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BOOK REVIEWS
Jane Reichhold
White Petals by Harue Aoki. Shichigatsudo Ltd. Tokyo, Japan. ISBN: 978-4-87944-120-1. Perfect bound with glassine dust jacket, 5 x 7.25 inches, Introduction by Sanford Goldstein, 130 pages, ¥1500.
Seven years have passed since Harue Aoki’s first book of tanka translated into English, Memories of a Woman and now four years have gone since the second book, A Woman’s Life. These previous books contained poems she had written in her thirties and forties with her thoughts and sensibilities of those ages. Now in her sixties, she has survived a divorce, raised her two sons, her father has died, she has taught Japanese in England and one of her sons has married and she has a new book of her tanka that she has translated herself – White Petals.
Sanford Goldstein writes in the preface: “When I began checking her poems in White Petals, I found that her English translations of the poems left out details that appeared in the Japanese, and I made changes. But later Harue rejected my changes, wanting to pare down her poems to a minimum. In other words, her own translations were not full versions of the Japanese. She asked me to correct only her English versions and I did, but many of my revisions she changed again, aiming for even greater simplicity, a bare quality that has a very special music. . . Certainly Harue Aoki is one of the few Japanese women poets making translation into a real art – and for the most part doing it herself.”
I was eager to read this book of Harue Aoki’s poems because I remember being extremely unhappy with her previous books. I felt then that her poems were self-indulgent, full of self pity and overwrought pathos. Just flipping open this new book, the first poem to come into view was:
end of the year
walking through town
feeling listless –
I caress my hair
with my red gloves
and found myself silently cheering Ms. Aoki onward! At the bottom of the page was
kure no machi
kokoromoshino ni
yuku ware no
kami kakiaguru
tebukuro akashi
and I gave her another cheer for doing such a good job of translation.
Other poems are much more difficult to translate, but still I found her translations to feel complete and full of the detail needed to carry the poems in English. I am puzzled why Goldstein, given the honor of working with Aoki’s poetry, should portray himself as he did in the preface. I find her poetry much better, more true to life, more evenly presented, as if seen from afar in White Petals.
Obviously Harue Aoki has gone though what has seemed to her to be difficult times and situations, though what modern woman has not made a similar journey? However, it seems these difficulties have done their good work and made her a richer, deeper more alive woman. Now is the time for her tanka.
the calm park,
cherry blossoms gone –
in the rain
the trees full of leaves
so vigorous, so green
Harue Aoki could be speaking of herself. This is what tanka is for and why it is in our lives. Celebrate and get White Petals for yourself.
The Unworn Necklace by Roberta Beary, edited by John Barlow. Snapshot Press, P.O Box 123, Waterloo, Liverpool, United Kingdom L22 8WZ: 2007. Trade perfect bound with color cover, 5.5 x 8.5 inches, 80 pages one haiku per page. US$14; UK£7.99.
This, the first collection of the haiku of Roberta Beary, was one of the nominations for the William Carlos William prize in 2008. This should come as no surprise since Roberta Beary has won first place prizes in the Brady, Haiku International Association, Kusamakura, Penumbra, and Tokutomi contests along with numerous other prizes. These honors included the manuscript winning the 2006 Snapshot Haiku Press Haiku Collection Award 2006. She is on the editorial staff of the Red Moon Anthology.
These spare and finely honed haiku sit one to a page, perfectly centered exactly above the middle and yet they, combined, tell the story of a break up of a marriage with small children. The opening poems briefly portray the author as a child within a perhaps less than happy marriage:
piano practice
in the room above me
my father shouting
The poems about deceit and lying soon morph into those her own husband is telling her and the situation between them.
blizzard –
the space between us
in the king-size bed
By page 35 we are into the divorce and by page 43 there is a new wife and by 49 there is mention of the “first date” and children “two continents away.” I will not give away the rest of the story and will only add the last haiku in the book.
empty room
a teacup holds
the light
Penny Harter’s words in the blurb on the back of this beautifully produced book:
“. . .Beary’s haiku record life passages – love and loss, anger and forgiveness, family and solitude – linking human nature and the natural world with exquisite sensitivity and striking clarity. A stunning collection!”
To which I can only add, “Amen” and “Go Girl!”
Seeing It Now: haiku & tanka by Marjorie Buettner. Red Dragonfly Press, press-in-residence at the Anderson Center, P.O. Box 406, Red Wing, MN 55066. Cover illustration by Jauneth Skinner. Introduction by H.F. Noyes. Perfect bound, 5.5 x 8.5, 44 pages, $15. ISBN:978-1-890193-85-0.
Among its many attributes, in the back of this book there is a listing of each poem by its first line. With this is the information about where the poem was published or the prize it won. I am blown away that someone would 1. so carefully keep track of each poem, and 2. publish only poems that had been first published elsewhere. Yes, in the beginning haiku authors did this 30 years ago as proof that some editor judged the work to be fit for print. I did not think that anyone still did this. Because I love Marjorie’s work, I find this charming and the right thing for her to do – it fits with who she is and how she writes.
first buds of spring
I change the washer’s setting
to delicate
I find this poem, picked from the top of the page that opened, to be simply perfect. Now looking in the back to the acknowledgments I see the poem was awarded Honorable Mention in the Harold G. Henderson Haiku Award, 2004. Reading that I began to wonder, if this poem got HM, what poem was better? I find after a Google search: The judges for the 2004 competition were William Cullen Jr. & Brenda J. Gannam who gave First Place to w.f. owen with “Indian summer / a spent salmon / washes ashore.” Go figure.
