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DRIPPING GOLDEN LIGHT
An examination of Pamela Babusci’s first collection of tanka, A Thousand Reasons
Marjorie Buettner
The magic of poetry occurs when the words of the poet leap off the page and enter the heart of the reader. It is hauntingly transformative experience; it only happens when the poet and poem reach that amari-no-kokoro state or heart and soul union which is then shared by the reader. It is a juxtaposition which is not only remarkable, but also memorable.
Many of Babusci's tanka in this first collection A Thousand Reasons, enter that state of soul and heart union, but it is a painful union which strips all pretense of poetic persona away. Babusci's tanka are intense and palpably alive sharing with the reader a gamut of emotions from joy to despair, from loneliness to love, from loss to redemption. Her tanka are the epitome of intimacy which echo the great court poetesses of the Heian era. And in many ways she has channeled that voice which so defined court poetry. But it is a channeling which is totally unique to Babusci and which goes beyond mere lament, goes beyond mere love song. In this respect, I want to concentrate on the form Babusci develops to compliment her poetic vision. It goes beyond the five line dictates of waka or tanka and enters that "haiku spirit" of amari-no-kokoro.
Many tanka today are written as if they were prose: five lines down. There is no pivot line, no responsorial relationship between the two halves of the poem: the first two lines and the last. Concomitantly, the sense of song which so defined original court poetry is gone. The tone is flat, the form redundant, and the content mundane. This is not true, however, about Babusci's tanka; they sing with originality and leap off the page to enter the heart and mind of the reader. Also, there is a magical juxtaposition of images in her tanka which redefines and redirects the tanka form. Consider this:
not a single star
out of place
in the milky way . . .
the garden gate
left ajar all night
The two halves of this tanka are united by Ma – that magical sense of space, of quiet, of interrelatedness which exits in Japanese art. The ellipse seems to connect both halves in a symbolic meditation on the importance of opening the spirit to possibilities, that broad expanse which occurs when we stargaze or when the gate is left ajar all night long, thereby leaving ourselves vulnerable yet open to possibilities without fear. This is a deep poem.
Another example of Babusci's technique:
a thousand reasons
to leave him
a thousand reasons
to stay . . .
withering bamboo
The hesitation in this tanka could last a life time. It is the way the withering bamboo is a symbol of indecision – that peach never eaten – which so entrances the reader. Again, there is a space of negativity which is the heart of the tanka. The juxtaposition of reasons and a withering bamboo tells the reader what the poet's heart is trying to express: go for it, seize the joy before it flies!
Here is an instance again of a juxtaposition which embodies the heart and soul of the poet and reaches into the center of the reader's heart:
i didn't ask
for a miracle
& yet these hills
of endless
sunflowers
The pause "and yet" is a potent and rich epiphany which the writer shares.
This tanka is a love song which reverberates and yet which does not explain away the mystery of love:
wanting you
fills me up . . .
flower nectar
dripping on the
lace tablecloth
Here Babusci is utilizing her poetic form in an almost haiku-like way, the symbol of the moon's inconsistencies reflecting a woman's change of heart:
fickle woman
first you desire him
then you desire
solitude . . .
moon on the wane
Here the personal experience in this tanka is reflected by a penetrating image in nature; it is a juxtaposition which runs deep:
visiting
a dying friend
the slow drip
of black
rain
Again, there is a silence between the two halves of the tanka; there is a negative space which tells all without telling, which shows all without showing, like a magician's handkerchief turned into doves.
does a woman ever find
a man to love her
with total abandon?
spring rains overflowing
the begging bowl
This tanka has a responsorial image out of nature once again which compliments and reflects the inner nature of the poet. There are of course some tanka that don't seem to work as well as they could have in that they are imitative, the images too forced and manipulative. However on the whole it is a stirring first collection for Pamela Babusci. Hopefully there will be more to follow, dripping golden light:
I want to become
a Klimt woman
dangling
off the canvas
dripping golden light
Contact: moongate44(at)gmail(dot)com. Pamela A. Babusci 150 Milford St. Apt. 13 Rochester, NY 14615 US Funds $14 plus $2.50 S&H ; Foreign $5 S&H.
