Karen Brain   Brain's Comparison of Chula & Rotella

Margaret Chula’s Haiku Margaret Chula is a well-known voice in the haiku society. Her haiku and other poetry she has written (such as haiga cards and haibun) have shown a brilliant author behind the pen. However, since I was only familiar with her haiku before I started this project, I can say that it was her haiku that led me to decide on her as the contemporary author to do a project on. As I started to research and study intently her work, that was when I realized that her writing abilities extend far beyond just writing good haiku. Her insight on life is so apparent in her work, which is what leads to such great haiku and other forms of poetry. Chula is able to get right into the ‘zing’ of everyday life. Her haiku have a sense of realism, since they do focus on everyday situations or things. Her range is also incredible. As Cor van den Heuvel, the editor of The Haiku Anthology said, "From deep within the haiku of Margaret Chula the mystery of life and death rings like a small chime. It sounds a sad note of quiet joy from the shadows in the fish pond, echoes faintly from the suicide’s night light on the second floor, and trembles into nothingness outside the hermit’s hut on New Year’s day." She seems to effortlessly be able to convey a wide variety of situations in her haiku. This way the main reason I was so drawn into the work of Chula. Her style for her haiku seems to be the typical three-line haiku poems. From time to time, the reader notices Chula does play with the spacing and indentations of lines in her haiku. She also includes different forms of punctuation, such as the emdash or the exclamation point to signal an excited voice. Part of the reason her haiku may be so enriched with life could be due to her background. When asked about her background, Ms. Chula replied, "I wrote haiku in the early 1970’s in California. Being very young and rather dramatic, I wrote haiku like: summer’s day a hawk swoops to kill I didn’t really understand the form until I moved to Kyoto, Japan in 1980 [and lived there for 12 years]. While teaching English at Kyoto Seika University, I found R. H. Blythe’s translations in the library and studied them, writing some of my favorites in a notebook, which I still have. Kyoto Seika U. was a unique university, very avant guard, with famous Japanese poets who had friendships with people like Allan Ginsberg and Gary Snyder. They both came to Seika while I was there. Therefore, the library was filled with autographed copies of their books. One of the few libraries in Kyoto with a collection of poetry in English." Besides teaching at Kyoto Seika University in Japan, she also taught creative writing and haiku at Doshisha Women’s College. When asked about the influence and impact of her years living in Japan on her work, she replied, "Living in the place where are the great haiku masters lived and wrote enriched my life. For example, I would ride my bicycle up into the east hills of Kyoto to Basho-an where both Matsuo Basho and Buson spent time in a hut in the (then) wilderness. I could sit in that hut and imagine them writing haiku while composing my own. The ancient temples, gardens and shrines were my muses. The sense of history and atmosphere was very inspiring." Ms. Chula has been awarded many honors and awards for her inspired works. As her biography in her book Grinding My Ink said, "Her haiku have received awards from Modern Haiku, Brussel Sprouts, Mainichi Shimbun, and Gifu Women’s University. In 1987 she placed second in the Japan Airlines/Mainichi Daily News National Haiku Contest. Itoen Tea Company selected one of her haiku for a publicity poster which was displayed in train stations throughout Japan. In 1993 she won the Japan Tanka Poets Club Prize in the Third International English Tanka Contest. Her haiku have been included in the prestigious Anthology of North American Haiku Writers and collected in the Museum of Haiku Literature in Tokyo." Then, Grinding My Ink won the Haiku Society of America’s National Book Award in 1994. A recent book, Shadow Lines by Margaret Chula and Rich Youmans, was the winner of The Haiku Society Of America’s 2000 Merit Book Award. Obviously, it is easy for many to see the richness of Ms. Chula’s work, and many have made sure to award her for her wonderful works. When asked about her awards and a possible favorite, Ms. Chula said, "The most recent honor of the most recent book is usually the favorite. But, in considering, I think that winning the HSA Book Award for Grinding My Ink in 1994 was the most exciting. I had written thousands of haiku over the years I spent in Kyoto and wanted to gather them together in a collection. Since I was too busy teaching in Japan, I waited until we returned to the US in 1992. Grinding My Ink was a memento of those years, of the house we lived in, and of who I was then. The fact that it was well received in the US made me feel welcomed to my country again after being away for fifteen years. And it was through this book that I became acquainted with haiku poets in America and active in the haiku community." The haiku in the award-winning Grinding My Ink are wonderfully written and are well structured. As the introduction to the book says on the Katsura Press website, "Twelve years of the poet's life in Kyoto are distilled in this extraordinary collection of haiku. The book opens with grinding the ink in preparation for painting or writing. Through this meditative process, the artist's mind begins to empty, allowing space for creativity. The four sections carry the reader through the cycle of seasons and life-from the birth of a kitten to a neighbor's suicide. Each season is introduced by an original fold-out calligraphy brushed in Chinese characters." This structure revolving around the cycle of seasons and life helps to give the haiku even more meaning since they are so purposely written. The opening haiku begins the section titled Flower (Hana): grinding my ink— a black cat howls in childbirth This haiku sets the mode for the entire book. It shows the writer beginning the creativity process, by preparing to sit down and write. Yet, the