Elizabeth Stiner • Beth's Haiku • Profile on Foster Jewell

Foster Jewell’s Haiku Foster Jewell wrote hundreds of haiku over the course of his life, in addition to sculpting and running his own publishing company. Jewell wrote primarily haiku—short verses dealing with nature and natural subjects, as opposed to senryu, which concern human subjects—in the traditional three line format. There is no consistent use of number of syllables, such as the traditional 5-7-5, although the lines of his haiku are generally between 4 and 8 syllables in length, with the second line being the longest line in the haiku. His haiku did not generally concern anything relating to human relationships, except the relationship between humans and nature. His haiku express an admiration and child-like wonder for the natrual world. He wrote about woodlands, wetlands, seasons, animals, insects, celestial bodies, and farms; but the majority of his haiku were inspired by his beloved Anza-Borrego Desert, in New Mexico. More than half of Leaves in the Wind is made up of haiku based on desert themes. Over and under, weaving sagebrush onto sky— a jackrabbit’s ears. Leaves in the Wind, p 14 Resting. The buzzards come to see how I do. Leaves in the Wind, p 15 Many deal with animals and insects, and are interesting, and sometimes amusing, observations of the actions of those creatures. In the haiku on the left, Jewell observes the movements of a jackrabbit as it moves through the sagebrush. But the phrasing of the haiku—"weaving sagebrush onto sky"—is so gracefully worded that it almost turns the jackrabbit into an artist, painting the sky with his long ears. The haiku on the right is a more humourous example of Jewell’s observations of animals. He has been hiking, and now sits down to rest. Above him, buzzards slowly glide. Jewell plays on the old joke that anything that sits too long in the desert attracts vultures, whether it’s dead or alive. The hiker is no longer moving, so the buzzards "come to see how he does"—to see if he’s dead yet. Jewell did not only observe the natural behavior of animals and insects in nature, but marveled at them, with a child-like wonder that pervades many of his haiku. Something as simple as a reptile or an insect could cause him to reflect on deep philosophical questions such as "what am I?" The horned toad and I gazing at the marvel of whatever we are . . . Leaves in the Wind, p 13 Walking stick— the wonder of him . . . the wonder of me . . . Leaves in the Wind, p 16 In both haiku, Jewell begins by introducing what has inspired the haiku—a toad, a walking stick—then expresses his sense of wonder at seeing the creature. He ends both haiku by bringing himself into the picture in such a way that he connects with the creature. The toad and the walking stick have the same sense of wonder as he, for the writer. In the first haiku, Jewell opens the haiku with "the horned toad and I", as if they were friends, both studying their own existence. The same sense of mutual wonder exsists in the second haiku, but it is individual, rather than shared. Imagery is very important in Jewell’s haiku, be it audio, visual, offactory, or any other. Some of his most beautiful desert haiku make great use of the contrast between sound and silence. Where the coyote called, rising in full cry, the moon… the sound of silence. Leaves in the Wind, p 7 Voice of the coyote filling the void of this empty land. Leaves in the Wind, p 16 As the call of birds characterizes the day, and the cry of the wolf fills the woodland night, so the coyote’s cry sounds through the desert nights. Both haiku give the reader an image of vast, open spaces. The first haiku shows an enormous moon shining down over a landscape made more spacious by white moonlight; one may almost see a painting of a coyote on a rocky cliff over looking a southwestern canyon, an enormous moon filling the sky behind him as he lifts his head to sing. The second, however, with the word "void", gives an impression of the absence of light, so that a visual image is difficult to see. The voice of the coyote sounds in these great empty spaces, filling even the wide empty spaces of deserts and canyons for a moment, before the silence reclaims the land, stronger and more vast than before. Jewell’s desert observations were not limited to earthly happenings. He wrote a good number of haiku that connect the earth to the heavens. Aspiring skyward the last of the campfire . . . The evening star— Leaves in the Wind, p 20 The rising moon entangled in the smoke tree easing out. Leaves in the Wind, p 10 The first haiku travels from earth to the sky: a camper sits by his fire, watching the sparks fly up with the smoke to shine for a moment like stars on the darkening horizon. The sparks "aspire skyward", as if they wish to join the evening star, the first star to appear in the night sky. The second haiku draws a celestial body to earth: the rising moon appears to become entangled for a moment in a smoke tree. It continues to rise, like the sparks, until it is free of the tree and joining the evening star in the sky. —Beth Stiner