REST OF THE BOOK REVIEWS
Jane Reichhold
KyôkaJapan’s Comic Verse, A MAD IN TRANS LATION Reader compiled, translated, explained and essayed by robin d. gill. Paraverse Press, 2009. Contact: http://paraverse.org Paperback, 8 x 11 inches, 734 pages (not counting the rant at the end). Includes Japanese originals, romanization, a bibliography, poet and poem indexes. Review is written from a reading copy that contained no price.
Even when, and especially when, Robin Gill pisses me off, I think the Japanese government should declare him a National Treasure and the Americans should copy the tradition and bestow on him a similar status (with cash) to make him the first double-crowned National Treasure. All societies have a system of valuing the “mad” among them – the very unconventional who produce prodigious works of art – and here in these times they are united by desktop publishing. Another nine months and another bicep-bending tome arrives from Gill.
This time Gill turns his brilliance to a genre of poetry that has remained closed to the non-Japanese – the kyoka (KEY-OH-KAH) – comic, mad, indulgent, satirical, waka/tanka. We don’t know many of them because so very little of this genre have been translated. There is a good reason we have, until now, read so little of this form. Mostly they are not good. Yes, sometimes there is a flash of wit or a well-turned phrase that Gill, in his way, tosses in the air, kicks back upward with his heel, drops it to shred and spread it into something like a translation. Watching Gill is entertaining. The poetry is not. There are good reasons for not translating or publishing all the poems a people write. The kyoka has them all.
No one could praise haiku, tanka, and renga more than I have, or spent more time in their company. My distaste for the so-called senryu is well-known and now I can add my dislike for the kyoka to that. I am not trying to banish the genre (no one is that influential; not even a Shiki), but from my reading of the kyoka, thanks to Gill’s tremendous effort, I now understand why the Japanese are not interested in exporting this form of their art. Even with Gill’s best efforts to translate the humor, and he will go to any lengths to do that, this stuff is not very interesting. Maybe limericks translated into Japanese would come across in the same way.
I think it has everything to do with intent. The person writing a limerick wants to entertain, to be admired for wit, to be thought of as ‘cool’ or smart. That is not the area of the personality from which poetry comes. Poetry is the desire to use words to convey deep feeling or experience that has no words. Poetry exposes the depths of the writer. Kyoka and its English cousins – limericks, come from a slick surface.
As with the eternal question of when does a haiku start being a senryu, here too, it is impossible to determine the exact line in the sand when a tanka becomes dirty. As Gill proves again and again, a perfectly well-accepted tanka, can, depending on how it is translated, tickle the funny bone, incite sexual arousal and/or be a great poem.
Gill writes: “The next waka, by anon, #6783, strikes me as a probable folk song. [I would strongly disagree with him on this.] It is also one of the best poems, period, in this book! [On page 123. I would agree! and in this chapter he leaves his absorption with kyoka to make fun of waka then rightfully declares the waka to be the best poem in the book. ]
koyoi koso namida no kawa ni iru chidori nakite kaeru to kimi wa shirazu ya
this evening esp.tear-river-in is plover crying return you-as-for know-not
Later tonight, I’ll hear plovers on the banks of Tear River,
Crying as they & I return; but this you won’t know dear
Fortunately Gill uses the English couplet form for his translations, so the form of tanka is not instantly recognizable. Fortunately Gill makes no effort to make workable tanka poems out of his kyoka [as you can see above] which further delineates what he is selling from tanka. Calling your poem a kyoka will not make it funny or better but will set the reader’s mind with lower expectations.
The value that makes KyôkaJapan’s Comic Verse, A MAD IN TRANS LATION Reader worth any price for the book is in the word-for-word translations. For these alone the serious student of Japanese poetry gets a priceless gem. If the reader wants to find only wit and fun, I suppose it is possible. But a closer reader of the word-for-word translations will also reveal a deeper, wiser, tenderer aspect of the Japanese poets.
