HAL: Heuristic Algorithmic Library
American Chapbooks: Reconfiguring Literary and Artistic Prestige
Taofeek Ayeyemi
DUST & RUST: A REVIEW
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Click here to download the free PDF chapbook DUST & RUST by Taofeek Ayeyemi.
HAIBUN, HAIKU, AND ETHICAL MEMORY IN DUST AND RUST BY TAOFEEK AYEYEMI
In Dust and Rust, Taofeek “Aswagaawy” Ayeyemi offers a debut haibun collection that is both formally attentive and emotionally expansive. The book participates in the haibun tradition as articulated by classical practice and modern English-language theory: concise prose written “in the spirit of haiku,” interspersed with haiku that deepen rather than summarize the prose narrative. Ayeyemi’s work demonstrates a sustained understanding of this reciprocal relationship, where prose narrates lived experience and haiku deliver moments of perceptual or ethical crystallization.
According to AHA Poetry and other foundational haiku resources, haiku are characterized less by rigid syllabic adherence than by juxtaposition, a structural “cut,” sensory immediacy, and a moment of insight. In effective haibun, the haiku should not repeat the prose but offer a turn—an image or perception that reframes what precedes it. Dust and Rust consistently fulfills this criterion, using haiku as ethical lenses through which memory, family, faith, and love are briefly, piercingly re-seen.
FAMILY RITUAL AND THE ETHICS OF ATTENTION: “THE RARITY OF LOVE”
“The Rarity of Love” exemplifies Ayeyemi’s sensitivity to everyday ritual. The prose describes the author’s parents eating separately yet waiting for one another, a quiet choreography of patience and care. The scene is rendered without sentimentality, focusing on gesture, timing, and the children’s watchful hunger. The concluding haiku—
starry night –
the bright of the lampshade
dimmed by a moth
—introduces a classic haiku juxtaposition: light and diminishment, illumination and interruption. The moth’s intrusion does not negate the light; it alters it. In haiku terms, this functions as a “cut” that invites reflection rather than explanation. Read alongside the prose, the image suggests love not as abundance but as a practiced restraint, a sharing that is partially obscured yet enduring. The haiku does not explain the parents’ devotion; it refracts it.
CHILDHOOD, HUNGER, AND IMAGINATIVE SURVIVAL: “DAYS OF DUST AND RUST”
The title haibun, “Days of Dust and Rust,” offers one of the collection’s most sustained meditations on childhood scarcity. The prose accumulates images of hunger, play, prayer, and improvisation—children “solving hunger with sleep” and learning to live lightly on unforgiving ground. The language is dense yet rhythmic, shaped by enumeration and repetition that echo oral storytelling traditions.
The concluding haiku—
harmattan over . . .
one by one, plants
take colour
—marks a seasonal and emotional shift. In classical haiku practice, seasonal reference (kigo) grounds perception in cyclical time rather than linear progress. Here, the harmattan’s end signals not triumph but gradual restoration. The phrase “one by one” resists spectacle, emphasizing patience and incremental change. The haiku’s restraint sharpens the prose’s abundance, reminding the reader that survival is often quiet and collective rather than dramatic.
MORAL INSTRUCTION WITHOUT DIDACTICISM: “ENCOMIUM”
In “Encomium,” Ayeyemi presents the father as a moral interlocutor, one who teaches compassion through comparative suffering. The prose recounts scenes in a hospital ward and a moment of parental intervention that transforms cruelty into remorse. Importantly, the father does not moralize abstractly; he redirects attention.
The haiku that follows—
tending the cuts
from grass blades . . .
harmattan deepens
—refuses narrative closure. The image of minor wounds contrasts with the deepening season, suggesting that care is ongoing and vulnerability persists. This aligns with critical definitions of haibun as a “narrative of arriving at a revelation,” while the haiku delivers the revelation itself. The poem’s ethical force lies in understatement, a hallmark of both haiku and effective haibun prose.
MEMORY, LOSS, AND TEMPORAL FOLDING: “DEAD BEFORE PHOTOGRAPHY”
“Dead Before Photography” addresses ancestral absence and the construction of memory through description. The prose meditates on grandparents known only through parental narration, faces assembled from words. The haiku—
weekend cleaning
father
in grandpa’s coat
—collapses generations into a single visual moment. The image exemplifies haiku’s capacity to hold two temporal planes in tension, producing insight through juxtaposition rather than explanation. The coat becomes a material bridge between absence and presence, inheritance and embodiment.
LOVE, CHOICE, AND CONTEMPORARY HAIBUN
Across the latter sections of Dust and Rust, Ayeyemi extends the haibun form beyond its traditional travelogue associations into romantic and domestic territory, a move well supported in modern haibun practice. Pieces such as “Wife Material” and “The Venom and the Serum” explore intimacy, fear, and self-scrutiny, often allowing the haiku to undercut or complicate the prose’s declarations. This dynamic reflects the AHA Poetry emphasis on haiku as moments of insight rather than commentary.
CONCLUSION
Dust and Rust succeeds because it understands haibun not as a hybrid convenience but as a disciplined conversation between modes. Ayeyemi’s prose is attentive, imagistic, and ethically grounded; his haiku are not ornamental but necessary, performing the crucial work of turning narrative into insight. In keeping with the best traditions of haiku and haibun, the collection trusts the reader to linger in the cut, to find meaning in what is shown rather than explained. The result is a book that honors memory without embalming it and transforms personal history into shared human recognition.
Click here to download the free PDF chapbook DUST & RUST by Taofeek Ayeyemi.
Image: I’m Sorry, Dave #14 (AI-assisted digital image) by O:JA&L staff creative. 2026. Public domain via Midjourney AI.
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BUTTONHOOK PRESS MASTERS SERIES
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