Letters to LYNX

LETTERS TO LYNX

. . .A year ago I went to visit Ft. Lincoln at Bismarck, N.D. where my father was interned during WWII. Ever since that visit I have been working with the director of the N.D. Museum of Art and the President of the United Tribes Technical College (formerly Ft. Lincoln) to put on a photo/haiku exhibition to educate people about North Dakota's involvement in the internment program. The following is the news release about the event that has evolved. In attendance at the opening event will include a few former German and Japanese American internees. The title of the event: Snow Country Prison: Interned in North Dakota is taken from one of the haiku's my father wrote while interned. His Bismarck haiku was just recently published in the Modern Haiku Journal. The interest in the experience of the renunciants and the DOJ detention centers seems to be growing. I'm hoping that this news release might lead to some former internees or their family member wanting to join us at the exhibition.

I have a few snapshots of my visit their last year in front of the brick building where the Japanese American internees were housed if you'd be interested in using them with the story. As you know, the struggle for the Resisters to get recognition was quite long in coming. So you can imagine that the story of the Renunciants is yet to be told. I have interviewed several Renunciants in the process of working on my new documentary, From A Silk Cocoon (for which we received partial funding from CCLPEP) and though there are many remarkable and heart rending stories, most of those that I met with are quite reluctant to be known, let alone share their stories, since they were shunned by the majority of the JA community and labeled as "disloyal." I believe that work being done by folks like John Christgau, Isao Fujimoto, Barbara Takei and Judy Tachibana, myself and others will begin to shed light on the true complexity of the experience. For most renunciants, including my parents, they suffered not a crisis of loyalty, but a crisis of faith...in their government."

In 1941 the U. S. Justice Department converted Fort Lincoln from a surplus military post into an internment camp to detain people arrested in the United States as enemy aliens. Over its five-year operation as a camp, the Bismarck facility housed about 1,500 men of German nationality, and over 1,800 of Japanese ancestry. The first group of Japanese and German men were arrested by the FBI in the days immediately after Pearl Harbor. The arrests were done under the authority of the Alien Enemies Act, and these so-called "enemy aliens" were removed from their homes, primarily on the West Coast and East Coast, and sent to camps in isolated parts of the country.

"The upcoming exhibit and public programs are an outgrowth of scholarly efforts to examine and teach about the government's use of isolation and imprisonment against certain groups of people," says Gipp. "At the core is an examination of human rights issues," he said.

The exhibition, curated by Laurel Reuter, Director of the North Dakota Museum of Art, opens with a gala public celebration on Saturday, October 4 at 6 p.m. in the United Tribes Cultural Arts Center, a log cabin style building on the north side of the campus where it will continue for two months. It will subsequently be seen at the North Dakota Museum of Art in Grand Forks from February 28 to April 11, 2004, and then tour to the Heritage Hjemkomst Interpretive Center, Moorhead, Minnesota from April 18 - June 20, 2004, and the Taube Art Center in Minot, North Dakota

The exhibition will feature historic photos and murals of the camp, floor-to-ceiling cloth banners imprinted with images of people interned there, and wall text drawn from the haiku poems of one of the Japanese American internees, Itaru Ina, the father of Dr. Satsuki Ina, a consultant to the exhibition.

The public programming surround the exhibition will begin on Saturday, October 4, at 2 P.M. with a screening of films led by Dr. Satsuki Ina in the lower level of the Jack Barden Center on the UTTC campus.

Dr. Satsuki Ina is a licensed family therapist and founder of the Family Study Center, Sacramento, CA. She is a retired professor from California State University, Sacramento, and producer of Children of the Camps, a PBS documentary about the experiences of six children confined to internment camps during World War II. Dr. Inas father was interned at Fort Lincoln while she, her brother, and her mother were incarcerated in a War Relocation Authority camp in Tule Lake. She is currently working on a new documentary based on the letters her parents exchanged while her father was interned in Ft. Lincoln, N.D. It is titled, "From A Silk Cocoon."

The public programs will continue at 2 P.M., Sunday, October 5, when Dr. Ina will be joined by other humanities scholars to discuss the enemy alien experience, Fort Lincoln's history as a camp, and the affects of internment on people's lives. Other panelists include: John Christgau is the author of the book Enemies: World War II Alien Internment, which is based on the stories of Ft. Lincoln internees.

Published twenty years ago, Enemies is recognized as the first book on the Enemy Alien Program, and a key volume in the history of North Dakota. According to Christgau, "My view is that Ft. Lincoln stands as historical proof of how wartime hysteria and ethnic prejudices can deprive immigrants of their civil liberties. That same wartime hysteria, driven again by ethnic prejudices, is tragically affecting the Muslim and Arab American communities today." Christgau, a native of Crookston, Minnesota, is the author of six books and a part-time English professor in California.

Karen Ebel, an attorney, is an activist instrumental in bringing to public attention the story of German alien internment during World War II. She was the driving force behind the introduction of Federal legislation aimed at studying the wartime treatment of aliens. She will discuss enemy alien issues and tell the story of her father, Max Ebel, a Fort Lincoln internee.

Isao Fujimoto, a long-time professor at the University of California, Davis, founded the Asian American Studies program and the UC Davis Graduate Program in Community Development. A long time activist for the nurturing of civil societies, Dr. Fujimoto has had a special interest in the World War II internment of Japanese Americans. At a recent Enemy Alien exhibition in Sacramento, Dr. Fujimoto read excerpts from a half dozen letters between his father and himself while his father was confined at the Missoula camp. What struck Satsuki Ina was how those passages conveyed the human emotions and added the personal dimensions to topics such as social justice and civil rights.

In addition to the Saturday film screening, the grand opening, and the Sunday afternoon symposium with the scholars and those former internees who are able to attend, activities at UTTC during the weekend include a book signing with the humanities scholars, and self-guided tours of the campus using a map that identifies buildings and structures of the internment period. Dr. Satsuki Ina.

"Those who do not know their history are bound to repeat it."

