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28:3
October, 2013

LYNX  
A Journal for Linking Poets  
  
   
     

BOOK REVIEWS


Treewhispers, tanka by Giselle Maya, ©2013, Preface by Michael McClintock, Foreword by David Rice. Saint Martin de Castillon, France: Koyama Press, 6½x10, saddle-stitched soft cover, 84 unnumbered pages, handmade. Contact: Giselle.Maya@wanadoo.fr
Review by Maxianne Berger

Haiku in English edited by Jim Kacian, Philip Rowland, Allan Burns. Introduction by Billy Collins. Norton and Company, 2013, New York / London. Hardcover, 5 x 8, 424 pages, $23.95; Can $25.
Review by Jane Reichhold

Haiku in English: The First Hundred Years Edited by Jim Kacian, Philip Rowland, and Allan Burns Introduction by Billy Collins. ISBN: 9780393239478  SEVENTEEN WAYS OF RESPONDING TO AN ANTHOLOGY
Jim Wilson

Broken Promises, by Jerry Dreesen, 5.5 X 8.5 paperback, 52 pages, purchase through Amazon, ISBN 9781484198636, ©2013
Review by Dennis (chibi) Holmes

embry eye poems, by George Swede, publisher: Inspress, Box 309, Station P, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5S 2S8, Contact – A. Zarins, azarins3@gmail.com. ISBN 978-0-9881179-2-1, paperback 5.5 X 8.5. 52 eye poems in 60 printed pages.
Review by Dennis (chibi) Holmes

Evening in the Plaza, Haibun & Haiku, by Jeffrey Woodward, published by Tournesol Books, PO Box 441152, Detroit, MI 48244-1152,5.5 X 8.5 paperback, 52 pages, ISBN: 978-0615834757,©2013
Review by Dennis (chibi) Holmes

Laughing To Myself, by Tom Clausen, Michael Ketchek Publisher, 125 High St., Rochester, New York, 14609, mketchek@frontier.com, 2013. 8.5 X 5.5 inch paperback, 25 pages.
Review by Dennis (chibi) Holmes

Weathered Wings, An Anthology of Poetry Magpie Haiku & Tanka Poets, © 2012, cover art: iStockphoto, cover art: Ken Richardson. ISBN 978-0-9693564-2-4, Paperback, 73 printed pages. Contact Joanne Morcom at morcomj@telus.net for purchasing the anthology.
Reviewed by Dennis (chibi) Holmes

C.2.2., Anthology of short verse, edited by Brendan Slater & Alan Summers, Yet To Be Named Press, Stroke-on-Trent, England, 2013, Paperback, 155 printed pages.
ISBN 9781479304561
www.yettobenamedfreepress.org
Review by Dennis (chibi) Holmes

Moon Woke Me Up Nine Times, Selected Haiku of Basho, translated by David Young, Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. ISBN 978-0-307-96200-3  Cover design by Peter Mendelsund  www.aaknopf.com
Review by Dennis (chibi) Holmes

Susurrus,  by Anita Krumins, Inspress, Box 309 Station P, Toronto, Ontario Canada M5S 2S8, Contact: A. Zarins, azarins3@gmail.com Paperback 56 pages.
ISBN 978-0-9881179-1-4
Review by Dennis (chibi) Holmes

Cantec de flaut, Flute Song, Chant de flute, Antologie de poeme Haiku, an anthology of poems by Octavian Mares from Bacau, Romania, published by Ecitura Victovia, 2012, ISBN 978-973-1902-88-3 5X5 Paperback, 101 print numbered pages. www.vicovia.ro
Review by Dennis (chibi) Holmes

Tangled Shadows, Senryu & Haiku, by Elliot Nicely, A “Book in Hand” edition, Rosenberry Books, etc., 101 Nicks Bend West, Pittsboro, NC 27312, Ordering info: 800-723-0336, 919-969-2767
http://rosenberrybooks.com/hand-bound-editions/haiku/tangled-shadows 
Review by Dennis (chibi) Holmes

A Dictionary of Haiku by Jane Reichhold. Trade paperback, 328 pages, 60# white interior paper, full-color laminated cover art by Werner Reichhold, 6” x 9” trim size. ISBN-10: 0944676243. Retail: $18.00 US;  $16.20 at Amazon.com; £12.32 at Amazon.UK; € 16,53 at Amazon..de AHA Books, P.O. Box 767, Gualala, CA 95445, Email: Jane@AHApoetry.com ; www.AHApoetry.com
Review by Jim Wilson

Haibun Notebook by Stanley Pelter. George Mann Publications, Easton, Winchester, Hampshire SO21 1ES. Cover design and portrait drawing by Izzy Sharp. Text and illustrations by Stanley Pelter. ISBN: 9781907640001. 2013. Trade-paperback, 158 pages. stanley pelter, 5 School Lane, Claypole, Newark, Lincolnshire, UK.
spelter23@aol.com; www.stanleypelter.com
 Review Jane Reichhold

A Five-Balloon Morning: New Mexico Haiku  by Charles Trumbull. Red Mountain Press, Santa Fe, NM (www.redmountainpress.us). 2013.  Flat spine, 5.5 x 5.5, unpaginated, color cover and color photo of the author.
Review by Jane Reichhold

Im Sog der Stille, Klaus-Dieter Wirth, 6 x 8.5 inches, paperback, ISBN 978-3-937257-72-3, Hamburger Haiku-Verlag, Germany
Review by Werner Reichhold

Träume teilen, Volker Friebel, paperback, 6 x 8 inches, Edition Blaue Felder, Wolkenpfad Verlag, Tübingen, Germany.
Review by Werner Reichhold

Mitten im Lachen, Gerd Börner. IDEDITION, www.ideedition.de. ISBN 978-3-7322-5048-6. paperback, 123 pages, 4,5 : 7,5 inches.
Review Werner Reichhold

BOOK ANNOUNCEMENTS


Sechzig Deutsche Gaselen by Werner Reichhold

Cloud Catching Mountains by Linda Galloway and Ron C. Moss

 

   

BOOK REVIEWS


Treewhispers, tanka by Giselle Maya, ©2013, Preface by Michael McClintock, Foreword by David Rice. Saint Martin de Castillon, France: Koyama Press, 6½x10, saddle-stitched soft cover, 84 unnumbered pages, handmade. Contact: Giselle.Maya@wanadoo.fr
Review by Maxianne Berger
 
Over the years of reading Giselle Maya's tanka, here and there, I especially admire this remarkable constant—how she is able to convey such depth with such simplicity.
 
        the peony
        leans into the breeze
        while I wait
        to unravel the essence
        of its white secret
 
Nearly all the tanka in Treewhispers have been previously published in literary journals—such as Ribbons in the United States, Kokako in New Zealand, and Eucalypt in Australia. Their gathering conveys a sense of the context within which Maya writes, as detail builds upon details.
 
David Rice refers to the poet as "a sensitive intelligence moving quietly through the world." Michael McClintock writes of her poems' "emotional and magnetic gravity[.]" In Maya's world, outer and inner landscapes are twined, and I find, the more I read her work, the more I admire her craft—the poetics of how she twines deep feeling and experience into poetry. Is it from living in France that she shows no fear of the abstract? Yet her abstractions have body because she always, and expertly, grounds them with just the right image, as here, with "solitude" :
 
        what is
        the scent of solitude
        incense swirling
        silver to the ceiling
        of this high room
 
There are, however, also tanka that propose no overtly verbalized emotional component at all. And here Maya's purely sensual accounts of what is heard, seen, and felt express precisely what is most ineffable about emotion.
 
        walking
        into autumn dusk
        sound
        of wooden shutters
        being closed for the night
 
Treewhispers is printed in a script font on lovely recycled paper, and like the other books I have from Koyama Press, is hand-bound with linen thread between subtly-textured, hand-made paper covers. I still wish there were a more detailed colophon, and perhaps some way of getting a title onto the cover. However the poems within are well served by that tactile sub-text when holding this book in one's hands. And opening it. And turning the pages. Again and again.



