Book Review
Translating Life Sketch into Words
“From Breath to Words” by Don Baird,
Lulu Publications, 2023, ISBN: 978-1-312-37377-8
Reviewed by Pravat Kumar Padhy
The
collection “From Breath to Words” by Don Baird metamorphoses the essence of
life into the flow of a story. Don Baird is an accomplished haiku poet, graphic
artist and editor. His pioneering contribution to haiku and related genres is
immense and The Living Haiku Anthology is a testament to his creation of
the contemporary treatise of haiku literature. The
poet blends a mélange image, emotional journey, human psyche,
and resilience in life's path.
In
the possible minimalistic expression, he rekindles the journey of life with candour poetic ingenuity, tonality and
a touch of mystical symbolism (yugen) when he recounts:
from
breath to words silence more silent
Don is
candid enough and in ‘Afterword’ he annotates: “With much on my mind, a story began to
unfold. It had its own take on things; I followed along, bending as the tale
became one of its own.
As I pursued the story, I often
pondered. There’s a mood, a tone that lingers on my mind like smoke drifting
from one part of a pub to another. I wanted to keep its mood by having words
bound together with something more satisfying than clinical fragments, phrases,
and sentences….”
Interestingly
Don elucidates the intense flow of poetic thoughts in his haiku with dexterity,
sensibility, succinctness and honesty. The collection features black and white photos by the poet
and they subtly bridge the continuity in a subtle style. Rightly so he says “Scent linking,
its nuance, became the story’s vital spirit. With subtle connection and
quietness through feeling, the haiku lead readers on several journeys that
disappear yet return…”
Poet Dan Beachy-Quick remarks,
“Poems might be understood as regions of intense becoming, spaces of encounter
and relations in which–impossibly enough–for a brief while a kind of
metamorphosis occurs and, as Arthur Rimbaud so succinctly put it, ‘I am other.’
That otherness isn’t an escape from, but an
entrance into.” The poet
reconciles reality and embraces pain and grief as parts of life. He dives into the
depth of the human psyche and metaphorically discovers the light of hope for fulfillment
in the twirled path of life:
in and out
the unusual path
of
a firefly
He feels the pain of separation: “missing her
friend, tears/ run along the cheekbone” and in a metaphorical framework, the poet unfolds the tears
dropping from leaves and torment remains unabated as “the rain rains too.”
raining leaves the rain rains too
In
the apparent chaos of life, he dreams for a glimmer of hope and remains
optimistic when he pens:
shorter
days dreams take their time now
He enumerates the spread of the
sea as a metaphor for loss. The intense human psyche of bereavement is
alliteratively portrayed with visual intelligence:
empty shell —
someone I know
lost
at sea
The poet dips into the depth of grief:
“on
empty/ a cigarette dangles/ from her lips” and instills the reality of life through an
innovative interaction or dialogue-based haiku:
she said
I said, “a dandelion
can’t
fly”
Don unearths the
inner feelings and paints the shades of emotion through linguistic precision,
phrasing and poetic prowess. In the
following haiku, one can observe the element of stirring synaesthetic
connection, ‘your thoughts’, in the muse of ‘songbird’:
songbird
I hear your thoughts
in
the breeze
Loneliness
gripped immensely as he writes: “lone star . . ./ the sound of a cricket/
singing to himself ” and the poet tries to return to the world of
reconciliation: “singing tree . . ./ scattered in the leaves/ the sound of
music.”
The journey of life necessitates
continuation despite obstacles. Patience possibly helps to overcome the tragedy:
“rippling/ a slow tide cuts/ diamonds.” Soon he discovers the waves of ‘living’ with rays of optimism
under the “moon shine”:
waves weave waves in the moon
shine
The textual
virtuosity, resonance, and rhythms are aesthetically crafted. Don applies a novel
technique “implied imagery” (from sound to seeing) in the following monoku and
tangles the sense of hearing and seeing (existential reflection) by implying synaesthetic
association. It is the emotional impulse that is alluded to in the word phrase
“cracked tree” with poetic profundity:
cracked tree sudden thunder
divides the forest
The nuances of nature and self are
interconnected. It embodies the spirit of awareness, imagination and
realism. Don is brilliant
at using visual images in a subtle way to explore the vastness of the sky:
crayons . . .
suddenly, the clouds
become blue
The
poet transforms the visual imagery to a different scale- from blue-coloured
crayons to clouds in the sky. The blue colour represents serenity and inspiration.
The disappearance of clouds implies the melting away of grief and pathos. The
poet might be in a Zen state transcending into the vastness. This reflects the sense
of hosomi (thinness) between nature and the human psyche.
