no.9, june 2011 page 2 - the haiku foundation · notes from the gean no.9, june 2011 page 3...

Notes from the Gean No.9, June 2011

Welcome to Notes from the Gean the haiku journal

Brought to you by Gean Tree Press

featuring haiku, tanka, haiga, & more.

Mission Statement:

We seek to encourage excellence, experimentation and education

within haiku and its related genres. We believe this is best

accomplished by example and not imitation. Our aim is for authenticity

above all else. We therefore solicit your finest examples of haiku, tanka,

haiga, haibun and renga/renku so that we may "hear" your voices

speak.

The Editors

For details on how to submit to Notes from the Gean please check our

SUBMISSIONS page.

cover artwork Grum Robertson

Magazine content copyright © 2011 Gean Tree Press. All Rights Reserved. Individual works copyright © the artist/artists.

http://www.geantreepress.com/

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contents

haiku

pp.4-33

tanka

pp.34-44

haiga

pp.45-99

haibun pp.100-120

renga/renku pp.121-145

special feature

pp.146-149

interview pp.150-158

reviews

pp.159-167

article pp.168-178

backpage p.179

Editor-in-Chief / Resources: Colin Stewart Jones - Scotland


Fukushima...

ah, the cloud

over Fukushima

Liz Rule - Australia

praying together

with my Muslim neighbor —

clouds over Fukushima

Radostina A. Angelova - Bulgaria

spring break

white foam surfing

plum trees

Jerry Foshee - U.S.A.

last day at the beach

content with watching

almost no waves

Scott Owens - U.S.A.

days of our lives —

going round in circles

on melting ice

Barbara A. Taylor - Australia


hazy dawn

the blue jay

before the alarm

Michele Harvey - U.S.A.

nuclear spring —

monitoring which way

the wind blows

Margaret Dornaus - U.S.A.

gaining an hour —

a long solo

on the erhu

Ruth Holzer - U.S.A.

back of my throat first Spring day

Greg Hopkins - U.S.A.


haiku: Carolyn Hall - U.S.A.

haiga: Ron Moss – Australia


the Ides of March —

a blade of grass emerging

from its sheath

Grace Galton - U.K.

iceland poppies

wondering how long

I can keep silent

Carolyn Hall - U.S.A.

white tulips in bloom —

realizing there was nothing

I could have done

Deborah Finkelstein - U.S.A.

klompen dancers

tulips bend

toward the sound

Jennifer Corpe - U.S.A.

prognosis uncertain...

the fragile scent

of bluebells

Jo McInerney - Australia


spring rain

seeping through

the sprigged wallpaper

Helen Buckingham - U.K.

intensive care —

confirming the status

of the apple blossoms

Melissa Allen - U.S.A.

my mother's childhood...

from the flower press

a celandine

Claire Everett - U.K.

trustee room

a gentle request

for more light

Bill Cooper - U.S.A.

the dying light

in my friend's old room

the clock ticks on

Chen-ou Liu – Canada


after the funeral

boys cast

into infinite shimmer

Jennifer Corpe - U.S.A.

obituary column

his smile forever

crooked

Kala Ramesh - India

silent secateurs —

a cabbage white flutters

over the fence

- In memorium, P.K. Page

Richard Stevenson - Canada

banks of azaleas

captured on Fujichrome

the rite of spring

Margaret Dornaus - U.S.A.

swamp lagoon

two fighting frogs

stir the sky

Rosa Clement - Brazil


first cookout

the red haze of buds

on the maple

Catherine J.S. Lee - U.S.A.

pea stew for lunch

my son asks

about the princess

Radostina A. Angelova - Bulgaria

spring sale

a grey-haired man sprints up

the down escalator

Cynthia Rowe - Australia

Easter morning —

a parade of new clothes

going to church

Adelaide B. Shaw - U.S.A.

spreading manure —

the farmer

stops to gossip

Michele Harvey - U.S.A.


Saturday sleep-in

one local woodpecker

has his own plan

Adelaide B. Shaw - U.S.A.

snapdragon...

the toddler mouths

what is said

Peter Newton - U.S.A.

hummingbirds at the feeder

I photoshop dad's frown

into a smile


at last

finding the bird feeder:

mum's darting eye

Helen Buckingham - U.K.

planting marigolds —

a bee

can't wait

Ann K. Schwader - U.S.A.


summer solstice

cicadas slice the heat

Petrus Heyligers - Australia

summer solstice

a fruit bat

circles the circle

Nathalie Buckland - Australia

yabby pump

a following

of gulls

Quendryth Young - Australia

drawbridge the span of the fisherman's arms

Alan S. Bridges - U.S.A.

bait fish

shadows slipping through

the shadows

Gerry Bravi – Canada


widgeon rising

between the waves

widgeon falling

Neal Whitman - U.S.A.

Purgatory Chasm —

sky-colored sea glass

just out of reach

Ellen Pratte - U.S.A.

willow shade

a jackdaw turns

the skimming stones


a room for the night

or a summer moon

for the road

Jeffrey Woodward - U.S.A.

cane fields...

pulling off to piss

in the Mississippi

John Hawk - U.S.A.


the king snake and I

regarding each other

remain ourselves

Ruth Holzer - U.S.A.

a rifled cottage

the watchman's flashlight

chasing fireflies

Garry Eaton - Canada

firefly

a small shadow

on the star chart

Melissa Allen - U.S.A.

falling stars

sand crabs dash across

the strand

L. Costa - Brazil

incoming storm

pine boughs

surf the wind waves

Frances Jones - U.S.A.


thunderclap

my boot just missing

a butterfly shadow

Jan Dobb - Australia

a woodknot twists

across the garden table

black drops of rain

John Hawkhead - U.K.

cyclone's eye —

do you still want

a divorce?

Liz Rule - Australia

storm damage

the tradesman's trail

of old spice

Cynthia Rowe - Australia

dog days

boys make a contest

of catching flies

Christopher Patchel - U.S.A.


August stillness

a fly

still on the swatter

Steven Carter - U.S.A.

parched fields

the low hanging clouds

just passersby

Gerry Bravi - Canada

mountain

wind moves

the deck chairs


after the freight train thistledown

Polona Oblak - Slovenia

daydreaming

thistledown drifts

on the breeze

Cara Holman - U.S.A.


an old man

walking an old dog —

ninety mile beach

Rodney Williams - Australia

coastal map

the sand etched

by snails

G.R. Le Blanc - Canada

awake

but still caught in the dream

summer clouds

Peggy Heinrich - U.S.A.

cirrus clouds

a lifeguard's hut

oversees the beach

Gillena Cox -Trinidad and Tobago

Virgin Islands

laughing gulls mingle

on the beach

G.R. Le Blanc - Canada


honeymoon —

behind security glass

Gioconda's smile

Krzysztof Kokot - Poland

cameras capture

a fine sunset

the smiles of strangers

Nick Sherwood - U.K.

alone in a crowd

his eyes hold fireworks

and hers

Autumn N. Hall - U.S.A.

meteor shower

the small safety pin

on her bra strap

Ignatius Fay - Canada

giving my father's advice

to my father —

the echo of wind chimes

Michael Morell - U.S.A.


fog shrouds the sky

in this uncertain summer

her first chest x-ray

Beverly Acuff Momoi - U.S.A.

morning walk

the path glittered

with cicada wings

André Surridge - New Zealand

late night

I let the spider sleep

in the bathroom

Rosa Clement - Brazil

haiku: William Cullen Jr. - U.S.A.

haiga: Ron Moss - Australia


silent morning

at my mother's bedside

fading queen-of-the-night

Urszula Wielanowska - Poland

giving up, giving in

grass bends with the weight

of a sparrow

Susan Constable - Canada

new moon —

drunk, walking the lane's

other gravities

Kevin Gillam - Australia

From other angles

there are still peaches

in the tree

Bruce England - U.S.A.

after meditation...

my fingers trace healed scars

on the oak's trunk

Nathalie Buckland - Australia


end of the night...

the white under

the buzzard's wings

Helga Stania – Switzerland

Indian summer

I wander into

the wrong locker room

Melissa Spurr - U.S.A.

que sera a wind-blown seed

Christopher Patchel - U.S.A.

Hampton Court maze

so many familiar

dead-ends

Berenice Mortimer - Canada

I apologize first —

morning mist

burning off

Terri L. French - U.S.A.


the river

beneath the river

of fog


night fog

stillness

in the unseen

Frances Jones - U.S.A.

moonrise

the cat hides

in the usual place


this rock —

as close as i will get

to the moon

Alan S. Bridges - U.S.A.

Lipizzans...

once my hair

was brown



jar of skin cream —

the chuckle of dry leaves

on the patio

Ignatius Fay – Canada

autumn dusk

I see my childhood

in her eyes

Gautam Nadkarni - India

anniversary

of her diagnosis

she sends a card

Pat Prime - New Zealand

yellow moon

...knowing

it's the last time


toadstools

in the hollow woods

their secret names

Nick Sherwood - U.K.


earthquake

I apologise

to my mother

Quendryth Young - Australia

around the bedpost

the prayer beads

she never used

Robert Epstein - U.S.A.

shavings curl away

from a carpenter's plane —

billowing clouds

Jeffrey Woodward - U.S.A.

my childhood dreams...

steam from the wok

evaporating

Nu Quang - U.S.A.

leaning in

to tell my story

the old barn

John Hawk - U.S.A.


moonglow

with each telling

his tale grows taller

Melissa Spurr - U.S.A.

a maple leaf

slips slowly downstream...

'me' time


last log split...

I hear the reply

of the woodpecker

John Hawk - U.S.A.

up there a woodpecker

underneath

splinters rustle

Michael Lindenhofer - Austria

crooked path

an old man

bends against the wind

Myra King - Australia


autumn wind —

waiting in a patch of sun

for the next train


filling the oil lamps...

another ring

around the moon


tired of counting

death anniversaries —

descending moon

Seren Fargo - U.S.A.

flickering stars

my old bedroom

now a study

Cara Holman - U.S.A.

autumn stars

we discuss our anxieties

point after point

Mary Davila - U.S.A.


red dwarf star

the slow burn

of apple wood


crescent moon —

hanging in the room

her scent

Angelo B. Ancheta - The Philippines

frost on the window

the same words scratched out

more than once

Bob Lucky - Ethiopia

autumn rain

the moth-eaten pockets

of my cagoule

John McManus - U.K.

steady rain

the dog foregoes

his daily news



winter begins

harsh words with my son

sharpen the chill

T. D. Ingram - U.S.A.

cat's cradle

the conversations

we never have

Aubrie Cox - U.S.A.

cold weather

watching the small clouds

of her words

Ernest Wit - Poland

cold morning

the thermometer

says nothing

André Surridge - New Zealand

white hair on my chin

this grasping at something

I cannot see

Autumn N. Hall - U.S.A.


red light

life in other cars

a winter night apart

Michael Lindenhofer – Austria

year's end

the night wind finds

every crack

Ann K. Schwader - U.S.A.

the pull

of the turning tide

winter solstice

Dawn Bruce - Australia

the possibility

of being who I am

winter loneliness

Kala Ramesh - India

dried roses

tied to the easel

hunger moon



ice moon

the coyote's call

through the pines


snow-covered hills...

howling back

to the coyote

Seren Fargo - U.S.A.

this winter wind —

I step outside

my comfort zone


from trash can

to trash can

hobo and crow

Nika - Canada

nobody's

coming out tonight

tapping rain

Ernest Wit - Poland


mid-winter rain

in fits and starts he asks

about the prognosis

Beverly Acuff Momoi - U.S.A.

asking over

and over

what winter wants of me

Robert Epstein - U.S.A.

shadows the difference between winters

Greg Hopkins - U.S.A.

winter tree

the wind moving through

my bones

Bill Kenney - U.S.A.

snowy walk

following my tracks

from yesterday

Catherine McLaughlin - Canada


deep winter

the new neighbor

has cleared my path

Bill Kenney - U.S.A.

february flurries

the fear my body

won't last...

