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| TABLE OF
CONTENTS XXI:3 October, 2006 |
LYNX A Journal for Linking Poets | ||||
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GUEST BOOK REVIEWS My Tanka Diary, by Yuko Kawano, translated by Amelia Fielden. Ginninderra Press: 2006, 213 pages, ISBN:1740227 361 3, US $20 (US bills preferred, cost includes postage). Can be ordered from A. Fielden, 20A Elouera Avenue, Buff Point, NSW 2262, Australia. by Sanford Goldstein, Shibata-shi, Japan
A Book Review Haiku: Anthologie du poème court japonais. Selection and
translation by Corinne Atlan and Zéno Bianu. Editions Gallimard: 2002.
Colour cover, 242 pages, ISBN:2-07-041306-3,
Book Announcements SWEEPS OF RAIN - a haibun book about dementia (in het Nederlands: Vegen van Regen) Year: 2006 by GEERT VERBEKE (°31-05-1948). ISBN - 81-8253-06-87, Pages: 128, Format: Paperback A5. Language: English. Publisher mail: Dr. Santosh Kumar Website: Cyberwit India PRICE: 18 us$ on bank account. Mud
On The Wall, Selected Haiku,
Senryu & Tanka Poems of CHO is a quarterly journal edited by Ken Jones, Jim Kacian and Bruce Ross. Featured in this issue: Selections for Contemporary Haibun [The Yearly Print Journal]. Haiku For
Peace – In Memory of Sadako Sasaki
by Mevsimsiz Publishing House in TANKA
FIELDS A Chapbook of Tanka by Robert D. Wilson, With a Forward by Michael
McClintock, White Egret Press (c)2006. Featuring 75 tanka written by the award
winning poet and owner/managing editor of Simply
Haiku, Robert D. Wilson. $6.00 July's FireWeed is complete and
ready for your inspection: Poetry, interview, HAIKU HARVEST — Journal of Haiku in English, Spring & Summer 2006, Volume 6 Number 1 Print & Digital Editions. Denis M. Garrison, Editor. The German web site Haiku heute (Haiku Today) appears monthly. It contains a juried collection of 15 to twenty haiku chosen from about 150 to 200 haiku submitted monthly, plus commentary, haibun, renku, interviews and essays.
BOOKS WANTING REVIEWERS All I Can Do by Aya Yuhki Reeds: Contemporary Haiga 2006, editor Jeanne Emrich Wazowski Himself and other poems by Ed Baranosky Slow Spring Water: The Life Poetry of Melissa Dixon On This Same Star, selections from the tanka collection Will by Mariko Kitakubo translated by Amelia Fielden But then You Danced: tanka by Jeanne Lupton Amber: dementia-haiku by Geert Verbeke Blonde Red Mustang. . . a gathering of small poems by Art Stein The Haiku Apprentice: Memoirs of Writing Poetry in Japan by Abigail Friedman The Solitude of Cities by Ruth Holzer Things Just Come Through by Ed Baker 17 Minutes by Mathew Hupert
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GUEST BOOK REVIEWS My Tanka Diary, by Yuko Kawano, translated by Amelia Fielden. Ginninderra Press: 2006, 213 pages, ISBN:1740227 361 3, US $20 (US bills preferred, cost includes postage). Can be ordered from A. Fielden, 20A Elouera Avenue, Buff Point, NSW 2262, Australia. Takuboku Ishikawa's famous words of tanka as diary of the emotional life of the poet perfectly apply to Yuko Kawano's My Tanka Diary (2002). Two other translations of Kawano’s books into English, As Things Are (translated by Fielden and Kozue Uzawa, l00 poems selected from Kawano's ten collections and chosen by Japanese poet Manaka Tomohisa) and Vital Forces (translated by Fielden and Aya Yuhki) also focus on Kawano's life as a woman, a wife, a mother, a celebrated poet, and other aspects of her varied life. In My Tanka Diary, Kawano’s plan was simple. She would write one tanka a day, or sometimes two or three, for an entire year. Her diary began on November 10, l999 and ended November 9, 2000. Before each tanka she wrote prose headings sometimes related to the tanka, sometimes not, sometimes abridged by Fielden in her translations. How the prose passage relates to the poem is not always apparent, so when I began reading Fielden's translations, I did not want to interrupt the flow of the poems by stopping to read the prose. Yet as I read the diary tanka of the first month or so, I became curious about the prose and, surprisingly, found I wanted to know, if possible, the actual situation that might have motivated the creation of the poem. In this way I gained insights into Kawano's busy life as an unusual person. We learn from three commentaries in My Tanka Diary, one by Kawano, one by Kathy Kituai, and one by Amelia Fielden, about the various facets of Kawano as a person and as a poet. One important fact that stood out was her award in 1972, when she was twenty-three years old, of the prestigious Kadokawa prize, given to her for a series of poems in her first collection. I had read a few years ago Vital Forces (l997). Finished when she was, I believe, forty-six, it covers a four-year period from the end of l990 to January l995. I was struck by the concern she had for her two children, an older boy and a younger girl. Two poems from