XX:2 June, 2005

Fly-ku by Robin D. Gill. Key Biscayne, Florida, Paraverse Press: 2004. Perfect bound, 9.75 x 7.5 inches, 228 pp., haiku in kanji, romaji and English with copious commentary, 0-9742618-4-X. $15.00. Contact robin d gill.

Silk Flower by Ruth Holzer. Edited by v. tripi with art by Merrill A. Gonzales. Pinch Book Series No. 7. Swamp Press: 2005. Folded, 4.5 x 4 inches, and opened, 19 x 4.5 inches. $4.00 each postpaid from Ruth Holzer, 601 Madson St. Herndon, VA 20170.

water poems by Kirsty Karkow. Edited by Cathy Drinkwater Better. Black Cat Press, Eldersburg, Maryland: 2005. Perfect bound, 6.5 x 5 inches, 130 pages, $15.95, ISBN:0-9766407-0-8. Order from Black Cat Press, 613 Okemo Drive, Eldersburg, MD 21784. 

Hudson: A Collection of Tanka by Kisaburo Konoshima translated by David Callner. The Japan Times, Tokyo, Japan: 2005. Perfect bound, 8.5 x 5 inches, 136 pages, original poems in kanji and English, photos, ISBN4-7890-1179-8. $25.00. Contact David Callner.

past imperfect by Stanley Pelter. George Mann Publications, Hampshire, England:2005. Perfect bound, 8.5 x 5.5 inches, 88 pages, ISBN: 9-780954-629922. Contact Stanley Pelter, 5 School Lane, Claypole, Newark, NG23 5BQ, Lincolnshire, UK.

Rain: Haiku by Geert Verbeke. Cybernit.net, 4/2 B, L.I.G., Govindpur Colony, Allahabad, 211004 India. Flat-spine, 96 pages, haiku in English, French, Dutch and German, full-color cover, illustrated with black and white graphics. Euro: 12 or $15. Contact Geert Verbeke,  14 Leo Baekelandlaan, 8500 Kortrijk, Flanders, Belgium, Europe.

Sunlit Jar -- Four Seasons of Haiku by Carmen Sterba Radish Series # 30 (hand-bound haiku series) edited by Wim Lofvers,  Private Press, 't Hage Woord Rijisterdijk 25, 8574 VW Bakhuizen The Netherlands, Published 2002. Reviewed by Marjorie Buettner.

The Mountain Poems Of Meng Hao-Jan, translated by David Hinton (New York: Archipelago Books, 2000 and When I Find You Again It Will Be In Mountains: Selected Poems Of Chia Tao, translated by Mike O'Connor (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2000; by Karma Tenzing Wangchuk.

Haiku mit Köpfchen, Anthologie zum 1. Deutschen Internet Haiku Wettbewerb, Herausgeberin Erika Wöbbena., 2003, Hamburger Haiku Verlag, 15:21cm, gebunden (perfect bound), 130 Seiten. ISBN 3-937257-04-7.

Haiku mit Köpfchen, Anthologie zum 2.Deutschen Internet Haiku Wettbewerb. Heraugeberin Erika Wübbena, 2004, Hamburger Haiku Verlag, 15:21cm, gebunden (perfect bound), 120 Seiten. ISBN 3-937257 06-3

Gepiercte Zungen, Haiku-Jahrbuch, 2004, Anthologie, Wolkenpfad Tübingen, 2004, 15:21cm, gebunden, 108 Seiten, www.Haiku-heute.de. ISBN 3-936487-05-7.

Ich träume deinen Rhythmus, (Kronach, Bayern - Hauptstadt der Poesie), Anthologie, 13:21cm, gebunden, 142 Seiten. Herausgeber Ingo Cesaro, Neue Cranach Presse,  Kronach, 2003 www.ingo-cesaro.de

Hinterhofhitze, by Gerd Börner, Moderne Kurzlyrik.  Haiku und Haibun. IDEEDITION Berlin, 12:19 cm, 164 Seiten, ISBN 3-00-015797-2. Preis Euro 12.90. Books on Demand GmbH, Gutenbergring 53, 22848 Norderstedt. by Werner Reichhold

 ON-LINE BOOKS / WEB SITES
Jane Reichhold

Marlene Mountain, A TRIBUTE TO CID CORMAN by Karina Klesko, The Anglo-Japanese Tanka Society , Tanka Splendor 2004,

NEW TANKA MAGAZINES

red lights edited by Pamela Miller Ness. Saddle-stapled, 3.5 x 8.3 inches, 36 pages, two issues per year (January and June) with annual subscription of $10 in the USA, $13 in Canada and $15. elsewhere. Submissions are due in-hand on April 15^th and November 15^th. Poets are paid $1.00 per poem. Send subscriptions and submissions to Pamela Miller Ness, Editor, 33 Riverside Drive, Apt. 4-G, New York, NY 10023-8025.

