TABLE OF CONTENTS

XIX:2 June, 2004

The Sound of One Thigh Clapping: Haiku for a Thinner You by Meredith Clair. Workman Publishing, New York: 2004. Hardcover with glossy dustjacket, 4 x 6 inches, 124 pages, ISBN:0-7611-3142-6, US$10.95 $15.95 in Canada.

On Cat Time by William Hart. Timberline Press: 2004. Flat-spined, 5 x 5 inches, illustrations by Jayasri Majumdar, 32 pages, ISBN:0-944049-31-5, $7.50 + $2.00 S&H. Order from Timberline Press, Clarence Wolfshohl, 6281 Red Bud, Fulton, MO 65251.

Insects - Mushi and other Small Creature: Three Haiku Sequences by June Moreau, Jane Reichhold and Giselle Maya. Koyama Press, Saint Martin de Castillon, Provence, France:2004. Hand-tied hand-made paper covers, 6 x 10 inches, 48 pages, illustrated by Dao Yan Hu with calligraphy by Yasuo Mizui, $18.00. E-mail Giselle Maya  or Jane.

Sunlight Comes and Goes: haiku by Francine Porad. Vandina Press, Bellevue Washington:2004. Saddle-stapled, 8.5 x 5.5 inches, 24 pages, color illustrations by Francine Porad, Introduction by John Stevenson, ISBN: 1-88738-24-4, $15.00. Order from the author at 10392 NE 12^th Street, I-307, Bellevue, WA 98004.

Kokoro: Haiku and Senyru by Geert Verbeke. Empty Sky, Kortrijk, Flanders:2004. Tradepaper back, 8.5 x 5.5 inches, 68 pages, ISBN: 90-805634-63, $25. Email Geert Verbeke for your best method of payment.

Breasts of Snow Fumiko Nakajo: Her tanka and her life written by Hatsue Kawamura and Jane Reichhold. The Japan Times, Tokyo, Japan:2004. Trade paperback, 8.5 x 5.5, 152 pages, ISBN:4-7890-1161-5, $20.00, ¥2000E. In the States copies can be ordered from Jane Reichhold.
If you wish to read another review of Breasts of Snow you can read the one published in The Japan Times written by Donald Richie online.

BOOK REVIEW
John Bird

At first I thought the oxymoron a zen firecracker an immodest title but having read the book I believe Graham Nunn largely delivers on the expectations he set up. Within the cracker-coloured covers of a pocket-sized (167mm x 110mm) book, he fires off 100 haiku. While not all are rockets, I didn’t t find a single fizzer.

The haiku are honoured by, and they merit, the generous white space around them. Near-random spacing on the page, and variation of haiku line alignments, help suppress any carry-over of mood and image between haiku there is little need for mind-clearing breaks when reading. I found the illustrations distracting, a missed opportunity for more white space.

How satisfying that Graham writes with an Australian voice and includes many local subjects: flying fox, sheep, ti-tree, rosella, jacaranda, curlew, and whip bird:

      high in the canopy
           shrill crack
       of the whip bird

For a poet who lives in sub-tropical Brisbane, he is finely attuned to the seasons:

       leaves all raked
           autumn moon
hangs in the branches

A common theme is reflections, such as in this delightful prize-winning poem:

      distant thunder
      each stroke of the oar
      stirs the clouds

Juxtaposed haiku elements are usually from the same sense but Graham gets great value from mixing them:

                           silently
   across the picnic blanket -
            butterfly's shadow

Do not expect philosophy or major disjunctions in this book. Graham writes in the mainstream of haiku in English. However, within that, he s prepared to take risks, to skid on corners:

      at the back of my throat
      autumn deepens

and one suspects he was encouraged in such adventures by writing associates in paper wasp, the Brisbane haiku group.  On the other hand, Graham is mercifully free of any need to demonstrate his cleverness. I easily pass over:    under lemon peel moon / fish and chips / on the beach for the pleasure of the simple:

      standing alone
      my shadow
      taller than me

He has the maturity and confidence to not ask too much of his poems:

      first light
      on the horizon
      a line of fishing boats

In terms of craft he is somewhat on the minimalist side. He uses punctuation  sparingly.  He opens many haiku with a preposition or present participle. Such openings produce run-on haiku which do not have the strong cut, or turn, that many readers will expect. However he still achieves effective juxtaposition:

       behind the stone nude
          three poplar trees
            almost leafless

A Zen Firecracker is a class production. How fortunate we are that Graham Nunn has made his work available.