Haiku in English edited by Jim Kacian, Philip Rowland, Allan Burns. Introduction by Billy Collins. Norton and Company, 2013, New York / London. Hardcover, 5 x 8, 424 pages, $23.95; Can $25.
Review by Jane Reichhold

When I first heard of this project, in the summer of 2012 – Jim was writing to me with requests for addresses of various haiku writers, none of which ended up in the book, I wondered what need was so great that it could force a person to start a job of this vast scope. When it was revealed that Kacian was starting with Pound’s “in a metro station” I wondered if he was doing a haiku book to exhibit a new closeness or connection between what we often refer to a ‘mainstream poetry’ – free verse in its many variations with authors published by well-known publishers – and the form of haiku. There is a definite lack of understanding among the dedicated haiku writers of how much haiku influenced and became simply a part of the poetic tools used by this pool of poets. I was cheered by this thought because I do feel that for too long there has been a ‘them’ vs. ‘us’ attitude among haiku writers and other poets and I was hoping that Kacian could, with well-chosen examples, pull haiku together, make it shine and place it in the mainstream.

When I first flipped through the actual book, I was startled by the large amount of haiku written in one line. From my experience of sizing up the percentage of haiku in the Haiku in English shown in this style that Kacian favors and fosters, the book contained more examples than are being published in magazines and haiku books. For someone without a large overview of the current haiku styles, they would get the wrong impression of what is actually being written and in what style. As I began to compare how many haiku each author was allowed in the book, it soon became evident that persons who write in one lines had more poems accepted. Not good.

As I read the one-line haiku it became apparent to me that whoever had done the choosing of the poems to include in the book was not very rigorous. One-line haiku can be as good as any three-line haiku in the hands of the experienced. The main weakness of the form is the ease of a one-liner becoming a simple run-on sentence. It is absolutely vital that the author understands and uses the concept that a haiku is composed of two parts –  the fragment and the phrase, especially when there are no line breaks to show this hallmark of haiku. Experienced haiku writers can create the cut with grammar; persons less adept need punctuation. When they leave out that, in making a one-liner the so-called haiku becomes simply a sentence. It is then possible for one to pick out any sentence of vision or genius in a work and declare it to be a one-line haiku. In addition, it is too easy for the eye to swipe across the one line in one movement. The line breaks stops the reader’s eye, gives the brain the time to form an image, before continuing on to capture another image to add to it and then! the image that pulls the poem together. Just printing one line of illogical words does not make a haiku.

This brings us to the next question of the book. I foresee a new past-time among haiku writers of thinking up all the persons who ‘should have been in the book, but were left out.’ If it had been Kacian’s intent to place haiku in the toolkits of established poets it is evident he has done too little research. With just one evening of thinking I wondered what his reasons were for leaving out Sylvia Plath – she wrote at least 8 sequences using 3- and 5- line stanzas that show her understanding of haiku and tanka. Alice Walker wrote a book of what she called haiku. Maybe the subject matter – an abortion – was not seen as being enough haiku-like? W.S Merwin’s book Finding Islands was declared to be haiku yet he is not here. Rainier Marie Rilke, in his final four years was exploring haiku and tanka and the poems, written in French, but have been translated into English since the 1970. Where is mention of Lorine Neidecker and her work in the 50s? Kenneth Patchen and his pre-haiga work? Not to mention Robert Hass’s work, not only as a translator, but as a haiku writer. The search will probably continue as others add the names of D.S Lliteras who has published haiku in his novels, and even written a novel about haiku and has a book of his own work. Stop the press: I just found 3 haiku written by Tom Robbins! One example from page 130 of Wild Ducks Flying Backwards:


Everywhere she walks
that ghost is right behind her:
Ah! panty outline.

 I am sorry but Haiku in English offers an inadequate and crippled view of the importance of haiku in literature. If one allows ‘names’ to be added to the list by finding un-intentional haiku in prose and sequences, due to the writer’s understanding of the haiku form, one would have to add Virginia Woolf, James Joyce and Gertrude Stein. Here is the book waiting to be written.

To avoid having to deal with such omissions as I have listed here, the editor’s foreword lists what this book is not:

  • it is not a collection of all the good haiku written in English
  • nor is it a gathering of every poet who has written haiku in English
  • many poets who produced credible or even very good haiku are not in the book
  • it is not the best work produced by the authors represented

(page xix)

In the second paragraph on that page Kacian gives the purpose of the book: ‘. . .to tell the story of English-language haiku, to identify its most singular accomplishments in its century of existence and to place them, in their context. . .”
This the book does. When I closed the covers on the last page I was aware of a huge arch— a bell-curve going from the first fumbling attempts to imitate a Japanese haiku, rising in a swell of most excellent works from the early days of English haiku writers and slipping downward as haiku became global to end with examples of haiku that many would hardly credit to the most liberal interpretation of the genre. If this was the truth of the matter the book would be ending with a very bleak result – single haiku having to become more and more exotic to keep up interest or find new images.

The difference between what Kacian and his two friends (why did he pick them? – he needed two persons with long experience in the haiku scene to fill in the gaps in his knowledge/experience) portrays as the situation with haiku and reality is so wide one wonders how they ever found the courage to publish this book. Only by plucking out the haiku from its much wider value and contribution in literature and poetry has he been able to make it sound so small and insignificant.

By choosing to organize the haiku and authors in a rough chronological order, the reader who turns page by page is bombarded by such a bewildering array of haiku that they neither stand alone (even when there is only one on a page) nor relate to each other.
Kacian’s restriction of his choices to only single haiku strips away the richness of haiku that had been combined into sequences, renga, or with other forms of symbiotic poetry and/or artwork. His silence on these topics threatens to swallow up the good intentions of his goal.

I can imagine that having Billy Collins write the Introduction was intended to demonstrate how a mainstream poet, and a popular one at that, has embraced haiku enough to put his name on the cover of a haiku anthology. I hope it sells many books for you, Jim, and I do hope that there will be people not acquainted with haiku who will be seduced into buying this book due to his name and will discover, in this way, the form of haiku.

However, when one reads what Collins writes in his Introduction, the thinking person will wonder if his words and opinions are good for the project. I have read and enjoyed several books of poems by Billy Collins but this was the first time I had read his prose. As I was reading, these thoughts kept flickering just above the logical intake of information: “Billy Collins writes prose like this? This is what he thinks? Maybe he gave the job to a freshman lit major? If he has all this knowledge about haiku, how can he insist on writing haiku like a 1950s novice?”

My patience with Collins’s Introduction splintered when he began, on page xxxii, to quote excellent haiku as examples of how he thought of the form. These examples were brutally cramped into Collins’s prose with the needed slashes and quotation marks. Who wrote these very good haiku? Are they his? I didn’t think so as these were minimal and well-written. I stopped to search for indices and footnotes but found none. As his desecration of haiku form continued on the next page, I began to recognize more and more of the poems. I had read them somewhere. I had even published a couple of these haiku. These were not the work of Billy Collins, but whose haiku were these? Later, as I read through the haiku in the body of the book, I found them, with the names of their authors at last. For a long time my mouth hung open in astonishment. How could a poet, especially a writer, quote so much of the works of others and not give them credit? Who is responsible for letting him get away with treating haiku writers so shamefully? If anyone hoped that the name of Billy Collins would form the bridge between haiku and mainstream poets, one must accept that a few boards are missing.

How he could write such convincing paragraphs on the art of the haiku but in the end return to his old methods of 5,7,5 and complete disregard for his own Introduction has me shaking my head in amazement. Let us hope and pray that other poets, exposed to this much proof of how to write a haiku in English, will be able to absorb and manifest better results. As I turned from the introduction and was confronted by Ezra Pound’s oft-repeated experiment in haiku, the thought crossed my mind: Maybe it is best that the breach between mainstream poets and haiku is as wide as it is and we should leave it be.

Naturally there will also be a chorus of cries of “Why wasn’t (fill in the blank ___________ with the name a living haiku writer) included in the roster of poets?” Any time an editor does an anthology there will have to be lines drawn with deserving persons and their works left out. The same thing happens with contests. A few persons are delighted by being chosen winners but hundreds are made unhappy with feelings of rejection. Still people pay good money to contests for this experience: an accepted gamble for recognition. One of the reasons publishers will accept an anthology rather than a single-author book of poetry is the assumption that every, or nearly every, included author will buy at least one book. I do hope that, in spite of these listed and surely many unlisted omissions, the book will ignite a new interest in haiku.