Poets, publishers and the public in the English speaking world are watching Western writers who are trying to integrate the use of Japanese genres. For some increasingly alerted observers the impression grows that in case the more imitative production of haiku keeps spreading the more obvious it becomes that this situation may pave a path for self-inflicted asphyxia, seen by some of the better poets as a danger of suffocation. If this is true or not may be hard to determine, but the conclusion should rather be to listen to the wider literary scene here and abroad which is asking for more openness, for more tolerance. Instead there are still some philistines operating from a fenced-in zone trying to block new developments.

For Japan, 1998, was somehow the year to try to fix the position of their genres internationally. Recognizing Jane Reichhold as 'The Mother of Tanka and Renga' in the English speaking poetry scene, the Japanese authorities, pondering thoughts as we do looked for help- and found it. Honoring first on the highest level the work already done, they cleared the way for letting an American poet redefine tanka, haiku, renga and haibun. The goal then was and still is to change or enrich poetical tactics in the West to make writers arrive at new destinations. The publisher Kodansha International put its power behind those goals. The book Writing and Enjoying Haiku is on the market introducing new perspectives to an audience decided to integrate Japanese genres into their own poetic adventures. Main stream poetry publishers hail the book, and they know why.

As society's image of the individual changes to incorporate the worthiness of each person, so must our methods of education make a slight, but dramatic shift. Instead of drilling a group to do the same things, as was done in the past, the newest emphasis is on teaching people to think by themselves. Gone are the methods of saying: this is how it is done, this is how you should do it, and this should be your result. Showing students how to think, how to investigate any situation, where to find answers and how to come to a unique solution greatly widens the horizon of thought and action. This is a fairly new field so it is rather astounding to find a book teaching the ways of writing haiku, tanka and renga already abiding by these principles.

Haiku, the most rule-riddled poetic form, has always been taught and expounded by emphasizing the many regulations as conceived of by the Japanese. Yet in this new book by Jane Reichhold, Writing and Enjoying Haiku: A Hands-on Guide by Kodansha, a novel and new approach is taken that could and should be copied in other educational materials.

Instead of saying "this is how to write a haiku", Reichhold first shows how to take a haiku apart to explore its various aspects. Techniques are explained so the reader can clearly see what made a certain haiku "click" or "work." Then she explains each of the many ways haiku have been written over the past four centuries with the emphasis on the ways the writers of haiku in English have tried to get their haiku across to an audience for whom the poetry form is new. In fact she lists sixty-five "rules" that have at one time or another been a part of the haiku education. Since many of these concepts are diametrically opposed, it would be impossible to follow all of them at once.

Therefore, and this is the crux of the new method of education, she encourages the reader of her book to consider why the rules were made, what results they fostered and then encourages the reader to pick his or her own set of rules and write from them! We have to have rules in haiku, in writing and in our daily routines. But the freedom comes when we are given the ability to pick our own rules, decide when to break them or even to change them for new rules.

It is in the teaching of how to regulate one's life and writing from within that empowers persons to stretch to their own highest abilities. Beginning with something as easy as a haiku, as small as the shortest poetry form, patterns for observing, registering and understanding freedom can be easily practiced.

By instructing the reader of her book to actually begin writing in the margins of the pages, Reichhold underscores her philosophy of participational learning. She offers her haiku as sacrifices, poems to be decomposed and written anew. She understands that the way the student learns to think and to work is more important than the poem or any product and she keeps this goal in the foreground of all her writing. ( One example I like to mention is that this year, in 2003, Professor Chech from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute engaged twenty professors, each of them equipped with $ 1 Million to explore new approaches in which teachers and students alternately are supposed to participate in every step taken in direction of a more effective learning process. The results, later implemented in curriculums, are expected to be revolutionary. Doesn't that ring a bell in respect to what Jane Reichhold did with Writing and Enjoying Haiku in 2002?

Further on, Reichhold's book points to a far out reaching web site, Ahapoetry.com, for readers eager to find more poetical and theoretical material enlarging their personal perspectives.

After a splendid start of Kodansha's English Edition in Japan, the Americas, Australia and England, Writing and Enjoying Haiku, is now translated into Russian and on the market available from Sophia Press, Ukraine. A cool look at the map shows that the Russian language not only bridges a vast territory but also connects different cultures reaching from Eastern Europe to the Sea of Japan. Expectations are well founded that the introduction of Japanese genres into the Russian poetry scene will find a potentially rich base.

History sometimes has its caprices, its charm and detours. The Japanese genres, some fifty years ago introduced to the North American poetry scene, and there developed for quite a period of time, now take on a journey to the Russian speaking countries, probably with a big loop later arriving at the Kurile Islands, one hour by boat from Hokkaido. As expressed in Jane Reichhold's book title, the hope for Enjoyment seems to appear as a great power.

. . . Grateful thank you for the feedback and it is wonderfully gratifying to have these tanka find a published home with you. I hope you know how much I appreciate your kindness and to me the reality of my tanka is that many are personal to a point that I am unsure whether they have a "universally" valid voice that others will find levity in or poetic reassurance or some kind of truth-value in finding them... Your willingness to publish some of my tanka gives me hope that they may have something worth sharing and I'm glad for that and will try to keep scribbling away when the muse and moments move me!

I'll be looking forward to all the great work you gather in the next LYNX and wish you the longer light in your home and hearts. I just went and picked Emma up from her closest friend Cora's house and she was so happy coming home... we had a good talk in the car and then the scent of damp old leaves mixed with new green grass and a lovely crescent moon... ah, so many gifts each day! There is a poem by Billy Collins in his latest book Nine Horses called "Aimless Love" in which he describes a sequence of things that he "falls in love" with and that sense is very much my own and that of any poetically inclined person. All best always, Tom Clausen

. . . I lived in Japan for twenty years while in the Navy. Though I was not writing at the time, I did absorb their way of life. I've had haiku appear in Haiku Headlines, Frogpond and Modern Haiku and had one waiting at Japanophile when it ceased publishing. I have a haibun coming out in Contemporary Haibun and Haiga vol 5. I've had many other poems published through out the country. Haibun are a new form for me, though I've written many haiku and prose poems. It took me years to figure out to put the two together. I hope there is something here you like. Jim Fowler

. . . It is good to see my three tanka in the current issue of LYNX. Thanks. If you have a policy against the use of titles, simply delete the titles I have used with these four tanka. (Given that, traditionally, the Japanese sometimes used "headnotes" with their tanka, I don't see why English writers today shouldn't use titles.) Andrew Lansdown

. . . Well, yes, one can argue about using a title on top of a tanka. Others tried to use titles, even by publishing haiku. And exactly this brings me back to the point you mentioned in your letter: "...why English writers today shouldn't use titles."