Back to the good stuff. The tanka on this same page is:
fading dream
through gossamer shade
early morning light
if I were a flower now
these petals my morning poem
This poem is a far better tanka than 90% of the work presently being published as tanka. We need to see more of Marjorie Buettner’s work to keep us, all of us, on the best – straightest and narrowest – paths for writing haiku and tanka.
Still open to the same page I find a haiku that I hope remains with me the rest of my life.
morning fog
the sound the river makes
when I close my eyes
And below that:
am I falling, too. . .
cherry blossoms
in rain
I am afraid to turn the page for fear that I will stay with this book and its marvelous poems and be unable to read another book for the next review. I am so tempted this beautiful morning made splendid by the poetry of Marjorie Beuttner.
Songs Dedicated to my Mother – Julia Conforti by Gerard J. Conforti AHA Online Books, 2008.
This fifth book of tanka by Gerard Conforti demonstrates an even greater sophistication with the form. Each of his collections has had the effect of peeling away layers of his being and his observations until this one approaches the very core of his being. The poems, or songs as he calls them, are the result of his outpouring of love for his mother who has been locked up in Rockland State hospital since Gerard was four years old. Though she is unable to recognize or see him, Conforti continues fling his love out across the universe to her in his poems.
As a gift, you may read the book on your computer monitor, download it to save on disk or print it out to have and return to for repeat readings. AHA Books is happy to be able to share books of poetry with a wider circle of admirers through the Web.
Kindle of Green by Cherie Hunter Day and David Rice. Letterpress on emerald Stardream cover and hand-sewn binding by Swamp Press. Illustrations by Cherie Hunter Day. ISBN: 978-0-934714-36-5, 48 pages, 5.5 x 8 inches, $13 ppd. USA and Canada. $15 for international orders. Write to Cherie Hunter Day, P.O. Box 910562, San Diego, CA 92191.
Just touching this book one suspects that it is a product of Ed Rydner’s Swamp Press. A glance at the graphics on the enclosed note of book specifics (thanks so much for writing them all out!) and the reader knows this is Ed’s perfectionist way of doing everything a book needs to be a gift and a blessing to the senses and sensitivity.
The Preface, short but necessary, explains how the collaboration between these two excellent tanka writers began in October 1999, and continued for over three years. In that time they wrote 216 tanka in response to each other’s work. From that number they have selected 72 for a Kindle of Green.
The presentation of the poems in this book have been stripped of the titles of any collaborative poems and it feels as if the initial leaps have been replaced. Here the poems are mostly presented two to a page. Each set has a definite and innovative connectedness that carries the reader through experiences as if the book is one new collaborative poem. Even the identities of the authors have been suppressed so the reader has no clue about who wrote which verse.
Still, reading the stanzas, there is a strong feeling of being within two different persons.
bees congregate
on the twisted spires
of bugloss
all blue and complicated
I feel a little neglected
for three years
no matter what color the sky
we corresponded
the day we agreed to stop
I stayed indoors
And on the last page:
choosing a brush
from the forest on my desk
I dip into the jewel tones
of when we were close –
so much left unsaid
two sparrows
call back and forth
at first light
if you start singing again
I will recognize the tune
This new poem they have made of their tanka is a memorial to love that exists, but remains outside of a relationship. The reader can only make a deep bow of honor to the decisions these two have made and one of gratitude that they have shared it with others in such a beautiful way.
Because of a Seagull by Gilles Fabre. The Fishing Cat Press. Perfect bound, 8.5 x 5.5, unnumbered pages, two haiku per page. Includes a CD with a French translation of the poems. 2005. ISBN:0-9551071-0-5.
This first collection of the haiku comes highly recommended by such haiku luminaries as James W. Hackett, Alain Kervern, Ban’ya Natsuishi, Susumu Takiguchi, George Swede, David Cobb and Ion Codrescu. If these men have read Gilles Fabre’s book, and approved it by writing a blurb for the back, why have you not yet read it?
The first poem in the book:
Even in my pocket ~
it is everywhere
this morning’s spring wind
and the last one:
Two swans took off
over the frosty canal ~ again
no sign of life
Gatherings: A Haiku Anthology edited by Stanford M. Forrester. Bottle Rockets Book #13. Published by Bottle Rockets Press, P.O. Box 189Windsor, Connecticut, 06095. Flat spine, color cover, 5 x 6.5 inches, 78 pages, ISBN:978-0-9792257-2-7, $14.
Stanford Forrester continues his good work by publishing a collection of haiku on the theme of amusement parks, carnivals, and country fairs by over fifty poets to add to the shelf-full of these colorful little books. A generous collection, with up to five poems from one person, gatherings portrays happy times at circuses and carnivals by poets around the world. Many of the pages are decorated with photos and cuts from copyright-free books.
village fair
after much haggling I win
the laughing Buddha
kala Ramesh
hazy afternoon
cloud shapes half dreamt
at the wine fiesta
H.F. Noyes
street fair
the artist’s red outfit
prettier than her art
Robert Epstein
I could go on picking out delightful poems from this engaging collection to share with you, but would prefer you buy the book yourself. While you are at it, order lanterns, a collection of firefly poems and double your pleasure, double your fun. Check out the website for the other books available in this series. See what you have been missing!
Opening the Pods by Silva Ley. Translation from the Dutch Ontbolstering by Silva Ley. AHA Online Book, 2008.
In the late 1970s, in Holland, Silva Ley had her poems published in a book titled Ontbolstering. Now thirty years later, Silva opened those pages again and got the idea of translating her work into English with the hope that this would enable more readers to access her thoughts and ideas. The poems are not really haiku or tanka but they have the view and the tonal quality of such poems. There was the thought that when English writers finally abandon haiku and tanka, this may be the way we will be writing in the future. Pleasure yourself. It costs you nothing. Just click on the title above and you can read Silva Ley’s poems and decide yourself what you think about them. You can even fire up your printer and make a copy for yourself to read and reread and to study and to think about the future as revealed in the past.