On this warm sunny May day, no books of tanka lie on my desk waiting to be reviewed. Thus, I get to give my attention to the haiku books, which in other times would only get mentions.

Thanks to the strong arts support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council, a beautiful book like this can be given to the haiku of Marianne Bluger. And she and her work deserve such professional treatment. The cover, with its subtle colors and picture of an excellent abstract oil painting , "Ottawa Experimental Farm" by Michael Adam Kim, announces that this is a book of poetry just as good as any other in mainstream poetry. And to my mind, even better.

It is a joy to take this marvelously made book in hand and to slowly turn the pages where the haiku flow gracefully among the generous spaces. The book is divided into sections titled "Sweetgrass," "Flight," "Goldenrod and Asters," "Snowblind," "Gusts," "Annapolis," and "Summer Quilt for A Winter Night," and ending with "Dunegrass." These breaks in the poems not only signal a change in the inspiration, but move the reader into other areas of interest creating perfect haiku sequences. To be unfair to the sequences, here are the first and last haiku of the book.

in a pause
when the wind dies
the coo of a dove

on the beach
back to the wind — I watch it
sweep my tracks

Bluger has received several awards for her haiku and tanka both in Japan and the United States. These include the Hoshito-Mori Prize and the Tanka Splendor Award. Marianne Bluger lives in Ottawa, Canada, with her husband of eleven years, Larry Neily. This is Bluger’s ninth book of poetry.

This is the kind of single-author book that makes haiku writers want to turn to despair and or commit some vile violence in the world of publishing. Finally a haiku book given first class treatment with fairly big name publisher, hardcover and dust jacket, surely a large print run, and what do they print? Rip-off haiku by someone who uses the form for jokes and three-liners not worthy of even being called beginner’s haiku.

Lose inches with lard. . .!
Fight fat with peanut butter. . .!
The alarm clock sounds.

And because this book will surely sell many copies, as gifts to dieters (aren’t we all?) the notion that this is the way to write haiku will proliferate like other misinformation and urban legends. In the meantime, "real haiku writers" will continue to staple and glue together by hand their beautiful little books of "true" haiku run off on the local copy machine and offered in small magazines. I could rail on for hours, and yet, I am a tiny bit thankful when anyone at any level can find joy and realization and even maybe wealth (if Workman Publishing has its way) in this tiny form that has formed such an important part of our lives. I am recommending, not that you buy this book, but keep it in mind as a goal for the treatment your own haiku deserve.

What an honor to haiku, that William Hart, though known for his novels (Not Fade Away is being used as a college text) and his scripts for the documentary films made by his wife, Jayasri Majumdar, continues to write and publish haiku. This is the fourth book the couple has collaborated on with Timberline Press. William writes the haiku, this time about their adventures with a neighbor’s cat, and Jayasri does the very catty illustrations, as lean and significant as haiga. This is a beautifully made book that is ideal for gift-giving to your friends who have also been adopted by a cat.

Clarence Wolfshohn, heart and soul of Timberline Press, continues to print and make books in the "old way" – with hand-set type on a 6 x 10 C & P Pilot Press. He then binds them by hand with flat-spines. Should you be a person not interested in cats, haiku or art, you would still buy the book as an excellent example of an old-time craft that is slowly fading from the scene. Only the popularity of haiku could keep it alive, and the gentle people with haiku in their veins.

One could say that William Hart has haiku as his daily meditation practice because his haiku are so gentle, so down-to-earth, so accepting of what is.

from a nap
into our potted fern
flops neighbor cat

In an increasingly long line of publications from Koyama Press, Giselle Maya lavishes her loving attention to another of these over-sized books. This one, Insects – Mushi (Japanese for insect) And Other Small Creatures, she brings three haiku sequences she has arranged from the haiku of June Moreau, Jane Reichhold and herself.

