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One Summer, a Thousand Days
One Summer, a Thousand Days. It’s a great title for an excellent collection of poetry.
I found Charles Albano’s haiku collection when I was searching online specifically for collections of scifaiku. I am glad I came across the book at Amazon, because I didn’t find it through the usual routes where I look for science fiction poetry. (My favorite spot to shop for sci-fi poetry is The Genre Mall, in case you were wondering, and I’ve written before about how much I like Sam’s Dot Publishing.)
One Summer, a Thousand Days is a collection of haiku, and it includes a chapter of scifaiku. Many of Albano’s haiku are very well written. As I read through the collection, I found myself smiling often — and I think the best haiku often leave the reader smiling, not necessarily because of humor, but often because of a clever turn. That is exactly how Albano’s haiku works. There are some that are just plain funny. When that is the sort of haiku Albano offers, his sense of humor really shines through. But more often, I found myself smiling because of a clever turn in the direction the poem was taken. That is, to me, the most important element in haiku.
The book is arranged in a very neat and compact way, which makes it flow nicely for the reader. Chapter 1 is entitled “Nature and Humanity in Season.” Here is a collection of haiku concerned with nature, humans, and the interaction between the two. All of the haiku here are structured in the traditional form, following the 5-7-5 syllable count. In the second chapter, “Scifaiku — Man Meets Alien,” the poems similarly stick to the 5-7-5 arrangement, and all fall into the scifaiku genre. This was the chapter that attracted to the book in the first place, and it did not disappoint. The final chapter, “A Rainbow of Free-form Haiku,” gets away from the 5-7-5 structure. Some of the poems here are 2 lines, some 4 or 5. None follow the 5-7-5 structure, but many of them have the same clever “turn” upon which haiku is built.
I am glad I have found Charles Albano’s poetry collection. It is a good read. He seems to really understand the haiku and how it is supposed to work. It is no wonder his haiku have appeared in a good number of print and online poetry magazines. If I had to offer one complaint about the book, it would only be that Albano uses more punctuation in his haiku than I tend to prefer. But that is a very minor complaint, really. His poetry is very well-crafted. I enjoyed the collection, and feel that it is something from which I can learn as I seek to develop my own poetry.
© 2008 Shelly Bryant
Sunday, 18 May 2008