Oh, Silva was a teacher for many years so her poems come from that perspective. Maybe as we learn to honor teachers, such poems will explain to us why we now should give them their due.
In the Company of Crows: Haiku and Tanka Between the Tides by Carole MacRury. Edited by Cathy Drinkwater Better. Black Cat Press, Eldersburg, Maryland: 2008. Perfect bound, 140 pages, sumi-e by Ion Codrescu, author and artist notes, $18.
I am not above temptation. Enclosed with Carole MacRury’s beautifully made book was this perfect book review. I quote:
“Released in December 2008, In the Company of Crows contains more than 200 individual haiku and tanka, poem sequences and illustrated by renowned sumi-e artist Ion Codrescu of Constance, Romania. The poetry was inspired by my experiences living in a unique coastal region straddling the U.S. / Canadian border just south of the 49th parallel. My work captures the spirit of the beach on which I walk, play, and meditate, the pastoral setting of the island’s interior, the nearby river delta, the ocean; and even the coyotes, migratory birds, and Orca pods that visit offshore.
[Yes she does and she does it with heart and excellent writing skills.]
In the Company of Crows was designed and produced by Black Cat Press of Eldersburg, Md. The book was edited by award-winning poet and journalist Cathy Drinkwater Better, co-owner, with her husband, Doug Walker. . . It features an introduction by Beverley George, president of the Australian Haiku Society and editor of the highly acclaimed Eucalypt poetry journal.
Many of the poems in this book were published previously in literary journals in the U.S., abroad, and online; and a number were honored with a variety of poetry awards. I am also an avid photographer, and my photos have been featured in gallery shows and have appeared on the covers of literary journals. . .”
In her foreword, Beverley George writes. “The clarity of [MacRury’s] images and the accuracy of her word choices are signatures of a mind that engages with the natural world with eyes wide open and a blend of curiosity and awe.”
heat shimmer
at the tip of a reed
red dragonfly
I watch a bee
burrow into a flower
remembering
a time when words
were lost to ecstasy
And this special one from “Cemetery Walk”
this overblown rose
supported by two buds
yet to bloom
will my children tell me when
I wear too much rouge?
The Japanese Universe for the 21st Century: Japanese / English Japanese Haiku 2008, edited and published by the Modern Haiku Association (Gendai Haiku Kyokai) Tokyo, Japan. Perfect bound, dust jacket, 220 pages, indexed, bilingual with kanji and romaji for each poem. Translation of haiku by David Burleigh and prose by Richard Wilson ISBN:978-4-8161-0712-2, $25.
The Japanese Universe for the 21st Century is part of the celebration of the 60th anniversary of the Modern Haiku Association of Tokyo Japan. As Tōta Kaneko writes in the introduction, “haiku had spread around the world, but Japanese haiku [one should say contemporary Japanese haiku] lacks the exposure to a wider world of readers.”
Thus 245 poets, all born after 1945, have their poems arranged to show the historical development from modern to contemporary times. Included are “free-form haiku poets” who were active during the transitional period, as well as “challenger” poets who question the developments that have led to haiku in its contemporary form. This book enlarges on the anthology of 185 poets published in the 2000 by the organization.
The book opens with the story of Masoka Shiki and his belief that the hokku and haikai of Basho, Buson and Issa were “unexciting literature, full of trite expressions, and with little artistic flavor.” Shiki insisted that haikai must be modernized in order to suit a modern Japan. Through his articles in the newspaper Nippon he was able to become influential, and his thinking was further advanced by the magazine Hototogisu edited by Kyoshi Takahama, which continued after Shiki’s death in 1902.
As is traditional in Japan, every literary movement has an equal and opposite faction. Hekigotō Kawahigashi (1874 – 1937) then took over Shiki’s newspaper column. Instead of using his position as disciple of Shiki he diverged by advancing his own ideas and promoting the idea that haiku should depict “inner phenomenon by subjective expression that he called “Shin-keikō” – which became so popular any haiku that failed to demonstrate the “inner phenomenon by subjective expression” was not considered a “real haiku.”
I have tried to figure out what this means – Kimura maintains it was Shiki’s ‘style’ but one of the two examples by Hekigotō’is:
Cold spring. . .
clouds without roots above
the paddy fields
which is much better than what Shiki wrote and I find to be excellent. The other example:
A red camellia
and then a white camellia
falls down
is a faithful reproduction of Shiki’s style that we know as “shasi.”
Later in his life Hekigotō introduced another style known as “muchūshin” (without a center of interest) which Kimura states “the idea of having doubts about the existence of the center or the whole in haiku was too early to be understood. . .and made his haiku difficult and did not come to fruition. ”
Soon this style was overwhelmed by the activity in jiyūritsu – free form haiku – which tossed out the seasonal themes (we know them as kigo), a fixed form, or old literary expressions, which sounds very much like present English haiku. From this literary tradition came the hermit poets Santōka and Hōsai who remain so popular that we have their works in translation.
At the same time Kyoshi Takahama (1874 – 1959) as student of Shiki and editor of Hototogisu, was poised to reign over the haiku scene, but at the critical moment, he turned to writing novels and changed the magazine into a literary magazine instead of a haiku publication. In 1913, however, he realized what was happening with the popularity of the free-verse haiku and returned to his old ways, his belief in Shiki’s theories of haiku and shasei and switched his area of literary endeavors.
