LYNX XXVI:1, February, 2011


Table of Contents XXVI:1 February, 2011		LYNX A Journal for Linking Poets



		BOOK REVIEWS *D’ÂMES ET D’AILES of souls and wings* by Janick Belleau. Perfect-bound, trade-cover, 5.5. x 8.5 inches, 154 pages, illustrated with black and white photos, French and English. $20. Les Êditions du tanka francophone, ISBN: 9782981 077059. D’ÂMES ET D’AILES of souls and wings is the book that in October, 2010 The Canada Council for the Arts announced as one of the winners of the 2010 Canada-Japan Literary Awards and granted the prize of $10,000. Not only are applause and kudos due to Janick Belleau for her work but also the Canada Council of Arts for so honoring a book of tanka. Janick Belleau, poet, cultural writer, and lecturer, has been interested in haiku and tanka since 1998. To date she has edited three anthologies of haiku in French and English and has two personal collections: Humeur. . ./Sensibility. . . /Alma. . . haiku and tanka and L’En-dehors du dêsir – short poems, du Blê. Her feature articles and presentations deal with how women poets have contributed to the advancement of tanka and haiku in Japan since the 9th century and in Canada and France since the 20th century. Twice she has given talks at the Haiku Canada yearly meetings on the work and influence of women writing haiku and tanka in French. Translations of these talks, by Dorothy Howard are now available online at Women and Haiku in French, Thematic Evolution, talk for Haiku Canada, 2008 and Canadian Haiku Women and Inner Thoughts; talk for Haiku Canada, 2009 Before getting to the 91 tanka of D’ÂMES ET D’AILES of souls and wings, 42 pages are given to a well-annotated and scholarly essay, in both languages, TANKA BY WOMEN SINCE THE 9TH CENTURY in which Janick Belleau traces the her-story of tanka with brief biographies of the better-known poetesses. Her study and examples are taken from books on the subject that have appeared in French and it is very interesting to note how the tanka story has come down through the French river of books. So, the poems. The tanka are sectioned into seven divisions titled Between Culture & Nature, Burning Fire (with a photo of ‘burning’ water), Walking toward Winter, Roots (showing tree branches), Solitary, The Last Sleep and The Beyond (which interestingly enough is prefaced with a drawing of Ono no Komachi). The section, “Roots” which is dedicated to Ms. Belleau’s father, curiously contains most of the heartfelt poems about mothers. As with many of the tanka, I felt the author was dancing around very upsetting material without the courage to say it outright. There was too much of the ‘good little daughter’ unable to speak her truth. Maybe love poems, as tanka are often labeled, were not the genre for this section. Or does Ms. Belleau get kudos for trying? The actual love poems for her mate are much more open and precise. The honesty of feeling comes through and the tanka carry it on open arms. along the green road on a midsummer day a bay of diamonds wild with joy I go to you wearing red lipstick Baie de diamants longeant la route verte au milieu de l’été le coeur fou je vais toi du rouge sut mes lèvres From the French version one can see how the lines 1 & 3 have been inverted. Ah, a search of the information page, I see Claudia Coutu Radmore has “révision des tanka en anglais.” I wish I had someone here at my elbow to discuss which version is stronger; or even if there is a difference. As I, in this solitude, read the poem again, I delight in the connection between the “bay of diamonds” and the author’s joy and for me that is the crux of the poem. And I admire the contrast between the green road and the red lipstick. Very fine! Why is the poem left so different in the French? Ah, one more question before I leave this. I am wondering why the English versions are all in lower case (hooray!) and why each of the French poems begins with a capital letter. Is Ms. Belleau adhering to some French tenet that refuses to be moved? Comfort for the author. Remember any time a critic jabs you with a worded spear, he or she has recently pulled the bleeding side the same and equally painful weapon guided home by someone else aimed at his or her work. How can we use love poems to describe a period of our lives still so outlined in pain due to a lack of love? What is going on with us, the women of imperfect childhoods when we write poetry? *Head Wind Tail Wind* by Ikuko Kawamura. Gated color cover, 6 x 8 inches. 