Sorry—illness has me offline for some time.

Dear readers,

About the time I wrote the last post here, I was coming down with what seemed like a bad cough that could easily turn chronic. Doctors, family, and I thought we could overcome it, but after many weeks of coughing and additional symptoms, it became evident that something more was wrong. Two weeks ago, after two weeks of testing in hospital, a substantial tumor was discovered in my chest, lodged among the organs between my lungs (rather than in any one of them), where it was pretty well hidden from x-rays, etc.

I am now engaged in treatment that includes aggressive chemo-therapy. Of necessity, virtually all of my time over the next several months will be devoted to this treatment. Unfortunately, I will have little energy for correspondence, participation in various online and organizational activities, and the like for some time to come.

Nevertheless, my excellent team of doctors, family, and I are all optimistic, and I expect to come out of this down the road to rejoin in most of my previous activities. In the meantime, your good thoughts and prayers in our direction as Penny and I work our way through this difficult passage will be very much appreciated.

Bless,

Bill

M., Paul. Pilgrim Stone.

Bristol, RI: privately printed, 2008.

Pamphlet, 4.25×3.75 in (11×9.5 cm), unpaged. Free for s.a.s.e. to the author at 31 Seal Island Rd., Bristol, RI 02809.

Front cover image as at left (about 2/3rds life-size, depending on your monitor resolution and so on). Pretty neatly enigmatic, especially with the close-quote omitted, suggesting that there is more of the quotation inside.

With thanks to the author.

I’m particularly fond of small pamphlet haiku books, as their unostentatious size and format go nicely with the notion of simple and direct haiku, though of course haiku are not always so. And it encourages a one-to-a-page presentation, as found here.

After a title page with what appears to be a simple line drawing of one of the “pilgrim stones” mentioned in title and text, the booklet begins with a brief introduction to this subject, that is, stones that have migrated from one place or another to take up temporary residence in the author’s field of view, and more permanently in his poems. The first one:

ridge shadow
at the stream
with other stones

One from the pair at centerfold:

pebbled shore
she turns away
to breast feed

And one from about two-thirds through, that I happen to especially like:

quick-running brook . . .
a stone from the bottom
lighter than imagined

Nearly twenty haiku here, well worth the attention brought to their pilgrimage on the pages of this small piece received in the mail.

Bill

Brandi, John. Staff in hand / Wind in pines.

[San Francisco]: Tangram, 2008. Hand-sewn, 5.5×8.5″, no page numbers, no price listed. (Colophon: “One hundred fifty copies printed from Monotype English O. S. on Zerkall.”)

With thanks to the author.

The cover image, I imagine by the poet-painter himself: a line drawing of a guy under a hat with a long staff, striding along, a moon looking down over a pine branch—maybe piñon? Hello, John, and a fine greeting this lovely letterpress pamphlet of poems, starting with:

First crocus
the nearest star
a little closer.

And then I notice, in finer type across the page to my left, the “Author’s note:”

When reading these poems, consider adding longer than customary silence between them, as if they were one to a page. Think of Miles on Kind of Blue, or Monk on Bags’ Groove, a hop-dwell-skip-jump across the middle of a stream.

Oh, yeah . . . Greetings, first crocus, hey, you remind me . . .

I leave off saying any more, here, just share a couple more, as usuall, randomly selected:

Travelers gone
the sound of the ferry
rocked by the sea.

Sky darkening
I fold a letter
before the ink is dry.

About 60 more, where those came from. And a deep bow to my traveller friend from El Rito, New Mexico.

Bill

Fukuda, Hanako. Wind in My Hand.

On the cover: The Story of Issa, Japanese Haiku Poet (technically, this is not a subtitle, as it does not appear on the title page, but I think it should, and if it had . . . well, read on).

San Carolos, CA: Golden Gate Junior Books, 1970. Illustrated by Lydia Cooley; written “with the editorial assistance of Mark Taylor. Haiku translations by Hanako Fukuda”.

1970! Gosh, if I’d not come to Chatham Middle School and had some free time to roam their school library, I might never have seen this book.

Thank you, Chatham Middle School!

This is a gently illustrated prose narrative of Issa’s life, appropriate to elementary and middle school readers. In the course of the text, Ms. Fukuda includes numerous haiku that arose from some of the more personal aspects of Issa’s life, set in a frame story of the time Issa returned to his family home after establishing himself as a major haikai master. At the outset, old man Issa approaches a mountain village, and engages in conversation with a group of children who are singing a song he rememvers from his childhood. I do not now have time to read through the engaginly told story, but I notice that in this book, published in 1970, the haiku translations are not in 5-7-5. Rather, they use only the words the translator feels are needed to convey the poems’ meanings. For example, one of his more famous poems is offered as:

Come and play with me,
Motherless, fatherless
Little sparrow.

