Wintermoon

In Wintermoon Robert MacLean distils twenty-five years of living in Kyoto, Japan, into a single seasonal cycle seen through the radically minimalist lens of haiku. Here are 119 precise instants of focus, divided into eleven sequences - 'stepping stones / leading to / a waterfall'. Each set of poems arrives at an awareness different from the one with which the set began, and the book as a whole maps a transformative journey filled with Zen practice, loneliness, university teaching, questionings, cultural acclimation, intimate encounters with nature, romance and marriage, and the death of parents and of an unborn child. Each sequence is a record of a series of acute and vital perceptions of the world.

About the Author :
Robert MacLean was born in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Canada. He lived in Kyoto for twenty-five years, where he taught at Ritsumeikan University, meanwhile continuing his lifelong zazen practice. He has studied and sat with Robert Aitken Rōshi and Jōshū Sasaki Rōshi, and latterly at Tōfukuji in Kyoto, where Keidō Fukushima Rōshi was abbot. He now lives in British Columbia with his wife and young daughter. His book Waking to Snow (Isobar Press, 2020) was chosen in 2021 by Lorna Crozier as one of her Poetry Picks for Canada's 23rd National Poetry Month.

Review :
Robert MacLean's haiku are to the haiku of Bashō and Buson as Rilke's sonnets are to the sonnets of Petrarch and Leopardi. They step back and forth across the rules (which don't work in the English language anyway) but adhere with grace and vigor to the principles. Principles aren't rules; they're something better: insights, visions, even, at the best of times, enlightened realizations. - Robert Bringhurst Beautifully laid out, and at times tremendously moving, the haiku in Wintermoon are allowed to breathe in a way that matches the practice of meditation that is one of its themes. Ranging from classic, Zen-like simplicity to bold, surrealistic imagery, but with a light touch throughout, they consistently sound a 'harmonic / of a deeper tuning'. - Philip Rowland Just a breath of words. But when I look, they disappear into the ink, taking me with them. Note to readers: keep fireflies in pocket. - Red Pine It is the penultimate sequence, 'January' that is the most poignant of all. This set of eight haiku circles round the premature death of a son .... There's an inevitable comparison with Issa's great poems on the deaths of his children, but it's to MacLean's great credit that his poems more than hold their own. - Billy Mills, Elliptical Movements The title ... is taken from a haiku by the eighteenth-century Japanese poet and painter Yosa Buson 'winter moon / pebbles / beneath my shoe' and the pebbles in MacLean's sequence, like Snyder's rocks [in 'Riprap'], are placed as stepping stones along an individual pathway ... the one "less travelled by. - Ian Brinton, The Long Poem Magazine MacLean writes well and from the heart. Forewarned that he was a Blake expert, I scrutinized the book for echoes, or images, of Blake. I found mainly silence and space. These too of course are present in Blake. However, in Wintermoon they are the silences and spaces of Japan, for, as the back cover rightly proclaims, this book distils twenty five years of living in Kyoto. An ex-expatriate myself, I find much of it so authentic. It resonates, bringing back my own memories of the smells, sounds, vistas and idiosyncrasies of Japan.... I admire the brevity and sparse minimalism of the best of these Wintermoon haiku. It is evident in the unmistakable Issa influence - with snake, snail and cockroach haiku. It's also there in the almost unbearable, beautiful yet heart-wrenching penultimate section "January" which you will have to read for yourself because I am not going to do it the injustice of quoting from it here. 'Superb strong stuff - a poet to watch. - Judy Kendall, Presence This new collection of sparse, astute poems distils more than twenty-five years of Robert MacLean's thinking about what is essential in poetry.... MacLean's mastery and innovative understanding of the haiku lens are immediately evident: one or two poems per page, simplicity of diction, each poem moving elegantly across the page, belying the intense contemplation of its conveyance through a language that is precise with unsaid evocation.... a voice on paper that responds to the ... challenge [of] how to understand the simplicity of a landscape's shapes and elemental rhythms, [and] how to carve away language from tradition to arrive at the meaning of such words as journey, breath and hearth - Jennifer Harrison, Haiku Canada