Su Zi's Review of LIKE ZEROS, LIKE PEARLS by Lola Haskins

 

The Benefits of Bookfairs 

Local communities hold a variety of events, and perusal of these listings will often yield bookfairs, either as independent events or in conjunction with craft fairs, or other forms of small market. Of course, the literate person ought to attend such events: it does take quite the effort for these solo artists, or small collectives to write the book, have it in handheld form, and then transport to the event, where they hopefully sit all day, waiting for you.  The genres offered at book fairs will vary; author displays often mirrors their genre-- authors of horror might have a display of black cloth, or go as far as to costume; certainly, children’s authors might have a pirate or a puppet; and local history authors can sometimes offer a fascination of research-intensive nonfiction. 

And then, sometimes, there’s a literary author: present because that’s home turf and they are sitting at a table with a stack of books as well. At the 2026 Sunshine State Book Festival, among the half a dozen tables for poetry, there was Lola Haskins. Unquestionably a citizen of the literary community in poetry, Lola was there with many books, including the 2025 Charlotte Lit Press release Like Zeros, Like Pearls, a trade-sized, perfect bound, full-length collection—a volume that includes two pages of acknowledgments and a bibliography.

That the book has “A Modest Bibliography” (71) belies the arc of this work, which is divided into three sections, occasionally adorned with a discrete illustration, and which sometimes cites these sources in the poems of the text. That the poems employ research might remind an astute reader of biographical poems, and these poems are biographical; however, the lives portrayed here are more than marginalized, to many readers these lives are invisible. Haskins addresses the invisibility of these lives in a four-paragraph prose preface that states,” [...] the only time I noticed insects was when they called attention to themselves by being beautifully marked or by attacking me “and then says “suddenly realized that ignoring whole worlds wasn’t okay”. With an epigram from the 14^th Dalai Lama about teaching children to “love the insects”, and much cultural information about the key-to-life species to our life on earth being bees, Haskins dedicated volume causes us to consider immediately what sort of worlds we notice, want to read about, and how that consideration can be meditations in poetry.

The work’s title is the last line of the poem, “Poem Ending with an Image from ‘The Mustard seed Garden Manual of Painting (1782)’ ” and begins with, “Only after the twelve instar are/ the ears of her legs ready to listen” (28). The assonant repetition of “instar are” has both a slant repetition in the poem with the stanzas ending ‘her/her/herself” but echoes with ancestral recognition of Ishar—she of the eight-pointed star, the planet Venus, the Mesopotamian goddess (in a general definition) of love, beauty, sex and war.  That this, and many of the poems in the text, concern themselves with insect reproduction rituals gives the poems here both beauty and a sense of the macabre.

Meditations on the lives of insects throughout time and culture are considered in these poems. In “Cricket, Vietnam”, a single stanza poem of two sentences, we cross both the globe and cultures:

Snowy tree crickets

synchronize their songs

until leaf, branch and core

are one repeating

 tremble. When Yen

was asked

to define moonlight,

in pearl and dim blue

she painted this.

                         (56)

While the poem’s opening lines include four consonant repetitions of  S, the repetition through the poem is on the assonant E of “tree/leaf/repeat” that also includes “crickets/ tremble” and the rhyme of “when Yen” that shifts consideration from sound to color and the meditation of listening to that of painting.

Ekphrastic considerations are fully at play in this work: Haskins begins at personal observation, delves into research, and considers the juxtaposition of lives in each poem. The author’s biography includes collaboration with other artists in music, and it ought to be no surprise thus that the auditory world is a strong element in this work. Haskins has long been a literary light, and the author website has prompt delivery.  As we consider our beleaguered planet, our extreme storms and images of homes washed away, Haskins asks us to consider the other lives, small and without much notice by our gargantuan doings, that are nonetheless cohabitants of our world as well.

Su Zi is a writer, poet and essayist who produces a handmade chapbook series called Red Mare. She has been a contributor to GAS from back when it was called Gypsy Art Show, more than a decade ago. Check out her author page on Amazon.