Book review: High Cliff Haiku, by Mary Edwards

High Cliff Haiku is one woman's experiences and remembrances in haiku form from High Cliff State Park in Wisconsin.  Mary Edwards chronicled everything she'd seen at the park with her pen, rather than a camera, and combined the images into a nicely printed self-published book.

The book starts with a brief description of High Cliff State Park and an introduction by Edwards.  Then it's on to the poems, which are divided into sections by season.

The poems in the book capture some unique and exciting images.  Edwards' passion for nature and the park show through clearly.  The book is well-designed and neatly formatted, with only one or two haiku to a page.

Each of the haiku is written in 17-syllable form, with three lines of five, seven, and five syllables each.  Because of this stringent limit, many of the poems come off as forced, and lose some of the power they might otherwise have had.

   many cliff swallows

   swooping and circling in the wind

        on road near the pond

Edwards shows the reader plenty of striking images, but then traps the images inside an arbitrary 5-7-5 cage.  Many times I found myself wishing she would throw off that yoke and let the poems shape themselves.  The forced cadence in each poem made them run together toward the end, and it became harder to focus on the image or scene described.

The limiting form Edwards' haiku take is surprising, considering that at the beginning and end of the book, she includes quotes from Bruce Ross and Cor van den Heuvel, two poets whose haiku don't abide by the 17-syllable rule.  

However, there are several strong haiku throughout the collection.  They shine through brightly, like these two:

   with landing gear down

   the blue heron glides in low

        over the rocky flats

   one monarch clinging

   to another as they float

        down the winding trail

Edwards also included a few haibun scattered throughout the book.  The prose was beautiful and well-written, but the haiku at the end of the paragraphs merely reiterated what had already been said, rather than adding to it.

The book does not appear to have been published for retail sale.  While the individual poems may not all be up to a haiku reader's expected standard of excellence, they do capture exciting images, and the book as a whole might make a good present for a nature lover or wildlife enthusiast.

High Cliff Haiku is a small paperback, published by Mary Edwards herself.  The front and back covers are adorned with two pictures of tree-lined trails.  High Cliff Haiku was available from Amazon, but is currently unavailable.

(Originally posted on Helium.com, June 2009)

Disclaimer: I earn a commission on Amazon sales made from links in this post.