TABLE OF CONTENTS

XVI:1   February  2001

Through a Dewdrop, a collection of haiku, senryu and tanka by Leonardo Alishan. Published by Open Letter, 1208A East Lexington Drive, Glendale, CA 91206, ISBN:0-9672751-3-X. Perfect bound, Smythe-sewn, 5.5 " x 4", 102 pages, $5.00.

Dimmed the Mystery by Janice M. Bostok. Saddle-stitched, full color cover, 4" x 6", 36 pages. $10., ppd. ISBN:1-9526773-2-6. Order from  Snapshots Press, 132 Crosby, Liverpool, L23 8XS, England.

Homework by Tom Clausen. Saddle-stitched, full color cover, 4" x 6", 36 pages. $10., ppd. ISBN:1-903543-00-2. Order from Snapshots Press, 132 Crosby, Liverpool, L23 8XS, England.

 The Best of the Electronic Poetry Network, edited by Carlos Colon, Barbara Verrett Moore, Jeffrey L. Salter, and the staff of Shreve Memorial Library. Published by the Shreveport Regional Arts Council Literary Panel, Shreveport, Louisiana, 2000. Saddle-stapled, 8.5" x 5.5, 44 pages. ; 

In the Margins of the Sea by Christopher Herold. Saddle-stitched, full color cover, 4" x 6", 36 pages. $10., ppd. ISBN:1-9526773-9-3. Order from Snapshots Press, 132 Crosby, Liverpool, L23 8XS, England.

A Frayed Red Thread - tanka love poems by Linda Jeannette Ward. Illustrated by Jeanne Emrich. Introduction by Laura Maffei. Clinging Vine Press, 2000. Perfect bound, a generous 9" x 6", 64 pages, $12.00 ppd. for USA. Add $3.00 for overseas orders. ISBN: 0-9702457-0-X. Order from Clinging Vine Press, pob 231, Coinjock, NC 27923.

 Love Haiku: Masajo Suzuki's Lifetime of Love, translated by Lee Gurga & Emiko Miyashita. Brooks Books, August 2000. Perfect bound, 5.5 x 8.5, 128 pages, USA $15.00; Japan $16.00. ISBN: 1-929829-003-3. Order from Brooks Books, 4634 Hale Drive, Decatur, IL 62526.

The HAIKU Calendar 2001. Snapshots Press, 2000. Fifteen cards, 52 haiku, in a 5 x 5 ½ inch plastic case, with full color covers. ISBN: 1-903543 02-9. $13., ppd. Order from Snapshots Press, 132 Crosby, Liverpool, L23 8XS, England.;

  Along the Way, by Garry Gay. Snapshots Press, 2000. Saddle-stitched, full color cover, 36 pages, 4" x 6", $10. ppd. ISBN: 0-9526773-0-X. Order from Snapshots Press, 132 Crosby, Liverpool, L23 8XS, England.

 Vershuivend Landschap by Silva Ley. Published by Het Brabants Landschap (Foundation for Nature Protection) in Haaren, Netherlands, September 2000. Saddle-stapled, 6" x 4", 33 haiku in Dutch. Contact Brabants Landschap, Postbus 80, 5076 ZH Haaren, Netherlands or Johanna van Aelst-Versteden, Cimburgain 40, 4819 BC Breda, Netherlands. E-mail for information on cost and shipping. 

water by Chris Mulhern. Acorn Book Company. www.acornbook.co.uk Perfect bound, 5 ½" x 4", 90 pages, full color cover, £4.99. ISBN:0-9534205-0-7.

 My Asakusa – Coming of Age in Pre-war Tokyo, a memoir by Sadako Sawamura translated by Norman E. Stafford and Yasuhiro Kawamura. Tuttle www.tuttlepublishing.com: 2000. Trade paperback, 8" x 5", 270 pages with glossary. ISBN: 0-8048-2135-6. US$16.95.

acorn book of contemporary haiku, acorn book company, England, 2000, edited by Lucien Stryk and Kevin Bailey. 173 pp, 5 x 7 inches, perfect bound, £ 6.99,-. Order from acorn book company, P.O.Box 191, Tadworth, Surrey, KT20 SYQ, England.