writer is reminded of the fragility of life when she hears the cat howling in pain as it gives birth to a new life cycle. Just as the writer is about to give birth to new words and poems, the cat is giving live birth to a new litter of kittens. The two images tie together nicely since they both concentrate on the idea of giving birth, yet it helps makes the distinction of how giving life to a living thing will start a whole new life cycle. Another haiku in the Flower section at the beginning of the book is spring cleaning a white kitten rolls in the dust This haiku is an excellent example of the realism that Chula brings to her haiku. It is one of those givens in life that the white cat will find the dirtiest place to lie and then roll around in the dust and get all dirty. The readers can easily imagine seeing a white cat, and having to smile when they see that cat and realize that its dirty fur is a sure-fire sign of the cat rolling in the dust. This haiku is a good example of the slight call to the senses that Chula enacts; it is the call to the senses that makes so many of her haiku appealing to so many readers. By using the place as "spring cleaning," the readers’ minds immediately bring its own ideas to that place. For example, when I think of spring cleaning, I think of wide open doors and windows with a slight breeze blowing through the house that I feel. I can also smell the scent of Lysol, and I can hear the vacuum in the background. Obviously, by using the adjective "white," Chula makes the point of the haiku, and makes another appeal to the readers’ senses because the adjective white helps the readers visualize the situation. The next section of the seasonal book is Fire (Hi). One haiku in this section is: teacher’s question hangs in the drowsy classroom a crow answers This haiku makes the connection to fire, by using the suggestion of heat. By using the adjective "drowsy," Chula helps the readers picture a hot, stuffy, sleep-inducing classroom. The overall haiku reminds the readers of their own grade-school days when they sat without the lights on to cut back on heat, the windows were wide open, fans were blowing and when the teacher asked a question, no one answered (except the bees and the birds) because it was just too hot to answer the question. Another haiku in this Fire section: Stars, stars’ reflections mirrored in the paddy field oh! the fireflies This haiku is also an excellent example of the everyday-life haiku that Chula so well expresses. She sets the scene by saying "in the paddy field." The readers are able to picture a nighttime paddy field where the only lights are the stars’ reflections in the field and the fireflies lighting up the night air. I loved how Chula added the "oh!" at the beginning of the third line of the haiku. This haiku was describing a beautiful nighttime scene, but then when Chula added the exclamation of "oh!" in the haiku, she added a sense of the surprise and wonder at the beautiful nighttime scene she was describing. Too often, we become too used to the wonders of life, such as the fireflies that light up the night, and we forget that they really are wonders. That simple expression, "oh!" helps to remind the readers that such everyday life should always be marveled at. The next section of the book is titled, Moon (Tsuki). A remarkable haiku from this section was: watching the fish pond fill up with shadows a distant train I really enjoyed this haiku because of the scene it suggested. Chula did not give any direct indications as to where this situation of everyday life was taking place. However, the readers are able to fill in that gap by the wonderful description Chula gives to them. By describing the pond as filling up with shadows, the readers are able to realize that the writer is just sitting by the pond, essentially just watching nightfall. As she sits there, reflecting on the shadows that are starting to fall, there is a distant whistle of a train, but the writer is hardly aware of it, since she is so involved in the actions of the night taking place. The final section of the book is entitled Snow (Yuki). Although I personally had many favorites from this section, one good haiku from that section was: wrapping my hands round the warm teacup the waning moon This haiku is a nice wrap-up for the book. The readers are able to picture the writer relaxing at the end of the day, searching for warmth in her teacup since it is so cold with all the snow outside. It is so cold that the moon doesn’t even want to be out, and she aptly describes it as "waning." The moon is "waning" because it wishes that its’ shift was almost over also. It wishes that it is almost morning, so that its job can be over also. This idea runs parallel with the idea of the cycle of life coming to an end and the book ending. It is important to note that Chula’s abilities do not just lie in writing excellent haiku. She also has put together excellent haibun and haiga cards, as previously mentioned. In Shadow Lines, she and her co-author linked their stories and haibuns together to create the book. The final haibun is her own and it causes the reader to get caught in the flow of people and events until reader and poets reach the Himalayas. She wrote: Suddenly I am filled with a profound loneliness. An ache, like hunger, an emptiness as bleak as the landscape. What would it be like to die here . . . And then I see them, a flock of snow pigeons flying in formation . . . Back and forth they move across the blank sky, then blur into nothingness. top of the mountain snow, sky, the outlines of birds I disappear I thought this haibun was beautiful, and I imagine that with the other haibun by herself and her co-author, the book must be quite exceptional. It is extremely safe to argue Margaret Chula as an outstanding haiku writer. Her insight into everyday life and situations, and her ability to bring those situations to the haiku readers is amazing. The realism in her haiku is extremely appealing because it appeals to the readers’ senses in many cases. Even the most uninformed reader would more than likely truly enjoy Chula’s haiku due to her realism style. —Karen Brain