Broadly there is a thematic
resemblance between the above poem and Buson’s haiku and in both cases, the colour
is used as a sparkling metaphor:
a gust of
wind --
and the waterbirds
become white
-Buson (Tr.
R H Blyth)
In the following haiku, the poet visualizes drops of
water from cupped hands to the rain falling from clouds. The haiku depicts a sense of harmonious effect (toriawase).
It captivates the poetic ingenuity by zooming out into the immensity of the sky:
cupping water . . .
clouds leak between
themselves
Bruce
Ross, in his preface, in Haiku Moment writes “The movement from a
special attention toward a non-human nature to some kind of union with that
nature is a central facet of Japanese culture.” Interestingly, references to fireflies,
dragonflies, roaches, crickets, ravens, cats, giraffes, songbirds, cuckoos,
seagulls etc find their places in the collection
to honour the surroundings and explore human feelings.
It is interesting to explore the close parallel
between his haiku “solid rock/ a cricket’s voice/ rings a bell” and that of
Basho:
oh this loneliness !
only the shrill of cicadas
seeps into rocks
-Basho (Tr.
Gabi Greve)
Don uses profound poetic skill,
cadences, and subtle elegance (shibumi) in the following haiku. The first line suggests a reflection of space.
The phrase “high- noon” sets the timeline. The vastness of the sea is
reinforced as the lone seagull skims the dryness of its wings. It is an inventive
classic with the interknitted craft of juxtaposition (space and time) with
artistic sobriety:
distant mirage . . .
a high-noon seagull
skims the dryness
Don skillfully plays with language, creating
memorable phrases with a poetic flair: “the cat licks the summer.” One can notice
the disjunction between the hot summer and the cool water of a rolling river. It reminds me of Lee Gurga’s observation
on haiku method as “primary techniques of juxtaposition of images and
disjunction of language.”
rolling
river . . .
the
cat licks summer
from
her paws
He reconciles the storm of
memories as the musical song: “flash storm/ passing memories/ become a song”
and feels the burning memories of life in quietude: “sun flare/ a hummingbird
colors/ my eyes.”
Don
sketches the stillness of life as he surmises the burning shadow of pain: “midnight
summer/ a cigarette still between/ her fingers.” Probably the meandering story
transcends into the symbolical portrayal of empty chairs and soulfully the poet
navigates the “unusual path”:
dream room
the unusual path
of
forgetting
After
reading between the lines, I realized the central theme as Don emailed me: “It's
a kind of fiction story (with several storylines implied) that scent links from
the first poem to the last. The photos scent link as well.” I think it is a verisimilitude of the poet’s story. He embraces
the inner urge with a drifting
mood (nioi) and arrives at the destination of realism.
James Hillman once wrote: “Mind is fundamentally
poetic in nature”. Soul is “that which deepens.” The poet desires to
discover the colours in the wind and celebrate this life despite all odds: “if
you think so too a petal in the wind.”
I wish everyone the
opportunity to explore the nuance and the transient nature of life (wabi-sabi ) in this collection.
Don Baird:
Don Baird (born May 15, 1947, Denver, Colorado, U.S.A.) is a
photographer, poet (haiku, haibun, haiga), and professional martial artist. He
is also an accomplished haiku poet, composer and studio musician, graphic
artist, public speaker, author, and editor. His haikai have
won awards in the International Kusamakura Haiku Competition (2004, 2005), the
NHK Radio International Haiku Contest (2009), The Haiku Foundation’s HaikuNow!
contest and Touchstone Awards for Individual Poems (both 2013), and the Santōka
International Haiga Contest (2018). He has written 12 books on subjects from
haiku, martial arts, poetry of God, and philosophy. Baird is cofounder and
editor of the online The Living Haiku Anthology and the
e-journal Under the Bashō. He
resides in Wake Forest, North Carolina, where he manages the American School of
Martial Arts—Wake Forest.
Pravat Kumar Padhy:
Pravat Kumar Padhy obtained his Master of Science and a Ph.D from Indian
Institute of Technology, ISM Dhanbad. He is a mainstream poet
and a writer of Japanese short forms of poetry. His poem “How
Beautiful” is included in the undergraduate curriculum at the university level. He served as a panel judge of “The Haiku Foundation Touchstone Awards
for Individual Poems” and is on the editorial board of ‘Under the Basho.’
He resides in Bhubaneswar and devotes time to writing papers on ‘Planetary Geology’ and listening to classical music and songs. His online publications can be read at http://pkpadhy.blogspot.com
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Publication Credit: Literary Vibes, 155, Feb 2025 (ed. Dr Mrutyunjay
Sarangi)
https://positivevibes.today/article/newsview/581
