HCSHR 1:3 Echoes 2: The New Resonance Haiku Poets 1999-2017

Echoes 2. The New Resonance Haiku Poets 1999-2017. Compiled by Jim Kacian & Julie Warther. Winchester VA: Red Moon Press, 2018. ISBN 978-1718615854. Unpaginated, soft cover, 6 x 9, $20US. redmoonpress.com  

Echoes 2 is a compilation of haiku by all the poets who have appeared in an issue of A New Resonance: Emerging Voices in English-Language Haiku (ANR) between 1999 and 2017. This, the second compilation, was produced to salute ANR’s 20th anniversary. Every two years a volume of ANR “showcas[es] emerging talent” (from the Foreword to echoes 1, Jim Kacian & Dee Evetts). Echoes 2 is a second “reunion” of all the poets who have appeared in those first ten issues of ANR. In a way, these poets constitute a cultural formation even though the poets’ original “meetings” are in the pages of a biennial publication.

There are 170 poets in all, thus 170 pages of updated biographical notes and haiku, in alphabetical order by family name (thereby foregoing the need for page numbers). Because this collection is a compilation, there hasn’t been any editorial mediation in the poems presented beyond works selected by the poets themselves, for the most part, six each.

The idea behind this compilation would be to find out what people are up to since being presented as “emerging voices.” It is certainly interesting to note among the pages poets who are familiar to us today, poets who have become leaders in the field, such as American poet Deborah P. Kolodji (ANR 4), Beverley George of Australia (ANR 4), and Claire Everett (ANR 9) of the U.K. It is a lovely reminder, as well, to see how many countries beyond the U.S.A. are represented among New Resonance poets, poets who were all, once, “emerging”: Petar Tchouhov of Bulgaria (ANR 5), Dietmar Tauchner of Austria (ANR 5), André Surridge of New Zealand (ANR 7), and Polona Oblak of Slovenia (ANR 9). These poets are wonderful indicators of the import of the ANR sub-title’s “English Language”—the language of expression and not the mother tongue of the poet.

And of course members of Haiku Canada have appeared in volumes of A New Resonance. Chen-ou Liu (from ANR 7) presents his work through six haiku that have earned awards, such as “im-mi-grant . . ./ the way English tastes/ on my tongue” (Kokaku Haiku Competition 2013, Second Prize). DeVar Dahl ((ANR 3) presents himself through six haiku that are previously unpublished, such as “the smooth place/ where two branches rub/ March wind[.]” Susan Constable appears in ANR 6. The six haiku she presents on her Echoes page include two monostichs: “knife cold swimming into blue bones” (Modern Haiku 44:1); and “moonlight fingering the blue of her prayers” (Acorn 39). I could look up the publication dates of Modern Haiku 44:1, of Acorn 39, and of ANR 6, this last, presumably, from the period when Constable was an emerging voice. I would have to look up these dates because they are not provided. This is unfortunate because chronology can be valuable to some readers, and actual dates are part of attributive references. It is unclear whether the absence of dates is an editorial decision, however very few poets have included the publication dates of their haiku.

Where there are a number of poets who present no updated biography, there are sadly those whose updates include a date of death. The page about Bruce Detrick (ANR 2) features haiku from For a Moment (no publishing information provided), poignant ones as “free Sunday concert/ in the slow movement/ another cane falls[.]” Robert Bauer is represented by haiku that appeared for the first time in ANR 5. Of these, “autumn sunrise/ the scent of sage lingers/ in the prayer lodge[.]”

My over-all impression of Echoes 2 is that it is more sociological than literary, more focused on the poets than on the poems. Even the haiku selections by the poets can be seen as indicators to how they feel about themselves, beyond the self-evident choice of theme. Although there are other ways to organize group poetry collections, Echoes 2 is a good scatter graph of a specific slice of haiku history, something it would not be had the editors intervened to shape it. As Julie Warther phrases it in her Foreword to echoes 2, “[t]his is the stuff of community.”

review by Maxianne Berger