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BOOK REVIEWS
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. 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 Broken Promises, by Jerry Dreesen, 5.5 X 8.5 paperback, 52 pages, purchase through Amazon, ISBN 9781484198636, ©2013 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. 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 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. 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. 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. 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 Susurrus, by Anita Krumins, Inspress, Box 309 Station P, Toronto, Ontario Canada M5S 2S8, Contact: A. Zarins, azarins3@gmail.com Paperback 56 pages. 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 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 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 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. 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. Im Sog der Stille, Klaus-Dieter Wirth, 6 x 8.5 inches, paperback, ISBN 978-3-937257-72-3, Hamburger Haiku-Verlag, Germany Träume teilen, Volker Friebel, paperback, 6 x 8 inches, Edition Blaue Felder, Wolkenpfad Verlag, Tübingen, Germany. Mitten im Lachen, Gerd Börner. IDEDITION, www.ideedition.de. ISBN 978-3-7322-5048-6. paperback, 123 pages, 4,5 : 7,5 inches. BOOK ANNOUNCEMENTS
Cloud Catching Mountains by Linda Galloway and Ron C. Moss
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BOOK REVIEWS
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:
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:
(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. . .” 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. 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 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: 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: 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 forgotten promises 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. remembering
Yet, others as landscapes in a terseness, both, in the amount and meaning words: november dusk—
end of march —
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.
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
From Hot Springs Mountain
the thoroughbred
riverbank swallows
(the imagery quite fetching)
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. The Magpie Haiku & Tanka Poets are:
Top of mountain—
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 dandelion field 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:
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 Old lady cherry tree
Sick while traveling (1694) single cherry blossom falls
show this progression from three-liner to one-liner form and others in between. Some in between: Basho’s
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 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
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 Or even shorter: unsaid (Page 169) Or another short one: cinders (Page 229) On the other hand, Reichhold’s haiku can be expansive: running down a path (Page 12) Many of Reichhold’s haiku are rich with implication: war museum (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 (Page 264) The rhyme here is used in an appropriately humorous way. Here’s another one that I found particularly effective: existence 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 (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 Or you can read it warming the night air 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 silence silence silence silence silence (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 at sea
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. 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. 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 “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. 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— 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 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 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 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.
Landeinwärts ein Meer upcountry a sea une mer intérieure tierra adentro un mar
Träume teilen, Volker Friebel, paperback, 6 x 8 inches, Edition Blaue Felder, Wolkenpfad Verlag, Tübingen, Germany. 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. Mitten im Lachen, Gerd Börner. IDEDITION, www.ideedition.de. ISBN 978-3-7322-5048-6. paperback, 123 pages, 4,5 : 7,5 inches. 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.
BOOK ANNOUNCEMENTS
Poetry, in the inspiration of Mid-Eastern Ghazal form, written in couplets with modern sensibilities in German. Trade full-color cover, 7.5" x 9.25" ,78 pages. AHA Books, P.O. Box 767, Gualala, CA 95445
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AHA Books announces the publication of 
