John Stevenson’s haiku “the reversible jacket” prompts me to feel there is, in many of us, only one side of that jacket we show to the world for work and play as we go out in a costume, even when there is no fancy dress party.
Often we only show the other side of that jacket to a chosen few. This author takes us on a multi-faceted trip round that side yet avoids the pitfalls of over earnest outpourings, of burying us in an avalanche of self-confessions that would require a mountain rescue dog to save us.
If this wasn’t enough, we can learn we are the core of our own material: those intimate themes within the circumference of our body space that provide resources to write for ourselves: the author writes “so much/of what I do/involves my body.”
Some of those resources from this will be poignant, painful, awkward.
Of course there are weaknesses in the collection, although intriguingly I’ve come back to them, and found I’m reducing them one by one. There is a cohesion to this collection, and possibly outside that structure one or two haiku aren’t strong enough to stand on their own two feet. At 92 haiku and senryu; fifteen tanka; one renku; and two haibun I defy anyone to keep such a low count.
This book is divided into two parts: Live; Again. I’ll be going back to this book again and again: sometimes to dip into, sometimes to read cover to cover. It won’t always be easy…
A child’s/ wide eyes/stares at me./If I could/I’d have a look too.
John, I think you allow us to do just that from time to time:
Previously published in Blithe Spirit, Journal of the British Haiku Society.
Live Again is John Stevenson's third full-length book of haiku and related forms (Some of the Silence, 1999 and quiet enough, 2004, First Prize winner of the Merit Book Award from the Haiku Society of America (HSA)), and his fourth collection overall (something uneraseable, 1996). The author has served HSA as President, Treasurer and Editor of Frogpond, its international membership journal. He is currently managing editor of The Heron's Nest.
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