Those Women Writing Haiku
CHAPTER 2
Tanka and Haiku Come to America
Before the combined efforts of women, centered around Amy Lowell, to bring haiku to North America, another woman, Adelaide Crapsey, was, through her independent study, already ahead of them.
In 1908, while in Europe with her father, she decided to return to Rome, where she had lived in 1904 - 1905, staying in Rome, London and Paris until 1911. While in London she studied English prosody at the British Museum in 1910. Perhaps as early as in 1909, the shy and sensitive Adelaide had read A Hundred Verses from Old Japan, William N. Porter's translation of the Hyakunin Isshu anthology and From the Eastern Sea by Yone Noguchis. In her notebooks she lists eleven tanka and eight haiku she had translated from Anthologie de la litt`erature japonaise des origines au XXe si`ecle from Marcel Revon. So influenced, Adelaide developed her own poetic system which she called cinquain.
These short, unrhymed poems consisting of twenty-two syllables distributed as 2, 4, 6, 8, and 2, in five lines were related to, but not copied from Japanese literary styles. Though she devised this form around 1909-1910, most of the 28 of which we have record that she accomplished were written between 1911 and 1914. An early death, on October 8, 1914, from tuberculosis prevented her from exploring the genre.
Published posthumously, in 1915, (by Claude Bragdon, Manas Press) with her other works as, Verse, cinquains came to be well-known only through the efforts of Carl Sandburg in his anthology, Cornhuskers, 1918, and Louis Utermeyer's Modern American Poetry, 1919. However, the interest in her poetry became so great that in 1922, Alfred A. Knopf published a second edition which was reprinted in 1926 and 1929 and a third edition was published in 1934 and reprinted in 1938.
Adelaide Crapsey is credited, not only with these first experiments with Japanese literature, but she is recognized as one of the earliest Imagists. Through the cinquain never became as popular as either tanka or haiku later became, it has outlived the Imagist Movement and continues to be used by tanka and haiku poets, notably Ruby Schackleford of Wilson, North Carolina. Footnote1
If Adelaide had not died so young (37) and had been able to build upon her early success by continuing to write and publish, one can surmise the effect when another woman discovered Japanese literature and found the courage to adapt it to her poetry as, unknown to her, Adelaide Crapsey had done nearly ten years before.
The second story begins with the publication of Amy Lowell's first book of poetry, A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass, on October 12, 1912. "Her first volume was perfectly acceptable poetry, but according to the few reviews it received, that was the trouble. There was nothing to excite or arouse the reader, even to anger." Footnote2 Another reviewer, Louis Utermeyer, in his column, "And Other Poems" in the Chicago Evening Post criticized the book with such vehemence that later he would write that his review was "not only generally patronizing but cruel in it particulars". Footnote3
Amy Lowell, bewildered by the rejection, took to her bed in the family home in Sevenels, Massachusetts, surrounded by exactly sixteen pillows for the next three months. During her recovery from nervous exhaustion, she opened the first copy of a new poetry magazine, Poetry, published by Harriet Monroe in Chicago.
The year before, while planning her strategy to launch the magazine which would be an outlet for new American poets, whether they were living at home or aboard, Harriet Monroe visited Europe where she met Ezra Pound. "Impressed with his sharp scorn of established magazine verse in his native country...she appointed him "foreign correspondent" for Poetry." Footnote4
For the first issue of Poetry, Pound sent, not his work, but that of a woman, a member of the group he had formed around himself called Les Imagists. Daring to sign her name only as ""H.D., Imagiste.", it was the poems of Hilda Doolittle, with their unrhymed, three-to-five word lines and exact use of images that caused Amy to realize why her first book of poems had failed. "She was an Imagist, too!" Footnote5 Rereading her new book, Amy found "unconscious imagisms" which she was intelligent to recognize as elements at work in herself that corresponded to new impulses in the magazine, Poetry.
In the March, 1913, issue, Ezra Pound "outlined the method used by Les Imagists to achieve the effect they were striving for in poetry: the emotional impact of things seen...nothing had so excited (Amy) as this set of do's and don'ts". Footnote6One facet of Pound's doctrine is one that is familiar to readers of haiku theory of later times: he refused to divulge the most important factor, claiming that it was not for the general public. "His words gave the impression that the Imagistse circle was a sacred cabala that must preserve a mystic secrecy concerning its essential concept" Footnote7
Pound's arrogance and his device worked positively on Amy. She booked passage on a ship in the early summer of 1913 for London, armed with a letter of introduction to Pound from Harriet Monroe, with the expressed purpose of wringing the secret out of him and meeting the other members of the group, especially Hilda Doolittle.
"Actually, the size of Pound's ego was much greater than the influence of his leadership, as the members of Les Imagistes were very loosely held together. The ideas had originated with Thomas E. Hulme...and the flamboyant Pound was quick to grab hold of them and make then his creation. The Imagiste movement was simply a series of weekly meetings in Soho cafes or teahouses, where the struggling new poets gathered to talk over tea and cake and to sit around by the hour writing Japanese tanka or haiku." 7
"At first, all went well between Amy and the self-styled leader of Les Imagistes...although each sensed in the other a domineering streak that could lead to friction between them." 8
Before this happened (about a year later) Pound accepted Amy Lowell's poem, "After Hearing a Waltz by Barto`k" which she had written under the influence of Les Imagistes, for inclusion in a small anthology of the group's poetry called Des Imagists.
In the summer of 1914, Amy and her life-companion, Ada Dwyer, set sail for Europe ("aboard ship was Amy's maroon Pierce-Arrow, with liveried chauffeur to match") Footnote8; she was, after all, the youngest daughter of the famous Lowells of Boston) with the expressed purpose "to consolidate her position with Les Imagistes, to be considered a full-fledged member or even an executive."1 Footnote90 Hostessing hotel banquets for Pound and his groups (he was now head of a group called "Vorticism") did not enlighten Amy to the inner secrets of Imagism but did serve to introduce her to the avant guard poets of England: Richard Aldington (who had just married Hilda Doolittle), John Gould Fletcher, James Joyce, Ford Madox Ford, D. H. Lawrence.
During these activities, and conferences to get her next book of poetry, Sword Blades and Poppy Seed, published with George Macmillan, Amy and Ada were stranded by the out-break of the First World War. Unknown to them, and only a few miles away, Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, were in the same predicament. Amy used her time to organize the "Belgian War Relief and to help stranded American who wanted to go home. She aided the latter cause by working in Hoover's office at the American consulate and at Victoria Station, where, with a large placard pinned to her ample bosom, she directed late, bewildered arrivals to the proper bureaus for finding hotel rooms or return passage, She also made a personal donation of $10,000. to (US President) Hoover's committee. Her main activity during these days of turmoil and marking time, however, was to make concrete plans for a new Imagiste anthology."1 Footnote101
Here the head-on confrontation with Pound was realized and Pound disassociated himself from the second, third and fourth anthologies, Imagiste, in which Amy wrote "explanatory prefaces, (which) aroused widespread interest and discussion."1 Footnote112 It was her force and influence that added to the list of participants the names and works of D. H. Lawrence, F. S. Flint and Ford Madox Ford, who repulsed by Pound's behavior, had decided to boycott the movement.