Ribbons edited by An’ya. Saddle-stapled, 8.5 x 11, 28 pages, single copies for Tanka Society of America members cost $2.50 and $3.25 for non-members. One year memberships in the Tanka Society of America are USA $15, Canada $18.00 and elsewhere for $20. Contact Kirsty Karkow, 34 Indian Point, Waldoboro, ME 04572. Send submissions to an’ya, PO Box 102, Crescent, OR 97733.

 DVDS
 by Liza Dalby called "Geisha Blues"

BOOK ANNOUNCEMENTS

bottle rockets press announces the publication of The Windswept Corner by Alan Pizzarelli

Always the perfectionist, Robin D. Gill now has out a second edition of his latest book, Fly-ku. This time there are an honest 1,000 poems in the book on flies and bits and pieces that only scholars would have missed, have been included. So if you bought the book, you already have it starting to be a rare book and if you haven’t gotten Fly-ku, then now is time you give yourself this great pleasure. My pleasure was finding that two pages of Geert Verbeke’s haiku on flies had been added to this addition.

Just about the time I think that the publication of the very small books of poetry are passé, someone comes along and pours a great deal of love into a few colorful pages of beautiful printing. Then I am enamored all over again with the idea of presenting a slim pocketful of poems that can be tucked into any letter or enrich the smallest gift. In this case it is Vincent Tripi’s "Pinch Book Series." So plain, with no printing on the cover at all, but held together with a strip of paper containing the title and author, this fold-out (think of those postcard assortments that flow into your lap as you open them) unhinges itself in a very feminine manner.

In this case, we have the poems of Ruth Holzer with the title of Silk Flower. The outer side of the sheet contains the title page and colophon – the marvelous printing was done by Ed at Swamp Press, who has done so many of Tripi’s books. Inside are ten haiku written in three different formats. Most are three-liners, but two are one-liners and one poem is vertical with one word on each line.

In the credits Vincent Tripi is listed as editor. This fact made me wonder why the poems are so individual – having no contact one with another, except the one relating to the title. Perhaps he only wanted to put together a collection of Ruth’s poems that he liked and admired. But putting ten poems on one sheet could have gained by working together instead of against each other. This is not to disparage Ruth’s work, because the poems, viewed one by one, are each, in their own way, very worthy. As sample, the title poem is:

the silk flower too toward the sun

and the last haiku is:

high tide –
around a bend
the beach walk ends.

water poems by Kirsty Karkow. Edited by Cathy Drinkwater Better. Black Cat Press, Eldersburg, Maryland: 2005. Perfect bound, 6.5 x 5 inches, 130 pages, $15.95, ISBN:0-9766407-0-8. Order from Black Cat Press, 613 Okemo Drive, Eldersburg, MD 21784. 

Having Kirsty Karkow’s newest book, water poems, in my hands has been such a good experience. Somehow, I admit, I had become unnoticing of how very good her poetry is. Yes, she is constantly winning prizes in all the contests, and I always agree that her work is the very best, and I continually read her latest works on the tanka list. However, having such a collection compiled is much greater, much more impressive, than the sum of the individual works.

Part of this feeling comes because each poem is flawlessly written. The rewriting never shows, but one cannot write tanka that well without at least some revision and working to get the thoughts exact and the lines to line up. As a proponent of writing her haiku and tanka without punctuation or caps, one sees how successful this approach is by turning the pages of Kirsty’s book. I was delighted to find, however, that she does use punctuation and caps for her sijo. Somehow this seemed a very good and right decision. Whether the page contains sijo, haiku or tanka, each one is given all the white space the poem needs.

As the right amount of pace-changing, Kirsty puts some of the sijo into sequences and occasionally the one-poem-per-page poems turn a regular sequence. In fact the whole book seems to be arranged with an alert eye on the progressions of life, from young to old, and from dawn to dark, and back again into the sunlight. Since all the poems relate to sailing or life on the water, the subject matter forms an inner cohesiveness, but by being sensitive to the time indications, Kirsty has furthered the connective relationships.

In addition, Kirsty is an accomplished watercolorist, so she was able to add to the water theme with the cover illustration done in full color, and unobtrusive ink brush sketches. Michael McClintock, President of the Tanka Society of America, wrote a brief foreword with his praise of Kirsty’s work.

