Book review: The Angel's Wound – Collected Haibun

In this book George Marsh, one-time editor of this journal, presents a collection of haibun. Those familiar with the muse and process of haiku and haibun will know, however, that you do not collect them, they collect you. So here we have the assembled work of someone that has been collected through the experiences and activities of his life including those of a Buddhist practitioner.

For readers who expect haibun to be a few paragraphs of prose punctuated by a traditional three line haiku verse which intensifies the themes of the prose, then this is a collection that will take you away from that anticipated route. George plays with both the nature of the prose and verse; sometimes the prose is in the form of a dialogue (who is speaking to who?), sometimes a number of points (who is the teacher? who is the listener?) and then comes a verse or at times several verses and not necessarily of the requisite number of lines. In their interplay with the prose the verses sometimes deepen the experience of the described moment and sometimes there is a rapid shift from one type of experience to the other. It is through its dissonances and unexpected juxtapositions that the freshness and indeed solidity of the stories is constructed. An approach that points us toward a full moment of awareness with its compendium of thoughts, feelings, sensations and being.

The conversation between the prose and the verse is always at the heart of haibun and here this dialogue/chat/shouting match is one that points to the way our life is filled with its ups and downs, its tragedies and hopes, just going along on its own idiosyncratic journey. There is violence and grief on the one hand and ordinary beauty and every day mundanity on the other. A whole range of emotions and senses are evoked by the prose, the stench of neglect, the horror of man’s inhumanity to man, the pleasure in the discovery of a bees’ nest. We meet experiences along the developmental path that we all are likely to encounter, if not yet; the first kiss, a parent’s death, the pleasures of being a grandparent and coping with the aftermath of surgery. Then there are experiences that many of us will not encounter, meeting a man in prison who killed his wife, visiting a remembrance site where hundreds of thousands of Chinese were killed by invading Japanese troops.

Plum blossoms
thanks be thanks be
my life so easy

There is also a surprising piece about the Large Hadron Collider and the revealing of the Higgs boson, the science of which evokes the verse,

always roaring
the echo in me
of the wind between the stars

and then to sitting in a greasy spoon café. So, if you would like to reflect on that cup of coffee, its serving and other experiences of life then join George with his haibun, I’m sure they’ll welcome you.

The Angel’s Wound – Collected Haibun by George Marsh.
Published by Alba Publishing, 2022.
Order from George Marsh,
Flat 33 St Martins house, Portsmouth, PO5 2EZ
Email: geormarsh1@gmail.com