TABLE OF CONTENTS

XVIII:1 February, 2003

Crouched Under the Cherry Blossoms by Akistu Ei, translated by Leza Lowitz and Miyuki Aoiyama. A publication of Hermitage West.  A folded broadsheet, 8.5 x 11" containing twenty of the pomes taken from the online book Collected Tanka of AKITSU EI. A serial publication, Hermitage West is produced by The New American Imagist, P.O. Box 124, South Pasadena, CA 91031-0124.

The Outer Coast by Edward Baranosky as EAB Pub. Saddle-stapled, 5.5 x 8.5, 40 pages, illustrated copiously by the author, with full color cover. Contact the author  for price and ordering information.

Fountains Play by Amelia Fielden & Times Passes by Yuko Kawano: An anthology of tanka poems in English and Japanese with translations by Saeko Ogi & Amelia Fielden. Perfect bound, 6" x 8", 140 pp., US$15.00. Order from M. A. Fielden, 10 Delasala Drive, Macquarie Hills NSW 2285, Australia.

The Effects of Light – Haiku by Jack Galmitz. An AHA Online Book.  that you can click on and read immediately.

a net of sunlight by Kirsty Karkow in Springbed Chapbook # 5 published by FootHills Publishing. Hand-tied spine, 5.5 x 8.5 , 24 pages, $6.00. Order from FootHills Publishing, P.O. Box 68, Kanona, NY 14856 or visit the website. 

Sacred Trees – Arbres Scrés – Heilige Bäume a tanka sequence by Giselle Maya and translated by Maryse Staiber. Hand-tied, 9.5" x 13", 52 pages, with black and white photographs by Sophia Gunther of the Luberon region of France, and Postscriptum by Jane Reichhold. Order from Giselle Maya, Koyama Press, 84750 Saint Martin de Castillon, France.

probably – ‘real’ renga sorta (one-line linked haiku) by Marlene Mountain & Francine Porad. Saddle-stapled, 5.5 x 8.5, 32 pages, illustrated by Francine Porad, $11.00 plus S&H of $1.50. Order from Vandina Press, 6944 SE 33^rd, Mercer Island, WA 98040-3324.

freed from words, Choral Music of Mark Winges, CD, published by the American Composer Forum, 332 Minesota St.E.-145, St. Paul, MN 55010. U.S.A. Order from: The San Francisco Chamber Singers, P.O.Box 15576, Ca 94115 for $15.

A String of Flowers, Untied . . . Love poems from The Tale of Genji translated by Jane Reichhold with Hatsue Kawamura.  Stone Bridge Press P.O. Box 8208, Berkeley, CA 94707.  Perfect bound, 6 x 8, 224 pp., 2003, $18.95. Available for 30% off on Amazon.com.

My California: 24 tanka sequences by David Rice. Hand-tied flat spine, 5.5 x 8.5, 32 pages, $8.00. Order from David Rice, 1470 Keoncrest Drive, Berkeley, CA 94702.

A Breath of Haiku by Helen J. Sherry. Perfect bound, 5.5 x 8.5, 98 pages, full color cover of a photograph by Ed Sherry, will ink illustrations by the author. Price: USA and Canada $12.00 ppd., elsewhere $14.00 ppd. ISBN: 0922273-02-2. Available from Chocho Books, 11929 Caminito Corriente, San Diego, CA 92128.

Kiyoko’s Sky – The Haiku of Kiyoko Tokutomi. Translated from the Japanese by Patricia J. Machmiller & Fay Aoyagi. Perfect bound, 8.5 x 5.5, 128 pages, ISBN: 1-929820-04-6, $16.00. Order from Brooks Books, 3720 N. Woodridge Dr., Decatur, IL 62526 or visit their web site.

Recovering English Ghazal by Erin Thomas. Saddle-stapled, 8.5 x 5.5, 36 pages. For price or ordering, contact the web site or write to Erin A. Thomas, Journeys Into Poetic Forms, 27441 Coyote Place, Willits, CA 95490.

Often, when I approach the task of writing these book reviews, I start by dreading to take on this job once more. How to find the right words to adequately describe each book and to find enough ways to say some thing or the same thing, over and over while making it sound new and fresh? And yet, this morning, like a day in April, I am overwhelmed by the variety, the richness, the vastness of the range of subjects, of emotions expressed, opinions and views into the hearts of the people brought to me by books. If anyone complains that poetry is dead, or tanka is an old-fashioned or worn-out form, that person is not reading enough books or listening close to these myriad voices. Maybe you cannot buy all the books suggested in these reviews, but do take on the task of picking at least one. Give some author a thrill by buying the book, reading it carefully several times and letting the author know what you think of the book with a letter or e-mail.