Still if that newbie reader fails to use the internet to find the wealth of sites (only the Matsuyama Shiki Group is mentioned in the book) available for instruction and education, he or she is seriously handicapped in this day and age of learning. There is no page of further reading to list the many how-to books or volumes of critique except those by the Kacian’s male friends listed in the biography. Which reminds me the relationship of the number of female haiku writers to males (1/4 female to 3/4 males) is seriously out of balance with the actual genders of haiku writers. Fie on you! I thought that by now it should be clear that you should not use the power of your maleness to misrepresent those in the scene – to shunt aside and make invisible deserving women.

I am very grateful for the information in the biographies of birthplaces and dates, but I am wondering why Kacian listed only one book for me in my bibliography. Can he be that uninformed? Also why was Lynx, with 22 years of continuous publishing, not included? Or its co-editor Werner? And what about the other magazines, especially those published by women, not mention? Where is the name of moonset, Mirrors, A Hundred Gourds, Haiku NewZ, Woodpecker and, and, and.

Kacian’s anthology does not even mention the translations from Japanese into English – a prime tool for seeing exactly how the Japanese work their poetry miracles; perhaps because Jim has not done any. No book can be better than the one who writes it. To begin a book is to expose all the holes in our education and lack of experiences. One always has to weigh the good of what one can bring to a wider audience on the scales balanced by one’s deficiencies.

I would like to conclude by offering another conclusion for a hundred years of haiku. Yes, when you think of all the haiku written in that period, it is true that many haiku have been written and many ideas have been used. Does that mean we can only search for unusual haiku situations and write our contemporary haiku in ways that are farther from the form? On this path lies death for the form. However, we writers who have been ignored in this book are already on the path of giving the haiku form new life – collaboration. By combining haiku with haiku for sequences, with other poetic forms as tanka and renga, or with art and images, the haiku can retain its brilliance and its brevity to shine out even more clearly. If we keep haiku in little boxes of single poem anthologies, it will wear out its welcome in English to become a butterfly pinned to felt.

 

Haiku in English: The First Hundred Years Edited by Jim Kacian, Philip Rowland, and Allan Burns Introduction by Billy Collins. ISBN: 9780393239478  SEVENTEEN WAYS OF RESPONDING TO AN ANTHOLOGY
Jim Wilson

I love poetry anthologies.  Most of my poetry reading is from anthologies.  They feel to me like wandering in a great used bookstore and stumbling on some volume you didn’t even know existed.  You take the volume home and a whole new world opens up.  Anthologies have often been like that for me; introducing me to poets I had never heard of, which I then track down, discovering a whole new world of verse and meaning. 

**

Haiku in English: The First Hundred Years is an anthology of English language haiku edited by Jim Kacian (who appears to be the primary editor and force behind the collection) and Philip Rowland and Allan Burns.  Kacian is superbly situated to produce such a book.  He is a dedicated haiku poet himself and Kacian is the founder of one of the main haiku organizations in North American, the Haiku Foundation.  Clearly, producing this book was a labor of love for Kacian and his fellow editors.

**

One way of looking at an anthology is that it is an invitation to enter into a conversation about the period, the movement, the poet, or the form that the anthology covers.  An anthology invites our own response and raises questions about what we would have included that was not found, what we would have left out that made the cut.  In the case of an anthology of a particular form, like Haiku in English, it invites us to ask what we mean by ‘haiku’ and what examples we would pick to instantiate that meaning.

**

Christian Wiman edited Poetry Magazine for ten years from 2003 to 2013.  Recently he took a professorship at Yale University.  In his collection of essays Ambition and Survival Wiman reviews The Penguin Book of the Sonnet.  Wiman writes, “What is a sonnet?  Careful, because if this anthology is a reliable guide, your definition needs to include some poems that have neither meter nor thyme and aren’t fourteen lines long.  The editor, Phillis Levin, states that her own working definition was that a poem ‘act like a sonnet,’ which must have meant that it lay quietly on the page when notified of its inclusion, because there are some contemporary poems here that have in common only ink and English.”

(Page 108)

I have similar feelings about the selections in Haiku in English.  The variety of presentation is so extreme that it is difficult to find anything they all share, something, anything, or even one thing, that they have in common.  Well, they are all short; but so are epigrams and American Cinquains.  So shortness doesn’t feel like a strong enough base, or criterion, for bringing all these poems together.  After going through the volume twice, I honestly cannot find anything which connects them, which binds them together.  The overall feeling I get is one of confusion and a lack of focus.

This lack of any discernible commonality raises the question of what is meant by the word ‘haiku’ in English.  If the instantiation of the word varies so extremely, then I think it is legitimate to ask if the word has any actual meaning.  If so, what is it?

**

When an anthology is offered one response is to focus on those who were not included; the imaginative scenario is, I think, something like “If I had been the editor I would have included so-and-so”.  It is a natural response and one that is difficult to avoid.  Given the huge amount of material Kacian and the editors had to sift, it is inevitable that some of our personal favorites will be left out.  So let me just get this out of the way and say that I would have included Hayden Caruth, Mary Jo Salter, Susan August, Tom Tico, Yeshaya Rotbard, Mary Witte, Edith Shiffert, Peter Brittel, and perhaps Ryan Mecum and David Bader.  But that’s just me.  I’m not bent out of shape at their absence as I understand what a huge job it is to sift all of this material.  In general I think the editors did an admirable job with their selections.

**

The anthology begins with some selections by Ezra Pound.  This isn’t promising.  It raises a question for me.  Am I the only one who finds this embarrassing?  I mean, am I the only English language poet who composes haiku who finds the narrative that English Language Haiku (ELH) begins with Pound to be problematic?  Pound’s notorious fascism and anti-Semitism is woven deeply into his life and work.  Can’t those of us interested in ELH come up with a different narrative for our own history than starting off with batty Uncle Ezra?  My personal view is that Pound had almost no influence on the emergence of ELH.  After a tiny number of initial attempts, Pound abandoned the form, moving on to cultivate his thud-like approach to verse.  Surely haiku historians can find someone earlier, or someone more substantial than this fascist poet to place as our progenitor and ancestor? 

**

The anthology has a large number of one-liners; among ELH poets these are sometimes called ‘monostich’ or ‘monoku’.  I call them incredibly boring.  I’ll admit it; I have an aversion to the one-liner.  I have seen exceptions, one-liners with some poetic craft.  But more than a few of the one-liners included in this anthology are utterly opaque; no amount of analysis, or contemplation, will clarify their meaning.  They are solipsistic.

And, in my opinion, the large number of one-liners isn’t reflective of their place in ELH; the one-liner is a fringe interest, yet their frequent appearance in the anthology would suggest they have a greater prominence.

Again, I admit it, I don’t get the attraction to the one-liner.  At their best they rise to the level of a good epigram.  So why not just call them epigrams?  What makes them haiku?

**

This anthology is a record of ELH among a particular group of practitioners; it does not record what haiku poets have accomplished outside of that particular group.  There’s nothing wrong with that; anthologies often represent the interests of a particular group.  But it is worth noting that this anthology does represent a particular group interest.

This is best seen by the absence of what I think of as ‘popular haiku’.  There are numerous volumes in this genre.  Perhaps the best selling of this kind of haiku include Red-Neck Haiku by Mary Witte, Haikus for Jews by Bader, and the four volumes of horror film based haiku by Ryan Mecum.  The editors do not include anything from the field of popular haiku.  This is rather like someone claiming to offer an anthology of 20th century music, but leaving out country-western or gospel.

In other words, the anthology is a record of a particular class and reflects their esthetic tastes and preferences.  Again, there is nothing wrong with that; but it is good to keep in mind that the anthology is not really an overview of the first century of ELH in general.  Rather, it is a highly selective overview which leaves out significant expressions of the haiku form.

**

There is a relentless minimalism in the anthology.  For example, James Hackett’s most famous haiku is as follows:

A bitter morning:
sparrows sitting together
without any necks

This is the version Hackett himself published; it also appears in Cor van den Heuvel’s The Haiku Anthology, and in The San Francisco Haiku Anthology.  (I believe it appears in this version in other anthologies as well, but I don’t have time to track them down right now.) 

In Haiku in English this haiku appears as follows:

Bitter morning:
sparrows sitting
without necks.

This is an earlier version of Hackett’s haiku; I believe it was published in an early issue of Modern Haiku, but I might have that wrong.  In any case, Hackett went on to revise it and it is in the full count version that it has become well-known and admired.  The full-count version is, in my opinion, a far superior haiku.  The truncated version is in telegraph-speak and makes the haiku sound flat and dull.  Hackett was absolutely right to revise it.  It is only someone operating under the conceptual fog of minimalism that would prefer the earlier version.  I think this really does Hackett a disservice because Hackett has explicitly rejected a minimalist approach to haiku.  He has written at least one articulate essay opposing minimalism and this is reflected in his own expansive haiku.

