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Elizabeth Searle Lamb's Haiku of Art
Elizabeth Searle Lamb, dubbed the “First Lady of American Haiku,” was born in Topeka, Kansas on January 22, 1917. She attended the University of Kansas and earned Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Music degrees. In December of 1941, she married F. Bruce Lamb—a forester, writer, and photographer. The couple moved to Trinidad shortly after their marriage, and lived there for two years. After leaving Spain, they lived in several countries in Central and South America and traveled extensively in Africa and Asia. They lived in New York City for over a decade before moving to Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Lamb was introduced to haiku in the early 1960s, after moving to New York. Because of her travels, she had been unable to pursue a career in music, so she turned to writing. She became a member of the Haiku Society of America in 1968, and was the group’s president by 1971. Lamb also served as editor of the Society’s quarterly magazine, Frogpond.
Lamb wrote 8 collections of haiku, including in this blaze of sun, Picasso’s Bust of Sylvette, 39 Blossoms, and Casting into a Cloud: Southwest Haiku. A number of her haiku, including a haiku sequence, also are featured in the 1985 edition of The Haiku Handbook: How to Write, Share, and Teach Haiku. Elizabeth Searle Lamb passed away on February 16, 2005 in Santa Fe.
The subjects of Lamb’s haiku were usually drawn from the places she had lived and visited. Therefore, her subjects ranged from the Amazon to Topeka, Kansas to Greenwich Village. I think that the experiences she gained through her travels are what make her haiku extraordinary. She was able to write about the freighters of the Amazon and the turquoise sea of Barbados because she had seen them. Common themes do appear in her work, namely harps, crickets, and artwork. However, each time one of these themes is used, it’s in a completely different setting and context. None of her work feels redundant.
Views on Function and Style in Haiku
Lamb’s perception of haiku is best described in a "Contributors’ Comment" written for Hummingbird V:3 March 1993:
It is to capture the moment: light on a bricked up window in Greenwich Village, faint crowing of a rooster early in the morning after a death has come, colored sails in an Amazon harbor after rain. It is to track down the real wetness of incomprehensible tears. It is to resurrect a tiny prism of memory into a moment that lives with color, scent, sound. These are, for me, the functions of haiku, senryu, and the short lyric. Captured in the amber of words, the moment endures.
I admire Lamb’s ability to preserve the smallest moment in time through an almost ‘stream-of-consciousness’ writing style. However, she didn’t restrict herself to this style of haiku writing. Her collections move from stream-of-consciousness to a more ordered type of composition almost effortlessly. For example:
this two-thirds moon a sly look the sun not down yet
-Lamb (Casting into a Cloud: Southwest Haiku, pg. 25)
is closely followed by:
Columbia, returning
from space, lands precisely
on her own shadow
- Lamb(CIAC, pg. 27)
These haiku aren’t my favorite haiku by Lamb, but I think that they show the versatility of her writing style.
Sight, Sound, and Scent in Lamb’s Haiku
What fascinates me most about Lamb’s haiku is the way that she used unusual combinations of sight, scent, and sound to create different affects for her audience. A classically trained harpist, she obviously wrote many haiku about music. Yet these haiku have very few references to sound, which I find extremely interesting. Instead, she set a scene, using sights and smells, to create the desired atmosphere.
For example, in her haiku sequence “Concert at Loretto Chapel,” Lamb only uses two allusions to sound. The rest of the sequence depends entirely on her images of the sights and smells in the chapel. These descriptions give the reader a definite feeling of the peace and comfort afforded the concert’s audience. This sequence also is a great description of the thoughts that really flutter through an audience member’s mind during a concert. Concert at Loretto Chapel
the door still closed
a pigeon motionless
on the gargoyle’s head
one red leaf
falls from a poinsettia—
the harpist tuning
music of many voices
floats on the hushed air
the incense
the miraculous staircase!
does the unknown Carpenter
listen unseen?
from the altar candles
Light
touches the harpist’s hair
-Lamb (CIAC, pg. 16)
The descriptions of the light from the candles on the harpist’s hair and the smell of incense are very effective in conveying the aura of this Christmas concert to the reader. If Lamb had gotten caught up in trying to describe the music of the concert, the other senses undoubtedly would have been overlooked, leaving the reader less aware of the scene as a whole.
An example of Lamb’s one line haiku takes almost the opposite approach:
fluttering in and out of harp strings the red-winged moth
-Lamb (CIAC, pg. 10)
Though the harp is a central figure in the haiku, there is no mention of sound. However, I think that in this case, the use of only one sense is effective. The reader expects to hear something about sound because a harp is mentioned, so it’s actually a nice surprise.
