love lost, Hope found

By: Tierney Bowden

---

ice beneath sharp blades,

yet never did it waver.

eyes meet suddenly.

---

first meeting, cold rain,

heated cheeks, burning passion-

lips do what hands do

---

chilling droplets

met their demise against

passionate activities

---

over time, the distance

grew.

weeks passed.

skies turned from grey

to a deep blue.

---

traded rain for perfect sun

yet hearts were never full enough-

lovelorn.

---

while meadows filled with rabid bloom,

angst became her.

nothing but hatred.

---

suddenly,

a dandelion grew!

budding blossoms

bid woes, adieu!

---

Review:

My poems are an anthology of haikus that reflect a past relationship of mine. I was highly inspired by the haikus from “There is Always Tomorrow: An Anthology of Wartime Haiku” that we read in class. Haikus typically have 17 syllables, mention some reference to a season, and are very concise in their wording. This forces poets who choose this style to be very picky with what they choose to write. Despite this, haikus still evoke powerful emotions.

The wartime haikus were written by Japanese American internment camp victims of the Central Valley. Being from the Central Valley, these haikus struck something inside of me. These poets created their own hope through the power of haiku. They reflected, ranted, and yearned all in a few short phrases. Although I cannot relate to their struggles, I can relate to the feeling of being a human trying to cope. This is where I got inspired.

I wanted my anthology to reflect the feeling of hopelessness that comes with a failed relationship. My haikus are meant to be read from top to bottom since it is a story with a beginning, middle, and end. I chose to keep with the 17-syllable and seasonal word rules because these are not meant to simply be poems, but haikus. Just like how the wartime haikus included a word to reflect the blazing Central Valley summers, mine travel between the seasons of winter and spring.

Along with the wartime haiku inspiration, I also was inspired by Julia Alvarez’s “Sometimes the Words Are So Close”. In her poem, she took lines from other poems to Frankenstein them into a new one. I did something similar in my second haiku. The line “lips do what hands do” comes directly from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. This is one of my favorite scenes from the play because it is the perfect embodiment of young love. My anthology is about the first relationship I ever experienced and it was a rushed affair. The inclusion of this line was meant to reflect my naivety and youth when I began the relationship. It also is a foreshadowing of the tragic ending of the story. Just like Romeo and Juliet, I did not end up with this person.

I believe the haiku format and Alvarez’s poem-mashing created the perfect outlet for me to reflect on the relationship and the feelings I felt throughout the experience. In a way, this was a very therapeutic assignment and these poems mean a lot to me. I hope others can find themselves in this anthology, even if it is only one other person.

Window of Hope

“From the window of despair

May sky

there is always tomorrow”

~ NEIJI OZAWA

Imagery has been invoked in haiku poems for centuries, portraying an experience captured by the poet. Imagery invokes a concise and vivid description that appeals to the senses, making the haiku almost audiovisual.  Haiku typically focuses on nature and the changes in seasons. Therefore, the juxtaposition and the choice of diction create powerful visual and sensory images that capture events or emotions. Which creates a mood or tone that invites the readers to engage their imagination to experience the moment that the poet is portraying.

Neiji Ozawa wrote this haiku based on his previous life experiences, mostly being hardships here in America. Since there was some much segregation and discrimination towards Japanese Americans, in healthcare. Pushing Ozawa to open his own pharmacy to help that cause since white physicians were unacceptable due to the language barrier and expensive cost. This haiku was written on the Gila River reservation where Ozawa along with many other citizens were put in due to the executive order being sent out by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Further, these reservations detained these citizens, labeling them as a threat to the country. “From the window of despair”, provides the readers with the timeline that this was written at a time of hardships for Japanese citizens. “May sky” can then be symbolized for hope and the promise of a new beginning. May being associated with the arrival of spring, renewal, and growth. Sky in May signifies the transition from the coolness of spring to the warmth of summer. Therefore, this haiku follows the typical structure of focusing on nature and the changes in seasons. Yet, this may sky symbolizes hope for the citizens in this camp, to regain their previous lives and more. “There is always tomorrow” gives this poem the tone of hope, since it describes that tomorrow there is always hope that they will be displaced from those camps. Ultimately creating a visual of Japanese citizens looking up at the May sky and hoping for their freedom to come tomorrow.

