‘In A Handful of Pebbles Mark Brooks joins the ranks of that handful of poets breaking new ground for haiku in English.’
from the foreword to A Handful of Pebbles
William J Higginson
Author, Haiku World
‘A unique voice echoes from every page of this stunning collection—Mark Brooks writes like no one else. His haiku moments are freshly perceived, skillfully captured, and instantly memorable. When the last page is turned there remains an eagerness for more—and each re-reading reveals further depth, richness, and power.’
Billie Wilson
‘Mark Brooks has a deep understanding of haiku aesthetics and his work consistently demonstrates his appreciation of the reader’s role in the poetic process. His diverse subject matter is treated with a reverence that reflects his own nature and contributes to the warmth one experiences in his poems. A Handful of Pebbles is a wonderful sampling of this poet’s work.’
Robert Gilliland
Associate Editor, The Heron’s Nest
A Handful of Pebbles by Mark Brooks
won The Snapshot Press Haiku Collection Competition, 2002.
William J Higginson graciously authored this foreword to A Handful of Pebbles.
In A Handful of Pebbles Mark Brooks joins the ranks of that handful of poets breaking new ground for haiku in English. The poems here, solidly in the haiku tradition, nonetheless refuse the constraints erroneously forced onto the cookie-cutter haiku that have filled the pages of our magazines and books for the last decade or more.
Some have said that metaphor and the “objective correlative” should be avoided in haiku. But what of this strikingly fresh image and its metaphorical punch?
old disagreements . . .
clouds of spray rise up
the waterfall
What makes this work? The “clouds of spray” function as both a genuine image in the world of the poem and as an objective correlative for the feelings resurrected in the poet’s mind at the time. “Waterfall”—a summer season word in traditional Japanese haiku— also brings to mind the hot and moist discomfort of summer along with the perhaps cooling effects of the spray as it lands on an on- looker. In short, this poem draws on a complex of psychological and sensory material, as we stand with the poet and look at the water flowing down as fast as time itself.
Brooks knows how to write a simple poem of event and place, as well, selecting words with the care for sound and sense that brings an immediate “that’s it” response:
heat lightning
an armadillo skitters
into a ditch
But beyond the present moment, deep time also lurks in many of these poems. Consider this, the book’s title poem:
small-town laundry
a handful of pebbles
stacked outside
An almost offhand, innocuous image that only causes us to pause for a moment. But later, who cannot return to it wondering why this seemingly random event draws us in? The pebbles, which I see as fresh-washed, might have come from some child’s pockets, or been placed there on the sidewalk by a child who waited outside while her parent tended the laundry inside. That is the pleasant story the poem evoked for me on a first reading, but I knew there was more. To me those pebbles further suggest a stream bed, a small river or creek where, in earlier, simpler times someone might have washed clothes over a patch of gravel with similar pebbles contributing to the cleansing effect of those pure waters.
Such range and engagement is maintained throughout the collection. Among repeated instances of just the right words bringing typical “haiku moments” to vivid life, there are striking vignettes, humorous senryu, slow revelations constructed by a master cinematographer, and poems that purely and simply pull our legs:
Seuss’s birthday
a dad and two lads plant
a plant in a planter
These haiku quickly escape the confining boxes of “haiku moments”, “nature poems”, or any other limitations one wants to put on haiku. Yet, marvelously, almost all these poems contain legitimate season words, and they easily fit just about any reasonable and responsible definition of the genre.
I recently wrote of a fantastic, ground-breaking book of American haiku. Here is another. Let there be more! In the meantime, enjoy the elegantly polished stones in A Handful of Pebbles.
William J Higginson
A Handful of Pebbles ($20 ppd) can be ordered from Snapshot Press.
A limited number of signed copies ($20 ppd) are available from the author.
If interested, please use the contact form to let Mark know.
The author’s introduction that follows the next four quotations
did not make it into the published edition of A Handful of Pebbles.
The universal character of haiku may be due to the fact that they always contain a sense of humor, as well as scenes of nature and daily life, things appreciated by anybody.
