HCSHR 4:13 — Carolyn Hall, Cricket Dusk.

HCSHR 4:13 — Carolyn Hall, Cricket Dusk. Winchester, VA: Red Moon Press, 2020. 104 pages; 4.25 x 6.5”. ISBN 978-947271-59-3. $15US redmoonpress.com

review by Kristen Lindquist

The title Cricket Dusk perfectly exemplifies the tone of Carolyn Hall’s fifth full-length collection of haiku and senryu: understated and resonant, with an ash-grey thread of sadness thrumming quietly but steadily in the background.

The book contains 82 haiku, one to a page, and is divided into four titled sections that are loosely but not consistently seasonal. The former editor of Acorn and current editor of Haiku Poets of Northern California’s member journal Mariposa, Hall offers here a master class in how to write excellent haiku using unflashy language and everyday images. And by “everyday” I don’t mean to suggest stale or dull in any way. Take the haiku that opens the main body of the book, in which she adroitly allies the energy of spring with something as ordinary as a loose grocery cart:

first spring day
a grocery cart
of its own volition

Or this quirky ku, celebrating rain after a drought (with an unusual, but well deserved, exclamation point):

rain at last!
I ask the piano salesman
to riff a little Bach

From the very first haiku of the book, “fiftieth anniversary,” included in the dedication to her husband Buck, the poems in this collection radiate the quiet wisdom of maturity. Hall presents moments of a lived life — marriage, death, aging, home, family — alongside finely drawn observations of nature, crafting accessible haiku that the reader steps into as if walking into her living room. And once there, they’re put at ease by the comfortable, unfussy furniture of her style, unsuspecting of how far they’re going to sink into the profundity of that big old leather couch.

ebb tide
first strands of gray
in my daughter’s hair

The title poem, found near the end of the book, is especially devastating in the simple, honest way that it shares a profound loss. It’s almost impossible to read through the book a second time without feeling the effect of that note of grief still lingering in the air.

cricket dusk
his homecoming
in an urn

Thankfully, it’s not all heavy stuff. She leavens the mood with warm humor and a generosity of spirit. You can sometimes imagine the twinkle in her eye as you read.

milkweed
the ‘best used by’ date
on these breasts 

I found myself especially drawn to her one-liners, which pack a powerful punch. As a poet of northern California, she touches on forest fires in a couple of haiku here, including one that has stuck in my head ever since I first heard her read it (virtually, of course):

wildfire   we who left those who stayed

Each of Hall’s previous books won awards, from either the Snapshot Press Book Awards, the Haiku Society of America Merit Book Awards, and/or the Haiku Foundation’s Distinguished Book Awards. And many of the individual poems in this collection were prize-winners in their own right. Cricket Dusk offers another stellar, consistently strong set of haiku and senryu by an experienced poet at the top of her game.

Kristen Lindquist
May 2021

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