**

I detect three main approaches to haiku included in the anthology: the three line form (this can be 5-7-5 or free verse lineation), the one-liner, and the experimental, including what they refer to as ‘eye-ku’, including one-word versions.  I think of the experimental haiku as consciously avant-garde.  They are the least successful.  They feel very dated to me.  Running across them felt to me like running into an 8-track tape machine; I mean that the 8-track tape machine is an artifact of a specific period, but it has been surpassed, left behind.  The avant-garde haiku have that same feel for me; they feel very dated and not very interesting.  I’m not complaining about their inclusion; in an overview of the century, as part of a documentary, they have their place.  In retrospect, though, these experiments have not proven very fertile.

**

The anthology reflects a view of how haiku should be crafted.  This is natural; an anthology reflects the editors’ views.  In this case it is noteworthy that there is an absence of poetic techniques that one would normally find in English language poetry.  I am referring to an absence of figurative language, absence of devices such as metaphor, simile, synecdoche, an absence of examples of rhyme, assonance, alliteration, etc.  I believe this reflects the views of the editors that haiku should not use these devices; rather haiku should report bare experience.  Personally, I find this view highly problematic.  First, because Japanese haiku poets use all of these devices at times, and second because it has the tendency of flattening out the expressive range that the ELH poet as available.  And, truth be told, many ELH poets use these devices.  It would have been nice to have them represented.

**

The anthology, in the opening and closing essays, presents ELH as a history of progress from the first naïve efforts to the more sophisticated approaches taken today.  This idea of progress is, to my mind, questionable.  I also think it is, in a small way, pernicious.

Contrast this way of looking at ELH history with how sonneteers look at their history.  The English language sonnet has not progressed in the sense of gotten better and better.  Sonneteers still study, admire, and learn from Shakespeare, Donne, and many other early practitioners.  They admire these practitioners.  This is because sonneteers have an esthetic which transcends a particular location in time.

The idea that ELH haiku is today more sophisticated, more subtle, is, I would suggest, a kind of self-congratulatory mechanism that allows one to think of one’s self as advanced compared to the past.  Forms change, it is true, but that does not mean they get better and better.

Let me give an example of what I mean.  On Page 324, writing on Richard Wright, Kacian writes, “He [Wright] died before he had come to full maturity in the genre . . .”  This kind of judgment is shared by some in the circles of official haiku organizations.  I would suggest, however, that it is misguided.  First because Wright was a mature writer at the time he composed haiku.  Second because the haiku of Wright are just as fresh today as when they were first written; they have not aged or become passé; they speak as meaningfully today to us as when first penned. 

But Wright was not a minimalist; and I think that is where the rub is.  Kacian’s judgment on Wright is from the perspective of a doctrinaire minimalist view which regards full count haiku, haiku in 5-7-5, as something which represents an earlier phase which haiku authors have now left behind.  The only problem with this view is that it doesn’t reflect how actual ELH poets have behaved.  5-7-5 haiku continues to be produced; many volumes coming forth each year.  It is a very popular, the most popular, approach to composing haiku.

**

Kacian has a view of the ‘divide’ which developed in the ELH community.  On page 336 Kacian writes, “With the proliferation of journals, organizations, and gatherings, English-language haiku had become a mature movement by the last couple of decades of the twentieth century.  One of the consequences of this growth, however, was a divide in the perception of what ELH was: even as the genre was maturing beyond its early imitative phase, moving past most obvious notions of what was significant in haiku, and consequently coming into its own as literature, a more simplistic notion was emerging in popular culture.  It identified the most overt characteristic of haiku – that is, the syllable count – as the one irreducible element, and so for it the measure of haiku was its firmly fixed form.”

My personal view of this divide is that it has given birth to several distinct forms of poetry.  The first one is an English syllabic form: three lines of 5-7-5.  The second is a three-line free verse approach which usually incorporates a minimalist esthetic.  The third is a self-consciously avant-garde approach which is easy to spot if difficult to define; in my personal schema the one-liner falls into the avant-garde category.

My personal view is not one that sees this in terms of one stream being more ‘mature’ than the other.  That is why I have no problem reading, enjoying, and admiring free verse haiku; because I see it as a different form of poetry than the syllabic form, with different standards, a different esthetic, and different procedures.  I seem to be the outlier in this kind of discussion, though, and many people share Kacian’s view of ELH becoming gradually more sophisticated and mature.  I freely admit that my narrative is personal and probably subjective.  I would suggest, though, that the one offered by Kacian is equally so.  Which do you prefer?

**

One development that I found absent from the anthology is the haiku stanza poem.  Kacian mentions several poets who have used the haiku stanza structure, but he doesn’t include any in the anthology.  I miss those.  One of Richard Wilbur’s haiku is included in the anthology, but none of his superb haiku stanza poems.  I’m not sure, but perhaps this is another example of the overriding minimalism; that is to say haiku stanza poems represent an expansion of the form which might run counter to a minimalist perspective.

**

In the ‘Editors’ Foreword’ the compilers of this anthology tell us the purpose for producing this anthology: “Our purpose from the outset of this project has been to tell the story of English-language haiku, to identify its most singular accomplishments in its century of existence and place them, in their context, before our readers.” (Page xix)  This anthology accomplishes that goal.  It does tell that story.  But it tells that story from the perspective of a particular group.  That group consists of what I refer to as ‘official haiku’; that is to say organizations and publications that have a particular take on how to compose haiku, what it consists of, and what its purpose is.  But, there is a vast field of ELH that lies outside of these organizations.  Personally, I have found some of the most creative, lyrical, and moving haiku to be found in this vast expanse beyond the gated community of official haiku.  There are also regions of popular culture which have absorbed the   haiku form; folksy, down-home versions of haiku that are not concerned with ‘enlightenment’ or ‘high art’.  These are also part of ELH.  But there is a kind of cultural chasm between the two which is difficult to bridge.

**

I enjoyed reading this anthology.  It is an interesting record and one worth perusing.  Kacian and the other editor’s are to be congratulated on completing a difficult task.  Those who are included in the anthology also deserve applause. 

If I were to draw one conclusion from this anthology it is this: I think there needs to be an anthology of ELH that is confined to just the syllabic tradition.  This is dependent on my personal view that the syllabic approach to haiku is a legitimate way to compose haiku and that it has not, in fact, been surpassed by later developments.  This is a view that is not shared by many in the ELH community.  On the other hand, it is a view widely shared in popular culture, as Kacian himself notes. 

My view is that syllabic haiku has become its own form, its own tradition.  In my imagination such an anthology would include selections from notable syllabic ELH poets; including Wright, Shiffert, Hackett, August, Carruth, Salter, and many others.  Also including would be examples of the Haiku Stanza Poem; this would allow for poems by Richard Wilbur, Rita Dove, and others.  Also included would be selections from popular haiku, including Ryan Mecam and Mary Witte.  Such an anthology would, I think, be a good balance to Haiku in English.  Together they would provide a more complete picture of the first hundred years.

**

 

Broken Promises, by Jerry Dreesen, 5.5 X 8.5 paperback, 52 pages, purchase through Amazon, ISBN 9781484198636, ©2013
Review by Dennis (chibi) Holmes

Jerry Dreesen is a poet and painter.  He’s been writing poetry for over 20 years.

Broken Promises, is a collection of Jerry’s poems touching on nature and personal remembrances. Most are three lines, a de facto standard for English short poetry. Most have the caesura implied rather than explicit. Jerry shows refined skill in crafting them.

One curious observation for me was the first poem of the book:

forgotten promises
the dusty basket
of tulip bulbs

This poem occupies dead center on the very first page of the book, suggesting to me, that the book’s title should have been, Forgotten Promises.
Curious!?

This first poem gives a feel for the other poems in Jerry’s book. The telling first line, “forgotten promises” sets the scenic background for the reader. Although, I felt it more telling than showing, as I would have more expected for a painter/poet such as Jerry, it is a good poem, layered with the nuances in the adjective, “dusty” and the noun-object, “basket.” One can certainly visualize this as a real gardening scene.
I’ve found other poems evoking a deep empathy for loss layered in the folds of Jerry’s lines:

remembering
my father’s face
not remembering me

in a drawer
a photo of my son —
he never grew older

 

Yet, others as landscapes in a terseness, both, in the amount and meaning words:

november dusk—
the thin mint moon
barely visible


And,  others expressing an easy humor:

end of march —
the ground hog
without a clue


Although,  I would have preferred Jerry to show more in his words rather than tell, his selection of the telling words work consistently well in his book.