Through a Dewdrop, a collection of haiku, senryu and tanka by Leonardo Alishan. Published by Open Letter, 1208A East Lexington Drive, Glendale, CA 91206, ISBN: 0-9672751-3-X. Perfect bound, Smythe-sewn, 5.5 " x 4", 102 pages, $5.00.

Leonardo Alishan, born of Armenian parents in Tehran, Iran (in 1951) and who, until recently, taught Persian literature and comparative literature at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, brings a very special perspective to the Japanese genres in which he is now writing. Readers of ghazals will recognize that whiff of the exotic in Alishan's perfectly executed haiku. A subtle blending of cultures occurs which makes his work even more valued and special and therefore – authentic. In adopting new forms, he remains true to his heritage and background by bending the spirit of the form to fit him instead of folding himself and his impressions into Japanese poetry. There is a very fine line there that is too often ignored by non-Japanese who become enamored with this new, to them, poetry. Some persons can write, in English, a fine imitation of what the Japanese have done. Too often prizes are given for this level of work. Much harder to accomplish and even more difficult to have accepted is the poetry that works with Japanese genre techniques but shows that the author was true to herself or himself for inspiration and understanding of the relationships of phenomena.

with the sonic boom
of jet aircraft you explode
in my mind
ten thousand birds scatter in flight
abandoning their nests for life

every day
under the weight of snow and ice
another of her branches break
soon
my mother alone will be left

Even the layout of this gentle book, shows an old-world courtliness and respect for the poetry by enclosing each poem, printed one to a page, in a fine, lined representation of a photo in an album. It is as if the editor understood that each poem is a picture, not only of the author and his life, but also of a reality. More than the blank space of the ivory pages, this detail raises each vision slightly above the previous one.

Leonardo Alisham's previous book was Dancing Barefoot on Broken Glass, which appeared in New York in 1991.

Dimmed the Mystery by Janice M. Bostok. Saddle-stitched, full color cover, 4" x 6", 36 pages. $10., ppd. ISBN: 1-9526773-2-6.. Order from Snapshots Press, 132 Crosby, Liverpool,L23 8XS, England.

The work of Janice Bostok is no mystery to the readers of Lynx. Well, it might seem a mystery how she can continue to amaze us with her ability to make the most of any of the genre to which she sets her mind. Having been writing haiku since 1971, and yet equally talented in her use of renga and tanka, her numerous books (I have no idea how many she has had published) continue to illuminate new facets of her life experiences.

Dimmed the Mystery, said to be written about the lane pictured on the cover of the book, the same gravel road - Campbell's Lane, where she and her husband, Sylvester, traveled as newly-weds almost thirty years ago when they bought a banana farm outside of the town of Dungay, Australia. Yet this collection of tanka is dedicated to Sylvester and the date of his stroke on May 29^th, 1998. While the poems suggest that her feelings revolve around her sadness of other aspects of his ill health and the fond memories of how their life once was seem to predominate. This all may sound rather sad, but there is a core of strength and talent in Bostok that gives a sense of up-rightness and deliciousness to her poetry. The reader gets the impression that no matter what happens to her, she will be able to hold on to her poetry through the darkest of nights or days.

mourning you
so many times in life
i try to imagine
what it will really be like
when you are gone in death

white heron
returned from feeding grounds
at dusk
lightens the darkening sky
of my homeward journey

As you can see in the last tanka, though Janice Bostok is going through some difficult times, she is guided by the light of nature, and her ability to translate this into poetry that she gladly shares. Her honesty sometimes has threatened to overwhelm the prudish or those with Victorian hang-ups. For example:

you cling to me
as i imagine a woman
might do
yet your body feels
more manly in its yielding

watching tv
your hand on my thigh
pulls me warmly
back into past moments
that we have shared

I would like to quote many more of the admirable tanka in this collection, but I prefer that you get a copy of all of these poems for yourself. See what tanka writing is all about. See what living a life open to pain and pleasure can do to one. See the places where poetry sprouts and grows – in a woman.

To quote the jacket notes: "Focusing squarely on domestic life, this collection of haiku, senryu, and tanka is often funny, often sad and always paradoxically both familiar and eye-opening." It cannot be said better nor more succinctly what this newest book by Tom Clausen contains. I can only add my continuing praise for Tom's work. It is always a revelation and delight how he seizes on the tiniest experience, and through his examination of it and the cool observation his own feelings, carries it over into a major event. This leaves the reader wondering, "Now, why did I not notice that?" and "Why did I not think of that as material for a poem?". It seems that tanka is especially designed for the methods of Tom Clausen. Even when aware of the smallest thing, he is also aware of how that thing or event is affecting him. This occurs even in his haiku.

