I will be reading my haiku from my Singing Waters book, and giving a haiku workshop for National Poetry Month at the Old Metairie Library at 2350 Metairie Road this Saturday, April 13, 2024 from 2-4. If you ever wanted to write or learn more about the haiku basics, this free workshop is for you! Grown-ups only.
Singing Waters Receives Review in Modern Haiku!
Peggy Bilbro gave Singing Waters an amazing review in Modern Haiku 53.2, pages 113-115! She writes,
“Johnette Downing’s Singing Waters is a charming collection encompassing all aspects of her creative life as an accomplished musician and writer with a rich production of music, poetry, and children’s books. Her many years of writing haiku has been culled down to one hundred haiku, a selection that reveals her love of New Orleans, the music that defines her life, and her delight in observing the innocence of childhood. These themes all combine with the music of flowing water.
Downing tells us in her introduction that she has always lived near water but that few poems in Singing Waters are about water. However, there are enough water poems to confirm her love of it in all its transformations. She has divided the poems into six sections, each titled with some aspect of water, moving from falling rain to the bayou and ultimately the ocean. more that a few of the haiku are full of images of moving water, sometimes in a quirky nod to modern life, as in the first poem of the book— “dishwater sky/ we walk through / the rinse cycle”— or this delightful six-word poem that combines the movement of the tides with childhood pleasure—”tide pool / children / come and go.”
Music in all its forms is an underlying theme throughout the collection. The chime in a zen garden, church bells, the roar of a crowd all add to the musicality of Downing’s writing. One of only two haibun in the book is dedicated to the ever-present sound of music in the streets of New Orleans, which she connects to the celebration of death in two of the haiku following the haibun. Downing’s writing in poems such as these is so full of life and energy that the reader is pulled into the activity, almost dancing along with the parade:
coffin
in the curves
of the tuba
cemetery workers
digging
the music
Also woven throughout Singing Waters is a view of a child’s world, not through the eyes of the child, but rather as the writer observing the innocent joy of children. She is very adept at showing that innocence, while leading the reader to remember the simple pleasures of childhood, as she does in “buttercups / a child’s / yellow nose,” or evoking the challenges of childhood in “double-dog dare / sourball / candy.” The reader is also allowed to stand back and simply observe the beautiful, dancing freedom of children as in the following poem:
pink tutus
fluttering in the wind
spring butterflies
Downing’s writing is clean and straightforward. She makes artful use of kigo and kireji to link nature and human experience. The simplicity of her writing makes her poems even more effective. In the sequence titled “Mother" the simple acts of closing her mother’s eyes, closing her mouth, and folding her hands opens the reader to the full circle of life, love, and death. This is not a poem of sorrow but of love and acceptance. Even the haibun “Hurricane Katrina,” recounting the horrible toll of that storm, exhibits the shared burden and finally the same acceptance of life we saw in “Mother",” as we see in these two haiku:
tears of a stranger
leave their mark
on me
dry riverbed
she moves on
with her life
Downing moves easily from traditional haiku and senryu to contemporary themes and format firmly anchored in modern English haiku. She plays with form, from concrete poems such as “March winds / his / c o m b o v e r,” with its upswept final line of letters, to the representation of an ever-so-familiar sound of this senryu:
nails_____________________________________
________chalkboard_______________________
________________________________chills____
Johnette Downing’s collection of haiku is an excellent representation of her creative spirit and lifelong themes. Each poem is complete in itself with nothing added or missing. She presents a warm relationship with life, even in its most difficult moments. Her ability to communicate a full story in a few, simple words makes this book a rich and worthy addition to any library.”
—————-
Thank you Peggy Bilbro for this thoughtful review. I deeply appreciate your thoughtfulness. You can learn more about Modern Haiku online at www.modernhaiku.org.
Singing the Praises of Singing Waters - Book Review in Frogpond!
I am beyond grateful to receive this amazing book review of Singing Waters by Tom Sacramona in Frogpond!
“Johnette Downing has been writing haiku for a long time, and she even co-founded the former New Orleans Haiku Society, so we are beyond excited about his selection of poetry, Singing Waters. Many haiku cover the complexities of relationships and delight in music and other rhythms that syncopate our lives. Darrell Bourque, former Louisiana Poet Laureate, rightly has this to say of Singing Waters (from the back cover): “In these poems, Insight is everything.” My favorite poems are the extremely perceptive haiku that emphasize just how aware Downing is of the poetry within her surroundings and just how receptive she is to the haiku moment:
hole in the cloud
my nephew calls
for more money
roofers next door
their shadows
work on my house
There are over 100 poems included in the book, which is edited by Stanford Forrester—a few in sequences, plus two special haibun “New Orleans,” celebrating the tradition of jazz funerals, and “Hurricane Katrina,” recounting the poet’s ordeal and suffering through that natural catastrophe:
flooding neighboring states
hurricane
evacuees
Driven by her musician’s ear, it is Downing’s sense of hearing that we find most often provides her imaginative leap from thought to poetry:
roller coaster
leaving my voice
at the top
so quiet
I hear his apology
coming
‘I have lived my entire life near water, and naturally, as a musician, I hear music in water,” Downing says in the introduction. ‘There is music in haiku as well; therefore, I have divided this book into water chapters to evoke a mood even thought few poems are about water. I hope you enjoy the score.’ The section groupings skillfully add meaning and layers to them. The chapter ‘Bayou’ lovingly contains poems about her family and memories growing up in Louisiana while the chapter ‘Ocean’ records traveling experiences farther from home:
dark bayou
a fish jumps
through the moon
magnolia blossom
I unfold the kimono
instructions
I’ll liken Singing Waters to a great record—I found myself returning to it again for certain haiku in the days after finishing it because I either wanted to experience a pleasant phrasing or recognize one of the poem’s insights over again.”
—Tom Sacramona, Editor, Frogpond, Volume 45:2 Spring/Summer 2022
Amazon Five Star Review for Singing Waters!
I am really touched by this 5 Star Customer Review for my Singing Waters haiku book by Cabbie on Amazon!
Reviewed in the United States on March 11, 2022
If you want to read excellent haiku, I suggest "Singing Waters." Ms. Downing has captured the true spirit of haiku, nothing gimmicky and everything of substance and resonance. Where her poems leave off, this reader was able to discover the "aha" moment. She also included two haibun, one of my favorite forms of the haiku genre. Kudos to Ms. Downing. Her poems are lovely and this book is one I am happy to include in my library.