Yes, traditionally, the Japanese used "headnotes" with their tanka. Very understandable, they found out a single tanka can look quite lost.

But here it is: their headnotes have been far from functioning as titles. Looking closer at the headnotes we mostly read as translations, one can come to the conclusion, that the headnotes plus a tanka together look much like a haibun, even though they are not 'journeys' in the Japanese sense.

The other thing I would like to emphasize on is that since long I try to persuade writers not to publish single tanka. Instead I asked them to consider collecting their own verses for a while and then find out what would fit together and constitute something like a longer poem, lets say a poem of five or more verses. Most people I wrote to started to consider my suggestions, and soon confirmed that using shifts and leaps between verses as they had learned from writing renga was not only fun but opened a whole new way for them composing poetry. Werner.

Dear Gary, Oh good, that's quality prose we much too seldom see. That's a prose poem ending with a tanka and a verse from Sappho; I like the translation into a haiku-like form.

Another writer who did translate Sappho into very short, almost haiku-like forms is Kevin Bailey, Editor of Haiku Quarterly in England. He asked us if Jane would make a book out of his translations, but well, there is a but, because there are not many poems by Sappho, and if one doesn't add a lot of text and history, those poems of her's don't simply make a book. We advised him to bring the poems on the web, on our Ahapoetry.com web site, but he still hopes to publish them as a paper book.

By the way, I myself visited Greece for several times in the 60s and s70s, lived on the Islands of Crete and Myconos, spent time on the Greek part of Cyprus, but didn't make it to Lesbos, so I didn't visit the town Mitiline on Lesbos. If I ever have a chance to go to that area again I think I'll include a trip to Lesbos. I am deeply in love not only with the country but with the spirits of the people in Greece and everything they turned into art. Werner.

. . .A bit from my bio: Originally from NYC, Allen lives, writes, acts and directs theatre in Mexico. His published fiction, non-fiction, poetry, plays, etc., have appeared in print as well as on line: NY Times, The Writer, Newsday, Retrozine, Literary Potpourri, Flashquake, Cenotaph, Poetry Midwest, Poetic Voices, Bottle Rocket, Herons Nest, Frogpond, Modern Haiku, World Haiku Review, many others. Allen McGill

. . .Here is a sijo tribute to my wife who passed away of heart complications last August 14, 2003. Hope you can publish it in a future issue of Lynx. Thanks. Vic Gendrano

The first 31 links of this poem "Ninty-Nine Bottles of Beer" have appeared on Zane Parks' web site around 1998, when he stopped updating the site. If agreeable to you, we would like for Lynx to publish the entire poem. Thank you for your consideration. Carlos Colón

. . . In connection with my ongoing work I would like to bring to your attention, that since already 1989, I started combining the forms of tanka, haiku, renga, and prose plus artwork, composing what we today call 'the correspondence of the media'. A typical example (along with others shown in Montreal, Canada, and in New York, N.Y., U.S.A.,in 1988) was my exhibit at the Orange County Center for Contemporary Art, Santa Anna, California, in 1989. There, an installation of large graphite drawings, each 5': 12' in size covering the walls of the whole room, was combined with haiku written on long stripes of paper crossing, twisting and interconnecting motives and spaces at the same time. Interspersed at space-specific important situations at the walls small transparent plastic birdhouses were placed so that inside of each differently arranged room a haiku signified a corresponding but paradox message.

Three book-size publications came on the market by AHA Books: Handshake and Tidalwave in 1989, Bridge of Voices in 1990. In there one finds new methods and examples offered to help the reader/viewer how to channel down the spirits of envisioned short poetry as we understand and develop it in the West.

In addition, both I and Jane Reichhold collaborated for years to put to use different genres in creating Symbiotic Poetry (the last example was a 36 link kazen renga in combination with 36 art works, published with the June issue of LYNX, 2003.). Mixed genres appeared first in the magazine Mirrors, later in the magazine LYNX, and are now available on the web site of AHAPOETRY.com., Haiku Forum. A new example putting different genres to work, one can find in this issue of LYNX, under 'Solo Poetry'. Werner

Greetings from Mishima, Japan. I am sending this hoping you can add the following message to your contests link or send to all interested poets in your address book:

Greetings from Japan, The 6th annual Suruga Literary Festival sponsored by Zen Temple Daichuji in Numazu is seeking entries for English haiku. You can visit the web page in English at the link below. Please note that entries will be accepted until Dec.20,2003. Any questions or inquires should be directed to Daichuji and not this email address---I'm only helping the head monk spread the word. Here is the URL and we'd very much appreciate it if you send in an entry and also told your haiku pals as well.