While some purists might fault his haiku for not being closely enough aligned with the nature-nature viewpoint, his sensibilities are absolutely accurate for tanka. This collection gains, I think, by the inclusion of his haiku (which often portray the lighter moments of family living). They seem to play off and actually highlight the attributes of his tanka. Altogether, the editing and arrangement of the poems seems especially fine and relevant. For anyone who has grown up in a family or is living in a family now, this book will take away those terrible moments of aloneness when one felt that no one else in the world ever had such moments of doubt, despair and pure undiluted joy. Tom has been there, and he has the courage to face them directly and honestly, and to continue to hang with the feelings until he has created pure poetry out of them.

no longer me
it proves a mystery who it is
I've become
walking around this house
with my family there inside

I sort of knew
my coffee cup
was empty -
so much I look in it
just to see

The sensitivity of the editor, John Barlow, is shown in the choice of a drawing done by Tom's young daughter, Emma Clausen, as cover along with the insider joke of the title of the book - Homework. Delight piles on delight with this one.

To quote from Carlos Colón's Introduction to The Best of the Electronic Poetry Network: "In April 1995, The Friends of Shreve Memorial Library purchased an electronic message board for $200. This message board was installed on the first floor of the Main Library and was used to display library hours and information on new books." After a few years, the staff member who regularly programmed the bulletin board took a different position and the lights dimmed. Only in November 1997, did Carlos Colón decide to use the unused space for poetry. He had previously worked with the Shreveport Regional Arts Council Literary Panel to get poetry to the people through radio and television, on the inside and outside of buses, the mall, and in public art murals. Now he had access to a new method to give his fellow citizens "a daily dose of poetry".

The success of this endeavor meant that in the summer of 2000, the Electronic Poetry Network appeared on the web  for a much wider audience. Through a system of voting for the poems that had been displayed, the group was able to choose an array of poets whose work appears in this, the first printed edition of the Electronic Poetry Network. Long may it serve!

Though the majority of poems in this book are haiku, there are also tanka, ghazals and short poems included. A very strong plus for this project is the ability to combine the work of local poets with a wide assortment of haiku writers around the world.

The moonlight
along the path
through the forest
flickers in the wind
but I find my way
quite well, after all
I learned to read
by candlelight. . .

In the Margins of the Sea by Christopher Herold. Saddle-stitched, full color cover, 4" x 6", 36 pages. $10., ppd. ISBN:1-9526773-9-3. Order from Snapshots Press, 132 Crosby, Liverpool,L23 8XS, England.

Christopher Herold's collection, beginning with haiku and ending with a selection of tanka, seems to mirror the path of so many English writers. First captivated by Japanese poetry in the haiku form, they later proceed into the larger, more complicated vision of tanka. Few do it as abruptly as Herold seems to do in this book, but it happens – eventually. When this change is shown by pressing both genres side by side into one small book, there is a danger of splitting the material into two books within one cover. There are many authors, who write haiku as Herold does, from the purists' view that haiku should show what is happening in the world of nature with as little interference as possible from the author and his feelings. These persons excel in portraying those small moments of nature standing still in nature's being. It is as if they have trained themselves to erase their own humanity and its (valued, in my opinion) connection to what they find in the natural world. The product of this endeavor is to create a vision of haiku that is Zen-cool, detached, pristine (because all the messy human factors have been eliminated) and idyllic.

