Garden Mandala by Giselle Maya, Koyama Press, 84750 Saint Martin de Castillon, France, 2011.
A handmade book 10” x 13” (Limited edition), 52 pages, illustrated in black and white, on recycled paper with handmade cover stock bound with linen thread.
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A Review by Guy Simser
Every so often, a reviewer receives a very pleasant surprise. For me it is Giselle Maya’s Garden Mandala. Why? Well, with the exception of reading a few Maya’s haiku and tanka in journals, I am not familiar with her work. Quelle surprise then when this understated art book arrived in my mail box.
Be aware I have a bias. My childhood was influenced by a gift common in the early ‘40’s: The Books of Knowledge sold door to door to uneducated parents wishing to give their children a good start. These books described nature in simple language and with line drawings illustrating poems and stories. I treasure them still. Maya’s book has this simplicity, but better still, it is a personal story made richer by her reverence for the potager (kitchen garden) and those who work it. Sadly, reverence is a word fallen into disuse in the last half century. Clichéd irony has for the most part replaced it. I dare say, for many today it would be embarrassing to admit to reverence. Not for Giselle Maya. Reverence is everywhere between the lines. Her book is the better for it.
Garden Mandala records a devoted person’s poetic writing with a purpose: her note on page 2, “This book is an homage to all gardeners past, present and future, beginning with the one who created Eden which is rooted in our garden of dreams.”
In brief, Maya’s book contains 54 haiku in three or four line form and 50 in one line form. There are as well haibun, tanka, tanka prose, vers libre and some “poem tales,” a category wide open for interpretation of form. In short, a mélange. This is a rich, full book which will stir the gruel pot of those concerned with Japanese form poetry aesthetics and definitions.
During my first reading I put such concerns aside and recommend others do the same. I read the book straight through with pauses for reflection between sections titled such as: “and the lord planted a garden eastward of Eden,” A Child’s Garden, Dandelions, Rain Chant, Snail, and Compost. With pauses Maya’s seeds of reverence will grow in the mind. Upon completion, I put the book down, thought how wonderfully this poet speaks of her love for her garden, how humbly she writes of the simple things occurring on that valued plot of land.
After further readings, I took up the subject of aesthetics and definitions. But first, here are some facts: Koyama Press states it publishes books in the tradition of contemporary (italics mine) Japanese haiku, haibun, tanka, tanka prose, renga and poem tales (italics mine). Maya does successfully write in Japanese forms, a number of her poems have been selected for publication in many Japanese poetry form journals. M. McClintock’s introduction to Garden Mandala, offers laudatory comment on Maya’s haiku, haibun and tanka. And finally, Maya makes no claim in the book to be writing only haiku, haibun, tanka and tanka prose. So, what am I reading? It is sometimes confusing.
I will now pick up my hoe and dig around some of the poems: For starters, I have selected “Compost,” a long poem of 23 stanzas where stanza length varies from 3, 4, 5 and 6 lines; some of which appear as haiku and tanka although in close reading are open to question. To give you a flavour, my comments follow.
The first stanza: composting/ old habits & peelings/ no longer useful. This looks like a haiku but reads as a three line statement of fact, a judgement. Lyrical perhaps, but as a haiku, it has no “leap,” no discovery; and it has no kigo for me as I peel potatoes all year round. On the other hand as a free verse stanza one may say it sets up the remaining stanzas. Qui s’en soucie!
The next two stanzas each have, unlike most English tanka, six short lines: taken/ from earth/ given back/ to earth/ manifold /feelings; followed by, out of pain/ equanimity/ grows – / together/ with sorrel/ and artichokes. The next has five lines squirrels / sculpt/ walnut shells/ found/ in odd places however, its rhythm is 2/1/3/1/3. This is very abrupt for tanka; and it has no “dreaming room” nor does it have a powerful last line all of which many claim tanka requires. There are tanka poets of standing like our own Kozue Ozawa (GUSTS tanka journal) who recommend English tanka be shorter in form than the common 31 syllables. I don’t know if Maya is attempting the shorter form here, or if she would claim it is not intended as a tanka, or if she would say it is a poem tale whatever Koyama Press claims that to be.
Moving to the haiku sections, here are three which please me, notwithstanding the one with no seasonal word, a faux pas for many haiku writers. Others would say, “So what, I still get it whether it is Palm Sunday or Christmas.” And I would respond yes, but bells sound all year round for a burial or in a country school. A kigo could clarify the reader’s experience in the sense of time and place.
insistent bells
the moment the sound stops
I remember I’m here
through shutters
the mistral whistles
changing my dream
I particularly enjoyed the following haiku. There are many things going on here. It has depth in the words chosen, it sings in phrases and it has a rhythm appropriate for each phrase. I am envious of the reverence.
eternal pine
a pause in the tide
of cicada song
Moving now to three one-line haiku I enjoy: they “leap,” they have kigo and for me they have a depth of perception in keeping with her book of reverence…
1) so many garden chairs each one with its own view
2) clear sky as if the thunderstorm had never been
3) tai chi on a dew-covered meadow a deer passes
And yet, here are two one-line haiku which suggest an epigram or line of prose:
1) desires if you watch them they tend to go up in smoke
2) whether or not it makes sense it is a miracle just the same
However, these lines are in keeping with Maya’s tone in this book and so I am conflicted. This could be avoided if these one-liners were placed somewhere else than under the sub-heading “one line haiku.”
Perhaps over a potager dinner with Maya such questions about her development of this book would be clarified. Wouldn’t that make for a lovely evening in southern France? I dream on.
In closing, I would like to say I enjoyed a great deal of content in this book including the following: imagist lines; a prose section on Maya’s lengthy search for and eventual discovery of her potager in a French mountain village; and a descriptive listing of “weeds” including her affection for them. However, my top choice is the haibun, “A Child’s Garden.” It suggests the root, I use that word deliberately, of a bond with the land between father and daughter which I suspect is the driving force behind this unique poetry book.
In summary, for those who would like to explore reverence in the year 2011, Garden Mandala would be a very good start, regardless of judgments of form.
Tagged “imagist/humorist” by lyric poet Marianne Bluger, Guy Simser has written English & Japanese verse forms since 1978, including his five year diplomatic service in Japan. Over 60 anthologies & journals (USA, Canada, Japan, England, Australia) carry his work. Major awards: Diane Brebner Poetry Prize (Canada) & AHA Splendor Prize for Tanka Sequence (USA). Co-chair 2009 HNA Conference. Selection committee member of GUSTS (Canada’s first tanka journal).