I, too, would like to add praise in this tireless worker who is making such a difference in the way the public views haiku, tanka and sijo with her contributions.

anchored
in the narrow cove
for protection
a circle of red spruce
clings to black basalt

near the shore –
loon wings beat still water
during take-off
I pick up my pencil
to trace their flight

summer sky
white clouds, pine forests
and the sea . . .
layer on whispering layer
of deepest purple

sailing beneath
playful gulls and terns
the boat lifts
over remnant swells
from last week’s big storm

at sea
ready to go home
and yet . . .
no wish to leave behind
wind-song in the rigging

Poetry, no matter what form it takes, is always filtered through the cloth of personality bearing the imprint of the designs of a culture. Even when the writer has traveled far from the place of birth, something of that earth, air and vibration, continues. Here, in the tanka in the book, Hudson, we have the rare opportunity of reading the poetry of a man born in Japan, but who lived the major portion of his life in the United States. Though all of Kisaburo Konoshima’s tanka were written and published in Japanese, his grandson, David Kei Callner has now translated this generous collection for English readers.

Kisaburo Konoshima was born in Yamato-mura in Gifu Prefecture on April 26, 1893, the oldest of the seven children. His family had always been farmers, but in recent years their circumstances had reduced them from being land owners. Konoshima went to school but had to miss one year because the family was too poor to pay his tuition. In spite of this, Kisabura continued his studies and was encouraged by a former samurai of the Aoyama Clan to pursue an academic life. At the age of fifteen, Konoshima left his village to go to Tokyo for a high school that allowed the students to work and study. There he milked the cows at 3:00 am and then delivered milk in the early morning. While still in school he met Yoshi Tomita.

When Konoshima graduated from high school he wanted to study medicine, but was finally convinced that it would be too difficult to work and study at the same time so he decided to go into teaching, and enrolled in the Doshisha University at Kyoto. Yoshi Tomita, at the end of her schooling, returned to her family where she was pressured into marrying a local boy. The marriage only lasted six months, and Konoshima encouraged her to go into nursing at the Doshisha University, which she did. The couple married on October 12, 1915.

In 1919, Konoshima graduated with a degree in economics and immediately began to teach at a special school in Tokyo that prepared students for emigration. The founder of the school felt that this would solve Japan’s overpopulation problems and give the students a more secure transition to the new land. Konoshima was sent out as a scout to find new places for the students, and one year visited South America, and the next time went  to the United States. While on the boat on the way to America he decided he did not really like teaching and preferred to return to farming. In California he immediately found a job as a farm laborer in the Stockton area and sent for his wife and four children to join him. They then moved to Santa Clara where he went into a partnership with another Japanese man to run their own farm. Just as the farm was beginning to pay off, the Second World War broke out, and all Japanese nationals and Japanese-Americans were rounded up and sent to camps. Konoshima and his family were sent to Heart Mountain, Wyoming for four years. Because the US government had confiscated and did not return his farmland, Konoshima, with his wife and children, moved to New York City where the couple worked as domestics. While educating his children, Konoshima returned to writing poetry. In 1950, he became a member of Cho-on, a poetry society founded in Kamakura in 1915. In December, 1955, Konoshima and his wife were naturalized as American citizens and he retired in 1963. He now devoted his time to his tanka writing and his collection of art which is now in the Herbert R. Johnson Museum at Cornell University. In 1870, the couple moved to Philadelphia to live with their daughter and son-in-law, Carolyn and Richard Callner. Eight years later, opting for a warmer climate, the couple moved to Honolulu, Hawai’i to live with their daughter, Sumiye Konoshima. Konoshima died in Honolulu, at the age of ninety-one, two years after the death of his wife.

The poems, dated and set into sequences, begin with New Year’s in 1951, and end in 1977,  with the sequence, "Wonders of Life." The poems are set in the old-fashioned couplet format and except in a few cases one cannot get a feel for the cadence of a tanka. Without the romaji, I cannot tell how close to the original poem the translation tries to be but most of the time, one can only recognize the upper and lower parts of the poem. From this, at times the reader can understand Konoshima’s leaps.

I suspect that Callner’s object was not to use his grandfather’s tanka as examples for modern writers, but was far more interested in bringing the story of one man’s life as told by the poetry he wrote. This is a very interesting story and is certainly worthy of being saved and shared.

