HCSHR 5:03 – Jennifer Hambrick, Joyride, haibun.

HCSHR 5:03 – Jennifer Hambrick, Joyride, haibun. Winchester VA: Red Moon Press, 2021.  978-1-947271-74-6. 98 pages. 15@US redmoonpress.com

review by Maxianne Berger

As I write about Joyride by Jennifer Hambrick, it has been shortlisted by The Haiku Foundation for the 2021 Touchstone Book Award, and has, not surprisingly, received much praise elsewhere. In back-cover blurbs, Stella Pierides calls it a “beautifully written book,” and John Stevenson, “a triumph!” For Cherie Hunter Day it is “something that our souls need.”

The thirty-nine haibun are gathered into three sections, and the publisher has given these brief vignettes space: only one of the haibun actually crosses over to a second page, so nearly all of them face a blank page. All this white space helps aerate prose that already has its own airiness written into it, such is Hambrick’s skill with words.

The prose of “Together” (p. 81) is an excellent example of the poet’s powers of description. In the first paragraph, the I-persona visits family graves. After, in the second paragraph, she leaves for downtown

where a magnificent salt water aquarium in the lobby of an office building catches my eye. Amid swirls of ghostlike jellyfish, two seahorses bob in the undulating current, tails intertwined.

The prose is also quite playful at times. How can a reader not love the joy in “That Summer” (p. 25): “everything was wheelie-o, bling-bloop, water in the frying pan, skittereedoo. everything purple and pink, crackly-crunch, salty-sweet, lemon-lime.” It continues in this vein for the next several lines, and it’s not any wonder when the haiku caps it off.

walking around
in a new place
first kiss

Not all haibun pair the haiku with prose. “Mammogram” (p. 83) follows the haiku with a ghazal. I share here the third and the sixth of the seven couplets:

a riddle unspooling in velvet night air,
the hum of darkness fills my breast

like a tree without shade, the breath
of an unfaithful lover lies in my breast

Many of the tales feature a car named Mary Ellen. This behaviour, described in “Jerk” (p. 51), seems typical:

she lurched forward like she was trying to buck me through the windshield but we jerked along to the Shop-N-Sav and I parked her in the shade of a tree and when I came back a few minutes later she had a flat tire and that’s when I knew who I was dealing with.

You can feel the breathlessness in the prose, and I haven’t even quoted the entire unpunctuated, one-sentence paragraph!

Of course, haibun include haiku. The one in “Inside” (p. 73) is quite apt as it interrupts the I-persona’s inner-monologue while she is driving through rush hour:

red light
the alpha goose honks
at the one out of line

The penultimate haibun, “Dropped” (p. 91) features a rush of feelings, memories and observations as friends move away. Then

as the wind dies down, they get into their car and drive into the distance.

drifting clouds
the road stretches
then disappears

These small tales capture the heart of experiences and the experiences of heart. Jennifer Hambrick’s Joyride: more than the pleasure of the road, the pleasure of the reading.

Maxianne Berger
April, 2022

*****

return to Haiku Canada              return to Book Reviews Home Page HCShoHyōRan