Aubrie Cox - U.S.A.

yoga show

the elephants bowing

into crow pose

Ramesh Anand - Malaysia

after the parade crickets

Alan S. Bridges - USA

gingko poets

some inside the fence

some not

David Ash - U.S.A.


paper weight

so many words

slip away



across the platform

a metro-clown juggles pears

but i can't see past

these bare tracks where

my train should be

Jade Zirino - USA

I sign it

the announcement of my

retirement —

the phone on my desk

rings and rings. . .

Dave Bacharach - USA

you call

from another time zone

and I smile

at the contours of your presence

still pressed into the couch

Shona Bridge - Australia

alone all night

in a king size bed

I leave at dawn

dropping candy kisses

on his pillow

Joyce S. Greene - USA


afterwards. . .

fields of prairie grass

bend in the wind

as we walk hand in hand

along an unmarked path


a hot wind

flips the olive's leaves

to silver

no way back to who I was

before this first arousal

Beverley George – Australia

from a dusty box

his journal describes a day

I'd forgotten —

in the deep Arctic night

icebergs calve and drift

Hannah Mahoney - USA

more accurate

than the mind can fathom

the atomic clock

tracking fractional seconds

of our floating lives

Ruth Holzer - USA


no one on the beach

but an old man and woman

arm in arm —

they gaze off at a boat

sailing towards the horizon

Dave Bacharach - USA

at life's shoreline

the sands of time escape

from many gaps. . .

I collect memories

embedded in sediment

P.K. Padhy - India

almost dark

the scent of wood smoke

drifting. . .

his last words whispered

in the language of his birth


a handful of petals

beneath the winding sheet. . .

mother's heart infused

with the lingering scent

of her favorite rose

Margaret Dornaus - USA


snowmelt

and the black earth beneath:

I abandon

the idea of dying

on purpose

Melissa Allen - USA

print hospital gown

and blue robe for all

white sheets on every bed —

how does death know

which of us to take?

Dorothy McLaughlin - USA

within a fortnight

both our mothers gone. . .

grimalkin

gives me a cuff without claws

our last feisty girl


her favorite

sleeping spot

among the gardenias —

now only a bed

of matted fur

Nancy Nitrio - USA


he purrs

and stares at nothing

for hours on end

the cat totally relaxed

at one with my ommm

Carol Raisfeld - USA

winter holidays

a spill of sun-warmed cat

on the rug

where you pick colours

for a crazy quilt

Maria Steyn - South Africa

dragons painted

on ceramic pots

six weeks in China

and I've only seen

a peaceful people

Angela Leuck - China

four months old

and he smiles at everyone

without guile

expecting only goodness

and a world of delights

Elaine Riddell - New Zealand


a canyon gouged

towards city and sea —

this stream

glinting through redwoods

dives beneath concrete


the rump

of a chestnut harrier

so white

this sweep of peaks

under snow all summer


odd places

we call home. . .

under the corbel

at the top of the facade

where a kestral slips in

Michele Harvey - USA

Claret Ash

I remember now

it's a name

to melt on the tongue

this lanquid summer's day

Patricia Prime - New Zealand


an unnamed rose

in an overlooked corner

brought across

by some uprooted wife

of a homesteading man

Michele L. Harvey - U.S.A.

on bare ground

I sprinkle small seeds

with abandon

as if growing wildflowers

requires a lack of care

Janet Lynn Davis - U.S.A.

seeing the whole

fruit contained

in a blossom

I look at the vast sea

and all that it holds

Kala Ramesh - India

I know it's people

more than places

that merit concern

but oh Matsushima

if you should perish too

Beverley George - Australia


great god

of mountains and mudslides

thank you

for blessing these hills

with your gift of soft rain


spring fever —

the sap in the maple

is ready to tap

and you, love

are looking younger

Carole MacRury - U.S.A.

this afternoon's movie

to which I went for popcorn

and escape —

a short one about networking

and the famine to come

Michael McClintock - U.S.A.

an Ozu movie

reminds me how short

a long life is. . .

bicycles rolling by

are suddenly metaphoric

Lucas Stensland - U.S.A.


wrinkled tattoos

across sun-tanned biceps

The Exterminator

printed on his motorcycle's

rattling carrier box

Maria Steyn - South Africa

I cobble together

just enough courage

to tell you —

the cable car sways

as it reaches the dock

Julie Thorndyke - Australia

Palm Sunday

Jesus' hands folded

in solemn communion

with the plastic flowers

on my dashboard

Al Fogel - U.S.A.

Sunday mass

for the hearing impaired

words dance

from the signers' hands

with our spoken prayers

Dorothy McLaughlin - U.S.A.


pointing his skis

straight down the icy slope

he races

past all caution and

his parents' fear

Amelia Fielden - Australia

summer afternoon

my children and I form

a three-headed shadow —

moving apart we carry

bits of each other with us

Craig Steele - U.S.A.

sharing a bed

this long summer night

like dolphins

swimming parallel

but never touching

Julie Thorndyke - Australia

the water

down to a trickle

my suggestion

to shower together

raises a smile



a splash of sherry

and a dash of danger

simmering on low

our first ragout

of wild mushrooms

Carole MacRury - U.S.A.

we celebrated

that night

by roasting chestnuts

yet I no longer recall

the taste or the reason

Cynthia Rowe – Australia


Haiku - Melissa Allen, USA

Photograph - Jay Otto, USA


Photograph - Bea Bareis, Germany

Haiku - Simone K. Busch, Germany


Image - Beate Conrad, USA

Haiku - Horst Ludwig, USA


Beate Conrad, USA


Susan Constable, Canada


Haiku - Susan Constable, Canada

Photograph - David Constable, Canada


Tanka - Melissa Allen, USA

Photograph - Aubrie Cox, USA


Tanka - Carmella Braniger, USA

Photograph - Aubrie Cox, USA


Mary Davila, USA


Cherie Hunter Day, USA


Haiku - Ônishi Yasuyo (Richard Gilbert and Itô Yûki,translation)

Photograph - Cherie Hunter Day, USA

Richard Gilbert, "Cross-cultural Studies in Gendai Haiku:

Ônishi Yasuyo" Gendai Haiku Online Archive (2008), Kumamoto University, Japan gendaihaiku.

Haiku - Mike Montreuil, Canada

mailto:gendaihaiku.com


Photograph - Carole Daoust, Canada


Haiku - Mike Montreuil, Canada

Photograph - Carole Daoust, Canada


Haiku - Ignatuis Fay, Canada

Photograph - Ray Belcourt, Canada


Ignatuis Fay, Canada


Haiku - Ramona Linke, Germany

Collage -Gerda Foerster, Germany


Haiku - Ramona Linke, Germany

Photograph -Gerda Foerster, Germany


Terri L. French, USA


Heike Gewi, Germany


Maya Lyubenova, Bulgaria


Haiku - Diane Mayr, USA

Image - Hokusai


Ron Moss, Australia


Adelaide B. Shaw, USA


Brendan Slater, The Netherlands


Barbara A Taylor, Australia


Urszula Wielanowska, Poland


Gerry Bravi, Canada

Beneath the Topsoil

We park the car on a gravel shoulder and walk down an old country lane. Leaning away from the wind an

old mailbox announces V. Klimchuk in fading black letters. Swallows now claim it as theirs. The

homestead, roof caved in, a weathered grey. Clumps of orange tiger lilies linger on. An outhouse tilts

east, inside a stack of Winnipeg Free Press turning yellow. The fields empty except for a rusting Ford.

reflections

on a cracked windshield

autumn sun


Owen Bullock, New Zealand

work

I take some time off from my job and we head for the bush.

almost at the lookout

a tui

opens a door

A truck with lawnmowers in the back moves through the grid-like suburbs below. Blue sky has settled into marshland.

my daughter

skips down the mountain... my work almost done

Note: The tui is a passerine bird unique to New Zealand. They belong to the honeyeater family, which means they feed mainly on nectar from flowers of native plants.



Metamorphosis

Our daughter's three years old when I discover the doll, its soft, pale legs disfigured by swirls and bold

slashes. "Did you do this?" I ask. She shakes her head, utters a defiant "No!"

Taking two felt pens from his desk, her father holds them up, one in each hand. "So which did you use,

honey? This one . . . or this one?"

a slight sag

to the pumpkin's grin autumn rain


Garry Eaton, Canada

It's 1954

And I am twelve. One day in early summer, a day I've spent loafing around, not doing much because I'm

out of school, my Dad comes home from work in an excited mood to tell me Little League Baseball is

being organized in our home town, and I'm still young enough to try out. Sandlot softball, the kind we

play at school, is one thing, but this is different, he tells me. Regulation ballparks, scaled down to kids'

size. Rulebooks and grown up umpires. Sponsors. Team names and uniforms that imitate the big

leagues. Wow! After a day of tryouts, I go home to await the bidding, and soon learn that my 'contract'

has been picked up by the Indians. hummmpph! While my lucky younger brother is going to play for the

Yankees!

By the end of the summer the Little League Indians, with me as a starting pitcher, prove their

dominance, taking home the pennant and the series, and for the first time, I go back to school feeling

like a winner. A year to remember, 1954.

and somehow Cleveland

also makes the series —

Indian summer


Seren Fargo, USA

Dust

I don't think the sting will ever go away. His daughter's words after he died. I imagine she was trying to

find justification for her horrific treatment of me: her deceptions, her verbal abuse, and her refusal to

allow me even the smallest amount of his ashes.

Instead, she spoke to his mother of distributing them somewhere from their life long before I met him,

not only as if the last year of his life and my life with him were irrelevant, but as if I wasn't sitting right

there.

I desperately tried to reach some part of her that I hoped had a sense of compassion, but all I was met

with were her words, "You weren't married. You weren't even with him a year!"

ask me what he was like

not how long I was with him

one year, one lifetime

his death

is an eternity


Gary Ford, Canada

Just Grazing

Late at night, few on the road, I work to keep from nodding off. An empty tank and a full bladder drive

me into a gas station. I fill up, rush inside for relief. On the way out, I grab a giant chocolate bar to spike

my energy for the long drive.

"That'll be $3.35" she says. I hand her a five. "$1.65" as she places the change in my palm and our

hands lightly touch. Eye contact ... a nod ... and ...... I head for the truck.

high beams

two deer nuzzle on the edge of the road


Autumn N. Hall, USA

Taps

Etched steel in brass scabbard bearing your name, this sword knows its Captain. It hung at your hip

when you pinned on pilots' wings, cut the first piece from your white wedding cake. Ivory hilt, black

leather braid, it graced every place that you lived. Now, in your will, you leave it to me, your oldest, your

daughter, because we both served.

testing my metal

I fasten the collar brass I bit as a babe

Collected bits of your life on display: a shadow box with your Distinguished Flying Cross, a fly fishing rod

and creel, your touring bike and jersey, a six string Goya guitar. Four photo boards filled to their borders:

Your wife's holds morels, merlot, gourmet makings of domestic tranquility. Your son's sports your

sporting side. Your youngest daughter has staged all your plays. Mine finds you, naturally, with your

granddaughters, in nature.

I feel the pricking

of blackberry brambles

your hand holds back

A clear tenor, second only to yours, rises. A tune from your roots, to be sung by a father for his son-

gone-off-to-war. Now sung by the son-who-never-went-to-war for the father who returned. One day, we

"might return...to bend and tell you that we love you." Today, we stand silent beside the few, the proud,

the detachment dispatched in white caps and navy wool to stand at attention on this 6th day of June for

you, their fallen brother.

cloud garments rent

morning sky rains tears for Danny Boy

Nineteen years since I last stood Color Guard. For lack of push-ups, my arms have gone slack. Now

witness, I wish: to honor you one last time — officer, patriot, pilot, combat vet, hero, man, father. But

caught up in the flipping folds of the flag, the slow ceremonious salutes, I forget to await the command,

"Order Arms," and drop my offered salute too soon.

baa baa black sheep

neglects to answer

"Yes, Sir—yes, Sir"

A bugle bawls, "Day is done, gone the sun, from the lakes, from the hills, from the skies...." Water beads

on polished mahogany. Your second wife, blue eyes red-rimmed, remains while you are lowered to rest

beside your first. Grasping the flag that one might have held, the other weeps beneath her black

umbrella.

