Haiku Redo: A Collection of Haiku, Companion Pieces, and Space for Your Own

Poems | God | Ai

Thank you to Pamela J Hatch & Donna G Fowler for providing me with an ARC in exchange for my honest review!

• Plot:
Haiku Redo is a Haiku written by Pamela & Donna. Their email is listed where you can share the haikus you come up with from the book with them. Pamela's style is a bit more playful, like when she mentions mooing for the cow prompt or is intrigued by the owl. Donna's poems are a little more serious.

• What I Liked:
Whether you’re new to Haikus or have heard of them before, the book opens with what it is, which is poetry listed as 5-7-5 syllables, and explains how it’s visual with lack of punctuation. There are images throughout the book that are meant to encourage the reader to write their own haikus as show more well. Donna also lists tips for understanding haiku.

• What Didn’t Work for Me:
Some of the AI images are repeated. Each page that featured an illustration could’ve had a different one alongside its poem. It’s repeated to encourage the reader to write their own haiku using the same image.

The work page instructions are repeated throughout and take up half of an entire page; the rest is blank. It feels like something is missing.

Instead of AI, some of the pictures could’ve been photographs.

• Themes / Ideas:
Friendship, God & Nature

• Who I’d Recommend It To:
Christians & those interested in reading and writing their own haikus.

• Overall Thoughts:
Donna G Fowler was inspired by Pamela J Hatch and wrote this book. All the images created are AI-generated, made with prompts by Donna. The poems are based on the images. The haiku that stood out the most to me
Was, “flowers are in bloom
God’s creation comes to life
Sunshine warms the earth.”
The photo was of flowers in the spring.
The book doesn’t take long to read, since most pages are repeats.
It's slightly confusing who really provided the arcs for us because the letter saids Pamela, but at the back of the book it saids Dona & it looks like Pamela sign it. Either way I appreciate the opportunity to read and review this. show less

In Haiku Redo we have an interesting book, a chapbook hybridized with a workbook. But, oh! I've got some questions! The authors are Donna Fowler and Pamela Hatch. Fowler presents forty "original" haiku; these are complemented by thirty-three haiku (branded as "haiku redo") contributed by Hatch. At first, I was taking "redo" literally: I thought the makeovers were somehow perceived as superior revisions to the originals. (They are generally not. One, in fact, includes the same syllable repeated seventeen times.) I then realized that "redo" was likely selected just to rhyme with "haiku." (Misleading titles are not something I find especially endearing.)

The haiku are mapped onto thirty days, with each day including at least one (but as show more many as four) original haiku and one or two "redone" haiku. Each day also includes a colorful, borderline garish AI-generated image (contributed by Fowler, as noted in an afterword). More confusion: Which came first, the original haiku or the image? Or both the original and redone haiku? Unclear. I wonder because, as a second part to each of the thirty numbered entries, readers are invited to compose their own haiku "based on" each image. And that's where I feel as if something is lost in translation.

Disclaimer: I used to live in Japan. I've also been known to compose haiku. In the Japanese context, the "images" to which poets respond might exist in the real (typically natural) world, but they're just as well mental images: impressions, senses, moods. I'm not aware of any haiku schools based on using pictures; I'm certainly not aware of any based on using artificial images. I'm also not aware of exchanges--unless we're referring to competitions here--where different poets respond to the same "prompt" and publish their attempts together, especially when neither or none of the attempts are especially inspired. Instead, I'm used to haiku serving as responses to one another. In such scenarios, the narrative develops or unfolds as the poetry progresses. So it's not clear to me if the "responses" here are simply another poet's take on the images or whether they were somehow inspired by the original haiku. Not knowing this fundamental fact about the origin of the collection makes it difficult for me to find inspiration in the work.

Lest I am coming across as ungenerous here, I'll share that I do hold a fundamental difference in opinion about English-language haiku. Yes, haiku in Japanese follow the 5-7-5 pattern of syllables. But Japanese is such a different language from English! English-language haiku, in my practice, are welcome to use a different pattern altogether. Such poems end up approximating Japanese haiku more aptly--again, in my opinion--because they spark mental images and associations in a way that better accommodates the linguistic and cultural differences.

I am reminded of a friend who reviews restaurants and believes that reviewers shouldn't let their own tastes interfere with their judgments. Haiku Redo is not for me, but other folks might find it valuable. I'm imagining folks who are drawn to haiku as puzzles but who do not expect their compositions to manifest "power," per se. I'm also imagining folks who are drawn to haiku because haiku are short, unintimidating, accessible. I would love for the world to be inhabited by more poets, and I believe that everyone with the gift of language can be a poet. Perhaps Haiku Redo will help some poets find their voices.

Thank you to the LibraryThing Early Reviewers scheme for a review copy of this book. show less