TABLE OF CONTENTS

XVII:3  October, 2002

Collected Tanka of AKITSU EI translated by Leza Lowitz and Miyuki Aoyama. Online for your immediate pleasure Just click on the title to see what you think of this book. 

The New Haiku, edited by John Barlow & Martin Lucas. Snapshot Press, PO Box 132, Crosby, Liverpool, L23 8XS, United Kingdom. ISBN: 1-903543-03-7. Perfect bound, 8.5 x5.5, 224 pages, Preface by John Barlow, Introduction by Martin Lucas, An Introduction to the Origins, Mechanics and Aesthetics of English-language Haiku by John Barlow, Resources, Authors’ Biographies, and Index of First Lines. £9.95 US$15.00.

Canoa Cheia – The Full Canoe by Rosa Clement. Edited by Jerry Jenkins. Helionaut Press, Louisville, Kentucky: 2002. Saddle-stapled, 8.5 x 5.5 inches, 36 pages, US$7.95. Contact Rosa S. Clement, Rua Pe. Antonio Vieira 126, 69.011 Manaus, AM, Brazil / Brasil.

Eucalypts and Iris Streams: Poems by Amelia Fielden, translated by Saeko Ogi. Charwood, Australia, Ginninderra Press: 2002. ISBN: 1-74027130 0. Perfect bound, 8.5 x 5.5 inches, 120 pages, English – Japanese. Contact  for more information. M.A.Fielden,10 Delasala Drive,Macquarie Hills,N.S.W.2285 Australia,for US$10,including airmail postage.

The Tree It Was by Sandra Fuhringer. King’s Road Press, 148 King’s Road, Pointe Claire, Quebec, Canada, H9R 4H4. Saddle-stapled, 16 pages, 8.5 x 5.5, US$2.00 ppd.

How Fast the Ground Moves by D. Claire Gallagher. Saki Press, Normal, IL: 2001. The Virgil Hutton Haiku Memorial Award Chapbook Contest Winner 2001 – 2002. Saddle-stapled, 5.5 x 4.25 inches, 20 pages, $5.00 ppd. Contact D. Claire Gallagher. 

Wolf Walk by R. Gray. Philadelphia, Pa, Infinity Publishing.com:2002. Perfect bound, 8.5 x 5.5, unnumbered pages, $9.95. ISBN: 0-7414-1182-2. Contact or call toll-free (877) BUY BOOK.

Blush of Winter Moon by Patricia J. Machmiller. Jacaranda Press, San Jose, CA, 2001. Perfect bound, 8.5 x 9 inches, 100 pages, sumi-e by Mary Hill, translations into Japanese by Kiyoko Tokutomi. $16.00 plus $2.50 for mailing in the US and Canada. It can be ordered from amazon.com or jacarand.com.

just enough light: Haiku and Tanka by June Moreau. Koyama Press, 84750 St. Martin de Castillon, France: 2002. Hand-tied, 16 pages, 10 x 13 inches, handmade paper. US$15.00 plus $6.00 air postage.

Sun Leaves by Predrag Pešič. Published under the auspecis of the haiku magazine Lotos in Smederevo, Serbija, Yugoslavia. Perfect bound, 8.5 x 5.5 inches, 56 pages, bilingual Slovenian and English. Contact Predrag Pesic, Prote Mateje 86/1, 11300 Smederevo, Serbija,

Candy in the Rain by Edin Saračevič. Haiku Balkan, Kranj, Slovenija: 2001. Perfect bound, 8.5 x 5.5, 76 pages, tri-lingual, US$10.00 ppd. Contact Edin Janeza Puharja 6, 4000 Kranj, Slovenia.

Discovering English Ghazal and Uncovering English Ghazal: Journeys into Poetic Forms, Volumes I and II of Series I by Erin A. Thomas. Saddle-stapled, 8.5 x 5.5 inches 34 pages in each. Contact: Erin A. Thomas , 657 Leslie Street, Ukiah, CA 95482.

