Review: The Spam Museum

It was week two of the epic family journey west.  Two weeks, two kids, two adults, cramped car, you know the story.  We had checked in with home the night before, and found a major storm had passed through leaving no damage, but no electricity.  No reason to hurry home.

We stopped at the Minnesota Welcome Center on I-90 and found the brochure.  Just up the road could possibly be the most interesting part of the trip, or possibly the worst.  You see, we love unique roadside attractions.  In our trips west, we have visited the World’s Largest Hand-Dug Well, the World’s Second Largest Hand Dug Well (if you have seen #1, you must see #2), the World’s Largest Ball of Twine and the infamous Prairie Dog Town.  It would be difficult to top such sites, but this looked promising.

We traveled east to Austin, MN and followed the signs.  There was nothing very unique about the town.  In fact, as I recall, it was uber-ordinary, until we turned into the parking lot.  There before us stood the SPAM Museum.  New, gleaming, inviting; not at all what I was expecting. I am not sure what I was expecting, but this wasn’t it.

At the entrance, we were greeted by friendly locals who welcomed us and served us little squares of SPAM, each impaled upon a pretzel.  Nice presentation; more creative than the usual toothpick.  Did I mention the “wall of SPAM?”  The entire entrance to the museum is made of SPAM cans, floor to ceiling.

Once inside, we watched a short film on the history of SPAM, how it is made, and other fascinating trivia.  It was all very entertaining, and at no time did they take themselves too seriously.  It was all done with a wink.  Then, it was off to see the exhibits.  Here, we “experienced” interesting displays, such as SPAM’s role in WWII, played a SPAM Game Show, and many other interactive displays.  It appealed to the kids as well as Mom and Dad, who had worked in the museum business for a number of years and are hard to impress.

I almost hate to spoil the ending, so if you are planning to go, please skip to the next paragraph.

If you cannot envision anyone wanting to experience SPAM, read on.  You may change your mind.  When we approached the last corner, we began to hear the familiar strains of Monty Python’s “SPAM, SPAM, SPAM, SPAM.”  Yes, there it was, the diner from the famous skit, recreated down to the last detail.   The skit is played on video screens mounted above the counter.  It was almost too good to be true!

As with any quality museum, you exit through the gift shop, where we were able to buy all things SPAM, from golf balls to underwear.  Oh yes, we were also able to purchase any of the nine varieties of SPAM available.  Somehow it seemed appropriate, even though I was not a big fan of the product.

The SPAM Museum is open seven days per week, with the usual holiday closings.  Best of all, it is free of charge, quite unusual for a museum of this quality. The SPAM Museum is located at 1101 N. Main Street in Austin, Minnesota. The phone number is 1-800-LUV-SPAM.  Well worth the drive, even if you find the product not of your liking, the museum is a blast.

MICKI MORAHN (BA- Indiana University, MA- Indiana State University) has worked for the Indiana State Museum and Historic Sites as operator of an 1880s water-powered mill.  She currently teaches American History for ISU in Corrections Education Program and at St-Mary-of-the-Woods MicCollege. 

Review: Haiku Wars

Lanoue, David.  Haiku Wars.  Winchester, VA: Red Moon, 2009.  184pp.

Let's start off with a brief summary of this haiku novel.  A bodhisattva reincarnates in the form of the telepathic pet weasel of a man identified only as Poet.  Poet is a member of the...

*snaps fingers*  Are you still following me?  I thought I saw your eyes glaze over there for a second.

I want to deal with the key problem of Haiku Wars before I get into the fact that I actually basically loved it.  See, there are the jokes that you know you can tell in any situation.  Up the risqué-factor, the offensive-factor, or the absurd-factor, and you're going to start losing some people.  But in losing some people, the ones you keep are going to love the joke all the more.  It's why we got beaten up in middle school for quoting Monty Python's Flying Circus all the time but were free to do so to our hearts' content during Chess Club.

(I hope that's a "we" thing.  I really do.)

I want to quote just a bit more than what could commonly be called "fair use" to illustrate this best.  The members of the New Orleans Haiku Club-- of which Poet is a member-- are debating the need for juxtaposition in the haiku form, which in turn descends into a discussion of whether the haiku needs to be defined at all:

-oOo-oOo-oOo-oOo-oOo-

"Does haiku need defining?" Sylvia's quiet voice piped in.


"Oh yes, definitely!" Poet answered, and I could tell by the increased urgency of his petting that he was winding up for a lecture.