 

embry eye poems, by George Swede, publisher: Inspress, Box 309, Station P, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5S 2S8, Contact – A. Zarins, azarins3@gmail.com. ISBN 978-0-9881179-2-1, paperback 5.5 X 8.5. 52 eye poems in 60 printed pages.
Review by Dennis (chibi) Holmes


The title:


embry
eye
poems


is itself a poem, “embryo” first appearing in Inkstone, 1993. This gives an insight to the nature of the poems in George’s book. Unfortunately, I cannot represent the graphics in this review which give the poems their eye-appeal. As you can’t tell from the title poem, that I’ve tried to represent here, the “o” in embryo, surrounds the pseudo-word “embry”. George’s book is chocked full of them! By arrangement of letters, space, and symbols, George takes a play-on-words to be a play-with-word/letters. 

I will try to represent a poem that will hopefully give you a visualization:



Lake Placid

o
m n
o


I hope this gives you an idea of the poems in George’s book.

May I say, George, I’ve crossed my eyes and dotted my teas reading your book. 

 

Evening in the Plaza, Haibun & Haiku, by Jeffrey Woodward, published by Tournesol Books, PO Box 441152, Detroit, MI 48244-1152,5.5 X 8.5 paperback, 52 pages, ISBN: 978-0615834757,©2013
Review by Dennis (chibi) Holmes

The haibun I have read mostly is from the founder of haibun in Japan, Master Matsuo Basho, The Narrow Road to Oku, in romanization, “oku no hosomichi”, first, the English translation by Dorothy Britton (1974), and later a more modern translation by Donald Keene and Miyata Masayuki (1996).  As I understand, the work, called haibun and other works of its style, is composed of prose and poetry. As to modern haibun, I have read but a little. I do see on the back cover of Jeffrey’s, Evening in the Plaza, Haibun & Haiku, positive assessments by Jim Kacian, Senior Editor, Contemporary Haibun, Ken Jones, Winner of the Sasakawa Prize for Haikai, and Penny Harter, Author of Recycling Starlight and One Bowl. I have met both Jim Kacian and Penny Harter. Their testimony to Jeffrey’s book is heavy weight.

Maybe I should best frame my review as a comparison of Matsuo Basho’s original style to Jeffrey Woodward’s style. I can see similarities. I can, also, see dissimilar approaches. True, both use prose. I might go far as to say, Jeffrey’s command of the English language in descriptive narration is impressive. I study Japanese, but, only in the narrow frame of haiku, so, I take the assessments of historians and scholars that Basho’s command of Japanese in his prose more than adequate for the “oku no hosomichi” journalistic style. Seeing that Jeffrey is general editor of Haibun Today, and, formerly edited Modern Haibun & Tanka Prose, I suspect he has had much practice and experience. The main difference I see between Basho’s haibun  of which I base my limited experience, and, Jeffrey’s haibun, is the poetry. Basho accents the prose account in his journal, trying not to directly draw from the prose, whereas, Jeffrey uses his poetry to more directly reference the prose.

Space is limited, but, I will try to show example, first by Basho (Keene’s translation):

“We left Haguro and continued our journey to the castle town of Tsurugaoka where we were guests of the samurai named Nagayama Shigeyuki.  We composed a scroll of linked-verse at his house. Sakichi accompanied us all the way. We boarded a river boat and went down to the port of Sakata.  We stayed at the house of a physician named En’an Fugyoku.

 

From Hot Springs Mountain
All the way to Blowing Bay –
The cool of evening”



Next, an example from Jeffrey:

Only, rising from his nostrils, that white breath that mingles and hers, there before the stable this frosty morning, when the wild, bright eye blinks largely with a semblance of apprehension – and she, unfastening her hand from his mane departs.

the thoroughbred
forgets a fence and canters
in a withered field


Both are very limited examples, but, I felt the differences and disconnects. Let me also say, I may be reaching due to my limited experience with haibun. Basho’s haibun is based upon a journey whereas Jeffrey’s basis in not. I am willing to concede it may be comparing apples and oranges. Yet, I like both fruits.



Laughing To Myself, by Tom Clausen, Michael Ketchek Publisher, 125 High St., Rochester, New York, 14609, mketchek@frontier.com, 2013. 8.5 X 5.5 inch paperback, 25 pages.
Review by Dennis (chibi) Holmes

I’ve known Tom online for a few years. He has written in the short poem venue based upon the Japanese haiku, senryu, haibun, and tanka since 1989. His book, Laughing To Myself, spans then until now with poems plucked from publications such as Bottle Rockets, Brussels Sprouts, Empty Ring of Stones, Frogpond, Modern Haiku, and Upstate Dim Sum, to mention a few.

Laughing To Myself, is strewn mostly with three line poems together with a two and few one line poems. The poems are personable, mostly, containing a “nature” theme. The poems are easy to read and resonate with an inner calm, offering a polite “ah” with a thoughtful yet enjoyable “ha.”

A good three line example from Tom’s book:

riverbank swallows
  my beer label
     peels easily


(It’s probably my penchant for puns, but, I read “swallows” as word play, although, I do not know if that Tom’s intent.)

A two line poems:


losing control of my son
 —and myself


(I’ve been there and do/did that!)

A one line example:


in the theater spotlight dust falls

(the imagery quite fetching)

I would hope to see more of Tom’s poems in future publications. I’ve smiled at his poems in, Laughing To Myself.


Weathered Wings, An Anthology of Poetry Magpie Haiku & Tanka Poets, © 2012, cover art: iStockphoto, cover art: Ken Richardson. ISBN 978-0-9693564-2-4, Paperback, 73 printed pages. Contact Joanne Morcom at morcomj@telus.net for purchasing the anthology.
Reviewed by Dennis (chibi) Holmes

The Magpie Haiku & Tanka Poets are:
Patricia Benedict
Yvonne Franklin
Jeanne Jorgensen
Joanne Morcom
Cynthia (Nan) Puntil
Lucille Raizada
Sylvia Santiago

Weathered Wings is a collection of short poetry (haiku and tanka) by these poets. Each poet has their own section which starts with a brief biography followed by their contribution of short poetry.

These are women poets of Canada. Their poems subscribe to a recommendation (in the beginning of the anthology) attributed to Matsuo Basho (the translator is not cited nor is the historical reference) which goes: “When composing a verse let there not be a hair’s breadth separating your mind from what you write: composition of a poem must be done in an instant, like a woodcutter felling a tree or a swordsman leaping at a dangerous enemy.” 
As with many edicts attributed to Master Basho, there seems to be a liberty exerted in translation.

I found the contribution of the poets well suited for enjoying insight into their individual worlds experiencing nature’s panoply of weather, flora, and fauna, together with, personal emotional content.
 
Although, I may have preferred less “ing” ing in some of the haiku, I feel this is more my personal preference base on tenets I learned from my study of hokku/haiku in Japan to have the verse more in the present using a present tense verb. If I might give example without prejudice toward the particular author, Patricia Benedict:


Juneau Icefield
cocky tourist looking for
skate rentals


perhaps instead of “looking” “looks”; and, dropping “for” to L3?

Patricia’s tanka does reach deeply into those moments of shared experience:


the eve of his death
clenched fists fight
imaginary foes
only an old song
brings him peace


Space prevents me from comment on each poet, but, generally, I found the anthology provided voice from each author.  I found woodcutters and swordswoman! Oh Canada!



C.2.2., Anthology of short verse, edited by Brendan Slater & Alan Summers, Yet To Be Named Press, Stroke-on-Trent, England, 2013, Paperback, 155 printed pages.
ISBN 9781479304561
www.yettobenamedfreepress.org
Review by Dennis (chibi) Holmes


c.2.2., is a collection of short verse by a horde of poets all listed in Credits in the last two printed pages of the anthology. The themes of the poems are about the dark side of humanity.

