Legal Commentary

PSA honors haiku — Roberta Beary’s The Unworn Necklace

By David A. Giacalone

The Poetry Society of America finally gave haiku a little respect last night, April 21, 2008. At its 98TH ANNUAL AWARDS CEREMONY, in The Grand Ballroom of The National Arts Club, in New York City, PSA officially announced the winners of its twelve annual awards.

We’re very pleased to tell you that one of the two Finalists for the William Carlos Williams Award — which was given to “Complete Minimal Poems” by Aram Saroyan — was The Unworn Necklace: Haiku and Senryu (Snapshot Press 2007) by “our” lawyer-poet friend Roberta Beary.

Renowned poet and poetry commentator Ron Silliman was the judge for this year’s William Carlos Williams Award [which is for a book of poetry by a single author, published by a small press, non-profit, or university press]. At his Silliman blog this morning, Ron explains why he chose The Unworn Necklace and the very different “Sorry, Tree” by Eileen Myles as finalists — “the term that the Poetry Society of America prefers for those books that also deserve some special attention.”

He had this to say about the relationship of haiku to the rest of the world of literary poetry:

“If slam poets & visual poets go around thinking that nobody takes their genres seriously as literature, haiku poetry has been off the map altogether ? a genuinely popular literary art form that receives no attention whatsoever from what Charles Bernstein would call Official Verse Culture unless it is for a new translation of one of the classics, or work by a poet, such as Anselm Hollo, already widely known and respected for writing in other forms. The whole idea of all these contests ? not unlike slam competitions ? is to create its own alternative institutional universe.”

Silliman later notes: “This is a book I never would have picked up ? probably never would have seen, although it?s already gone into a second printing ? that made me completely grateful to the Poetry Society of America and the Williams Carlos Williams Award for putting it into my hands.” I’m grateful that Ron Silliman had the courage to bring haiku into the spotlight of this “alternative institutional universe” — an important first step that should mean a little more respectability and appreciation for the genre as it has evolved in the English-language haiku world.

Silliman then goes on with great insight describing Roberta’s The Unworn Necklace. I hope you’ll read his entire posting to see why he felt TUN was a book worthy of special attention. After noting that her

thunder
the roses shift
into shadow

“might tell you a lot about a poet like Beary” [e.g., she likes subtle formalities and specificity of detail] but, Silliman says:

“By itself, tho, it?s hardly distinct from any of the hundreds of well-written works in these books, not just my final 19 volumes or even the broader group of books I liked. The reality, tho, is that it?s atypical of The Unworn Necklace, which is really a 70-poem not-quite-narrative cycle that has the weight and emotional force of a novel. A sprawling & powerful novel. A novel specifically about a woman?s midlife relationships as her marriage goes south, her father dies, her daughter takes flight, a new relationship is tested.”

Silliman then gives a couple examples of more typical TUN poems:

his death notice . . .
the get-well card
still in my briefcase

or

mother?s day
a nurse unties
the restraints

and declares: “These poems are compact, but remarkably well placed in the construction of a larger whole. . . . [T]he aesthetic here of absolutely minimal strokes accumulating to create a far more powerful picture is really overwhelming.”

If Silliman and PSA have whet your Beary appetite, check out our f/k/a review of The Unworn Necklace, which includes and has links to many of the poems in TUN. And, find many more of Roberta’s poems by clicking the links on her f/k/a Archives Page.

Here’s his final tribute to the two William Carlos Williams Award Finalists:

“Absent Aram Saroyan?s Complete Minimal Poems, I knew I would have given the WCW Award to one of these two books. . . . The only thing these books share in common is their power, and it?s interesting to imagine what kind of statement either would have made had it been the volume selected. This is what I just hate about contests. Each of these volumes is a total winner.”

Bravo to Roberta Beary and congratulations to the haiku genre, which can perhaps now start to overcome its little poetic self-esteem problem.

The Unworn Necklace: Haiku and Senryu, by Roberta Beary
(Snapshot Press 2007)

p.s. Snapshot Press has been in the process of “comprehensively redesigning and updating” its website for several years. It’s homepage now promises that “The new site will be launched in May 2008.” I hope so. And, I hope the new site will do a much better job than the old one of spotlighting each of its publications — especially the individual collections by haiku poets such as Roberta Beary, Carolyn Hall and Paul Miller.

Full post as published by f/k/a . . . on April 22, 2008 (boomark / email).