Adding fuel to the fire was the acclaim Amy Lowell received with the publication of her second book, Sword Blades and Poppy Seeds, on September 22, 1914. Not only did the images in her title fit the currents events (the German invasion of Flanders) but her language and images were at the leading edge of modern poetry. Yet "when Macmillan in its zeal to make the most of the stir the book caused, advertised the author as "the foremost member of the Imagists", he (Pound) was furious and threatened to sue both Amy and the publisher".1 Footnote123
Amy dared him to try it with a letter stating: "you would be obliged to prove my inclusion in your group (referring to Pound's publication of Des Imagistes) as a libel, and it would be interesting to see whether that could be done. She had him there, and she knew it!"1 Footnote134
In the preface to Sword Blades and Poppy Seeds, and in the poem, "Astigmatism" (in which she portrays a poet, easy identified as Pound, as one who walks through a garden with a cane, whacking off the heads of all flowers which are not roses), Amy proclaimed that her work was not wholly of one school or movement, but the result of many sources. Still she maintained an active part in the selection, writing and publication of the rest of the issues of Des Imagistes. Pound, with the scathing attacks on Amy and the publisher, "evidently resented Amy's takeover of the Imagist movement in America".1 Footnote145
It would be going too far to say that any of the efforts of bringing Imagism to readers of poetry was introducing them to haiku. Aside from the use of direct images, unrhymed lines and associative groupings of visual elements, it is almost impossible to recognize the haiku form in any of the works. Amy herself must have realized this. In 1925, Amy published, What's O'Clock, sub-titled, "Twenty-Four Hokku on a Modern Theme". The theme was unrequited love, which, at that time, was thought to be a facet of the tanka, and not suitable for haiku and never for hokku.
Amy used the strict seventeen syllable count while bringing the clarity and succinct images to prove that she could, when she wanted to, write very good hokku.
Beyond this, Amy maintained an avid interest in Oriental literature and art, using all her skills to bring them to the English-reading public. In her introduction to Diaries of Court Ladies of Old Japan,1 Footnote156 she writes vividly and knowingly of all the Japanese poem forms, including hokku which was not yet known at the time of the writing of the Court Diaries, explaining each genre clearly.
Her collected poems published in 1919 by Macmillan were titled, Pictures of the Floating World.1 Footnote167 Several of her poem titles acknowledged influence from Japanese wood prints and lacquered objects and in her introduction to Pictures of the Floating World she wrote:
"In the Japanese 'Lacquer Prints', the hokku pattern has been ... closely followed ... but... I have made no attempt to observe the syllabic rules which are a basic part of all Japanese poetry. I have endeavored only to keep the brevity and suggest of the hokku, and preserve it within its natural sphere."1 Footnote178
Though bed-ridden with a long list of ailments including high blood pressure, heart disease and a condition only referred to as 'weak eyes', Amy collaborated with Florence Ayscough on Fir-Flower Tablets, a translation of a collection of Chinese poetry which was published in December, 1921.
None of these women: Adelaide Crapsey, Harriet Monroe, Hilda Doolittle, Amy Lowell, or Florence Ayscough had the goal of bringing the haiku form, as such, to American poetry, but were far more enthusiastic about spreading the haiku spirit and techniques of haiku writing so that other poets would incorporate this in their own newer works. With the ending of Amy Lowell's life and work, as so often has happened in haiku history when poet gathers much interest in the form, the death signals the end of that phase of development.
It wasn't until 1934 that a comprehensive study of haiku was published by Harold G. Henderson under the title, The Bamboo Broom. It's effect on the American poets, Carl Sandburg, John Gould Fletcher, William Carlos Williams, e.e. cummings and Wallace Stevens, is difficult to evaluate though, we can see that each of these used haiku influence in their work, but they were not interested in furthering an acceptance and understanding of Japanese poetry forms.
The Second World War, which on one hand was an interruption to the flow of poetry, did, on the other hand, through American involvement with the Japanese language, ultimately opened up the spread of Japanese literature.
From 1949 to 1952 there appeared the four books of haiku translations and commentary by Robert L. Blyth which became the basis for the interest in haiku of the Beat Poets; Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Gary Snyder, Philip Walen, Gregory Corso, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti.
From reading the list of the published works, one gets the impression that no women poets were involved with haiku at this time. This is not so. Women were also exposed and fascinated with the new genre which immediately began to influence their work. ruth weiss relates how she and Jack Kerouac wrote haiku together, often using it as dialogue between them (which would preclude the renga), yet none of this was published and is presumably lost.
In 1956, in a small town only a few miles south of the activities in San Francisco, Helen Stiles Chenoweth organized the Los Altos Writers Roundtable for the study and appreciation of haiku. From her leadership of this group, Chenoweth became known as "the dean of American haiku writers" and under her guidance the haiku of this group were published by Charles E. Tuttle Co., Tokyo in 1966 as Borrowed Water : A Book of American Haiku. This first anthology of English-language haiku was hailed by the Library Journal as, "a book for ages to savor, to quote, to display, to buy, to borrow or to give. Also to emulate."
The thirteen authors of these 300 pioneering haiku were women.1 Footnote189 Meeting on a regular basis, they actively studied the form by reading every book available, which the editor, Chenoweth, amply describes in the bibliography, with generous quotes from each defining haiku. One of their guides was Mary J. J. Wrinn's The Hollow Reed, published by Harper Bros., in 1935, one year before Harold G. Henderson's, The Bamboo Broom.
In 1963, shortly after the first American haiku magazine was founded, The American Haiku, in Plattville, Wisconsin, by James Bull and Donald Eulert, members of the Los Altos group began submitting their work. Later when the editorship passed on to Clement Hoyt, the cooperation between the magazine and the group increased; with James Bull being the one to encourage them on the necessity of putting together an anthology. Each of the 700 haiku considered for the book was read and discussed by all the members of the group and many of the poems had previously appeared in The American Haiku.
In an East Coast college, Muriel Rukeyser was introducing her students to haiku. One of them later wrote:
"One thing I try to have in my life and my fiction is an awareness of and an openness to mystery, which, to me, is deeper than any politics, race or geographical location. In the poems I read, a sense of mystery, a deepening of it is what I look for - because that is what I respond to. I have been influenced - especially in the poems of Once - by Zen epigrams and Japanese haiku. I think my respect for short forms comes from this. I was delighted to learn that in three or four lines a poet can express mystery, evoke beauty and pleasure, paint a picture - and not dissect or analyze in any way. The insect, the fish, the birds, and the apple blossoms in haiku are still whole. They have not been turned into something else. They are allowed their own majesty, instead of being used to emphasize the majesty of people: usually the majesty of the poets writing."
Alice Walker, now famous for her book, The Color Purple, which was for months on the nation's best-seller list and was later made into a smash-hit movie of the same name, made the above statement in 1973 in an interview with John O'Brien. She was so enthusiastic about haiku that she goes on to say:
"During the whole period of discovering haiku and the sensual poems of Ovid, my feet did not touch the ground."