Vital Forces: our son the kid, In My Tanka Diary, Kawano's children remain one of the vital forces in her life in addition to her husband, her mother, and her extensive duties as one of the most famous tanka poets in Japan. Two poems on her children along with the prose entry in My Tanka Diary: July l2th cloudy; somehow I feel her love affair is not going well in a love affair May 26th heavy rain; Nagata [Kawano's husband] went up to Tokyo; Jun [Kawano's son] took a dying stray cat to the vet's come to borrow Fielden, in her introduction, mentions how closely she worked with Kawano on the translations. The translator, who limited the 643 poems in the diary to 396, tells us she "tried to retain the original phrase order, and the order of images" [p. 15], this despite the differences in Japanese and English grammar. The following poems from My Tanka Diary show how closely Fielden was working with Kawano on another collection: February 23rd cloudy; Amelia Fielden from Canberra University came to my home to work on the translation of Time Passes lifting her eyes June 2nd fine; from Jun, two days late, a birthday cake; in the afternoon Amelia came to visit for our final session on the translation of Time Passes one by one What is especially noteworthy in this tanka collection is how Kawano makes the commonplace poetic. We find Kawano peeling pears, walking home after getting off a bus, thinking about household repairs, climbing the stairs to the second story in her house, noticing the wrong order of shoes on her grandchild's feet, putting cherry blossoms into a vase, doing neck exercises, brushing her teeth, waiting for her husband to fall asleep, and on and on. But included in the rhythm of these commonplace events are quite painful moments: Signs of age on her husband's face (I peer close/at his fevered face/seeing that/he has aged now/sooner than I) [p. l76]; on dying: (I hate the thought/of lying still and dead/for a long, long time/being prayed over and called//'true believer', 'priestess', ‘great sister’) [p. l50]; death of a friend (so she has really/ended in ashes,/that person/who used to sit beside me/complaining of the cold) [p. 130]. Readers can enter into all these moments in Kawano's life. But as I read on, I had forebodings. Kawano could not have known when she began this year experiment of writing one poem or two or three a day what the end of the year would bring. Yet as a reader I was kept in suspense. The pressures on the poet of selecting tanka for TV contests and journals in addition to her own lectures and interviews and teaching had to take their toll. Sometimes Kawano is exhausted by these duties: stab, stab, with books increasing same classroom, so writing seven tanka, having weathered It was on September 20th that Kawano made a discovery: the great lumps Her poignant tanka of October l tells us what we had earlier learned: it's an absurd The memorable tanka of the last month of the diary have remained with me long after I finished reading. Whether poems appear at the start, middle, or end of the diary, Fielden's versions are always poetic. The saga of Yuko Kawano will continue. In 2004, Amelia Fielden was designated the poet's official translator. Sanford Goldstein
A Book Review
if someone asks yadi koi poochhe One morning, I received a mail from Angelee saying that she has sent me her book, a translation of Shiki’s poems into Hindi. I waited and waited for its arrival. I was more than rewarded . . . I read it many times over, both the English and the Hindi versions. If Someone Asks . . .Masaoka Shiki’s Life and Haiku, originally published by Matsuyama Municipal Shiki-kinen Museum has now been translated into Hindi – India’s national language – by the renowned haiku poet Dr. Angelee Deodhar. Ms. Angelee in her translator’s note says: "Masaoka Shiki, though well known to the western world through numerous excellent translations, is little known in India. The paucity of haiku related material to readers of Hindi made me take up the task of presenting this book. It was an arduous task and some might question this translation. However, since one must start somewhere, I felt it would be worthwhile to introduce in Hindi this selection of Shiki’s work, originally done into English by the sixteen translators of the Shiki-Kinen Museum, Matsuyama. It has taken three years to do this work" Translation cannot be everyone’s cup of tea. It needs a certain sensitivity, a certain way of seeing things, through the eyes of the poet and the translator, the experience and what is experienced. To be able to stick to the spirit of the original and still get into the skin of the translated language. In other words, not just to translate but to trans-create, which can be done only when the translator internalizes what needs to be translated. The amount of time, effort, inclination, and pure love that this kind of work demands is clear when one comes across a good translated work. Then comes the art of translating haiku, which is so simple that it becomes complicated. All great art is simple. It looks simple. From page one, Ms. Angelee’s translation sticks to the original, a faithfully and honest rendering of the Master. Hindi when spoken as it should be spoken sounds simply beautiful – the language of the great poets like Saint Kabir and Saint Meera is both lyrical and forceful.I’ve put a few of Ms. Angelee’s Hindi translation into Romaji for your reading pleasure; just read aloud and feel the texture of the words – the experience is rewarding! again and again barambar