In, “Writing the Difficult Thing,” Introduction to c.2.2., by Sonam Chhoki, a collection of witticisms on writing from famous authors, Sonam cited: George Orwell, Adorno Flaubert, Kafka, Anais Nin, Osip Mandelstam, Primo Levi, Azar Nafisi, Andrea Levy, Rilke, Wilfred Owen, W. B. Yeats, Virgil, Thomas Hardy, and Malala Yousafzai, to weave a thematic thread exploring writing about the darker sides of human experience. This is the fabric of this anthology expressed by its collection of authors.

The anthology for the most part has each poem on its own page, but, a few span over more than one page, these are haibun in that there is prose and poem. There are tanka verses, also included. 

A bit of “grin and bear it” is sometimes expressed. For example, Leigh Beaune’s short verse about divorce:


after the divorce
he mows
in the opposite direction


Or Fruit Dove’s


city ghosts—
in every shop-window
the same old me



A theme of desperation and despair in LOST0091’s


attempted suicide
I am the blood leaking
out of my body


Sola’s tanka “autonomy expresses a sense of disconnection:


he chooses this day to try to save my soul
breathing fire dripping sweat jowls swaying
finger pointing spittle flying as I sit on this hard
bench knowing  that I’d rather take a swan dive
straight into hell than be anything like him
indulgence —
a Jeezit
on my tongue



As I see in some of the poet’s names, a need for anonymity due to the intimate darkness expressed in their verse. I understand.

c.2.2. is somewhat experimental in presentation and dark in its weave of word. I found the read, though dark, a fine treatment.




Cantec de flaut, Flute Song, Chant de flute, Antologie de poeme Haiku, an anthology of poems by Octavian Mares from Bacau, Romania, published by Ecitura Victovia, 2012, ISBN 978-973-1902-88-3 5X5 Paperback, 101 print numbered pages. www.vicovia.ro
Review by Dennis (chibi) Holmes

The book is an anthology of Octavian Mares’ poems selected by Clelia Ifrim. Octavian is a poet and woodcarver in Romania. The book is presented in three languages: Romanian (the author’s native language), English (translator Clelia Ifrim), and French (translator Nicole Pottier). Clelia Ifrim wrote the introduction which is presented in the three languages. The English title is, “Cherry Blossoms, a raven and a white butterfly” which introduces Octavian Mares with selections of poems and commentary of Octavian’s style (“… an image of two parts that are in contrast with each other. …”).  I found the Clelia’s English slightly difficult to understand in some of her explanations, but, not to the point of too much confusion.

The rest of the book is a presentation of poems, three to a page, with the selected poem in the original Romanian, the translation in English, and the translation in French. There are occasional illustrations (reproductions of pencil drawings) by Anca Elena, interlaced throughout the anthology, that lend scene to a poem on the opposite page. The poems are three lines with traditional “cuts” at the end of the first and second lines and adhere to the style previously mentioned reinforcing the two part contrast.

I found Octavian’s short poetry English translations, (I do not read Romanian or French, sadly) easy to understand and fine to read. I enjoyed the natural seasonal themes and images in the poems. An example of the two part contrast:

Top of mountain—
nearby the blackened rock
an edelweiss


and another:


Under the full moon
the whitewashed walls of house—
branch and twig shadows

If I were to critique the overall short poetry, I would suggest that less is more and terseness may add polish to the poems. Yet, I feel, this may be difficult to truly say because I am reading a translation that may or may not give the flow and context from the original Romanian. Poetry is very difficult to translate, but, I appreciate and applaud multilingual attempts.

 

Tangled Shadows, Senryu & Haiku, by Elliot Nicely, A “Book in Hand” edition, Rosenberry Books, etc., 101 Nicks Bend West, Pittsboro, NC 27312, Ordering info: 800-723-0336, 919-969-2767
http://rosenberrybooks.com/hand-bound-editions/haiku/tangled-shadows 
Review by Dennis (chibi) Holmes

Elliot’s book is a  hand-bound “Book in Hand” edition using Japanese stab binding laced with linen cord, front and back cover of Somerset cotton cover stock mould-made in England. The book is about the size of a large 7X5 greeting card.  The card is certainly a candidate for a card/book gift.
Elliot’s short poems are three-line and one-line and quite clever and delightful, covering a range of experience from simple delights of nature:

dandelion field
the summer wind casts
a thousand wishes

human experiences (from which the book title is taken):

the last time we spoke tangled shadows of telephone wires

and some weave romantic intent mixed with seasonal sentinels:


summer solstice the distance to her lips

I would recommend this book as a fine unique treatment of poetry presentation, simple yet elegant.

 

Moon Woke Me Up Nine Times, Selected Haiku of Basho, translated by David Young, Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. ISBN 978-0-307-96200-3  Cover design by Peter Mendelsund  www.aaknopf.com
Review by Dennis (chibi) Holmes


The Introduction to David Young’s Moon Woke Me Up Nine Times, Selected Haiku of Basho is standard fare and gives some insights and background to Japan’s famous poet of the Edo era. For those not familiar with Basho, it is clear and straight forward, for those familiar Basho it is… well… familiar. I do have some issue with the translations and selection of poems (which are hokku/haikai verse, not haiku historically). The English translations do serve the explanations in the Introduction, though I found most of the English translations throughout David’s book, rather flat. Yet, I do know from my own experience how difficult it is to translate the poetic nuances from one culture to another in different languages.

There is in Appendix One, Correlations with Reichhold’s Numbering that cross-references Jane Reichhold’s, Basho: The Complete Haiku.  As is, the book is filled with Basho verse in David’s translations arranged in chronological order 1662-1689 and 1689-1694. The reader, by exercise, may make comparison of the English translations to note changes in style. As a small and perhaps simplistic effort, I’ve taken the first English translation of one of Basho’s early poems:

Old lady cherry tree
 blooming in age —
  memories


(1662)
Compared with the last English translation (in this case Basho’s death poem)

Sick while traveling
  dream of a withered field
   wandering around

(1694)
Covering a 32 year span, the different style in the English translation is hard to assess. Jane’s book and notes will be necessary to assess the differences in the Japanese style. There are books upon books analyzing Basho’s poems. I feel that David’s book misses the mark for anyone that will not have Jane’s book, too, for reference comparison. All in all, another set of translations of Master Basho’s poems can lend discovery of layers that Basho wove into his poetry.
 

Susurrus,  by Anita Krumins, Inspress, Box 309 Station P, Toronto, Ontario Canada M5S 2S8, Contact: A. Zarins, azarins3@gmail.com Paperback 56 pages.
ISBN 978-0-9881179-1-4
Review by Dennis (chibi) Holmes


Susurrus (yes, I googled it and it means among other things, a whispering sound) is a collection of previously published short poems presented in chronological written order starting in 1988 through 2012.

Anita presents us with a visual evolution of her short poetry. The reader through reading the poems in order can see the poem forms change. I would say from the first in 1988 to the last in 2012, shows a progression in skill honed by experience and exposure to the genre, reflecting perhaps branches off the genre’s evolutionary trunk.

Anita’s first poem:

single cherry blossom falls
swarms of haiku poets
pounce on it


to the last:


knee x-rays show all the step aerobics

show this progression from three-liner to one-liner form and others in between.

Some in between:

Basho’s
Turd
Frog
Plop

moonrise
cellulite-pocked
thighs


Although, the progression is not a linear one, the progression (if I’m allowed to call it such) shows influence from publications Haiku Canada Newsletter, Inkstone , Modern Haiku, Frogpond, and Lynx.

Anita’s poems are humorous  whispers  through time.

 

A Dictionary of Haiku by Jane Reichhold. Trade paperback, 328 pages, 60# white interior paper, full-color laminated cover art by Werner Reichhold, 6” x 9” trim size. ISBN-10: 0944676243. Retail: $18.00 US;  $16.20 at Amazon.com; £12.32 at Amazon.UK; € 16,53 at Amazon..de AHA Books, P.O. Box 767, Gualala, CA 95445, Email: Jane@AHApoetry.com ; www.AHApoetry.com
Review by Jim Wilson

The first thing you need to know about this book is that it is huge. Two columns per page, roughly 8 to 10 haiku per column. At over 300 pages that’s somewhere between five and six thousand Haiku.

The second thing to know is that this is not intimidating. It’s not intimidating because of the layout of the collection. Reichhold has used the traditional Japanese Saijiki format for her haiku. What this means is that first the Haiku are arranged in accordance with the five haiku seasons: Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter, and New Year. 