But her feet were on the ground when she began writing her own haiku. During the summer between her junior and senior years at Sarah Lawrence College, (1964), Alice Walker journeyed throughout East Africa revisiting the homeland of her ancestors. From these experiences can the poems and haiku titled, "African Images, Glimpses from the Tiger's Back," the first poem sequence in the book, Once. Here the reader has the feeling these pictures were sketched with words in a traveler's notebook.
However, in the same interview with O'Brien, Walker honestly relates:
"That week [after having an abortion] I wrote without stopping (except to eat and go to the toilet) almost all of the poems in Once. I wrote then all in a tiny blue notebook that I can no longer find -- the African ones first, because the vitality and color and friendships in Africa rushed over me in dreams that first night I slept."
Reading this work Once, one watches a poet emerging from her educational cocoon. One sees her making experiments in the form right from the beginning. Walker never did write haiku using only three line: she saw haiku as "painting the eye in the tiger," so she gave her line the long, thin formats that do remind one of the glint of light in a wild cat's eye while sticking (more or less) to the traditional syllable count.
Perhaps her statement, "Basho convinced me that poetry is more like music - in my case, improvisational jazz," explains where she found the freedom to make haiku echo with her rhythms and visions.
As the poem progresses, one is subtly aware that she is making changes in punctuation and has abandoned the starting of each line with a capital letter.
The sequence ends with Alice Walker already hinting at the form she will develop and expand in the remaining poems in Once, where , still, here and there as in these last lines, she surprises her reader with a haiku.
"in my journal
I thought I
could
capture
everything --
Listen!
the soft wings of cranes
sifting the salt
sea
air."
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According to available sources, the only other books published by women at this time were Cats and Their People, in Haiku, by Louise Lessin, and Ruby Lytle's What is the Moon: Japanese Haiku Sequence; haiku of the world as seen by a Siamese cat.
Then Ann Atwood began her prolific outpouring of haiku works, in books, film and in translations. The first of her three books published by Charles Scribner's Sons, was Haiku: The Mood of the Earth, in 1971 which was reissued in soft cover in 1980. Combining her vast talents in both photography and haiku, Atwood began a legend that no other woman has been able to follow. With the enduring popularity of her evocative photos she wrote haiku, that from the beginning were of such high quality, there is still deep pleasure in reading them and very much to learn from her work.
It was no surprise that Scribner's printed My Own Rhythm. An Approach to Haiku, in 1973 and in 1977, brought out another edition of her haiku and photographs, Haiku-Vision in Poetry and Photography.
In addition, Ann Atwood made four films for Lyceum Productions, La Puente, Ca, as writer and photographer between the years, 1971-1978.
Another dimension to her work is her steadfast involvement in translating the haiku of Gunther Klinge from German to English. Atwood selected and translated his haiku for Charles Tuttle Company's two slipcover editions, Drifting with the Moon, and Day into Night. In 1982, Atwood and Gunther Klinge published a book of her photos with his haiku, Im Kreis des Jahres. Totally faithful to furthering his work, she sends submissions of her translations of his work in to the magazines every four months; as recently as last month.
Of the other haiku written and published prior to Ann Atwood, there is a strong possibility that if they were submitted to North American haiku magazines today, 99% of them would be rejected on the basis of being "not haiku" or not meeting the current styles and standards. Only one woman who began publishing in the early 70's is still active in the field. Ann Atwood's haiku written twenty years ago are indistinguishable from her most recent poems seen and admired for their high quality in the national magazines. She, and she alone, began great and has remained the most constant, prolific writer of excellent haiku.
As haiku had its reintroduction to the USA after WW II, nearly all the works were published in hardcover editions by old and well-established companies. Suddenly, in the first half of the 70's, changes occurred in various sectors that then had a cumulative effect for haiku writers.
At about the time the Haiku Society of America was forming in New York (1968) there were rapid changes in printing and reproduction. The fresh breezes of freedom and self-determination wafted by poets as well as the political activist. With increased communication, the examples of individuals who began publishing created a burgeoning of small presses. What began as newsletters, grew to magazines and from there was only a skip and jump to producing slim chapbooks of poetry.
Where formerly the editorial staff of a large, entrenched company, geared to marketing and the making of money, with almost no connection to the writer's field or community of like-minded persons, would chose the book/author, now the shakers and makers of groups could determine what was published. In the case of haiku this meant, that the editors were the determinants of what "a haiku really is" with their choice of author.
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In the case of Haiku Society of America, led by then-their president, William J. Higginson, who had his first book of essays on haiku and senryu published with Jean Calkins/Rima Golden's support through her press J&R Transcripts, which was printing Haiku Highlights and Jean's Journal , became the other side of the coin on the other side of the continent.
Feeling a need to codify haiku and senryu with their interpretation, a committee composed of Harold Henderson, Higginson and Anita Virgil was organized. Meeting over several years this group took the job of informing makers of dictionaries and encyclopedias of standards and definition for these new (to English poetry) genre. Anita Virgil was, during this time, elected as president of the Haiku Society.
In 1974, she privately published her chapbook, A 2nd Flake. Designed to be distinguished, a 4 inch by 7 inch, comb-bound book containing 58 pages was printed in brown ink on light creme matte paper. Each haiku appears alone on the page with variations in layouts added to the changes in pace created by Virgil's use of adding two haiku sequences and several pages of graphically innovative haiku (sometimes referred to as "eyeku" or cousins of concrete poetry). This book was to set the standard for the veritable avalanche of similar, or less, chapbooks of haiku which have followed.
Shortly thereafter, Elizabeth Searle Lamb's book, in this blaze of sun , was printed by From Here Press, founded by William J. Higginson. Parallel with Virgil's accomplishment, Lamb's book had the same format and size containing 62 haiku divided into sections titled: "Picasso's 'Bust of Sylvette', Greenwhich Village", "On the Amazon Freighter El Viajero", "Returning to Belem, Brazil", "To Measure the Width of Prairie", "Against the Blue of Sky", and "On the Island of Barbados".
The book, in this blaze of sun, was the result of haiku writing begun in 1963 when Elizabeth Searle Lamb saw a note about the haiku magazine, American Haiku. She subscribed, and later that year the two haiku accepted heralded the beginning of a long, illustrious life of service to haiku by Elizabeth Searle Lamb. Over the years she was to have more than 500 haiku published in 48 different magazines around the world. Her haiku have consistently won prizes in the contests; her work is included in every important anthology.
Still, Lamb continued to author chapbooks of haiku bringing out Picasso's Bust of Sylvette, with her husband, Bruce F. Lamb, 39 Blossoms, a High-Coo Press mini-chapbook, and Casting into a Cloud: Southwest Haiku, produced by From Here Press in 1985.
