Baseball Haiku

Features

• Cover Type: Hard Cover with 240 pages
• Published by: W. W. Norton April 1, 2007
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 0393062198
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-0393062199
• Book Dimensions: 7.1 x 4.8 x 1.1 inches
• Weighs: 9.6 ounces

From The Washington Post


By Mary Karr

Hearing a ball game on the radio recently said spring to me, as does any trip to Yankee stadium (now in its last season before demolition). In New York, the chatter about team injuries can take on a tribal intensity -- which is why I cracked Baseball Haiku: American and Japanese Haiku and Senryu on Baseball. Editor and translator Cor van den Heuvel is a haiku aficionado whose single-image poems capture moments from my own baseball-centered childhood, like these two:

baseball cards


spread out on the bed


April rain


biking to the field


under a cloudless sky


my glove on the handlebars


In George Swede's work, as is evident in the two here, the natural world interrupts and supercedes play, lending totemic power to things like dandelion seeds and sunbeams:


empty baseball field


a dandelion seed floats through


the strike zone


village ball game


through knotholes in the old fence


evening sunbeams


Michael Fessler, who's published two books on the game along with five of haiku, best captures the game's players. His last line really drags me into the intimacy of those screaming matches:


August heat


umpire and manager


nose to nose





Despite the sometimes curious carnal power of these poems in English, the Japanese poets managed to make the haiku a spiritual instant -- delicate as tissue paper. Imai Sei even creates psychological complexity:


after the error


the player still faces the outfield


towering clouds


Such feeling in such a small space. These haiku prove that in a secular culture, the stadium -- from little league through the majors -- may be the closest many Americans get to a house of worship, which is why I end with Raffael de Gruttola's meditation on eternity:


lost in the lights


the high fly ball that


never comes down


(All of these poems appear in "Baseball Haiku: American and Japanese Haiku and Senryu on Baseball," edited with translations by Cor van den Heuvel and Nanae Tamura. Norton. 2007. Copyright 2007 by Cor van den Heuvel and individual copyrights by the poets.)

Mary Karr's most recent book of poems is "Sinners Welcome."




Copyright 2008, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

From Booklist
Introduced to Japan in 1872, the quintessentially American game of baseball has inspired more than a century of poetry written on both sides of the Pacific in the quintessentially Japanese literary form of the haiku. An appropriately international partnership of editors-translators--one American, one Japanese--here bring readers a marvelous sampling of these haiku. Including work from 15 Japanese masters (including the acclaimed Masoaka Shiki) and thirty American poets (including the Beat genius Jack Kerouac), this anthology delivers unforgettable baseball experiences in striking imagery. Light rain raising puffs of dust from the infield, a drooping flag cueing a manager to shift his outfielders, a cricket serenading an outfielder in his lonely vigil--these and scores of other baseball moments live forever in the tight compression of these poems. The natural fit between baseball and haiku (and the closely related senryu) comes into historical and conceptual focus in an insightful introduction and afterword, where van den Heuvel ponders this cross-cultural intersection. A rare book, appealing to both die-hard fan and literary critic. Bryce Christensen
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Reader Reviews
For a book of haiku --about baseball no less-- to break out into wider readership the way this book has is reminiscent of Dave Brubeck and Stan Getz bringing jazz into the popular music charts in the 1960's. My sister gave me this book for my birthday and, as Thomas Merton wrote, as long as it talks, I'm going to listen. Cor van den Heuvel and Nanae Tamura have assembled a tour de force of baseball haiku. America brought baseball to Japan and Japan gifted this country with haiku. There is a most enjoyable introduction about the history of baseball haiku in both countries. The book has a long section of haiku by well-known, and less well-known, haiku poets in the United States, followed by a rich collection of translated Japanese haiku featuring the game. Van den Heuvel concludes with an appreciative essay on baseball in the United States and Japan. Here are some samples which reflect moments which come in the world of baseball: walking home with his glove on his head shrieking cicadas Imai Sei summer afternoon the long fly ball to center field takes its time Cor van den Heuvel dog days of summer twenty-three games out of first Michael Ketchek This last poem sounds the tone of melancholy, called wabi in the classic Japanese haiku tradition, which many of the haiku in this book capture beautifully and hauntingly, and which is certainly is eventually present for any young or aging participant (or observer) in the game. Here are a few more evocations: while playing ball it becomes time to go home to supper Kawahigashi Hekigoto calm evening the ballgame play-by-play across the water Jim Kacian Baseball haiku, because of their brevity, will not provide the same kind of reading as Jimmy Breslin's writing about the 1962 Mets in his chapter "They're Afraid to Come Out," nor Ed Linn's reporting on Ted Williams' last game in 1960. But they make their own special offering. Speaking of melancholy, in my case I grew up in the 1950's in Kansas City, which gives a certain meaning to the term Kansas City Blues. By the way, Cor van den Heuvel loves jazz too. Get the book.