Book Review:
Ancient History: Haibun and Tanka Prose

By Adelaide B. Shaw
Published by Cyberwit.net
Allahabad, India
2023, Paperback, 82 pages
ISBN: 978-81-19228-46-1
$15.00
Available from Cyberwit.net or Amazon

Reviewed by Tish Davis

In the preface to her new book, Adelaide B. Shaw notes that she grew up in a city: New Haven, Connecticut, which at the time she lived there (1936 to 1952) had a population of over 160,000. However, her experiences were those of a small town, centered around her parents, sibling, and a neighborhood of Italian, Irish, Polish, and Portuguese families. Throughout this collection of forty haibun and ten tanka prose, Shaw reflects on this “ancient history,” beginning with her parents and their lives growing up in Italy. In the first haibun, she describes her father:

Dad

He is a Neapolitan child of the streets, in short pants and skinned knees, until he is apprenticed to a tailor and learns how to handle a needle and thread, how to cut cloth, how, with wool or silk or gabardine, to take arms and legs, torso and shoulders, and reshape them into a new man.

As the haibun continues, so does the father’s journey:

In 1908 at age eighteen, and with only a few lira, his scissors and thimble in his pocket, he leaves behind a struggling family in a town often layered with the ashes of Vesuvius. He travels in steerage, twelve days in the bowels of a ship before docking in Boston harbor.

Shaw’s father would land a job as a tailor. “Other countrymen with their needles and thread sew together a strong bond,” Shaw writes, a sentence that evokes a comforting sense of community.

The next haibun, “Mom,” introduces the poet’s mother, who in this piece is 10 years old. While her father (Shaw’s nonno), is away again and “hauling his wagon of water barrels to different villages,” she has daily chores “to gather kindling, feed the chickens, sweep the floor, get milk from the goat boy.” In the afternoon she “studies her catechism, recites it for Nonna.”

Readers will learn in the penultimate haiku that the young girl has celebrated her First Communion—a significant occasion in the Catholic faith. It again evokes a sense of family and community:

First Communion
after a cleansing rain
the festive table

Those images—First Communion; cleansing rain; the festive table—set the stage for “The Voyage,” a tanka prose piece that describes her mother’s crossing to the United States:

Steerage, the lowest area for passengers. Men on one side. Women and children on the other.
She is crossing with her mother, two younger brothers and a baby sister. The New World waiting. She is 13.

A narrow iron framed bunk bed, one of a hundred in a long room. Two swinging lanterns overhead. A thin mattress, a skimpy blanket and life preserver in every bunk.

Life on board consists of long lines for food, for the toilet, for washing. Stale, smelly air below; clean, brisk, and cold air on deck. Now and then a treat.

a fresh orange
three sections for herself
to slowly savor
each bite of memory
of Nonna's tree

On the third day out an alarm. Life jackets put on. The waiting on deck, perhaps to all die. The engine stilled. U-boats. Torpedoes; New words; New fears.

Every day, always the rocking and swaying, always the confinement, the restlessness, the wish to run across the hills again.

sea spray on the wind
a slow walk around deck
and back
the ache of her legs
moves to her heart

After 16 days the flat horizon changes shape. Land. As island, a statue high on a pedestal holding a torch. She stands on deck in falling snow. The first she has ever seen.

fragile and light
flakes on her open hand
quickly melt;
fragile and light all her dreams
shadowed in the dawn

“The Voyage” is a good example how a poet can add dimension through use of contrasting images. Shaw describes the undesirable conditions on the vessel and then adds an unexpected leap—the treat of a fresh orange.

In the forty-seven works that follow, Shaw continues her personal family history, with scenarios that also take the reader back through the 20th century:

“Remnants” takes place during World War II, when “there is little to use and even less to throw away.” One of her neighborhood’s characters, Crazy Rachel, “wears a red Raggedy Ann wig that fits poorly, exposing lank strands of dull brown hair. Her clothes are loose and baggy, a long skirt and man’s jacket, too heavy for the hot summer days when she comes down our street pushing her cart. ‘Rags, rags. Give me your rags.'”

“An Introduction” recounts an experience where Ruth, one of the few Black children in Shaw’s eighth-grade class,” invites Shaw into her home. The kitchen is filled with “the fragrance of baking” and “Ruth’s grandmother stands up, smiles and motions me to sit down. ‘Sit. Sit and have some biscuits.'”

In “The Five and Dime,” the reader accompanies Shaw to one of the United States’ iconic stores: “Shopping with Mom at Woolworth’s is a treat for me. Christmas season is the best.”

Shaw also offers reminders of a time before today’s sophisticated technology. In “Give Me Entertainment,” the children “Listen to the radio. Go to the movies on Saturday afternoon. Have board games and books. In summer, occasional trips to the beach or amusement park.” And then there was the piano:

My sister and I are not allowed to touch it. Gert plays the piano. We beg and cajole her to play. Doesn’t matter what. It’s how she plays. The way her hands fly, faster, slower. The way the keys move without her even touching them.

Shaw includes a selection of black-and-white photos at the end of the book, allowing readers to actually see the people to whom they’ve just been introduced. Those photos deepen the experience of the collection, especially with the following haibun:

Grandparents

A box of photos saved from my parents’ house. In one photo an old couple stands close together. The man has a thick, white mustache and a bald head; the woman has white hair pulled tightly into a bun, an ample bosom, and wide hips. Stiff and formal in the black and white picture. The stern faces give a lie to what I know.

afternoon rocking—
the odors of food
and warm flesh

They feed us, scold us, hug us. Italian immigrants. Few English words understood and even fewer spoken. Never mind.

hand and hand—
from the tobacco shop
to the ice cream store

Within a few months of each other they are gone. Too young to understand, too old to forget,

relatives gather—
another party with tears
and stories

These are just a few examples of what the poet shares about her “ancient history.” I’ve personally experienced some of this history and give a nod and warm smile to Adelaide B. Shaw.

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About the Reviewer

Tish Davis lives in Northern Ohio. Her tanka and related forms have appeared in numerous online and print publications. When she isn’t busy with work and grandchildren she enjoys exploring the local parks with her husband and three dogs.

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