The reason his haiku are so widely published is because they are all so great and unique. What is so great about Roseliep’s haiku is that every single one is an experience. Perhaps not an actual experience from Roseliep’s life, but an experience for the reader. There are some patterns and common themes in his haiku—art, religion, personal relationships and interactions—but all of them share one thing in common. The lines of Roseliep’s haiku transport his readers to new scenes, bombarding them with feelings and sensations. A good example of this comes from one of his haiku selected for the third edition of The Haiku Anthology, a collection edited by Cor van den Heuvel.
unable
to get hibiscus red
the artist eats the flower
Roseliep, The Haiku Anthology, pg. 160
This haiku is one of my absolute favorites from Roseliep. As an artist myself, I can physically feel the frustration of the artist in this haiku. The frustration builds and builds with every tiny dab of color added to the ever-growing mess of not-quite-right red, until the artist finally snaps. He gives up and accepts that he will not be getting that hibiscus red today and plucks the reference flower from wherever it was perched. The artist notices a fleck of paint on one of the petals, and it’s a fleck of that frustrating not-quite-red, just a hair too orange or the tiniest bit too crimson. He brushes that fleck of not-quite-red off of the petal as best as he can before stuffing it in his mouth, finally fed up with the darn flower and just wanting it to go away. Once the flower is gone, he relaxes. His shoulders come back down from their stressed high as he exhales and he decides that its time to stop painting. If he has gotten to the point where eating his reference is the only thing that relaxes him, it is time for him to leave the studio. This haiku perfectly portrays that all too common progression from frustration to resignation, an all too common plight in any artist’s life.
There is not a lot of sensory language outside of “hibiscus red” in this haiku, but it is the description of the moment that creates the scene for the reader. By describing this simple moment, Roseliep not only stages this short little movie of the frustrated artist, but he illustrates every moment leading up to it. The reader finds themselves sitting on a paint-splattered and charcoal-stained stool beside the artist, watching him eat that offending hibiscus bloom.
Art and the creation of it is a common theme in Roseliep’s haiku, as seen in this next poem from his book, Rabbit in the Moon.
artist
doing the eyes
my kiss had closed
Roseliep, Rabbit in the Moon, pg. 79
This haiku transports me to the scene of a woman working on a self-portrait. She is in her studio with her girlfriend and is attempting to make progress on her piece, only to be consistently thwarted by her girlfriend who keeps distracting her. From the reader’s vantage point in this scene, looking on as events unfold, I can see the artist, a mirror in one hand and her charcoal in the other, while her girlfriend is straddling the back of a folding chair, resting her head on her folded arms. For three hours, this artist has been trying to sketch the shape of her face and get the proportions of her facial features correct. Finally she succeeds, no thanks to her girlfriend’s comments and interruptions, and she manages to convince her to at least let her work on the eyes in peace. The girlfriend obliges, and while her artist works, she sits back and just watches her. Looking on at this scene, I can see the girlfriend watching the focus in her artist’s eyes—the green eyes she loves so much—as she draws them, watching her make her concentrating face as soon as she puts down the mirror. The tip of the artist’s tongue is sticking out between her teeth and curling up a little bit, just enough to touch her upper lip. A little smile creeps onto the girlfriend’s face as she watches her artist in her element.
The moment that this haiku creates is happy and blissful. It follows Roseliep’s pattern of writing short snapshots and brief scenes, which is also exemplified in the following haiku, also from The Haiku Anthology.
campfire extinguished,
the woman washing dishes
in a pan of stars
Roseliep, The Haiku Anthology, pg. 164
This haiku deviates from Roseliep’s theme of art and art creation, but it remains consistent with his sensory snapshots. The word “campfire” alone sets the scene of this moment. I, the reader, find myself sitting on a stump in a circle around the flame and the air is full of the scent of woodsmoke. The smell has penetrated my clothing and my hair, and no matter where I go, that smell follows me everywhere. There are trees all around, stretching up towards the sky, and there is a tent pitched a few yards away from the fire pit. As it gets darker, stars start to twinkle in the opening in the trees above the clearing and woodsmoke curls and flutters against the darkening sky. The night is clear—there are no clouds to block the stars.
