Book Arts:
Say It Simply:
Vincent Tripi’s Chrysalis
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I have long admired the meticulous attention that Ed Rayher of Swamp Press in Northfield, Massachusetts lavishes on his limited editions of letterpress books of poetry. His paper choices, crisp typefaces, arrangement on the page, use of color (and often illustration) are hallmarks of his dedicated craftsmanship. He is a master printer and designer, as well as a fine poet himself. He also publishes poets who have something to say and know how to say it. Case in point: Chrysalis by Vincent Tripi, edited by Jeannie Martin and John Martone, a unique “book” consisting of 65 haiku printed on 3x5 Superfine cardstock and encased in a cork enclosure with a butterfly woodcut by Hyde Meissner. |
Tripi was one of the most accomplished haiku poets of our time. According to Martin and Martone when Tripi died in August, 2020, he left behind several thousand haiku poems, typed on 3x5 cards. The choice, therefore, to print this selection on cardstock is not only fitting but a way to honor the poet and his method of composition.
I first came across Tripi’s poems in the mid-1990s when my friend Raffael de Gruttola, then president of the Haiku Society of America, gave me a copy of Haiku Moment: An Anthology of Contemporary North American Haiku. Both de Gruttola and Tripi had poems included; and both poets stood out as remarkable masters of this very difficult form. The poems in Chrysalis, written over about a decade, reveal that Tripi only got better, in part because he freed himself, unlike many English-language practitioners, from trying to make his quintessentially American versions sound like precious mistranslations from Japanese.
He largely abandoned the traditional three-line 5-7-5 syllable count yet adhered to the traditional ethos of saying much and suggesting even more in just a few words. He largely followed the emphasis on nature as a metaphoric entry into a more philosophical or spiritual awakening. In his introduction to his earlier Swamp Press collection to what none of us knows, Tripi commented on how he saw the form functioning: “What is it about haiku that makes it both a question and an answer? It answers us each & every time we begin to question ourselves . . . to question life. It's a small poem. It's a small door. It's a small key and a small lock.” Indeed, Tripi’s poems often imply both questions and answers. Here, arranged like water cascading over a dam, is one of his gems with a definitive answer to an impossible question:
Roar
of
the
falls
what
I
don’t
know
i
know
Or, as he also wrote in his earlier introduction: “One seeks for resolution as the beetle seeks the water. Is the water. The search for answers is as futile as the search for haiku. The search ends with the searcher. It ends with the current.”
Mystery, for Tripi, should remain. Should be,
A cloud where millions
of clouds have been before
gone
“All i can say,” wrote Tripi, “is that poems are my special way of questioning the reader, of challenging their consciousness, of reaching out for help to find the bottom.”
He method of challenging his readers is truly artful, a skill rare among American haiku poets: Complexity in the guise of simplicity. He was master at using simple words to show us the innermost core of emotions, apprehensions, insights, and awe.
Swamp Press has plans to publish additional collections, which is very good news. It will help fulfill his wish:
Me too
the wish to be remembered
autumn colours
— Chris Sawyer-Lauçanno
I first came across Tripi’s poems in the mid-1990s when my friend Raffael de Gruttola, then president of the Haiku Society of America, gave me a copy of Haiku Moment: An Anthology of Contemporary North American Haiku. Both de Gruttola and Tripi had poems included; and both poets stood out as remarkable masters of this very difficult form. The poems in Chrysalis, written over about a decade, reveal that Tripi only got better, in part because he freed himself, unlike many English-language practitioners, from trying to make his quintessentially American versions sound like precious mistranslations from Japanese.
He largely abandoned the traditional three-line 5-7-5 syllable count yet adhered to the traditional ethos of saying much and suggesting even more in just a few words. He largely followed the emphasis on nature as a metaphoric entry into a more philosophical or spiritual awakening. In his introduction to his earlier Swamp Press collection to what none of us knows, Tripi commented on how he saw the form functioning: “What is it about haiku that makes it both a question and an answer? It answers us each & every time we begin to question ourselves . . . to question life. It's a small poem. It's a small door. It's a small key and a small lock.” Indeed, Tripi’s poems often imply both questions and answers. Here, arranged like water cascading over a dam, is one of his gems with a definitive answer to an impossible question:
Roar
of
the
falls
what
I
don’t
know
i
know
Or, as he also wrote in his earlier introduction: “One seeks for resolution as the beetle seeks the water. Is the water. The search for answers is as futile as the search for haiku. The search ends with the searcher. It ends with the current.”
Mystery, for Tripi, should remain. Should be,
A cloud where millions
of clouds have been before
gone
“All i can say,” wrote Tripi, “is that poems are my special way of questioning the reader, of challenging their consciousness, of reaching out for help to find the bottom.”
He method of challenging his readers is truly artful, a skill rare among American haiku poets: Complexity in the guise of simplicity. He was master at using simple words to show us the innermost core of emotions, apprehensions, insights, and awe.
Swamp Press has plans to publish additional collections, which is very good news. It will help fulfill his wish:
Me too
the wish to be remembered
autumn colours
— Chris Sawyer-Lauçanno
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