Book Review: Journey
By Zane Parks
2020, Paperback
ISBN 978-1-6781-7992-2.
$7.00 from Lulu.com
Ordering Information
Reviewed by Patricia Prime
The title of Zane Parks’ haibun collection, Journey, not only signifies the act of traveling from one place to another, but a way to sum up a life. “We knew the risk going in. It’s a hard thing to know the hour of your death,” says Parks in the first haibun, “For Those in Peril.” At times nostalgic and humorous, at other times raw and startling, Journey is a thought-provoking odyssey of one man’s life journey: his family history, traumas, joys, and challenges, all transformed through haibun into redemptive art.
The 56 haibun in Journey range from the personal to the intimate to the humorous. In “Honeymoon,” Park uses sparse imagery to evoke his parents’ early years during a time of worldwide war, and to express the wonders of being in love:
Early August. Young lovers. A brilliant flash. A shattering roar. Their bodies melt into each other.
reading the stories of saddam's war crimes a-bomb day
Throughout the book, Parks’ writes with honesty about all aspects of life, both the pleasant and the disagreeable.
We’re going on a winkidink. That’s what my little brother calls a picnic. There are public bathrooms but they’re pretty rank. Mom won’t use them at all. We just use them to pee. None of us would use them for tootilitot. (from “Private Language”)
Parks also introduces us not just to his immediate family members—his parents, his grandmother (to whom the book is dedicated), his brother—but also to his extended family, as in “Dear Coz”:
A Christmas visit. You were sixteen. I a couple of years younger. You were a beautiful child and now had blossomed. Early morning. We were decorating the tree. You stood on a chair to reach the upper parts. I handed up ornaments, wide-eyed as you leaned over to place the. Your baby doll pajama top swinging out.
state fair dad hurries as past the girlie show tent
In the haibun “Celebration,” he writes simply about his first experience of making love, giving the precise date:
August 3, 1966. I’m twenty today. My roommate Mike has arranged everything – food, cake, beer. My girlfriend plans to stay over. We celebrate. Then Mike gives us the gift of privacy. Our first time.
peace march we exchange the sign and the baby
And in “Nine Eleven,” he captures the heartbreak that is also a part of life.
A colleague from our New York office is planning a training session to be held at the Twin Towers. She’s having breakfast at Windows on the World.
For days hope remains alive. Everyone smiles seeing her walk into the office with her husband, But there’s no answering smile.Now the realization, the weight of it. She has a twin. They’ve come to collect her things.
hearing my name I turn to no one
Through simple poetry and prose, Journey charts the tumble of tiny moments that make up a life, including the unexpected discoveries that can still bring joy—seagulls lining the shore, dinner in a posh restaurant, a pretty, bright, successful daughter, and the changing seasons, as in “Winter’s Approach”:
A carpet of browns and yellows. Birch leaves. Some dark around the edges. Like ancient parchment. The rain has stopped]. But not the fall of leaves.
indian summer
the smoke I exhale
is just that
These are poems full of cathartic storytelling. Parks’ collection manages to speak of the simple things of life in a single breath, and out of enormity creates small poems of beauty.
About the Reviewer
Patricia Prime is co-editor of the NZ haiku journal Kokako. She is the articles editor for contemporary haibun online and also a reviewer for Atlas Poetica, Takahe, and other journals.