Frogpond, Volume 45:1, Winter 2022. Haiku Society of America.
by Kristen Lindquist
Water and Stone: Ten Years of Art and Haiku by Annette Makino (Makino Studios, Arcata, CA: 2021). 124 pages, 8” x 10”. Matte cover, perfect softbound. ISBN 979-8519290142. $24.99 from www.makinostudios.com.
Award-winning poet and artist Annette Makino’s first full-length collection—Water and Stone: Ten Years of Art and Haiku—beautifully reproduces fifty of her haiga, painted with Japanese watercolors and sumi-e ink, in a larger format for maximal appreciation. The haiga, most of which previously appeared in her yearly calendars, are arranged by season. However, this book is so much more than a series of seasonal pictures with haiku. Fifteen reflective, memoir-style haibun are interspersed with the haiga, creating a cohesive personal narrative that pulls the book together thematically through the year. Each haibun’s concluding haiku is repeated in the succeeding haiga, an echo which further enhances the connections between these strong, well-crafted works. Makino’s artwork, which she says has been influenced by traditional Japanese woodblock prints and the Japanese folk art of etegami, or simple postcards, has tremendous appeal. While her paintings can often feel more illustrative of the haiku they are paired with, her simple and sincere style makes them shine. For example, she pairs a painting of ripe tomatoes on the vine with this haiku: heirloom tomato / finally comfortable / in my own skin. Not much left to the imagination, and yet, thanks to Makino’s skill as a haiku poet, as well as the preceding haibun about growing older, this feels just right. Paired with a painting of hers, a question / answered with a question / clucking hens seems obvious—but that curious hen’s priceless expression indicates that this haiga is really a form of ars poetica, allowing us to see, and hear, the inspiration for this masterful haiku. Her straightforward approach is refreshing, and not without its own kind of depth and resonance. Some favorites: (1) a painting of Japanese anemones paired with cowlick / some part of me / still wild; (2) an image of a swimming dog paired with rippling river forever arriving at now; and (3) two horses standing side-by-side in a field paired with our easy silence / every puddle / sky-deep. While this book is clearly meant to showcase the haiga, I don’t want to overlook the universal appeal of her haibun, which speak directly to the reader’s heart about such topics as parenthood, being an artist, time passing, beloved pets, family history, and the natural world around us. There is so much to love and appreciate in this book, which I would also highly recommend as the perfect gift for a haiku poet to share with non-haiku-poet family and friends. Hopefully, we won’t have to wait ten more years for Makino’s next collection, but in the meantime, I also recommend her calendar, available through her website!