Like the question of what came first – the chicken or the egg? one cannot separate the tanka poetry of Akitsu Ei from her involvement in the feminist movement. Not only have her words reflected her ideas and philosophy, as they do for any writer, but she seems to consciously augment her political stand with the surprising grace of poetry. Still, if one only knows her by her tanka, one would probably only think one was reading the work of a one intelligent woman with the courage to question what she has been told about the place of a woman in society and in relationships with men.

In a country which in ancient times was called Queensland, because it was ruled by women, but which has stayed patriarchal in spite of so much progress in other areas of society, it is good news that Akitsu Ei's tanka has not only won several prestigious poetry prizes in Japan, it is also valued as a reflection of her engaged efforts for the rights of women. She has helped her sisters take a huge step and her fellow countrymen have applauded her efforts.

Having her feministic tanka translated by two outstanding poets adds an additional gloss to her shining efforts to become a powerful statement of the place of women in tanka poetry. Leza Lowitz and Miyuki Aoyama have worked together to critical acclaim for translation before in the two-part poetry series of contemporary Japanese women’s poetry culminating in A Long Rainy Season by Stone Bridge Press.

From the Introduction by Hatsue Kawamura: "Akitsu Ei ironically criticized the modern matrimonial system, which brings such inequality to women. She is the first to write tanka by using colloquial terms for sexual words which have been thought, until now, to be unsuitable to this form of poetry. By excluding emotional and poetical beauty from her tanka, she demands that we think about the questions; what is a woman?"

Through the centuries it has been the women of Japan who have made the leaps of innovation in tanka poetry. Akitsu Ei joins this esteemed group as she brings the honesty of her up-to-the-moment feelings into today’s language. Her astonishing work places the poetry form into a fast forward so the reader can see today where the genre can go. No longer mired in outmoded concepts of constrained poetry, these tanka rock!

With over 300 haiku from 100 writers, The New Haiku attempts to show, in a very classy fashion, that haiku has finally arrived in England. Not only are excellent haiku being written by the English authors, the editors also recognized the good haiku of other writers in former English colonies – Australia, USA and Canada.

The haiku are arranged alphabetically by authors’ last names with each author given one to five pages with one to three haiku per page. As always, John Barlow exhibits his excellent and modern sense of graphics by placing a wide gray field on the outside edge in which the author’s name is printed in large darker gray letters. In black, the properly sized haiku are easy on the eye with just enough space for the imagination to catch fire.

The haiku were picked from those in various British haiku journals that appeared in a two year period, with the exclusion of verses in sequences and haibun. Not only did the editors consider their opinion of the worth of a haiku’s excellence, they also took into consideration how many haiku a certain author published. Thus, those who published more had a greater chance of being included in the anthology and also were then represented by more works.

Because of these parameters, a large number of well-known and currently acknowledged experienced authors were excluded in the book. In their place is a greater number of relatively unknown poets making their early attempts with the form. As positive as this is for the fledging haiku scene in Great Britain, the beautifully-made book could have less importance for new or accomplished haiku writers elsewhere. This does not say that the book does not contain a goodly portion of excellent haiku; it does. Among the one hundred names, over one-third of them would be instantly recognized by a Lynx reader. Knowing how much hard work and money goes into such an impressive anthology, here are two haiku from the editors, who are to be complimented on for not including more of their work than they afforded space to the others.

funeral morning –
saturday’s confetti
blowing around the hearse

John Barlow

early spring
in the city square
a loosening of ties

Martin Lucus

In the hope that this book will serve as a resource for writers new to the form of haiku, John Barlow has appended an introductory essay on the origins, mechanics and aesthetics of English-language haiku, along with a bibliography. I loved the final paragraph in Barlow’s preface" "We have come a long way. We have reached a new beginning and its seeds are already scattering in the wind." This relates to the photo on the cover by Garry Gay of a milkweed pod exploding with fuzzy seeds. Due to the composition, the picture seems to have two dark engaging eyes staring into the face of the reader, daring one to get acquainted with The New Haiku.