The last time I reviewed a book of Stanley Pelter’s, it was his book, Pensées, for which I think I came down fairly hard on him. In this his latest book, past imperfect, I have a lot more to praise. It feels to me now, as if Pensées was the searching, the preparation to make this new book so very fine.

Pelter has a certain nervous energy, an overload of intellect and recollection, but now he has used this quality to reshape our ideas of the haibun and of haiga. By building his book on the structure of his life, he has allowed himself the freedom to do whatever he and his story needs to have to be told. And it works.

One can read the book to get the story of one man’s life, but one can also see it as an example of everything that can be done with and to the haiku and its illustrated form, the haiga. Gone are sweet sumi ink sketches of other haibun books. Here in Pelter’s work they are replaced with brutal collages, harsh line drawings, ancient photos and graphic concrete poems. The haibun also show such wide variations. I see this as a high compliment. Pelter seems open to exploring everything that has been done while inventing his own new method of deconstructing sentences, and lines of poetry.

The stories he tells are completely compelling. Whenever I pick up the book to look up something, wherever my eye falls I cannot help myself from reading. I am amazed at Pelter’s ability to instantly suck me into his world. It is not a pretty world and he tells it without artificial sweetening, but it feels honest and I am a true sucker for honesty.

Pelter’s tanka are a long way from Japan, and again, this is a compliment. Here is a sample set, as his poems are, in italics.

If you are interested in the cutting edge of the Japanese genres, and want to see how this man from England has bent them, do order this book.

Rain opens with an essay on haiku written by Geert Verbeke that spins one’s head as he combines the wisdom of a great many minds to pass off as his own thoughts. I have not yet figured out if it is a compliment or insult to find one’s own complete sentences in his rant, but his heart seems pure and his enthusiasm contagious so let’s just get on to his poetry.

As in his previous books (see last month’s book reviews in Lynx) Rain follows the same format with each poem beginning under a graphic of the piano keys C, C#, D, D#. and E. Each poem is in English and then also translated in French or German from the Dutch. As I have said previously, Verbeke’s translations are so right-on, so accurate, so word-for-word, that one can actually enlarge one’s vocabulary by studying the poems.

One of the reasons this is possible, is because Verbeke avoids going for a deep or philosophical meaning or background to his poems and when he does, he states this thought so simply it is fairly easy to move it between languages without loss.

Take for example the first poem in the book (which are lovingly illustrated by the impressionistic photo on the cover taken by Jenny Ovaere).

two monks
no other master
than the rain

deux moines
aucun autre maître
sinon la pluie

twee monniken
geen andere meester
dan de regen

LYNX READERS’ BOOK REVIEWS

Sunlit Jar -- Four Seasons of Haiku by Carmen Sterba. Radish Series # 30 (hand-bound haiku series) edited by Wim Lofvers,   't Hage Woord, Rijisterdijk 25, 8574 VW Bakhuizen The Netherlands, Published 2002.
Reviewed by Marjorie Buettner

This compact collection of haiku is a delight to read.  The Radish Series published by Wim Lofvers is a wonderful introduction to worldwide talented haiku poets.  In this collection, the poet uses her senses in order to allow the external world to enter her internal world.  Sometimes it is just the scent of flowers which stimulates the spirit:
 
winter doldrums
adding lavender sachets
to each drawer
 
Sterba has a unique way of expressing complex human emotion through sense-oriented concrete images. Sometimes it is this effervescent scent which leads us down a forgotten path, making our own way, guided by fragrance:
 
woodland path
the scent of plum blossoms
draws us forward
 
Sometimes scent leads us forward as well as backwards; the touch of a pussy willow or the smooth roundness of a button floods us with memories:
 
childhood home
the pussy willow
just as it was
 
rainy day
rummaging through grandma's
button drawer
 
Often, however, it is not scent but the exquisite sounds of music which lead us to ourselves, climbing each step, one by one, out of darkness:
 
shadowy steps
climbing towards the sound
of the shakuhachi
 
Sterba does something magical in her haiku, helping us to visualize by internalizing those transcendent moments in time:
 
brisk walk-
lifting the surrounding bareness
flutter of wings
 
rose trellis
a butterfly adjusts
its flight
 
She reminds us how nature itself is a gift which illuminates the spirit and which takes us out of ourselves and, like this wonderful collection of haiku, it should be shared:
 
sunlit jar
the beekeeper's gift
on the doorstep
 

From the translator's introduction to The Mountain Poems Of Meng Hao-Jan, translated by David Hinton (New York: Archipelago Books, 2004; page xii):

Reviewed byKarma Tenzing Wangchuk

"In meditation one actually inhabits the pregnant emptiness by cultivating empty mind; and in cultivating empty mind one can, in turn, attend most fully to the ten thousand things in and of themselves. That generative emptiness often appears in Meng's poetry, as it did in the final line of Wang Wei's lament, and Meng's poems remind us, page after page, in so many ways, of that most difficult lesson: the primacy of the immediate."