It is interesting to note that all the ‘famous’ haiku poets writing in this style are now not known outside of Japan. Even though Takahama “eagerly published” – as Kimura states – women haiku poets, none of them are known to us either. Only near the end of the 1920s came the works of Teijo Nakamura, Tatsuko Hoshino, Takako Hashimoto and Takajo Mitsuhasi – known as the four T’s – and women poets began to become editors of the haiku magazines Suimei, Tamano, Hana-goromo, Komakusa and others.
In opposition to this large and growing group of conservative and conventional poets, in the early 1930s, Shūōshi broke away and began a magazine, Ashibi, to promote his ideas of romantic lyricism through “rensaku or serial haiku.” This style of writing, because the haiku were linked or put into a sequence, did not need the dependence on kigo or seasonal themes so new arguments arose over this use of non-seasonal haiku. Several new publications rose in opposition as the writing in sequences became very popular.
Due to these explorations, and the incoming poetry from the world beyond Japan, a new idea for haiku writing was introduced in 1935 and called “Ningen Tankyū-ha – Human Inquiry School. Suddenly humans, their ideas and feelings became the focal point of the haiku. This lead to the proletarian haiku, much influenced by the communist revolution in Russia, in which haiku such as this one by Takeji Ozawa:
Smokestacks
belching out
black blood
This lead then to war themes by both the conservative and non-seasonal proponents as Japan entered the Japan-China War of 1937. Their expressions became so fierce that haiku poets of both movements were arrested for violating the Maintenance of Public Order Act. The magazines publishing their haiku were also shut down which only increased the fervor of their writing.
After the war, Japan was gripped by a fever to modernize itself and become a part of the global community. An article by Takeo Kuwabara declared that it was difficult to distinguish between a haiku written by anyone and a teacher or master of a haiku school and thus haiku was a “secondary art – distinguished from real art because haiku was not an art but a kind of skill.” This sensation shook the haiku communities to their very cores and forced them to reconsider their attitudes toward composing haiku.
Again various groups reiterated their belief in socialistic (humanistic) haiku which caused another split. One group tried to relate positive attitudes from humans and the other, opposite and equal faction returned to “keep poetical beauty in its works.”
Kimura’s fascinating preface goes into the names of various magazines, their publishers and proponents (get the book if you wish to get deeper into this). All of these schools of haiku philosophy maintained the fixed form but accepted non-seasonal haiku. Then even the form was attacked and they tried the “four-line” haiku such as this one by Tōta Kaneko:
Twisted and burnt
at ground zero of the
Bomb ------
a marathon
Come on guys, this haiku has the perfect syntax of a three-part haiku! and the example by Shigenobu Takayangi:
The sun
going down. . .
the words called
a mountain range
is simply a two-part haiku perfect for a linked work. Giving the poem new typesetting line breaks does not make a four-line poem.
All of this finally brings us to 1947 when the Gendai Haiku Kyōkai was founded which accepted all kinds, styles and philosophies of haiku writing. Typically, and traditionally, the opposite and opposing faction was founded in 1961 for the traditionalists for fixed-form haiku with season words. In 1987 the Nihon Dentō Haiku Kyōkai was formed by persons who felt the traditionalists were not traditional enough for them. Again, as Japanese poets take one step toward experimentation and new ideas, more of them take two steps backwards and together they numbered over 20,000. Now the number of haiku writers in Japan is estimated to be well over a million “and greatly surpasses the total number of tanka or modern free verse poets.” There are, according to Kimura and he should know, over 800 haiku magazines in Japan.
One of the changes in haiku publishing has been the acceptance of children’s poems as haiku as well as that of “haiku fans [who] compose haiku mainly with colloquial expressions and do not stick to using season words, [but] they are inclined to be absolutely conscious of the 17 –syllable fixed form ( 5-7-5).”
Kimura briefly outlines the spread of haiku beyond the islands of Japan and notes that the “spirit of innovation has become weaker and only one stable condition lasts: poets focus on themes related to the inner world of their own souls.” At this point Kimura cannot see the future of haiku as it moves into the hands of non-Japanese.
Then begins the anthology divided into categories of Pioneers, Promoters, Challengers and ends with a Kaleidoscope of Contemporary Japanese Haiku. If you have the slightest interest in haiku, where it came from and where it is going, who is writing what in Japan, you must have this book.
Haiga 1998 – 2008 Japan Collection by Emile Molhuysen. Binder bound, 8 x 12, unnumbered pages, with a CD included. E-mail for price and shipping.Website.
 Emile Molhuysen is not interested in informing the reader of this book about himself or giving an explanation or lesson in haiga. Instead he simply wants to present you with his work. This he does by printing out, one to a page, his haiga on glossy photo paper. As the title informs one, all the photos are taken by arrangements of Japanese art or artworks. To these are added Molhuysen’s haiku. Most often the haiku are about what seems to be happening on the picture with Issa-like wistfulness or playfulness. He has a charming way of talking to his art objects and letting you in on the co nversation.
I guess I have spent too much time on the haiga forum at AHAforums, as my mind, instead of enjoying what I am given with this book, wants to be making suggestions about chop sizes, font choices, information included. However the beginner with computer graphics in me wants to praise and honor Molhuysen for the immense amount of work he has put into this project. How could I criticize something I could not do better myself? I hope you will at least get the disk and take a trip into Japanese culture.
Haiku, Haibun, Haiga – De la un poem la altul by Valentin Nicolitov. Societatea Scritorilor Militari, Bucuresti: 2008. Translated from Romanian into English and French. Flat-spine, 5.5 x 8 inches, 142 pages. ISBN:978-973-8941-34-2.
This book is divided into three parts as indicated in the title with a forward to each in which the genre is explained and illustrated by the works of a wide range of authorities around the world who work closely with this group in Bucuresti. The collection of haiku poems by Valentin Nicolitov are presented, one to a page, in Romanian, French, and English.