Stone Mirror, Water Mirror / Oglinda de Piatra, Oglinda de Apa by Clelia Ifrim. Perfect bound, 5.5 x 8.5 inches, 54 pages, Romanian and English. Illustrated with ten drawings by the author. No price. Available from Clelia Ifrim, Calea Dorobantilor 135-145/ Ap. 5, 010563 Buchar’est, Romania
I really prefer to review books that I love or even like. Having to say my truth about another’s work, especially when I know how much work such efforts are, really puts a mean dent in my day. It is so much more pleasant to open a book, like Stone Mirror, Water Mirror and find the first haiku so marvelous:
Stone mirror –
the rain polishes
its own marks
There! that looks so easy and is so perfect! Why can’t every haiku have that truth, that perfection in it? For me, just finding one great haiku in a book is enough to put a smile on everything else in the day. But wait, Stone Mirror, Water Mirror offers much more.
Sprinkled among the haiku (one to a page) and the postage sized drawings (one to a page) are the haibun. I often find myself inhaling a tired gasp of air as I prepare to read another haibun – almost knowing I will be bored to tears before I get to the haiku at the end. Not so in Stone Mirror, Water Mirror! I loved Ifrim’s prose writing.
People write and talk about how haibun need to have “haiku-style” prose and try to accomplish this with incomplete sentences and outlandish punctuation. Clelia Ifrim’s haiku-like writing comes from her inner being. Her subject matter, and the way she views the incidents of her prose, contain that loose, easy way of haiku. By thinking and feeling deeply she is capable of saying the most outrageous things simply and making the reader glad to believe them. I do not know if this is skill one can learn or if it happens that this woman contains the spirit of haiku in everything she writes. She does! and haibun writers should study her work to see what can be done with this form. Even if you have no intention of trying to write like Clelia Ifrim, buy her book just to enjoy the haiku and admire the haibun in the hands of a master. Truly!
While on the subject of haibun, get
Delta Blues by Skip Fox. Ahadada Books: 2009. Perfect bound, 5.5 x 8.5,176 pages. No price; contact ahadadabooks.com
Delta Blues contains only a smattering of haiku and almost nothing of any of the other Japanese genres, but Skip Fox writes beautifully! If you wish to make your haibun writing better, get this book to study how this man tells a story. Page after page of these short glimpses into his inspiration just beg for a haiku or two in conclusion. He is standing on the high dive with his toes bent over the edge of the board, ready to plunge into writing haibun in the way it should be done. Jump Skip! Show us how! Blessed be!
Blue Night & the inadequacy of long-stemmed roses by Larry Kimmel. Second Edition with The Temperature of Love. Modern English Tanka Press, www.themetpress.com, 2009. Perfect bound, 6 x 9 inches, 124 pages, $12.95.
The first edition of this book was reviewed in Lynx (www.ahapoetry.com/ahalynx/221bkrvs.html ) but in this new production, under the Modern English Tanka Press, Kimmel has added what he calls a sequence – “The Temperature of Love” – consisting of ten title poems in a free-verse style.
As Denis Garrison, editor, writes in the Introduction: “I would characterize Blue Night as an eclectic miscellany of formal and free verse with rather a lot of tanka. . .I am not at all dismayed that some poems were just a bit different than one expects of tanka; it is predictable poetry that dismays me.”
Larry Kimmel writes in his Author’s Notes, that his hope is in adding the free-verse section that his book Blue Night can “bridge the space between the haikai and the mainstream poetic communities.” This is an admirable goal and I would cheer on any book that could accomplish the job so many of us have worked on for so many years.
I often wonder if the study and practice of Japanese genres makes non-formal verse better or not? I do feel that skills honed on haiku and tanka can make us better writers but are these the ones we need for free-verse? My jury is still out. Maybe I need to read more free-verse and less haikai? Maybe life is too short? Good luck with this one, Larry!