Unfortunately, because this book is a biography, no one scanning the poetry shelves in a library is likely to spot it. But the gentle telling of the story, the softly pastel or gray-scale spot and occasional full-page illustrations, and the simple, straightforward haiku translations make this a winner. I’ll be looking to find a copy for myself. If you’re the parent of a reader, or a teacher, or just enjoy children’s books yourself, you might like to get a copy of this one for yourself.

Bill

Announcement: Catherine Mair Receives Award

Catherine Mair, of Katikati, New Zealand, has been given a Queen’s Service Medal in the Queen’s Birthday Honours for her services to poetry and to the community. She conceived and has managed the building of the “Haiku Pathway” in a park setting along a river in Katikati. The pathway features large stones carved with haiku by poets from around the world, and is one of the region’s stellar contributions to a celebration of the new millennium. The Haiku Pathway has recently been expanded, and there is a booklet of the poems available.

Seems like Catherine, with a lot of help from members of her community—as she gracefully acknowledges—has turned “haiku” from an unknown to a household word where she lives. We should all be proud of her, not for this award in itself, but for her achievement on behalf of haiku everywhere.

For a local news story on the award, see “Medal an ode to crafter of poetry” on the Bay of Plenty Times web site, here. For more information on the Haiku Pathway itself, check out this link.

A Haikai Pub toast to Catherine Mair!

Bill

HSA Newsletter, Listing of Issues on Hand.

This post consists of a listing that will eventually include all the issues of The Haiku Society of America Newsletter, to give it its formal title, in my collection, most recent at the top. For a post that describes a particular issue, please see my review of issue 22:4. Links to other individual issues will be added to the table as they appear in the blog.

Bill

Issue Number	Date	Notes
23:1	February 2008	Includes a separate pamphlet, A Guide to Haiku Publications, 2008, by Charles Trumbull, listing some 50 or so print and online periodicals and annuals.
22:4	November 2007	Reviewed.
22:3	August 2007	Contains Laura Davidson Tanna’s moving memorial to her mother, L. A. Davidson.
Issue Number	Date	Notes

Haiku Canada Review, Listing of Issues on Hand.

This post consists of a listing that will eventually include all the issues of Haiku Canada Review in my collection, most recent at the top. For a post that describes a particular issue, please see my review of issue 2:1. Links to other individual issues will be added to the table as they appear in the blog.

Bill

Issue Number	Date	Notes
2:1	February 2008	Includes name and address listing of some 200 members, plus Haiku Canada Sheet by Naomi Beth Wakan. Reviewed.
1:2	October 2007	Includes Haiku Canada Sheets by Marianne Bluger and members of Haiku Deer Park.
Issue Number	Date	Notes

Haiku Canada Review, 2:1 (February 2008).

Edited by LeRoy Gorman.

Comes with membership in Haiku Canada (details below).

Well, thing pile up while you’re distracted, as I have been for the past several months, with work (that brings in the wherewithal to keep going) doing one of the things I most enjoy, working with students and teachers to improve their writing and teaching of writing. Some details about that on Penny’s and my “Events” web site: http://www.2hweb.net/events/.

One of the things piling up is haikai periodicals, of which there are now more than a score to report on—that’s a score of different titles, a lot more than a score of individual issues. So, I’ll take up the most recent issue in a minireview, and create lists of additional issues, so that we can get—I can get—an overview of what’s happening as quickly as possible.

In this context, it’s a delight to report on one of the latest entries in the haiku magazine business, Haiku Canada Review. Not entirely new, HCR is a follow-on from the Haiku Canada Newsletter, which has been issued in pamphlet form for many years. However, last year (2007), editor LeRoy Gorman noted that the newsletter had been going in the direction of becoming a magazine, a “review” (that is, a magazine with not only literary content, i.e., poems, but includes reviews and articles on topics related to its literary content). He asked if he could not move it all the way over into the review style of publication it was becoming, and the Haiku Canada membership agreed at last May’s HC Weekend in Ottawa. At the same time, Marco Fraticelli became the editor of an e-mailed HC newsletter, which goes out to members as he accumulates things to report, which has turned out to be every few weeks. Marco’s done a great job with the newly dubbed Haiku Canada Newsflash, turning it into one of the best ways to stay abreast of developments in English- and French-language haiku worldwide. (Hint, hint, you might find it useful to be a member of Haiku Canada just for this e-mail newsletter! Check out the Haiku Canada web site, here: http://www.haikucanada.org/.)

So, to the matter at hand: Haiku Canada Review, 2:1, contains a great mix of poems, mainly haiku/senryu and tanka, haibun, and linked verse, along with a note from the editor on current developments in Haiku Canada, a couple of fine essays (more on them below), pithy book and magazine reviews, and other commentary. (E.g., here again is one of Tom Noyes’s essays on “Two Favorite Haiku”.)