The attraction of tanka is that it mixes this classical haiku attitude with the chaotic and ephemeral feelings of the author and reader. Yet when one publishes poems in one style, especially when they are such excellent examples, then twist to change attitudes mid-stream, as it were, this makes one better understand why the Japanese themselves have insisted for the past 400 years that haiku and tanka should be kept separate. I would not go as far as the Japanese do in claiming that persons writing haiku are writers and persons writing tanka are the poets, but there is some small element of rightness in what they do.

untouched by the tide
this sandcastle far from the waves -
little by little
my hopes of seeing you slip,
with the sun, into the sea

I thought I knew Linda Jeannette Ward's tanka poems from the work she had published in Lynx and American Tanka, yet I was completely overwhelmed by the tour de force of her collection of poems in this book. I had no idea that she had advanced so far in her understanding of the Japanese tanka and in the accomplishment of her own English tanka. I knew from experience that tanka seemed to work the best when they had as their subject a thing or person that one loved, but the idea of putting together a large series of poems on the subject of love has never seemed to have worked as well as it does here. Reading the book, I felt a great talent had sideswiped me. Here was someone in our midst, whom I thought I knew, and whose work was familiar to me, and yet I had failed to comprehend how very good her ability to write was. As I turned the pages my amazement simply piled up around me into great shining drifts of admiration. So much talent saying so many beautiful words put together so marvelously barely left me breathing space to focus on the artwork of Jeanne Emrich which was equally rich and evocative. Here, again, I thought I knew Jeanne's artwork, especially since I had been all over her web site on haiga, but the power of her brushstroke sumi-e work was beyond my expectations. It seems that these two women have combined to draw out the very best in each other. And what a fantastic book they have made.

Laura Maffei's introduction provides a brief, but accurate portrayal of tanka and its history as she explains how women, a thousand years ago, and even now, are drawn to the tanka form for expressing their feelings about love, about the sensual aspects of love as well as those of longing and of abandonment. Thus, it seems the natural outgrowth of this history for these women to combine for this exceptional book.

The title, A Frayed Red Thread, which in Japanese culture denotes the tie of intimacy between two people, comes from the poem:

lining the inner spine
of love poems you left
a frayed red thread
adhering as stubbornly
as your memory

This poem exemplifies the classic, traditional tanka devices and handling, perfectly executed and deeply enriched with overtones of meaning. By using the expression 'the inner spine' which can refer to the back of a book or to the backbone of a human, the frayed red thread moves from being evidence of there being a wearing away, to the image of the very veins which carry the blood heated once by love, and then as the tie of one to one's lover and then, finally the life-line that attaches one to one's memories. This use then ties the last line to the first words: "lining the inner spine". Do you feel how those four words spin music across the tongue? Only under the thrall of inspiration can one come up with that many connections in one very short poem and say it so beautifully.

And how is this for under-statement that at once reveals the depths of truth, knowing and sensuality?

how long, you ask
for another world to appear . . .
for the length of one kiss
the time a raindrop travels
to pine needle's tip

That tanka begins the series of poems of A Frayed Red Thread. It completely fulfills the promises of the work with the excellence of the intervening poems. And on this first page do spend a few more moments with the excellence of Jeanne's black ink pine tree and the way the written text fits the illustration. I think this book will become a classic to which new and older writers will go for inspiration, instruction and simple erotic pleasure.

How good it is that Masajo Suzuki's love life, which in her lifetime has become so famous, is now the vehicle for her haiku in English. It will surely broaden the scope of foreign language haiku to have as example her fine work on the feelings of, for and about love from a passionate woman's perspective. The translations by Lee Gurga & Emiko Miyashita are as competent and contemporary as Suzuki's life and work are.

The HAIKU Calendar 2001. Snapshots Press, 2000. Fifteen cards, 52 haiku, in a 5 x 5 ½ inch plastic case, with full color covers. ISBN: 1-903543 02-9. $13., ppd. Order from Snapshots Press, 132 Crosby, Liverpool, L23 8XS, England.

Don't think that calendars are just for keeping the dates straight. John Barlow has given the world a new way of appreciating haiku in its own time. Oh, we have had haiku calendars before, because it is a great idea, but this is the first time I have seen the 'jewel' cases for CDs used, and used so effectively. If you were only interested in excellent haiku from this choice of international authors, this would be an exotic addition to your bookshelves, even when the years have passed beyond this one.

Along the Way, by Garry Gay. Snapshots Press, 2000. Saddle-stitched, full color cover, 36 pages, 4" x 6", $10. ppd. ISBN: 0-9526773-0-X. Order from Snapshots Press, 132 Crosby, Liverpool, L23 8XS, England.

This is another contribution by Snapshot Press to publishing pocket-sized books, beautifully made and edited just as well. Garry Gay's haiku are well known through the awards that he has won. How good it is to have the best of his work gathered together and so ably presented. The full-color photograph, which is marvelously composed, on the cover gives you a taste of Gay's other life as a photographer.