. . . In 2000 I was present at a two day meeting here in Holland, to celebrate the 400 year that Dutch people were in contact with Japan. I was lucky and happy to have some discussion with Mr. Makoto and Mrs. Tada. She is a poet and a professor from Kobe, teaching French at Keio - Tokyo. Since 1979 Mr Makoto has had the first page daily poetry column: "Every day's poem" in the Asahi newspaper of which he edited a 100 poem-edition, translated in French in 1993 by Yves-Marie Ailloux. And only now I find this note again. marius geerts

. . .just saw your review of 'haiku noir' and i'm so grateful, just that you didn't HATE it, let alone give me such a kind and good and understanding review!....thank you, sincerely 2 things: 1. the correct ISBN is 0-7414-1395-7 2. the 'noir' : i was more referring to the spirit of 'film noir'--that whole existential, absurdist, detached, and even wryly funny quality found in most of the genre you 2 guys have meant and do mean so much to me--in spite of my churlishness, i hope you know that thanks again. Bob Gray

. . .This is the first time I had a chance to visit your LYNX review section. Thank you so very much for your kind review. I find I could spend hours at you site, everything is so interesting. You are one in a million, Jane! What a wonderful mind God blessed you with. You are the most outstanding woman I have ever had the privilege of knowing. I hope you and Werner are well and happy. Peace and love,
Helen Sherry

1. Thirty-one tanka and three tanka sequences will be awarded publication in Tanka Splendor 2003 and for each winning entry the author will receive a $20. gift certificate for books from AHA Books.

2. Each author may submit either a group of up to three (3) unpublished tanka or one tanka sequence of any length. All material must be original and not under consideration elsewhere.

4. Individual tanka should be in English, written in five lines containing 31 or less syllables, preferably without titles.

5. The tanka sequence should consist of a title with three or more tanka, each of which contains 31 or less syllables written in five lines.

6. Send your entry either by using the form below or sending an e-mail to ahabooks@mcn.org with "TS entry" in the subject line. Entries may also be sent by regular post. These will be entered in the contest but the author will be unable to take part in the judging. Winners not online will notified by mail. Send mail entries, typed on sheets of paper to:

8. The judging will be done only by the persons with a valid e-mail address who have entered the contest. Each contestant will receive an e-mail with the anonymous poems for judging. The contestants are invited to declare their choices for the best single tanka and best sequence. After tabulating these votes the 31 single tanka and three sequences which receive the most votes will be published as Tanka Splendor 2003 as an AHA Books Online and winners will be notified with the gift certificates.

Back editions of Tanka Splendor for the years 92, 95, 97, 98 and 99 are still available from AHA Books for $6.00 each postpaid. Send a check by post to AHA Books, pob 1250, Gualala, CA.

The haiku scene lost two important women writers in one week in March, 2003. Anne McKay, born April 29, 1932 in Ottawa, Canada, died on March 4^th in Vancouver, British Columbia. She had published fourteen books of haiku, renga and tanka. Her soft, romantic way of writing, all in lower case, influenced many other poets. Lea Lifschitz died on March 10th, 2003. (If anyone has more information on her, please e-mail me so I can add it in.)