The short poems in English, offered under the heading “Haiku Plus . . .”, include the following, almost at random (I usually strive to include authors’ whose names I’m less familiar with in these quick compilations):

city cab—
at each intersection
the full moon

izak bouwer (p. 3)

Li Po’s moon
I go to the window
to see for myself

Renée Luria Leopold (6)

back from Paris at the suitcase rollers leaves from the boulevard

retour de Paris aux roulettes de la valise feuilles du boulevard

Klaus-Dieter Wirth (10)

This last forms a neat segue into the section of haïku en français, under the heading Haïkus du fleuve, réunis par Micheline Beaudry. Some samples:

première neige
une mouette s’envole
dans le gris du ciel

Hélène Leclerc (14)

Tout chaud, enrobé Les cristaux nous effleurant Barbe à glaçons

Czeply, okryt Krysztaly nas muskaja Broda z lisieta

Robert Bilinski (17)

Soir d’Avril
derrière la haie
des rires d’enfants

Martine Hautot (18 )

The second poem above illustrates the fact that while English and French may be the dominant languages of global haiku, many other languages are also involved, and I salute HCR and its editors for sharing poems in several languages with its readers. (Another illustration of the fact that, for all its internal political difficulties, Canada may be more truly welcoming of cosmopolitan influences than some other countries we could name.)

Between the sections of short poems in English and French, we have three quite fine haibun, each with a light touch, though two of them deal with quite serious matters.

And, what makes this a “review” rather than just another haiku magazine: following the poems, a major article by Janick Belleau, translated into English by Dorothy Howard. (The article first appeared in the magazine Haïkaï, in French, December 2006.) In English the title reads “Canadian Haiku Women Pioneers from Sea to Sea (1928–1985)”. The article provides its own overview in the first paragraph, noting that it concludes its survey concurrently with the landmark book Haïku: Anthologie canadienne/Canadian Haiku Anthology, edited by Dorothy Howard and André Duhaime, published in 1985. (I’ll note here my gratitude to the editors for sharing proofs with me as I was putting the finishing touches on my Haiku Handbook, published the same year.) Belleau continues:

We shall see among these women, women who have devoted a good part of their creativity to the writing and publication of haiku, and women who spent great creative energy in haiku promotion through critical studies, journal publications, mentoring and leadership in haiku associations. (20)

The article goes on to feature:

• a poet who published haiku in an award-winning poems in French, including haiku in 1928 (Simone Routier)
• “the first author in English Canada to put out a collection of haiku”, in 1965, a book I remember well for its striking wood-engraving illustrations (Claire Pratt)
• a “haiku theorist” who published The Haiku Form in 1974 (Joan Giroux)
• three poets from Saskatchewan (Catherine M. Buckaway, Mildred A. Rose, and L. Pearl Schuck)
• and poet, essayist, illustrator, and co-founder of the Haiku Society of Canada—now Haiku Canada (Betty Drevniok)

Toward the end of her article, Belleau mentions a number of women whose major activity and influence reach far beyond 1985, right up to a couple of living folks that I might liken to “national treasures” of Canadian haiku, Anna Vakar and Dorothy Howard. For each of these and others unnamed here, Belleau provides brief biographical info and a synopsis of their contributions to the haiku community, in many cases embellished with poems.

As elsewhere today, haiku in Canada is neither a women’s nor a men’s world, but a world richly intertwining the work of both. Perhaps someone else will undertake a similarly instructive survey of men’s contributions to the genre in Canada, but in the meantime, it is very good to be reminded of these leading ladies and their contributions.

But the feast of this issue of HCR does not end here. Next up is an article by Angela Leuck, part II of her essay “Approaching Beauty: Writing Haiku About Flowers”—begun in the previous issue. This piece, subtitled “The Human Connection”, includes examples of her poems making that connection, as here:

watering the daylilies
a woman like my mother—
summer dusk (31)

How gesture, form in motion, can bring us back to the memory-artifacts of our personal history. (Angela’s article is based on a talk she gave at the Haiku Canada Weekend, Ottawa, May 2007. You can read my review of that event here: http://haikai.home.att.net/haiku/haikucanada07/.)

The issue moves forward with three linked poems in a variety of forms, one a solo piece we might call “cut prose”, another classically moving kasen in 36 stanzas, and a rengay, the latter in an experimental format that I’ll leave for HCR readers to discover.