Elvis in Black Leather by Alexis Rotella. Modern English Tanka Press: www.themetpress.com, 2009. Perfect bound, 4 x 6.5 inches, 44 pages, $9.95.
The twenty-six tanka comprising this slim book have, as one could guess, Elvis Presley as subject and center point.
Chill cry
of the albino peacock
the day
I heard
about his death.
Though this poem is shaped like a tanka, the associations of the images label it as a wordy haiku that simply was allowed to expand in the hands of a writer wanting to be a poet but was trapped by her history.
The way his hair falls
over his left eye
as I press my teenage lips
onto Elvis’s
newsprint pout.
The punctuation and caps are correct for this poem as it is a sentence set into five lines. The five lines do not even approach the lengths of the tanka form, but evidently this is not a problem for Alexis Rotella.
Alexis, now past editor of a senryu journal with the appealing name of Prune Juice, has long been known for her sarcastic haiku and her attitude carries over into her tanka, as well. One of the two haiku in the book:
Jailhouse Rock –
even Grandpa
taps his foot.
Dragonfly’s Play / Jocul Libelulei by Oprica Padeanu. Verus, Bucuresti, 2009. Romanian and English. Translated by Vasile Moldovan. Perfect bound, full color cover, 5.5 x 8.5 inches, 100 pages. Contact: verus@clicknet.ro
Opening a copy of Dragonfly’s Play is like taking a step back in time. The pages have decorative curly designs at each corner to give the page a photo album atmosphere. The two haiku, though set in a Times New Romanesque font, have the initial caps enlarged in Old English Gothic. In addition, the haiku are arranged according to season and within the sections, the poems also reflect the passing time by a close observance of the various subjects. I had forgotten how pleasant it is to read haiku that flow from one to another on the string of time. Truly. I understood again why the Japanese used this device to create their sequences and regretted that so many haiku books have abandoned this practice in the race to be different.
There are times when I feel I have read every possible haiku and yet so many of Oprica Padeanu’s haiku caught my mind and gave me new pleasure.
Oasis of silences –
the chrysanthemums
the time in place
Blossomed tree-
in my old album
a yellow picture
I could go on finding excellent haiku in this collection that I want to show to you. Oprica Padeanu does understand the haiku as a poetry form and uses it in a most excellent way.
Vasile Moldovan did the translations for which we must be thankful or the poems would have remained locked by language. However, his work is a disservice to the poems. In so many cases he spoils the English version by adding the pronoun “I” when the Romanian version seems not to have it – a distinct indication of the work of a superior haiku writer. Also there are many easily caught misspellings in the English if he would only use a dictionary. When he keeps closest to the original, the translations are the best. When he resists the urge to explanatory meanings the beauty of the haiku is unclouded.
As more and more people have learned how to write a haiku, and better still, how to write haiku well, the difference between the poets is again, as for the Japanese, coming around to show, not who can write a haiku, but who best thinks in the haiku way. Who among us sees the world in this gentle, reverent way?
Writing table
the moon is just signing
the last haiku
I look forward to more haiku from Oprica Padeanu and bless anyone who helps her get her work into English and published. Good stuff here! She reminds me of Anna Holley and her haiku work.
slightly scented short lived words and roses by Stanley Pelter. England: George Mann Publications, 2009. Perfect bound, full-color cover, 6 x 9 inches, 132 pages, cover by Izzy Sharpe, Introduction by John Daniel. Illustrations by Stanley Pelter.
Okay, clear your minds of past ideas about haibun. Forget the mind-wearying linear haibun of ordinary people. Here comes Stanley Pelter again with even more outrageous haibun than ever before. With font-play, ala Robin Gill, and liberties taken with the language, as in “he loves me he lovess me knot” Pelter romps through sexual experiences with his eyes wide open and his tongue securely in his cheek – in the beginning.
This is a book about love and sex and sex and sex; fascination and fantasy face to face. slightly scented short lived words and roses is a book where everything is possible; even the impossible. If it can’t be done it can be fantasized about, but it all becomes fodder for Pelter’s poems.