Semper Fi

the sodden blanket of greening grass


Jeffrey Harpeng, Australia

Between the Pages

The words of Moses Mendelssohn

concealed between the Talmud's pages

travelled by coach the rutted roads

past whispering rye, and raven woods.

My eye said that was one song. The road said there are many more. The house said everything can be

seen from my windows. My answer, I climbed a ladder to the roof. The chimney declared the house a

train. There were no timetables, with their tiny articles of faith. "All aboard!" a porter cried. From the

rooftop the landscape was more rooftops. An earthbound angel might drown in that sea. Mountains

crumbled as they rose, whole ranges! Two falcons swept across the lawn, climbed thermals, banked and

soared. My children travelled the eddies of the spring air. My heart is a constant prayer.

twilight among pines

dust motes and a wish upon the first star

The sun had sunk below the roofline. Honeycomb light haunted the house. She leant against the

doorframe, as bees were a humming cloud in the blossoming sycamore. The heady scent was another

swarm. Winter is past and yet to come. Footprints from the house and the snow are gone. A swallow

arced across the new-mown lawn. Her clothes had their own yarns to tell. They whispered changing

intimacies, dizzy translations of her fluid geometry. I unbuttoned her dress, drew it over her shoulders.

Hear how much of what spring says is a prayer in avian languages.

looking up

to a spider web I walk

into another

And here is an old woman. She draws a crocheted shawl around her shoulders. She knits by a window

crowded round with ivy. Sunlight thaws the smaller aches in her bones. She learnt to knit with two nails

and a length of string, educated herself in patterns. The shawl tells her it is woven from angel-down. But

the only angels are her own. They are grown and live in little stories of their own. In a reverie, she is

daydreaming under the kitchen table. Her mother moves round, places a cold iron on the coal range,

swaps it for a heated one. Ah, the scent of steam and starch.

The words of Moses Mendelssohn

concealed between the Talmud's pages

travelled by coach the rutted roads

past whispering rye, and raven woods.

No talk of salvation. God is constant. Let us begin the lesson with a prayer.


Michele L. Harvey, USA

The Birdwatcher

He had moved from a quaint run down apartment in Barcelona to an immense loft in the busy midtown

garment district of New York. The front windows looked across to other windows and other lives. It was

just what he liked, to be anonymous in a crowd that flowed and pushed around him. But it was changing,

with many young, hip artists flocking to the district, lured by lots of space and little rent. His loft was

empty except for a huge bed and big easel, and oh yes, there was something else?

signs of spring

binoculars focused on a new bird


Helen E. Herr, Canada

On the Rails

Riding a passenger night train is a raucous event. From our reclining position, bodies corkscrew into

pretzels, heads bob and joints complain. Once the engineer surmises everyone is asleep, he begins his

plan to capture lost time. The train rattles as rails quake. Hyena screeches on every curve. In all this, we

sleep. That is until the train stops and quiet prevails.

voices gossip

until you walk

in the door


Ruth Holzer, USA

Meservy Street, Salem

My grandmother's house was the last one on the street, standing in peeling wooden grayness at the edge

of the Atlantic. Every summer, my parents would drive us up four hundred miles to spend our vacation

with her.

high tide —

at the kitchen window

seasick

With neighborhood friends, I'd climb down to the beach, picking my way barefoot over broken glass and

globs of tar. I'd swim among poisonous violet jellyfish and climb jagged granite rocks encrusted with

barnacles. On the beach were spread pearly mussel shells, periwinkles, tangled lengths of seaweed, pale

crab claws and silvery fish speckled with flies.

endless summer —

outliving all my family


Chen-ou Liu, Canada

Meeting Place

For Mary Macdonell

who encourages me to write in English

I wander the streets of Toronto all morning, thinking of moving yet again. I lean against a wall, weary,

and feel the urge to cry out: "I'm tired of starting over!"

snow-covered street

looking back which footprints are mine?


Bob Lucky, Ethiopia

Some Nights

Sometimes I sit in the dark for the simple reason there is no electricity and I'm too lazy to light candles

or haul out the portable generator and crank it up. I go into the garden and look at the stars. I know so

little about them. Some nights they seem closer than others.

canis minor

the puppy's cold nose

in my hand

Sometimes the electricity comes back on and I don't know it because there were no lights on when it

went out. I'll get up and go into the bathroom or the kitchen and reflexively switch on the light, discovering I've been sitting in the dark needlessly. I quickly turn it off.

crescent moon

an alley cat tightropes the garden wall


Ed Markowski, USA

The Morning After a One-Night Stand

Jan? Jane? Jean? Joan? Jenny? Gina? scribbled my alias & phone(y) number on a sweet & sour sauce

stained carry out menu from Wang Ho's Hong Kong grease garden sporting an Authentic Schezwan

Cuisine Hot & Spicy sign on Cadillac Avenue.

clear night

my moon shadow settles

on a white tombstone


Berenice Mortimer, Canada

A Far, Far Different Life

Julian Fellowes's films "Gosford Park" and "Downtown Abbey" bear a small resemblance to what one

would now call my privileged childhood.

There, too, it was commonplace for the butler to iron "The Times," then a broadsheet, behind the green

baize door.

The 'tweenie' peeled the vegetables. No cook, worth her salt, would dream of sullying her hands.

A parlour maid in maroon and cream uniform, with matching cap, served tea in the double drawing room.

One was sometimes invited to tea, but we children had to sit with crossed ankles and only speak when

addressed.

The lady's maid attended to my mother's toilette, also even becoming an accomplice to stealing her

jewels.

A chauffeur ferried me to school, once forgetting to fetch me.

Helping further our education, before and often after boarding school, a governess gave us after-school

and holiday tasks. A hard taskmistress, she often made me write lines: "I must be obedient," "I must not

answer back" and "I must not scratch my wounds" being among the most frequent that I remember.

It certainly did not help: I still question authority, often contradict and my fingers scratch each and every

itch. No wonder writing thank you letters often became a tiresome task and my handwriting is what a

kind friend calls "unformed."

garden swing

the cat watches

I don't fall

red currants

prising them from frail stalks with baby teeth


Carol Pearce-Worthington, USA

Next of Kin

The small museum park provides a gently curving path. Rose bushes grow behind a fence that protects

them from tourists and baby strollers. They would like it here — my grandmother, mother, and great-

aunt. So I gather them on a bench, put my grocery bag to one side, and we sit for a while without

speaking. Getting dark early, summer's ending, my mother observes. A breeze finds us, licks the sweat

from my forehead along with the wear of memories, flickers my hair and absorbing the blessing of a

warm breeze, the four of us watch the roses waver. They send out no perfume, but so many things are

missing now that we don't comment, and the unscented dusk settles over our laps, around our knees and

shoulders. Darkness seems to pause when for some reason I tell them that a woman drowned her two

children yesterday, and in the ensuing silence I study my toes and wonder at the mystery of mothers and

flowers and summer evenings that seem to move so slowly yet go by like lightning flashes. Oh my, oh

my, my great-aunt says. Well they're gone now — out of pain — and the mother here? she asks. Yes, I

say. Alive. In prison. Well, not so alive, my grandmother points out in her practical voice; but we all know

that kids can drive you crazy. Oh no, no, my mother says. You are the light of my life. She turns to me

for no good reason. What light can I be, I wonder, this soot-worn lamp of me? What light? Yet I allow her

thought to pass through me with the evening breeze as from an empty bench I watch the roses move.

faded instructions —

how to grow

the tomato plant


Miriam Sagan, USA

La Jolla

Memorials seem to be everywhere, even on this sunny southern California day. There is an informal

shrine carved in a grotto of sand to a surfer who died in an "alcohol related accident" after he found

Jesus. And a lifeguard box, one of those old-fashioned metal ones on poles that houses an emergency

phone. This one covered in metal words, a memorial to someone drowned.

over the cove

a wishbone of pelicans

daytime moon

A girl with reindeer horns runs into the Pacific — it is Christmas Day. Strolling the beach, the whole world

seems to be here, including women in saris, women in veils, and their children, running.

America —

graveyard of mother tongues

We go out for Moroccan food, eat with our fingers. At the next table, there is a gentleman with a pair of

identical twins dressed provocatively. They are dark haired, of no identifiable nationality. We can only

conclude that they are professionals. It's not just the scanty outfits but the fact that they stare in rapt

attention at him as he monologues on...agriculture.

The mint tea is sweet. The music changes, and belly dancers appear. You switch seats and sit next to

me, presumably to see better but also I think so that you can shelter in the notion of wife. You aren't on the loose, about to stuff a dollar in a jingling belt.

can she feel our eyes

on her — belly dancer in red


Adelaide B. Shaw, USA

The Long Night

A walk through the rooms. Hot milk. A game of solitaire. Reading. Watching television. One or the other of these. Sometimes all of them in the hope of finding a remedy for insomnia.

naptime

rocked to sleep

on grandma's lap


Lucas Stensland, USA

8:35 a.m.

"Pinot Noir"

the detective book

we never wrote

I was still a little drunk when I got the bleeps of three incoming text messages. Grabbing for my phone

on the nightstand, I accidentally knocked it to the ground. I wasn't surprised to learn it wasn't three

messages but one very long one from Mae.

We had been out drinking and dancing the previous night, something that was becoming our Saturday

night ritual, and she had drunk-called me when she got home, a little after three a.m. Apparently, Doug

— her best friend and ride home — had said something derogatory about our pantomime, although the

specifics were a little cloudy. Our relationship was on the down-low, and gossip and flies were

surrounding us. She had burst into tears, told Doug to go to hell and ran into her house, feeling "lost,

and, and, just so sickened by viciousness, you know? Why can't two people just like each other and let

the rest fall away?"

no matter

the position

summer ends

"Wait, what do you mean by let the rest fall away?" I had asked.

"God, I just said it!" she replied. "I'm not getting angry! I'm not. It's just that you want something from

me right now that I don't know if I could even give you in the future. This is complicated stuff. We're not

playing old-man checkers here. I'm still married. I have a kid. You were engaged twice in the past year

and a half." At times the truth could feel unreal.

We had only talked a bit longer since I had Mick and Sara over at my apartment for whiskey and drunken

YouTubing. I had once again talked Mae into not ending it. Even though we had only been seeing each

other for three weeks, it was starting to seem like every other day one of us was falling more in love or

falling all over the place. I was hoping this was only natural. So there I was, living one morning-after to

the next. Awakened by Mae's texts regarding a relationship that was dead on arrival, I clicked to read the

first and flinched at seeing "bastard" and "moron" in the same sentence. Suddenly I remembered sending

her an I-give-up text before passing out. She deserved better. In a way, I did love her. Somehow she

managed to make everything a little funnier, even tragedy and burned potpies.

Wishing I had a smoke, I surmised the situation: I keep staggering down the same dark corridor toward

a door that will never open. My hangover and the thought of trying to solve this case made me weak. I

needed bacon, black coffee and some goddamn Willie Nelson.

