Book Reviews:

New:

David G Lanoue: Haiku Guy: Michael McClintock

Ikumi (Ikuyo) Yoshimura, elephant's eyes

David G Lanoue, Laughing Buddha:Michael McClintock

Dušan Vidaković, S prebolene obale/From the Forsaken Shore: Jadran Zalokar

Milenko D. Ćirović Ljutički, U zagrljaju sjenki/The Embrace of Shadows: Verica Živković

Stefanović Tatjana; Zoran D. Živković: Haiku cvet/ A Haiku Flower: Moma Dimić

Jianqing Zheng, The Porch, Deltascape, & Found Haiku from Eudora Welty's Delta Wedding: Charles Trumbull

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Classic Haiku, A Master's Selection: From the Preface by Yuzuru Miura

Flori de tei; Lime-tree flowers: anthology of haiku: From the Forword by Vasile Moldovan

Saša Važić, muddy shoes candy heart: Dimitar Anakiev

Gwiazda za Gwiazda, antologia haiku europejskiego: Foreword by Max Verhart 

 

Slavica Blagojević, The Turtledove's Necklace (Copyright@Haiku Association of Serbia and Montenegro, 2005, Belgrade, Francuska 7, Serbia). ISBN 86-84813-06-5, 95 pp, 21 cm, art design: Slavica Blagojević, trans: Saša Važić, editing: Norman Darlington; available from the author: 35255 Mutnica, selo Lešje, Paraćin, Serbia; [email protected] or from the publisher.

 

Vladimir Krasić

ALONG THE PATH TO THE HUT

When a grown woman from the village of Lešje at the foot of Mount Baba sheds her shyness without the intention of impressing even a sleepy cricket, then we have to believe in her amazement and fidelity to the poetry to which she devotes herself completely.

Slavica Blagojević long ago strung the turtledove necklace of dreams and reality. She wandered through continents and collected remnants of the past, throughout Africa and along the borders of loneliness, fear, lust and wonderland. Then she sat at her desk and wrote painstakingly. She painted on silk, organized exhibitions, visited monasteries, nurtured her monks, encouraging one of them to renovate the church next to her house, and to gather all kinds of people from far and wide.

Surrounded by irises, her joyful house is one where nights are so long, working and sleepless.

In that way, her brilliant thoughts have strung the heads of a poetic style from far Japan. This is most likely why Slavica has come directly to Belgrade, to read her love-woven poems among those who love contemporary and the exotic. Having satisfied herself that this was what she wanted, she prepared "The Turtledove's Necklace" and brought it to light.

And a cricket takes a nap in a warm bedspread. Irises fell and it's time to part till springtime. And so it continues.

New and unreachable loves are born. Slavica does not know whether she has been dreaming and not yet found. She is as happy as a child with everything that is new and lost. Her lyre echoes in her way. She changes nothing even when everything has been changed. Lešje is silent. The wind paints the turtledove on a piece of sky. This piece of the dream is where Slavica Blagojević is to be found.

Wrapped in her multicolored rug, she has been waiting for her prince on a white steed. Who knows, perhaps He will come along the path to the hut. Into the little church to enter a monastic order, nurtured with their song.

Slavica Blagojević walks her continent enchanted, enticed onto the «side road» of poetry and silk framed in colorful fireworks. She believes in the impossible, all the while observed by those around her, astounded by all they see and all they do not want to see. This healer of dreams does not return malevolent looks, because she believes most of all in Slavica Blagojević.

In giving my blessing to this manuscript, I believe I am not wrong in stating that Slavica Blagojević is a faithful novice in the monastery, travelling the long path of her search for the Love of God.

 

AN EXTRACT FROM THE BOOK REVIEW BY ZORAN RAONIĆ

... When she says that the sound of the church bells wakes the sky, this poet does not create, either in herself or in readers (with variations depending on the characteristics of every individual), any symbolic meaning which can be understood by itself in the above phenomena, nor does she want to imply any metaphorical meaning to awaken those to whom the image is made available, but rather she literally records her experience of the moment, just because it is hers alone, inasmuch as it touched her, and because she knows that that repeatable vision won't ever be the same to her, let alone to somebody else. And that somebody else (now we know: the reader or the listener) will accept it however he can and on the condition that he/she finds it more different and more important than the humming of all the vibrations of the passing world. Therefore, it is wise to capture this moment, to write it down, so that it should remain and outlive itself. Wise for the one who has already experienced it, but for some others as well. Others who are rare, but can still be found.