It is a young family sharing the tent in the clearing, and the kids are laughing at the bits of marshmallow that are sticking to their faces. Their father volunteers to help them clean up and get ready for bed, leaving their mother to wash the dinner dishes. She gets some soapy water in a pan, turns on her lantern, and extinguishes the fire. From my vantage point as the reader, I can watch her as she takes dish after dish and scrubs them in her wash pan, disturbing the reflection of the stars with every swish of her dishrag.
What is interesting about this haiku is that it highlights Roseliep’s tendency to write haiku about people and the things they do. Not only do his haiku create these snapshots of moments, but they are interesting observations of humans and how they interact and behave. It is not direct, but it is there. This can be seen more clearly in a haiku from Roseliep’s book, Listen to Light.
with his going
the birds go
nameless
Roseliep, Listen to Light, pg. 66
This haiku is, I believe, a superb example of Roseliep’s examination of human relationships. When I read this haiku, it made me think of an old man who used to birdwatch. He had the names, songs, and identifying features of countless birds memorized. Whenever he saw a bird that he knew, he would point it out to whoever was around. More often than not, it was his grandson who was around. This old man would point out the birds to his grandson whether the boy cared or not (he usually did not), and tell him how he knew exactly what kind of bird it was. His grandson would make some sort of noncommittal but positive noise and the old man would continue, telling the boy different facts about that particular bird: something about its plumage, its diet, its migration habits, anything that came to his mind. The grandson just accepted it as one of Grandpa’s quirks.
He was an old coot with white hair who knew too much about birds, and that was about it as far as the grandson was concerned. That was, until the day that the old man got sick. The old man was hospitalized, but he requested a room with a window so he could watch for birds. He continued to watch for the birds, pointing them out to the nurses that checked in on him periodically throughout the day. He would tell them about the more interesting birds he saw while they were gone and about the dreadfully boring days where he only saw two birds - and of the same kind to boot. The nurses loved him. One day, when the grandson was visiting the old man with his parents, the old man pointed out a red-tailed hawk through the window. The grandson humored the man, though he did not pay much attention. All of that changed the day that the old man flatlined.
I think that this haiku takes place at the grandfather’s funeral. The grandson is alone, sitting in front of his Grandpa’s grave. Everyone else has left, leaving the grandson the only one kneeling before his grandfather’s tombstone. He hears the twittering of a bird and he looks up to see the animal landing in a nearby tree. The grandson thinks he remembers hearing that call sometime in the hospital with his grandfather and he is sure that the bird has a name, but he has no idea what it might be. His grandfather would know. His grandfather would point out the bird and tell him its name and how he knew it. Instead, the grandson is clueless. Now that his grandfather is gone, the birds go nameless, and that is when it truly hits him. His grandfather is gone.
That may not have been exactly what Roseliep intended with this haiku, but I believe that it is a legitimate interpretation. That haiku was not about birds, but about the old man who knew them all. This is not the only haiku of Roseliep’s that examines people and their relations. The following haiku from Roseliep’s book, Sailing Bones, is another example of this.
breaking the silence
of Mama’s knitting needles
the click-click of sleet
Roseliep, Sailing Bones, pg. 38
Similarly to my interpretation of “with his going,” this haiku is about a family relationship. The scene that Roseliep creates is clear. When I read this haiku, I imagine that the speaker is a high school aged girl who is curled up on the couch with a good book on a dreary winter night. Meanwhile, her mother is knitting in her favorite armchair. For awhile, the only sounds in their living room are the occasional flips of pages of the girl’s book and the click-click of her mother’s knitting needles. This alone suggests a positive and comfortable relationship between mother and daughter. There is a comfortable silence, the silence that is broken in the first line of this haiku: “breaking the silence.” It feels silent in this family’s living room, in this comfortable scene that Roseliep has transported me to, until it is broken by a new clicking noise - sleet against windows. That is what really makes this haiku stand out to me. There are a lot of haiku that play on words and use sounds and onomatopoeia, but this haiku uses both to tremendous effect.