Somehow lately I've been consistently waking in rough patches. It hadn't always been like this. I figured

I was ready for another change.

too weary

for words... morning shadows


Barbara A. Taylor, Australia

Free Again

Gerry and Jenny, it rolls off one's tongue, smoothly, like their balanced coterie, back then when plans to

bloom together into permanency were the only reasons to exist. The calm before the storm. I should

have known, he sighs, knows he must move on, transcend, find solace in these tranquil scenes. Arms

outstretched, he beams, breathes in the beauty of the distant rocks: in this magical light, a crusader

castle, solid, golden, that penetrates a cobalt sky. Hallelujah! Spring is in the air! Irresistible blossom

time. Dappled landscapes: a breathing, rippling Pissarro through his window. Rainbows in sprays of water

sprinklers dance. Bees buzz let's do it. An energetic sense of fertility exudes. Vibrancy abounds in scents

of sun-warmed jasmine, cool frangipani nights of swaying palms and gentle breezes. A season this of

new beginnings. Deep breaths. In. Out. He smiles, finds heaven again — heaven he'd wanted to share

with her, to build, to nest, to nurture romance. Madness. Jenny left him. Now to Gerry she's naught but a

dream or a ghost. Agh, Pisceans, never constant. Here today, gone tomorrow. Pragmatic drifters in the

wind.

a single swallow

nine frenzied circles

around the ceiling...

Go with the flow and go she did


Neal Whitman, USA

Endless Summer

June 30, 1958. Saxonville Elementary School. "The last day of school." Not really. The end of summer

proves it so. But, this really is my last day of school. June 18, 2008. University of Utah. In a farewell

address at the Academic Senate, I tell the story of Jeremy Bentham who had taught at London's

University College. When he died in 1832, he willed that his body be preserved and displayed in a glass

case at the College. He stipulated that he be trundled into the annual Faculty Convocation and listed as

"Present, but not voting." This was my final motion. Seconded. Call the Question. The vote: Unanimous.

The "ayes" have it.

summer doldrums

rubber trees need little care the florist tells me


SNOW GOOSE Special Feature


Tomegaki and Kanso

After Thoughts

Tomegaki - Linda Papanicolaou

The basis of this shisan with images is graphic renga, an art form of linked images that was invented in 1992 by

Nakamura Rieko and Anzai Toshihiro (www.renga.com). In this kind of renga, images are passed between participants,

who alter the image and pass it on to the next participant. The received image may be altered by adding something to it,

cutting something out of it and pasting it into a new image, or manipulating it until it becomes substantively new in its own

right. Nakamura and Anzai's concept was the exchange of images. A few years ago, under the leadership of Carol

Raisfeld, we, the members of WHChaikumultimedia, developed our own variant by including haiku for a series of linked

haiga. The results of these exercises have been published in Simply Haiku, Sketchbook, and Haigaonline.

The graphic renga at WHChmm employed various ways of linking verses as well as images, including simple six-image

rengays and word linking. Soon, some of us became interested in testing the viability of building linked images into renku

and have adapted graphic renga to the text forms of shisan and junicho. "Snow Goose", a graphic shisan, is the latest in

this series as we explore the possibilities of linking images with texts.

Kanso - Jim Swift

These are not the thoughts of an experienced renkujin, but of someone who has just caught a glimpse of the artistic

realms whithin renku.

There could be so much to cover here, but I will restrict this to just two topics, links and dynamics.

1. Links

When we first started adding verse to graphic renga, it seemed relatively straightforward. The image to image link was a

cut/paste/alter technique, so we just wrote a current verse (tsukeku) that linked to the previous verse (maeku) and the

new image.

But here in the shisan I realized, for the first time, that in adding a new haiga to the renku, we are adding 5 new links

(think of drawing a square with diagonals below an existing horizontal line).

Only the mind of a J. S. Bach can juggle such complexities into harmony. But it was quite wonderful to see how, more

often than not, harmony did come from the simple procedure of linking the tsukeku to the maeku, and the tsukeku to its

image.

Sometimes, as with 9 to 10, it was more natural to generate the image first and then write a tsukeku with the needed 2

links.

Fortunately for the two of us, there were no renku police around, for with 5 new links to check at each addition, they

would surely have found something!!

One other new aspect of linking concerns image linking. While we often used the Anzai/Nakamura technique, we did

also explore other kinds of image linkings that are, perhaps, analogous to the nioi kinds of links. This could become a

most interesting topic to explore in future graphic renku.

2. Dynamics

It was instructive, in trying to write the ageku, to print out just the text part of the shisan. There was a recognisable

dynamic in the text that helped to determine the mood for the ageku.

But when it was all finished, I printed all 12 haiga on 11x17 paper in 4 columns, one for each side. At that scale, the

dynamic is all visual, and with subtle differences from the dynamic of the text.


Adding graphics to a renku produces an entirely different art form, but it's one that does resonate with text renku for me.

But at the same time, there's a new language to explore here and I expect that it will take some time to do more than

scratch the surface of the possibilities as we have done here.


Imprinted A Rengay

wd:

rm: fg:

Wende DuFlon, Guatemala

Ron Moss, Australia Ferris Gilli, USA

night feeding

my chin cupped

in his palm /wd

a wallaby shakes off dew

as a joey wriggles in the pouch /rm

from porch to kitchen

an imprinted gosling follows

the farmer's wife /fg

a bobcat kitten peeks

from the backpack /wd

Snowy Mountains

a brumby and its foal

lean into the moon /rm

snuggled with tissue nearby

mother and son watching Bambi /fg


Three Rengay

rm:

kc: fg:

Ron Moss, Australia

Katherine Cudney, USA Ferris Gilli, USA

Vespers

outback flame tree

the southern cross

through its branches /rm

a kangaroo rat ventures

in search of favorite seeds /fg

indigo stains

on the pottery shard

hallowed ground /kc

lucerne flowers tremble

over a sand dune /rm

vespers

a crumb disappears

down the ant lion's pit /fg

the storyteller's voice

carried by the wind /kc

Last-Stop Motel

October, 2010

border crossing

a raven's caw

skims the arroyo /kc

strewn wombat bones

in the poppy field /rm

full sails

a blue tarantula hidden

among the bananas /fg

losing my religion

to the mezcal worm /kc

a neon halo sparks

from a cockroach

at the last-stop motel /rm

from their bridge roost

a million bats take the sky /fg


Angel Hair

11/01/ 2010 - 11/8/2010

bright sky

released butterflies drift

toward the bride /fg

twin shafts of light

where the towers once stood /kc

tiny fingers

making angel hair

birthday smiles /rm

Māori boys get down

with a breakdance show /fg

solstice moon

a primal pilgrimage

to Stonehenge /kc

late sunrise

spectrums of colour

on the christening gown /rm


Two Renhai

hs: rl:

Helga Stania, Germany Ramona Linke, Germany

a bleak wind

unemployed

father remains

in silence /hs

perusing the housekeeping book /rl

the windows clatter in the storm /hs

where Luther felt cold

on his last journey

a temporary traffic light /rl

translation – the authors

the color red

potter's clay

she molds

a chawan /rl

the lake already turns red... /hs

our wishes, with the wind /rl

skirts flutter

whilst the waltz

from the Rosenkavalier /hs

translation – the authors


Tao

A kasen renku

ac: wc:

Aubrie Cox, USA Wayne Chou, Canada

spring breeze

tea stains

on the atlas /ac

first daffodil blooms

by the crossroad /wc

crow on the

rusty barbwire fence

gazing forward /ac

new stars

in the sextant lens /wc

hunter's moon

streams through

the keyhole /ac

a hidden oasis

in each floating seed /wc

•

mossy stones

sacred temples

of my childhood /wc

she ties a pink charm

on his keychain /ac

we watch the sunrise

atop a broken

ferris wheel /wc

cinnamon rolls

fresh from the oven /ac

summer heat

the bowerbird picks

thicker reeds /wc

minnow breaks

the water's surface /ac

•

kamuro fireworks

leave a trail

of moondust /ac


her kimono's sheen

tanabata night /wc

wishes tremble

on bamboo

in the aftershock /ac

paper cranes

in the donation box /wc

beggar bowl

overflows with

plum blossoms /ac

he burns sweet grass

singing for spring rain /wc

•

oak tree's shadow

grows longer

with the days /wc

girl swings higher

not ready to let go /ac

holding my breath

as they dot

the Dragon's eyes /wc

blank face

at the window /ac

lone wolf

trails its pack

beyond the frost line /wc

howling wind

across snow country /ac

•

ink bleeds

into the crisp

white page /ac

evening before battle

I open her letters /wc

after the call

wedding invites

packed away /ac

kitsune mourns

for her fallen mate /wc

sliver of the

autumn moon

cradles a star /ac


crowded platform

for the way home /wc

•

each stalk

plowed under

is a promise /wc

dinner table

set with hope /ac

the vagabond

rests at last

by the old lighthouse /wc

spring sea laps

against my feet /ac

pink clouds of hanami

will never be

the same again /wc

the butterfly

awakens /ac


Flight

A solo kasen

Aubrie Cox, USA

heat hangs

in the temple halls —

sweating buddha

a dull splash

in the shallow wishing well

lazy circles

ending

at the beginning

luna moth lands

on the windowsill

lightning moon

pierces the hazy clouds

of my thoughts

writing a novel

at the stroke of midnight

•

texts bounce

off satellites

between us

jet streams streak

the morning sky

speckled eggs

in the folds

of the farm girl's apron

bird's nest woven

with Easter grass

the key

to their first home

on a string

construction crew

packs up for the day

•

all night long

the rabbit pounds away

on the moon

enough mochi

for the whole world


a small fox

out of and into

the darkness

rainy streets glisten

with broken glass

foundation

slips through a hole

in the makeup bag

when you're not looking

I paint over my lies

•

tea left to cool

after the fight

now too cold

even the paper cranes

are unflappable

two days

after she left

the frog is back

wind in the willows

gently stirs pond scum

toy boat

run aground

in the sandbox

pillowcase parachutes

off the garage roof

•

dandelion seeds

carry a little piece

of me away

barbeque pit filled

with ashes of your diary

dust gathers

on the new

gravestone

Mother's Day telegram

still unopened

Major Tom

phones home

1-800-MOON

distant galaxies

in the kaleidoscope


•

stained light

washes over

empty pews

holy books stacked

on top one another

school bell

cuts through

the pouring rain

gum under the desk

from her braces days

notebooks covered

in cherry blossom

stickers

suitcase sitting

empty on the bed


Dear Readers,

While we may never be able to adequately express our sympathy for the people of Japan following the

triple disasters of the earthquake, tsunami and subsequent nuclear radiation, poetry can still give

expression to our thoughts and feelings. As Notes from the Gean is a journal of Japanese form poetry, we

felt that it was fitting and right that we show our support for Japan with this tribute.

Though we do not intend to mark every disaster that occurs in our world with special features, our

thoughts and prayers are also with those who have suffered following the earthquakes in New Zealand

and Spain.

Colin Stewart Jones, managing editor.

Melinda Hipple

our axis shifts —

Fukushima Daiichi

through flurries of snow

spring tide

the daikaiju hidden

in every wave

new daffodils

bloom among the rubble... lanterns floating by

Lorin Ford


A New Raw Season

Early spring in Utah's canyon country, red and mauve sandstone pillars, wind carved canyons, the land

still denuded by winter's fury. In the dry, sandy washes, bits of green here and there, a few wildflowers

starting, a purple locoweed that grows only in disturbed areas.

A static-riddled radio, my only connection to the world, brings the news, each day's worse than the

previous day's, a land devastated by an artificial sun's fury, a village washed away by a tsunami, a

people, stunned, in tears. Japan, it seems so far, yet so near, that small island of a people who love cherry blossoms, who gave haiku to the world.

bent low

from a flash flood — ancient cottonwood

Ray Rasmussen

haiku: Lorin Ford

haiga and image: Colin Stewart Jones


Shichi Fukujin

on the makeshift map

we kiss

the lost cities

starlight cold

my finger traces the north star

petal-like moon

over Fukushima

consoling people

dealing with loss

my childhood in bookcovers

baby giggle

the man resurfaces

with sea-green eyes

Myoken Bosatsu

your compass for safe voyage

Alan Summers

Japanese translation: Hidenori Hiruta


Colin Stewart Jones

tanka: Kirsty Karkow haiga and image: Melinda Hipple


An Interview with Jane Reichhold

by Colin Stewart Jones

Colin: Jane, most interviews with haiku luminaries usually start with a variation on the same question

which is "what first sparked your interest in haiku?" I am not going to ask you that. Over your illustrious

career writing within the haikai genres you have accomplished all there is to accomplish; and if parts of

haiku theory, practice and knowledge was not already in place then you ably wrote the book on it. Having

been there, done that and got the T-shirt, so to speak, what is it that still keeps you motivated?

