Annette Makino book

Frogpond - Briefly reviewed

Frogpond, Volume 45:1, Winter 2022. Haiku Society of America.

by Kristen Lindquist

Water and Stone: Ten Years of Art and Haiku by Annette Makino (Makino Studios, Arcata, CA: 2021). 124 pages, 8” x 10”. Matte cover, perfect softbound. ISBN 979-8519290142. $24.99 from www.makinostudios.com.

Award-winning poet and artist Annette Makino’s first full-length collection—Water and Stone: Ten Years of Art and Haiku—beautifully reproduces fifty of her haiga, painted with Japanese watercolors and sumi-e ink, in a larger format for maximal appreciation. The haiga, most of which previously appeared in her yearly calendars, are arranged by season. However, this book is so much more than a series of seasonal pictures with haiku. Fifteen reflective, memoir-style haibun are interspersed with the haiga, creating a cohesive personal narrative that pulls the book together thematically through the year. Each haibun’s concluding haiku is repeated in the succeeding haiga, an echo which further enhances the connections between these strong, well-crafted works. Makino’s artwork, which she says has been influenced by traditional Japanese woodblock prints and the Japanese folk art of etegami, or simple postcards, has tremendous appeal. While her paintings can often feel more illustrative of the haiku they are paired with, her simple and sincere style makes them shine. For example, she pairs a painting of ripe tomatoes on the vine with this haiku: heirloom tomato / finally comfortable / in my own skin. Not much left to the imagination, and yet, thanks to Makino’s skill as a haiku poet, as well as the preceding haibun about growing older, this feels just right. Paired with a painting of hers, a question / answered with a question / clucking hens seems obvious—but that curious hen’s priceless expression indicates that this haiga is really a form of ars poetica, allowing us to see, and hear, the inspiration for this masterful haiku. Her straightforward approach is refreshing, and not without its own kind of depth and resonance. Some favorites: (1) a painting of Japanese anemones paired with cowlick / some part of me / still wild; (2) an image of a swimming dog paired with rippling river forever arriving at now; and (3) two horses standing side-by-side in a field paired with our easy silence / every puddle / sky-deep. While this book is clearly meant to showcase the haiga, I don’t want to overlook the universal appeal of her haibun, which speak directly to the reader’s heart about such topics as parenthood, being an artist, time passing, beloved pets, family history, and the natural world around us. There is so much to love and appreciate in this book, which I would also highly recommend as the perfect gift for a haiku poet to share with non-haiku-poet family and friends. Hopefully, we won’t have to wait ten more years for Makino’s next collection, but in the meantime, I also recommend her calendar, available through her website! 

Modern Haiku - Reviews: Briefly Noted

Modern Haiku, Volume 53.1, Winter-Spring 2022.

by Michele Root-Bernstein

Water and Stone: Ten Years of Art and Haiku by Annette Makino (Arcata, Calif.: Makino Studios, 2021). 123 pages, 8” x 10”. Matte four-color cards covers; perfectbound. ISBN 979-8-519290-1-42. Price: $24.99 from online booksellers.

This first full-length collection presents fifty haiga and fifteen autobiographical haibun by a poet whom Stephen Addiss places “among the leaders of haiku painting.” Makino organizes her work seasonally, interspersing linked forms in such a way as to tell a story of who she is. The haibun offer peeks into her family life, her love of art, and various of her philosophical musings in an engaging, down-to-earth manner. Considering “the (very) long view” of all our daily strivings, she remarks, “in geological time, all this effort will amount to approximately zip.” What matters in the end, “is the energy we put out into the world as we do our work. Call it love.” Love, indeed, is what seems to inspire Makino’s haiga, visually rendered in Japanese watercolors and sumi ink in an unpretentious style that illustrates and interprets her charming haiku. This reader’s favorites include “fog-shrouded coast / we listen / to the view,” superimposed on a foggy scene; “lines of foam /  over and over the sea / writes its story,” juxtaposed to some seagulls at the tide line; and “cowlick / some part of me / still wild,” linked to a close-up of pink wildflowers.

Haiku Canada Review: ShoHyōRan - Image and haiku in three books

Haiku Canada Review: ShoHyōRan, HCSHR 4:26. December 30, 2021. (Excerpted)

by Maxianne Berger

. . .

Water and Stone: Ten Years of Art and Haiku, by Annette Makino. Arcata, CA: Makino Studios, 2021. 979-8519290142. 124 pages. 24.99$US. www.makinostudios.com

. . . 

Happily quite different is Annette Makino’s Water and Stone. The paintings that support her haiga are as lovely and lively as any that illustrate children’s books, although she writes for all ages, looking at inner and outer life, often simultaneously.

The book is organized traditionally, according to season. The painting of three raccoons (fall) carries this truth:

watchful eyes
the wilderness
inside us

Cows grazing (summer), riffing on the “other side of the fence” reminds us about

the grass on this side—
the gift of wanting
what you have

The haiga in this book are interspersed with haibun, often being “home” to the haiku within the accompanying image. Winter includes “In the balance,” where Makino speaks of a local raccoon they’ve named Delilah. “. . . I wonder what it means to be wild, especially when human activity reaches every corner of the planet, . . .” The haiku that follows this paragraph is picked up in the painting on the facing page:

fox tracks . . .
who was I before
I was tamed?

The images in Annette Makino’s collection are lovely, the prose is limpid, and the haiku seem effortlessly to verbalize how we are part of the world.

water and stone
how we shape
each other

. . .