Book reviews can have several undercurrent agendas. Mostly I try to let the readers of Lynx know what the book is about, and give samples from the poems and information for purchasing the book. Occasionally some of my book reviews slip from praise and encouragement over into literary critique, just because I feel so strongly about certain facets of poetry, but I rarely allow myself to be as strong as my feelings truly are. This issue we have a book review written by Josh Gage that reviews the books by Erin Thomas that I wrote about the previous Lynx issue. Because I greatly admired Josh Gage’s writing and agreed with his views, his astute opinions repeat a review of these ghazal books at the end of the new reviews.

Also, we got the good news that Marlene Mountain’s haiku have been featured on a CD, "freed from words" made by the San Francisco Choir of music written by Mike Winges, so Werner has written a review of that.

And because I have a new book just out by Stone Bridge Press of Berkeley, Larry Kimmel was good enough, and quick enough, to write a review of A String of Flowers, Untied . . . for this issue of Lynx.

Michael McClintock, a long-time writer of haiku, has now expanded his interest into other poetry forms and has devised an inexpensive  method of distributing the works of a variety of authors to a wider audience. Borrowing the idea of the "Haiku Sheets" of the Haiku Society of Canada, McClintock, as editor, selects a series of poems from an author, sets them on both sides of one sheet of paper, which is then folded into three sections.

Crouched Under the Cherry Blossoms, puts into printed form this selection, on petal-pink paper,  from the AHA Online Books for those who wish to mail copies of Akitsu Ei's tanka or tuck them into another book or notebook. 

Other authors in this series are: John Palozzolo, Luis Cusuhtemoc Berriozabal, Robert Edwards, Leonard J. Cirino and Jeff Vande Zande. If you are interested in submitting work for this series you may e-mail Hermitage West or use the same address above as for ordering the broadsides.

The swish and smell of the sea seems to come along with the poems in Baranosky’s newest book, The Outer Coast. The energy in this compilation is higher than most with astonishing images of wild seas, lonely ships and special light effects in the black and white illustrations. The poems, too, have a special depth and vibration as he reaches ever deeper into that which drives man. Again he offers a variety of genres: tanka, ghazals, haiku, a pantoum, haibun, glosa, cinquain, and sedoka. His experiences in renga bring him to doing linked sedoka with Lisa O’Leary, Bonnie Duhamel, and April Severin as well as a linked glosa with Melisa Fauceglia. In the last issue of Lynx was a comprehensive review of Edward Baranosky’s work in Windbirds by Sue Chanette which you are encouraged to review. "Footnotes to Noah," "Preludes," and "Spindrift" have been also printed in previous issues of Lynx.

CINQUAIN MIRROR

refuge
secret café
fountain of voices fades
blending old tears and dust into
safe house

safe house
café secret
fountain of voices fades
blending dust and fears into
refuge

This is an unusual book as the reader basically gets two complete books in two languages between one set of light blue covers. The connective tissue is tanka and the work of Amelia Fielden, who is the author of Fountains Play, and the translator of Yuko Kawano’s book of Time Passes. In addition to having both the Japanese and English of Yuko Kawano’s book, Amelia Fielden’s book is translated into Japanese kanji by Saeko Ogi and Amelia Fielden. Another connection between these two authors is the similarity of their work due to their circumstance of being married women with now-adult children. Being slightly older, Amelia Fielden’s subject matter is wider with inclusions of memories of past lovers and youth, as well as honest feelings about her two husbands, and grandmotherly observations. Yuko Kawano, since this is her sixth book of tanka, narrows her material to tanka written in the one and a half years of 1989 to the summer of 1990 and therefore concentrates greatly on her feelings about her family. This is not to be taken as a drawback as Yuko Kawano, who has won some of the most prestigious poetry prizes in Japan since she was twenty-three years old, now the tanka editor for the Mainichi Daily Newspaper in Japan, is famous for her poems of family life. Both women have a view of life that comes from the darker corner with a large number of laments, wistful memories of being younger, of being more attractive and the reality of plain old depression.