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While many women writing haiku also write other forms of poetry, Geraldine Clinton Little is one of today's most distinguished poets who still writes and publishes haiku regularly. Since learning of haiku through a poetry group in 1970, Little has combined in many of her poetry projects either actual haiku or Japanese subjects and influences. This ability to coalesce reaches in the same way into her haiku. Geraldine C. Little's haiku, more than anyone else's in America, comes the closest to being lyrical. Totally knowledgeable and having trained herself in the traditions of haiku, yet the poet in Geraldine C. Little transforms her work so that it becomes, often, a bridge between the two genre.
The first indication of this quality is her preference for longer forms. Little has written many renga, both solo renga and in participation with a variety of partners; several have been published in books and magazines. Most often her haiku are put into sequences or series such as in Boxwood Comb or ones published in magazines such as "A Vesper Service of Grace for A Jogger" which won the Modern Haiku 20th Anniversary Issue Award. Another example is the following sequence which also won a Modern Haiku Special Award of twenty-five dollars.
"CELEBRATIONS AND ELEGIES FOR A FRIEND DEAD OF
AIDS"
-Geraldine C. Little
the patio party
where we meet -- how Venus
flares
in white wine
attracted to you
before I know you can't
you pluck
me one rose
invited
to your studio -- stopped
by one
camellia
in oils
the strong erotic
headiness in all your art --
you
brew herb tea
learning how deep
sexless love can be - holding
hands
in the spring meadow
the daisies
you paint full
of philosophy
the night you tell me
the diagnosis -
starlight
skids down icicles
slimmer each time
I come your brushes still
plump
with pictures
so dark, you say
one bright day, the room
full
of narcissus
blind, you feel
canvas edges, cover one
with
color like petals
reading to you
you stop me to listen
to owl
tints
your lover
cradling at the last --
full autumn
moon
mountaintop --
we offer your ashes
to wind and
weeds
just bird anthems
as we watch fine dust
through
filmed eyes
one-man show:
the depth of you everywhere -
I
arrange chrysanthemums
I hold your lover --
speechless, we say our love
to
Venus rising.
To note the changes in cadence and rhythms in her work; to see the uncommon commas is to see the poetic voice breaking the restraints of haiku. To combine in a lyrical manner, homosexuality, AIDS, rape, poverty, with haiku is evidence of a woman who is taking huge strides in moving haiku toward a new form. Geraldine C. Little died March 8th, 1997 in her home in Mount Holly, New Jersey.
Remembering how the women of Basho's time became involved with haiku/renga is to know, to some extent, how Marlene Mountain came to the American haiku scene. As the wife (at that time) of John Wills, Marlene was introduced to haiku being written in English when he forged contacts with other writers in the middle 60's and he himself began writing and publishing his haiku. By 1970, when John Wills's third book river appeared he was rightfully hailed as one of the country's most promising haiku writers. However, what set this book apart from the rest was the inter-relationship between John's haiku and Marlene's spare, yet bold, ink drawings. For the first time an American artist using brush, bamboo stick and a matchbox dipped in ink, was able to create anew the traditional Japanese haiga (drawings accompanying haikai).
In the same year that John's book was published in its second edition (1976), Marlene's first book, the old tin roof appeared. In the light of later herstory when Marlene, still writing haiku and painting in her indomitable style, became the foremost advocate of women's rights, it is interesting to compare these two haiku books.
John's book format was 13 inches long, five inches high; Marlene's was 8 1/2 inches long by 3 1/2 inches high. The pages of John's book look wild and rough because of the looseness of Marlene's drawings. plus she hand lettered, with a brush, each haiku, yet his haiku are for the most part, very classical, always staying within three line and using the usual Japanese haiku techniques.
Marlene's thin narrow pages seem to be folded hands with the prim, sparse letters written with a typewriter, slowly and patiently set with one poem to a page. But the poems on her palms rise up to sock the reader in the eye. Everything that was later tried in the "eyeku" or concrete poetry, methods others had not the courage to attempt were all explored and mastered. Her first one-liners are stretched across the page as clouds giving length to mountains, rain raining leaves or water in a dark, warm hose. When this form was not enough for Marlene, she pushed and pulled words into violets, water drops and frogs which no one can forget. Here was a lady who wasn't accepting the form or content of anything she was taught. She followed in her husband footsteps only long enough to began leaping to the forefront of the haiku scene.
Yes, many who admired and lauded the old tin roof were deeply puzzled when, after her divorce and with the assumption of the last name of Mountain, Marlene began to expand the idea of what a haiku could sound like, look like and be with the addition of using haiku to expound on such diverse (and in the haiku tradition, unlikely) topics as women's rights, environmental pollution and the outright rejection of male domination.
No longer one to take half measures, Marlene wrote of her feelings, her concerns, her sexuality in no uncertain terms. The one-liners she piled up into sequences or renga to practically bombard readers with the ferocity of her thoughts, the sharp-edged wit. Wise old academic heads shook in disbelief that this could happen to haiku, but they have all had to admit that no one before her, or since, has written as she does.
Ten years after the old tin roof, in 1986, came the warm yellow covered book, PISSED OFF POEMS AND CROSS WORDS. In just 18 pages Marlene's one-line haiku sequences introduce ivory tower writers to the world of peace marches, abortions, AIDS, wife-beating, religious acceptance of killing, female circumcision, female poverty, hungry kids, the Grafeberg spot, lesbianism -- nothing is sacred or exempt from her wit and way with words. Words that didn't fit into the sequences became crossword puzzles that string together images like beads on a choker.
'good faith discussions'
the shit beat out of him american in an american jail
peace banner did the general have a good laugh
summer night he flashes his badge at the rape victim
in mud bobbies drag a peacewoman to jail
-Marlene Mountain
logic
dear god thank you for telling our forefathers
to kill the native peoples
so we could have this land and thank you
for all the rivers ponds and oceans
into which we can dump our toxic wastes
in jesus name amen
-Marlene Mountain
vudu
nativity scene in snow a camel blown over
the myth bought nothing down no payments until february
under the tree a doll laced with pesticides
christmas day the pope lies in yet another language
-Marlene Mountain
Taking the gentle art of punning, Marlene spins words around, inserting the letters that make them reveal the hidden secrets. Fiction and non-fiction work abound in words turned right-side out such as: taxus, malepractice, manpowwar, corporapetions, and even, laidy. When pages won't contain her rages, she turns to painting giving us "the great mad mother earth paintings", "cave paintings", and "SHE IS ONE AND SHE IS TWO: SIGNS FROM THE ANCIENT." Always her art has gone hand in hand with her haiku, sometimes the artwork spawns and sparks new forms, such as in 1974 when Marlene was doing her "tear outs", a series of collages in which she incorporated some of her haiku written earlier in Japan into the one-liners which would become one of her hallmarks.
===================
To go from a discussion of Marlene Mountain's work to a discourse on the haiku of Peggy Willis Lyles is to examine the opposite side of a phenomenon. Both Peggy and Marlene are women of the South in the United States. Both began writing haiku approximately at the same time and have continued to be active, ever expanding spheres of influence and expertise.
Where Marlene's haiku have become more aggressive and oft times has become hardly recognizable as haiku, Peggy's work has become stiller and quieter, ever more refined with the slightest adjustment in the three-line placement taking on meaning and significance. The initial capital letters are now gone and Peggy says of her transitions, "I see incremental repetitions rather than linear changes in those from the past ten years."