After H. F. Noyes’s brief “Two Favorite Haiku” the issue draws toward a close with book and magazine reviews. After one by yours truly (perhaps to appear here later), we have a review of Abigail Friedman’s The Haiku Apprentice: Memoirs of Writing Poetry in Japan, written by Angela Leuck; she likes it. And, finally, a section titled “Books in Brief”, which actually covers as many magazines as books, and gives a good thumbnail sketch of its subjects. Each provides full physical descriptions and ordering info, then a very brief synopsis. Here’s what the editor—we must assume, these are unsigned—has to say about Roberta Beary’s The Unworn Necklace:

These are haiku of the heart that quietly catch and draw the reader in. It is no surprise, after reading the credits, to learn many of the poems are award winners.

Haiku Canada Review frequently comes with extras. With this issue we have a Haiku Canada Sheet (a simple trifold brochure) with poems by Naomi Beth Wakan, a long-time poet and advocate for haiku, plus a list of the organization’s 200 or so members. If you’re not one of them, click on the “Join Haiku Canada” link on Haiku Canada’s home page, and find out more of what’s going on in the world of haiku, northern perspective: http://www.haikucanada.org/.

Bill

Announcement: Roberta Beary’s The Unworn Necklace Finalist for William Carlos Williams Award from Poetry Society of America!

If you haven’t heard yet, note now that a haiku book, a small haiku book, all things considered, has been named one of two finalists for the extremely prestigious William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America.

I won’t go into it all deeply here, except to say that I’ve just sent Roberta and Snapshot Press publisher John Barlow the following message:

Roberta, congrats, congrats, congrats! Obviously, you grabbed [Ron] Silliman’s attention not only with the well-crafted haiku, but with the carefully arranged sequence, their collective portrayal of a genuinely human reality that includes, but is obviously not limited to, what we might call “haiku stuff”. If all haiku books were so carefully crafted, we’d not have to ever make any apologies for our devotion to the genre.

This is obviously the way forward for haiku, in Japan and anywhere else, and your book becomes a guidepost along the way with this notice. Also, a bit of an answer to Paul Muldoon, Billy Collins, and others who would toy with haiku but not really enter what we might call haiku culture.

Brilliant. And brilliant, as Michael [Welch] says, that you took the initiative to enter the book in the PSA contest, for one of the most prestigious prizes in American poetry. Runner-up status here is akin to any ten awards in haiku-land combined, and more, a good deal more.

A low bow,
Bill

Here’s what this year’s PSA judge for the WCW Award has to say about Roberta’s book: http://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/search/label/Roberta Beary.

Glasses raised in a toast to Roberta, John, and Ron Silliman, from the Haikai Pub!

Bill

BfS: Donald Keene. World Within Walls—1600–1867.

Full title:

World Within Walls: Japanese Literature of the Pre-Modern Era, 1600–1867.

New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1976. Hardcover, 6.5×9.5″ (17×23.5 cm), 606 + xv pages.

Condition: In d.j. with three slight tears and slight creasing, text and binding mint condition, signed by the author.

Original price: $22.95; this copy: $15 + shipping. Click for ordering info.

This is the first book issued of what would become Donald Keene’s magnum opus, a brilliant 3–4 volume history of all Japanese literature (the number depends on whether you count the two-volume Dawn to the West as one or two “books”). With this volume and the volume of Dawn to the West mentioned in the previous post, one has a nearly complete history of what we call “haiku” as it grew and matured in Japan. (The only thing missing would be the pre-history of the genre, in the linked poetry—classical renga—of the 1300s–1500s, which features in Prof. Keene’s final volume in the series, Seeds in the Heart.)

The opening six chapters of World Within Walls give the history of haikai from the late 15th century, when a more playful style of courtly renga began to emerge, to the full-blown art of Bashô, whom we know today as “the father of haiku”, but who was actually a master of haikai no renga in his own time. Then, after seven chapters devoted to fiction (3), drama (3), and waka poetry, Keene takes up haikai again with chapters titled “Buson and the Haikai Revival” and “Haikai of the Late Tokugawa Period”; the latter mainly deals with Issa. Further excursions into fiction and drama intervene between these and the final three chapters, devoted to “Waka of the Late Tokugawa Period”; “Comic Poetry” dealing with kyoka, the “mad verses” related to waka; and “Poetry and Prose in Chinese”—written by Japanese authors.

Despite its large size and page-count, this book is set in very readable type, with good margins, and forms probably the best single-volume introduction in English to the writers and writings of the Tokugawa Era, the era that includes Bashô, Chiyo, Buson, Issa, and others of the time with whom we may be familiar from the writings of Blyth, Henderson, and others. Thus, it makes a good introduction not only to the haikai poets of this time, but but to contemporary writers and works with which they would have been familiar.

I picked up this copy at a used book store, mainly because of the fact that Donald Keene had signed it for someone (name withheld to protect the guilty!), and it seemed fun to get such a copy. But now, with my earlier copy of the same book all marked up, when I come to part with one, it’s the signed copy that must go.

To Order: If you are interested in purchasing this copy of World Within Walls, e-mail me with name, postal address, and phone number.

Bill