Prima zi din an-
privesc fotografii
de asta-vara
Jour de Nouvel An
je regard aux photos
depuis le dernier été
First day of the year –
I look at the photos
since the last summer
The center section, dealing with haibun, has considerably more problems with the translation of long sections of prose that precede or wrap around the haiku. Again these enthusiastic poets of Romania need a keeper – someone to help them with the target language. The extent and number of language missteps seriously impairs a reader’s enjoyment of the works.
Thank goodness for haiga, where the heavy lifting is done by illustrations. Pencil drawings, a few are quite good, are placed on the right-hand page, and on the left side is the poem in the three languages. It seems the author was involved with translating the images into words as most of the haiku simply echo or follow the author into his feelings about the objects illustrated. Though one wants to applaud Nicolitov for his adventurous spirit in exploring these genres foreign to his culture, there needs to be more research in how they are currently being employed and choose better examples to copy.
Floating Here and There written and translated by Ikuyo Okamoto. Kadokawa Shoten. ISBN:978-4-04-52039-5, US$15. Perfect bound, 4 x 7, 130 pages, bilingual with poems in kanji and English.
Ikuyo Okamoto has a long string of prizes for tanka, holds important positions in several tanka groups, and has published five collections of tanka works. From the last one, Floating Here and There, Okamoto has, after 20 years of studying English, translated 120 of the poems.
The title poem from the title sequence:
I floated
and I floated again
as if my back was pushed
by a power I could not see
…….I’m now in grief of life
The poems are all gathered into sequences that verse by verse tell little stories about the life and feelings of Ikuyo Okamoto. The final verse in “Floating Here and There” ends on a positive note:
this is my new town
where pussy willows
are shaking
in the breeze of spring
splashing silver light
and show Okamoto has settled down to the point where the English and the tanka form combine into a happy union. From here on, the poems get much better and I found many that delighted and inspired me. The leaps between verses range from the obvious to the very sophisticated.
even in the things
which are put into a mess
there is a rule for me
and all of them calm down
on my desk successful
a[n] eraser rolled
struck a book
and oddly enough
it stopped
where I wanted
if you look at the face
of an electric fan
you will begin to see
something like a sunflower
and soon see yellow
Only by reading the biography in the back of the book did I realize Ikuyo Okamoto is a woman. I would not have guessed this by reading her tanka poems. Yes, they are sensitive and introspective, but there is none of that whining that I find so irritating in other female Japanese tanka writers. These are good tanka poems that deserved a wider audience.
So the Elders Say – Tanka Sequence by Carol Purington and Larry Kimmel. Folded 8 x 11 inches single sheet with color photos. Winfred Press, 2008.
Okay, this is technically not a book and maybe should not be given a book review, but I find the five collaborative tanka sequences written by Carol and Larry to have more quality on this one sheet than many of the books still lying in a pile waiting to be reviewed. I find the couple’s need to share this portion of their working together, before it grows into another book, to be charming.
How often could you have shared your writings in a beautifully made brochure instead of adding them to that drawer stuffed with unpublished and unpolished works? If I am describing you, please do write to Larry Kimmel, for a copy of “So the Elders Say” and get yourself inspired by this work and get off your duff and do likewise.
The work of this pair will, I am sure, in the future be seen as a very special collaboration. They work and write together so seamless one cannot imagine siblings doing it better. They have successfully melded their separate egos into one writing machine. Here is one small, delightful example from the title poem:
A jade kayak
on the Connecticut River
like Icarus
steering toward danger
how his father would have grieved
Carol
That Li Po, drunk
leaned over the boat’s side
to embrace the moon
and drowned. . .?
sure, I believe it
Larry
The surety and rapidity with which these two spin out and around the tales is a marvel to the reader who spends the time to make the connections.
The Irresistible Hudson: A Haiku Tribute Based on Yiddish Poetry by Martin Wasserman. Honors Press, Adirondack Community College, State University of New York, 640 Bay Road, Queensbury, New York, 12804. Flat-spine, 28 pages, 5.5 x 8 inches. No Price, no web access given.
This slender book is a tribute to Chiune and Yukiko Sugihara, a Japanese couple in the Lithuanian embassy in 1940, who by disobeying orders, issued travel visas to an estimated 40,000 Polish Jews permitting them to escape from the advancing Nazi troops. Martin Wasserman wrote these poems as haiku to honor this couple.
From the introduction the reader understands that Wasserman bases his concept of what a haiku is and how to write it on the works of Jack Kerouac. Going beyond the often unhaiku-like examples of Kerouac’s haiku, Wasserman takes the idea that embedded in Kerouac’s prose are other haiku, and it is these that he uses as models for his work. Thus we are given:
This bird-like bridge
soars over the river
in search of skyscraping wonders.
Or on the same page:
On fast steamships
winds blow hard
over the joyful waters.
Or on the opposing page:
The Hudson croons
great big songs
to the heights of the city above.
It is rather engaging that someone wants to write haiku, and then does so, after researching the genre in his way, and then goes on to publish them without embarrassment. What really bothers me, is the idea that it seems Martin Wasserman is a professor at a university and that he has such a limited and outmoded idea of what haiku is. Increasingly I am discovering that it is the creative writing professors who lack the most elementary understanding of haiku is and yet think that because haiku are simple and small, that they can write them without even knowing more than they may have learned in the second grade. Some day maybe, in the way Black Studies have been adopted by college curriculum, haiku will be given a place in order to educate a population eager to understand and use the form.
The Tanka Prose Anthology, edited by Jeffrey Woodward. Modern English Tanka Press, PO Box 43717, Baltimore, MD 21236 USA. Perfect bound, 6 x 9, 175 pages, biographies of contributors, bibliography, $12.95. Available through Lulu.com
(Caveat: When ordering from Lulu watch the shipping charges. At first they will show them to be over $13 – what I paid, but if you keep clicking around, others have said you can find the option for cheaper shipping and handling charges.)