~Jeshua Rocha

A ray of hope shines in from a window of despair

“From the window of despair

may sky

There is always tomorrow“

The imagery of imprisonment, its depressive setting, and hope are all woven within the three short stanzas of this haiku. “The Window of Despair” places an image of the setting in the reader’s mind. A dark and harsh environment, trapping the reader within, its only relief being the one window it holds. Its “May Sky” is a strong juxtaposition to the room one is trapped in. Despite the situation one may imagine themselves in however, that sky becomes a strong source of hope within the reader, as one hopes to find themselves within the other side of that window. While today they will be trapped in that dark and harsh room, just as they were the many days, weeks, and months before, “There is always tomorrow”. Perhaps tomorrow will be different and it’s thanks to that lingering hope that one can continue to preserve in such a draining environment.

With the context of its author and their experience within the internment camps during the Second World War, the imagery presented by this haiku becomes much more refined. The dark and harsh environment suddenly becomes a small apartment in the middle of the desert. Isolated from everything they knew prior. The decision to look towards the “May sky” for hope becomes much clearer, surrounded by nothing but identical buildings, barbed wire, guard posts, and the harsh desert environment, the sky becomes the only thing they share with those on the outside, and allows one to still feel a sense of connection. Those within the camps hope that they will eventually return to the homes they were forced to abandon, as the young Japanese Americans hope that their service to the military would show their dedication to their home country, and as they hope that maybe tomorrow will be different.

Eduardo Ojeda Jr

The Reiko Gomyo’s way: how to endure the internment period

To understand this poem, I first attempted to draw a picture. In the picture I drew, I sensed the loneliness and hope. The imagery of grass, newly sprouting buds, and the green hues of spring. How do these represent the experience of daily life at the internment camp?

The author was born in Japan and later immigrated to California, USA. While the author and the speaker are not explicitly the same, it can be inferred that the author likely experienced loneliness during the internment period imposed by the US government. Detainment in a country where rights to freedom are ensured creates a gap that would have brought significant loneliness to the author. It is definitely likely that the speaker in the poem shares this feeling. However, the speaker does not give up. The grass that grew by the ditch last year must be moved elsewhere. Everyone who sees the grass there will think so. The ditch is not where grass is supposed to grow. The speaker clearly feels oppressed and lonely, akin to the withering grass. But the grass that grew by the ditch will grow again next year. And someday, ‘firm’ buds will bloom abundantly. Ultimately, it means that oppression will not go forever, and the speaker’s steadfast determination shines through, indicating that liberation will come, allowing her and other Japanese to enjoy freedom like those trees, like American citizens.

Jisoo Jang

Sand Dunes Rolling

It is waking, but unable to see.

Staying awake to see too much more.

In this white desert traveling is me

Do I try to escape or find its core

But how to continue, chained to the ground

My spirit weakens in exhaust of heat

Try to walk, try to talk, there is no sound.

Anchored but floating is there no way to cheat?

Still, there is the honesty of my will

To tear one’s connections from the earth

Ascend over these barreling dunes of burning sand

for the next step taken will not ache so

embrace the heat the longing the craving

the breath of warm air that reminds you of your very heartbeat

and that though this place is vast and desolate, you are infinite— 

For my creative project, I based my poem’s outline and theme on Claude Mckay’s “Outcast” and “The Tired Worker.” Mckay’s poems in his collection Harlem Shadows all hold significant personal value to him as it discusses his race, his home, his love, his hate—all things which make of himself and the world. That stood out to me amongst the other poets, so I wanted to create my own imitation and as so decided this poem would have to mean something personal to me as well. My poem, “Sand Dunes Rolling,” reflects upon the state of the mind and how one copes with it’s many barriers.

Originally, I meant for my poem to be a sonnet through and through since both Mckay’s poems are sonnets. However, I decided to break from that rigid form once I wrote the volta on line nine, because like Mckay’s poem (or the way I analyzed it), the formal structure of the sonnet carries a deeper meaning; while Mckay’s format is meant to reflect the social limitations on the outcast man and worker, my sonnet stands in for the many obstacles which bar someone from finding their potential such as illnesses or trauma or even something as simple as procrastination. 

This restriction is reflected in how the poem is condensed to be a sonnet of only ten syllables, an ABAB rhyme scheme, a volta, ending at fourteen lines. As all problems start small, we are faced with a wall that halts us from continuing. I present this through the initial sonnet structure but also in the setting of the poem itself—the desert. The speaker is “chained to the ground” (line 5) and too weak to move forward, whether that forward be the core (akin to finding the reason one isn’t able to progress in life) or the exit (avoiding the problem). 

However, where Mckay keeps to the sonnet structure throughout both poems from beginning to end, I break after the volta, which is the speaker’s realization that they are able to overcome whatever hurdle they face (literally, the desert and it’s “barreling dunes” on line 11 in this case). The tone shifts from solemn and weary to hopefully and optimistic. Though, no mental problem is easily handled in an instant. It takes time and effort which is why the line after the volta still hangs onto the ten syllable limitation and even attempts to rhyme a few times (though not in the ABAB style). 