"Without definition, the word 'haiku' ceases to hold meaning.  Or, putting it in another way, if it's not defined, then anything can be a haiku.  Why not a sonnet or a limerick?  What makes a limerick not a haiku?"


"There once was a man from Nantucket..." Van interjected.


Poet ignored this.  "If we don't have definitions in mind when we use words, we can't make sense."


"If defining's so important, why don't we just check the dictionary?" Janette suggested.


"Because" (Poet in full lecture mode now) "the dictionary only records common usage: what the majority of people speaking the language think when they use the word, 'haiku' at the time of the dictionary's publication.  But this can lag way behind what poets of haiku are saying... and discovering.  Haiku is an art, so someone's always pushing its envelope.  A great innovator, a trailblazer, might take haiku where it's never been, and then the world, and dictionaries, will follow-- but later.  There's always lag-time."


"So!" Van slapped his knee.  "You admit that haiku is evolving!"


Poet squeezed me hard, but then his fingers relaxed completely as he realized the corner into which he had painted himself.


"I rest my case," Van said.

-oOo-oOo-oOo-oOo-oOo-

The common reader is going to take this scene (as narrated by the telepathic weasel, mind you) to be obscurely scholastic at best.  But I can guarantee you any reader who has been in a few creative writing workshops has sat through this same debate before.  And once we get into the convention being held by the New Orleans Haiku Club, the intense rivalry between Kusuban-san and Muya-san, the missing manuscript of incredible import, and the "Head-to-Head Haiku Death Match," our audience keeps getting narrower and narrower and our narrow audience keeps laughing harder and harder.

I think a few parts of this are a little hokey, sure.  Even as the author is attempting to create a farce, I think the use of an animal narrator just becomes a little too weird to deal with, especially when Poet is trying to get suspected manuscript thieves to pet his weasel to establish a firm telepathic bond.  (In other news, "pet my weasel" is my new pickup line.)  But as much as I kept wanting to distance myself from the people in the book, I kept realizing that each laugh proved how much I was a member of that circle.  

After all, I'm writing a review of a book called Haiku Wars.  

So all in all, if you read High Coup Journal, you're probably going to like this book.  If you don't read High Coup Journal, you're never going to hear my warning about the book anyway.  I feel obliged to put both of my ratings below-- but don't fool yourself into thinking anything but the first applies to you.

FINAL RATING(S):

FOR HAIKU NUTS:

4.5/5 AWESOME SAUCES

FOR NORMALLY SANE PEOPLE (WHO I DOUBT MAKE UP MUCH OF OUR READERSHIP):

3/5 AWESOME SAUCES

Review: Morning Haiku

Sanchez, Sonia.  Morning Haiku.  Boston: Beacon Hill, 2010. 104pp.

We try not to be too "establishment" here at High Coup Journal, and the fact that this book comes recommended by Chiuna Achebe, Joy Harjo, and Maya Angelou made me a bit wary at first.

That was stupid and bullshit.  This book is awesome.

Whereas "artistic" haiku can often feel bloodless and detached, Sanchez injects some white-hot passion into her writing, as seen in this poem from the "duende" series:

my thighs

sing the flesh

off the guitar

All of these haiku come grouped together in strings, most of which are dedicated to either historical or living African-Americans.  And yes, there's a series dedicated to St. Augustine of Hippo-- remember, Augustine was an African.  Plenty of the Roman Empire was African.  

Playboy of North

Africa, burning the streets before

you learned to genuflect

The significance of Sanchez's poetry resonates even closer to home with her poems dedicated to Oprah Winfrey, Toni Morrison, and Ms. Angelou.  A favorite series of mine is dedicated to Emmett Till, which ends up with the following:

your death

a blues i could not

drink away.

Sanchez describes her collection well in her "haikugraphy," when she says that "this haiku, this tough form disguised in beauty in insight, is like the blues, for they both offer no solutions, only a pronouncement, a formal declaration-- an acceptance of pain, humor, beauty, and non-beauty, death and rebirth, surprise and life.  Always life.  Both always help to maintain memory and dignity."

Essentially, Sanchez takes this form and takes it to school.  I learned a lot from reading her, and I hope you do as well.  

FINAL RATING:

5/5 AWESOME SAUCES

Review: Pirate Haiku

Spradlin, Michael.  Pirate Haiku.  Avon, MA: Adams, 2010.  186pp.

