Haiku Canada Review: ShoHyōRan, HCSHR 4:26. December 30, 2021. (Excerpted)

by Maxianne Berger

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Water and Stone: Ten Years of Art and Haiku, by Annette Makino. Arcata, CA: Makino Studios, 2021. 979-8519290142. 124 pages. 24.99$US. www.makinostudios.com

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Happily quite different is Annette Makino’s Water and Stone. The paintings that support her haiga are as lovely and lively as any that illustrate children’s books, although she writes for all ages, looking at inner and outer life, often simultaneously.

The book is organized traditionally, according to season. The painting of three raccoons (fall) carries this truth:

watchful eyes
the wilderness
inside us

Cows grazing (summer), riffing on the “other side of the fence” reminds us about

the grass on this side—
the gift of wanting
what you have

The haiga in this book are interspersed with haibun, often being “home” to the haiku within the accompanying image. Winter includes “In the balance,” where Makino speaks of a local raccoon they’ve named Delilah. “. . . I wonder what it means to be wild, especially when human activity reaches every corner of the planet, . . .” The haiku that follows this paragraph is picked up in the painting on the facing page:

fox tracks . . .
who was I before
I was tamed?

The images in Annette Makino’s collection are lovely, the prose is limpid, and the haiku seem effortlessly to verbalize how we are part of the world.

water and stone
how we shape
each other

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