This is the book I have been waiting for. Finally the English poetry barriers have been blasted into smithereens by this anthology. Under the concept of short poems representing the world as it is, without theories or philosophies, just the is-ness of things, as put forth in Zen thinking, the editor, Manu Bazzano has successfully combined all genres of poetry without borders. Though a large portion of the poems is haiku from contemporary writers whose names you will recognize (a virtual who’s who of haiku), along with a goodly number of translations of Japanese masters. There are even several translations of Japanese tanka, (but no contemporary English tanka). But what is truly surprising that here is an editor willing to combine to this mix, the short poems of the Western literary scene from Wendell Berry, William Blake, Emily Brontë, René Char, Emily Dickinson, Friedrich Holderlin, Federico Garcia Lorca, Amy Lowell to Jack Kerouac, Joni Mitchell, mixed in Basho and Issa and less recognized Japanese names – well, you get the idea.

Suddenly someone has the courage to combine into one book the best of both the East and the West in a commonplace juxtaposition. If you needed only one reason to buy this book, it would be for the astounding opportunity to enjoy the abundant fruits of both worlds. Just about the time the reader is lulled by one style of thinking and writing, the editor makes a cunning sidewise step and opens up another window of delight and appreciation with a new viewpoint on life. It is enjoyable to see how some Western poets, in parts of their poems, were already investigating the sensibilities of Oriental poetry before it arrived en masse.

As one could say about any anthology of poetry, this book may be best taken in small visits. The book is laid out in the typical Japanese method of starting with spring poems and proceeding through the seasons to winter. Thus, if inclined to want a poem appropriate for the current season, it is easy to flip to the page to grab a poem or two at random. However, with careful reading, one finds each season is actually a finely constructed series, beginning with comments by the editor. Again and again I was charmed by the improbable mix of the various genres – each which had its own appeal and purpose in the hands of such professional poets.

Zen Poems is listed as a Poetry/Gift book and as such, it again sets new higher standards for the market. The small, square size fits so comfortably in one’s hand. The thickness of the book, due to high quality papers and many pages, feels as if you will have enough poetry for a long, long time – an endless treasury of word-riches. The graphics are modern without being overbearing or unusable.

A deep bow goes to the illustrator, André Sollier who has completely mastered the sumi-e style of painting. Time and time again I was sure I was seeing a portion of an ancient Oriental painting. The graphics allow the reader to enjoy special parts of his artwork by enlarging and repeating certain motifs on various pages. The print, in soft grays, or white on a gray page is totally correct for creating an atmosphere of gentle calm. Each time I pick up the book I am surprised again what peace and goodness it radiates.

The book is already in its second printing and is being translated into French. MQ Publications also has two other anthologies with a similar vein in the works.

Rosa Clements, Jerry Jenkins and I have only met on the Internet. It was surely in 1996, on CompuServe’s seminars in poetry where we first explored together the mysteries of haiku and tanka in a flurry of e-mails. Only with the arrival of her book, The Full Canoe, did I learn that Rosa has studied literature at the Paulista University and has two cookbooks out on ethnic Brazilian cooking in addition to having several of her poems in anthologies. The Full Canoe, reflecting native-born Rosa and her husband from Connecticut, is bilingual Portuguese and English with both versions next to each other so the reader gets a feeling for both languages. Rosa Clements’s haiku look, sound and work as do the best in any English haiku magazine She presents her work without punctuation and no caps so it looks as modern as it is.

Rosa Clements has been active in teaching and furthering an interest in haiku in Portuguese with her Web site.

picnique
os futos da laranjeira
refletidos no prato

picnic
the orange tree’s fruits
reflected in the plate

Eucalypts and Iris Streams: Poems by Amelia Fielden, translated by Saeko Ogi. Charwood, Australia, Ginninderra Press: 2002. ISBN: 1-74027130 0. Perfect bound, 8.5 x 5.5 inches, 120 pages, English – Japanese. Contact for more information. M.A.Fielden,10 Delasala Drive,Macquarie Hills,N.S.W.2285 Australia,for US$10,including airmail postage.