He even makes poetry out of haibun! and that is supposed to happen only in the spacey parts with the wide margins. Pelter sprinkles everything he touches with the magic that Izzy Sharp captures on the cover art. I love these covers and feel they, in collection, could be an art exhibit in the way record album covers are admired.
slightly scented short lived words and roses is not an easy book. I do not think one could read it (I can’t). It is a book to be dipped into, some pages savored for days, with ideas taken up the way one studies a facetted diamond in the sunlight. Buy the book; it will get you through the winter.
THE ONAWA POEMS 1999-2008, EDITED BY PAUL W. MACNEIL. SHIP POND PRESS. PERFECT BOUND 5.5 X 8.5 INCHES, 40 PAGES, $11. COLLECTED HAIKU BY YU CHANG, FERRIS GILLI, GARY HOTHAM, KIRSTY KARKOW, PAUL MACNEIL, PAUL DAVID MENA, PAUL M., JOHN STEVENSON, HILARY TANN, AND PAUL WATSKY.
THESE TEN POETS SHARE AN EVENT – THE ANNUAL ONAWA HAIKU AND RENKU INVITATIONAL AND MOOSEBREATH ALE FESTIVALS – HELD BY PAUL MACNEIL ON LAKE ONAWA IN MONSON, MAINE. THE POETS COME FROM THE FAR SOUTH ( FERRIS GILLI, FROM MARIETTA, GEORGIA) AND FROM AS FAR WEST AS SAN FRANCISCO (PAUL WATSKY). FROM STATES IN BETWEEN COME THE REST OF THESE KNOWN-NAME HAIKU WRITERS.
IN THE BOOK, EACH POET’S HAIKU ARE ARRANGED IN A SINGLE ROW, SIMPLY LINED UP AGAINST THE LEFT HAND MARGIN, FOLLOWING DOWN THE PAGE. SOME ONLY HAVE A HAIKU OR TWO AND OTHERS USE THE SPACE FOR FIVE POEMS. READING THE COLLECTED HAIKU IS A VARIED VIEW OF WHAT IS TO BE SEEN AND EXPERIENCED IN A CABIN IN THE WOODS ON A LOVELY LAKE. LOTS OF LOONS, THE TALK OF FRIENDS, A STARRY LAKE.
MOST OF THE HAIKU, PLEASANT THOUGH THEY ARE, FAIL TO GRIP THE READER WITH THE ASTOUNDING VISION OF WHAT ONE EXPECTS FROM THE FORM. TOO MANY SIMPLY DESCRIBE WHAT IS/WAS THERE.
THIS IS UNDERSTANDABLE BECAUSE THE ENVIRONMENT IS SO FANTASTIC WORDS RECEDE BACK INTO THE NOTEBOOKS AS THE ENJOYMENT OF THE PLACE AND PEOPLE OCCUPY ALL THE SENSES. THIS IS GOOD!
THE RENKU ARE IN THE 20-VERSE “NIJUIN”STYLE WHICH IS NOT ONE THAT INVITES MY ADMIRATION. THE BEST PART OF THEM IS THE FEELING THE AUTHORS EVIDENTLY SHARED AS THEY WROTE THE LINKS. THIS IS NOT TO BE MINIMALIZED OR LOOKED DOWN UPON. WHAT HAPPENS BETWEEN THE PEOPLE WRITING THE POEM IS USUALLY THE VERY BEST PART OF THE WORK; IT IS JUST SO HARD TO GET IT PAST THE INK AND TO THE PAPER.
WHILE I HAVE PRAISE FOR PAUL MACNEIL FOR DOING THIS BOOK AND SAVING THESE ACCOUNTS, I THINK ONE HAD TO BE THERE TO REALLY ENJOY AND APPRECIATE THE POETRY. YES, THE WHOLE BOOK IS DONE IN CAPS.