Jane: When I get into new situations or am visiting different places, I become aware of special images

or incidents that form fresh connections or associations and something in me becomes alert and searches

for words for what I am feeling or observing. The ten day trip to Japan last September, naturally

unleashed a flood of tanka and haiku daily. When I am rested, or at the beginning of an adventure, I will

write tanka; as the images pile up I will often drop back to haiku. Later when I rework the poems (I

revise and rewrite a lot) I will sometimes expand some of the haiku into tanka when what I was feeling

at the time clings to the words. I never get just one haiku or tanka from an experience. They come in

bunches and I feel they carry their original emotional connections. That is why it is very hard for me to

show or submit just one poem. It is like plucking one sparkly bead off of a shimmering evening gown.

I can also get into new areas of experience through reading. Rilke, Dickinson, Woolf, the Japanese and

Chinese Master Poets and even the works of so-called unknowns can put me into emotional states where

I can see my familiar environment in previously unrecognized ways.

That is the motivation for writing my own poems. Still, there is a lot of days filled with time that I am not

or can not be in these 'states of grace' where the poems come to me. So I do whatever needs to be

done: write an article someone wants, publish a book, start a project to further poetry, fill a gap in the

current understanding of something, thank someone for their work which has impressed me, wash the

dishes, feed the cat.

Colin: Your literary interests and sources for inspiration are wide and varied. It would also be fair to say

that sloth is not a sin you suffer from. I see from your website you have recently completed a book on

the Psalms: Psalms as New Testament, because as you state you wished to return God to "the New

Testament idea of being a loving and compassionate part of our lives." Do you mind discussing faith and


theology. Surely, it was Christ who first put forward the idea of God as a loving Father, which was

considered blasphemy by the Pharisees, and seeing as the New Testament comes later in the chronology

would it not be an impossibility to "return" The New Testament idea of God to a point before this idea

was known?

Jane: The Biblical Psalms are in the Old Testament, where they reflect the ideas of a god at that time —

a being of wrath, anger, and punishment. However, now we have other images of God, especially since

the teachings of Christ as you say, so many of us are uncomfortable using prayers and other devotional

materials that reinforce the idea of a god that is still portrayed in such negative terms. The Old

Testament Psalms are beautiful poetry and too magnificent to discard along with these outmoded ideas of

a god. Also the way they are written in the OT, the couplets of parallel poetry have been destroyed. So I

tried to bring back the poetry of the Psalms, along with our current ideas of a loving god. I did this by

resetting the Psalms into couplets and substituting more modern ideas of God which equals the Psalms of

the New Testament.

Originally I did the work for myself. I was keeping the Divine Office — prayers and readings 8 times a

day in the Catholic tradition of Saint Benedict and I simply could not say or pray such vengeful ideas

about God as was in the Psalms. Then I found out there were others who agreed we needed to up-date

God's image and rebalance the strongly patriarchal slant of the OT version of the Psalms. The use of

"Lord" implied a male ruler. To use "Beloved," as a term of address, brings the relationship into a warmer

more personable marriage of souls. Such seemingly small things become very important when praying or

meditating as the soul and mind merge to enlarge them into beliefs.

By the way, I worked on the Psalms in 2000 - 2001, and carried it on my website. Last summer, I greatly

feared that the trip to Japan would be "too much for me" and that I would die. I felt I had to get the

Psalms into a real book before that happened.

Colin: I am pleased to see that your fears were not realized on your Japan trip. Yes, much of the poetry

and devices such as acrostics are lost when translating from the original Hebrew. This is true for most

translations of poetry into different languages. Translations often seem to concentrate on the meaning of

the words but sometimes the musical qualities of the lyrics are lost. I encountered much of same

problems when I studied Gaelic language and literature. As we know Japanese is a non-syllabic language

and there has been much discussion and debate surrounding the translation of the haiku of the master

haijin into English. What are your views about R.H. Blyth, and his adherence to a 575 metre, and those

who have followed him who advocate a less strict metre. Should we, at least, keep to the s/l/s format;

and what are your own ideas about current English Language Haiku (ELH) insofar as following the


Japanese model; and should we be following set patterns or aiming to capture the spirit of the form,

above all else?

Jane: R.H. Blyth, though I have all his books and have read them each several times, lost his credibility

with me when he stated that women could not write haiku. Beyond that is the problem of trying to use

one method of structuring a poem form in languages as different as Japanese and English. The Japanese

kana or sound unit is so much shorter than our syllables that one cannot interchange one for the other.

Seventeen English syllables will contain about 1/3 more information than 17 sound units in Japanese. For

a poem form built on brevity it seems self-defeating to use a rule that binds us to repeating the problem.

I am very much for the guideline of using short, long, short lines as I think this is easier for non-poets to

follow than one based meter. In fact, in the past couple of years I have embarked on a crusade to get

haiku to return to this s,l,s form. Too often I am finding haiku written with the longest line at the end

when following the rule would actually make a better haiku. An example would be:

evening dark

shore rocks

washed by the sea

I feel the poem is stronger if it is written as:

shore rocks

washed by the sea

evening dark

Do you see the vast difference in what this haiku is saying?

Colin: Yes I do. Do you, then, regard ELH as a completely separate entity?

Jane: In many ways it would be easier to view what we write as haiku completely separated from

Japanese haiku because there are so many differences. The list would include:

1. We are mostly basing the form on line lengths instead of the count of sound units.

2. The season word which is dropped from so many of our haiku.

3. The fact that we cannot use kireji or cutting words because we don't have any. We do have

punctuation but since that does not influence the length of the haiku (as it does in Japanese when the

sound units in the punctuation add to the count) I feel we only need punctuation in haiku when we have

failed to use the grammar to make clear the breaks between the fragment and the phrase.

4. The fact that we do not differentiate between haiku and senryu and many of our 'haiku' would be

judged as senryu if written in Japanese.

5. Japanese haiku are often written in one line while we have the convention of placing each poem part

on a separate line. I do think this is an improvement for several reasons. We do not have the history and

habit of hearing these separate poem parts and it is too easy for the haiku to become a run-on sentence.

Also, more and more people are seeing the advantage of having a space at the end of the poem part in

order for the reader, or listener, to have time to form an image based on the information given in the

line. In the nanosecond it takes for one's eyes to shift from the right- to the left-side of the page, there is

time for the creation of the personal image. I feel this is where the actual poetry begins. When the

reader/listener allows the words of the poem to create a personal and individual image, then adds

another and "sees" (!) the connection to the two parts, then that person, and not the author, is creating

poetry.


However, I feel it is too late in the game, now after 100 years and the countless efforts of the Japanese

to bring their haiku to us, to make the change in our naming the form haiku. However, we should note,

and keep in mind, that when the Japanese create contests they usually keep our work separate from

theirs and use the English-Language or Non-Japanese haiku category.

Colin: Indeed, the cat is out of the bag! Jane, you list the differences between ELH and Japanese haiku

and also note at the end of your last response that:"...when the Japanese create contests they usually

keep our work separate from theirs and use the English-Language or Non-Japanese haiku category."

given this, I am prompted to ask:

Do you think the Japanese will, or must, always have authority over the rest of the world in haiku

matters?

Jane: Lacking a working crystal ball, I cannot answer the "will" part of your question. As to the "must

the Japanese have authority over the rest of the world in haiku matters" part of the question I can only

say that when the poets of any other language take up haiku to make it their poetry form, changes will

occur. These have happened already and with the increased exposure haiku has due to the Internet,

these changes will manifest faster and be reflected in more poets' works. I believe the future of any

poetry form is completely in the hands of the poets. Teachers and authorities may exist but the future of

poetry is within the poets — who they believe in, who they follow, who inspires them to their best work

and who keeps the form alive for them will all be forgotten as it is the poem alone that lives.

Colin: I agree, it must be the writers and not the theorists or academics that should shape the future of

any form. Do you think, ELH and Non-Japanese haiku has grown sufficiently, in the past hundred years,

to now start influencing Japanese thinking then?

Jane: Now this is a novel idea. I find it very hard to judge this. First of all, there are so many haiku

writers in Japan and so many organizations, (Gabi Greve answered when I asked her for a number, "add

up the number of towns and villages and multiply it by ten.") Out of that number how many person read

ELH? And out of that small number, who would admire anything we wrote or did enough to emulate it?

However there are some bright spots in the night sky. The magazine HI of the Haiku International has for

over 25 years printed a bi-annual journal of English and Japanese haiku and The Mainichi Daily

Newspaper regularly prints a column of haiku in English and even runs a yearly contest. The Tanka

Journal for the Nihon Kajin Club also comes out twice a year with an English version and Aya Yukhi, the

editor has also translated the tanka of Anna Holley into Japanese and is currently working on a book of

my tanka.

Colin: Publishing Non Japanese work is not the same as being influenced by it though, is it? Hmmn...

"who would admire anything we wrote or did enough to emulate it?" I do find that response to be rather

limiting, on two fronts: it is very dismissive of ELH as poetry of any worth whatsoever and rather paints

the Japanese as insular and isolationist when it comes to art. Yet there are some Japanese artists from

other genres who have been open to occidental aesthetics, I am thinking of the filmmaker Kurosawa, in

particular, who was heavily influenced by the American Western film genre when he made his classic

Seven Samurai and Yojimbo films which were in turn made into "Spaghetti Westerns" (Italy/Spain) which

then influenced the stylistically violent Peckinpah and Tarantino (USA) who brought all these ideas back

to the American Western. So if there can be cross-fertilisation in film then why not in poetry. Even

though ELH is one hundred years on do you think some people are still actively trying to bolt the stable

door?


Jane: Well, since poetry is a written art, publishing is the main way of sharing it. I feel that if someone

cannot read our work he or she will never find out its possible admirable qualities. It is a well-known fact,

that in the past, the Japanese were seen as insular and isolationists, but this is changing, in more than

just the cases above which I listed. Still it has been my observation that the Japanese persons seemed to

be of two kinds (forgive the generalization). Those who felt, and may still feel, that we non-Japanese

cannot begin to write in their poetry forms because we lack the literary history, the cultural sensibilities,

the amount of understanding of references which enriches the ambiguity of their slender forms. They

think, not without grounds, that we as a people and as writers are not able to admire their work to the

level which they can and do. The very small number of Japanese who did not feel like this, instead felt a

missionary-like zeal to teach us their ways, culture and literature. Here comes the rub! Because of the

differences in our languages and our cultures, we cannot follow their methods to create poetic work that

approaches theirs. For the nay-sayers this 'proved' that we were incapable of, for example, writing a real

haiku. It has been my impression that those Japanese who do try to work with us, do so with

considerable risk and possible rejection from fellow citizens. Therefore we need to be even more grateful

to them even when they cannot always give us what we need to bring our poetry up to theirs.

I clearly remember my shock and dismay when after working years with Hatsue Kawamura on

translations, she one day said, "These translations, they are so far from the beauty of the tanka in

Japanese." I felt as if I was trampling flowers.

Colin: Trampling flowers! Now there is an image that should motivate every non-Japanese to aim for

musicality in their haiku and tanka. Jane, thank you for giving generously of your time and participating

in this interview and now I would like to present some samples of your work for our readers to enjoy.

