Review Articles
Chasing Ripples, David Platt
Chasing Ripples, David Platt, Hub Editions, obtainable from the author, 16 x 11 cm, ISBN 1-9-3746-03-5, £4.50
This first collection gives a brief account of haiku, followed by 100+ arranged in seasons and interspersed with a haibun, a haiku sequence, and some tanka. The non-seasonal ‘Afterthoughts’ are a short miscellany: not of “failed haiku, because they say what I wished to say”; but haiku which are on the other side of “where I set my boundaries”.
David Platt seems an out-doors man, if not a naturalist. There is no obtrusive science, but many sights incidental to work and recreation outside:
| in the snow in a curled leaf sparrows footprint |
bedraggled rooks on iron rungs in old brickwork pecking and pecking |
There are some bi-polar haiku, in which two things seem at first to have no connection, and have to be felt out. Also ‘weather reports’, strained verses, and some which could be either an elusive observation or a conceit:
| startled dual in their sharp cries squeeze between wingtips and water |
distant thunderheads less the darting of swifts than their screeches |
Mixed in with the scenes from nature are a few poignant personal poems. The desolate feelings hinted at are more affecting than in the explicit tanka, and give a ‘scent’ to descriptive verses nearby. One is quoted below. Finally, in the ‘Afterthoughts’, there is a little wit:
| watching leaves fall between me and the streetlight dawn wind |
pouring oil on troubled waters lighting a match |
Page(s) 61
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