If you participated in last year’s Tanka Splendor 2001 Award the name of Amelia Fielden will bring to mind the tanka which garnered the most votes:

from Europe
your daytime calling
my deep night,
our voices making love
along the sea bed

Or maybe you remember that it was Amelia Fielden who translated Hatsue Kawamura’s tanka collection On Tsukuba Peak that was  reviewed in Lynx. Now readers of English and Japanese have a book full of her tanka, tanka series, haiku and free verse. Saeko Ogi’s kanji translations appear on the left-hand page, with the English facing it so it is easy to read either language.

Amelia Fielden, though born in Sydney, Australia, and living much of her life in Camberra, has an uncanny association with Japan. Not only did she receive a Bachelor of Arts in Asian Studies, she has formed deep relationships with the people of Japan through her many visits there. Thus, her tanka and haiku exhibit strong ties to Japanese styles of these forms along with numerous references to things Japanese.

smoke-swirled birds
keening in the twilight
from winter trees
thoughts winging away to
warm in Nara gardens

The single tanka are treated as little poems, each with its own title. The tanka sequences are engaging and easy to comprehend with their snapshot narrative style. For the readers who find many tanka or haiku difficult to read, one after another, Eucalypts and Iris Stream offers them in a mix of genres that work because they are all joined by the strong twine of poetry.

The Tree It Was by Sandra Fuhringer. King’s Road Press, 148 King’s Road, Pointe Claire, Quebec, Canada, H9R 4H4. Saddle-stapled, 16 pages, 8.5 x 5.5, US$2.00 ppd.

The Tree It Was is the fifteenth book in Marco Fraticelli’s Hexagram Series based on the ideographs of the I Ching. For Sandra Furinger, the hexagram "The Source or The Well", which represents the deep, inexhaustible, divinely centered source of nourishment and meaning for humanity" seems an apt title illustration for a book of haiku. This, though, is more than just another chapbook. Between the lines, and the wide spaces haiku ask from pages, a triumphal story unfolds. Beginning in pain and hospitals, the glimpses in Furinger’s life, open out, deepen and affirm renewal.

biopsy
a few red petals
the wind tore off

The booklet ends with the title haiku, that though dark, is radiant with enlightenment.

charcoal
drawing the tree
it was

How Fast the Ground Moves by D. Claire Gallagher. Saki Press, Normal, IL: 2001. The Virgil Hutton Haiku Memorial Award Chapbook Contest Winner 2001 – 2002. Saddle-stapled, 5.5 x 4.25 inches, 20 pages, $5.00 ppd. Contact D. Claire Gallagher. 

As it should be with a chapbook award winner, I found this haiku book filled with excellent haiku. With four to a small page the readers certainly get their money worth, not only in quantity but also in quality. Each of her haiku, though sounding simple, as they should, on the surface, has an undercurrent of truth, realization or even humor. Claire Gallagher’s use of words and their deeper or associative meanings is truly marvelous.

autumn breakers
the laughter of old friends
with new hips

If your haiku have been feeling a bit stale lately, get this book to see how it should be done.

outside the polls. . .
a child abandons one swing
to ride another

The shiny black, completely plain cover with the stark white Times Roman fonts does not prepare the reader for the wealth of colors, ideas and impressions in Robert Gray’s book Wolf Walk. Even the two words "wolf" and "walk" on the cover had a sinister feeling. Yet inside the book I found a fine and sensitive author sharing a range of moments in a calm, dignified voice. There are a couple haiku and tanka sequences, but the main ingredient is the wealth of haibun. Some are as short as a title, a paragraph, and a poem, but others continue over several pages.

It is in his haibun that Gray is trying something new. For the past decade, since English writers have taken an interest in the Japanese genre of combining prose with poetry, there has been a search for a way of writing the prose that corresponds with the poetry in a new way. Instead of linking the two parts of the haibun with ideas, emotions or subject matter, a few people are trying to find either a writing style or method that is different than normal prose.