June Moreau, who has never had enough of her poems put into book form, although she seems to be published everywhere in magazines far beyond the smaller haiku scene, is certainly deserving of having a collection of her many delightful haiku about insects available for the readers. I feel she is one of the best haiku (and tanka) writers in English, so I can never get too many of her works. See how good she is with:

quiet schoolyard
a scribble of ants
in the stone’s shadow

dewdrops
turned into tiny stars —
fireflies

Giselle Maya tends to write longer haiku than the other two participants in this book which forms a nice change of pace. She, too, is an excellent writer of haiku and tanka so it is no surprise to find among the work in her sequence:

in the center
of a splendid sunflower
a ladybug just sitting

rhubarb leaf
chalice for summer rain
and orange butterflies

Well, what do you expect me to say about my own haiku? Just that I am thankful to have been included this book with such great writers by my side.

a broken crayon
the path of a butterfly
drawn by a child

braiding in her hair
last night’s dream
a tiny moth

As always, Giselle invites wonderful artists to contribute to her books. This time it is Dao Yan Hu, a watercolorist living in Toronto, Canada, who adds the beautifully drawn, accurate, sumi-e ink works. The warm yellow pages in perfectly matching hand-made paper covers gives a sense of the delight of summer and the time of insects and other small creatures celebrated in this book.

Sunlight Comes and Goes: haiku by Francine Porad. Vandina Press, Bellevue Washington:2004. Saddle-stapled, 8.5 x 5.5 inches, 24 pages, color illustrations by Francine Porad, Introduction by John Stevenson, ISBN: 1-88738-24-4, $15.00. Order from the author at 10392 NE 12^th Street, I-307, Bellevue, WA 98004.

This book, Francine’s first since the death of her husband Bernard, is dedicated to her family and friends in his memory. The title is a clue to her acceptance and many of the poems refer to her life with him and without him. From the sequence "Beyond Measurable Systems"

trying to get past
the trying years
to the good memories

e-mail message
received by the new widow:
Take care. Have fun.

blank calendar
not only a new year
a new life

Francine Porad, former President of the Haiku Society of America and Editor of Brussels Sprout, continues to amaze and astound with her prolific works in haiku, tanka and renga. This beautifully made book, the twenty-third in her series, is probably her most poignant.

As Karma Tenzing Wangchuk writes on the back cover: "Francine Porad’s poems are plainly autobiographical, but never self-absorbed; often melancholy but not without a nearby touch of the poet’s more characteristic sense of humor; darker in mood than usual for the author, but accompanied by brief, and brilliant, breakthroughs of sky and sun, as well as appearances by the flowers she is well known for writing about."

In the Introduction, John Stevenson, also a former President of the Haiku Society of America, calls Francine "a generous and wise teacher, leader, and mentor" and relates she sent him his first rejection slip that was "frank, specific and surprisingly nurturing."

Ever faithful to her inner feelings, the abstract watercolors in this book have, superimposed over her gay, bright colors, slashes of black that add a new maturity to her art. You can see more on the web  or on Suhni’s Mother-Tongued. 

With the news full of examples of atrocities, corruption, and killing, one needs, even more, to take in hand a book like Kokoro (Japanese for "heart"), go off to a quiet place and realize that there are good people and beautiful things on this earth if one just seeks them. Here is Geert Verbeke, a completely gentle soul who writes volumes of haiku (in both Dutch and English in this book), plays the Himalayan singing bowls (he has made ten CDs of his compositions), has written four books on the bowls (one published by Pilgrims’ Bookhouse in Nepal). Why can’t the sonorous voices of newscaster teams discuss his work instead of yet another suicide bomber? His haiku have all the elements the news needs.

There is sadness:

grootvader sterft               grandpa is dying
de dichte sneeuwval            the dense snowfall
bedekt zijn klompen                covers his clogs

There is sex:

opa lonkt nog steeds           grandpa still looks
met wellustige blikken         with lascivious glances
oma zoent zinj foto       gran kisses his photo

There is madness:

voor mijn grootvader             for my grandfather
is de maan zihn dochter        the moon is his daughter
elke boom een zoon             each tree a son

And all of that on only one page of Kokoro. Each page has eight to eleven haiku so the reader gets a generous sampling of Verbeke’s many haiku. Though they are not divided into sections, the flow does move gently from one subject to another, from one experience into another – almost as one would watch a film.

Unhindered by the current emphasis in that corner of the world (Netherlands / Flanders) for strict 5 – 7 – 5 syllable count, Verbeke’s haiku have a natural rhythm and flow and perhaps you can see how exactly he translates the Dutch into English. Of all the Dutch haiku I’ve read, none sound as succinct and sweetly filled with life as his.

