Tanka writers are familiar with the name of Hatsue Kawamura as the editor of The Tanka Journal in Tokyo, Japan. And the readers of Lynx know of her translations of the tanka of Fumi Saito Akiko Baba and Kyoko Inaba, but her own works, in four books, have until now, remained hidden from us. Amelia Fielden, who has won many prizes for her own tanka and translation works, has now given us a book of translation of Hatsue Kawamura’s own tanka – On Tsukuba Peak.

From her home in Ibaraki Prefecture, where Hatsue has lived since she was born in 1931, she can see Tsukuba Mountain in the distance – a center of her life’s compass. Here she married and became the mother of two sons who are now grown, taught literature and tanka in several universities until her retirement this past March.

The book, by presenting the poems in series much in the order in which they were written, becomes a diary of a five-year period: 1994 – 1999. This leads the reader through the times Hatsue’s husband, Yasuhiro, spent a sabbatical year in USA, his return, their life together and then his bout with cancer. With five poems on each left-hand page, and the kanji on the right, readers of both languages receive a generous offering of her life and her poetry.

These examples, taken from the series "Riding the Globe" show how she makes connections between the tanka as well as within the poems in typical tanka techniques.

at night,
while a fax comes
billowing out
the moon shines
in the same old way

the yamaboshi flowers
have all dropped, and
the spirit of cancer
shrouds my husband
in dense gloom

I keep sticking with
my English translations
as the seasons change –
beyond the green-leafed forest
a rainbow rises

Not only does the above demonstrate Hatsue’s style of writing, it also shows her indomitable spirit – a quality I value greatly in her. Perhaps these tanka mean more to me since they were written during this time that we were working together – faxing our translations back and forth over the Pacific Ocean.

I have only highest praise for the work of Amelia Fielden and am very grateful for her opening our eyes to the marvels of Hatsue Kawamura’s work. Both of these women understand the importance of keeping, as much as possible, the same word order in English as in the Japanese originals so that even in translations, the poem still function as tanka. In addition, the poems are presented as fragments, which they are in Japanese, and not as sentences as is too often the case by uninformed. The tanka in On Tsukuba Peak, even in translation, are worthy of acting as models for our own English tanka.

One often reads a collection of poetry for glimpses within a person’s life to see how it is lived and how one’s fate is viewed. Thus, reading On Tsukuba Peak offers an intimate glimpse into the days of a very special tanka writer as well as showing English readers how to write tanka.

Harue Aoki is a writer and Japanese language teacher who has also lived in Germany. Thus, the two hundred tanka in the book have been selected from her years as a teen-ager herself to being the mother of two teen-aged sons. These poems should offer minute glimpses into a woman’s life, as the title indicates, and yet I, as reader, got the feeling that I was being shown a side of herself that she presented only to impress the reader with a supposed ideal of poetry and not her real life or feelings. It seemed she had the idea that a cultured woman, as she is – she teaches the Sougetsu School of flower arranging, who attends concerts and art exhibits must always be lamenting her loneliness, her unhappiness with her husband and sons, and illustrating how unfulfilled she is. A little of these feelings every woman experiences at least once a month, but to have the largest majority of the poems concerned with whether to get her hair cut or leave it long, the application of a bright red lipstick because she is no longer young, and the search for unhappiness even on a sunny New Year’s Day irritated this reader greatly.

Harue Aoki is well versed in tanka writing and in addition, her language skills are such that she has given her readers very credible translations. For her many writing talents we can be very grateful. Each page contains the kanji in a long line on the outside margin with the five-line romaji version at the bottom of the page. Thus, it is very easy for English readers to move from poem to poem – surely one of her goals. A sample of her tanka:

Hearing the sound
of wind rustling
in the bamboo grove
I’m unable to calm
my restless mind

The New Year sunlight
shines brightly and amply
on the surface of the sea
and fills my hands, too
Yet I’m so full of suffering

At the beach
the New Year’s light
is peaceful
But I’m tired of
my simple and honest nature

Yes, there are times, and even persons whose emotional equipment fail to bear up to the load of their lives, and I am glad to give them a chance to express themselves about the burden they bear. I hate to see people suffer and I like to think of myself as a sympathetic listener who would do anything to help if I could. But when the unhappiness about life is projected as an admirable poetic stance (it has been done!) it rings as untrue. There could be other persons who share Harue Aoki’s perspectives and would welcome her expression of feelings they also have. If so, then they may find her voice more welcomed than I did. I will admit that her tanka are excellently constructed and valuable as examples of the art of tanka writing in both languages.