Could anyone passing indifferently through this world notice that “plucking a flower, she plucks a piece of sky,” which this poet notices so easily, feeling that invisible thread holding the sky above us. Since she lives a life of certain heightened sensitivity and receptiveness to all kinds of flickers, from the sky and the universe, to a blouse, to her inner body, and thus sees what others fail to, and thus feels what others have no developed senses to feel, senses which the Mighty One builds somewhere in the region of the soul of the privileged – who therefore must be broad and open. With one plucked flower, a piece of sky is plucked, too – the poet puts it as a fact, neither complaining nor explaining, but just saying: “Man, you've done it, it's a fact.”

“An eagle's flight / cuts short my dreams/ at daybreak,” says Slavica, perhaps even she herself not knowing if that flight belongs to her dreams or if it came true somewhere in the perspective of her view stretching into some daybreak; in this place it is not important – in fact, it is important that it is not important that the flight took place! Just as it is not important whether this is a “pure” haiku or whether it is of this or that kind. Above us is and will remain a woman's dream about a flight, but a flight along the route she desires.

Can someone who is not gifted with an especially rich spirit, say (feel, get to know, experience) this:

“Scented night air. 
The moon shadow cuts 
through my blouse.” 

From sublime lunatic midnight resurrections all the way to silent erotic flickers, blooms a fan of trembling strokes over a night lake - a boat for its restless dreamers. Or these verses: “Taking my dress off. . . / Without a brush stroke: / a butterfly on your wall.” Or: “My village / full of blue irises / and – blue skies.” And then this: “When you are gone / even with irises in bloom— / it's all the same to me.” Then maybe this: “Yellow quinces / scattered all about the hut floor. / The scent of winter”, and more, (un)similar to these...

No need for more citations... here we can (perhaps) find even better verses, more successful as haiku poems, but those quoted above establish proof of the convincing value of this collection of poems, and of the author's characteristic voice. I could comment on a third, if not a half of these verses and point to successful images and three-line poems, haiku poems – no matter how one may name them, but I'd like to point out that I am specially happy to find in this collection a freshness and honesty simply arising from a number of images, and I am happy for the pure joy of discovery. This could also be true both for those unfamiliar with the genre and this poetic form, but also for readers who practice haiku in all possible ways, both as authors and readers, editors or reviewers and critics. They will all find in this collection something worthy of praise. Simply, here are values beyond all formal views.

These verses, these images are full of energy. There is no doubt that everything in them was really experienced, springing from the soul, that nothing is just an opinion or the result of mere construction or improvisation as a shortcut to false values. We can see that everything that has been penned by the author is here because it wanted to be, because it recorded itself. What could be better and more beautiful! Today and here in this world of alienation, not just man from man, but even more man from nature, from the world of wholeness.

This world has received an acceleration! It rushes somewhere, rushes to an outcome which will certainly culminate in bigger puddles, if not in something even worse from these that this civilization leaves behind. We are left with some flickers of hope, at least in the form of the haiku poetry of this lady, Slavica, telling us that there are still some people who live the life of a human being who still possesses some soul. In accordance with nature, with the environment, with those facts that speak about a life known from time immemorial as the most human one, in freedom won by liberation from the ballast of the endless enchantments imposing themselves on us at the turn of the second millennium. Therefore, one should live satisfied with “small things” since small things are big, when in their proper place.

I have experienced intensely many of the poems from Slavica Blagojević's collection as if I were a witness of the moments of this record she has presented, leaving an enduring image. This collection has been mainly written in celebration of the turtledove, but the real praise belongs to the author who coos with a tongue of humanity of an unusual glow, and offers us a sequence, in fact a necklace of wonderful haiku moments (multiplying after reading them as a flock of new images, ours – or who knows whose and where from), which it is good to carry through this time of exhaustion and collapse.

 

Translation: Saša Važić

Language editor: Norman Darlington

 

 

 

 

 

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