Greetings from Luna Park by James Roderick Burns. Modern English Tanka Press, www.themetpress.com, 2008. Perfect bound, full-color cover, 5.5 x 9 inches, 100 pages, $14.95.
James Roderick Burns is one of the very few English poets who writes in the sedoka – an ancient Japanese genre employing sets of verses with the 5,7,7 sound unit count. Originally, over 1300 years ago, the sekoda was used as a question and answer unit – used to convey wisdom in the oral tradition. At one point the sedoka was used by lovers in a “how do I love thee?” game.
Burns has taken the form, and the syllable count in English, but the syntax and punctuation of the poems confines them to a very traditional European literary tradition. Also, he completely ignores the question and answer aspect of the genre.
James Roderick Burns’s sedoka are printed one to a page, but arranged in three sequences: “Greetings from Luna Park,” “Coney Catching,” and “Bamboola.” For an excellent sample of Burns’s work, go in this issue of Lynx to the Solo Poems and you will find “Hot Dog And Bun: A Duet (Nathan’s Famous, 2001)” which in my humble opinion is much superior to any of the work in the book. Reread this poem with your (new?) understanding of the sedoka form and see if that increases your pleasure of the work.
While applauding Burn’s attempt to revive this ancient form, I feel it still has potential that has not yet been touched. Those with experience and skills from writing haiku and renga are missing out on a great opportunity here to explore another facet of Japanese poetry. Kudos go to Denis Garrison for including a book of sedoka in his tanka publishing stable. He is an open-minded kind of a guy!
BOOK ANNOUNCEMENTS
. . .James Tipton's latest book, All the Horses of Heaven/Todos los Caballos del Paraiso,which Alexis Rotella calls a "rare combination of mostly erotic tanka...that at the same time celebrate...the poet's life in Mexico," is available through www.themetpress.com.
. . .Also recently published, James Tipton's Washing Dishes in the Ancient Village/Lavando platos en el pueblo antiguo, is a collection of 100 short poems – in both English and Spanish – about Mexico and Latin America. Some of the poems are humorous, some are erotic, all very human. One critic calls these "haiku on testosterone.” The book is available for $10.95 plus $3.00 shipping and handling through Bread & Butter Press, 1150 S. Glencoe, Denver, CO 80246.
Another recent collection of haiku by James Tipton, Proposing to the Woman in the Rear View Mirror, which William J. Higginson, author of The Haiku Handbook, says are written "by a man who is not afraid to be himself," is available through www.themetpress.com.
. . .A Film of Words, by Jane and Werner Reichhold, which was published online last autumn, is now available in a paper edition. In addition, this book contains the collaborative poem “Roar,” also by this pair. Perfect bound, 7 x 10 inches, 96 pages, full color cover, $12. Contact: Jane@ahapoetry.com
. . .I am happy to announce Haiku Encounters, my book of 186 haiku for your reading pleasure. If you are interesting in downloading a copy of this E-book for only $3.00, go to http://greatamericanstoryhouse.com/category/poetry and click on Haiku Encounters. It is well worth the three bucks! Or order a copy of A Family of Sicilians... by Salvatore Buttaci. Click on Buttaci Publishing. Thank you for appreciating my work. Sal Buttaci
Headlights at high noon –
a funeral procession
stuck in traffic.
On a bus stop bench
a young couple smooches.