Jane: Thank you, Colin, for initiating this interview. You have a marvelously quirky mind and it has

been a joy to match wits with you. I hope the readers of Notes from the Gean enjoy reading this as much

as I did dancing it with you. You are proving to be an inspiration to me with your work as editor of Notes

from the Gean. It was partially your increased interest in haiku education that motivated me to post

my Bare Bones School of Haiku online. So I want to thank you, for not only looking at my work long

enough to think of these innovative questions, but for all the work you do for Japanese genre poetry. A

deep bow in the direction of Scotland!

Colin: Thank you, Jane. If you ever make it to Scotland I will take you to a Ceilidh, and we will dance

the night away!

POINT ARENA WHEN IT RAINS

tires tread through small waves with

the sound of gutter rivers running full

the street becomes a shining sheet

of water between the sash and glass

a spider nest lets fall black droplets

of future fly meals in the diner

windows steamed with gossip

"Keith's woman had a baby girl"

tracks in and out the door remember

other places that come through

walls made of piecrust bursting

under a fork shaped as a loud laugh

http://www.ahapoetry.com/Bare%20Bones/bbtoc%20intro.html


another squall sweeps down the town

so the edges of real things fizzle and dance

a sparkle to cover the ordinariness of miracles

two by two car lights search for the dotted line

that calls out singing, "home, home"

even when these people only borrow roofs

as does the bellied landowner who stares

into an empty cup the rain no longer

fills with coffee in drought times

the sky lightens when the door opens

and the water bill goes over a hundred again

warm and dry

a house of sound

above the beach

Jane Reichhold

the long letter

lacking a certain grace

yet it was folded

the way a swan settles

on a still bright pond

cliffs

holding their sides

in a rocky rattle

the laughter of children

old, bent and slow afoot


beach rocks

changing the creek's course

with each tide

I come back to find

the landscape new

sundown ripeness

coming into a life-like

old age

the done and undone

in a blaze of fruit colors

early to the beach

beating holiday crowds

surprised

thinking I am alone

to see the quarter moon

Jane Reichhold

music

in the grass

lovers


fusion music

apple trees bloom

at the winery

eastern melodies

the apple trees

newly planted

cloud fire

on every tree

blossoms

the murmur

around outdoor tables

the wine

the afternoon

rolling downhill

live music

spots of beauty

under the apple trees

alto sax solo

falling petals

the afternoon ends

with applause

music

covering the musicians

petals

packing up

the chatter of musicians

snap their cases

taking home

an afternoon of music

sunburn

Jane Reichhold

www.AHApoetry.com/

http://beadsnjane.blogspot.com

Lynx: A Journal for Linking Poets

http://www.ahapoetry.com/

http://beadsnjane.blogspot.com/

http://www.ahapoetry.com/lynx


Peeling an Orange: Haiku by Peggy Heinrich

Photographs by John Bolivar

A review by Colin Stewart Jones

Peeling an Orange is a truly beautiful book whose cover invites one in to sample and enjoy. It was also

personally inscribed to me, by Heinrich, which was a nice touch. Peeling an Orangebegins with the

charming longer piece: Conversation With Bashō; and is then set out, rather like an orange, in segments

that follow the pattern of the seasons and interspersed with Bolivar’s lovely descriptive black and white

photographs.

Heinrich is a master of her craft. She writes with both intuition and instinct:

just knowing

the velvet touch of pansies

without touching

income tax time —

scribbling on the tax form

notes for a haiku

One gets a sense of Heinrich's delight with all nature and her concern for all its creatures.

holding my breath

until the cormorant

resurfaces

Indeed, it seems she would not even hurt a fly:

carelessly,

brushing away a fly

into a cobweb


But the same cannot be said for her cat:

beneath the feeder

a scattering of feathers —

sunbathing cat

Heinrich is not afraid to show her emotions but seems to use humour as a mask for her grief and

loneliness. The man is missing from her bed yet she tries to make this a positive by remembering his bad

points. Interestingly the inclusion of the word “try” is very telling and significant:

half-empty bed

I try to recall

his faults

One sees her hesitation about her loss from the spacing in the following poem which also signifies her

reluctance to bring finality to the matter:

packing up his clothes

giving away everything

giving away

The matter of fact nature of Heinrich's haiku belies the inherent sadness that is clear on closer reading:

after the funeral

I come home to leaky faucets

and a pile of leaves

One senses there is a stoical nature to Heinrich where she must put on a brave face and get on with the

day-to-day things but it is evident she is missing a man about the house.

Given Heinrich's already noted concern for nature, the irony of our duality when it comes to nature's

scarier creatures is beautifully and funnily brought home:

ten below zero

carefully setting the spider

outside

There are so many more examples I could choose but copyright laws only allow me to include a small

percentage and I would not want to give away all this book's delights. However,Peeling an Orange is a

collection from a poet at the top of her game and is a must for all who have a taste for quality haiku and

is thoroughly recommended reading.

Peeling an Orange, Peggy Heinrich

MET Press

Baltimore MD 21236 USA

ISBN 978-1-935398-12-7

http://www.modernenglishtankapress.com/


Home to Ballygunge: Kolkata Tanka

by William Hart

A review by Colin Stewart Jones

William Hart is a poet and novelist who also holds a PhD in English from the University of Southern

California. As the title suggests, Home to Ballygunge, Kolkata Tanka is a collection of tanka poems set in

Kolkata, formerly known as Calcutta, the state capital of West Bengal, India. Rarely does one read a book

of tanka that manages to sustain the imagery throughout the collection and still delight the reader with

something new in each poem.

Hart uses light and dark, and the shades in-between as a metaphor for human relationships in his tanka.

He is not afraid to mix the poetic with concrete imagery and the result is often philosophical:

this thing between us

like sun rising in fog—

brightness without light

day with no beginning

words with no sound

Similarly philosophical and perhaps inspired by the Wheel of Life from the Indian flag Hart muses on the

cyclical aspect of nature:

this apple core

to me an ending

is to the waiting crow

a new beginning

waiting to begin

And again he is both poetic and philosophical, using an eye as a metaphor for the sun:

the eye that can’t close

opens bright orange

blazing in place

it walks the earth

feeding on the night


There is an openness and honesty to Hart’s poetry that is refreshing. In the following poem we get a

glimpse of someone perhaps trying meditation because of their geographical position and failing because

of the gnat, not quite a mote, has taken his focus and is irritating his eye.

the center

of my life

all at once becomes

the gnat drowning

in my eye

The eye and what is seen, or unseen, plays large in Hart’s poems. Darkness can paradoxically often

prove to be illuminating:

the power cut

blinds us with darkness

that was always there

we just

forgot about it

And again the absence of light heightens the senses:

the blind wear black glasses

or bare their eyes to the light

most can hear

a lotus blooming

all peer with their fingertips

This sensory overload does, however, come at a price. Hart has obviously been indulging in the local

cuisine but is suffering the next day as his insides are dancing from eating hot curry.

I love all these spices

but today they love me back

like a brute tango

leaving me hot and wobbly

dizzy and a little wan

Each poem has a page of its own (which they all deserve) in this very nicely presented pocket-sized book

and I have no hesitation in recommending Home to Ballygunge.

_________________

Home to Ballygunge, William Hart

Modern English Tanka Press

PO Box 43717

Baltimore, MD 21236, USA

ISBN 978-193539817-2

_________________

http://www.modernenglishtankapress.com/


A New Resonance 7: Emerging Voices in English-Language Haiku

Edited by Jim Kacian and Dee Evetts

A Review by Billie Wilson

The New Resonance series is one of the most important and enjoyable English-language haiku series

published today, and is a major resource for haiku historians. In this seventh volume we find another

solid collection with the consistently high standards we've come to expect and anticipate.

We are introduced to 18 poets who are likely "destined to be amongst the leaders in the genre," as the

editors note in their foreword about previous poets selected for this series. With a generous showcasing

of 15 haiku for each poet, a photograph, and a brief snippet of prose, the reader is allowed to get better

acquainted with writers from Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, Scotland, and the United States.

There is an excellent mix of previously-published and unpublished work.

I knew from my experience with the previous six volumes that I was in for a real treat when I first sat

down with this new treasure. There was the desire to greedily devour it in one sitting, and the wish to

slowly savor, making it last as long as possible. I couldn't resist — I did both. Despite the richness of

seven pages of haiku for each poet, I found myself begging at the seventh page for, "Just one more!"

As a sampler, I've selected one of my favorites from each poet:

a long journey

to stand by this grave —

mackerel sky

Susan Antolin

Walnut Creek, California

tai chi class

the slow curve

of a train's whistle

Alan S. Bridges

Littleton, Massachusetts


one empty bowl

inside another

winter moon

Joyce Clement

Bristol, Connecticut

low-lying fog

the house guests outstay

their welcome

Jennifer Corpe

Elkhart, Indiana

a silver hair

woven into the nest

winter light

Lorin Ford

Melbourne, Australia

all night long

small frogs

keep my windows open

Jeff Hoagland

Hopewell, New Jersey

the time it takes

to thaw the breast milk —

winter night

Duro Jaiye

Hirakata, Japan

no moon

my mind follows

the wild geese

Colin Stewart Jones

Aberdeen, Scotland


morning hush

the fisherman casts

a thread of sunlight

Catherine J. S. Lee

Eastport, Maine

summer road trip

a change in mood

with the top up

Erik Linzbach

Dewey, Arizona

the distance between

my attic and the moon —

April rain

Chen-ou Liu

Ajax, Ontario, Canada

summer's end —

I lick the popsicle

down to wood

Tanya McDonald

Woodinville, Washington

invisible now

the path I followed

river starlight

Fonda Bell Miller

Alexandria, Virginia

how far

will this busyness take me

dandelion seeds

Renée Owen

Sebastopol, California


the rainstorm eases

people drift back

to what they were

Greg Piko

Yass, Australia

motel room

passing headlights change

the shape of darkness

Melissa Spurr

Joshua Tree, California

fallow field

the frosted shadow

of a scarecrow

André Surridge

Hamilton, New Zealand

salt spray

a taste of peat

in my whisky

Quendryth Young

Alstonville, Australia

_________________

A New Resonance 7: Emerging Voices in English-Language Haiku

Edited by Jim Kacian and Dee Evetts

Red Moon Press, 2011

P.O. Box 2461, Winchester, VA 22504-1661, USA

ISBN 978-1-936848-00-3

_________________

http://redmoonpress.com/


All That Remains

by Catherine J.S. Lee

A Review by Lorin Ford

Catherine J.S. Lee's All That Remains begins with a haiku which hints at the layering of present and past

to be found over the course of this sensitively edited chapbook:

hometown visit

no trespassing signs

where we used to play

Set in four sections, All That Remains gains the formality of musical structure. Each movement develops

the themes of return to family and family traditions and the persistent influence of the past but with a

difference in mood and pace each time. A narrative framework of impressions and memories from

childhood to the present is implied.

In the first section a pervading stillness is barely disturbed by the murmur of a scythe, a stirring of leaves

and a swirl of pine needles on a roof. There is the silence of a tin roof after rain, the lingering scent of

sun-dried linen, a braided rug hung out to dry in haying weather and a rebuilt porch on which a single

chair indicates not only a grandmother's widowed status but something of her stoic character as well.

Images of the past glow as if in an eternal present.

In section two, a freighter's horn heard through fog and a wharf listing under the weight of storm clouds

presage the emergence of unsettling, darker undercurrents. Family secrets, lies, hidden personal

histories are enfolded within objects — photograph albums, diaries, war medals and a flag set against the

rattling of dry leaves:

tri-folded coffin flag —

dry leaves in a corner

of the empty pool

After the hard territory of the decline and death of parents in the third section, there is the comparative

energy and gaiety of a family reunion in the closing section:

horseshoes and gossip

tossed around the grove

family reunion


Horseshoes are tossed (reminding the reader that this is a family which proudly adheres to traditions

which have died out in many places in the world) dust eddies, winds unravel, a moth clings and a Great

Blue Heron fades in such a way as to become one with the sky. The greater frequency of verbs in section

four suggests that the world itself has now become more active. A commitment seems to have been

made to be present for all that remains to be experienced in a life:

backlit clouds

the slow wait

for sunset

All That Remains shows that Cat Lee writes haiku with subtlety and precision, and she writes from a

strong sense of place — Maine, in the New England region of north-eastern U.S.A. — and heritage. She

evokes mood and changes in mood through expert use of the technique of juxtaposition, blending images

from the natural and human worlds into the one fabric.