In a few of the haibun, such as the brilliant piece, "The Bye-Bye Man" Robert Gray takes the step to eliminate all the punctuation from his prose, just as many are now doing with their haiku and tanka. What an idea! How the reading eye is slowed down by the mind saying, "Now wait a minute. Does he mean this or that?" Here is a sample of the words on one page:

cooly goes his way and it turns out our man
led tours of the city in several languages for
many years and says he’s an old friend of le
Président and somehow I don’t doubt it God
knows huh and now like a perfect gentleman
takes his leave and when he’s gone we look
at each other grinning and dig there is
nothing to say man about the great contained
sad joy in the old man’s eyes looking off
like so many who have graced our lives if
we know it or not or remember so like Bye-
Bye

Blush of Winter Moon by Patricia J. Machmiller. Jacaranda Press, San Jose, CA, 2001. Perfect bound, 8.5 x 9 inches, 100 pages, sumi-e by Mary Hill, translations into Japanese by Kiyoko Tokutomi. $16.00 plus $2.50 for mailing in the US and Canada. It can be ordered from amazon.com or jacarand.com.

Of all the books lying on the desk for review for this issue, Blush of Winter Moon is easily the most beautiful. With its soft mauve cover, readable but very artistic fonts on quality paper that softly glows between the well-set poems and Machmiller’s expert use of Mary Hill’s simple, but expert sumi-e artwork, this book radiates quality and care. The addition of Kiyoko Tokutomi’s translations set into kanji calligraphy adds to the strong Oriental feel of the book.

Patricia Machmiller is one of the last of a vanishing breed – those who still write haiku in five, seven, five. Often she can make her rule work for her:

. . . and now the cat comes
in moonlight his shadow
darker than himself

And even when she extends the verse to fill up the syllable count, one wants to forgive her for the excessive punctuation.

winter rains – late;
I crack the patio door
to listen, listen . . .

Yet one cannot argue with her ability to observe with the fastidiously correct haiku awareness that is missing in the work of so many new to the scene. Even Machmiller’s written poems have the patrician dignity, authority and mounted grace that her voice carries when she reads.

wave on wave – purple –
purple on blue – a rippling –
dark sea – winter sea –

If there is any haiku and tanka writer who deserves to have her work given the honor of a book, June Moreau is the one above all others. Over many years she has published in such prestigious venues as the Christian Science Monitor across the board to the tiniest woman’s literary magazines, and her name is well-known to LYNX readers. And yet, as far as I know, this is her first book. Giselle Maya, a friend of many years, has lent her good taste (she is an artist), her talents (she has done six other books), and her knowledge of haiku and tanka (Giselle also writes both and is a practiced collaborative writer with Moreau) to pick the very best poems for this collection, just enough light. Again, this is one of Maya’s outsized books that will stand out on your bookshelves so June Moreau’s poems are never far from you.

I want to give
it to you
wrapped in tiny light
from one star –
the cricket’s song

This is a good example of Moreau’s gentle, down-to-earth feeling with a marvelous touch of whimsy and fantasy that makes her poems like those of no one else. Totally at home in worlds most people can only visit through her poetry, June Moreau knows well the wind that speaks, the animal that is a part of her, the life of the simple-living rustic. The book ends with a bold, wide-nibbed pen in a hand-written autobiography that reads:

don’t ask me
to write about myself.
My life keeps changing
from moment to moment,
even if I stay
in the same place.
I don’t have the kind
of writing utensils,
only the ink
of pokeberries and a stem
from a clump of sedge.

Even if we all cannot live such a life, the poems of June Moreau remind us that someone has or someone does know such an existence. Her haiku are as flawless as her practiced imagination.

inside the wolf’s den
how ancient it sounds –
the ice melting . . .

Predrag Pešič has won numerous haiku prizes for excellence in Japan and in his own country as well as having been published in haiku magazines in Japan, USA, Holland, Belgium, Canada, Australia, Romania and India. The haiku in Sun Leaves are arranged in seven sequences on the subjects of the sun, flowers, butterflies, animals, trees, sky and a path.

Rotten stumps.
One part of a mountain
is spreading towards the sky.

We are just getting used to bilingual books of haiku and now we have one in Slovenian, Bosnian and English. One cannot help but be touched at how haiku is pulling together strange bedfellows. Edin Saračevič’s Candy in the Rain presents one haiku to a page in the three languages in large, easy to read print.