Vershuivend Landschap by Silva Ley. Published by Het Brabants Landschap (Foundation for Nature Protection) in Haaren, Netherlands, September 2000. Saddle-stapled, 6" x 4", 33 haiku in Dutch. Contact Brabants Landschap, Postbus 80, 5076 ZH Haaren, Netherlands or Johanna van Aelst-Versteden, Cimburgain 40, 4819 BC Breda, Netherlands. E-mail for information on cost and shipping. 

Silva Ley, who is best known to Lynx readers for her extensive collaboration in renga with Jacques Verhoeven, has had 33 of her haiku picked for this collection from the many haiku she has had published in Branbants Landschap magazine since 1970. The editor, Victor Bakker, solemnly handed over the book to the author, on November 10^th to honor her contribution to this most important regional nature preserve.

What a lovely, sensitively designed book! Every element is perfectly coordinated to fit the theme Chris Mulhern has chosen for his second book of poetry - water. It is even dedicated to a pisces woman! The poems, mostly haiku, are presented one to a page with soft gray ink. There is such an attitude of stillness about the looks of the book, and yet the haiku are able to rock the reader with the aim of their aptness.

This book, My Asakusa, has only one haiku in its 270 pages, and no tanka at all, yet I was utterly fascinated, not only by the information about customs in Old Japan, and the history of a place, Asakusa, but also by the attitude of the writer. Sakako Sawamura was the daughter of a small-time manager of a troupe of actors that performed at the Miyato Theater, nationally famous for its style and quality of the art of Kabuki (which in comparison might be termed operetta). The father's greatest efforts seemed to be given to fathering sons (he had two), nourishing his sons (he gave Sakako's sister up for adoption to a childless relative) and preparing his boys for the roles he himself never obtained. To accomplish this, the meager resources of the family were taken from Sakako and her mother without question. How just it seems then, when the two sons were passed over for major roles, that Teiko Kato who then becames Sakako Sawamura, the famous character actress who obtains the riches from films that always eluded her father. In 1956, she won a distinguishing award for her supporting roles in several films. By 1969 she was a writing book and her Song of a Shell was picked to be produced as a television play for NHK, Japanese Public Television. In 1977, this book, My Asakusa (Ah sock sah) was awarded the Essayist's Club Prize.

Finally, this gem has been translated into English by two very competent translators, Norman Stanford and Yashuhiro Kawamura, who have worked together before translating tanka from Japanese into English. (Now you see the connection between this book review and Lynx?) Even if I did not have the connection to Yasuhiro Kawamura (yes, he is the husband of Hatsue Kawamura, Editor of The Tanka Journal in Tokyo) I would want to recommend this book to you because it brought me so much pleasure and so very much information in such an easy enjoyable way.

Wisely, Sakako has broken her memoirs down into little stories about the famous temple area in Tokyo. Each memory contains descriptions of places, many of which are still to be seen today, customs and practices, which one often only encounters now in literature, and amazing people one wishes one could still meet personally. The telling is done so adroitly that I found myself, at once hating her father, loving her sensible mother, cheering for her aunt, booing the nasty shopkeeper. So many of the superstitions and cultural aspects that have almost completely faded away are given such a life and reality with her stories, the thought comes that maybe we are missing something with their passing. Added all up, the little episodes and incidences create the story of Sakako's childhood surrounded by fame and history. For anyone interested in Japanese culture, the theater world of Japan, Old Tokyo or the changing situation of women, I can recommend the pleasure in the readability of My Asakusa.

acorn book of contemporary haiku, acorn book company, England, 2000, edited by Lucien Stryk and Kevin Bailey. 173 pp, 5 x 7 inches, perfect bound, £ 6.99,-. Order from acorn book company, P.O. Box 191, Tadworth, Surrey, KT20 SYQ, England.