A sample from Yuko Kawano’s tanka as translated by Amelia Fielden:

this gray person
who, in show motion,
is putting the lid
on a big pot -
she’s my mother

In spite of this sample, in some of Yuko Kawano’s work she uses the defining pivot of the tanka form in such poems as this one that opens Times Passes.

no longer
do I lean down
to talk to him -
children grow rapidly
wild rice at the water’s edge

Readers of Lynx and especially the Tanka Splendor Awards series will remember this tanka of Amelia’s that garnered the most points in the judging of the 2001 contest.

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

Forgive me if I say I find this the best tanka in the whole book. It is the only one that offers the depth of implied meanings and suggestive overtones that give tanka the richness that raises it above ordinary speech. It is easy to jot down momentary thoughts, which is a good thing to do, but occasionally the spirit leaps up and offers the author such a gem as this and one needs to offer thanks for the miracle.

This combo book offers so much for readers of both languages, it seems anyone interested in tanka should have a copy. With three or four poems to a page, faced with matching kanji, readers will find much here to enrich themselves. In the back is a comprehensive biography of Yuko Kawano to give English readers a better understanding and appreciation of the accomplishments of this amazing woman. It is important for us English authors to see what contemporary Japanese tanka writers are doing with the form. In addition one can also see how the form is being used by Amelia Fielden, a retired teacher of Japanese, French and English, who lives in Australia.

Born in the Bronx in 1951, this New Yorker brings the city to his haiku as he finds his inspiration in his daily life. For those believe you needed to live in the woods to write haiku, Jack Galmitz shows how being aware of nature in an urban environment can be equally enriching and productive. In this his first book of haiku, Galmitz, whose work has been widely published, shows a facet of the genre that is in a state of becoming an English poetry form.

a net of sunlight by Kirsty Karkow in Springbed Chapbook # 5 published by FootHills Publishing. Hand-tied spine, 5.5 x 8.5 , 24 pages, $6.00. Order from FootHills Publishing, P.O. Box 68, Kanona, NY 14856 or visit the website. 

Kirsty Karkow’s works have been published in an amazing number of paper and online publications – a testimonial to how hard this woman works on anything she turns her hand to do. In a net of sunlight she offers haiku, tanka and sijo simply as poetry without any instruction or definition of the forms which heralds a new phase in the process of valuing the work as poetry and not as samples of a particular form. Yet the pages are ordered by form with five haiku appearing on a page in the first section, then nine pages of tanka, with two to a page, and closing with two pages of sijo.

Kirsty Karkow has done her homework and understands the ins and outs of each of the genres so well that she is able to allow herself to use whatever best fits her needs. I was especially impressed with:

honeymoon
we wade into the current
of a great river

But I must admit I was most delighted with her selection of tanka. Any of them were worthy of quoting but somehow her expert use of the pivot in this one truly touched me.

acorns
drum on fallen leaves
soft staccato
of a heart responding
to this bejeweled path

Kirsty Karkow, was born in England, but raised in the British West Indies and a ranch in Arizona. Her vocations have been equally as diverse, ranging from medical entomology to schooling and showing dressage horses to teaching tai chi in addition to be being a sculptor and having a marvelous garden. She and her husband Ed, live on the coast of Maine.

Giselle Maya, after years of living in Japan and the United States has settled down in the Provence of France, where, as she says, "All the trees in this sequence are friends of the author." Here, she writes, "Trees in Provence are often dwarfed for lack of water. They tend to be wondrously gnarled – olive trees can reach the age of a thousand years. The olive is a noble tree, its oil a delight. Introduced by the Greeks they keep their silvery-green leaves all year round. Cherry orchards abound in the Luberon Mountains, dark trunks and boughs luminous and magical in April with white cherry blossoms. Oaks are wide-armed and moss-covered, mysterious Druid symbols of strength and survival. The almond tree elates the winter heart just before spring with delicately scented pale rose blossoms. Cedar and cypress are trees of Provence, walnut trees planted or wild where water is present, shedding nuts in late September. Quince trees grow wild and each family has a recipe for ‘pate de coing’ a delicious quince paste."

Giselle Maya’s tanka sequence begins:

over the dark mountain
a great red moon rising
dove gray threads of smoke
for a few hours only
spring snow white on petals

With the sequence translated into French and German and the copious black and white photos, this out-sized book is a generous offering. The lovely hand-made paper pages swim with open space around the poems, adding to the feeling of opulence and richness.

