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They say you can't tell a book by its cover. But in the case of this one, even a reader unfamiliar with Japanese short poems could expect to spend a pleasant afternoon exploring the relationship of the "letters" of the title with the woman whose profile graces the cover. A profile based on a charcoal sketch by Nancy A. Knight, entitled Karen Jeanne Harlow. On discovery of the dedication, For Karen Jeanne Harlow, this reader's interest was piqued. More about this later.
Many of the poems in this volume have been published in a variety of journals (thirty-five) and in anthologies (five), sometimes in slightly different versions. Since the author is well known in the haiku and tanka communities, he faced the challenge of finding a way to present these discrete parts from a fresh perspective, and in doing so to create a coherent whole. Using the vehicle of "letters," and the overarching theme of "traveling through time," he has met this challenge.
On the second page, the reader meets the time traveler, the persona of the letters:
as a young poet
I traveled to Innisfree
to draw out the root:
the lake was a small, mean place
and no swans anywhere (p. 10)
Is this persona the real Michael McClintock? Does it matter? Should it, so long as he manages to persuade us to adopt what Coleridge referred to as that "willing suspension of disbelief"?
Though I've never been to Innisfree, I have traveled there with William Butler Yeats in "The Lake Isle of Innisfree." Thus I understand it as a place where a poet can hope "to draw out the root" [McClintock] of English poetry; to "hear the lake water lapping . . . in the deep heart's core." [Yeats] (1) A place for a citizen of the New World to seek his heritage in the Old. Or turning our attention from the poet to the poetry, a journey back in time to seek the "vertical axis" discussed by Haruo Shirane in Traces of Dreams. (2)
This thin volume is like a hidden treasure that is accessible from four directions: that of the experience of the poet (persona), both subjective and objective, imaginary and realistic; that of literary allusion, suggested by the Innisfree of the poem quoted above; that of the search for the vertical axis, not only of the poems herein, but by extension, of the tanka, haiku, and senryu of Western and other non-Japanese cultures; and the personal relationship the reader develops with the text as he or she progresses through its pages.
The experience of the poet lets us see him enjoying the moment:
idle summer day
sucking the meat
from a fig (p. 41);
being mindful of it:
raking beans
into a steel pot
over a sink-
let me not forget
where I am (p. 13);
and finding resonance in the moment, between the natural world and the world of humankind:
between sun and shade
a butterfly pauses
like none I've seen-
who ever falls in love
with someone they know? (p. 16).
Upon occasion, we find the poem reaching back in Western culture to find its vertical axis in such themes as carpe diem:
from my palm
she takes the apple . . .
and it's understood
our time is not
forever (p. 40).
Or beginning with the particular, the here and now, and progressing across time and cultures to the universal in human history:
a view of rain,
wind, pale wisteria
in this California flat-
who knows how long
men have lived like this (p. 24).
The fourth direction mentioned above for approaching this volume is that of the reader's developing relationship to the text. For me, this was the most rewarding, since it engaged not only my head but also my heart. I found myself thinking again and again that I've had a similar experience. It happened so often that I went back through, carefully considering each poem and taking a time to let it speak to me, personally. In all but a few cases, I was able to recall something from my own life that resonated with the image, theme, or setting. One of the blurbs on the back cover succinctly expresses what I felt:
"So acute is McClintock's sensibility that many of his tanka have struck me, not just as poems that I have read, but as signal events in my life." (Marianne Bluger, author of Zen Mercies, Small Satoris.)
The very first poem in the book is the one that "struck" me, as one of the most "signal events in my life". An event it took me 40 years and 40 lines to write a poem about. Here it is in just 5 lines, memorable and poignant:
tell me a story
make it last
all night
the child is dead
who asked this (p. 9).
Back to the woman on the cover. What is her relationship to these "letters in time"?
This is never clearly delineated. Is she perhaps the you of this scene:
you never showed up
at the train station
as it empties
I learn the cellphone's
re-dial function (p. 19).
Or the subject of this one:
well-loved and wise,
the careful goddess
who in the morning
brushes all sorrow
from her hair (p. 52).
This is just a glimpse of the hidden treasure awaiting the reader.
For the past few weeks I have been carrying this volume around with me, trusting it to tell me what I wanted to say in the review. I have been reading in line at the grocery store, between planes, or arriving early for a potluck. Each time I revisit one of my favorite poems, I try looking at it from a different perspective-e.g., craft; theme; depth of meaning. And each time, I am rewarded with a sense of appreciation, of enjoyment of a shared experience.
This book would make a great Christmas gift. I plan to use it for stocking stuffers for my poetry loving grandchildren. (They're all closet writers, it seems.) It is available here:
Letters in Time: Sixty Short Poems, by Michael McClintock
78 pp., softbound
$10 USA / $13 Canada
Published by Hermitage West
P.O. Box 124
South Pasadena, California 91031-0124
ISBN 0-9770259-0-X
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