Then within each season there are seven topics: Moods, Occasions, Celestial, Terrestrial, Livelihood, Animals, and Plants. These seven topics are repeated under each season. In a sense you can think of these seven topics as a cycle within the cycle of the seasons.

Then under each topic Reichhold has sub-topics: these sub-topics, and the haiku within each sub-topic, are arranged alphabetically which leads to the idea that this is a Dictionary. The sub-topics are not necessarily repeated in the way the topics under each season are. The sub-topics are more focused, more season specific. In addition, the rang of sub-topics is very broad including such traditional foci as ‘mountains’ and ‘stars’ and various fauna and flora to such human concerns as love, coping,  anger and thankfulness; the range covers the full spectrum of human feelings and relationships as well as the world we live in, both celestial and terrestrial.

For example, the first Season is Spring. The first topic under Spring is Moods. The first sub-topic under Moods is Coping. And the first haiku placed in this arrangement is:

 

attention to detail
attending the event
on the wrong day

 

This is followed by some more haiku in the Spring/Moods/Coping section, before moving onto the next group which is under Spring/Moods/Desire. 

This sounds like a complicated system, and when I try to explain on paper like this, I suspect it seems formidable. But it is actually no more complicated than looking at your calendar to find the month, date, and day of week for a particular event.  In other words, once you enter into Reichhold’s Dictionary you will find that it flows easily from sub-topic to sub-topic, from topic to topic, and from season to season; just like the events of the days, weeks, and months of our lives.

This approach to presenting her haiku has several advantages.  First, it ties Reichhold’s collection into the traditional Japanese way of cataloging and presenting haiku. Saijiki are central to how most Japanese compose haiku and how they determine the seasonality of a particular image. At the same time, Reichhold’s approach to saijiki has a particularly western turn to it. First, because these are haiku by a single author, and as I understand it saijiki in Japan are collections of haiku from multiple sources.  And second because some of the topics and sub-topics Reichhold uses are non-traditional. I am thinking, for example of ‘moods’ which is, I think, a strikingly western category, and in particular the sub-topics under moods feel non-traditional to me. So this system of presentation is a wonderful blend of the traditional Japanese structure with the cultural tendencies of the West. And it is done very smoothly and in a completely convincing manner.

A second advantage with this kind of arrangement is that it places all the haiku in this large collection within a seasonal context. Reichhold’s Dictionary is a resounding reaffirmation of haiku as, in essence, a seasonal poem. Everything is embedded in a seasonal context simply by the placement it receives in the Saijiki/Dictionary.  The reader is greatly assisted by this kind of placement. In reading, the reader is guided first by the season, then by the topic, and then by the sub-topic, and finally to the specific haiku.  This feels to me like having a learned Aunt or Uncle by my side. In other words, the haiku are not isolated from the larger context of the world. When we read haiku in the west, often the haiku feel somewhat cut off or isolated; the brevity of the form can increase this sense of separation.  Not that this is the intent, but it is the effect of placing haiku in, for example, anthologies where the flow is from author to author rather than from season to season.

My recommendation for reading this work is to read one sub-topic at a time. The average sub-topic ranges from about 2 to 20 Haiku. That is an easy number of haiku to digest. And because all the haiku within a sub-topic are thematically related they  naturally flow together, forming a kind of overall collage of meaning.  I have found this a very comfortable way to access the material.

Incidentally, you don’t have to read the book from cover to cover. Like a good Dictionary you may be interested in a particular entry. For example, under Summer/Terrestrial there is the sub-topic Earthquake. Perhaps the haiku in that section might be of interest (Reichhold is from California, like myself, so it’s a natural topic of interest).  Under Fall/Livelihood there is a series of haiku on ancestors.  So you can go to a particular section that interests you or matches the season you are currently in, or perhaps matches the mood you are feeling at the moment. 

Now, what about the Haiku themselves? My overall view of Reichhold’s Haiku is one of crispness, fine observation, attention to detail, and clarity. At times terse, at times lyrical, there are no wasted words. 

I have observed three approaches to composing haiku in the west these days: the single sentence, the list, and the juxtaposition.  Almost all of Reichhold’s haiku fall into the juxtaposition approach.  This gives the haiku a sparkle and as you move from one haiku to the next there is a continuous unfolding of gentle revelations of how things are overlapping and interweaving. 

In terms of lineation, Reichhold’s haiku can be very short:

moonset
in the plop of waves
sleep

Or even shorter:

unsaid
on her lips
yes

(Page 169)

Or another short one:

cinders
forgotten
thoughts

(Page 229)

On the other hand, Reichhold’s haiku can be expansive:

running down a path
the rainbow always faster
to slip over the cliff

(Page 12)

Many of Reichhold’s haiku are rich with implication:

war museum
sitting down to still
my quaking knees

(Page 200)

Now, here’s an interesting question:  What season would you place this haiku in? There is no specific season mentioned. Reichhold places this haiku in the Fall season. And that feels right to me. That is to say there is an essence, a feeling tone, for this haiku which connects it to autumn. I am using ‘essence’ in a Japanese way (I believe the word is hon’i) rather than in a western way of essence as some definable trait. Hon’i has more to do with their feeling state. The relics of a war museum, and war itself, are autumnal from this perspective whether or not the visit to the war museum took place in fall. Reichhold has an unerring sense for this kind of placement and it makes the flow of the haiku in this volume river-like; an easy flow.

Reichhold does not shy away from incorporating western poetic techniques into her haiku.  I noticed, for example, that some haiku unapologetically use rhyme:

in the park
the ark
of his bark

(Page 264)

The rhyme here is used in an appropriately humorous way.  Here’s another one that I found particularly effective:

existence
in mountain distance
silence

Only a small percentage rhyme and my feeling is that when rhyme is naturally appropriate, Reichhold feels free to use it. The same is true for other techniques. Here is an example of personification:

a gentleness
warming the night air
summer stars

(Page 73)

I love this haiku.  The first line indicates a human trait; that trait is then transferred to the warm night air. The second line is a pivot line (a technique Reichhold uses a lot), so you can read this:

a gentleness
warming the night air

Or you can read it

warming the night air
summer stars

This kind of pivot enriches the texture of many of the haiku in the collection.

Notice also the use of alliteration in lines 1 and 3; the recurring ‘s’ sound, which ends line 1 is picked up in line 3, becoming a major sonic element. This kind of careful crafting is found throughout the collection.

At times Reichhold will present a series of haiku linked by an explicitly stated common theme.  For example in the Winter Season, under the topic Moods, she has the subject Being Silent:

deep silence
it takes the shape
of the inner ear

silence
between words
stories

silence
drawing together lovers
a silver cord

silence
between objects known
others becoming

silence
fingers pointing
forwards

silence
its size shaped
by loneliness

(Page 227)

There are more in this series, but this gives you an idea. This kind of sequencing has an exploratory feel to it, a kind of tentative uncovering of various aspects, sometimes contradictory, of an experience. Notice, for example, how silence can draw lovers together, but in a later haiku in the sequence silence has company with loneliness. The effect of repeating the word silence and having it prominently placed, gives the sequence an incantatory effect, like a chant. 

While each haiku in this sequence could stand alone, the effect of reading them together is more than the sum of its parts. It ends up creating a complex mental picture of many facets. I find this kind of arrangement one of the rewarding features of the Dictionary.

For those who love haiku, this is a rich treasure chest. As I noted above, you can read it through, one sub-topic at a time, or you can dive into the book and read those sections which are of interest to you at the moment. For those who are haiku poets, this work also offers examples of effective use of pivot, juxtaposition, and how to construct a very short line without that very short line becoming anorexic. The richness of Reichhold’s very short lines is one of the stellar aspects of the collection.

For those who enjoy reading poetry in general, this book also has much to offer. I have found, for example, that I can apply Reichhold’s usages to other short-form types of poetry, such as the cinquain, fibonacci, and tractys. There is a great deal to be gleaned from this collection by one of the most prolific poets of haiku in the English language.