This tanka is from my book Concrete Seasons, A Collection of Urban Tanka, which I have just posted at my blog as a cyberbook here:
http://musicmanna. <http://musicmanna.blogspot.com/> blogspot.com/
I hope that you can take the time to read it and that you enjoy it. Thanks,
Bob Loomis, Concord CA USA
. . .No haiku, no tanka, and not even in English, Werner Reichhold’s newest book, Symbiotic Art, $30., is a big book ( 8 x 11 inches; 96 pages) of over seventy full-color collages done with and from famous artworks. The viewers of these works need to mobilize more than a bit of courage, because they are required to look at art in an unusual way. They may recognize single parts of works created by artists a long time ago, which have now been recomposed into collages. Observers are invited into “the mathematics of a modern collage” wherein they will come face to face with the possibility of discovering a path into unknown territory. Mixing older concepts with new ideas of space and relativity, everything offered here is designed to light up the fantasy as it points into a direction so far not yet encountered. You can sample the collages in the poem “Notable Unleashed” in the Collaborative Poetry section of this issue. Symbiotic Art is available through AHA Books. |
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BOOK REVIEWS
DRIPPING GOLDEN LIGHT
An examination of Pamela Babusci’s first collection of tanka, A Thousand Reasons
Marjorie Buettner
Contact: moongate44(at)gmail(dot)com. Pamela A. Babusci 150 Milford St. Apt. 13 Rochester, NY 14615 US Funds $14 plus $2.50 S&H ; Foreign $5 S&H.
KyôkaJapan’s Comic Verse, A MAD IN TRANS LATION Reader compiled, translated, explained and essayed by robin d. gill. Paraverse Press, 2009. Contact: http://paraverse.org Paperback, 8 x 11 inches, 734 pages (not counting the rant at the end). Includes Japanese originals, romanization, a bibliography, poet and poem indexes. Review is written from a reading copy that contained no price.
Stone Mirror, Water Mirror / Oglinda de Piatra, Oglinda de Apa by Clelia Ifrim. Perfect bound, 5.5 x 8.5 inches, 54 pages, Romanian and English. Illustrated with ten drawings by the author. No price. Available from Clelia Ifrim, Calea Dorobantilor 135-145/ Ap. 5, 010563 Buchar’est, Romania
Delta Blues by Skip Fox. Ahadada Books: 2009. Perfect bound, 5.5 x 8.5,176 pages. No price; contact ahadadabooks.com
Blue Night & the inadequacy of long-stemmed roses by Larry Kimmel. Second Edition with The Temperature of Love. Modern English Tanka Press, www.themetpress.com, 2009. Perfect bound, 6 x 9 inches, 124 pages, $12.95
Elvis in Black Leather by Alexis Rotella. Modern English Tanka Press: www.themetpress.com, 2009. Perfect bound, 4 x 6.5 inches, 44 pages, $9.95.
Dragonfly’s Play / Jocul Libelulei by Oprica Padeanu. Verus, Bucuresti, 2009. Romanian and English. Translated by Vasile Moldovan. Perfect bound, full color cover, 5.5 x 8.5 inches, 100 pages. Contact: verus@clicknet.ro
slightly scented short lived words and roses by Stanley Pelter. England: George Mann Publications, 2009. Perfect bound, full-color cover, 6 x 9 inches, 132 pages, cover by Izzy Sharpe, Introduction by John Daniel. Illustrations by S. Felton.
THE ONAWA POEMS 1999-2008, EDITED BY PAUL W. MACNEIL. SHIP POND PRESS. PERFECT BOUND 5.5 X 8.5 INCHES, 40 PAGES, $11. COLLECTED HAIKU BY YU CHANG, FERRIS GILLI, GARY HOTHAM, KIRSTY KARKOW, PAUL MACNEIL, PAUL DAVID MENA, PAUL M., JOHN STEVENSON, HILARY TANN, AND PAUL WATSKY.
Greetings from Luna Park by James Roderick Burns. Modern English Tanka Press, www.themetpress.com, 2008. Perfect bound, full-color cover, 5.5 x 9 inches, 100 pages, $14.95.
BOOK ANNOUNCEMENTS
. . .James Tipton's latest book, All the Horses of Heaven/Todos los Caballos del Paraiso
James Tipton's Washing Dishes in the Ancient Village/Lavando platos en el pueblo antiguo
James Tipton, Proposing to the Woman in the Rear View Mirror,
A Film of Words by Jane and Werner Reichhold,
Haiku Encounters, by Salvatore Buttaci.
Concrete Seasons, A Collection of Urban Tanka, by Bob Loomis
Symbiotic Art by Werner Reichhold |
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