When reading this haiku, I see the harp and the background in black and white, with the moth an almost crimson red. Its wings beat furiously as it weaves in and out of the strings. Another nice aspect of this haiku is that it focuses on the smaller of the work’s two subjects.
In the next examples, Lamb again emphasizes one of the senses by taking away the others.
noisy marketplace—
a young blind guitarist
playing love songs
-Lamb (in this blaze of sun)
the blind sculptor
his own features
on all the bronzes
-Lamb (CIAC, pg. 45)
In both of these haiku, Lamb strips away sight. In the first haiku, this enhances the reader’s aural imagination and emphasizes the tenderness of the young guitarist’s love songs against the clanging of the marketplace. The idea that this guitarist probably learned to play his songs strictly by listening to his own trial and error adds a layer of determination to the scene.
However, in the second haiku, the main sense used is still sight, even though the subject has none. This intensifies the audience’s reaction to the idea of a blind sculptor and to the sad humor of seeing this man standing next to rows of almost identical bronzes.
Lamb uses a similar idea with this next haiku:
deep into this world
of Monet water lilies…
no sound
-Lamb (in this blaze of sun)
“Water Lilies” Claude Monet
In this haiku, the reader is taken into a world so immersed in vivid color that it is devoid of sound. For this haiku, I have found that it is helpful to actually look at an example of Monet’s paintings of water lilies. I think that, because she refers to the water lilies and not another type of Monet landscape, she is suggesting that you become so submerged in light, shadow, and color that it’s like you’re underwater – therefore, no sound. In this haiku, I think that Lamb combines images of sight and sound very successfully:
flute arpeggios tangling in apricot blossoms
-Lamb (CIAC, pg. 23)
I had a very strong reaction to this haiku when I first read it, even though I had no idea what an apricot blossom looked like. Once I looked at this picture, I liked the haiku even more. I love the way that Lamb takes two things that are very similar in nature, and compares them without using a simile or a metaphor. You’re left with the divine image of shimmering arpeggios floating through these beautiful blossoms, without being bogged down by too much grammatical structure.
Artwork in Lamb’s Haiku Lamb also liked to use pieces of art as inspiration for her haiku. Besides the Monet piece, she also used Mimbres pottery and the San Ildefonso Pueblo for inspiration. Another unique characteristic of Lamb’s haiku is that all of her collections contain photographs and illustrations. In 1977, she wrote an entire haiku collection, complete with photography, on the enlargement and adaptation of Picasso’s ‘Bust of Sylvette’ that stands in Washington Square Center in Greenwich Village.
Here’s ‘Sylvette’:
“Bust of Sylvette” Pablo Picasso The collection goes from the beginning of ‘Slyvette’s’ construction to haiku on people’s reactions to the finished sculpture. These are some excerpts from Picasso’s Bust of Slyvette:
not knowing what~
piles of black pebbles, sand,
the scaffolding
a year older now,
Picasso’s ‘Bust of Sylvette’
In the square
not knowing
this is the New Year, she smiles
in the same old way
going out to look at her
again
on the day he dies
-Lamb (Picasso’s Bust of Sylvette)
These haiku all are written in “a day in the life” of the sculpture, and this perspective gives a very unique sense of ‘oneness’ between the city and ‘Sylvette.’ These haiku are different from most of Lamb’s other works. They focus more on the thoughts of people (and of inanimate sculptures) than on the images of the scene. This again illustrates Lamb’s versatility in her writing.
Conclusion
As one of the best American haiku writers, Elizabeth Searle Lamb brought a unique perspective to a form of poetry that was just starting to really develop in America. Her direct writing style provides many moments of simple clarity.
the weathered barn brighter in the mountain lake
- Lamb (CIAC, pg. 34)
after last night’s frost
a colder music
from the wind chimes
-Lamb (CIAC, pg. 62)
• • •
Bibliography
Kussart, Natalie. Elizabeth Searle Lamb. Millikin University. 29 April 2006
<http://www.brooksbookshaiku.com/MillikinHaiku/haiku/writerprofiles/lamb.html>
Lamb, Elizabeth S. Casting into a Cloud. Fanwood, NJ : From Here Press, 1985.
Lamb, Elizabeth S. in this blaze of sun. Paterson, NJ: From Here Press, 1975.
Lamb, Elizabeth S. Picasso’s Bust of Sylvette. Topeka, Kansas: Garlinghouse Printers, 1977.
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