Eventually though, as the poem progresses, it transforms into free verse. The punctuation vanishes, which I intended to make the end feel less rigid and more smooth as though this speaker had began to walk (also reflected in the longer lines pushed forward). The lines go past the fourteen-line limit to signify the breaking of those restraints that had held the speaker down and the dash at the very end is meant to signify the infinite, that though the dunes of sand may never end, they will simply roll at one’s feet than barrel over them.

Caitlyn Klemm

See everything and see nothing, see-saw!

from lain illustrations by Yoshitoshi Abe (2006)

by Andrew Perez

I prefer H.D.’s poem because it shows an attempt at trying to leave this hopeless cycle of desperate validation both of these poems depict. Although the sea rose does not achieve a grandiose victory against the systems it ferociously rebelled against, it doesn’t need to. To have reached the ocean, to have persisted, and to have hoped for a better tomorrow, is what makes “Sea Rose” most effective in challenging the traditional symbol of the rose.

H.D. and Puente are separated by a near half-century of social change and feminist thinking that cannot be ignored by the comparison and evaluation to follow. To contemporary readers, H.D.’s poem usurps a tired cliché we have already discarded in the pencil boxes of our middle school backpacks. But to flip the metaphor of the “rose”, one which rejects the feminine objectification of Victorian society and proposes a new kind of feminist tenacity, was an incredibly novel idea for H.D.’s time. She removes the rose from its usual congregation in a garden bush to a lone existence on the tides of a beach. Caught between the “drifts” of the ocean waves battering against “the crisp sand that drives in the wind”, the speaker illustrates the transitionary period many women of the Victorian era were braving despite the various patriarchal institutions shackling them down. This struggle for independence and autonomy has left the sea rose “marred” and “thin”, but is precisely what gives it value over the patriarchal convention of the “spice-rose”. H.D.’s sea rose is beautiful because it does not aim to please the men who behold it, but instead confers a reality of conflict and suppression they have injured it with.

Puente’s “The Rose and The Poppy” feels like a mirrored continuation of H.D.’s “Sea Rose”, in which the battered subject has resigned itself to a quiet and invisible existence. She makes a comparison between the amorous passion of the rose to the sedated sleep of the poppy. “Forgotten”, “rarely chosen”, and “rotting into umber”, the speaker’s outlook on the future is colored by feelings of hopelessness and death. They no longer wish to be a vehicle of relationships and memories cherished and forgotten, but to instead expire alone in the vast expanses of nature and its many orchards. The final stage of this poppy’s life is particularly morbid: its corpse is collected and displayed at the table of all the people who have ignored it in life, eventually to be discarded once the fragrance of its “potpourri” has vanished into thin air. Thus, the sad existence of this poppy terminates as it started: unloved, unseen, and expendable.

Messages are only powerful if I accept them

Arguing that one poem offers a more powerful Christian message over another is like arguing that the color red is more appealing than the color green.  The argument is truly based on tastes and preferences; therefore, I believe that George Herbert’s “Easter Wings” offers a more powerful Christian message over his other poem, “The Alter,” because I, a non-Christian, was able to find the enjoyment while uncovering and understand the underlying message in the structure of the poem “Easter Wings” that I could not find in the structure of the ritual-heavy-maize-like poem “The Alter.”

Approaching the poem, “The Alter,” for the first time was literally like approaching an alter because the poem takes the shape of an alter.  However, once I got into the alter and started reading the lines, I got lost in the unfamiliar maize that Herbert took me to.  I had an inclination that the words in the poem were also supposed to form an alter, but lines like 3 and 4, “Whose parts are as thy hand did frame; No workmans tool hath touch’d the same,”confused me because it made me realize that I knew very little about what alters do or how they came about.  My lack of understanding led to my distaste for the message that the poem tried to convey.

“Easter Wings” on the other hand, effectively used its winged shape structure to fly the powerful Christian theme of hope into my brain.  In line 1, “Lord, who createdst man in wealth and store,” and lines 4 and 5, “Till he became Most poor,” Herbert refers to the famous biblical reference of Adam and Eve to show that God took away unlimited happiness in the world and instilled sorrow.  The speaker begins to feel the sorrow in lines 11 and 12, “My tender age in sorrow did begin: And still with sicknesses and shame,” but uses lines 9, 10, and 2o, “And sing this day thy victories: Then shall the fall further the flight in me… Affliction shall advance the flight in me,” to convey hope.  I enjoyed “Easter Wings” because the words, meaning, and structure of the poem led me to believe that I could use hope to fly me past my sorrows and darkest days and reach places that are better than ever.