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Palm: David Cobb 2002 ISBN 0951710346 available through local bookshops, price £7.95, and from The BHS Bookshop, post free with a discount of 25% (£6) Sinodun, Shalford, Essex CM7 5HN

On a scale of A to E, achieving any level of the wide C band invariably results from dedicated slog. The B range is, mostly, the reward of more effort for more hours, more practice with even greater determination. But, even here, a different concoction of juices is required. A study of a few Oxbridge ‘Firsts’, despite long periods of drug and alcohol induced haze, shows that ‘more of the same’ was an inadequate explanation. Often fewer hours were spent with greater effect. The ability to effectively select from a wide range of options was a requisite. Lateral approaches, making unusual connections using a wider range of devices, a highly developed critical faculty, and approaching problem-solving, decision-making and style in a non-conformist way, were also clearly apparent.

What has this to do with David Cobb’s book PALM, a personal anthology of haiku, senryu, short and less short poems, others based on Chinese poems, and haibun, selected from work written over a number of years? Quite a lot, actually! C grade is a container sufficiently huge to hold millions and millions of haiku/senryu, the sincere and clever results of the majority who work diligently and honestly to achieve this commendable, middle height pinnacle, those of us who learn off the backs of others, who in turn... an incest which leads to a surprisingly wide range of ‘clever’ poems, stylistically similar in structures, content and devices. In the harsh regime of judgement, there are not many B, and even fewer A grades. The latter, Gods guard with miserly care.

Reviewers of ‘mainstream’ novels and poetry often catch a protective, ‘you-rub-mine-and-I’ll-rub-yours’ cold, one indicator being; ‘I (highly/fully/totally) recommend this (unforgettable/world-changing) book’ squirt of words. So why, just because we inhabit a much, much smaller world, should this be any different! The reason is that PALM, due to some exceptional writing, and application of a sharp critical and selective faculty, does, in parts, reach deep inside the B grade plethora of burrows. From experience, we know this is not an easy achievement? To move in any direction, protection against the pressures of relatively unquestioning defenders-of-the- faith-and-traditional-conditions-to-remain-within-narrow-paradigms, has to be faced down. Intelligent and sensitive, with gentle understatement, bits of this rattle bag of a book are so good the fact the jury is still well and truly out on the hybrid that is ‘haibun’, recedes in importance. There is one memorable, extended work that enlivens local history in a way more interesting than any traditional format. In the context of experiments-within-convention there is, here, the clarion call of a hard-won personal voice, not to mention a few quite magical section headings.

The best word to describe PALM is ‘clean’. The most austere critic would not be embarrassed. Even if the content were crude or repulsive it would hardly matter because style and form is so finely balanced. It is art, and that does matter. Its language is consistently enjoyable. Delicate perceptions are expressed in ways that can, perhaps, be examples for many of us. Reduction is constructive; precisely moulded, with uncongested meanings.

‘Lightness’, travelling to us through time from the mind of Bashō is, it seems, an essential haiku quality not ‘lightly’, if ever, questioned! Sometimes it is confused or interchangeable with delicacy, gentleness, subtlety, softness, diffidence, particular image and language combinations, positive examples of which form a part of PALM mood. It is also a bit offbeat in a way that expands the work, adjusting to retain, and even enlarge, attention. Here, there is that feeling of awe in the face of a high standard craftsman, a rarity in an age of mass-production.

Neither a compliment nor a criticism, this is a very ‘English’ book, which may, in the kindest of all possible ways, exhaust and electrify your Bashō emulating nerve-ends. It is also interesting in the sense that it unobtrusively hooks readers into cleverly devised methodologies, events, styles and content and allows them to swim in this tributary of that Grand Master River design in which we must all, for a time, flounder and splutter. This is a book, not just of an older man, but a mature one who is able to catch and convert ‘moments’ into language both enchanting and enchanted. Like childhood innocence, it uses complex means to achieve the effect of ease. And the sober light of adulthood does little to alter this. His Art is concocted artlessly. A great Jewish writer said of V.S. Naipul: ‘one glance from him and I reckoned I could skip Yom Kippur’. Same here! Not surprisingly, it is also unsentimental, except where ‘mother’ reigns supreme. Even then, it is so cleverly crafted as to be almost dispassionate. It is sentiment from within Art  - and the word connexion phrasing is just about faultless.

Vladimir Nabokov, in Bleak House, explains that ‘the fit reader does not read with his brain or his heart but with his back, waiting for the telltale tingle between the shoulder-blades’. Inevitably there are ‘clever’, C grade poems and haibun, but some parts of PALM do tingle, and not just the backbone. In our increasingly stylistic, clone-like and stultifying middle-range arena of convention, little we manufacture backs such a claim to fame.

Despite his apparent ‘ease of results’, I am aware that the author, more often than not, reworks initial linguistic responses. As one addicted to immoderate ‘fiddling’, I feel strengthened in, and more able to justify, my own practice. It may not be walking in tandem with that ethereal ‘haiku spirit’ but it does provide an even sleep pattern. Even maestro Bashō wasn’t immune from this ancient ‘reworking’ craft. Four years was spent reworking Narrow Road To The Interior before achieving the peace of finality.

There is little one person can say to another to persuade them to read this or that book, but even without the consciously omitted, seemingly obligatory multitude of examples, (or perhaps because of it), if there is any desire to move beyond the contemporary subtext of ‘self-improvement’ to ‘self-discovery’, then not to read PALM represents a minus on the learning-from-cradle-to-grave scale. Go get yourself a compassionate friend disguised in the warm mask of PALM.