When Roseliep uses the words “click-click,” the sounds of the knitting needles and the sleet are connected. This comparison draws the whole experience of this haiku together, combining the two elements of the comfortably warm and the piercingly cold. This is not the only haiku of Roseliep’s that utilizes sound, but this is by far one of the best examples. Similarly, Roseliep uses the absence of sound to his advantage. The noticeable absence of something can be just as powerful, if not more so, than the presence of something else, and the following haiku from Roseliep’s book, The Still Point, shows that he knew that very well.
the Mass priest
holds up bread
the still point
Roseliep, The Still Point, pg. 26
This haiku revolves around the absence of sound. This snapshot of a scene is a clear one again, and it is a scene that is, in its essence, silent. In every church service, the sacrament of communion is a central point. This moment that Roseliep has experienced is one that many of his readers, including myself, have as well. Reading this haiku, I find myself sitting in a pew in my church at home. I can feel the strangely comfortable hardwood underneath me and against my back and feel my toes pinching a little in my dress shoes. I can see the backs of heads, their faces all pointing towards the altar up front. When my eyes travel up to the altar, I see my pastor taking the large circular wafer of bread in one hand and the old ceramic goblet in the other, before she holds them aloft, the bread centered above the goblet. She pauses, and this is the still point that Roseliep speaks of in the last line of this haiku.
This is the epitome of a snapshot in a haiku. It is true that Roseliep’s other haiku capture short scenes and moments of life, but this haiku truly is about one single moment. It is the last line, “the still point,” that shortens this haiku to that single moment. If the last line was anything else, I would be taken back to a church service and the whole preparation of communion instead of those brief few seconds in which the priest or pastor holds the bread aloft. The scene is like a photograph, it is so still. It is almost contemplative in its silence.
Not only does this haiku provide a prime example of Roseliep’s snapshots as well as use of sound, but it brings me to the last and final theme found in his haiku: religion. Having been a priest, it can be expected that Roseliep wrote some haiku with Christian themes, but there is one that truly stands above the rest.
light
lights
light
Roseliep, The Haiku Anthology, pg. 163
At first, the mental image one gets from this haiku is using one lit candle to light another. The first candle is flickering, casting shadows on the hand curled around the flame to protect it, and carefully, the person holding it brings the flame to the wick of the second candle. The first one is held there for a moment until the second one lights and when it does, it is a steady flame. Whoever was holding the first candle puts it back where it came from and leaves the candles flickering in unison with the minute movements of air in the room.
From there, the scene makes me think of the two large candles that stand proudly atop the familiar altar of my home church. It brings back memories of watching my friends serving as acolytes and using one small candle to light those two. However, that is not what this haiku is truly about. This is about more than physical light.
What I interpret this haiku to truly be about is spiritual light, consistent with Roseliep’s theme of writing religious haiku. Someone’s own spiritual light can kindle a similar light in another person. This haiku is about that exchange, that spread of spiritual light from one person to another. That exchange is constant, like the lines of this poem. At a first glance, the three lines look almost identical: “light/lights/light.” With a second glance, one recognizes the physical element of light, one candle lighting another, and after third and fourth readings of it, the reader becomes enlightened to what Roseliep is truly talking about. This haiku seems so simple at first, but in reality, it is wonderfully complex.
That complexity is seen in Roseliep’s body of work as a whole. One cannot pin his work down into one category, there is simply too much variety, but there are themes that run throughout his haiku. His haiku are delightfully sensory and create experiences for the reader. Even if the reader does not have personal experience with the topics of his haiku, they are written in a way that the reader can still be transported to the scene he has written. The language he uses is what builds those scenes, words as simple as “campfire” and “still point” do incredible things for the creation of an atmosphere around Roseliep’s haiku. He writes about topics such as the creation of art, relationships between people, and religion, and all are very different in their own right. It is that underlying constant of sensory language and phrases that submerge the reader in the moment that unites Roseliep’s haiku into a truly amazing body of work.
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Works Cited
Dayton, David, ed. A Roseliep Retrospective. Ithaca, New York: Alembic, 1980. 105-109. Print.
Roseliep, Raymond. Listen to Light. Ithaca, New York: Alembic, 1980. 22-123. Print.
Roseliep, Raymond. Rabbit in the Moon. Plainfield, Indiana: Alembic, 1983. 13-121. Print.
Roseliep, Raymond. Sailing Bones. Ruffsdale, Pennsylvania: Book, 1978. 7-38. Print.
Roseliep, Raymond. The Still Point. Menomonie, Wisconsin: UZZANO, 1979. 1-41. Print. |