TABLE OF CONTENTS XVIII:3, October, 2003		LYNX A Journal for Linking Poets



	LETTERS TO LYNX Dr. Satsuki Ina FLYING ADAPTION by Werner Reichhold, Tom Clausen Jim Fowler Allan McGill Vic Gendrano Carlos Colón Robert Yellin marius geerts Bob Gray Linda Jeannette Ward David Rice ITerri Grell Kelly john hudak Michael Dylan Welch Carol Purington & Larry Kimmel Guillermo Compte Cathcart Helen Sherry Khizra Aslam Suhni Bell, Mary Lee McClure and Cindy Tebo Paul Conneally Guidelines for the FOURTEENTH INTERNATIONAL TANKA SPLENDOR AWARD 2003	LETTERS TO LYNX . . .A year ago I went to visit Ft. Lincoln at Bismarck, N.D. where my father was interned during WWII. Ever since that visit I have been working with the director of the N.D. Museum of Art and the President of the United Tribes Technical College (formerly Ft. Lincoln) to put on a photo/haiku exhibition to educate people about North Dakota's involvement in the internment program. The following is the news release about the event that has evolved. In attendance at the opening event will include a few former German and Japanese American internees. The title of the event: Snow Country Prison: Interned in North Dakota is taken from one of the haiku's my father wrote while interned. His Bismarck haiku was just recently published in the Modern Haiku Journal. The interest in the experience of the renunciants and the DOJ detention centers seems to be growing. I'm hoping that this news release might lead to some former internees or their family member wanting to join us at the exhibition. I have a few snapshots of my visit their last year in front of the brick building where the Japanese American internees were housed if you'd be interested in using them with the story. As you know, the struggle for the Resisters to get recognition was quite long in coming. So you can imagine that the story of the Renunciants is yet to be told. I have interviewed several Renunciants in the process of working on my new documentary, From A Silk Cocoon (for which we received partial funding from CCLPEP) and though there are many remarkable and heart rending stories, most of those that I met with are quite reluctant to be known, let alone share their stories, since they were shunned by the majority of the JA community and labeled as "disloyal." I believe that work being done by folks like John Christgau, Isao Fujimoto, Barbara Takei and Judy Tachibana, myself and others will begin to shed light on the true complexity of the experience. For most renunciants, including my parents, they suffered not a crisis of loyalty, but a crisis of faith...in their government." In 1941 the U. S. Justice Department converted Fort Lincoln from a surplus military post into an internment camp to detain people arrested in the United States as enemy aliens. Over its five-year operation as a camp, the Bismarck facility housed about 1,500 men of German nationality, and over 1,800 of Japanese ancestry. The first group of Japanese and German men were arrested by the FBI in the days immediately after Pearl Harbor. The arrests were done under the authority of the Alien Enemies Act, and these so-called "enemy aliens" were removed from their homes, primarily on the West Coast and East Coast, and sent to camps in isolated parts of the country. "The upcoming exhibit and public programs are an outgrowth of scholarly efforts to examine and teach about the government's use of isolation and imprisonment against certain groups of people," says Gipp. "At the core is an examination of human rights issues," he said. The exhibition, curated by Laurel Reuter, Director of the North Dakota Museum of Art, opens with a gala public celebration on Saturday, October 4 at 6 p.m. in the United Tribes Cultural Arts Center, a log cabin style building on the north side of the campus where it will continue for two months. It will subsequently be seen at the North Dakota Museum of Art in Grand Forks from February 28 to April 11, 2004, and then tour to the Heritage Hjemkomst Interpretive Center, Moorhead, Minnesota from April 18 - June 20, 2004, and the Taube Art Center in Minot, North Dakota The exhibition will feature historic photos and murals of the camp, floor-to-ceiling cloth banners imprinted with images of people interned there, and wall text drawn from the haiku poems of one of the Japanese American internees, Itaru Ina, the father of Dr. Satsuki Ina, a consultant to the exhibition. The public programming surround the exhibition will begin on Saturday, October 4, at 2 P.M. with a screening of films led by Dr. Satsuki Ina in the lower level of the Jack Barden Center on the UTTC campus. Dr. Satsuki Ina is a licensed family therapist and founder of the Family Study Center, Sacramento, CA. She is a retired professor from California State University, Sacramento, and producer of Children of the Camps, a PBS documentary about the experiences of six children confined to internment camps during World War II. Dr. Inas father was interned at Fort Lincoln while she, her brother, and her mother were incarcerated in a War Relocation Authority camp in Tule Lake. She is currently working on a new documentary based on the letters her parents exchanged while her father was interned in Ft. Lincoln, N.D. It is titled, "From A Silk Cocoon." The public programs will continue at 2 P.M., Sunday, October 5, when Dr. Ina will be joined by other humanities scholars to discuss the enemy alien experience, Fort Lincoln's history as a camp, and the affects of internment on people's lives. Other panelists include: John Christgau is the author of the book Enemies: World War II Alien Internment, which is based on the stories of Ft. Lincoln internees. Published twenty years ago, Enemies is recognized as the first book on the Enemy Alien Program, and a key volume in the history of North Dakota. According to Christgau, "My view is that Ft. Lincoln stands as historical proof of how wartime hysteria and ethnic prejudices can deprive immigrants of their civil liberties. That same wartime hysteria, driven again by ethnic prejudices, is tragically affecting the Muslim and Arab American communities today." Christgau, a native of Crookston, Minnesota, is the author of six books and a part-time English professor in California. Karen Ebel, an attorney, is an activist instrumental in bringing to public attention the story of German alien internment during World War II. She was the driving force behind the introduction of Federal legislation aimed at studying the wartime treatment of aliens. She will discuss enemy alien issues and tell the story of her father, Max Ebel, a Fort Lincoln internee. Isao Fujimoto, a long-time professor at the University of California, Davis, founded the Asian American Studies program and the UC Davis Graduate Program in Community Development. A long time activist for the nurturing of civil societies, Dr. Fujimoto has had a special interest in the World War II internment of Japanese Americans. At a recent Enemy Alien exhibition in Sacramento, Dr. Fujimoto read excerpts from a half dozen letters between his father and himself while his father was confined at the Missoula camp. What struck Satsuki Ina was how those passages conveyed the human emotions and added the personal dimensions to topics such as social justice and civil rights. In addition to the Saturday film screening, the grand opening, and the Sunday afternoon symposium with the scholars and those former internees who are able to attend, activities at UTTC during the weekend include a book signing with the humanities scholars, and self-guided tours of the campus using a map that identifies buildings and structures of the internment period. Dr. Satsuki Ina. "Those who do not know their history are bound to repeat it." FLYING ADAPTION Werner Reichhold Poets, publishers and the public in the English speaking world are watching Western writers who are trying to integrate the use of Japanese genres. For some increasingly alerted observers the impression grows that in case the more imitative production of haiku keeps spreading the more obvious it becomes that this situation may pave a path for self-inflicted asphyxia, seen by some of the better poets as a