Blue Ridge

Patrick Van Mil was a freelance writer in Banff, Alberta.

Contrary to popular belief, poets do not run around in a perpetual state of ecstasy and insight. If they did, there would not be any ordinary poems. The proof of this lies in the pudding and the pudding, in this case, is James Deahl’s Blue Ridge. It is a curious volume containing some very evocative and moving haiku and also very ordinary haiku. Not bad; but ordinary.

James Deahl is a capable poet: his images are focused; his rhythms are appropriate to his subject; his tone is down to earth. Capable can mean good but, as the French say, the good is the enemy of the best. An example:

This haiku is as dripping with peace and bliss and domesticity as the wet sheets, but it really fails to move. There are many poems like this one in the volume. What they lack is an image that cuts through the surface reality and shows some insight. Haiku should do more than simply evoke a feeling. Deahl can write such haiku:

In pieces such as this, Deahl presents us with the classic haiku theme, which explores the general in the specific and the specific in the general. The woman’s loneliness is magnified by her tiny image against the vast sea of grass while the grain’s ripeness, with its suggestion of harvest, reflects her longing and potential need for surrender. Both the woman and the landscape incorporate parts of each other in themselves. Striking a more universal note, this haiku is more satisfying to read than such cute pieces as the first one.

The unevenness of the volume extends to the illustrations by Gilda Mekler. Some of them are squiggles and smudges in which one cannot see a thing. Others at first seem the same but then develop into images: here is a road and some trees, there some clouds — all melt into one another, moving in and out of focus. In such drawings Mekler creates on the thin line that separates the concrete from the abstract. This is also where good haiku is created.