Of all the books in this batch for reviewing, this one offers the most material on its few pages and what a bounty this is! The reader is taken on a jolly ride across the landscape of modern life by two very witty writers who are so at home with the haiku form they can say anything, and often do! No sacred cow is left unmilked or popular idol left without exposed clay feet. The quick exchanges often switch from the sublime to the ridiculous from line to line but are always linked by a sense of truth and heart-felt honesty. Marlene and Francine are a perfectly matched set of renga partners (not an easy thing to find) who are changing our concept of the form day by day as they write.

Each set of facing pages contains a complete 36-link renga with the verses written in one line. Readers of Lynx will recognize the format and many of the renga, but how good to have them compiled and arranged together between the covers of a book. There are more of the renga from this book in this issue of Lynx so check them out and do consider getting the book with all them.

In the folder that accompanies the CD, the composer Mark Winges states: "The pieces of this recording combine sung text and vocal sounds in different ways. Sometimes the text is clearly presented in a straightforward manner. Other times, the sound is the thing, with the intelligibility of words and their meaning taking a backseat to the music. Most of the pieces freely mix both approaches. There is one exception: 'freed from words' is made entirely from phonemes, it contains no text."

For the Lnyx, readership orientated toward Japanese genres, and familiar with the works here used by Marlene Mountain, John Wills,  Chuck Brickley, O. Mabson Southard and Eric Amann, I would also like to repeat the explanations given by Winges:

"The haiku used in the Haiku Settings cover a broad range, from the traditional 3-line, 17 syllable single moment / image poem, to the "heightened' individual words of Marlene Mountain. All of the texts are minimal, however, both in their use of few words to achieve their effect, and in their presentation: text surrounded by a lot of blank space on the page. I have tried to carry over the elements over to the music: melody phrases tend to be brief, musical material is set off by silence, and text of the haiku emerge from purely vocal sounds. A key example of the latter is the way each movement begins: sustained vowel sounds ("o", "a", etc.) alternate with silence, and the text ("in the woods / in her old voice") gradually emerges. Another element is the use of haiku patterns in the music, specifically the 5  7  5 pattern (the syllabic division of the traditional 3  line haiku), and the use of seventeen as a "unit". This element is like the scaffolding  not visible, but a necessary part all the time."

The 3-part composition, the Haiku Settings of Mark Winges is a successful attempt to combine efforts once started in the first half of the 20 th century. Here the music is the language. The echoes of chorus works by Diestler, Carl Orff (Carmina Burana), later by Kagel and others at that time and early works of the middle ages are unmistakable part of Winges' own compositions. Whoever had the pleasure to listen to the Gyuto Monks with their very special vocal and chorus techniques can experience how powerfully Mark Winges tried to put together the past and the present.

It's a little strange to the informed circles that Winges still emphasis on a Japanese 5  7  5 syllable count, which guided him easily into a conventional concept of harmonies not relevant anymore for western haiku poets.

Clear intonations and a vast variety of vocal expressions make this performance a joy to listen to. Musicians and poets of all genres may have to learn quite a bit from Mark Winges.

Werner Reichhold

A String of Flowers, Untied . . . Love poems from The Tale of Genji translated by Jane Reichhold with Hatsue Kawamura.  Stone Bridge Press P.O. Box 8208, Berkeley, CA 94707.  Perfect bound, 6 x 8, 224 pp., 2003, $18.95. Available for 30% off on Amazon.com.

In a beautifully produced book from Stone Bridge Press, Jane Reichhold has brought us a unique concept in presenting Murasaki Shikibu's tanka from The Tale of Genji, along with a running commentary of the tale itself, an ideal presentation of this classic for those who love the ancient courtly tanka of erotic love and longing by Shikibu but have found this long, 1000-year-old first novel in the world, a daunting reading experience.

To quote from the introduction itself  "[In] A String of Flowers, Untied . . ., not only the poems have been redone, but additional notations and clarification of the story have been supplemented.  It is possible to obtain a condensed version of the whole story ... by reading just the poems and the headings that set the scene for the poem."  This method also gives the reader the advantage of knowing the voice of the individual character who is writing the poem.

For those who already know Jane Reichhold's collaborations with Hatsue Kawamura in White Letter Poems by Fumi Saito and Heavenly Maiden Tanka by Akiko Baba, there is hardly a need to mention the high poetic quality of her translations from the Japanese, and the advantage of Reichhold's taking a middle ground between literal translation and the often-used remaking of the original Japanese tanka into a poem using a traditional English syntax.