Winner of the second Turtle Light Press biennial haiku chapbook competition, All That Remainsis a

delightfully produced, hand made chapbook which will please the most fastidious collector.

_________________

All That Remains, Catherine J.S. Lee

Turtle Light Press, 2011

Highland Park, N.J., 08904 U.S.A.

27pp, ISBN 978-0-9748147-2-8

_________________

http://www.turtlelightpress.com/


The Intentional Ellipses: Haiku and its Relationship to Space

by Tracy Koretsky

There was a great guru of Zen Who ran out of ink in his pen All the better, he said For these words in my head ....

Aaaannnd.....? you say. The other shoe? I'm waiting. Well, if you're Japanese, and instead of limerick, you're hearing haiku, you can just go on waiting, for that is precisely the intended effect of haiku. To the Japanophone it offers no cadence, no satisfying sense of resolve. It is the poetry of deliberate incompletion — a conduit from here to someplace else. There are myriad ways how, like a koan, haiku's inherent quality of incompleteness enables this most compact of poetic forms to be one of the most expansive. By considering the relevance of space to examples ranging from haiku's three classical masters1 through today's avant-garde2, the wide breadth of haiku, as well as techniques for comprehending it, becomes evident. It's time to put away the notions instilled by your third grade teacher. Modern English language haiku are not limited to three lines of 5/7/5 syllabication beginning with a reference to nature. Now your third grade teacher wasn't trying to scam you. Chalk it up to some skewed interpretations and misappropriations by the well-intended pioneers who brought haiku form to the attention of the Western world. Today however, haiku artists benefit from a more accurate understanding of the form's origins. The Party Game Haiku had its beginnings in a popular pastime called renga3. This elaborate and refined parlor game began in the courtly era of Shogun Japan, though, by the time of its 17th century hey-day, it was played by noble and peasant alike. People enjoyed it at parties as an excuse to drink, though it was also "played" seriously by clubs and societies who edited and published their results. Established masters, including the renowned Bashö, considered by most to be the father of the form, were called in to supervise. It is from the initial, premeditated, renga fragment, assisted by the advent of the printing press, that the form we now know as haiku was born. Renga was built upon the basic units of the tanka, a form as common to Japanese poetry as the pentameter quatrain is to English language poetry, and quite natural to the Japanophone's ear. Tanka required 31 onji, or sound-symbols which are similar to, but in practice substantially shorter than, English language syllables. These were arranged in lines of 5-7-5-7-7. The following is an early tanka by Ono no Komachi4, a woman about whom little is known. The last two lines, in particular, are quite famous:

Did he appear because I fell asleep thinking of him? If only I'd known I was dreaming, I'd never have wakened.

Many authors compare tanka to the Western sonnet. The similarity lies in the function of the last two lines which, like the final tercet of the sonnet, comment upon the previous. However, when considering the form's musical qualities, the better comparison might be the limerick, with its pleasing return to the tonic rhyme. To play a renga the first player would offer a hokku, literally a "starting verse" consisting of the first three 5-7-5 onji lines of the tanka. The next player would then "cap" the verse by adding on two lines of seven syllables to make a tanka. Riffing off only the lines offered by the second player, the third player would now attempt a brand new poem — a sort of upside down tanka — by adding three lines of 5-7-5 to the two lines of seven. The result, if successful, is an entirely new piece. It would, ideally, have no relationship to the meaning of the first tanka. Now can you guess what the next player must do? If you said add two lines of seven syllables to the 5-7-5 just played, you'd be right. And, once again, if the players were adept, the images would morph into a wholly different piece.


An important rule of renga is that no story line be developed. The sense of logic must always be undermined, the sense of completion, ever elusive. If the renga were a film it would be constructed with rapid dissolves into surprising, unrelated, images. These images are more related to one another than say, a string of commercials on television, but they transmute and even disappear quite rapidly. The ability to let go of the previous image and be present in the reality of a totally new image is an Eastern, or actually, Buddhist, way of thinking, quite foreign to us. The medieval poet Nijo Yoshimoto5 put it this way:

"Renga is not exhausted by the meaning of the stanza that preceded or of the stanza that follows ... for just as we set boundaries only to have them shift away, so there is nothing in this transient world. As we consider today, it has grown tomorrow. As we consider spring, it has become autumn."

In other words, each ephemeral tanka fragment offered in the renga is an arrow pointing. Towards what? Towards intentionally undefined space.

"It's just so lonely" To illustrate what this means expressively, allow me a brief anecdote. I used to sing jazz professionally, and, because I'm known to enjoy an expressive risk now and then, worked up a little arrangement for one of my tunes calling for an unresolved final chord. It drove the accompanists nuts. Half of them resolved the chord anyway, despite my red circles and double underlines instructing them not to. Most lectured me in rehearsal believing, as accompanists frequently do, that because I'm a singer, I don't understand theory. One bohemian sort just loved it, shaking his head and saying "Whoa, out there." But my favorite accompanist, he actually begged. "Just let me resolve it," he pleaded, his hand hovering above the keys. "Look, I'll just play one little note." So I asked him why. What was it about breaking this rule that was so hard to do, so objectionable, so "whoa, out there"? "It's because it breaks my heart," he said. "It's just so lonely." Precisely. That is exactly the effect the unresolved tanka that is haiku has upon the Japanophone's ear. This trailing off, this ellipses leading to nothing, effectively imbues haiku with its predominate tonal mode: the quality known as sabi. Inadequately translated, sabi is the sadness of aloneness, or perhaps better phrased as the more Zen concept of the solitariness of no-mind. Notice how space functions to convey this quality in the following haiku by Bashö First snow falling on the half finished bridge.

The bridge, the only mode of connection between people of the day, is not only unfinished, but, because of the snow, will remain so for the long winter ahead. The image confirms an unbroken emptiness of space and time lying ahead. Former poet laureate Robert Hass writes of Matsuo Munefusa Bashö6 (1644-1694) that "it would appear that the world contrived to serve him with a lesson in nonattachment every decade or so." He is referring first to Bashö's father's death, then to his beloved master's, and finally to destruction of his house due to fire. These life lessons, combined with Bashö's dedication to Chinese poets and Zen meditation, characterize the form to this day. Emptiness is a characteristic common to the Zen-influenced arts. Consider for example, Ikebana, Japanese flower arranging, with its paradoxical qualities of sumptuousness and austerity. Barbara Joyce, a well-known practitioner of the Sogetsu School, instructs her students to consider the unfilled space equally to the physical material. In truth, the unfilled space is actually the compositional focus of Ikebana. Does this not go to the heart of the following haiku by Anita Virgil7? the black spaces : as much star as star!

Echart Tolle, possibly the most influential contemporary popularizer of Zen concepts puts it this way: "You contact the all not only from within, but also in the silence between sounds and in the space between objects."8 That probably explains why William J. Higginson, one of the world's foremost authorities on Japanese haiku in English, had the insight to title a piece constructed of linked haiku "Interstices".


Take a look at this piece by Virginia Brady Young: On the first day of spring snow falling from one bough to another

Young focuses our gaze. Instead of the large vista, we are asked to envision a space delineated by two boughs. The fact that snow falls from one to the other is an apt summation of the first day of spring — a proof of its coming. It is not uncommon for haiku to be constructed from this sort of equation. Notice too, how the lines are broken in such a way that the middle line might either be read as completing the first phrase or beginning the second. Snow falling on the first day of spring is a disappointing event, but then we learn that what she really means is that it falling away from the trees. The last line functions similarly to punchline of a joke. While focusing on the space between things does create balance, as in Ikebana, and contribute to the sort of spiritual stillness referred to by Tolle, perhaps of greater importance to poets, it has enormous expressive value. Consider this haiku by Marco Fratecelli9: between each wave my children disappear

Now, not all haiku are Zen — quite the contrary. In fact, as Hirosaki Sato wrote in One Hundred Frogs10 "Haiku artists have ... (always) ... had less grandiose intentions than enlightenment. Haiku have been written to congratulate, to praise, to describe, to express gratitude, wit, cleverness, disappointment, resentment, or what have you, but rarely to convey enlightenment."

Not all haiku are Zen, but Fratecelli's "between each wave" is. It speaks of transience, the ephemera of existence, our contingency with nature. Each "space" in this haiku, that is, the cresting of each wave, contains consequence; each space is fraught with fear and anxiety — of breath held. And yet it is a poem of trust as the author allows his children to remain in the ocean, letting them go and allowing them to be free entities.

Space Vs. Place But wait, if the subject is the area bounded by borders, be they physical or temporal, is that "space"? Because I am not Bashö's buddy with their unlimited associative minds, but rather the daughter of Aristotle, I found it essential to know this. How is "space" different from "place"? Actually, this distinction is more than semantical sophistry. After all, to discuss the use of place in haiku is hardly an assignment worth doing. Haiku is the quintessential poem of place, one of its most common attributes if not, arguably, a defining characteristic, being the kigo, or seasonal word, which functions as a sort of dateline, specifying the particular time and, often, location. My American Heritage gives "place" as: "1. A portion of space; an area with definite or indefinite boundaries. 2. An area occupied by or set aside for a specific person or purpose. 3. A definite location."

whereas "space" is defined as: "1.(a)A set of elements or points satisfying specified geometric postulates. (b)The infinite extension of the three-dimensional field of everyday life. 2. The expanse in which the solar system, stars and galaxies exist. 3. A blank or empty area : the spaces between words." (and so forth).


The question therefore becomes, how does one manipulate the quintessential poetry of place to encompass "space"? How can the three-dimensional field of everyday life be extended in a form prized for its brevity? One way, to borrow a term often applied to the paintings of Edgar Degas, is to "break the frame". He was the first painter, at least in the Western tradition, to "crop" in ways that implied extension or continuation beyond the composition. For example, by depicting only the thigh and forearm of one of his famous dancers, Degas left the viewer to complete the partial limbs mentally. This is, in a sense what the second of the great classical masters, Yosa Buson (1716-1783) is doing in this haiku: field of bright mustard, the moon in the east — the sun in the west

Buson was a man of a very different disposition than Bashö. Many scholars enjoy polarizing them, even calling them "the two pillars of haiku". Bashö, the mystic seeker, versus Buson, the worldly artist. Gentle, wise, Bashö versus brilliant, complex, Buson. Although in general such devices are false and derisive, of more use to scholars than to the service of biography, if one's goal is to understand haiku as opposed to biographies, the conceit can be useful. It yokes the aspects of haiku that are concerned with heightening consciousness with those concerned with artful description. Notice that in Buson's haiku above there is just pure description, and sparse description at that. Not only must the continuation of the mustard field be supplied by the reader, so too must the emotional content, the sense of awe, or perhaps humility, the poem instills. By the way, take care not to read meaning into the moon coming before the sun. The haiku has been translated both ways. In this contemporary haibun — a haiku linked to a piece of prose — by Penny Harter11, the subject is most definitely a specific place. Yet it draws its emotional content from the concept of space. During the summer of 1987 my husband and I were fortunate enough to spend the night in a pilgrims' dormitory on Mount Haguro in Yamagata Prefecture, Japan. When I entered the room, its entire far end open to the sky, I quickly crossed the space to the edge of the tatami-matted floor and opened my arms:

fingertip to fingertip and still more sky — Mount Haguro

Harter has made several admirable choices of diction here. As is true with all poetry, this can be an essential key to appreciating a piece. Unlike the piece from Buson, Harter's haiku is not framed by the sky, but by her own reference. To convey this she has not chosen "hand to hand" or even "arms open wide", but "fingertip to fingertip", as much as a mere human can physically encompass. And not only is there "more", there is "still more." Notice too the inclusion of the word "fortunate" in her preface. This contributes to the sense of wonder and delight. Moreover, it is an expression of humility frequently invoked in haiku. Harter has captured the moment truly and naturally. Specifically, she has captured its spontaneity. Spontaneity, for which there is no apt synonym, is another element — if not the subject — of some of the best haiku. When the technique of "breaking the frame" is applied not to the strictly visual, as was the case in these two examples, but to the conceptual, the reader is led towards something further. Here is a piece by George Swede, a professor of psychology, in which the "border" is broken literally and figuratively: passport check : my shadow waits across the border

At first glance the poem appears somewhat humorous, a sort of glib visual notation, but a second glance is merited. The word "shadow" is laden with connotations that move this poem into the Swede's particular realm — the psychological. Because there is always something inherently uneasy about having one's identification checked, just as there is about moving beyond one's own known and safe borders, there is something eerie about the shadow taking the lead here; it is as if one moves inexorably beyond oneself.