  "But at this level, experience is beyond language, for the pregnant emptiness that precedes the ten thousand things also precedes language, and the ten thousand things themselves are utterly self-sufficient beyond our limited human constructs. Hence Ch'an's emphasis on the old Taoist idea that deep understanding lies beyond words."

Meng (689-740 C.E.) was the founder of the Mountains and Rivers School of poetry.

From the translator's introduction to When I Find You Again It Will Be In Mountains: Selected Poems Of Chia Tao, translated by Mike O'Connor (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2000; page 5):

"It has been said of Chia Tao that his deepest quest was for poetic mastery and, related to this, to finding chih-yin, people who understood and appreciated his poetry--a time-honored endeavor in Chinese literary history. Chia Tao had the good fortune to live in a time when poets were highly supportive and appreciative if one another."

Chia Tao (779-843 C. E.) was for many years a Ch'an Buddhist monk. Though he gave up his robes at 31, his poetry remained sharpened by the dharma eye, and his peers came to call him Lang-hsien, or "Wandering Immortal."

Autumn begins unnoticed. Nights slowly lengthen, and little by little, clear winds turn colder and colder, summer's blaze giving way. My thatch hut grows still.

At the bottom stair, in bunchgrass, lit dew shimmers.

trans. David Hinton)

Hinterhofhitze, by Gerd Börner, is the first publication of this author. Amazingly so, one wants to add, because the selection shows him as one who is really firm in composing haiku. He uses haiku for a wide variety of themes, and knows form can never be more than the extension of its content. Even though in our correspondence he never mentioned it at all, his haiku certainly carry the idea of Zen more clearly than other German poet’s work.

Börner is one of so many German writers adept enough in English language, so in the future we will see his work also published with non-German language magazines. This ability to write poetry in a second or third language gives German writers a great advantage over Americans depending on translations only.

    All of the above announced books give the impression that the German haiku scene is in a process of reflecting an adaptation to what is going on internationally. Haiku mit Köpfchen (2 publications, one published in 2003, the second one in 2004), Gepiercte Zungen and Ich träume deinen Rhytmus, all four of these books are anthologies, and each of them is holding names of writers who write the best German haiku up to today.

    There are indeed interesting things going on in Europe – and here we especially talk about the haiku scene in Germany, email: haikugesellschaft@arcor.de - not really known to many American writers engaged with Japanese genres. There was a change in leadership inside the DHG (Deutsche Haiku-Gesellschaft: ), the new President, Martin Berner, is working hard to reform the group, and to give the magazine a face-lift. A younger generation announces that they are willing to take up responsibilities. With this comes hope for a change, sending out signs that the time of counting syllables is not a criterion of the quality of haiku. There are new voices opening up and referring to nature as a whole, and there are no limitations to themes for writing haiku, tanka, renga, or haibun.

   Obviously there is a strong wish of the European writers to be recognized as a new power offering poetry related to the Japanese genres. Please realize that they are faced with works written in twelve different languages! That alone means, haiku, tanka and renga are in the process of being influenced by all these cultures and languages.

We are watching the appearance of new Haiku Societies in France and Sweden. Europe is expanding economically as much as it is culturally. There is also a movement reflecting a  wave that may have the potential to bring the European haiku scene under one big roof. This year, in Bad Nauheim, close to Frankfurt an the .Main (River)., the first Europäische Haikukongress will take place from May 13 to 15, 2005, meaning the planed congress will help to enlarge the single group’s influence. Davis Cobb, England, and Martin Berner, Germany, will be the main speakers. Over one hundred guests are booked for the meetings in several different beautiful settings in and around the city of Bad Nauheim.

In the early 1990s Marlene and I worked for several years on making a book of her writings and artworks, so I had the feeling that I had a pretty good idea of what she had done. The longer we waited for the right time to do the book, the more mountainous became the pile of papers, the more it would have cost to make such a huge book, and the project was abandoned when I mailed everything back to Marlene.

I thought I was following her production by reading her work in Raw NerVZ and Lynx, and the announcement of her shows of art in various galleries. How wrong I was!