Though Peggy Willis Lyle's mini-chapbook book Red Leaves in the Air and Still at the Edge, contain a combined number of 24 haiku, there exists an extensive collection of her work available in over thirty-five magazines which regularly accept and publish her consistently evocative haiku.
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Barbara McCoy of Raleigh, North Carolina, is another writer who, as winner of the 1979 Annual Mini-chapbook Contest, has had her first and only book, A Christmas Death, published by High/Coo Press. Included in numerous haiku and literary anthologies, the well-crafted poems of Barbara McCoy represent the more traditional aspects of the genre. Thus, she is often a winner in the numerous contests which she enters.
~*~
As with many of the women writing haiku, Penny Harter first began writing other kinds of poetry, stories and essays. In spite of being married to William J. Higginson, who was one of the charter members of the Haiku Society of America and several times President, Penny Harter's publishing career began with a book of her poems, House by the Sea. It wasn't until 1980, that her first book of haiku, The Orange Balloon appeared, followed three years later by From the Willow, and in the next year a collection of her haiku, In the Broken Curve, was elegantly produced by Burnt Lake Press, Canada.
At the head of many of the developments in the haiku scene, she wrote one of the chapters of William J. Higginson's book, The Haiku Hand Book: How to Write, Share and Teach Haiku, "A Lesson Plan that Works", while assisting him with translations and editing.
Always active in various New Jersey Writers' Groups and Arts Councils, Penny Harter has co-authored and contributed to numerous anthologies. In connection with her husband's wide-reaching involvement in haiku, Harter has been able to accompany him on trips to Japan, meeting writers there and exploring areas dear to the hearts of the old masters. Her light and polished style of haiku writing has permitted her to use these experiences, as well as other influences from Japan, as basis for sequences and collections of works such as From the Willow.
Being a poet-haiku writer married to a poet-haiku writer has the innate risk of comparisons of one to another. One must note that Penny Harter has evolved her own personal style of writing haiku which is spare and actual, without capital letters or punctuations which marks her work as modern. Her tighter linkage, less based on observation, has a universality that gives her haiku a timeless quality.
~*~
It is difficult to write about Ruth Yarrow's work without using superlatives. For anyone who wants to quote the most womanly of the women's haiku, Ruth Yarrow's name and haiku head the list. She was one of the first to write haiku expressing the innermost feelings of motherhood and she did it with such superb finesse that no one has been able to surpass her.
window clouds:
under the quilt
our soft folds
-Ruth Yarrow
squatting
she gently opens petals
to the ovary
-Ruth Yarrow
high cleft
unseen stream
sprays the maidenhair
-Ruth Yarrow
mountaintop granite
curving my belly
and the warm
wind
-Ruth Yarrow
sunlight overflows
the wicker basket -
newborn in
my arms
-Ruth Yarrow
warm rain before dawn
my milk flows into
her
unseen
-Ruth Yarrow
my cheek pressed
against her baby head -
our bones
underneath
-Ruth Yarrow
children squealing -
slowly the oldest
gorilla
focuses elsewhere
-Ruth Yarrow
The mother of two children, Ruth Yarrow has been active in the peace movement and as a teacher of college level ecology, Yarrow still uses her pen to write and illustrate her messages for a better world. In 1988 The Crossing Press published a diary journal consisting of blank pages, each captioned with a haiku from Ruth Yarrow.
~*~
Learning of haiku in 1966, when her friend
Elizabeth Searle Lamb gave her a copy of Harold G.
Henderson's Haiku in English, L. A. Davidson was
inspired shortly thereafter to begin experimenting with the
form. Three years later she had her first haiku published in
Haiku Headlights.
A resident of New York City, Davidson has written haiku with an urban background. She finds her nature in houseplants, vacant lots and manicured parks or, on weekends, on the city's waterways by sailboat. Nature is everywhere she is. Her haiku follow her life. Their form follows their content. Steeped in the traditions of haiku, yet the winds of the wide open spaces of her native Montana blow through her poetry allowing her the freedom to shape her work around her observations instead of vice versa. No one could have thought the city held so much for the haiku writer. Yet here is a whole year of insights, feelings and impressions.
While many women of the early 80's were content to publish their haiku in mini-chapbooks comprising of 16 or less poems, Davidson's book, The Shape of the Tree, contained 48 pages; nearly 200 haiku.
As charter member of group in New York that formed the Haiku Society of America, L. A. Davidson was as the organization's vice president in 1976 and treasurer for 1989-90. L. A. Davidson has remained a moving force in the organization shaping its policies and directing its development.
~*~
Adele Kenny responded to the questionnaire's inquiry of how she came to write haiku:
"I was introduced to haiku in 1980-81 by Bill Higginson ... who taught me what haiku is not and then encouraged me to learn what it is by reading and writing it myself."
The second question about whom she admired as a haiku writer, Adele answered:
"The woman whose haiku I most admire is Penny Harter because there is a constant, crystal-cutting clarity in her work -- a sureness of craft which distinguishes it among the works of others."
Upon reading Adele's haiku, one is aware that not only do these women live in the same New Jersey town (Fanwood), their works have marked similarities. Close examination reveals how they each have shortened the regular cadence of traditional haiku. It is most often apparent in the second line, but occasionally it occurs in the first. The haiku is written in three lines but the last line is often composed of what, in most haiku writer's habits, would be the latter half of a line.
By breaking apart the two images (sometimes the noun and the verb) the impact of each part of it is emphasized. Until or unless one gets accustomed to this manner, it can feel as if the one line should be reconnected to the one above so that a third line can develop. As the haiku grows shorter in the hands of the so-called modernists, one sees this style being accepted more and more by editors of even the less progressive magazines.
It seems apropos that Adele Kenny, as trendsetter for this emerging style, was in 1988 and again in 1990, President of the Haiku Society of America. As a creative writing teacher at the College of New Rochelle, as a creative writing specialist for Rahway Public Schools in Rahway, NJ, as a poetry consultant for various arts councils and agencies in New York and New Jersey, as editor for small press literary journals and anthologies and leader of workshops and poetry reading, Adele will be bringing new impulses into the writing of modern haiku.
Active in publishing her haiku and free verse poetry, Adele has eight books for her readers to choose from, with more forthcoming.
~*~
At almost the same time Adele Kenny was becoming interested in haiku, another woman in the same area (New Jersey) was also turning from writing only poetry to add haiku to her list of accomplishments. Often using a haiku style very similar to Kenny's and Harter, yet Alexis K. Rotella was able to add another element to her haiku so the American haiku scene was never the same after her.
One of the cardinal rules which remained after the non-traditionalists abandoned nearly every other, was the admonishment that a haiku was to be the result of "a moment keenly felt." This was the factor that was to decide if a haiku was good or not; if in deed had there been such a moment for the author and if it was then expressed in a way that the reader could relive it. Pages of essay in Frogpond expounded this theory; it was the highest praise one could give an author's work.
