HCSHR 5:13 - Bona M. Santos and Susan Burch, Not Your Kids' Nursery Rhyme Haiku

Bona M. Santos & Susan Burch, Not Your Kids’ Nursery Rhyme Haiku., Sacramento, CA: Velvet Dusk Publishing, 2022. 9798846494053, 36 pages. velvetduskpublishing.com $12 Can. amazon.ca

review by Maxianne Berger

Those who know me know I’m a sucker for intertextuality. Not merely allusion, but evoking an original for new purposes. Think Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, and Hamlet. Think James Thurber’s Fables for Our Time. Think Marion Zimmer Bradley’s The Mists of Avalon and the Arthurian legends. We read the new and simultaneously reconsider the old.

Bona M. Santos and Susan Burch teamed up to produce fifteen monostich haiku each to echo, deconstruct, reconstruct, and joyfully reimagine what Mother Goose set down. And do keep in mind, although apparent nonsense, even in their own historic era the originals themselves were sometimes coded satire.

The results of Santos and Burch’s exploration of possibilities are both thought provoking and fun. The opening poem sets the mood of contemporary tribulations.

his fragile ego Humpty Dumpty                                        (Santos, p. 3)

Aging is the subject of several haiku.

arthritis one two can’t buckle my shoe                             (Santos, p. 25)

“Hey Diddle Diddle” informs more than one poem.

cheating spouse the dish ran away with the spoon         (Burch, p. 30)

 sexual abuse hey diddle diddled                                       (Burch, p. 15)

So, as suggested in the title, no, definitely Not Your Kids’!

The other evening, I read these aloud while my husband did the dishes. We found ourselves laughing and singing the originals. Other (adults) surely will too. An excellent stocking stuffer, but gift yourself as well.

Maxianne Berger

September 2022

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