Review of Anna Yin's haiku "Nightlights" by Ron Dart

Nightlights, Anna Yin, 2017, Black Moss Press
 

Anna Yin has emerged, season by season, year by year, as a fine, probing and nuanced poet. There is a contemplative soul tenderness in her previous books of poetry that can only be accessed through many a unhurried and meditative read of each inviting poem. Anna’s recent book of poetry, Nightlights, illustrates Anna’s fuller potential that is ever being birthed and maturing. Nightlights is Anna’s newest book of poetry that embodies a venturing forth into the suggestive poetic pathway of haiku poetry and all the wavering and timid lights in the night such a journey taken reveals.



Nightlights is divided into six inviting parts: 1) Night Visitor, 2) Sweeping Gingko Leaves, 3) Dancing Alone, 4) Winter, 5) White Wreaths and 6) Reflections. Each of the haiku poems reveal, at ever deeper levels, quiet and unfulfilled longings, painful points on the journey, legitimate nostalgia, loneliness, mystery of unresolved desires, speech from nature to the heart, moments of tender union and places in the soul where few have lingered with the poet. Those who dare to go to the places Anna offers will discover much about their life pilgrimages yet needing to be lived into—a kindly yet aching call to hope in the night season.   



Nightlights should not be read merely for information. The deeper and wiser insights offered can only be understood by a slowing down and many a reread. The genre of the haiku, in many ways, is a form of expressing complex feelings, experiences and emotions, in a compact and succinct manner, which leaves many a portal open for entering the layered meaning of the poem. Anna has in this collection of subtle and refined haiku poems made it abundantly clear that this is way of expressing her poetic vision in a convincing and compelling manner. I found myself, at times, lingering at quite a few of the distilled haiku signals, doing my best to heed their call ---each haiku in this collection has called forth much from Anna and, as such, reaches out to the reader and calls her/him to respond to the invitation of the unique haiku. A question---do we hear the call across the water from the further short----each poem certainly bids us welcome to cross the water.



The whispered and colourful front cover of Nightlights is a beauty worth many a quiet reflection as are the many poignant black and white photographs that introduce each part of the book. The “Introduction” by Claudia Radmore is worth many a read as a primer on haiku poetry.



Many poets either say too much or what is said is so abstract or esoteric that the reader becomes lost in a maze. The simple and direct yet ever deeper layers of each congealed haiku that has lived through Anna in Nightlights offers a way of doing poetry that can speak to one and all. Nightlights is a thin book of poetry but once through the haiku doorway, a vast world of the soul, nature and society is revealed.

This is a book of poetry that will remain with me on the journey and does knit me to much that is essential to the core on the trail and off trail treks of life.

 

Ron Dart          



                    

Restless is the Heart of an Exile (for Trump exiles from Amerika)

 
This little town holds
a contained and fragile charm
where my elsewhere-birthed spirit
learns to survive.
My sustaining friends candle it into home
though shadows shimmer in curtained corners.
The land of ancestors buried in hard-won sacred soil
calls out to my waiting bones...
I am forbidden to answer,
grieve for my moment to come
when alien soil covers restless remains
and spirit hovers between
the world that barely embraces me
and the pulsing claim of blood and ligament,
heart, spirit and tribal ties
that scream for my absorption
back into fiery particles that stoked my entity.
Wine cannot placate, bread of other fields seldom satisfies,
a communion I must re-learn.
 
Katherine L. Gordon
for  Trump exiles from America.

ZenRiver redux

Hi Fran,
I enjoyed my visit so much yesterday that I went back today to prune the apple trees - glad to have an excuse  ;  )-   I pruned the 2 trees on the west side of the shack, and I left the blue chair where I cut the biggest branch so you can inspect the tree. I also pruned a major branch from the tree near the entrance path, and I cut down the little dead spruce where the wicker entrance used to stand. Then I had a nice fire in the pit beside the Jimi Hendrix tree stand and burned all the dead wood.

Afterwards I enjoyed some more beerzen on the shaman shack deck. Five minutes into meditation and a high pitched chirping kept disturbing me. I remembered a wren used to nest in the deck's rafters, but when I checked that spot, all I found was your bogus security camera! Then . . . over at the feeder - a gorgeous male cardinal was demanding my admiration, which he got for over five minutes. I've learned that when meditating in nature, especially at ZenRiver, it's wise to pay attention when some being insists on interrupting. I don't know if nature is responding to the stillness of a human sitting in meditation, or if it's the positive vibe the meditation gives off!

peace,
Chris

look at me
look at me!
cardinal at the feeder

On 2017-06-01, at 8:36 PM, Fran wrote:

Hi Chris,
That's great, glad everything looked secure. For sure, if you get a chance, please have a go at those apple trees. The grass is growing so damn fast that all I usually get done is the meadow and the "driveway" mowed. I may have to let a few of those trails grow in if it doesn't stop raining so much! Last year I had very little mowing to do :)
Thanks much for cleaning the screen out and glad you enjoyed your visit. Me and the pups hope to be up on Saturday.


On Jun 1, 2017, at 3:47 PM, Chris Faiers wrote:

Hi Fran,
I paid a visit to ZRG for a few hours this aft. Bugs weren't bad - only a couple of mosquito bites when I walked back to the quarry around noon. I sat on the deck after the short hike and ate lunch and then enjoyed a half hour of 'beerzen'  ;  )-  Love the colourful new 'tree of life' prayer flags! I cleaned the screen mesh on the rain barrel - good idea to do this from time to time. Also the 2 apple trees beside the shack on the west side have some major dead branches which should be cut out. I don't mind doing this if you'd like me to. The shack looked very secure, thanks I'm sure to the new heavy duty double locks.
peace,
Chris