Jeffrey Woodward’s comments on the back of the book are a brief and the best introduction to this new book:
“The Tanka Prose Anthology is a vital evidence of the first flowering in English of an ancient Japanese genre – tanka prose, the wedding of prose and tanka in one unified composition. The great diversity in subject and style of the individual writings in this volume testifies to the versatility of this new medium in the hands of skilled practitioners. Whether the setting is urban or pastoral, an elegant interior or rustic retreat, whether the time is contemporary and presently unfolding or archaic and retrospective, the revival of the ancient medium of tanka prose has proven equal to the immediate task. This first-of-its-king collection draws upon the work of nineteen poets from eight different countries. The introduction offers a detailed survey of the genre’s history and of its evolving forms while an annotated bibliography directs the reader to related literature. Why is tanka prose so novel? Because it is so old. The present anthology announces that it is her to stay.”
Jeffrey has given generously of his thinking and research for this book and we are all grateful that he has turned his attention, and the readers’ minds, to the subject of prose and tanka. It is interesting that the combination of prose and tanka is so accepted, so much a part of Japan’s long literary history, that we have not been given a Japanese name for the genre. The various resulting books, essays, diaries, have names to distinguish them, but the addition, or lack of, tanka does not earn a special term.
When Basho borrowed from this time-honored technique, to combine hokku and prose, as in his several travel journals, he gave the combination the name haibun (hai = crippled, joke, broken; bun = literature, essay, prose). This term is easily used in English for efforts written in that language.
In spite of Woodward’s use of the term “tanka prose” – a true oxymoron – in this book, there are still on-going discussions of what the form should be called in English. A recent poll on the AHAforums come up with these results:
tanka prose - 18%
tanka + prose - 12%
tankabun - 37%
kabun - 18%
wakabun - 0%
tanbun - 12%
To say “tankabun” would be like referring to “haikubun” which may be more accurate but sticks in the throat. Is it a time to change these names before we go any farther? It may already be too late as Woodward has now started a magazine using his term. Modern Haibun & Tanka Prose is a biannual journal-a print literary journal, a PDF e-book, and a digital online magazine-dedicated to the publication and promotion of fine English haibun and tanka prose.
Besides this point, The Tanka Prose Anthology does contain a wealth of valuable information that otherwise might be overlooked. The scholar Woodward carefully and completely discusses the history of tanka combined with prose in Japan and now in the English language. Then, using examples of the works of the nineteen contributors to the anthology, Woodward points out the various styles and methods current writers are employing in their use of this form in compact discussions of their work. For this we are very grateful to Jeffrey for separating out and defining this arm of Japanese-inspired writing. His scholarship is impeccable.
The anthology presents the works alphabetically by author and the very first one, by Hortensia Anderson, blows up Woodward’s whole concept of trying to put modern prose and poetry into a box by her employing a ghazal-like couplet, prose, two five-line untanka and a haiku. Fortunately for Woodward, Marjorie Buettner comes on the next page with her classical examples of prose and perfectly written tanka which greatly deserve the eight pages they are given.
But then Sanford Goldstein immediately disrupts the tanka prose theory with eleven pages of journal prose that include his quirkiest use of the tanka form – many of which, if written correctly according to syntax would be haiku.
As welcome relief, Larry Kimmel’s work appears and here again are the nearly perfectly formed tanka combined with varied and interesting glimpses into spots of life.
Yet on the next page Gary Le Bel continues with his imaginative prose (as letters written by a Southern man long-dead) to which tanka are attached. The reader, this one at least, felt whipped back and forth with trying to apply the principles of tanka prose as stated in the introduction and what has been written.
Other authors in the anthology are Bob Luckey, Terra Martin, Giselle Maya, Linda Papanicolaou, Stanley Pelter, Patricia Prime (who certainly deserved her many pages for her work), Jane Reichhold, Werner Reichhold, Miriam Sagan, Katherine Samuelowicz, Karma Tenzing Wangchuk, Linda Jeannette Ward, Michael Dylan Welch, and Jeffrey Woodward.
It is too late to rewrite the book, but I wonder if it had been better for Woodward’s theory about tanka and prose to present first the writers’ works that best illuminate his ideas and then later, deeper in the anthology, to show how modern writers are already moving beyond the concept. Also, I wish in the acknowledgements Woodward had given the web addresses of works, especially excerpted works, so readers could find and read the complete piece.
The book is beautifully made, and I see the two figures in the cover illustration as prose and its blue-faced tanka child.
Tanka written and translated by Geert Verbeke. Cover photo by Jenny Ovaere taken in Nagarkot Nepal. Printed by Cybernit.net, in Govindpur Colony, Allahabad, India. 2008. Perfect bound with color cover, 5.25 x 8.5 inches, 48 pages, with two poems per page in Dutch and English. Contact Geert Verbeke for purchase information. He often will do a simple trade; send him your book and he will send you his.
As Geert Verbeke speeds up his ever astounding production of books, Tanka feels as if the author is too busy to bother with including pages of title, introduction, preface or dedication. On the page facing all the normal book information, the poems begin. I wish I loved the tanka of Geert Verbeke as much as I admire his haiku. In his haiku, he mostly – but not always, remains subjective. Somehow in his understanding of the “objective” aspect of tanka he has mistakenly taken this to mean that in tanka he is allowed to preach or show off the superiority of his life-style.
Verbeke is a very educated man who has traveled widely and absorbed religions and philosophies only to abandon them in his life. However, in his tanka he dumps in all the ideas he has thrown away or out-grown into five lines.