me leaving mera jana
snow – brrph –
tugging at kheechtay huay
spring ebb tide vasanti bhatay mein
my chair is moved – meri kursi hilai gai – At first glance, I must own I was slightly disappointed with the cover. But after giving a thorough reading and seeing the world through Shiki’s eyes, his self-portrait said so much more and seemed so meaningful. The editing is faultless and all the credit should go to Dr. Angelee. Any translation, if well done, is like the two faces of a coin. Even after it has settled down well in its new language it makes the reader ‘hunger’ for the original. If this happens to the reader after reading this book, it is the most beautiful thing ever to happen! Kala Ramesh
Haiku: Anthologie du poème court japonais. Selection and translation by Corinne Atlan and Zéno Bianu. Editions Gallimard: 2002. Colour cover, 242 pages, ISBN:2-07-041306-3, available for under $13 from www.amazon.caThis is a very comprehensive anthology of over 500 haiku from more than 130 poets, spanning the period from the beginnings of haikai in the sixteenth century, up to the late twentieth century. The book is divided into a section for each season, with notional subsections such as "Célébration du paysage", and "Le grand herbier", the effect of which is to group haiku with the same or similar kigo together. The poems are presented without regard to chronology, and this reader found it initially disorienting to read on a single page, for example, three haiku on lucioles (fireflies) by Chiyo (C18), Kaneko Tota and Maeda Fura (both C20). But though this may be an unusual method of presentation, it is ultimately rewarding to easily compare use of a single kigo through the centuries, knowing of course that the later poets were usually aware of the earlier poems. In some cases, this can help the reader by highlighting the possibility of deliberate cross-referencing. Consider the following on page 95: Frappé (Struck/ the wooden fish/ spits out the midday mosquitoes) Natsume Soseki (C19-20)
Dans le vieux puits (In the old well/ a fish gulps down a mosquito —/ the water makes a black sound) Yosa Buson (C18)
In Soseki's haiku, the image is of a kind of temple gong in the form of a hollowed-out fish, and we can easily imagine that he is playing on Buson's image, turning it inside out, as it were. And on page 188: Dans ce jardin (In this garden/ a century/ of dead leaves!) Matsuo Basho (C17)
Les feuilles tombent (The leaves fall/ on the leaves—/ the rain falls on the rain) Kato Gyodai (C18).
As with any translation, there are inevitably cases where one feels a different choice of word or phrase might have been more felicitous, but the quality of translation is in fact very high. In addition to the wide variety of haiku presented, including many by lesser-known (in the west, at any rate) poets, there are several pages of notes which assist with some of the more opaque imagery, as well as a number of very useful appendices. These include a Petite histoire de haiku, which traces the origin of the form through tanka and renga, through its development up to the present day, with all of the changes thus imposed; an extensive bibliography of sources in French (as well as Japanese and English) for those interested in further study; an index of authors, presented both chronologically and alphabetically, and with female poets asterisked - always interesting to note the proportions, as well as the at times substantially different presence offered by the female haikuist. This anthology has much to recommend it. In terms of value for money it surpasses almost anything available in English. It is an informative and enjoyable addition to the bookshelf of both the experienced haijin and the interested generalist. Even if you have only school French you will be able to enjoy new translations of old favourites, as well as poems entirely new to us, without incessant recourse to the dictionary: Ce matin l'automne — Murakami Kijo
La solitude Uemura Sengyo I recommend that this book is one to have. Norman Darlington
Book Announcements . SWEEPS
OF RAIN a haibun book about dementia (in het Nederlands:
Vegen van Regen)
Year: 2006 by GEERT VERBEKE (°31-05-1948). ISBN -
81-8253-06-87, Pages: 128, Format:
Paperback A5.
