Cathy Sadowski •

Appreciation for Ellen Compton’s Haiku I have always enjoyed reading poetry and haiku full of imagery and wonder. When I started reading Ellen Compton’s haiku I found that I the imagery she uses in her work to be similar in style to my own. This is what attracted me to her work. I wondered how someone could be so inspired as to create such imagery, as shown in the following example.         fifth of july the wavelets shifting… …shifting         the jellyfish What I find interesting about this haiku is the spacing, which creates the movement of the water and the jellyfish floating on top. The repetition of shifting also adds to the overall motion of the haiku. This was part of a collection entitled shifting the jellyfish: haiku from a quiet shore. The answer to my inquiry about Compton’s inspiration came from an email interview with me. She finds haiku moments wherever she has lived or traveled, even in her own kitchen! The Maryland shore of the Chesapeake Bay has played a major role in this as well. Compton admits that few of her poems would suggest that they are "urban haiku" at first glance, but many others are drawn from her life in Washington D.C. where parks, gardens, and other natural areas exist along side the monuments. Sights, sounds, smells, and textures speak to her on many levels. Compton says that "behind the taste of an orange is a history of dormancy and awakening, a scent of blossoms; beyond it is the possibility that lies in its seeds. Run your fingers over an empty clamshell and read another little history. Do we somehow hear the tundra in the cries of wild geese on migration? Seen up close, a vulture is not particularly attractive, yet in flight it has a certain grace, and as a scavenger it is an important part of the economy of nature." I now understand how someone with such insight into the beauty of life can write such exquisite haiku. To take ugliness, like that of the vulture, and turn it into something graceful through haiku is truly incredible. Although many haiku writers, myself included, attempt to do this in some of their work, only a select few, in my opinion are capable of creating something memorable out of this. I believe Ellen Compton is one such person. She is also inspired by the great Japanese masters, old and new, and has returned many times to poems such as Chiyo-ni’s this evening! since the crescent moon I’ve been waiting (translation by P. Donegan and Y. Ishibashi, in Chiyo-ni: Woman Haiku Master) and Yatsuka Ishihara’s pulling light from the other world . . . the milky way (translation by T. Kondo and W. Higginson, from Red Fuji) The email interactions have been very pleasant. Compton would always end her letter with a haiku. Although I had time to respond with a haiku of my own, I was pleased that she liked what I had written. I have submitted my favorite haiku from this semester’s collection, In the Garden, to her and she responded favorably to it. in the garden we kiss . . . a rosebud opens She thought the interplay of the kiss and the opening rose was wonderfully done. I would like to meet Ellen very much; she seems like a very intelligent, kind and insightful woman. She sent two haiku through email, the first of which was about an insect that I had never seen. I believe she wrote them especially for me since I have not been able to find them in the list of haiku she has published over the years. moonset a last katydid still sings I found out that a katydid is related to crickets, so that explains why it sings. I like how it is still singing after the moon had finally started to set. I really do not know if katydids remain awake the entire night chirping, but it does create a peaceful atmosphere. It would be nice to know the place where this occurs because I do not know where katydids live. From what Compton has told me in her profile, I would believe that katydids could live anywhere in the United States since she is well traveled. Since the insect is out at night, it would be safe to assume that the climate is warm. I envision a sultry summer night in the South, where a night of romance has occurred, and now the only sound left is the song of the katydid as the moon slowly sinks below the horizon. The other haiku Compton sent me was: earthscent meadow birds flock to the plow The combination of "earth" and "scent" to create "earthscent" was incredibly clever to describe the smell of newly turned soil. I am sure that this takes place on a farm near a prairie because meadow birds live in grasslands. They probably see worms exposed by the work of the plow. I wonder if it is a mechanical plow, or if it is old fashioned plow pushed by those who labor on the farm. The images created here make me long for a life less stressful than the one I have now. The following will be responses to the imagery in Compton’s haiku. voice of tsugumi lingers in the tall trees— Nikko in mist (Gendai Haiku 1999) Compton wrote that this