HCSHR 1:7 Juanito Escareal's The Silence Within

Juanito L. Escareal, The Silence Within: Haiku, Tanka, Haibun & Free Verse. East Bay, CA: Haikukuru Publishing, 2018. ISBN 978-1-7202-7456-8. 119 pages, soft cover, 6” x 9”. 16$US, available through amazon.

The Silence Within by Juanito L. Escareal is this California poet’s first collection. The book includes nearly 150 haiku organized traditionally, by season. Most are previously published or have won awards in various contests. There are also several tanka — one of these was honoured with a supplementary prize in the 2005 Hisho-to-Mori International Tanka Contest. The awards ceremony in Japan is the subject of the haibun. There are also a handful of free-verse poems.

In 1999, after a decade on the Shiki Internet Haiku Salon, Escareal joined the Japanese haiku group Fuyoh (rose mallow). The Fuyoh group’s leader, Yoko Sugawa, had been a student of Shūson Katō who in turn had studied with Shuoshi Mizuhara whence the humanist perspective of the Fuyoh group: “that humans are essentially part of nature and through the medium of haiku [the Fuyoh group] searches for truths of human existence.”

Of his many haiku that had appeared in Fuyoh between 1999 and 2007, Escareal includes with thirty of these the comments by then co-editor Dhugal J. Lindsay: appraisals, deeply thought, of the poems’ poetics. This first example is a practical explanation of “humanism.” The haiku is from the book's “Zo” section, that is, non-season.

a stone’s throw
from the canyon’s edge
I throw a stone

Dhugal’s comment is a long one. Here are the first two sentences.

Although this haiku does not include a kigo or seasonal reference, it is a good example of how a nature word (stone) can be just as powerful as a seasonal word. It links one aspect of the stone’s existence (immobility — especially over short periods of time) with an aspect of human existence (the need to verify our convictions and the will to change nature by our own hand). (Fuyoh 54, 2003)

Dhugal’s lucid analysis shows, quite clearly I feel, the distinction between the “humanism” of the Fuyoh school and the encapsulating phrase “human nature” often used nowadays to explain how senryu is understood outside Japan. A haiku of the humanist school is clearly a haiku. Meanwhile, Escareal’s haiku itself quite seamlessly shows how schemes — he uses a chiasmus here — needn’t be banished from haiku.

Escareal himself presents comments on about forty of his haiku. These comments are interesting in how they reveal the process of distilling all the details into the essence, a process many beginning haiku poets find difficult. For this example, from “Spring,” I’ve permitted myself to present information from Escareal’s comment first, and his haiku afterwards.

The poet explains that he parks on the street under his neighbor’s plum tree (an early-spring kigo). One morning, upon stepping outside to head for work, he saw “there were only fallen petals on the parking space.”

the car thief
also took with him
plum petals

If we are reminded of what Ryokan’s thief left behind, Escareal leaves readers only those details needed to feel the moment — or rather, that magic balance of needed and sufficient.

My copy of The Silence Within is littered with sticky notes, too many haiku to share in a review, but here are just a few more.

From “Winter,” a haiku Dhugal concludes “is a lesson on how classical-style haiku should be made.”

meteor shower
. . . in the darkness
a leaf falls

This next haiku, from “Spring,” is overtly gendai in its five-line layout.

bay mud
in the eaves
the swallows
come
and go

There is no specific mention of the Philippines in the title poem, Escareal’s comment, though, explains the childhood memory of the inspiration.

the silence within
the swift monsoon waters
returning to sea

I add here that Escareal is not afraid to use Tagalog in an English poem.

high tide . . .
diving to the muddy bottom
for ibong dagat

His note explains these are “large colorful mussels literally called ‘bird of the sea.’” I say “is not afraid” because many poets avoid terms readers might not immediately know. Yet, if we all strictly adhered to that philosophy, haiku in English would never even include regionalisms, and would be the poorer for it.

Although I have discussed only the haiku, as mentioned above there are also several tanka, one haibun, and a handful of free-verse. In and of themselves, the poems of The Silence Within make the book a worthwhile read, however the comments, the poet’s own and those of Dhugal J. Lindsay, up the value in how they contribute to our understanding of haiku genesis and structure. This is Juanito L. Escareal’s first collection. I hope he’ll have time for a second.

review by Maxianne Berger