All too often instead of seeing tanka as a poetry form where the natural world connects with the personal world through images that are common to both, he uses his five lines to state again and again his personal philosophy on what we should think, do, or believe or envy about his sex life.
However, by page 6 he has this out of his system and his tanka become hymns of praise for Jenny his partner and their lusty love life. On page 16 she is abandoned for a travelogue to a place with plentiful berries, but he returns to her on page 26 more lusty than ever. The rest of the book of tanka are centered around Geert’s newest passion – flying. His tanka take you on his maiden flight, into a helicopter, a flight over the Grand Canyon and obviously a trip to Japan. There the tanka return to hymns of praise for people and events there and ends one for his daughter Saskia:
my daughter draws
a tiger with a long tail
on the wet window
he grins to the passengers
in the morning train
It is fitting that Tanka ends on this poem. Geert Verbeke travels onward, and upward, with all his endeavors. May the gods of poetry protect and provide for him whether he believes in them or not.
NOTES OF OTHER BOOKS AND REVIEWS
Curtis Dunlap has written a book review of Basho The Complete Haiku that you can find at: http://tobaccoroadpoet.blogspot.com/2009/01/basho-complete-haiku-book-review.html
Modern Haiga is an annual journal—both print and digital—dedicated to publishing and promoting fine modern graphic poetry, especially but not limited to, haiku, senryu, tanka, cinquain, cinqku, crystallines, cherita, and sijo. Many writers and artists around the world have generously shared their work in Modern Haiga. Included in the premiere issue print edition are one hundred and one outstanding works of graphic poetry. We are pleased to announce the publication of the print edition of Modern Haiga 2008. The digital edition with all accepted works is available, free, online. The print edition includes a subset of he works in the digital edition; specifically, one hundred and one works were included in the case-wrapped hard cover book, one work to a page.
The full-color, hard cover book is priced at $49.95 and is available at our Lulu store, and at our MET Press website. Thank you, all the fine poets and artists who submitted their work to Modern Haiga 2008, and to the very hard-working board of editors, which included Alexis Rotella, Liam Wilkinson, Linda Papanicolaou, and Raffael de Gruttola. Alexis and I have resigned from the board for 2009, so we can have some fresh blood for the new edition. Liam Wilkinson is the new chief editor for MH 2009. We encourage you to send your submissions in to Modern Haiga 2009 - submissions are open and now forwards to Liam. best wishes and thanks for a great year! - Denis M. Garrison
Jack Fruit Moon, haiku and tanka by Robert D. Wilson, Published by Modern English Tanka Press. Available from Lulu.com, from major booksellers, and from the publisher. Complete information and a mail or email order form are available online. Trade paperback price: $16.95 USD. ISBN 978-0-9817691-4-1. 204 pages, 6.00" x 9.00", perfect binding, 60# cream interior paper, black and white interior ink, 100# exterior paper, full-color exterior ink.
Jack Fruit Moon by Robert D. Wilson, his long-awaited new collection of haiku and tanka strings, is a captivating read, not to be missed. The book includes a Preface by Steven D. Carter and a Foreword by Sanford Goldstein is already being widely praised by poets and critics alike:
Renowned poet and translator Sanford Goldstein describes Robert Wilson's Jack Fruit Moon as "... the creation of a remarkable world unlike anything seen in tanka and haiku all these centuries. The book is filled with unusual images that make us feel we are experiencing a surrealist world. ... What seems to have happened in this amazing book filled with images never seen on sea or land is that the rationalism of the world is turned upside down or is sent whirling as on an endless merry-go-round."
"As exotic as its title, Jack Fruit Moon is an intriguing document, a lyrical stream of consciousness in the shape of alternating haiku and tanka style poems. It is rich with fantastical language and mysterious images. We can smell the tropics in Wilson's poetry :
sundown
the old woman
scooping
fish paste
into recycled bottles
and we can feel the heat of love there :
dancing with
lights, your nipples
lead me to
the bed we broke last
night in a haiku
An excitingly different poetic world to read and absorb."
—Amelia Fielden, Australian poet and translator.
"The well-known poet and founder of the online literary journal, Simply Haiku, Robert Wilson, has written an epoch-making work of vivid tanka-haiku entitled Jack Fruit Moon. His web haiku, “Vietnam Ruminations,” which I used in my college textbook, The
Internationalization of Japanese Poetry, gave us a strong punch, challenging our lukewarm living. Through Jack Fruit Moon, he shows us his way of living in the southeast Asian nation, the Philippines, where he lives with his new wife and family. His poetry emotes vivid images of life in the Philippines. When I was younger, I recall the time when my Filipino friend recommended I try `balut' saying that if I did, I would better understand the Filipino mind and spirit. Enjoy this innovative new tanka and haiku collection. Please taste Robert's cooking in the Philippines!"
—Ikuyo Yoshimura, internationally recognized poet, author,
speaker, and Associate Professor of English at Asahi University, Gifu, Japan
About Author: Robert D. Wilson lives in the Republic of the Philippines with his wife, Jinky. He's a retired educator, newspaper staff writer, magazine columnist, and Southern Baptist minister. Wilson's the co-founder and owner/managing editor of Simply Haiku. For years Wilson served as the master of ceremonies for monthly open mike poetry
readings in Sonora, California. He's performed his poetry on radio, television, and in a variety of public venues. Wilson's poetry and haiga have been widely published throughout the English speaking world. His haiku and tanka have been translated in the Japanese, Romanian, Serbian, Italian, French, and Tagalog languages. Robert D. Wilson is the father of six children. Not bad for a 59 year old, hard to figure out, and definitely unpredictable "kano."