haiku was composed after she heard about the death of Yatsuka Ishihara, haiku master and gracious host to the HSA delegation at the Tokyo Conference in April of 1997. Tsugumi is the Japanese "dusky thrush." I feel loneliness in this haiku; the loneliness of the bird and the desolation caused by the misty weather. Compton told me that Ishihara’s work inspired her own, so I can understand her great loss. Nikko is a mountain city in Japan. red geraniums          rips in the awning          leak sunlight (Modern Haiku, winter-spring 1992) What I like about this haiku is that although there is a tear in the awning that will eventually need to be repaired, the sunlight leaking through is bringing life to the red geraniums underneath. Something so insignificant in our daily lives is transformed into a little slice of life. I do not know why, but this haiku somehow gives me hope. Through destruction (tear in the awning) life struggles to survive. Without that precious light, the geraniums will die. For some reason, I keep imagining that the awning is as red as the geraniums except the color has faded a bit from the long exposure to the sun. kaleidoscope the little sound of a star shattering (Modern Haiku, winter-spring 1992) I responded to this haiku with a story about a woman who dropped a beloved kaleidoscope from her childhood. It is sad that a toy that brought such happiness to a child could bring so much sorrow when destroyed. What is fascinating about this particular kaleidoscope is that it has glass parts in it. I have never seen a kaleidoscope with glass beads inside of it, so I guess it would have to be an antique. I can see in slow motion the star falling out of it as the casing breaks open and adds its own little crash. Hearing the star shattering over the rest of the kaleidoscope increases the sorrow felt by the broken toy. This is the story I wrote for the haiku: The glass fell to the floor in a thousand pieces. Mary stifled a cry as she stared helplessly at the broken toy she’d loved so dearly as a child. Daddy gave that to me when I was four. I rode a pony at the state fair all by myself. It was a thin, gold metal tube with a funny shaped ball at one end. Inside were tiny glass stars, moons, flowers and other strange shapes a child’s mind could only guess at. But she especially loved the stars. Her father would take her out on clear nights when the sky was brightened by millions of stars. That was almost forty years ago…when he was still alive and when she was still so innocent. I’m sorry, Daddy. I’m sorry. Another favorite haiku by Compton: driftwood gathering… over the whispering surf cries of geese (Modern Haiku, 23:3, fall 1991) The spacing in this one shows the driftwood, well, drifting, over to a pile on the beach. This pile is alone. Hearing the geese overhead adds to the desolation of the beach. I would feel lonely at this part of the beach, but also at peace since there is nothing here but driftwood. The geese would probably startle me out of the contemplation, however, but I guess anything I heard besides the roar of the ocean would. Writing anything here would be pleasant and enjoyable. ancient well the pebble drops into silence (South by Southeast, No. 3, 1996) Obviously the well has either dried up or the water is so far down the well that Compton cannot hear the splash. Since she said it was an "ancient" well, I would guess the former. Now I wonder what the well looks like from the outside. Is there a stone ring around the hole with a weathered roof and a crankshaft that once held a rope and bucket? Maybe it is a well from Japan or another country where the standard conception of a well that would look ancient is different from my own. hands full of mussels and mud . . . the heat (Modern Haiku, winter-spring 1999) This is another very visual poem. I do not know why she is scooping up mussels from the sand, but I can feel the mud and mussels slipping between my fingers. The ellipsis helps create the feeling of intense heat beating down on Compton’s body. Perhaps she has a mussel farm on her property, or she could be collecting the shells. If she was doing the latter, I imagine her cooking the meat of the mussels for lunch or dinner as a well-earned reward for her hard work. I think the spacing of the second and third lines is interesting and fitting because of the imagery the haiku creates. From what I have seen of Compton’s work, I perceive her to have a unique view of life. I was overjoyed to have her respond to one of my own haiku, which I do not consider to be of the same caliber as her work. She has seen so much more of the world than I have, and I can only hope of traveling to Japan and Chesapeake to see with my own eyes what has given her such tremendous inspiration. After meeting her at the Global Haiku Festival I now realize what a truly special person she is. I only hope that one day my own haiku will be as loved as much as hers. —Cathy Sadowski