Our review of Michael Spradlin's Pirate Haiku is long overdue!  No, seriously, it's like a month late, and then another week late.  But let no one suggest that has anything to do with the quality of the book.  It's actually a pretty clever little romp around the Caribbean and across the Pacific Ocean to a strange place called... Japan.

Pirates are simple.

We like rum, guns, wenches.  And

women like bad boys.

If there were one poem that best summarized this book, that's probably it.  Fans of any of the previously-mentioned vices will probably get a snicker as they leaf through this book.  It occasionally gets a little blue, though, so if you're considering getting the book for a young scalliwag, you might want to wait until after the Bar Mitzvah.  Or you may just be dealing with a particularly mannish boy.  Decide for yourself:

In Jamaica I

spent nearly all my time with

a wench name of Belle.

Oft' I watched her dance.

A dark-haired beauty, my Belle

shivered me timber.

Admittedly, the rum/guns/wenches combo does start to fall a little flat on rereading, but there's more to the book than simply a jumble of references to pirate-y things.  Though the following is perhaps one of the best g-ddamned pirate puns I have ever heard:

My ears have no holes.

I find earrings expensive--

at a buck an ear.

Get it?  Buck an... right.  It's awesome.  'Nuff said.

As opposed to another haiku book we reviewed by the same publisher, Pirate Haiku isn't simply a compilation.  It tracks the voyages, exploits, ninja attacks, maroonings, battles, hand-and-leg amputations, and general mayhem associated with the fearsome One-Leg Sterling in a sort of journal form.  What I like best about the work is the prose introduction explaining the "history" behind the pirate himself: "What we know of One-Leg Sterling is this: he was probably Richard Sterling, who as a young boy was stolen by pirates from his family's home near Cape Fear, North Carolina."  And further explanation takes place in the journal itself:

I want to tell my 

story in the haiku form

I learned here last time.

But it is very

hard to count syllables when

you have just one hand.

The history (or "pirateology," as the field is named) really makes the book work, in my opinion.  It's a lot like Rohan Kriwaczek's An Incomplete History of the Art of Funerary Violin or Peter Schickele's The Definitive Biography of P.D.Q. Bach.  

(Is it worth noting that it also makes the work like the editor of this journal's still-to-be-published master's project?  Not at all.)

Anyway, the frame-story makes the book a winner.  I think Spradlin could have gone a little further to make the individual haiku a little more punny, but the overall narrative, combined with an explanation for the reason why it's all in haiku involving a lengthy island stay near Japan, causes the book to flow really well.  It's delightfully absurd.  And besides, pirates beat ninjas any day of the week. 

FINAL RATING:



4.5/5 AWESOME SAUCES

Review: Peace and War

Black, Rick. Peace and War: A Collection of Haiku from Israel. Highland Park, NJ: Turtle Light, 2007. 54pp.

Let's start off by discussing what this book isn't: it isn't a polemic from either a pro-Israeli or pro-Palestinian perspective.  (The very idea that there's only one Israeli or Palestinian perspective itself is a gross simplification.  But this book doesn't fall into either general camp.)  This book was not written with an axe to grind.

And not grinding an axe was one of the struggles Black went through in writing this book.  As he explains in his forward, "I have always struggled to reconcile haiku's non-judgmental, Zen-like approach to life with my own deep-seated need to protest against life's injustices.  I have an ongoing argument with God about the world's imperfections.  Simply to accept the world as it is, as Zen philosophy requires, does not come naturally to me, especially when I am in a country at war."  That Zen requirement brings to mind for me the image of a placid Abraham simply documenting the aroma of brimstone as it falls on Lot's head.

So as much as this book examines conflict within peoples and the land, it reveals conflict within the author's own perceptions.  These contradictions and paradoxes give us meaningful snapshots, such as in the following pair of poems from the "peace" section of the book (more on that in a minute):

army bulldozer

smashes an olive tree--

still in bloom

highway's edge

old armored vehicles rust

beneath cypress trees

In the first we have the force of military action overcoming nature.  In the second (and in my opinion, more provocative), we have a seemingly placid image.  Despite this feeling of peace, though, natural action is overcoming the military equipment.  A different kind of struggle manifests itself in the "War" section of the book:

empty sandbox

a mortar shell explodes

nearby harmlessly

a sonic boom

sets off the car's alarm:

false prophesy

The struggle here is not the fight between metal and wood but the fight between moment and memory.  Especially in the second poem, the memory of war comes into the moment for just an instant, but an instant can be all it takes to trigger a flashback.  (Along those lines, if you haven't seen Waltz with Bashir, do so.)