I should mention here that the over 400 tanka in A String of Flowers, Untied . . ., are from the first 33 chapters of this monumental work.  Reichhold has stopped here, as it is uncertain that the continuation of The Tale of Genji was the actual work of Shikibu, or whether others took over.  In this way we are assured that the tanka are all by the originator of this greatest of Japanese literary works.

Speaking here as a general reader and not an expert in Japanese literature, I was delighted when I learned of this new translation.  First, I feel that there cannot be enough good translations of the important works in any language; it is in this way that one can compare and come to the best understanding possible of the original, and second, to know that the work has been done by a poet/translator with a long and respected familiarity with the cultural history and literary tradition of that language is indeed exciting.

As an example of the headings and how they relate to the poems, here is the section containing the tanka from which the book's title is derived:

"After spending the rest of the night together in the deserted villa, and when the sun has risen high, Lady Evening Faces wants to know who this man is who has carried her off in the night.  All this time, Genji has carefully kept her unaware of his identity, and she feels the affair has come to the point where he should show his face to her in the daylight and reveal his identity.

in evening dew
strings of flowers were untied
in this way
thus by chance our destinies
have a reason to exist"

(It should be noted here that each of the tanka translations is presented side by side with its original in romaji.)

Reichhold is to be congratulated on a most original concept of presentation in this beautiful book, which at once gives us superb translations of one of Japans foremost women poets, couched in readable scholarly notations (each page is edged in a light gray border with a delicate leafy design on which are found "footnotes" giving historical background and meanings concerning the poems).  There is also an Afterword concerning the writing of The Tale of Genji, the known biographical details of Murasaki Shikibu, and a discussion on the nature of tanka.

Having read and held in hand this valuable book, I can't see how any enthusiast of Japanese tanka, or Japanese literature in general, could endure not having A String of Flowers, Untied . . . in their collection.

Larry Kimmel
Colrain, MA
6 January 2003

When I think back over all the tanka in all the books in this batch I have for reviewing, I think with the greatest pleasure on the mind and heart of David Rice. In his tanka he is saying things – he gives words to, not always feelings I have had, but feelings I wish I had had. His theme for this book is the environmental message – how we should be taking better care of our world, but he never puts blame or shame or makes the reader feel inadequate. Instead, by his good example, by his greater understanding of what is happening, by the beauty of his spirit as he contemplates a situation, the reader gets a whiff of hope, a tiny joy in what has not yet been destroyed by corporations or clear-cutting.

Each page of the book has at the top a relevant quotation on the tanka subject borrowed from such a wide range of poets as Rilke, Thich Nhat Hanh and Gwendolyn Brooks. Under this is Rice’s three-tanka sequence. Because all it all works together so well, here is a sample page from My California.

KPFA news
the largest corporations
rarely pay taxes
I scoot a bathroom spider
out the window

the perfume of apologists
masks the stench of wealth
and its greed creed –
I curse and fume
at the daily charade

nauseous
from the free press ferris wheel
I cut up my paper
and re-arrange the letters
into honest headlines

All of those quotes are given credit in the back of his chapbook with copious publishing information so a reader can easily find, and maybe buy? the rest of the book and to read the kind of literature David Rice reads.

One more note on the making of the book. Rice has found a marvelous solution to getting the cover sheets to cover up the ragged edge of the text pages, which due to their folding, stick out beyond the one side. Buy this book to find out his secret and you will see how beautifully a hand-made book can be. In the bargain you will get expertly written tanka. David Rice has been writing tanka as long as anyone, and some of his ideas about our world may change your life.

Helen Sherry refers to this as her "second book of haiku" and yet it also contains two renga with her husband Ed Sherry, six tanka, two sequences, and one rengay with H. F. Noyes. Like Colors of Haiku, 1993, A Breath of Haiku presents the wide array of expertise by this talented woman. As H.F Noyes writes of her in his blurb on the back of the book: "She brings to her work the painterly eye of a fine artist refreshingly blending the modern and classical traditions." and this is very true. Her watercolors, having received many awards, as well as her writing, also recognized by prestigious prizes attest to, not only the excellent craftsmanship of her work but of the gentle, refined nature of the woman.