The tanka in Tongue are written in 31 English syllables and broken into the five lines. Due to the rigid counting, the line endings often have nothing to do with the syntax or phrasing, but everything to do with the unyielding dominance of a meaningless rule. Thus, one ends up with such lines as:

Ejects itself from
moist black loam into spring air
green as life, dusted
with yellow yolk’s sun chopped fine
feathery fronds still in prayer.

The poems, each facing a realistic watercolor by Carolyn M. Schneider, are like a trip by the grocer’s produce bins – it’s all about vegetables. As great as it is to see people being inspired to write tanka, and taking their inspiration from things at hand, it is discouraging to see the results come out like one long run-on sentence with no understanding of the parts of a tanka or how one is constructed. I would hate to be hard on a charmingly handmade book but these little poems are not tanka.

John Barlow has produced his third issue of Tangled Hair and somehow the craft and beauty of this finely-made bound volume is more like a book and has little to do with a magazine. Everything this man sets out to do is done with ultimate skill and taste. Even the advertising for his press and his haiku books and magazines is a cut above the ordinary. No wonder everyone is flocking to him to have their book done by Snapshots Press. Do visit his website to see if you are as impressed as I am.

After rereading this, the third collection of tanka from well-known writers in both England and North America which he has chosen for this release, I see how far tanka writing in English has come in the last ten years. Again and again, as the pages fanned through the air, I heard myself saying "Yes.", "Yes!" to his impeccable taste and the rich array of English tanka. On facing pages in the very beginning are these poems:

clear night, owl night
through the tissue of darkness
an exchange
their grip of honed surfaces
my sinew and bone

Cherie Hunter Day

spring rain
the scent of these ink-black streets
washed clean
is there time enough ever
to start over once again

Marjorie Buettner

In the past couple of centuries in Japan there was a method of firing tea bowls called raku which was also the honored name of the family who discovered and maintained the process. Basically, the trick was to pull a glowing red-hot pot out of the kiln and plunge it into either cold water or straw and grasses. After the Second World War this process was re-discovered by North Americans – the Englishman Bernard Leach first tried it and then it was forgotten as being too exotic and expensive as many pieces shattered under the stress. Typical American, they were unable to simply follow patterns, methods and instructions, so that in the hands of various potters massive experimentation began. Later, when some Americans went to Japan to demonstrate their "raku" to the Raku family of Japan, the shocked men in kimono thought the process should have a new name because so many changes had been made. Instead of some smoky streaks and foggy blotches, the Americans had discovered iridescent colors, glowing fire patterns and previously unobtainable glosses. Something like this is happening in the art of tanka also. Subscribing to John Barlow’s series of mini-anthologies Tangled Hair is one the best ways I know to keep an eye on what is happening with tanka in English.

The best and most succinct explanation of this book comes from the beginning of the Introduction written by Carlos Colón: "This collection of linked one-line haiku by Jean Jorgensen and Marlene Mountain begins in July, 1993 and continues through August, 2001. . . these 16 poems are more of a haiku diary than the formalized renga some writers compose which moves, sometimes ploddingly, through the seasons in a structured, often straitjacketed way. Jean and Marlene alternate short and long links and double their links at stanzas 6 /7, 18 / 19 and 30 / 31; otherwise, they free themselves to write about anything they wish."

This pair had started writing together in 1993, but it was not until they both had email in January, 2001, that their collaboration speeded up to the velocity of their two minds. Marlene Mountain, with her demands that all the renga she participates in be done in her style and format – one-liners in all lower case letters on current events and personal commentary, and her righteous anger that out-leaps almost any linkage, puts quite a burden on her partners to retain their individuality and personal outlook. Jean Jorgensen, with her wry humor and her excellent ability to link responses holds the poems together with her work. With their backtalk and commentary to the images on the TV screens, these renga present licitly-split machine gun mouths in today’s world. The renga world is richer for the work of Jean Jorgensen with Marlene Mountain.

For a sample of the work in the book, mother nature’s heat / a desert snake – the title of their first renga, here are the last six links from "just the odd flake" done during April 8 – 28. 2001. Jean’s lines are in roman font and Marlene’s in italic.

just enough money to pay for the parcel

despite all his efforts . . . grass brown and dry

all day in a haiku workshop my numb bum

Editor Manu Bazzano has put together a charming mix of poets writing in short forms. Here you’ll find poems by Emily Dickinson next to Basho’s haiku along with the best from contemporary Japanese and English authors. Without designating that this is a haiku and that is a tanka and here is short free verse, the reader is offered an interesting combination of forms – all of which are still poetry.

