Japanese title: 『新しい池—英語圏の俳人たち』 宮下 恵美子 編者訳者
Tokyo: Hokumeisha, 2002.
With belated thanks to Emiko!
This book came to Penny and me in July of 2002, and somehow got left at our son’s house. On a visit there just a few days ago, I saw it on a shelf, and, not recognizing it as mine, pulled it down to look at it. (It was on the family poetry shelves.) Wow! There in the front, not only an inscription, but a very pleasant note from the editor. Well, I thank the powers that be for the return of our book. (Come to think of it, July 2002 was just when Penny and I were in the middle of our move back to New Jersey, after eleven years in fabulous Santa Fe, New Mexico, the main reason for the move being precisely that distance between Santa Fe and our children, all here on the East Coast. I guess the book must have arrived in our midst while we were in transit.)
Both Penny and I have two poems each in this collection, which is unusual, as Emiko points out in her note. The pages are so openly designed, and the poems given lots of air, such space is at a premium, and we are duly honored to be included, twice each!
But the book is not about pleasing us, or any of the other contributors. Like books by our friend Prof. Kazuo Satô before her, Emiko’s book is to help Japanese readers get to know and appreciate English-language haiku. The book has the poets grouped into the following sections, each with a brief introduction, sometimes in English and Japanese, sometimes in Japanese only (these titles are my loose translations of Japanese headings):
1. The American Midwest
2. Northern California: Yuki Teikei Haiku Society
3. Boston Haiku Society
4. Towpath Haiku Group (Washington, D.C. area)
5. American Pacific Northwest
6. Haiku Poets of Northern California
7. British Haiku Society
8. Spring Street Haiku Group (New York City)
9. Haiku North America (2001, held in Boston)
10. Haiku Canada
11. North American Haiku Poets
12. September 11, 2001
Each section features one haiku by each of ten poets, with very few poets appearing in more than one section. The introduction to the last section, in which the poems reflect upon the terrorist attacks on the USA on that date, is a sequence of two tanka and four haiku by Cor van den Heuvel.
Each poem appears in English, with a literal translation in colloquial Japanese and a “haiku translation” that represents the poem in traditional haiku form. Two sample poems from the book by poets whose work is less familiar to me (Emiko’s haiku translations are given below in parentheses; if your computer is not prepared to read Japanese text, you will see a series of question marks instead):
Summer’s highest tide—
the roots of the old fig tree
mingle with the shells( 夏の潮満たて古木に届く貝)
Wendy Wright (Yuki Teikei)
rust speckles the new saw
left by the carpenter
under the stars( 星月夜大工忘れし鋸に錆)
Randal Johnson (Pacific Northwest)
An eminent collection of 120+ haiku by a similar number of North American and British poets. Well-done, Emiko! And my apologies for this late notice . . .
Copies of The New Pond are available in North America from Brooks Books.
Bill