Because she genuinely understands and uses the art of linking, she can write about anything in any genre and it sounds good and right.

old adobe
dust and a dog
curl up

A compulsive revisionist, she hones each poem until it comes as a polished stone to the reader, glinting with inner lights others might have missed seeing.

tucked into
a hummer’s nest
blue dryer lint
from the last washing
of mother’s blanket

I especially liked what Yvonne Hardenbrook had to say in her blurb on the back of the book: "Life is made good by how deeply we breathe, not the number of breaths. A Helen Sherry poem pulls the reader into its depths, then lifts you up enlightened, refreshed, a little amused, and much better off than you were. Turn any page."

Kiyoko Tokutomi, and her husband Kiyoshi, were the founders of the Yuki Teikei Haiku Society of USA and Canada in 1975, in San Jose, California. Due to a hearing loss as the result of medications for his tuberculosis, his wife, Kiyoko, who had written tanka in her youth but later turned to haiku writing, introduced him to the form. As he studied numerous books on the subject, he realized how much the current budding haiku scene (mostly the Haiku Society of America) was missing the basic tenets of Japanese haiku, namely the use of the kigo or season word. Rather quickly a group who agreed with his teachings (also that an English haiku should have seventeen syllables) gathered around the couple and they began to publish a monthly journal called Geppo, as well as holding meetings, with a yearly retreat at Asilomar on the Pacific coast. After Kiyoshi died in 1989, Kiyoko continued her involvement in the group though by this time a series of presidents resided over the meetings and different persons (I was one of them) edited Geppo. At the Asilomar retreats one of the highlights of the programs was the night Kiyoko lead the renga session.

Not a member of the inner circle of the Yuki Teikei Haiku Society, I never understood why I saw so few of the haiku of Kiyoko. In this book, which appeared just weeks before Kiyoko Tokutomi died, on Christmas Day, 2002, - which contains an excellent biography of story of the couple and the beginnings of the haiku group, I find out that she had been publishing her haiku all these years in Japanese with the group around Shugyo Takaha in Japan. It is these haiku that Fay Aoyagi and Patricia Machmiller have compiled in a chronological order of their publication and translated. Each haiku is printed in kanji and romaji along with footnotes of explanation when necessary.

A haiku Kiyoko wrote about her mother, but which could also fit to Kiyoko herself, is this one from the 1995 sequence of "the silence before":

Where my mother lives
standing there
towering cumulus

Randy Brooks has done a marvelous job making a book that so reflects the gentleness and refinement that we saw and admired in Kiyoko. And how thankful we are that Patricia Machmiller and Fay Aoyagi, who did all the research and writing necessary to tell the extraordinary story of this couple, were also able to translate so competently the haiku into English. Anyone interested in the haiku story not often told by other groups, must have this book to keep alive this literary history.

Re-reviewing the books of Erin Thomas
by Josh Gage

Within recent years, there has been a resurgence of interest in formal poetry, including "new" or "original" forms. One such form is, of course, the ghazal, which in reality can be traced back at least 1000 years, with roots going much deeper. However, it is indeed new to English, especially as a formal piece. Many writers have claimed to written ghazals, but have in reality written creative free verse in couplets. It wasn’t until the late Agha Shahid Ali introduced the form, as an actual form, to English, did the ghazal begin receiving the respect it well deserved from English audiences and poets.

One such poet is Erin A. Thomas. New to the poetry scene (though not to poetry), Thomas has recently self-published two chapbooks of ghazals, titled Uncovering English Ghazal and Discovering English Ghazal. Upon purchasing these books, I was elated to find that not only were there other poets interested in ghazals, but interested in trying to maintain the form in its utmost purity. While a majority of collections, Agha Shahid Ali's Ravishing Disunities being the prime example, have one or two examples by various poets, I know of no other complete collection of traditional ghazals by one individual. Of course, Ali’s Call Me Ishmael Tonight will be out in March of 2003, but until then, we have Thomas.

Unfortunately.

For while Thomas indeed has a grasp of the ghazal form, he seems to have little to no grasp of poetry. His rhymes are pure, his rhythm as tight as can be expected in English, but his poems simply seem to lack substance. This lack of depth or substance seems to stem from two sources: Thomas’s misunderstanding of ghazalic disparateness and Thomas’s misunderstanding or severe lack, of imagery, and indeed, modern poetry.