Edin Saračevič was born in Ljubljana in 1964 and is now a professor of philosophy at the Gymnasium at Ljubljana. He regularly publishes his haiku in haiku magazines in Yugoslavia and the USA. His "candy in the rain" haiku can be found online.

This is a very interesting book – one Shiki fans should make sure they obtain at any price. It came out of the collaborative work of sixteen people – the volunteers being trained to guide English-speaking tourists through the Shiku Museum at Matsuyama. As part of their preparation, the group began to translate Shiki’s haiku and out of the over 23,600 haiku Shiki left, they have picked 124. Each haiku has the kanji and romaji version along with very valuable notes on either how Shiki came to write the haiku, his age at the time, the season word, or explaining some element in it.

Among the illustrations are three actual photos of Shiki which were new to me, and three of Shiki’s sumi-e works. In addition, is ink drawing that shows a meeting at Shiki’s home with the names written in of each of the persons. It is so good when a museum opens up a few treasure chests and lets the rest of us have a new peek at hidden materials.

The translations are very well done, without caps and only a minimum of dashes as punctuation. David Burleigh went over their work, as well as others so there are none of the common errors that often mar institutional translations.

I am still not a fan of Shiki’s poetry but I do enjoy gathering information about him as a person because he was pivotal in Japanese literature at the turn of the last century. Picked at random from page 59 is this haiku:

young bamboo –
having my hair cut
on a chair in the garden

As with haiku, a book of ghazals still cannot be published without considerable effort given to definitions and other educational material on the form. However, in this case, Erin Thomas delights in this task and does an excellent job of making this form from the Middle East understandable.

However, it is in his poems that he gives the reader, for the first time in my experience of reading English ghazals, evidence that all the demanding aspects of the ghazal can be combined to make an excellent poem. His power of words is so vast that he makes it seem easy to create and then maintain the repeat and the varying rhyme schemes. The reader can become so fascinated with his gyrations of thoughts and words to fulfill this demanding aspect of ghazal writing that there were times I was tempted to first scan the poem for the endings of the second lines to see how he did it. Again and again his virtuosity invited pure astonishment. For those who have never experience a true English ghazal, please read and note how this ghazal from Discovering English Ghazal works:

These Aged Pines
(the remaining old growth redwoods)

Amid lush fern carpet stand perpending pillars;
Into broad canopy rise impending pillars.

Shady gloom in quiet calm hangs perpetual
Neath enshrouding shelter of attending pillars.

Ringlets firm encircle hearts of antiquity,
Deeply shielded within great suspending pillars.

More than stately; more than magnificently made,
High up into heavens reach transcending pillars.

Among elder giants Zahhar walks astonished,
His heart held uplifted by extending pillars.

The booklets are divided into sections, with each one opening with prose comments by Thomas which provide insight either into the poems or his life and serve to offer the reader a break from the intensity of the poems. Volume I offers: Reason, Expressions, Trees, Women, Kismet. The poems in volume II are sectioned by Affliction, Condition, Passing and Realizations. Thomas has set for himself the goal of writing one hundred ghazals, which he as nearly accomplished, so the readers are assured they will have many more of his outstanding ghazals for study and enjoyment.

Windbirds, by Edward Baranosky. 
Reviewed by Sue Chenette.

Edward Baranosky has chosen, as an epigraph for his chapbook, Windbirds, a haiku by the 8th century painter and poet Buson: "afar, shorebirds are flying./ near, water ripples/ washing a hoe." It’s in this coastal zone, where land, wind, and water meet and merge, that Baranosky centers exploration of the themes named in his forward: lament, regeneration, and transmutation.

In this place of flux we find "a broken shark’s jaw" but also, "whistling through breakers--/ flights of sandpipers." We feel "the salted humidity of haunted westerlies/ As they caress the insomnia of late-night drifters/ Fingering amulets of memory," but also "warm winds/ Stalking October or March or early May,/ Lifting the clouds from horizons / Of bitter seasons." Lament, regeneration, and transmutation are never far from each other; they intermingle, as do wind, land, and water at the shore.