Akito Arima
gu ni kuraku / ibara o tsukamu / hotaru kana
foolish in the dark
I grab a bramble –
that firefly
Bashô
translation by Mark Brooks
“Nature’s truth” is an ore for good haiku. In contrast, for the writer to remain in a passive position — to describe what he saw as he saw it — is, strictly speak- ing, an attitude that can be named Natural Imitationism. A true artist takes a more positive attitude. He tries to add forging to the ore, to add creativity to it, and to produce something delicate and profound.
No matter how hard we try to copy Nature as is, the Nature we can depict in haiku cannot be said to be more detailed than the real Nature. Nevertheless, when we recite a superior haiku, we have the feeling that it is truer than Nature itself because something exists in the haiku that captures our heart.
Mizuhara Shûôshi
A mountain man lives under thatch
before his gates carts and horses are rare
the forest is quiet but partial to birds
the streams are wide and home to fish
with his son he picks wild fruit
with his wife he hoes between rocks
what does he have at home
a shelf full of nothing but books
Han Shan (Cold Mountain)
A handful of pebbles. A simple sign left behind. This happened.
Eternal debate about what this is. From physics to poetry to metaphysics, the quest continues. Haiku step back from the pursuit of a theory of reality, instead choosing to focus on individual experiences, to concentrate on things appreciated by anybody.
Haiku are drops of experience. Individual drops, moments when conventional subjects and objects meet, form simple reality. The best haiku search out key elements of a drop of experience, juxtapose them, and thus encapsulate the whole glorious happening for others.
I was here. I saw this, I heard this, I thought this, I felt this. This happened.
The best haiku are not faux shasei moments of scientific “objectivity”. The poet is present. The experiencer and the experienced are necessary to each drop of experience. Emotions, implicit or explicit, permeate the best haiku. Drops of experience are always a mixture of self and other. When such a happening is related well, haiku create a new drop, a new experience for the reader, one that captures our heart.
Haiku use the commonest of frameworks: the progression and repetition of the seasons. The parade of life creates the language of haiku, a poetic language of seasonal topics and expressions (kigo).
Kigo convey not merely seasonal implications, but with time they also carry poetic sentiment, emotions, and allusions. Without such a grounded poetic language, it is virtually impossible to communicate an experience of any depth in so few words. Kigo are the essence of the haiku tradition, the shared experiences of the poets and readers.
Haiku encompass more than tradition though. Haiku preserve the present, the here and now. In this collection I include many haiku that contain an essential sense of time and place, of Temple, Texas, from 2000 to 2002.
Some, like the title haiku, were written on journeys. Some concern seasonal events not found in a saijiki (compendium of seasonal events), much less a Japanese saijiki. Some, again like the title haiku, have the barest trace of seasonal feeling or none at all, yet still strive to convey experience. While these haiku need more from a reader, all are experiences I value.
In each case, this happened. Each drop of experience here. My handful of pebbles.
Mark Brooks (Shimi)
Austin 2004
Credits
The Akito Arima quote is from the foreward to Kôko Katô and David Burleigh’s A Hidden Pond (Kadokawa Shoten, Japan, 1997). They translated Dr Arima’s words.
The romaji for the Bashô haiku foolish in the dark/I grab a bramble –/that firefly is gu ni kuraku/ibara o tsukamu/hotaru kana. This translation by Shimi (Mark Brooks) is not previously published.
The Mizuhara Shûôshi quotes are from his haiku independence essay, “Truth in Nature, Truth in Literature”, translated by Hiroaki Sato. Hiroaki Sato completed this translation for the unpublished first print issue of haijinx. The article can now be found here.
The Han Shan (Cold Mountain) is number 31 in The Collected Songs of Cold Mountain, translated by Red Pine.
The concept of reality as “drops of experience” belongs to Alfred North Whitehead.
A Handful of Pebbles ($20 ppd) can be ordered from Snapshot Press.
A limited number of signed copies ($20 ppd) are available from the author.
If interested, please use the contact form to let Mark know.
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