Yet, on the other hand, was the traditional admonishment, not really stated in anything as concrete as a rule, but nevertheless, a known and accepted attribute of haiku was the idea that the author should, within the haiku, cease to exist. Or at least the writer should not be visible. Part of this thinking came from the selflessness of Zen thinking. There was the idea that all was one; we were all a part of the whole and no one part was above or outside of the rest. This concept was reinforced by the Japanese language in that personal pronouns are not definite as they are in English, but are only implied.
This, and most probably a reaction against mainstream American poetry which after World War II wallowed in "me-ness" and personal "angst" and other Freudian-made feelings, gave early haiku tastemakers encouragement to set haiku apart by maintaining that it was different. Using the criteria that haiku was based only on nature, because it must always have a season word, gave them fuel for their fire. Writers were warned to write only about nature, but not human nature.
Many of the translated haiku from the Japanese sounded as if they were written in a pigeon-English as the professors tried to follow these notions of haiku by leaving unsaid the pronouns even though the old masters did write about themselves and their feelings. American haiku writers also found that to truly write what they were feeling deeply that they had to include themselves in the haiku
The personal pronoun "I" was to be avoided at all costs. Many circumvented this by referring to themselves as "he" or "she"; sometimes giving themselves a pseudo-occupation or putting themselves in another person's shoes. One must admit, such practices did free haiku from the dearth of capital "I's" as in other poetry.
As more and more haiku were written, though, in this person-less atmosphere, the result was a sameness of among the work. One could look out into the world and see only so many snapshots of nature being expressed while ignoring the vast inner landscapes.
Consciously or unconsciously, Alexis Rotella realized this. More likely she herself, after writing the prodigious number of haiku she wrote and published in the beginning of the 80's, began to tire of the meagerness of available themes. Increasingly she turned to expressing her moments with herself and her relationships within the haiku.
In her first book of haiku, Clouds in my Teacup , the discriminating reader can find her initial attempts of mixing into haiku, feelings and actual references to herself as part of the experience. With practice and acceptance of her new way, she forged ahead to write On a White Bud , in which the haiku give the reader the distinct impression that she is having marital problems; that there is a lover in her life. One year later she published the title, After an Affair in which she clearly, by her use of haiku only, lets the reader share her relationship.
Though Alexis Rotella was faulted in book reviews for writing in this manner, she was in no way alone. Many other men and women were writing in haiku their most intimate moments as was evident by Rod Willmot's anthology of Erotic Haiku published the year before. Perhaps because she wrote haiku better than most and surely more than any other modernist, she remained the trail-blazer.
Such a talent as Alexis Rotella's knows no bounds. She has tried and accomplished everything. She has edited an anthology, Butterfly Breezes (1981), she wrote a collection of tanka, The Lace Curtain (1984) , sequences based on ancient Chinese poets, Harvesting Stars (1983) , a haiku journey through Italy with haiku in English and Italian, Antiphone of Bells, (1989) , plus seven other books of haiku and/or haiku or linked haiku.
Though such lists of books published looks impressive, each was important for haiku to obtain the next step of its development, most of these and those published in the next five years were very small booklets. Some of the mini-series of chapbooks had only a few pages stapled together. Other authors who seemed to achieve larger booklets, were advocates of generous white spaces. Often only a haiku or two appeared on a page. Thus many of these "books" could hardly earn the name.
Cheap and easy to produce, such cottage industry books were not able to impress the poetry world beyond haiku circles.
Even though Helen Chenoweth broke the ground with her haiku anthology, the stream dried up so that if one wanted to see better quality haiku books, one had to look to the men to make them. Owing to the fact that it was the women who were beginning to write and publish more, the only way a woman had of being in a "real" book was to be included in an anthology made and funded by men.
In 1974, Cor van den Heuvel edited The Haiku Anthology which contained about 200 haiku from authors. In 1986, Simon and Schuster published a revised and expanded edition of The Haiku Anthology. This book contained about 700 haiku, senryu and related works from 66 authors. (Of these only 21 were women and only seven were from the west coast although there were more Haiku Society Members there than in New York.) Though the book contained a valuable introduction and definition, biographical notes on the authors, and sequences in full, it was criticized for " having a curious "sameness" in the vast majority of haiku, the sense that they might almost all have been written by the rather uninspired hand." The fact that so many excellent haiku writers who were well-known enough to van den Heuvel to have been considered for inclusion were not in the book gives a lop-sided view of the haiku being written at that time.(The book is currently under revision again, promising 800 poems this time.)
Two other haiku anthologies were based on themes. Rod Willmot, who was producing first-rate books in his Burnt Lake Press in Sherbrook, Ontario, Canada, edited and published the book, Erotic Haiku. At a time when some of the older women in the haiku scene were still insisting that haiku never had any sexual references (these were supposed to be called senryu) this book caused quite a stir. Actually Willmot was totally right to encourage the collection -and indirectly, the production and acceptance- of erotic haiku. For anyone who knows the folk art of innuendoes in the Japanese language, has witnessed how even the most blandly stated haiku could, to the like-minded, have the most ribald meanings. Eleven women are represented in the book with 19 haiku and two sequences. Twenty-five men have 72 haiku and one sequence chosen by the editor.
~*~
Lorraine Ellis Harr, of Portland, Oregon, founded in 1974, the Western World Haiku Society. As this was a group in name only, (it had no meetings or officers or official organization,) the magazine Dragonfly, a 1/4ly of Haiku, was the sole connectedness of the members. Each year the haiku chosen as the best published in Dragonfly were reprinted in Western World Anthology along with articles on 5-7-5 rules, kigo, Zen, visits and visitors from Japan. With her relinquishing publication of Dragonfly to Richard Tice in 1986, the concept of the Western World Haiku Society fell into disuse and he ceased publication of the magazine after a short time.
~*~
By 1974 Kiyoshi Tokutomi, of San Jose, California, had become nearly deaf. His wife, Kiyoko Tokutomi, watched as he began to sink into apathy and dejection. In a moment of inspiration, she suggested to him that he start a haiku group with Japanese and Americans. Thus, she became his ears and right-hand of a brand new organization which is still in existence today (1998) and still the treasurer.
Associated from the beginning with the English Language Division the Japanese Yuku Haru Haiku Society of Tokyo, the Yuki Teikei Haiku Society of USA and Canada became only haiku group writing in English that was officially connected to Japan.
Within a few years their newsletter, the Geppo, was giving access to writers across the continent who were interested in the most traditional methods of writing haiku. By strict adherence to the use of kigo, the 5-7-5 syllable count, and grammar conventions dictated from the Japanese, the haiku of this group was the only officially recognized haiku to be "pure."
The Geppo [Monthly Bulletin] had a publishing policy shared by the periodical of no other haiku society. In stead of an editor choosing which poems to publish, all members were invited to sent up to three haiku which were printed as sent, but without names. These were then voted upon by the readership. The ten best haiku of each issue were then judged and published on a sporadic basis in the Haiku Journal, which also contained articles on writing and reading haiku from Japanese and Americans.