In 1999, Marlene began to put her work up on the web. Occasionally I would accept her invitation to see her latest addition to the pages. I always viewed her work with a mixture of awe, admiration and a tad of jealousy, because she was, and is, so very good. Then a scanner came into her life and photos of her many arts works and even of herself were added. In 2004, Marlene got her own domain name, marlenemountain.org and joined forces with Suhni Bell and her pages blossomed. All the pages are done within the strict bounds of simplicity, lower case letters, and plain colors because she saves all the fireworks for the best part of the site – her works. Today I looked and see that she was still adding work. The latest addition went up in February of this year.

I cut and pasted the current index so you can get a hint of the scope of her enormous output.

'from the mountain'  w/annotations:'backward'

one-line haiku  .  one-line haiku sequences

one-line linked haiku collaborations

mm's links from one-line linked collaborations

essays, reviews, haibun, self-interviews, self-reviews

one-line haiku tear outs  .  other-line haiku tear outs

other-line linked haiku tear outs/mm's links

dadaku   .   high coup hai ku   .   high coup visuals

a crone's highcoup captions

unaloud haiku  .   visually aloud haiku  .   ink writings/drawings

mm's info    .  letter essays .   & other 'as is'

other-line haiku  .  other-line linked haiku .  &  mm's links

other-line haiku sequences  .  poems  .  photographs

'visualante'   .   'shetrillogy'   .  'nature talks back'

'pissed off poems and cross words'

'intimate posters'  .   'solstice'   .  'equal, hell art cards'

images & writings to '79

.painting series & writings since '79

First of all you should visit Marlene’s site to delight your soul and eye with her wit and prickly-pun humor, and to read her writings in most of the Japanese genres. But I would hope that she inspires you to make a web site yourself of all your works that never saw the light of day in print. People sometimes bitch about the faults of the web, but Marlene gives it a positive spin when she brings so much of her work to the whole world for the cost of some hardware and an Internet connection. She has surely invested hundreds of hours of her time to give you this gift. Take a visit to her site, bookmark it so you can return again and again and be inspired by her example.

A TRIBUTE TO CID CORMAN by Karina Klesko 
 Karina, despite major eye problems, developed this site in tribute the poet Cid Corman who died on March 12, 2004 at the age of 79. The list of the contributors to the site reads like an international list of "who’s who" in the world of haiku. Werner Reichhold - USA, Jane Reichhold - USA, Alan Summers - UK, Karina Klesko – USA, H.Gene Murtha - USA, Poem and Art:Sheila Windsor - UK, Michael McClintock – USA, Michael L. Evans – USA, Kevin Ryan - UK, Elbert Pruitt – USA, Garry Gay - USA, Gerry Bravi – CAN, Sprite - UK (Claire Chatelet), Stanford M. Forrester - USA, Steve Addiss - USA, Adelaide B. Shaw - USA, Cindy Tebo - USA, Allen McGill - USA, Lynne Steel - USA, Kirsty Karkow - USA, Hortensia Anderson - USA, Tomislav Maretic – HR ( Croatia), Mary Lee McClure - USA, Carol Raisfeld - USA, Ron Moss – AU, b'oki. (Bette Norcross Wappner) - USA, Soji - USA, Gary Blankenship – USA, Raffael de Gruttola - USA, Betty Kaplan – USA, Johnye Strickland - USA, Ed Baker - USA, Norman Darlington - IRE, Gerald England – UK, Conrad DiDiodato – CAN, Carole MacRury – USA, Zolo (John Polozzolo) – USA.

Each poet is given a separate page for their contribution. Some have photos and artwork, and others simply a poem about or from their memories of Cid. The site contains, in addition to these pages dedicated to Cid’s memory, photos of Cid and letters to his widow, Shizumi. For those wishing to know more about Cid Corman’s life, Karina’s web site has a series of links that also make for interesting reading.

The Anglo-Japanese Tanka Society situated in York, England under the directorship of Hisashi Nakamura, has a web site sponsored by Japan Airlines and York Saint John, a collage of Leeds University. The first meeting of the group was held on Tuesday 15 March 2005 & Wednesday 16 March 2005 with talks on "Tanka Art Project Exhibition"  (Ms J Charlton, York St John College), "Tanka in Japanese and British Culture"  (Dr P Harries, Oxford University), "15 Years of Tanka in Britain"  (Dr M Lucas, British Haiku Society),"A Ripening Peach"  (Mr Brian Tasker, Poet), "The Unbroken Tradition of Tanka"  (Prof K Hidaka, Kobe Shinwa Women's University), "Our Art Collection: the Fusion of Arts"  (Ms K Ueda, Hida Takayama Museum of Art), "What Makes Poetry?"  (Prof M Hirai, Kobe College), "Slide Presentation of Komachi Festival"  (Anglo-Japanese Tanka Society).