But most of all, the Dictionary is simply a delight to read. I will be reading it for a long time to come and I can think of many people for whom it will make a much appreciated gift. 

ashes
on the far mountain
snow

at sea
guardian angels are
everywhere

 

Haibun Notebook by Stanley Pelter. George Mann Publications, Easton, Winchester, Hampshire SO21 1ES. Cover design and portrait drawing by Izzy Sharp. Text and illustrations by Stanley Pelter. ISBN: 9781907640001. 2013. Trade-paperback, 158 pages. stanley pelter, 5 School Lane, Claypole, Newark, Lincolnshire, UK.
spelter23@aol.com; www.stanleypelter.com
 Review Jane Reichhold

This, the fourteenth book by Stanley Pelter feels, in some ways, like a commentary, an apologia, an explanation of Pelter’s previous works. As one of the leaders in the haibun form and certainly the most eccentric, perhaps there is a need for the average reader to be educated and brought up to date on this form and the way Pelter works it. He does a very good job of illustrating the finer points of his writing without being the oppressive teacher. He does this by posing questions about the haibun form. Many are unanswered, leaving the reader to puzzle out the meaning for him or herself.
At first this method considerably slowed my progress through the book. I would stop to try to find my answer to such statement questions as:

Haibun should represent an alternative, not as assertation.

Supposedly the text of this book came from Pelter’s notebook that he kept for his jottings on the subject of the haibun. One that I loved and want to remember is:

Western haibun is slowly emerging from the squeezed womb of haiku.

And

Haibun is a dark ocean without shores or lighthouse, strewn with many a judgmental wreck (Pelter plagiarizing Kant).

“We have to get used to a culture that doesn’t make sense. All those perennial truths have gone. . . “Philip Glass
Pelter quotes from a wide selection of artists, painters, and writers to illustrate what he thinks haibun should include:

“Court risk, tempt accident, scorn the norm” Francis Bacon.

You get the idea. Pelter is encouraging himself, and others, to push into the unknown with this form borrowed from Basho four hundred years age. Stop imitating the accomplished, the realized, so you have the freedom to reach down into your very being to rescue what would otherwise be lost.

I hope that any one who has been mystified by Pelter’s previous haibun books will take one more plunge into the art of haibun by reading this book. You probably cannot plan to sit down and speed read it in one evening. This is a book to leave lying near the place you sit to write your own haibun. In an idle moment flip it open and begin to read. Your mind is guaranteed a trip into the unfamiliar and the not-yet-thought.

Pelter brings an extra bonus in his Haibun Notebook: His own artwork as manga commix. Excellent. Well worth the price of the book. Need a gift for a writer friend? Think of Pelter’s exercises for the brain.

 

A Five-Balloon Morning: New Mexico Haiku  by Charles Trumbull. Red Mountain Press, Santa Fe, NM (www.redmountainpress.us). 2013.  Flat spine, 5.5 x 5.5, unpaginated, color cover and color photo of the author.
Review by Jane Reichhold

To mention the name of Charles Trumbull is to call up the image of the editor of Modern Haiku 2006 – 2013 and past president of the Haiku Society of America, as well as a kind and generous gentleman. The publication of a book of haiku that celebrates his return to his birthplace—New Mexico—seems a fitting adieu to Modern Haiku. The balloons refer not to childish toys but to the hot-air balloons that carry person aloft above the bonds of earth and frequently dot the fair blues skies of the state.

My favorite, and one of the best haiku I have read in a long time, is:

almost breakfast time—
fumbling in the coffee can
for a night crawler

I love the skillful way he leads the reader into thinking about food and then coffee and then switches, very logically, to the night crawler for the early morning fisherman. To me, this is the way haiku should work. Instead of simply a juxtaposition of the same or commonly associated things, but to pick and choose each word that, step by step, builds to an utterly new way of seeing these items. The little shock of the third line is a perfect example of the hai or comic in a haiku.

Another one of Charles haiku that touched me was:

heat lightning
the casino cashier’s
liquid silver choker

Rereading this haiku now, however I recognize that if the reader did not have   knowledge of this type of necklace (which I do), a great deal of the connections and echoes of this verse would be lost.

About one-fourth of the haiku were closed to me as they were built on Spanish words. I recognize that if one is to bring forth the flavor of the area, one almost must include these words. However, to have them not defined robbed me of much expected pleasure. I could have used a glossary of terms.

Even the haiku on the same page:

triple sevens
his aluminum crutch
clatters to the floor

left me wondering about the first line. Was this a reference to a card game? If so, is this a good hand or a bad one?

Im Sog der Stille, Klaus-Dieter Wirth, 6 x 8.5 inches, paperback, ISBN 978-3-937257-72-3, Hamburger Haiku-Verlag, Germany
Review by Werner Reichhold

For more than forty years we’ve watched Klaus Dieter Wirth writing and being widely published among  international haiku. Worth to be mentioned is the fact that we are talking here about a German writer—and former college teacher—that Wirth is not only firm in his mother tongue, but studied and used to teach languages in a way that made him later write in English, Spanish, French and Dutch. His skills in all four languages are amazing. We feel, we are not reading translations, instead here is a great talent working and composing haiku exactly after his own liking. Readers interested in linguistic cross-systems, here is a perfect chance to follow influences back and forth. In effect, this book is helpful for many writers trying to experience how a gifted person can guide us from one culture to another—simply by reading haiku.
Also, Im Sog der Stille is the title in German, including 208 haiku - times 4, if able to read compositions in four different languages—is a bargain, is a real gift not offered very often.

 

Landeinwärts ein Meer
von Abfall. Im Morgenwind
schwärmen die Möven

upcountry a sea
of refuse – its musty odor
swarming with gulls

une mer intérieure
de déchets – dans l’air de moisi
une nuée de mouettes

tierra adentro un mar
de desechos – aire podrido
lieno de gaviotas

 

Träume teilen, Volker Friebel, paperback, 6 x 8 inches, Edition Blaue Felder, Wolkenpfad Verlag, Tübingen, Germany.
Review by Werner Reichhold

Jahrbuch 2012, one of yearly appearing books, edited and published by Volker Friebel, Wolkenpfad Verlag, www. Wolkenpfad.de – Friebel, himself a prolific writer of short verses—gives us an inside of the very best written haiku in German.

Die sieben Töne des Waldes, 2011, Volker Friebel, Wolkenpfad-Verlag, Tübingen, G., 6 x 8 inches, paperback.
Friebel also proved with his latest book of poetry Die sieben Töne des Waldes, how he is able to change writing from genre to genre, somehow showing the German scene there are ways to escape from being locked into a group of haiku writers and instead trying to get innovative into multi-genre thinking, may add visual arts and find your own way of creating German poetry. Let’s see if over time Volker Friebel and influences from outside the scene will change the situation, stop being ignorant to what is done in other verse forms and will fuse the writing of this group with tendencies practiced in mainstream poetry.

Mitten im Lachen, Gerd Börner. IDEDITION, www.ideedition.de. ISBN 978-3-7322-5048-6. paperback, 123 pages, 4,5 : 7,5 inches.
Review Werner Reichhold

The book has a subtitle “Kurzgedichte und Prosa-Miniaturen”- saying we are invited to read “short poems and prose-miniatures.” Indeed, this is the right subtitle, avoiding consciously the fixed words and the fixer-upper’s vocabulary mixing German and Japanese. Börner, for god sake, knows why he does this: he is finally tied of the misuse of Japanese forms when almost none of us today goes for their rules. We are guided back to what we feel is the poetry of our own language – and yes, if one wants to spend time looking for the roots of this work, fine, yes, one can find them - and overcome them shortly afterwards.
In collaboration with himself, with his own personality and in relation, and retaliation of what’s challenging us, here are Börners examples from which to learn. The prose and the verses work comparatively, confront each other, and fall in love with each other, and – much more. The European readers already know why they buy his books; now it should be we to find out why poetry of this kind points to the future of those who left the usually admired “group thinking” alone.

 

BOOK ANNOUNCEMENTS


wr bkAHA Books announces the publication of
gal book




                   by Werner Reichhold

Poetry, in the inspiration of Mid-Eastern Ghazal form, written in couplets with modern sensibilities in German. 
Deutsche Dichtung, aus den Formen des Mittleren Ostens und Indiens heraus entwickelt, aber geistig und thematisch unserer heutigen Einstellung zu Poesie verpflichtet.

Trade full-color cover, 7.5" x 9.25" ,78 pages.
ISBN-13: 978-0944676868
ISBN-10: 0944676863

Available through CreateSpace eStore: https://www.createspace.com/4397021
 or Amazon.com for $12.00; Amazon Europe for €9.04; Amazon, UK for £7.84

AHA Books, P.O. Box 767, Gualala, CA 95445
Email: Werner@WernerReichhold.com

 

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