So which of these themes-- war or peace-- takes primacy in this book?  Well, that's just it: the binding doesn't really let you decide.  The work is bound dos-à-dos, so neither theme is "first" or "last."  Normally I wouldn't call the binding of a book out as such, but I think this method of presentation helps reveal the deconstruction of such stark terms.  Saying a book has "ended" is a lot easier than saying a war has "ended."

Unfortunately, in this format I can't just place these poems back-to-back to let you pick one to read first.  They are each the last poem to a side.  So I inserted a little of my own bias in ordering the two to leave you with.

last clouds-- 

if only the violence would

drift away, too

rainbow's arc

the old city's domed rooftops

still glistening

FINAL RATING:

5/5 AWESOME SAUCES

Review: Guyku

Raczka, Bob. Guyku: A Year of Haiku for Boys. Illus. Peter H. Reynolds. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2010. 48pp.

We've already reviewed a Young Adult book in haiku here at the journal, but Raczka and Reynolds's Guyku is our first children's book.  And that brings up some questions: do you use the same sorts of standards in reviewing a children's book that you do in a book for adults?  Let's take a look at the authorial intent (dangerous, right?), or, um, in this case the illustratorial intent.  As illustrator Reynolds explains, "My mission is also to help people defy stereotypes-- to think creatively and bravely.  The invitation for boys to swim in the 'poem pond' needs to be issued more often, and more loudly.  I want to shout, 'Come on in!  The water's fine!'"

And at that goal, this book hits spot-on.  Several quintessential experiences from boyhood are succinctly called back to mind in its pages:

In a rushing stream,

we turn rocks into a dam.

Hours flow by us.

---

Pounding fat cattails

on a park bench near the pond,

we make a snowstorm.

Does Raczka occasionally cheat?  Sure.  Filling in syllables is an easy way to make a haiku work, as in this example:

Skip, skip, skip, skip, plunk!

Five ripple rings in a row--

my best throw ever!

That one comes off as a little cheesy, but I'm willing to give him a pass because of the bucktoothed grin borne by the rock-skipper.  These would be nice haiku in general, but the illustrations just make them.  I'm a sucker for spot color anyway, and Reynolds picks a separate one for each of the seasons: green for spring, yellow for summer, sepia for fall, and cyan for winter.  The result is a classic children's-book look.

So yeah, it absolutely succeeds as a children's book.  But I also want to examine the real poetic value of some of these haiku.  Take for example these two:

Lying on the lawn
we study the blackboard sky
connecting the dots.

---

With the ember end

of my long marshmallow stick

I draw on the dark

Along with creating a book for children, Raczka and Reynolds have created a vehicle for adults to relive some of those precious moments of boyhood, regardless of how long it has been since we spent them by the pond or gazing at the stars.  Call me sentimental, but this book did some good for my heart.  I've read enough haiku about death and suffering... sometimes I just want to look up in the sky and think back to a time when I had fewer worries.

So I'd like to see this book show up in elementary school classrooms from time to time.  Boys need someone cheering them on, and I can think of some younger cousins who I will be re-gifting my review copy to.  But I'd also recommend it to any jaded adult who would do well to take a short vacation to age nine.  Don't worry, death and suffering will still be around after reading the book.

In essence: Guyku rocks!

FINAL RATING:

5/5 AWESOME SAUCES

Review: Sketches from the San Joaquin

McClintock, Michael. Sketches from the San Joaquin. Highland Park, NJ: Turtle Light, 2009. 30pp.

Even if I personally have a fetish for 17 syllables, a lot of great poets don't. And judging by the number of times I've seen Michael McClintock's name around haiku circles, he counts as a great poet. McClintock seems to use the form as it serves him, but is unafraid to stretch and truncate his lines to provide real punch in some cases.

with no kites in the sky

the wind

moves on

The behind-the-times formalist in me has a little trouble getting on board... but the kid in me likes the frosting side! Seriously, the sparseness adds to the windy feeling here.

The collection moves through the cycle of the seasons, beginning with spring poems and moving through summer and autumn to finish in wintertime. This natural theme structures the work overall, but smaller and tighter cycles can be found in other poems, such as the following:

A shining world--

dewdrops for the duckling

and the beetle it eats.