In tracing the subtle shifts in these physical and spiritual landscapes, Baranosky makes skillful use of a variety of forms. Just as the fixed features of a seascape--cliffs and headlands, the curve of the shore--become the "bones" of the scene, around which our eye organizes varied colors and details, so the forms Baranosky uses become the bones of his poems. (The table of contents indicates the form of each poem.)

The book contains seven Tanka Series, the tanka being a Japanese form of 5 lines, often with a turn after the third line. In the beautifully evocative series "Preludes," suggestions of lament and regeneration sit side by side. Baranosky sequences five tanka, alternating between the physical world and the speaker’s thought, and alluding in stanza four to T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland.

dark morning
the sound of migrating geese,
invisible.
blue jays squabble and ravens.
cardinals clink in the rain.

gulls swarm around
spars framing the hazy sun.
the sea whispers
beneath brief blasts of foghorns,
two lights float above the waves.

the moon disappears
as it climbs into the trees,
falling maple leaves drift.
blood-red rust flows from the wharf
staining the rising tide.

Baranosky has also included in his book a pantoum, a ghazal, a sijo, a haiku series, two villanelles, and eight glosa. Four of the glosa are the book’s title poems--Windbirds 1, 2, 3, and 4. A glosa, or glose, as described in Lewis Turco’s New Book of Forms is "a commentary upon something; in this case, upon quoted lines that appear as a headnote or epigraph at the beginning of the poem...The first line of the epigraph finishes stanza one, the second stanza two, and so on..." Baranosky has woven his "Windbirds," and also the poem "Solar Eclipse," around lines from T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets. These glosa are wonderful poems, in which Baranosky skillfully harmonizes his rhythms, images, and the music of his words to those of Eliot, giving us meaningful tropes on Eliot’s enduring lines. In "Solar Eclipse," he builds on Eliot’s depiction of midwinter sun as Pentecostal fire to create a moment when the natural order seems suspended--a moment of crisis when the speaker of the poem gives way to deep lament that is the beginning of regeneration. Here is the first stanza (where he rhymes "rune" and "moon" with Eliot’s "afternoon") and two lines of the second:

The ecliptic sunrise:
Rippled bands of shadow and light
Surge across forest embers,
Animating winged antediluvians
Carved into a broken rune.
Free-falling.
Nightmare trance.
Icarus spirals past the ancient
Dance of the sun and the moon.
A glare that is blindness in the early afternoon,

The corona ignites a darkness
Consuming the crescent sun,

Baranosky has used lines from Robert Frost in three other glosa. This form seems particularly apt in the book’s landscape of shiftings and interminglings, where the windbirds of the title are not only gulls and shorebirds, but also the exploding Hindenburg memorialized in "Dirigible." That Baranosky values life’s littoral zones--the beaches and tidal pools where life and idea are not fixed but constantly reforming--is clear in lines such as those which rail against sea dunes "locked and owned,/ Away from the small hands, toy shovels,/ And prying eyes...[barring] the sea from ideation/ In the eyes of conceptual beasts."

Like the haiku poet Buson, Baranosky is both poet and artist. Several fine drawings, as well as a photograph, mirror the moods of the poems. The black and white drawing of the exploding Hindenburg which appears on the cover, and also, enlarged and differently cropped, within the body of the book, is particularly strong.

This is a book to read and reread for its beauty of language and image, for its use of form, and for its supple explorations of grief and renewal. It is published by the author, and is available from him at 115 Parkside Drive, Toronto, Ontario M6R-2Y8, or at ebaranosky@hotmail.com.

Sue Chenette is a poet and classical pianist who lives in Toronto. Her chapbook The Time Between Us won the Canadian Poetry Association’s Shaunt Basmajian Award for 2001.

Note to readers: If you would like to review one of your favorite books, either old or new, please consider sending it to Lynx. We are happy to bring in-depth analysis of books that are greater than these brief reviews if your comments are submitted by e-mail.

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