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WRITERS & LOVERS CAFE: <strong>Spring</strong> <strong>2014</strong> 51<br />
The book is printed on a rich stock in an unusual backpack- and coffeehousefriendly<br />
format, and its pages bear no numbers, giving off the feel that you are<br />
holding a stack of poetry-slam handouts. Also, the text is printed vertically, not<br />
horizontally, You get the impression it is a very artsy neighborhood. At times<br />
it feels like Greenwich Village:<br />
actor drops in<br />
secondhand book store<br />
night of summer solstice<br />
like a fairy tale<br />
I ask my husband<br />
to pick some medicinal herbs<br />
But even if the neighborhood is quickly recognizable as Greenwich Village,<br />
the flavors are all Asian. The sounds, artifacts, and concerns are exotic. The<br />
events, upheavals, and terrors of the daily life are dainty, minuscule, or else<br />
over-exaggerated.<br />
a scream<br />
of young wife<br />
a roach's gone<br />
Professor Ikumi Yoshimura has taught at Gifu University, Dept. of Comparative<br />
Literature, for 30 years. She sings of her neighborhood in haiku saturated<br />
with sensual data very reminiscent of Basho's perspective:<br />
setting sun brightens<br />
a smoke of grilled shells –<br />
autumn shore<br />
early morning wind<br />
a gull is skimming<br />
the boatman's face<br />
Perhaps the greatest gift of Yoshimura's book I had never expected. Haiku is<br />
one's oooh's and aha!'s over daily, ordinary things served straight, she shows.<br />
Objects like “paper planes” or “paper lanterns” are really straight talk:<br />
spring festival –<br />
my wish on the paper lantern<br />
swaying
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