danger of suffocation. If this is true or not may be hard to determine, but the conclusion should rather be to listen to the wider literary scene here and abroad which is asking for more openness, for more tolerance. Instead there are still some philistines operating from a fenced-in zone trying to block new developments. For Japan, 1998, was somehow the year to try to fix the position of their genres internationally. Recognizing Jane Reichhold as 'The Mother of Tanka and Renga' in the English speaking poetry scene, the Japanese authorities, pondering thoughts as we do looked for help- and found it. Honoring first on the highest level the work already done, they cleared the way for letting an American poet redefine tanka, haiku, renga and haibun. The goal then was and still is to change or enrich poetical tactics in the West to make writers arrive at new destinations. The publisher Kodansha International put its power behind those goals. The book Writing and Enjoying Haiku is on the market introducing new perspectives to an audience decided to integrate Japanese genres into their own poetic adventures. Main stream poetry publishers hail the book, and they know why. As society's image of the individual changes to incorporate the worthiness of each person, so must our methods of education make a slight, but dramatic shift. Instead of drilling a group to do the same things, as was done in the past, the newest emphasis is on teaching people to think by themselves. Gone are the methods of saying: this is how it is done, this is how you should do it, and this should be your result. Showing students how to think, how to investigate any situation, where to find answers and how to come to a unique solution greatly widens the horizon of thought and action. This is a fairly new field so it is rather astounding to find a book teaching the ways of writing haiku, tanka and renga already abiding by these principles. Haiku, the most rule-riddled poetic form, has always been taught and expounded by emphasizing the many regulations as conceived of by the Japanese. Yet in this new book by Jane Reichhold, Writing and Enjoying Haiku: A Hands-on Guide by Kodansha, a novel and new approach is taken that could and should be copied in other educational materials. Instead of saying "this is how to write a haiku", Reichhold first shows how to take a haiku apart to explore its various aspects. Techniques are explained so the reader can clearly see what made a certain haiku "click" or "work." Then she explains each of the many ways haiku have been written over the past four centuries with the emphasis on the ways the writers of haiku in English have tried to get their haiku across to an audience for whom the poetry form is new. In fact she lists sixty-five "rules" that have at one time or another been a part of the haiku education. Since many of these concepts are diametrically opposed, it would be impossible to follow all of them at once. Therefore, and this is the crux of the new method of education, she encourages the reader of her book to consider why the rules were made, what results they fostered and then encourages the reader to pick his or her own set of rules and write from them! We have to have rules in haiku, in writing and in our daily routines. But the freedom comes when we are given the ability to pick our own rules, decide when to break them or even to change them for new rules. It is in the teaching of how to regulate one's life and writing from within that empowers persons to stretch to their own highest abilities. Beginning with something as easy as a haiku, as small as the shortest poetry form, patterns for observing, registering and understanding freedom can be easily practiced. By instructing the reader of her book to actually begin writing in the margins of the pages, Reichhold underscores her philosophy of participational learning. She offers her haiku as sacrifices, poems to be decomposed and written anew. She understands that the way the student learns to think and to work is more important than the poem or any product and she keeps this goal in the foreground of all her writing. ( One example I like to mention is that this year, in 2003, Professor Chech from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute engaged twenty professors, each of them equipped with $ 1 Million to explore new approaches in which teachers and students alternately are supposed to participate in every step taken in direction of a more effective learning process. The results, later implemented in curriculums, are expected to be revolutionary. Doesn't that ring a bell in respect to what Jane Reichhold did with Writing and Enjoying Haiku in 2002? Further on, Reichhold's book points to a far out reaching web site, Ahapoetry.com, for readers eager to find more poetical and theoretical material enlarging their personal perspectives. After a splendid start of Kodansha's English Edition in Japan, the Americas, Australia and England, Writing and Enjoying Haiku, is now translated into Russian and on the market available from Sophia Press, Ukraine. A cool look at the map shows that the Russian language not only bridges a vast territory but also connects different cultures reaching from Eastern Europe to the Sea of Japan. Expectations are well founded that the introduction of Japanese genres into the Russian poetry scene will find a potentially rich base. History sometimes has its caprices, its charm and detours. The Japanese genres, some fifty years ago introduced to the North American poetry scene, and there developed for quite a period of time, now take on a journey to the Russian speaking countries, probably with a big loop later arriving at the Kurile Islands, one hour by boat from Hokkaido. As expressed in Jane Reichhold's book title, the hope for Enjoyment seems to appear as a great power. Dear Werner and Jane, . . . Grateful thank you for the feedback and it is wonderfully gratifying to have these tanka find a published home with you. I hope you know how much I appreciate your kindness and to me the reality of my tanka is that many are personal to a point that I am unsure whether they have a "universally" valid voice that others will find levity in or poetic reassurance or some kind of truth-value in finding them... Your willingness to publish some of my tanka gives me hope that they may have something worth sharing and I'm glad for that and will try to keep scribbling away when the muse and moments move me! I'll be looking forward to all the great work you gather in the next LYNX and wish you the longer light in your home and hearts. I just went and picked Emma up from her closest friend Cora's house and she was so happy coming home... we had a good talk in the car and then the scent of damp old leaves mixed with new green grass and a lovely crescent moon... ah, so many gifts each day! There is a poem by Billy Collins in his latest book Nine Horses called "Aimless Love" in which he describes a sequence of things that he "falls in love" with and that sense is very much my own and that of any poetically inclined person. All best always, Tom Clausen . . . I lived in Japan for twenty years while in the Navy. Though I was not writing at the time, I did absorb their way of life. I've had haiku appear in Haiku Headlines, Frogpond and Modern Haiku and had one waiting at Japanophile when it ceased publishing. I have a haibun coming out in Contemporary Haibun and Haiga vol 5. I've had many other poems published through out the country. Haibun are a new form for me, though I've written many haiku and prose poems. It took me years to figure out to put the two together. I hope there is something here you like. Jim Fowler . . . It is good to see my three tanka in the current issue of LYNX. Thanks. If you have a policy against the use of titles, simply delete the titles I have used with these four tanka. (Given that, traditionally, the Japanese sometimes used "headnotes" with their tanka, I don't see why English writers today shouldn't use titles.) Andrew Lansdown . . . Well, yes, one can argue about using a title on top of a tanka. Others tried to use titles, even by publishing haiku. And exactly