Upon opening Discovering English Ghazal, we find a brief definition of ghazals. I agree with Thomas s decision to place such a definition in his book, as the form still is misunderstood by so many poets. However, I disagree with the definition itself, specifically that a ghazal should be like "a pearl necklace". While the idea of a necklace is appropriate (various objects strung together by a common thread) the idea of pearls, as opposed to jewels or beads, is what snags me. Pearls are similar, if not nearly identical. Jewels and beads are radically different from each other. Every ghazal essay, especially those by Ali, stresses the disparateness between stanzas. Each stanza should stand alone, and be completely separate from the poem save the rhyme and refrain. So while each of Thomas’s stanzas could, theoretically, stand alone as separate couplets, most of the time, they are simply too similar to each other to qualify as ghazals. While this technically is not a major flaw in the poetry, it does lead to some monotonous images, and therefore, monotonous poems. Indeed, one of the major tasks of ghazals is to keep the rhyme and refrain fresh, the variance between stanzas, and more importantly, their images, being the obvious way to keep the poem from dragging down.

In Uncovering English Ghazals, Thomas talks about an epiphany on disparateness between couplets. "Each ghazal binds to a theme, and in fact, each couplet within Hafiz’s ghazals seems to look at the same thing. It is just that rather than flowing couplet to couplet along the same lines of insight and reflection, each couplet offers a dramatically different perspective of what the ghazal as a whole is focused on. In a way, it is like looking through the eye of a dragonfly, each couplet is a facet in the eye, but the attention of each facet is focused on something in particular." This, while a nice idea, leads to some extremely boring poetry if used improperly. I have heard of this theory as the "room theory" as well, in which the ghazal focuses on a table in the center of the room, but each stanza is written from a different wall or window in the room. For example, in "Defeated", Thomas writes about affliction, and indeed an injured soul or spirit, using a dead baby as a metaphor for the experience. However, he keeps returning to the baby, to the point that he kills the thing four times before the poem is ended. The metaphor, while a solid one, becomes mute and almost obnoxious by the end, to the point that the reader is more interested in HOW the baby dies, and not the fact that it is dead. And this in poem no longer than a sonnet. When the couplets are disparate, Thomas’s ghazals do indeed excite and inspire. "Thoroughfare", form Uncovering English Ghazal, is one such example.

Where fragrant lilies beautify the way,
Decaying corpses putrefy the way.

Brilliant sages point the way to heaven,
Yet we in bloodshed rubefy the way.

The way of peace was plain when life began,
Then darkness fell to mystify the way.

When through harsh places arid spans the way,
How hard it is to ratify the way!

Rivers flow the way of least resistance-
Plainness will always signify the way.

A vagrant walks the way with dignity,
Yet speaks no words to dignify the way.

Crying skies are not the way of sorrow,
They only serve to pacify the way.

If to the empty center leads the way,
There is no need to simplify the way.

The wind demonstrates the way of roaming,
But does not try to justify the way.

Who taught the fowl the way to warmer skies?
How is it that they verify the way?

Compassion is the way within us all,
But we must act to reify the way.

Death cannot endorse the way of living;
It also cannot mortify the way.

This dream is the way of dancing shadows;
Trusting this farce will falsify the way.

Who can hear the way the stars are calling?
They wait for us to stellify the way.

Each time Zahhar collapsed upon the way;
Has been a mean to clarify the way.

Woefully, most of Thomas’s ghazals are not of this caliber. Not only do they focus on one theme or one image to a point of excess, but they also seem to lack a potency that can only come from imagery. Thomas is wary in his use of imagery, to the point that he sacrifices his poems by its exclusion. He admits that to him, modern poetry is "a tossed salad of verbal images". However, he does claim a belief in "visuals", which "solidify the abstract and focus channels of interpretation where [he] would like them to go". He against imagery for imagery sake, but is in favor of imagery if it aids the poem. Thus, a majority of his poems are completely void of images, but instead contain "visuals", or "real life visual experiences that are used within the context of a memory or feeling in relation." However, a majority of his "visuals" are so cliché or drab that they simply add nothing to the poem. And, when Thomas can t find a "visual" or "image" to suit his purposes, he goes without, much to the detriment of the poem, and the reader. The old adage "Show, Don’t Tell" applies to a majority of Thomas's work, to the point that the bulk of his poems come across as not poems, but sermons and dissertations, where ideas are spouted but immediately leave with no tangible weight to bear them into the mind. Thomas needs imagery, and while he seems fully against modern poetry, he needs to understand that he participates in that tradition, whether he wants to or not. Until the time machine is invented, his poems will always be read by a modern audience in a modern context, and therefore, anything devoid of images or imagery will be seen a trite. Shakespeare was successfully able to wield imagery, and very few editors would consider him or his poetry "modern." Thus, even without the aid of modern poets, Thomas should be able to understand and use imagery. Until he is, we will be forced to read on "visuals", which seem to be in short supply.

