Thistledown Press, 2006
Read by Jakub Stachurski
In Obon: The Festival of the Dead, Terry Watada evokes the eponymous Japanese-Buddhist holiday on an aural and physical plane. The lines are radically enjambed and the convention of the dropped line is often utilized. Punctuation is used sparsely, and this absence of commas and periods opens the poems to the white space of the page as well as silence:
I awoke.
the air
was
heavy
wet
and still -paralyzed
insects crouched
in mid-cry
Without clunky punctuation, end stops become muted, and all of these conventions work to create long, slender verse evocative of quiet contemplation. The sound and shape of the verse and Watada’s mining of Japanese-Buddhist rites is a potent combination, evoking the artifice as well as the underlying emotions of the festival.
While the holiday is a celebration for the departed, the somber mood beneath the dancing and beating of taiko drums is present in Watada’s syntax and diction. In the first poem, Watada creates his own version of the origins for the festival. Later poems render the various traditions of the festival—the lighting of paper lanterns, the music of flutes and drums, the offerings of rice and oranges—with a careful attention to detail. Watada uses the proper Japanese names of instruments, foods, and other specifics. A glossary is provided at the end of the book, and the collection of words is small enough as not to obstruct a seamless reading of the poems.
Between the ceremonial poems, Watada includes a series of his own elegies to his departed family and friends. This creates a sense of conflict within the collection, as the stylized form of verse used to denote the festival is also used to write about heroin junkies, oppressed Asian-Canadians, and 9/11. The syntax and diction do not always translate into scenes of urban angst or the isolation of a Tim Hortons. However, the poems concentrating on the festival are skillfully rendered and a welcome departure in style and scope within Canadian poetics.