Nakamura publishes tanka by a long list of English writers as well as English translations of his own Japanese tanka. He adheres to the classical rules, but is open to freer formats (under 32 syllables) in English. 

The Haiku and Zen World of James W. Hackett hosted by Patricia Hackett has among the haiku and zen writings of James W. Hackett, a monthly feature. This month there is a picture album book, "Visiting R. H. Blyth’s Home" that documents the September 2002, visit of the Hacketts to Oiso, Japan and the home of James’s mentor, some thirty-eight years after Blyth’s death. To view the 27 photos and learn more about R. H. Blyth and his family, and click on the "Monthly Feature" icon.

For Blyth or Hackett fans, here is a chance to put faces on these famous names and to get a chance to read a haiku from Blyth’s letters. A brief biography of Blyth helps newcomers to appreciate his work. In conclusion are other recommended books for further reading. The diary section of the day spent in Oiso, also contains a haiku by Patricia Hackett.

Tanka Splendor 2004, sponsored by AHA Books and edited by Jane Reichhold.
Tanka Splendor 2004 contains the results of the fifteenth annual Tanka Splendor Awards which attracted 101 e-mail submissions and two entries by post. There were 220 individual tanka and 14 sequences accepted as valid entries. Those authors entering by e-mail were then eligible to vote for their favorites. All the anonymous entries were posted on a web page, the address which was sent to all e-mail addresses with instructions for voting. Each judge could pick 31 single tanka and three of the sequences. In addition, the judges could give additional points by assigning each of their picks a grade. A = 3 additional points; B = additional points; C = 1 extra point. This system, though making more work with the tallying, sharpened the judgmental skills and gave a wider latitude of points to minimize ties.

After the votes are tallied, again e-mails went to all the participants so they could visit the web site to see which poems won and how many A's, B's and C's each one received. This permitted the judges to evaluate their own skills and choices against those of other judges. The authors received a detailed picture of how well their poems did when stacked up against the others. So even if the author did not win, there was a learning process. Only the names of the winners are revealed so this part of the process is known only to the submitting author. The winners received $20 worth of books from AHA Books per win. Special congratulations to Angela Leuck and Thelma Mariano for having all three of their entries be winners.

The winners for 2004 were: Hortensia Anderson, Tony Beyer, Pamela A. Babusci, Mary Lou Bittle-DeLapa, Marjorie Buettner, Ana Cagnoni, Kathy Lippard Cobb, Peter Duppenthaler x 2, Jeanne Emrich, Laryalee Fraser x 2, Suzanne Finnegan x 2, Richard Goring, Wheeler Joseph Hall x 2, C. W. Hawes, Kirsty Karkow, Karina Klesko, Angela Leuck x 3, Carol MacRury x 2, Thelma Mariano x 3, Michael McClintock x 2, Allen McGill, Keith McMahen, Joanne Morcom, Jack Prewitt, David Rice, Maxwell Ryan, Adelaide B. Shaw x 2, and Sheila Windsor.

The contest for this year is now open and you can find entry information for the sixteenth annual awards at Contest Rules.

Receiving red lights was like opening a valentine. With the soft red cover of hand made paper, the red rubber stampings and the illustrations of Merrill Ann Gonzales, the poems all seemed to be bringing love. In addition to the generous offering of individual tanka (up to four to a page), Editor Pamela Miller Ness also picks a "featured poet" (for this first issue it was rightfully so, Sanford Goldstein) and dedicates a colorful pink paper centerfold to the works of this poet. She also has a special section for "red lights Featured Tanka" or tanka using the phrase "red lights" (in honor of Mokichi Saito’s book Shakko (Red Lights) written in 1913, and translated by Seishi Shinoda and Sanford Goldstein, Purdue, 1989. Every one seems to be here, and if your name is not on these pages, you definitely should check out red lights.

Thanks to a grant from the Hermitage West Foundation, under the directorship of Michael McClintock, President of the Tanka Society of America and Editor of the Tanka Café in Ribbons, and in the TSA Newsletter, the TSA can now offer a quarterly journal in addition to its newsletter. Many of the features previously in the newsletter, such as Michael McClintock’s Tanka Café, contest news and results, as well as articles have now been moved into the much more spacious Ribbons. Much of what was reported in the newsletter, aside from the financial findings, was a repeat of the contents of Ribbons. Editor an’ya wrote a lovely piece on "ribbons" and their importance in our lives that gives new meaning to the title of the journal. A nice touch was her making bookmarks (with real ribbons on them) and tucking them in this first issue.