The Haiku Journal was published under the editorship of Yoshi and Kiyoko Tokutomi. In 1979, the Yuki Teikei Haiku Society separated from the Yuku Haru Haiku Society through they have maintained close ties with Japanese writing haiku in English who still participate in the Geppo.
Yoshi Tokutomi died in 1988. Now Kiyoko has taken on the full load herself. For eight years the group has held retreats in Asilomar, Pacific Grove, California with speakers from San Francisco and Japan invited to join the four-day event. Recently, the strictness concerning 5-7-5 has been loosen. Though members are given the kigo for each issue and encouraged to use them, haiku without kigo have been accepted.
The strongest supporters of Kiyoko's work and
organization have been Patricia Machmiller of San Jose and
June Hymas and Pat Shelley. Between the three of them most of
the offices in club and the jobs to be done were competently
handled. Jean Hale was editor of the Geppo for many
years. When she relinquished the job, the journal fell into
such irregular publication that most of the members quit. In
1992 I was given the job. Three years later I handed it back
to Jean Hale and she has had it ever since.
~*~
Roger Verran had been teaching a haiku group under the auspices of the Gualala Arts in Gualala, California since 1981. After debating whether to make a slide show of haiku and local photography, it was decided to do a book instead. Verran, the author of several novels, chose the title, The Land of Six Seasons, as a more accurate description of the weather on this remote coastal village. Dividing the year thus, Verran wrote texts for division pages and the haiku submitted from the group members where arranged in that order. Shortly after publication, the book went into a second printing and has now sold nearly 2,000 copies. Among the thirteen haiku writers were only two men.
Six years later the feat was repeated under the editorship of Jane Reichhold with the companion book titled, The Land of Seven Realms. In this edition the haiku are arranged according to landscapes -rivers into the sea, mountain ridges, ocean, beaches and meadows, forests of giant trees, people at home, and endless skies with accompanying text. Four men and nine women were joined by six boys and five girls to make the anthology a community project as well as sharing the haiku which are a paean to a place.
Hal Roth, editor of Wind Chimes magazine, published and distributed chapbooks (four titles; one from a woman), minibooks (eighteen titles; 12 from women) and haiku sheets (five titles; three from women). If it had not been for Roth and his dedication to publishing haiku from these women (though, again the majority of the authors lived east of the Mississippi), the feminine situation would have been even more desperate.
Another valuable publishing service is offered by Randy and Shirley Brooks with their High/Coo Press in Battle Ground, Indiana. Since 1979 they have been printing mini-minibooks (2 3/4" x 4 1/4"), along with their small haiku magazine, Mayfly and the very complete and useful, Haiku Review, a bibliography of haiku books and articles. Though the mini-minibook can only contain about 17 haiku, for many writers with a small output, this was an adequate sampling of their work. The small size, inexpensive editions (they also did cloth covers) and ease of production, made these little booklets convenient for sharing among friends.
~*~
Sister Mary Thomas Eulberg, a teaching nun at Mount Saint Francis, Dubuque, Iowa, is one of the few women who has had all of her haiku books published by someone other than herself. Her first haiku book, Fair are Fowl, was done by High/Coo press in 1980, making Sister Mary Thomas Eulberg one of the first women they published. Eulberg, being a student of the well-known haiku poet Father Raymond Roseliep, came into the haiku scene highly recommended. The Brooks had published his Firefly in my Eyecup the year before.
Eulberg's second book was done by Hal Roth in his Wind Chimes Minibook Series. Far as The Eye Can See (1983), contained 30 haiku, some of which had won prizes as early as 1978 (The Yuki Teikei Society of USA and Canada: Honorable Mention for "tired old man") up to Henderson Awards and the Hawaii Education Association which awarded Sister Mary Thomas Eulberg Third Place for "the child swings."
The title, Far as The Eye Can See, is a very accurate description of a woman who writes her haiku inspired by the family of man that surrounds her outer world. Yes, there are haiku celebrating life in a convent, but they are expanded into the wider world of children, lovers, old folks, fathers and sons, and memories of her mother. Not content with captured moments in nature, Sister Mary Thomas Eulberg, gives her readers haiku which hold the essence of her person as well as that of those around her.
In 1988, Eulberg chose to publish a collection of haiku relating to famous artists and painting. Using the title, Gallery, the Wind Chimes Minibook becomes a tiny blue window into the world of art as related to a haiku writer's life. The book was well received and given positive reviews in the haiku magazines.
~*~
As with any art form, in haiku also are many women who never hook into the establishment, the magazines and organizations. At the risk of remaining unknown -- or at least unrecognized -- they proceed, one way or another, to write, produce, and distribute their books of haiku. A few of these will have to here represent all the others which unfortunately remain unnamed.
ruth wiess, a recognized poet and artist of the North Beach scene in San Francisco during the late 50's and early 60's was introduced to haiku through her intimate association with Jack Kerouac. It was from him she learned that what she had been writing were haiku. With (and from) him she learned to "speak in haiku." Both interested in setting haiku to and against jazz music, they formed a method of dialogue of haiku to haiku between themselves.
In 1960 ruth weiss took part in a poetry reading at The Cellar as benefit to save Chessman (a man awaiting execution) in which she read thirteen senryu written for the situation. After Jack's death, ruth moved into other relationships and places, but she always took haiku with her. For her fifty-second birthday ruth hung a showing of twenty-five of her watercolor paintings, each accompanied by a haiku at the Gallery Become at Haight Street and Market in San Francisco "celebrating the word BECOME as-is becoming a poet in-volved with visual-visionary artist at the most of her creative life."
Still ruth gives jazz-haiku performances in which she passes a hat full of haiku. Members of the audience each pick a haiku which they can read aloud. As each haiku is read by a participant, the jazz musician, very often a saxophonist, changes his variation and to this ruth reads a corresponding haiku. The effect is almost a musical renga which binds together performers and spectators which in itself has been instrumental in giving individuals the feeling that they too could write haiku.
ruth weiss' haiku have also been reproduced as broadsides and in serigraphs with the work of Paul Blake and are exhibited and sold in that form.
~*~
Emily Anderson, a very shy and retiring woman, would never dream of shouting her haiku before a crowd of people. Instead she has, year for year, published her chapbooks as best she could. Many have been produced by her husband, Wendell Anderson, under the imprint Buzzard's Roost. Others have been done by The Plowman of Canada. Without the probability of ever reaching a large audience, Emily Anderson has for almost 20 years written and published her haiku.
Her interest in haiku sparked by the very first beginnings of haiku published in magazines, Sister Mary Ann Henn has probably the longest continued involvement with the form. Though she has never had a book of her work published, Sister Mary Ann has faithfully subscribed and submitted to a wide range of haiku magazines for over twenty years. It is rare, in America, that an author who writes with this zeal, has yet to have her works collected and preserved.
All of these women still favor the older models of haiku, very often adhering to the 5-7-5 rule and mixing concrete with abstract images to a greater degree than writers of mainstream haiku. Without peer pressure or the constant educational processes of the magazines, Anderson and weiss represent the many women's work that flames up in unexpected places. Sister Mary Ann Henn's work is just waiting for a "certain coming-together" that she surely deserves.
