HCSHR 3:10 — John Brandi, Blue Sky Ringing.

HCSHR 3:10 — John Brandi, Blue Sky Ringing. Translator (Punjabi) Amarjit Sathi; translator (Hindi), Angelee Deodhar. Punjabi Haiku Forum / Unistar, 2010. ISBN 978-93-5017-263-6. Free ebook: http://www.unistarbooks.com/poetry/2534-blue-sky-ringing.html  

                                                                       reviewed by Sandra Stephenson

Do you ever feel like a book is your lover?  You think of it through the day, you want to return to it. You want it not to end, so you only allow yourself a bit at a time?  I’ve got one of those on the go. And it’s a good thing, because it’s relentlessly hot outside and the lockdown has emptied purpose out of a lot of what we used to do. Thank you for Blue Sky Ringing.

I couldn’t remember where I had picked up this book by an American haijin, translated below the English into Hindi and Punjabi, until I read the bio of one of the translators on the back fly. Amarjit Sathi has been a member of KaDo Ottawa. He and his wife, Surinder, live in Canada. Angelee Deodhar, the other translator, who died in 2018, lived in Chandigarh, India, and was a member of Haiku Canada. 

The book is a small size, just thick enough, just small enough to slip into a purse. Hardback. It has drawings and haiga made rough by hand, which segue from the delightful curlicues of Devanagari and Gurmukhi, the Hindi and Punjabi scripts. Devanagari is the script of the gods, home of the gods; and Gurmukhi the word of mouth of teachers. The occurrence of these scripts on every page, iterating and reiterating Brandi’s ringing poems, elevates haiku to another plane, even if the reader, like this reviewer, can't read it. They redouble the feeling that every line has at least three meanings.

evening light
through her veil
everything hidden revealed

Brandi’s poems recall notes I made on Kenneth Rexroth’s book, A Hundred More Poems from the Japanese.  In a review of that book, Gary Hotham noted the poems’ sensuality. I was struck by their subtlety, but where Hotham saw sensuality, I saw spirituality. When I looked again at Rexroth’s collection with Hotham’s note in mind, the two were married. The lover some poets yearn for is mixed.

Does the bell ring?
Does the beam ring?
The bell and beam
Ring together                                            (anonymous, xcvii)

This poem marries earth and heaven, carnal and spiritual. Sexuality in Buddhism has a place as a spiritual goad . . .

Though they lack a little in warmth, Brandi’s poems nurse that spiritual sensuality. It is unmistakable:

 

for a topknot
Buddha wears
the morning star

It also contains humour, contemporaneity and loneliness:

on a bed of nails
the fakir lies down
to read the Financial Times

and speaks to the sometimes rending dichotomies we have to choose our way through in this life as human being:

about to kill an ant
but no it’s carrying
a corpse

Still, Brandi can judge and chortle:

after the loudmouths leave
the mynas eat
their crumbs

and revel in the senses, in the aroma of pine smoke in the tea or the cool breeze from a passing waitress. There’s nothing amateurish about this poet or this book. It’ll take all summer to read, and then I’ll start again.

Sandra Stephenson
May 2020

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