Language: English. Publisher mail:
Dr.
Santosh Kumar Website: Cyberwit
India PRICE: 18
us$ on
bank account BE-80-6353-2374-0177 (IBAN: BNA GBE-BB). SWEEPS OF RAIN: A light shiver happens to you, when you open this remarkable diary. Oh, please, no… poetry about the illness dementia? Yet, the first page already will grip you. No clinical picture, but an example of the art of living slides along. Day after touching, humorous, sometimes very heavy day. A surprising, intense ‘dialogue’ between Sarah de Boeck and her son and ‘coating care provider’ John, supported by his wife Mia. Sarah suffers from Pick’s disease. First it affects your personality, then your memory and at last your total health. The author notes down this process of gradual changing and losing almost playful and light. In a rich, sometimes rough, associative language. But in the haiku sadness sounds through: touching her toys – After
her death John decorates Sarah’s photo with a crockery scarab - the morning
figure of Re - as a grave gift. Because ‘death is a mild final chord’. "My
conclusion: Sweeps of Rain consists of as many fits of sun. The 85 haibun,
not longer than one page, are constructive, in variety of contemplation and
anecdotes. A book to approach in averse and appreciate after reading." –
Silva Ley.
Mud
On The Wall, Selected Haiku,
Senryu & Tanka Poems of "I find that reading Jörgen Johansson's haiku, senryu, and tanka is a lot like getting used to a naked woman running through my backyard with a smile on her face . . . I never know from which direction she will come, or at what time of day or night, but I find myself wide-awake and patiently waiting..."--Michael McClintock.
1000
HAIKU FOR PEACE in MEMORY of SADAKO SASAKI “this is our cry
“Sadako
Sasaki was a Japanese
girl who lived near
After
her death, her friends and schoolmates published a collection of letters to
raise funds to build a memorial to her and all of the children who died from the
atomic bomb in Mevsimsiz Publishing House in
TANKA
FIELDS A Chapbook of Tanka by Robert D. Wilson, With a Forward by Michael
McClintock, White Egret Press (c)2006. Featuring 75 tanka written by the award
winning poet and owner/managing editor of Simply
Haiku, Robert D. Wilson. $6.00 Says McClintock:
The German web site Haiku heute (Haiku Today) appears monthly. It contains a juried collection of 15 to twenty haiku chosen from about 150 to 200 haiku submitted monthly, plus commentary, haibun, renku, interviews and essays. The publisher of "Haiku heute", Volker Friebel, publishes also each year a "Haiku-Jahrbuch" (Haiku Yearbook), containing haiku, renku, haiku sequences, articles and international interviews and essays. You can submit haiku and related material in English with Germen translations (no fees claimed) for the monthly competitions and for the "Jahrbuch." BOOKS WANTING REVIEWERS All I Can Do by Aya Yuhki Reeds: Contemporary Haiga 2006, editor Jeanne Emrich Wazowski Himself and other poems by Ed Baranosky Slow Spring Water: The Life Poetry of Melissa Dixon On This Same Star, selections from the tanka collection Will by Mariko Kitakubo translated by Amelia Fielden But then You Danced: tanka by Jeanne Lupton Amber: dementia-haiku by Geert Verbeke Blonde Red Mustang. . . a gathering of small poems by Art Stein The Haiku Apprentice: Memoirs of Writing Poetry in Japan by Abigail Friedman The Solitude of Cities by Ruth Holzer Things Just Come Through by Ed Baker 17 Minutes by Mathew Hupert
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Back issues of Lynx:
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Next Lynx is scheduled for February, 2007.
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“On
the morning of. August 6, 1945, the first atomic bomb of the world ever to be
dropped, exploded it the heart of 