As far as I know this is the first time someone has issued a book of haiku and a matching CD. To sit and listen to the singing bowls is a great way to read the over 500 haiku in Geert Verbeke’s book. The artwork throughout the book is simple but very effective in black, white and red. Here is someone doing everything to the very best of his ability to share the majesty and beauty in his life. All you have to do is to order the book and CD and there you have it!

And I almost forgot!

Fumiko Nakajo is considered to be the third in the three most famous female poets of Japan in the last century, right up there with Akiko Yosano and Machi Tawara. Though she is almost unknown outside of Japan, (aside from the 20 tanka translated by Makoto Ueda in his book Modern Japanese Tanka) her popularity at the time of her death in August, 1952,  was such that her one and only book of tanka rocketed to the best-seller lists of the country and her publisher then assembled a volume from the poems she had culled for her book and this too sold extremely well. Of the two novels were written of her life, Chibusa Yo Eien Nare by Akira Wakatsuki and Fuyu No Hanabi by the well-known author Jun-ichi Watanbe, Chibusa Yo Eien Nare (Let Breasts be Eternal) was made into a film of the same name.

Fame came to Nakajo only in the last days as she lay dying of breast cancer in a hospital in Sapporo, on the island of Hokkaido, at the age of 32. Her last words to her mother were, "I don’t want to die." And in so many ways she hasn’t as her poetry lives and finds an ever wider audience of men and woman who so greatly admire her spirit and her faith in love as expressed in her tanka.

For this book, Hatsue Kawamura and Jane Reichhold (their fourth collaboration of translation of tanka) continued their method of presenting the tanka within a matrix of prose as used in A String of Flowers, Untied: Love Poems from The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu. In Breasts of Snow, the reader is shown the events of Fumiko Nakajo’s life with the tanka inserted at the proper chronological intervals. Along with the biographical information of this mother of four children, are descriptions of the beautiful island of Hokkaido, customs of the country as well as explanations of how Fumiko used tanka and its techniques. A sample from the book with one of Nakajo’s most famous poems:

"As one year ends and the new one begins, with fireworks in the night sky, Fumiko, in the arms of her lover, thinks of her recent operation to have a breast removed and her joy in her coming marriage.

overhead a sound
fireworks in the night sky
shoot up and open
everywhere I
can be taken

The first line oto takaku, (oto - sound, and takaku – high in the sky), has a double meaning; the sound of fireworks is very loud and that the fireworks open high up in the sky. This poem contains the only sexual scene in her tanka collection. The verb ubawarete – "taken" can mean a woman's body is "taken" by a man's so that she is taken in passion or as "possessed" as in almost crazy. In addition, the loss of her breast means that a part of her body has been taken away from her which adds greatly to ephemeral aspect of fireworks. The fireworks symbolize her fleeting, transient and ephemeral happiness, since she now knows she is fated to die soon."

The book, beautifully made by The Japan Times Book Division also brings the kanji versions of the poems. A timeline of Nakajo’s life in the back of the book allows a quick overview. An essay by Jane Reichhold explains the place of Fumiko Nakajo as a poet in Japan.

If you wish to read another review of Breasts of Snow you can read the one published in The Japan Times written by Donald Richie online.

Who We Are

The next deadline is 
September 1, 2004

Read book reviews in previous issues of Lynx

XVIII-3 Book Reviews
XVIII-2 Book Reviews
XVIII-1 Book Reviews
XVII:3 Book Reviews
XVII:2 Book Reviews
XVII:1 Book Reviews
XVI:3 Book Reviews
XV:2 Book Reviews
XV:3 Book Reviews
XVI:1 Book Reviews
XVI:2 Book Reviews
XVIII:3 Book Reviews
XIX:1 Book Reviews

Read the previous issues of Lynx:

XV:2 June, 2000
XV:3 October, 2000
XVI:1 February, 2001
XVI:2 June, 2001
XVI:3 October, 2001
XVII:1 February, 2002
XVII:2 June, 2002
XVII:3 October, 2002
XVIII:1 February, 2003
XVIII:2 June, 2003
XVIII:3, October, 2003
 XIX:1, February, 2004