Along with hearkening to the yin-yang, this poem reminds me a lot of that great old hymn/Cat Stevens song, "Morning Has Broken." It's a poem that gets better the more I think it over-- and that's the very essence of what haiku should do, no?

Other poems succeed by providing jarring contrasts within three lines (a number that McClintock does maintain throughout). The main contrast seems to be between beauty and death/violence, as in these poems:

Easter morning...

a woman with an axe

walks into the chicken house

where three drowned

the lake water

sparkles in the morning

the day heats up--

I make the dog's grave

deeper by a foot

As much as I liked the collection, I did have the occasional quibble with McClintock's wording. A few poems seemed a bit looser than they needed to be, especially since we're already breaking form. Take the following example:

this is how life is--

hearing the cricket at dawn

just as it ceases

Once we've settled comfortably into the nature/meditative mode of tradition, shouldn't all these poems be "how life is"? Another occasional chafing-point was the use of some poetic inversion, such as in this poem:

eating a pear--

how small the seeds

in this modern variety

The poem seems to be bending over backwards to avoid using an existential verb. Additionally, though I recognize that punctuation isn't a staple of modern haiku, why did the em-dash and the ellipsis get a pass in this case? These aren't questions that in any way ruined the book for me, but they did make me wonder.

Overall, McClintock has put together a pretty nice book here. I got a feeling for the wildlife and the farm workers, for the flowers and lakes and all that nature-y stuff in the San Joaquin Valley. It didn't compel me exactly, but I have a firm respect for how the work is organized and the portrayals of the landscape. It's a book that made me think in color, and thus is worth reading. And while this book wasn't my favorite of all time, I'll definitely be on the lookout for some more of McClintock's work to get a better appreciation of his poetry overall.

FINAL RATING:

3.5/5 AWESOME SAUCES

Review: Brains for Lunch

Holt, K. A. and Gahan Wilson. Brains For Lunch: A Zombie Novel in Haiku?!  New York: Neal Porter/Roaring Book, 2010. 87pp.

MARTI FUERST, GUEST REVIEWER:

When I first learned about haiku in middle school, we read a few pithy poems about nature from the textbook, wrote one of our own, and called it a day. The entire “unit” was yawn-worthy, and I promptly forgot about the little form until I had to regurgitate later on.

K. A. Holt's novel, Brains For Lunch, takes haiku out of the hands of the literary elite and into the rotting grip of zombies. The story centers around Loeb, a zombie middle-schooler in a world where the undead, “lifers,” and chupacabras exist side-by-side.

“It's against the rules.”

“What's against the rules? Fighting?”

“No. Eating your peers.”

There is an “invisible” line between the “lifers” and the more unusual students, which leads to subtle hints of revolution and social change. All of this comes to head at the climax of the novel-- a poetry contest, where Loeb reads haiku.

“Lifers, Chupos, Zs

Melting pot of dopes and thugs

Or are we just kids?”

I don’t know if it’s a trend, but in my experience, novels in verse are usually in first-person and adopt a diary format. Brains for Lunch follows this same concept, but the poetry acts like a running commentary inside Loeb’s undead brain. This is the main vehicle for the novel's tangled romantic plot. Holt attempts to make it simple in the trailer for Brains for Lunch, but when is love in middle school ever anything but complex?

I can't clear my head

Even with all the holes

Fincher, Siohan, brains

This is my life, huh?

It's “The Catcher in the Fly”

Lame teen zombie angst

The haiku flow easily from one to the next, and zombies apparently talk in haiku-like rhythm anyway. The action sequences are a little hard to understand the first time through, and I personally wish it were a little longer. Still, it's a long length for young and/or reluctant readers. Last but not least, Gahan Wilson's illustrations are whimsically zombirific.

Over all, Brains for Lunch is a great resource for teachers for introducing haiku to middle schoolers. Not that those dry haikus in the textbook are entirely unreadable, but with something like Brains, students are more likely to hang onto the idea of haiku and maybe even write some snarky lines of their own.

FINAL RATING:

4/5 AWESOME SAUCES

MARTI FUERST (Rapid City, SD) is a BS graduate of Indiana State University's English Teaching program currently working on her MLIS at San Jose State University. Fuerst spends her days answering reference questions and her nights writing, knitting, and making faces at her dog. You can find her online on her blog or on Twitter under the moniker zealofzebra.