HCSHR 5:01— Fifty at Fifty: My Haiku, by Dave Read. 2020.

 

HCSHR 5:01— Fifty at Fifty: My Haiku, by Dave Read. 2020.
davereadpoetry.blogspot.com/2021/07/fifty-at-fifty-my-haiku.html

Review by Maxianne Berger

This haiku chapbook has no ISBN. It is a PDF posted at the poet’s web site. It does, however, offer an opportunity, through a review, to present a work for which the poet has gathered “a collection of [his] best haiku” as a personal celebration of a fiftieth birthday in 2020. And I dwell, here, on the notion of “collection” and “best.”

Too often, poets gather all the haiku that fit, perhaps fearing that otherwise the poems will never be seen by others. Read, however, has carefully curated his own writing, which promotes  quality. Many of these haiku have appeared previously, in journals from Acorn to Wild Plum. As such, other, external, editorial eyes have pre-selected them, and we all know how hard it is to have even a single haiku noticed from among the hundreds plus plus plus submissions that an editor might receive for any given issue. We can therefore expect many of Read’s poems to rise above the mundane. And they do.

Read does not follow the traditional seasons. Instead, he interweaves them as he moves from early morning to night.

heavy snow
I shovel the morning
out of my day                       (p. 3)

twilight
every bird
a crow                                    (p. 27)

The natural world is not the only topic of interest, and yet it is just as present as the fading memory of a relationship, expressed in the fewest, most carefully-chosen words.

darkness
her name slips
into it                                    (p. 13)

At times, the ephemeral combines delicately with the spiritual.

candle smoke
the afterlife
of prayer                               (p. 26)

These fifty haiku by Dave Read show how deeply poetry can touch reality. There is nothing banal about them, and this birthday collection is definitely worthy of your reading time. And in this reading, to see how choice produces strength, whether of individual words within a poem, or of poems within a collection.

Maxianne Berger
January, 2022

*****

return to Haiku Canada              return to Book Reviews Home Page HCShoHyōRan