The sections are divided in the Japanese style – according to the seasons beginning traditionally with spring. The sumi-e artwork of old masters continues the oriental feel of the book in spite of containing the poems of René Char, e.e. cummings, Friedrich Hölderlin, Denise Levertov, Garcia Lorca and William Shakespeare. It is refreshing to see English language poetry being reorganized and presented in a new and exciting manner.

While most editors of such anthologies in North America would have shied away from adding to such illustrious names, those of authors from the current haiku scene, Manu Bazzano trusted his own good taste enough to not only make a who’s who of current writers, but also to pick excellent work from each of them. The tanka in zen poems are all translations from the Japanese, with no examples of English language tanka – as if they did not exist.

When the east wind blows,
Send me your perfume,
Blossoms of the plum:
Though your lord be absent.
Forget not the spring

- Sugawara Michizane
trs. G. Bownas – A. Thwaite

By keeping the poetry uppermost in his mind, and following the seasons, the works flow from one to another with just enough dissonance to make the reading lively while avoiding monotony. The various translators of the Japanese are also taken from old and new collections so the step between English poetry to translation has leaps of various magnitudes and styles. Under the guise of putting together a collection of zen poetry, the editor has successfully crossed the artificial boundaries between Occidental and Oriental literature. In case you have an irrational fear of religious poetry, here is a sample of the haiku:

Bed too short
but long enough
for making love

This is a great gift book for yourself or that friend who wonders why you write haiku. It is not often in these paperback days that one finds haiku being given such lavish graphic treatments as in this beautifully made book. Here is one book which will become well-thumbed as it enjoys a long shelf-life.

Tsuru, the crane of Japan, a signature of nobility, long life and family devotion is a most-apt title for this book by a woman who was adopted when she was two months old, taken to Matsuyama (the native place of Shiki) to be raised as the pampered daughter of a physician. Given in marriage to a student doctor her own education was interrupted by her pregnancy with her first daughter. While she gave birth to two more daughters and a son, she stubbornly continued her studies of English by reading cookbooks and books on child care. As her children grew older she began to write free verse, but when she discovered a used book of the haiku of Rinka Ôno (1904 – 1982) she became convinced that this was the only form for her. Over the years - she is now an active 87 - her poems and her place as a teacher - she is head of the group Hoshi (Star) have made her a star. As an advocate for the understanding and acceptance of international haiku, she also brings to the genre the sometimes-lost concept that love should be the basis of all of one’s work. Oh, her haiku read as if cool and calm and collected, but deeper down is the vitality and the reality of her true feelings.

Planting a pearl seed
into a helpless she-oyster
early autumn chill

As woman she has felt very keenly and often the discrimination of her patriarchal society and yet she has never allowed herself to become strident, hostile or aggressive. The love she brings in her haiku she also gives openly to the writers and readers of haiku as she continues to advise and instruct new generations of haiku writers.

The translations of the haiku of Yoshiko Yoshino in Tsuru is doubly welcomed. First of all, English readers are given a selection of excellent haiku – each one polished and honed to its highest brilliance. And secondly it is a chance for us to get to know more about the country of her birth. Deeply indebted to the culture, Yoshino’s poems are filled with references to the things Japanese. It is not easy to translate such poems which depend so much on aspects which are foreign to English readers. Yet in these translations there is never a false step, never the kind of curve that can come when poetry goes from one language to another. The many footnotes act not only as education of a far-off culture but enlarge the scope of the poems as well. Much credit goes to the team of Lee Gurga and Emiko Miyashita for a difficult job well-done.

But there is a third reason for gratitude for the haiku of Yoshiko Yoshino. These haiku are the words of a woman who lives her beliefs, who backs up her ideals with action and who is tireless in the avocation of haiku as a vehicle for international peace and understanding. In her talk "Haiku Mind" given in April 2000, she said:

"Haiku is like a nuclear explosion. When the three elements of haiku – time (eternity symbolized in a moment), space (earth and the universe), and love (eternal life symbolized by the cycle of the seasons) – are properly combined, they produce an explosive power like that of a nuclear fusion in the mind of every reader. Since the essence of haiku is love of nature – of the whole of creation – I sincerely hope this explosion of love will occur in the minds of millions of people and will be passed on and one until cover the whole earth and enables the earth to fulfill its natural life span."

Hooray for Yoshiko Yoshino – may many follow in her footsteps!