Articles from Doreen King (picking a Member’s Choice tanka), Michael McClintock for the Tanka Café feature, Jeanne Emrich on "A Tanka Favorite: Elements of Narrative Technique," Cherie Hunter Day’s "Poet and Tanka," book reviews by Melissa Dixon, "Titles in Japanese Tanka" by Yuri Runov, "World Tanka: The intimate Poet" by Marjorie Buettner added immensely to the reading material in Ribbons. In addition there were listing of publishing outlets for tanka, contest news, and contest results by Janice M. Bostok listing not only the names of the winners, but all the winning poems. An’ya and her staff deserve a huge thanks for so much work so well done. If you are looking for the tanka journal that gives you the most bang for your bucks, do consider subscribing to Ribbons.

Coming soon: Angela Leuck and Kozue Uzawa are establishing Tanka Canada and will publish the  journal gusts. Annual membership includes two issues of the new tanka journal "gusts," (June and December) and the right to submit three unpublished tanka or three unpublished tanka translations per submission period. The journal is titled after Marianne Bluger's book of the same name (Penumbra, 1998), which was the first full-length tanka collection published in Canada.

                 Gusts
                 bend the trees tonight
                 at each new onslaught
                 to endure
                 or not.       
                                                Marianne Bluger

Due date for June issue: April 15. December issue: October 15. For information or submissions contact Angela and for translations contact Kozue Uzawa. The fee period is January to December. Canadian residents Can$15; US residents US$18; International US$25. Please send your membership fee in cash, check, or international money order with your name, return address, e-mail, and telephone/fax number to Kozue Uzawa, Department of Modern Languages, University of Lethbridge, Lethbridge, AB T1K 3M4, Canada.

REVIEW OF DVDS
Jane Reichhold

I just got a copy of a DVD made by Liza Dalby called "Geisha Blues" in which she clarifies and brings authentic examples of the poetry form called ko-uta. Liza was the only American ever to be initiated into the very exclusive profession of geisha girls in Kyoto. She wrote of this experience in Geisha and the book was made into the movie, American Geisha. During her education, she was taught to sing the ko-uta (the specialized poem-songs of the pleasure quarters somewhat similar to the tanka). As part of her instruction, she made a recording of her teacher singing some of the favorite songs with shamisen accompaniment. In this DVD are these songs which Liza explains and translates, and shows them in the romaji and kanji,  along with lovely shots of Japanese art. The DVD can be obtained from Amazon.com. Only recently was I able to meet Liza, who had written a blurb for me for A String of Flowers, Untied. Liza also wrote an excellent book with the fictionalized life of Murasaki Shikibu, the author of The Tale of Genji, called The Tale of Murasaki. Both of her books are excellent reading and the DVD "Geisha Blues" is a real treasure.

BOOK ANNOUNCEMENTS
bottle rockets press announces the publication of The Windswept Corner by Alan Pizzarelli with an introduction by Anita Virgil. This collection of haiku and senryu poetry contains 36 poems by a major voice in American haiku!

"As you stand on Alan Pizzarelli's Windswept Corner, stamp the snow off your boots and prepare to be swept off your feet by some of the best haiku written anywhere."
          --Cor van den Heuvel, Winner of The Masaoka Shiki 2002International Haiku Award

series: a bottle rockets book #6, 4 x 5.75", color cover, side-stapled, 36 pages, $6 US (includes postage & Handling), $7 Canada & Mexico (includes postage & Handling) $8 Asia, Europe & Beyond (includes postage & Handling). Cash or checks made out to: "Stanford Forrester, P.O. Box 290691, Wethersfield, CT 06129-0691.  bottle rockets: a magazine of short verse...  submission guidelines and ordering information (subscriptions, back issues, and/or sample copies) can be found on our web site: 

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Back issues of Lynx:

XV:2 June, 2000
XV:3 October, 2000
XVI:1 Feb. 2001
XVI:2 June, 2001
XVI:3 October, 2001  
XVII:1 February, 2002
XVII:2 June, 2002
XVII:3 October, 2002
XVIII:1 February, 2003
XVIII:2 June, 2003
XVIII:3, October, 2003
XIX:1 February, 2004
XIX:2 June, 2004
XIX:3 October, 2004
XX:1 February, 2005

Next Lynx is scheduled for June, 2005.

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