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BOOK REVIEWS
White Petals by Harue Aoki. Shichigatsudo Ltd. Tokyo, Japan. ISBN: 978-4-87944-120-1. Perfect bound with glassine dust jacket, 5 x 7.25 inches, Introduction by Sanford Goldstein, 130 pages, ¥1500.
The Unworn Necklace by Roberta Beary, edited by John Barlow. Snapshot Press, P.O Box 123, Waterloo, Liverpool, United Kingdom L22 8WZ: 2007. Trade perfect bound with color cover, 5.5 x 8.5 inches, 80 pages one haiku per page. US$14; UK£7.99.
Seeing It Now: haiku & tanka by Marjorie Buettner. Red Dragonfly Press, press-in-residence at the Anderson Center, P.O. Box 406, Red Wing, MN 55066. Cover illustration by Jauneth Skinner. Introduction by H.F. Noyes. Perfect bound, 5.5 x 8.5, 44 pages, $15. ISBN:978-1-890193-85-0.
Songs Dedicated to my Mother – Julia Conforti by Gerard J. Conforti AHA Online Books, 2008.
Kindle of Green by Cherie Hunter Day and David Rice. Letterpress on emerald Stardream cover and hand-sewn binding by Swamp Press. Illustrations by Cherie Hunter Day. ISBN: 978-0-934714-36-5, 48 pages, 5.5 x 8 inches, $13 ppd. USA and Canada. $15 for international orders. Write to Cherie Hunter Day, P.O. Box 910562, San Diego, CA 92191.
Because of a Seagull by Gilles Fabre. The Fishing Cat Press. Perfect bound, 8.5 x 5.5, unnumbered pages, two haiku per page. Includes a CD with a French translation of the poems. 2005. ISBN:0-9551071-0-5.
Gatherings: A Haiku Anthology edited by Stanford M. Forrester. Bottle Rockets Book #13. Published by Bottle Rockets Press, P.O. Box 189Windsor, Connecticut, 06095. Flat spine, color cover, 5 x 6.5 inches, 78 pages, ISBN:978-0-9792257-2-7, $14.
Opening the Pods by Silva Ley. Translation from the Dutch Ontbolstering by Silva Ley. AHA Online Book, 2008.
In the Company of Crows: Haiku and Tanka Between the Tides by Carole MacRury. Edited by Cathy Drinkwater Better. Black Cat Press, Eldersburg, Maryland: 2008. Perfect bound, 140 pages, sumi-e by Ion Codrescu, author and artist notes, $18.
The Japanese Universe for the 21st Century: Japanese / English Japanese Haiku 2008, edited and published by the Modern Haiku Association (Gendai Haiku Kyokai) Tokyo, Japan. Perfect bound, dust jacket, 220 pages, indexed, bilingual with kanji and romaji for each poem. Translation of haiku by David Burleigh and prose by Richard Wilson ISBN:978-4-8161-0712-2, $25.
Haiga 1998 – 2008 Japan Collection by Emile Molhuysen. Binder bound, 8 x 12, unnumbered pages, with a CD included. E-mail for price and shipping.Website.
Haiku, Haibun, Haiga – De la un poem la altul by Valentin Nicolitov. Societatea Scritorilor Militari, Bucuresti: 2008. Translated from Romanian into English and French. Flat-spine, 5.5 x 8 inches, 142 pages. ISBN:978-973-8941-34-2.
Floating Here and There written and translated by Ikuyo Okamoto. Kadokawa Shoten. ISBN:978-4-04-52039-5, US$15. Perfect bound, 4 x 7, 130 pages, bilingual with poems in kanji and English.
So the Elders Say – Tanka Sequence by Carol Purington and Larry Kimmel. Folded 8 x 11 inches single sheet with color photos. Winfred Press, 2008
The Irresistible Hudson: A Haiku Tribute Based on Yiddish Poetry by Martin Wasserman. Honors Press, Adirondack Community College, State University of New York, 640 Bay Road, Queensbury, New York, 12804. Flat-spine, 28 pages, 5.5 x 8 inches. No Price, no web access given.
The Tanka Prose Anthology, edited by Jeffrey Woodward. Modern English Tanka Press, PO Box 43717, Baltimore, MD 21236 USA. Perfect bound, 6 x 9, 175 pages, biographies of contributors, bibliography, $12.95. Available through Lulu.com
Tanka written and translated by Geert Verbeke. Cover photo by Jenny Ovaere taken in Nagarkot Nepal. Printed by Cybernit.net, in Govindpur Colony, Allahabad, India. 2008. Perfect bound with color cover, 5.25 x 8.5 inches, 48 pages, with two poems per page in Dutch and English. Contact Geert Verbeke for purchase information. He often will do a simple trade; send him your book and he will send you his.
NOTES OF OTHER BOOKS AND REVIEWS
Curtis Dunlap has written a book review of Basho The Complete Haiku that you can find at: http://tobaccoroadpoet.blogspot.com
/2009/01/basho-complete-haiku-book-review.html
Modern Haiga is an annual journal—both print and igital—dedicated to
publishing and promoting fine modern graphic poetry, especially but
not limited to, haiku, senryu, tanka, cinquain, cinqku, crystallines,
cherita, and sijo. Many writers and artists around the world have
generously shared their work in Modern Haiga.
Jack Fruit Moon, haiku and tanka by Robert D. Wilson, Published by
Modern English Tanka Press. Available from Lulu.com, from
major booksellers, and from the publisher. Complete information and a
mail or email order form are available online. Trade paperback price: $16.95 USD.
ISBN 978-0-9817691-4-1. 204 pages, 6.00" x 9.00", perfect binding,
60# cream interior paper, black and white interior ink, 100# exterior
paper, full-color exterior ink. |
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