Morning Haiku by Sonia Sanchez
Reviewed by Abby Travis
Rain Taxi
Sonia Sanchez's latest book resonates as boldly as a jazz ensemble; clear and poignant, it is intransigent in her subject matter. Her impassioned reflections come in the loose form of the American haiku, in groups of two to twenty-one haiku at a time. Primarily ekphrastic, her poems react to and commend the work and activism of African American singers, artists, authors, sculptors, painters, celebrities, and political and social activists, to whom many of the poems are dedicated. Sanchez presents a deeply personal, affected history and promulgation of her race, yet does so in each poem with a fresh breath and new song.
The collection begins with a preface, a "Haikuography." Most emphasized is the "haiku nature" that resides beneath our rushing lives, the simplest (and nevertheless complex) essence of our existence. Sanchez proclaims that haiku "offer no solutions"; indeed, there are times when no solutions exist, as in "Sister Haiku (for Pat)":
how to moisten
the silence of an
afternoon molestation?
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
his touch wore
you down to a
fugitive eye.
However, the purpose of Sanchez's haiku is to provide "an acceptance of pain, humor, beauty and non-beauty, death and rebirth, surprise and life. Always life. Both always help us to maintain memory and dignity." Her emphasis on life in spite of everything that contradicts it -- here and in each poem -- calls to mind Albert Camus's concept of revolt in the face of the absurd. Camus proclaimed that one must not repress the world's despairing qualities, but instead live in full consciousness of the absurd, and through this constant acknowledgement achieve a sense of freedom and reason to live -- to "maintain memory and dignity," as Sanchez writes. She maintains the memory of both her personal past and a collective one, bringing each to light while emphasizing its weight -- and she does not shy from death, as in "Dance Haiku":
do we ease
into death with
workingclass abandon
and in "14 Haiku (for Emmett Louis Till)":
we taste the
blood ritual of
southern hands
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
say no words
time is collapsing
in the woods
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
your death
a blues, i could not
drink away.
Through her poems, as well as her dedications to so many integral individuals, Sanchez emphasizes the stunning effect that art, literature, and music have had on the social and political realms. Even the title
Morning Haiku suggests the Walden-esque sort of awakening that Thoreau wrote about experiencing in the morning, an unpolluted awakening for moral reform, for throwing off the slumber of apathy. "To be awake is to be alive," Thoreau wrote, and as Sanchez throws these haiku of awakening out to her readers, she dares to look us in the face and demand that we too seek to be alive and conscious.
Sanchez's haiku is as simple and clear as breathing, but with everything that brings energy and vivacity to being alive. She does this through undulations in her voice's rhythm, usually slowly whispering, but sometimes frantically screaming. Yet while Sanchez is not afraid to unleash dissonance into our slumbering world, and does not shy away from pain or despair, she consistently transforms these sorrows into something beautiful -- in turn making us beautiful, even in our mistakes and our failures.