this brings me back to the point you mentioned in your letter: "...why English writers today shouldn't use titles." Yes, traditionally, the Japanese used "headnotes" with their tanka. Very understandable, they found out a single tanka can look quite lost. But here it is: their headnotes have been far from functioning as titles. Looking closer at the headnotes we mostly read as translations, one can come to the conclusion, that the headnotes plus a tanka together look much like a haibun, even though they are not 'journeys' in the Japanese sense. The other thing I would like to emphasize on is that since long I try to persuade writers not to publish single tanka. Instead I asked them to consider collecting their own verses for a while and then find out what would fit together and constitute something like a longer poem, lets say a poem of five or more verses. Most people I wrote to started to consider my suggestions, and soon confirmed that using shifts and leaps between verses as they had learned from writing renga was not only fun but opened a whole new way for them composing poetry. Werner. Dear Gary, Oh good, that's quality prose we much too seldom see. That's a prose poem ending with a tanka and a verse from Sappho; I like the translation into a haiku-like form. Another writer who did translate Sappho into very short, almost haiku-like forms is Kevin Bailey, Editor of Haiku Quarterly in England. He asked us if Jane would make a book out of his translations, but well, there is a but, because there are not many poems by Sappho, and if one doesn't add a lot of text and history, those poems of her's don't simply make a book. We advised him to bring the poems on the web, on our Ahapoetry.com web site, but he still hopes to publish them as a paper book. By the way, I myself visited Greece for several times in the 60s and s70s, lived on the Islands of Crete and Myconos, spent time on the Greek part of Cyprus, but didn't make it to Lesbos, so I didn't visit the town Mitiline on Lesbos. If I ever have a chance to go to that area again I think I'll include a trip to Lesbos. I am deeply in love not only with the country but with the spirits of the people in Greece and everything they turned into art. Werner. . . .A bit from my bio: Originally from NYC, Allen lives, writes, acts and directs theatre in Mexico. His published fiction, non-fiction, poetry, plays, etc., have appeared in print as well as on line: NY Times, The Writer, Newsday, Retrozine, Literary Potpourri, Flashquake, Cenotaph, Poetry Midwest, Poetic Voices, Bottle Rocket, Herons Nest, Frogpond, Modern Haiku, World Haiku Review, many others. Allen McGill . . .Here is a sijo tribute to my wife who passed away of heart complications last August 14, 2003. Hope you can publish it in a future issue of Lynx. Thanks. Vic Gendrano The first 31 links of this poem "Ninty-Nine Bottles of Beer" have appeared on Zane Parks' web site around 1998, when he stopped updating the site. If agreeable to you, we would like for Lynx to publish the entire poem. Thank you for your consideration. Carlos Colón . . . In connection with my ongoing work I would like to bring to your attention, that since already 1989, I started combining the forms of tanka, haiku, renga, and prose plus artwork, composing what we today call 'the correspondence of the media'. A typical example (along with others shown in Montreal, Canada, and in New York, N.Y., U.S.A.,in 1988) was my exhibit at the Orange County Center for Contemporary Art, Santa Anna, California, in 1989. There, an installation of large graphite drawings, each 5': 12' in size covering the walls of the whole room, was combined with haiku written on long stripes of paper crossing, twisting and interconnecting motives and spaces at the same time. Interspersed at space-specific important situations at the walls small transparent plastic birdhouses were placed so that inside of each differently arranged room a haiku signified a corresponding but paradox message. Three book-size publications came on the market by AHA Books: Handshake and Tidalwave in 1989, Bridge of Voices in 1990. In there one finds new methods and examples offered to help the reader/viewer how to channel down the spirits of envisioned short poetry as we understand and develop it in the West. In addition, both I and Jane Reichhold collaborated for years to put to use different genres in creating Symbiotic Poetry (the last example was a 36 link kazen renga in combination with 36 art works, published with the June issue of LYNX, 2003.). Mixed genres appeared first in the magazine Mirrors, later in the magazine LYNX, and are now available on the web site of AHAPOETRY.com., Haiku Forum. A new example putting different genres to work, one can find in this issue of LYNX, under 'Solo Poetry'. Werner Greetings from Mishima, Japan. I am sending this hoping you can add the following message to your contests link or send to all interested poets in your address book: Greetings from Japan, The 6th annual Suruga Literary Festival sponsored by Zen Temple Daichuji in Numazu is seeking entries for English haiku. You can visit the web page in English at the link below. Please note that entries will be accepted until Dec.20,2003. Any questions or inquires should be directed to Daichuji and not this email address---I'm only helping the head monk spread the word. Here is the URL and we'd very much appreciate it if you send in an entry and also told your haiku pals as well. In my Bizen cup reds appear and disappear Mars behind night clouds...... Thank you. Robert Yellin . . . In 2000 I was present at a two day meeting here in Holland, to celebrate the 400 year that Dutch people were in contact with Japan. I was lucky and happy to have some discussion with Mr. Makoto and Mrs. Tada. She is a poet and a professor from Kobe, teaching French at Keio - Tokyo. Since 1979 Mr Makoto has had the first page daily poetry column: "Every day's poem" in the Asahi newspaper of which he edited a 100 poem-edition, translated in French in 1993 by Yves-Marie Ailloux. And only now I find this note again. marius geerts . . .just saw your review of 'haiku noir' and i'm so grateful, just that you didn't HATE it, let alone give me such a kind and good and understanding review!....thank you, sincerely 2 things: 1. the correct ISBN is 0-7414-1395-7 2. the 'noir' : i was more referring to the spirit of 'film noir'--that whole existential, absurdist, detached, and even wryly funny quality found in most of the genre you 2 guys have meant and do mean so much to me--in spite of my churlishness, i hope you know that thanks again. Bob Gray . . .Thanks Jane and Werner for publishing "ON A THOUSAND BRANCHES" ... I especially enjoyed the renga by you and Giselle Maya...i've been out of touch with her (and other friends) for too long and hope to catch up this summer...still having some fatigue problems, but health is improved from last yr. LYNX continues to be an important "Linking" source for poets. Linda Jeannette Ward . . .Thanks for the kind and generous comments about my chapbook, My California. The last issue of the Tanka Society of America newsletter had a listing and one person (Michael McClintock) ordered one! I especially appreciated your comments about the binding. I was going to staple it when a friend said she could/would like to bind it. She did a great job. She "refused" to let me put her name on the acknowledgements page but I am going to print up twenty more soon (I gave most of original twenty away to friends and family) and I plan on giving her credit whether she wants me to or not. I'm up to chapter 13 in your Genji translations. Very impressive. Thanks for doing that work!!! Hello to Werner. "Praise Be" to tanka writers and translators. David Rice . . . You have done such a wonderful job with Lynx and all the wonderful resources at AHA - bravo! I haven't submitted anything for so long because I have been using up all my writing energy on academic papers and a masters thesis. But I'm done now, and teaching at university, and eager to get back to the sorts of writing I really love. Hopefully I can send you something in the near future. ITerri Grell Kelly (former