{ Thursday, October 30, 2003 }
I am very pleased that I finished a haibun, Souvenir Haibun, in time for submission to the anthology Kate and Sandy are putting together of Canadian formal poetry.
Souvenir Haibun
By Caterina Fake
It is only from far away that the mountains are beautiful; up close the rocks are grey and sharp, the snow not soft but icy. They were honeymooning in the Canadian Rockies.
Sights familiar from TV and tourist brochures were magnificent unframed, but she had to turn away from the too powerful, maiming beauty. She felt more comfortable seeing the
mountains
in postcards
back home.
She’d sent them to herself. Even her new husband was too much up close. She loved him less than his photograph, or her quick memory of him, sitting by the fire, just after he’d left the room.
It's a fairly westernized, self-referential haibun. I was playing with the idea of the haibun as a poetic form most commonly used to evoke nature and travel (a la Basho, etc.) and the idea that experiences sometimes aren't as manageable as the poems we write about them, or the photographs we take. This turned out to be the perfect form for this, the haiku like a little distillation of experience in the middle.
Stewart was appalled when he first read this poem, because, of course, we honeymoooned in the Canadian Rockies and that's not what happened. Well of course not. This poem has its roots, as far as I can tell, in these experiences:
• On our honeymoon, we pulled up to Moraine Lake just as the sun was setting. It was really cold and sleeting outside, and I didn't want to get out of the car to see it. Call it vista overload. Stewart came back exclaiming that it was the view from the back of the old Canadian twenty-dollar bill.
• At Mount Rushmore, as Sevilla and I were getting out of the car to go see the monument, I overheard a woman saying, "Nope. I've seen the photos. I'll stay right here, " and she flipped open a paperback and read in the car.
• One sunny Sunday, my sister and I were walking along Ocean Beach in San Francisco marvelling at how few people were outside taking it all in. We realized the Superbowl was on TV that day. "How can they do that on such a beautiful day? People waste so much time in front of the TV!" I complained. Corey said, "Shhh, don't tell! If they found out how great it is out here, nature would get too crowded."
I've also known people with shelves full of travel books and adventure stories, who've never even applied for a passport. Which is sort of great. Or sad. Or something.
Etc.
LINK | 05:03 PM | TB
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