Renga: 100 Poems by John Kinsella and Paul Kane (review)

While traversing the longtime friendship shared between the poets as well as the land they both inhabit, the experience I had while reading the coauthored book Renga: 100 Poems, by John Kinsella and Paul Kane is a truly unique one because of their willingness to try an innovative project with the traditional Japanese form of renga as the driving force. To continue a call-and-response between two people in the form of renga over the span of ten years is quite bold and also a challenge, considering that traditionally the poems are written in one sitting, usually during a gathering, by more than two people—essentially renga was a party game. Here, however, solitude seems to be at the center of most of these poems, in which the observation turns inward.

In the foreword, Kane describes the final product of their efforts as "both a single entity built by accretion, like limestone, and a virtual fossil record of the multiple procedures used to construct it" (vi). The work that follows this statement will leave the reader in agreement, as these metaphors link to the duration of time it took to write and compile the book while also linking to the organic transitions and progressions between the poems as well as the high attention to nature.

Paul Kane's poem "Renga 1" sets the tone of where we begin in beautiful, yet harsh, nature:

If a man lives throughMarch here he deserves to live the rest of the year.I haven't moved far downstate,still upstate, still the country.

The final two lines are an unexpected admission leaving the reader to ponder a contrary within the poet. Even though the harshness of winter in the country might kill someone who dares to live there, this poet still has not left the country and probably never will; the country takes on a supernatural power that is able to make people stay there despite the difficulty in doing so. By mirroring human and nature, nature becomes a means of describing human desires, needs, and impermanence in a concrete way.

Both Kane and Kinsella are concerned with the natural world and the well-being of the environment. Growth, in all matters of the word, comes with opposition and difficulty, but because of the resiliency found within nature, we persevere:

Ground is singedbut wild melon vinesburst out of the field.It is dry, desiccated,but wild melon vinesburst out of the field.Even hardy localswither in heat waves,but wild melon vines burst out of the field.When paddy melonsform their mild toxicity,I'll regret not havingventured into the sunto pull them by their roots.The sun is harshand makes melanomas,but wild melon vinesburst out of the field.The field is depthless,the field is our end,but wild melon vinesburst out of the fieldand live life to the full.

(Kinsella, "Renga 84")

This poem is composed of oppositions—the macabre reality of the pain that extreme heat inflicts and the inevitability of death juxtaposed with the growth of the melon. The melon vines take on great power in this portrayal. They are ancient, in that they come back every year, while also taking on infant imagery when they "burst out of the field." The sun, which harms humans, "even hardy locals," does not harm the melons yet makes them grow wilder. The melons have been there before anyone and will always be there, even after humans have met their end. By the end of the poem, readers are left feeling as if they should live life a bit more like wild melon vines.

In Kinsella's poem, the beautiful image of wild melon vines is handled with a playfulness that makes the weight of the poem more visible. This is not the only poem he approaches in this way. The lyric element of his poems...