editor of LYNX!) . . . long time! i have two children now: kaspar 5 years ursula 2 years we just moved here: chaba has been non-functioning (but the page is still there even though i haven't had that account for years). i haven't been writing much... the reason i write is that i am trying to put out a winter cd/gift for all my friends (i count you...please let me know your mailing address again), and the friend who is collaborating with me wanted me to write a short haiku. it will be related to the end of winter/last snow/temporariness of winter. the only line i have so far is: snow into my head as i forgot to put my hat on the snow disappears into my head. perhaps not too related to the end of winter... i tried to find the shiki list, but found it gone...is there a replacement? i have to take my daughter to a music class now; but i thought, since i found your name in relationship to the shiki list, that you might be able to help on short notice. Thanks for the notice about Lynx, Jane. And congrats on your new books! john hudak . . .FYI, my new address in the Seattle area is as follows: Michael Dylan Welch, 22230 NE 28th Place, Sammamish, WA 98074-6408. Michael and Hiromi Welch are expecting a baby around the ninth of October. All Blessings on the new baby! Write for his haiku sheet of "expecting haiku." . . . Of the writing of tan renga there is no end, apparently, at least not for Larry and me! We enclose several sets written just recently, with the hope that they may find space in the upcoming Lynx. We are excited to inform you (and the readers of Lynx) that our book of tanrenga and other linked verse, A Spill of Apples, is almost...almost ready to go to the printers. Thank you again for your introduction, which gives our words both historical and creative context. Carol Purington & Larry Kimmel . . . Respectfully, I send you this message to present you my new book: “Tanka of the Local Village”I make wooden books, handmade books, made one by one, colored with acrylic paintings, color pencils and ink. A handmade book that weighs 1 kilogram and 100 grams! An art book with original illustrations painted one for one The title of my new wooden book is: "Tanka of the Local Village" 170 Tanka written in Spanish and in English! The Local History expressed poetically The notes are written in English A concrete example of comparative literature: the basic form of Japanese poetry (a five line, 31syllable poem) , an Argentinean writer and written in Spanish and in English with cultemas ( cultema: minimum unit of imitation, minimum unit of cultural transmission, a culture gene ) shared by the Local Village and the Global Village I send you more information in an attached file. I will respond any question that you want to make to me... It is your message the star that guides me for strange lands your and I will make the Tanka that connects your Village and mine Es tu mensaje la estrella que me guía por tierras extrañas tu y yo haremos el Tanka que engarza tu Aldea y la mía Guillermo Compte Cathcart, Garay 254, (1854) Longchamps, Argentina . . .This is the first time I had a chance to visit your LYNX review section. Thank you so very much for your kind review. I find I could spend hours at you site, everything is so interesting. You are one in a million, Jane! What a wonderful mind God blessed you with. You are the most outstanding woman I have ever had the privilege of knowing. I hope you and Werner are well and happy. Peace and love, Helen Sherry LYNX is making an important contribution in providing a lot of variety and quality of work. It is a worthy source of reference for a reader or a poet. Your efforts in this ezine are commendable. Cheers. Khizra Aslam . . .Had a note from Suhni Bell, Mary Lee McClure and Cindy Tebo that the premier issue of mothertongued is being unveiled today. This is a website with an incredible magazine of art and literature featuring many names you will recognize such as Marlene Mountain, Marjorie Buettner, Jeanne Emrich, Hortensia Anderson, Lyn Lifshin, Francine Porad, Shiela Windsor, Susan C. Bolstad, Benita Kape, Melisande Luna, Carol Sircoulomb, Sprite, Lynne Steel, Carmen Sterba, Melinda Varner, Etsuko Yanagibori, Cathy Drinkwater Better and myself. They are looking for more female artist/writers, so do check this out. Invitation to The Bush Warble If you are unable to attend the World Haiku Festival in Holland this weekend then take part from wherever you are! We'd like you to take part by sometime this weekend taking a short walk or visiting somewhere, someone and then sharing something of the experience with us as haiku, haibun, haiga, if its haiga or haiku alone tell us where you went too - and lets all join together with those friends that are meeting in Holland with our hearts and minds if not physically - it is the World Haiku Festival so lets make it happen not only in Holland but the world over! So this weekend be a haiku 'Bush Warbler' - let us know where you are and what you are doing - sing out! Please put WHF Bush Warble in the subject field somewhere! Send your submissions to: paul.conneally@ntlworld.com Paul Conneally. FOURTEENTH INTERNATIONAL TANKA SPLENDOR AWARD 2003 Sponsored by AHA Books 1. Thirty-one tanka and three tanka sequences will be awarded publication in *Tanka Splendor 2003* and for each winning entry the author will receive a $20. gift certificate for books from AHA Books. 2. Each author may submit either a group of up to three (3) unpublished tanka or one tanka sequence of any length. All material must be original and not under consideration elsewhere. 3. There is no entry fee. 4. Individual tanka should be in English, written in five lines containing 31 or less syllables, preferably without titles. 5. The tanka sequence should consist of a title with three or more tanka, each of which contains 31 or less syllables written in five lines. 6. Send your entry either by using the form below or sending an e-mail to ahabooks@mcn.org with "TS entry" in the subject line. Entries may also be sent by regular post. These will be entered in the contest but the author will be unable to take part in the judging. Winners not online will notified by mail. Send mail entries, typed on sheets of paper to: TS2003 Contest pob 767 / 1250 Gualala, CA 95445 8. The judging will be done only by the persons with a valid e-mail address who have entered the contest. Each contestant will receive an e-mail with the anonymous poems for judging. The contestants are invited to declare their choices for the best single tanka and best sequence. After tabulating these votes the 31 single tanka and three sequences which receive the most votes will be published as Tanka Splendor 2003 as an AHA Books Online and winners will be notified with the gift certificates. 9. Rights return to authors upon publication. Entries cannot be returned. Send your tanka entries to the Tanka Splendor Awards Contest with this form. If this form fails to function, you can send a regular e-mail to ahabooks@mcn.org with "TS entry" in the subject line. Read the winning entries in Tanka Splendor 2000. Or in Tanka Splendor 2001. Or the latest winners in Tanka Splendor 2002 Back editions of Tanka Splendor for the years 92, 95, 97, 98 and 99 are still available from AHA Books for $6.00 each postpaid. Send a check by post to AHA Books, pob 1250, Gualala, CA. The haiku scene lost two important women writers in one week in March, 2003. Anne McKay, born April 29, 1932 in Ottawa, Canada, died on March 4^th in Vancouver, British Columbia. She had published fourteen books of haiku, renga and tanka. Her soft, romantic way of writing, all in lower case, influenced many other poets. Lea Lifschitz died on March 10th, 2003. (If anyone has more information on her, please e-mail me so I can add it in.)



	How to submit Who we are Back issues: XVIII-2 June, 2003 XVIII:1 February, 2003 XVII:3 October, 2002 XVII:2 June, 2002 XVII:1 February, 2002 XVI:3 October, 2001 XVI:2 June, 2001 XVI:1 February, 2001 XV:3 October, 2000 XV:2 June, 2000	Copyright © by Designated Authors, 2003. Page Copyright © by Jane Reichhold 2003. Next Lynx is scheduled for February, 2004. Deadline is JANUARY 1, 2004.