This is a hard chapter close because in reality it never closes. Even as these words are being typed, somewhere, a woman is standing before a bit of the world with her lips parted as she inhales the wonder of the "nowness" unfolding within and with out her. In her mind words are forming, slithering together, jumping from one line to another, as she combines heart and mind to hold tight the impressions that are speaking to her inner-most being. Holy moments, every one. Take good care of yours.
-----------------------------------------
Books mention in Chapter Two
Los Altos Writers Roundtable, Los Altos, California, Editor Helen Stiles Chenoweth. .Borrowed Water. Tokyo: Tuttle, 1966.
Mary J. J. Wrinn, The Hollow Reed, New York and London: Harper Bros., 1935.
Harold G. Henderson, The Bamboo Broom, An Introduction to Japanese Haiku, Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1934.
Alice Walker, Interviews with Black Writers, edited by John O'Bren, n.p.:Liveright Publishing Corp., Inc., 1973.
Alice Walker, Once, San Diego, New York, London: Harcout Brace Jovanovich, A Harvest Book/HBJ, 1968.
Louise Lessin, Cats and Their People, in Haiku, illustrated by Arouni, New York: Paul S. Eriksson, 1968.
Ruby Lytle, What is the Moon: Japanese Haiku Sequence, illustrated by author, private, no date.
Ann Atwood, Haiku: The Mood of Earth, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1971. Reprint in Softcover: 1980. 32pp.
Ann Atwood, My Own Rhythm: An Approach to Haiku, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1973.
Ann Atwood, Haiku - Vision in Poetry and Phototgraphy, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1977.
Ann Atwood, photographer and writer, Haiku: A Photographic Interpretation, [filmstrip] La Puente, CA: Lyceum Productions, 1971. Ann Atwood, photographer and writer, The Heart of Haiku, [filmstrip] La Puente, CA: Lyceum Productions, 1971. Ann Atwood, photographer and writer, Haiku: The Hidden Glimmering, [filmstrip] La Puente, CA: Lyceum Productions, 1973. Ann Atwood, producer, Haiku-Vision in Poetry and Photography, [filmstrip] La Puente, CA: Lyceum Productions, 1978.
Gunther Klinge, Day into Night, A Haiku Journey, Selected and adapted into English by Ann Atwood, Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle, Co., 1980.
Gunther Klinge, Drifting with the Moon, Selected and adapted into English by Ann Atwood, Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle, Co., 1978.
Gunther Klinge, Im Kreis des Jahres, Photos by Ann Atwood, Haiku by Gunther Klinge, Innsbruck: Pinquin-Verlag, Frankfurt/Main:Unschau-Verlag, 1982.
William J. Higginson, Itadakimusu, Essays on Haiku and Senyru in English, Kanono, NY: J & C Transcripts, 1971.
Anita Virgil, A 2nd Flake, Montclaire, NJ. Private print, 1974.
Elizabeth Searle Lamb, in a blaze of sun, Paterson, NJ: From Here Press, 1975.
Geraldine C. Little, Hiroaki Sato, and Marlene (Wills) Mountain, "As the Fog Thickens", One Hundred Frogs, Hiroaki Sato. New York: Weatherhill Publishing, 1983. Geraldine C. Little, Hiroaki Sato and Jane Reichhold, "As Sunset Settles". Narrow Road to Renga, Gualala, CA: AHA Books, 1989.
Geraldine C. Little, "A Frog Opens His Mouth", Frogpond V???
Geraldine C. Little, Beyond the Boxwood Comb, Sherbrook, Canada:Burnt Lake Press, 1986.
John Wills, river, Elizabethton, Tennessee: Self-published, 1976.
Marlene Morelock Wills, the old tin roof, N/A: Self-published, 1976.
Marlene Mountain, PISSED OFF POEMS AND CROSS WORDS, Hampton, Tennessee, Self-published, 1986.
Peggy Willis Lyles, Red Leaves in the Air, Battle Ground, IN: High Coo Press, 1979.
Ruth Yarrow, Down Marble Canyon, Wind Chimes Mini-chapbook VII, 1984.
L. A. Davidson, Haiku Headlights V:3, 1969.
L. A. Davidson, The Shape of the Tree, Glen Burnie, MD: Wind Chimes Book III, 1982.
Alexis Rotella, Clouds in my Teacup, Glen Burnie, MD: Wind Chimes Book IV, 1982.
Alexis Rotella, On a White Bud, Westfield, NJ: Merging Media, 1983.
Alexis Rotella, After an Affair, Westfield, NJ: Merging Media, 1984.
Rod Willmot, Editor, Erotic Haiku, Winsor, Ontario, Canada: Black Moss Press, 1983.
Alexis Rotella, Editor. Butterfly Breezes: An anthology of 160 haiku on the subject of butterflies by 29 poets. Brussels Sprout Press, 1981.
Alexis Rotella, The Lace Curtain, Morristown, NJ: Jade Mountain Press, 1984.
Alexis Rotella, Harvesting Stars, Morristown, NJ: Jade Mountain Press, 1983.
Alexis Rotella, Antiphony of Bells, Morristown, NJ: Jade Mountain Press, 1989.
Keith Southward. Book Review of The Haiku Anthology in Inkstone III:#, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, 1987.
Roger Verran, Editor. The Land of Six Seasons. Gualala, CA: Gualala Arts, 1983.
Jane Reichhold, Editor. The Land of Seven Realms. Gualala, CA: AHA Books for Gualala Arts, 1989.
==================
Footnote1
Shackleford, Ruby P. Rosewood, 1987. Available from the author at Route 5, Box 407, Wilson, NC 27893. Spiral-bound, 27 pp., #3.50 ppd. Taken from a book review by Richard Straw in Pine Needles, Summer, 1988.
Gould, Jean. Amy: The World of Amy Lowell and The Imagist Movement. New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1975. P. 108
In a "Memoir," Louis Utermeyer's introduction to The Complete Poetical Works of Amy Lowell. Boston: Haughton Mifflin Company, 1955.
Gould, Jean. Amy: The World of Amy Lowell and The Imagist Movement. New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1975. P. 112.
Ibid. P.113.
6 Ibid. P.115
7 Ibid. P.116.
8 Ibid. P.125.
9 Ibid. P.125.
10 Ibid. P.136.
11 Monroe, Harriet. Poets & Their Art. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1926. P. 299.
12 Gould, Jean. Amy: The world of Amy Lowell and The Imagist Movement. New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1975. P. 141.
13 Ibid. P.142.
14 Ibid. P.162.
15 Omori , Annie S. and Doi, Kochi, Translators. Dairies of Court Ladies of Old Japan. Tokyo: Kenkyusha Company. 1935
16 Lowell, Amy. Pictures of the Floating World. New York: Macmillan Company. 1919.
17 Ibid. P.VII
18 Los Altos Writers Roundtable, Los Altos, California, Editor Helen Stiles Chenoweth. Borrowed Water. Tokyo: Tuttle, 1966.
Copyright © Jane Reichhold 1986.
Go to the
anthology for Chapter Two.
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Chapter Three