“Travel,” says the book to the reader, “travel your mind with me. I’ll be your companion finding a new way to appreciate the reading of short poetry adequate to the spiritual challenges of our time.” From the early western translations of what was once imported from China and Japan, to the attempt of blending it with our own poetry 
traditions, this anthology is a step one likes to give a lot of attention. And, with the intense help of introductions by co-authors Lucien Stryk and Kevin Bailey, the acorn book of contemporary haiku seems to ask the reader some pressing questions. After telling us the historical developments of the Asian influences in Europe since the 1880s, Kevin Bailey goes on to point to Art Nouveau and Jugendstil art styles, to explain how the messages worked their roads deep into the different arts of Europe and later over to North America. It was long over-due to see a British and an American editor together to take their chance to enlarge the picture and influence of contemporary haiku. Kevin Bailey wrote, chapter 4:
“ A Strange and Happy Meeting
There will always be the haiku purists. The haiku is a traditional poetic form native to Japan, and there it should and will be preserved. But when haiku and other Japanese verse forms have been mauled, digested, and  regurgitated by their own poets, and cast out of polite and innocent national isolation to be preyed upon by Imagism, Symbolism, Minimalism, and hundred and one other cultural influences, the beast we’re left with has had to adapt to survive. It is notable that many non-Japanese haiku magazines try to protect the haiku like some endangered animal, by giving it only a little literary space in which to roam free of the predatory attentions of mainstream poetry. This is done quite appropriately in its native land, fused as it is with Zen philosophy and culture, but it is an insult to the nature of literary evolution not to allow the form to mutate and hybridize within whatever cultural habitat it has become established.”

As one strolls slowly along with all of the hundred and forty poets from twenty-five countries presented here, aren’t there many of the short lines in this anthology clearly pointing in a new direction, leaving much of the dependency to the former term haiku behind them? Why don’t we consider joining the bigger literary scene, which for long has integrated the form without using a Japanese term for it? This new anthology shows that western writers know how to blend the old haiku techniques with the 
poetical spirits of our short and longer western poetry forms. Our language, and here English language poetry, is by no means a toy in the hands of foreign rulers. In fact, it is one of our cultural forms of survival. The authors and the publishers of the acorn book of contemporary haiku paved the way and moved the poetry of this short form closer to mainstream poetry. 

With a twinkle in one eye I would like to add one more thought. Today, physicists, chemists, biologists and other scientists discover structure-building processes of self-organizing biological principles. DNS 
seems especially well working for the development of nano structures. One 
would like to state, that in poetry the writers are also “engineering down” the structures of language. Then, similarly with what we learned from mother nature and of what the scientists with their findings are reminding us, we’re “engineering up” letters, syllables, and words building an artistically formed new whole, the poem. There is a bell ringing: Are the energies created by poets are soon going to get company by scientifically developed processes? If the processes themselves will at least partly become compatible, in which way will the results differ? Are you, the reader of the acorn book of contemporary haiku  tempted to find new criteria for reading and writing short poetry? 

With a beautiful cover design, layout and typesetting, the publishers of the acorn book company produced a book that is a joy to look at, and they offered it for a price that is very reasonable. The over four hundred poems are neither organized alphabetically nor  seasonal. But thanks to Lucien Stryk and Kevin Bailey, there is indeed a spiritual concept for the book that feels very adequate to old and new western thinking. To go ahead with a poetical principle, here are some examples taken from the book, necessarily a selection by the limitations of a reviewer, blended together. Can you imagine what kind of surprises you yourself will find holding the anthology in your hands?

A SYMBIOTIC POEM
Werner Reichhold

David Finlay

David Cobb

Fred Schofield

R.K. Singh

Vasile Spinei

George Messo

Andrew Nightingale

John Gonzales

Keiko Kakami

Phyllis Walsh

John Barlow

Chris Mulhern

S.J. Davies

Fiona Owen

John Arnold

Andrew Grossman

Hannah Mitte

Nika

Vincent Tripi

 Michael Kelly

M.J. Malone

Tom Vaughan

Sara Baig

Doreen Robles

Gary Bills

Giles Goodland

Adrian Henri

Peter Dent

Jean Jorgensen

Leslie Vassalo

Prospero

Nick Pearson

André Duhaime

Peter Redgrove

Harold Morland

Philip McCall

Sheldon Young

George Seferis

Arseni Konetzky

Alexis Lykiaro

Ikuyu Yoshimura

Gary Hotham

Francine Porad

Alan Brownjohn

Sabine Müller

John Capp

Gabriel Griffin

Terry Cuthbert

Who We Are

The next deadline for is May. 1, 2001

Read the previous issues of Lynx:
XV:2 June, 2000
XV:3 October, 2000