At the beginning of Discovering English Ghazal, Thomas relates an incident in which an English professor insults his free verse, and instructs him to write villanelles. He insists that villanelles would be no problem, and upon researching them, as well as terzanelles, discovers ghazals, on which little to nothing had been published concerning ghazals. This is in 2001. Ravishing Disunities, while it does take some liberties in what it accepts as ghazals, a majority of the book contains complete, well-written, well-structured traditional English ghazals, abiding by all the rules of the form. Ravishing Disunities was published in 2000. I suggest, if he has not already, that Thomas read this work, as well as the upcoming Call Me Ishmael Tonight, and learn what imagery and disparity add to the ghazal. I have a feeling that, in response to his teacher, Thomas may have followed all the rules of the form for a villanelle, but that s all he did. Very few people can name more than half a dozen successful villanelles written in English, and even then rules are dropped all over the place (Elizabeth Bishop s "One Art" as an example). Most villanelles, including a majority of the ones published, merely participate in the form. They are simply formal exercises with a few bright spots along the way, but are not truly successful poetry. In much the same way, Thomas merely participates in ghazals most of the time. There are a handful of good, possibly even great, poems in these two collections, enough to create a prize-winning collection, maybe. But definitely not enough for a chapbook manuscript, let alone two. So, to see what can be done with the ghazal form, to see a series of ghazal exercises, I encourage you to read Thomas’s Discovering English Ghazal and Uncovering English Ghazal. He does indeed have a mastery of the form. If you want to read something that transcends mere form, wait for Agha Shahid Ali’s collection to come out and hope for the best.

Recovering English Ghazal by Erin A. Thomas. Saddle-stapled, 8.5 x 5.5, 36 pages. For price or ordering, contact the web site or write to Erin A. Thomas, Journeys Into Poetic Forms, 27441 Coyote Place, Willits, CA 95490.

Almost as a repudiation of Josh Gage's comments about the poetry of Erin A. Thomas, just the other day arrived the third in this series of booklets of the ghazals of Thomas - Recovering English Ghazal. I didn't know if the word in the title, "recovering" meant "getting better" or "covering over again" or even "rediscovering the ghazal" because all usages fit the accomplishments of his use of the ghazal form.

Erin Thomas had set for himself the task of writing 100 ghazals and this booklet contains the poems completing this goal. But what a difference in this set of works over his previous two books. Whether he meant to or not, Thomas did take Gage's advice - there was private correspondence between the two authors before Gage wrote his commentary. 

The leaps between the couplets in many of the poems of Recovering English Ghazal now demonstrate the agility the ghazal demands and there is a drastic increase in visual imagery that also adds to the impression of the vastness between linkages. Erin A. Thomas has accomplished excellent work here. The poems are sectioned into four divisions: Distress, Ponderment, Calling, and Transcendence with five to seven poems each. Here is a sample of the new work taken from the section titled "Calling" that is the 77th ghazal 

DESTINY
Erin A. Thomas

A brook gently weeps on each stone, calling;
Soft wind consoles with a light moan calling.

Shaken autumn leaves float faint to the ground;
They filter against the wind's drone calling.

In the forest, an ancient falls crashing;
Hush follows behind its last, lone calling.

Seeds fall to soil, clouds nest in high canyons -
Each heeds the seat of its high throne calling.

Do you wonder where the falling stars land?
They go the way of their last known calling.

What is that sound so difficult to hear?
The silent sound of the heart's own calling.

Zahhar hears again your delicate voice -
Sweet on the breeze, a subtle tone calling.

Thomas has tells a marvelous story when he explains in the Introduction of Recovering English Ghazal how he got his pen-name.

And for those of you who feel you are just not writing enough, do think of following the example of Thomas and set for yourself a goal of writing a specific number of poems in a form or on one subject. May I remind you of Geraldine Clinton Little's exercise of writing ten tanka on ten different subjects (such a snow, moon, flowers, a hut, etc.) which turned into her well-known book, More Light, Larger Vision?

Who We Are

The next deadline is 
May 1, 2003

Read book reviews in previous issues of Lynx

 XII: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

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