I don’t know about you, but I can feel that storm coming, that adrenalin-rush we feel at different moments in our lives: the tension as you emerge on stage, the feeling before you meet someone you value. Yet you must bring that emotion to the surface. The poem doesn’t say anything directly about such feelings. That is the cool, restrained power of Asian poetry, in particular the haiku of Kirsty Karkow who lives on Indian Point in Waldoboro. Sometimes it’s easier to define something by what it isn’t.

Haiku, the Japanese form of poetry, is not just some easy, simple-minded little poem; it is not a thought put down on paper just because it occurs to you.

These poems are discrete, vividly described vessels that carry the essence of a moment, typically involving nature. Haiku,tanka and sijo are a form of painting with words, and Karkow uses all three forms. In these pictures you soon realize there is more there than first meets the eye. These poems speak to our lives, our ins and outs, our ups and downs. In haiku, each poem embraces a minimal, naked image that invites you to connect it to your own experience and emotions.

Japanese Haiku, typically three lines in a short-long-short pattern, evolved from the first lines of tanka, a much older form of Asian poetry. Tanka is five lines in a short-long-short-long-long pattern. Unlike haiku, tanka encourages emotional expression. Sijo, a rigidly structured form of song from Korea, often has a twist in the third line.

Karkow is a capable wordsmith who turns out poems that fit the haiku tradition of zen-like present tense, uncomplicated but specific imagery and a cool detachment from emotion, at least on the surface. The poems let you feel but don’t tell you how to feel. It’s as if you found a tide pool on the shore, small and full of color, light and reflection. It isn’t telling you how to react, but you can stop and wonder at such a pool of sheer beauty, and how that might speak to our lives.

Karkow writes of tides, sailing, paddling, life, love and death. She isn’t timid about it. Something as mundane as selling a boat acknowledges the frailty of age and the realization that dreams, and life, come to a halt.

boat for sale

our happiest hours

lifetime dream

teetering on

the slippery slope of age

I believe in full disclosure, so I admit I’m biased in favor of sailing to the remaining unspoiled islands and coves along our coast. Karkow clearly loves the moods and mysterious beauty of these places, and her work is anchored by that sense of place. Her husband Ed, to whom the book is dedicated, is clearly part of her special Maine world and he is present in her poetry, directly and obliquely. Together they sail, kayak, hike and snowshoe from their completely and delightfully Danish home. She humorously notes that he now knows “what takes her so long,” the writing of poems. Sometimes a haiku seems like three swift brush strokes, firm and smooth, pleasing to the eye and in this case, the ear too.

solstice dawn

a flotilla of sea ducks

turns eastward

Karkow’s generous spirit shines through her work, at once affectionate, compliant, gently teasing.

you are the wind

I the supple birch

Bending

to your soft caress

and far-fetched whisper

I love to swim and feel the zing and taste the salty tang of the buoyant sea, which supports me but can also overpower me. I suggest you immerse yourself in Kirsty Karkow’s water poems; join her in what has to be the Caribbean Sea.


I swam

in turquoise water

last night

the sound of lapping waves

colored all my dreams

This snug little volume embraces our coast, sings of nature’s rhythms and the corresponding rhythm of our lives. The book is illustrated with Karkow’s deft paintings of things like a butterfly, a turtle. On the cover is one of Karkow’s watercolors of blue sea and sky, of a sailboat, sea grass, spruce and rocky shores. It seems like a place we know…like her poems.

Karkow has won some prestigious awards for her poetry – including Japan’s Mainichi contest – and her work has been published in journals from Croatia to Canada. When haiku came into her life a few years ago, she said, it became another spiritual step for her. Besides writing poems and learning to sail the Maine coast, she has raced sports cars, sculpted in clay, instructed in t’ai chi, trained horses and taught dressage to young and old. Born in London, she grew up in Trinidad and later herded cattle on an Arizona ranch where her mother was one of the last homesteaders. She is a self-taught watercolorist.

Karkow will read from her new book June 18 at 1 p.m. at the Second Read Cafe in Rockland. More than 30 people attended a reading last month at the Personal Book Shop in Thomaston.


calm morning

a kayak adrift

in clouds

Now that’s something to savor with your first cup of coffee.

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water poems: haiku, tanka,

and sijo

By Kirsty Karkow

Black Cat Press, Eldersburg, Maryland 2005

132 pages, softcover, $16