80 pages, full-color photos, Japanese with the poems translated into English. ¥1300. I often feel like a protectionist, as if I want to put my arms around a poetic term when I feel it is endangered by an adjacent or new diminutive term. It seemed to me that tanka would become an endangered species if I accepted the word gogyohka into my vocabulary. The gogyohka is a modern Japanese devised term for a derivative form of tanka, written in five lines like the tanka but without the employment of the pivot, change of voice or any of the other signifiers of linkage and leaps within a tanka. It is basically a sentence broken by uneven right margins into five parts. Is my distaste showing yet? For someone who has to really work to get a tanka do all the many techniques for which the genre is so rightly known, it seems criminally easy to simply think of a sentence, crack its spine into the form and call the product a tanka. Yet, as I see more and more so-called tanka writers adopting into use this method of writing, I am beginning to appreciate having a term such as gogyohka at hand. Ms. Kawamura’s book arrived with a lovely bookmark that adds as sub-title, “The Collection of Tanka Poems created in Brazil, Argentina, and Peru having traveled in October, 2008 for only fifteen days” When I first started reading the poems my ever-present inner critic was screaming, “but these poems are not really tanka.” When I quieted that voice with a calm, “well maybe these are gogyohka.” I was able to relax and let myself be taken on a marvelous trip through cities and countries I never hope to visit. As tour guide, Ms Kawamura is excellent. Her photos are of professional quality, she introduces each locale with prose (in kanji) and her flow of poems is a gentle narrative of her days. Not only does the reader get to know what she saw or did, but also, thanks to the tanka habit of adding subjective material – feelings and emotions felt – can emote with her during each new experience. While I greatly admire Ms. Kawamura’s ability to garner her thoughts while on such an intensive trip, and for making a lovely book out of the journey, I quake to think of the influence she might have on neophyte tanka writers in English. Will they think tanka writing is this easy? this facile? Will their tanka of the future be so lacking in poetic technique? I worry. Recycling Starlight by Penny Harter. Mountains and Rivers Press, P.O. Box 5389, Eugene OR 97405 http://mountainsandriverpress.org. Hand-tied, 5.5 x 8.5 inches, 28 pages, gated cover, cover design, printing and binding by Ed Rayher of Swamp Press. $15.00. In a series of 23 poems of various forms and genres, Penny Harter records her feelings and recovery in grief from the death of her husband, William Higginson on October 11, 2008. One cannot help but be touched by the bravery of this woman as her poetry comes to sustain and retain the burden of memory. As John Brandi writes in the back page blurb: “These poems are among Penny Harter’s best, a fine tribute to her late husband, a wrenching presentation of loss, and an incomparable homage to love.” One cannot critique such work. One can only be thankful to be invited by a book to observe, in reverent silence, the work of recovery we all have to make at some time. Ce Rosenow, at Mountains and River Press, has done a beautiful job with the making of the book by putting it in the hands of Ed Rayher. The dark blue covers, specked with the starlight of mica, and the somber black of the end sheets adds to the serious and subdued tone of the poems. The old-time process of hand-tying the pages reminds one of the many haiku books done by Swamp Press. For those who may have thought of Penny as a poetic shadow behind William Higginson, a reading of the list of her books and the poetry fellowships (three from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, and one from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts -- VCCA), and one award from The Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation and the Mary Carolyn Davies Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America and the first William O. Douglas Nature Writing Award) at the book should quickly convince all that Penny Harter deserves to be seen as a poet in her own right. Penny now lives in Mays Landing, New Jersey and works as a visiting poet in the schools through programs sponsored by the New Jersey State Council on the arts and various other agencies. Riding the Atlantic City Express Train to Manhattan for the Spring Equinox 2009 in the marsh beside the tracks, one heron whitens the dawn train whistle – I remember the warmth of your hand weak sunlight lifts the morning haze – a rusting water tower red budding on the maples – I flex all my fingers brown leaves clutch the pin oak