Hyatt and Salzer’s first linked-verse collaboration together offers poetry of movement between the authors’ verses, choreographed by the Japanese forms of renga, rengay, and others. The collection achieves a “blissful silence of ecstatic dance” in poems that aren’t about merely friendship but are themselves friendship made poetic. In most of the pieces, apart from the solo linked-verse, the poets alternate stanzas, which creates the effect of “roots and shoots.../ push-pull energy/ in a garden/” to cultivate a natural tension but also a stirring awareness of the space between verses, friends, moments, and nature and art. The subject matter reflects the collection’s poetic form, often juxtaposing, as is traditional in Japanese poetry, seemingly disparate images to illuminate stark truths that relate at times to the political, as in “The Machine” and “A Drop of Water,” the ancestral, as in “Inheritance” and “Grandma’s Stories,” and the natural, as in “Kaleidoscope” and “First Light,” where lines like “tired of the English language / I sit in the shade/ with a cranefly” explore the kind of paradoxes that aren’t housed in the sphere of chaos but rather the sphere of dream. The world is always turning, yet life remains still. Echoes shows readers contradictions of peace.
Yet while Hyatt and Salzer’s poems occupy this lulling, liminal space of blurred consciousness, they also harmonize into a soundtrack or sound-portrait of modern life, and the collection is abundant with lines like this one from “Black Ice”: “breaking news/ in the old t.v./ drifting clouds.” The way we live today is exposed in blends of dissimilar images that pair the mundane with the strange, but the authors throughout point towards how we can find serenity amid this chaos. An echo is a thing between sound and silence, and readers in this collection will find depth and meaning in their exposure to all three.
Takeaway: A linked-verse collaboration exploring nature, friendship, and the spaces between.
Great for fans of: Hiroaki Sato’s One Hundred Frogs, Matsuo Bashō.
Production grades
Cover: A
Design and typography: A
Illustrations: N/A
Editing: A
Marketing copy: A
Echoes is a fine poet collaboration on various forms of renku inspired verse focusing on friendship. Michelle Hyatt and Jacob Salzer are both experienced poets, and their poetry for this book was composed during the world’s social isolation due to Covid-19. The collection is diverse and divided into the following sections: “Tan Renga,” “Yotsumono,” “Rengay,” “Experimental Rengay,” “Junicho,” “Kasen,” and “Solo Linked-Verse.” Besides friendship, the other prevailing subject is a consideration for ancestors, including mother earth or Gaia. This theme appears in many of their renku inspired forms. Take the following tan-renga from a sequence of them called “Past Lives” as an example: past lives / the ancestors smile / in my grandma’s face // dry riverbed / the thirst for knowledge. The next section is a group of yotsumono renku, and Hyatt and Salzer used the book Renku Reckoner (2015) by John Edmund Carley as a guide...
I just finished this fabulous book of poetry by Jacob Salzer and his friend Michelle Hyatt. Every poem in the book is a gem. This book blew me away with it's depth and beauty. Highly recommend you read it too.
I highly recommend Echoes! A heartwarming collaboration of traditional Japanese forms of linked verses that captures the reader, much as music does, with fine lyrics. In this book, the two poets, Michelle Hyatt and Jacob Salzer weave words that instantly captivate as we deeply experience their love of nature and the human world, and poignant relationships with loved ones. Moving, insightful, joyful and uplifting, Echoes offers the reader an intimate journey into ordinary life filled with moments of beauty, love, and peace.
The newly published anthology Echoes – A Collection of Linked Verse Poetry by Michelle Hyatt and Jacob Salzer should not be missed. It is, as Salzer explains in the introduction of the book about friendship which is further emphasized in the acknowledgement page where they express their gratitude to many other poet friends. Echoes is a fine example of poet collaboration on various forms of renku inspired verse.
During this radio interview, Michelle & Jacob dive into haiku and other forms of Japanese poetry. They also discuss dreams, indigenous culture, and the power of listening. To finish, they talk about a movie titled Waking Life. Throughout the interview Michelle and Jacob read samples from their book Echoes: A Collection of Linked-Verse Poetry in addition to other poems. The radio host is Tonio Epstein. Duration: 2 hours and 30 minutes