limbs – I whisper your name spring equinox – the train rocks side-to-side on polished rails *Shelter\| Street* Haiku & Senryu by Karma Tenzing Wangchuk. Minotaur Press, P.O. Box 272, Port Townsend, Washington 98368. Saddle-stapled, 5.5 x 8.5 inches, 36 pages, $10. I first met Karma Tenzing Wangchuk in the library, where he worked, in El Rita, New Mexico 13 years ago, before he became a Buddhist monk and left behind the name of Dennis Dutton. Years later I met him, splendid in his monk’s robes at the ukiaHaiku Festival in Ukiah California. Now, with this book, I meet him as an ex-monk, but still with the amazing name, on the pages from Port Townsend, Washington where I learn I could go to listen to him read at the open mic at The Boiler Room on Thursdays and at Lehani’s Deli and Coffee House on Fridays. I am tempted to make the trip just to be in this man’s presence again. For me, Tenzing is the quintessential haiku poet. He lives on the edge and he manages to control the madness bequeathed to him by the Viet Nam war into hard and biting haiku that still have an aroma of sweetness and a glide of gentleness about them. From page 26 sunflower – head too heavy to meet the sun low tide. . . the shells not chosen summer’s end a swelling of wind in the pines See what I mean? Do you know what I am trying to say about his poems? I wish I could lay this gentle booklet in your hands so you could share these moments. Unable to do that, I can only recommend you buy the book. Wouldn’t that be a lovely happening? To have checks and orders pouring into box 272 from around the world asking for Tenzing’s book? In my universe that would happen. *aN ABunNDaNCe of GiFts* by Stanley pelter. George Mann Publications, Easton, Winchester, Hampshire SO21 1ES England. Perfect-bound, 6 x 9 inches, 134 pages, £8. Appropriately, aN ABunNDaNCe of GiFts arrived in the mail on Christmas Eve. It has proved to be the gift that keeps on giving. Now, well into January, I am still finding gems to admire, delights for pleasure, and new ways of thinking of this old life. I think this is the best of all of Stanley Pelter’s books. Izzy Sharp’s cover is certainly his best ever. Just when I am thinking the front cover is superb, I will accidentally lay the book down with the back cover exposed and then I think, “no this is even better.” Back and forth I go each time I pick up the book. It takes time to read one of Pelter’s books. You can not simply find a comfortable chair near a heat source and settle in for a read. Pelter has to be taken in small bites, with time to allow the complexity of his thinking to ooze into consciousness. Just when you think you have gotten the prose, the piece has a haiku in it, like a fat Brazil nut that you must nibble at, chew and digest all the while you are still trying to get around it. Pelter takes the genre of haibun to the edge of the cliff, where he tosses it into the air, blows on it playfully and then skillfully catches it in his outstretched hands to hold it before a reader with a chuckle rumbling from his deep chest. With the same skill that Pelter mixes genres, images and subject matter, the fonts and attributes on the page follow the bouncing ball. He must be a typesetter’s nightmare but he proves again that his vision is deeper and wider than that of any one else. This time John Parsons did the illustrations. He must be Pelter’s right hand. The same quirky mind seems there also. May that third operation go well, return him to health, and keep alive this wellspring of twisted thought. We need him to remember the distance of our edges.
	BOOK REVIEWS *D’ÂMES ET D’AILES of souls and wings* by Janick Belleau. Perfect-bound, trade-cover, 5.5. x 8.5 inches, 154 pages, illustrated with black and white photos, French and English. $20. Les Êditions du tanka francophone, ISBN: 9782981 077059. *Head Wind Tail Wind* by Ikuko Kawamura. Gated color cover, 6 x 8 inches. 80 pages, full-color photos, Japanese with the poems translated into English. ¥1300. Recycling Starlight by Penny Harter. Mountains and Rivers Press, P.O. Box 5389, Eugene OR 97405 http://mountainsandriverpress.org. Hand-tied, 5.5 x 8.5 inches, 28 pages, gated cover, cover design, printing and binding by Ed Rayher of Swamp Press. $15.00. *Shelter\| Street* Haiku & Senryu by Karma Tenzing Wangchuk. Minotaur Press, P.O. Box 272, Port Townsend, Washington 98368. Saddle-stapled, 5.5 x 8.5 inches, 36 pages, $10. *aN ABunNDaNCe of GiFts* by Stanley pelter. George Mann Publications, Easton, Winchester, Hampshire SO21 1ES England. Perfect-bound, 6 x 9 inches, 134 pages, £8.



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