Another method of breaking the conceptual frame is to point towards the future. Buson did this when he wrote dozens of haiku beginning with the kigo "the short night", which is to say, the short summer night. He always chose the early morning as his subject, looking forward towards what would come next. The luminous clarity of these haiku sometimes remind of paintings by Edward Hopper: the short night — on the outskirts of the village a small shop opening

Nicholas Virgilio, an early pioneer in exploiting the emotionally expressive capacities of haiku, especially in his famous series dedicated to a beloved brother lost in Viet Nam, provides a strong example: Adding father's name to the family tombstone with room for my own.

By striking two notes simultaneously — his father's death and his own impending one — Virgilio creates a minor chord. Note how he has chosen to layout the piece, with each line taking subsequent steps to the right, inevitably marching on.

Every Ying has a Yang As effective as haiku can be at expanding beyond itself, it is equally as effective at the opposite. Just repeat this one-line haiku of Cor Van Den Heuvel's aloud twice, as is the traditional custom with haiku: raining at every window

and see if you do not instantly feel more circumscribed. This is a very universal notation, so much so, that Van Den Heuvel recognizes he need not provide any further information for us to rush immediately to our own private and very accessible association. Articulating a transferable association — capturing a moment and sharing it — may actually be the primary goal of haiku. I find that I am moved by this piece by Betty Drevniok: snow at dusk: our pot of tea steeps slowly darker

In her first line she employs not one but two images that suggest a quieting, a shutting down. It is a bit reminiscent of Bashö's piece about the unfinished bridge. With the two elements — snowfall and nightfall — amplifying one another, it is clear to the reader that no one is going anywhere soon. A simple, homey, pot of tea — a substance that requires time and enclosure to come into being — provides an oasis of warmth. Note too how Drevniok has spaced her final line, leaving room, taking time, moving onward toward ultimate darkness. Another effective method to achieve spatial reduction is to scrutinize the minute. If Buson's "field of bright mustard," may be thought of as shot through a wide-angle lens, then certainly he has attached his telephoto to create this one: white dew — one drop on each thorn


Here is another one-liner from Cor Van Den Heuvel: the shadow in the folded napkin

To bring to consciousness this humble element, this play of light that the less-present mind would almost surely overlook, is a characteristic of artistic tradition of Zen, and is often attempted in haiku. Bringing our attention to this "negative space" as the visual artists would say, quiets us and allows us a brief pause. For similar reasons, one can find a great many haiku exploring silence. (Oddly, there are almost no haiku about noise, that is, obnoxious, distracting noise, despite the fact that it is so much part of the fabric of contemporary urban existence. Perhaps it is fertile soil for poets interested in breaking new ground.) Here, in this haiku by Lorraine Ellis Harr, silence is used as a device to evoke distance: after the snowfall . . . deep in the pine forest the sound of an axe

Another technique often found in haiku is the yoking of two disparate elements, perhaps something enormous to something miniscule, or something spiritual to something mundane, in order for each to reflect upon the other. This is another Zen-influenced expressive technique because it emphasizes the interconnectedness of all things and elevates the ordinary. Take a look at this haiku by Gary Hotham: distant thunder — the dog's toenails click against the linoleum

Far is contrasted to near. Both images — thunder and a dog's toenails — come to us from nature, but one is the huge, impersonal nature to which we are subject, and the other is our darling companion animal. Like Ellis Harr, Hotham is using sound to express distance. The intimate sound of the near-by dog is a comfort as the storm approaches. Here is a poem by Elizabeth Searle Lamb12 in which far and near are played against each other by depicting them as mere illusion: the far shore drifting out of the mist to meet us

"Space" is actually the subject of this haiku, and — like many poems by Emily Dickinson — it wonders at the disjunction between our perception and reality. The sense of the knowable, the trustable, is here undermined by nature. Whereas in this haiku by Clement Hoyt: down from the bridge rail, floating from under the bridge, strangers exchange stares

space is contained — tamed, if you will — at least "bounded" by the passing glance of two strangers. One looks down from the bridge, one looks up to the bridge, an imaginary line is created, and as swiftly as the next play in renga, dissolved, as the boat floats beneath the bridge. In both poems, Searle Lamb's, "the far shore", and Hoyt's, "Down from the bridge rail," something is present and by the time you've observed it, present no longer. The manipulation of space allows these authors to pull of conceptual disappearing acts.


Haiku Diaspora Consider now an entirely different aspect of haiku and its relationship to space: global diaspora. Undoubtedly, haiku is a world art. Says Jim Kacian, editor of Frogpond, the journal of the Haiku Society of America, "haiku is now the most practiced form of literature in the world... it is arguably Japan’s foremost cultural export.13" Certainly there are haiku journals currently published in the United States, England, Australia, Germany, France, Spain, Portugal and Italy. When William J. Higginson published Haiku World: An International Poetry Almanac14 in 1996, he was able to include 600 poets from 45 countries writing in 20 languages. What effect does this diaspora have upon the quintessential poetry of place? Well, first there is the pressure to loosen haiku from its customary grounding in place, traditionally accomplished through the use of a kigo, or seasonal reference. While some vehemently adhere to the belief that a kigo must be included in order for a piece to be haiku, others as actively ignore the practice entirely or substitute "keywords". This is probably the most vehement debate within the haiku community today. There are conference sessions and special supplements of journals dedicated solely to its discourse. It could easily sustain an essay as long as this entire piece just to air the major points. The problem, briefly summed is this: the attributes that signify seasonal or cultural markers for one culture do not necessarily translate to another. In other words, place does not communicate through space. Compare the following two pieces, the first, a haibun by Bashö, A view of Narumi: early fall — the sea and the rice fields all one green

the second, a haiku by North American, Foster Jewell: nearing the mountain yesterday, and still today . . . tomorrow

The first is the vision of a man who lives on a narrow island with a north-south orientation for whom the slopes and the sea come together. The rice is, of course, in full bloom. In Japanese haiku, the trees are always depicted as in full bloom, the bird, in full-throated song. On the other hand, Jewell portrays seemingly endless vastness, and too, the dogged persistence to claim the mountain. Haiku is always a study in comparative culture. It is interesting, for example, that Americans, the people of manifest destiny, for whom every frontier is meant to be conquered, include "outer space" as part of their milieu. Haiku poet Penny Harter frequently incorporates objects like satellites and telescopes as in this example: distant thunder overhead a satellite moves in the dark

After all, are satellites not as much a part of our surroundings as rain? Not surprisingly, haiku lends itself superbly to the expression of the immigrant or expatriate experience — people for whom a sensitivity to place is necessarily informed by dislocation. San Francisco haiku poet Fay Aoyagi15 frequently makes this her subject as in the following examples: migrating birds — the weight of my first voter's guide elderberries — his childhood ritual unfamiliar to me


Looking at these poems a bit more deeply can help unlock the mechanics of a great many haiku. I borrow here from Harold G. Henderson's An Introduction to Haiku16. Henderson was one of the first scholars who worked to popularize and interpret haiku for a Western audience: "The two parts that make up the whole are compared to each other, not in simile or metaphor, but as two phenomena, each of which exists in its own right. This may be called 'the principle of internal comparison' in which the differences are just as important as the likenesses."

Immigrant and expatriate experiences are, by their nature, projects in 'internal comparison'. Haiku is a natural form for their eloquence.

Haiku and White Space Like the codified kigo of traditional Japanese haiku, the liniation of text does not culturally translate. Japanese is, after all, written vertically and Japanese haiku are generally expressed in a single column of symbols that can be apprehended instantly together, as with an illustration. Early English language translators broke the lines into onji, or sound symbols, which led to our presumption of the three-line form. Like kigo, Western haiku poets have questioned this presumption and created a variety of solutions. A poem from the third of the triumvirate of classical masters, Kobayashi Issa (1763-1827) demonstrates the point: the snow is melting and the village is flooded with children

At this time, Issa is beloved above all other haiku masters in Japan, and it is perhaps for this reason, that his biography and the interpretation of his work are sentimentalized. In general, Issa is characterized as a country bumpkin with a terribly sad life. Unlike Bashö, schooled in a noble's home, or urbane, cultivated Buson, Issa was a bumpkin. At least he was born in a small mountain village and lived a life of true — not affected — poverty. But at closer look, Issa can only be thought of as a true country mouse if forced into a comparison with Bashö and Buson. Viewed independently, one sees a boy who was shipped off to the city at the age of fourteen and spent his life in travel, much of it in cities. He is often compared to Robert Burns — and quite aptly. Another comparison presents itself — Will Rogers — for in this poem it is Issa the humorist which concerns us. Notice how the poem sets up its first two ominous lines and then cuts, like a punchline, to its resolution. In Japanese, Issa would have had a variety — nearly fifty — ways to punctuate the end of the lines to build toward the joke, then to let us know it was time to relax and smile. Western poets, on the other hand, have about four end punctuations from which to choose. There is the dash, the ellipses, the comma, the colon. As we have seen in Virginia Brady Young's "on the first day of spring", line breaks are often used to effect associations between images or, as in the break between the second and third lines of Ellis Harr's "after the snowfall", to create a pause. We have also noted how Betty Drevniok has spaced her third line to slow it and convey a certain inexorable quality. Nicholas Virgilio achieves a similar affect by indenting each line just a bit more deeply than the previous one. Clement Hoyt uses the same technique to suggest motion. Finally, there have been two examples of fine one-line haiku by Cor van den Heuvel — perhaps attempts to capture some of instant apprehension available in the Japanese form. Van den Heuvel has, quite famously, pushed this envelope. He once reduced the form to its essence with his "tundra" haiku in which the single, uncapitalized word was centered on an otherwise large blank sheet. The "internal comparison" in this case is between the concept and the page. As is common in haiku, many derivative pieces exist. These are considered more homage, as in the Eastern tradition, than imitation, as in the Western. One of these comes from Charles Trumbull, the current president of the Haiku Society of America. The directions, which he requires accompany the piece, read like the instructions for a Fluxus installation. INSTRUCTIONS for publishing the poem "I" by Charles Trumbull The text of the poem consists solely of the letter "I". "I" is to be printed in the exact center of an otherwise completely blank recto page. No header, footer, page number, or other text may appear on the page with "I".


The text of "I" is to be printed in 24-point, boldface type. Ideally an Egyptian-type typeface (with equal horizontal and vertical stroke weight) will be chosen, but a modest serif font such as Garamond or Times may be substituted if an Egyptian face is not available. Under no circumstances may a sans serif face be used! The usual author and location information should appear at the foot of the facing verso page. In the best of all worlds, this page also would otherwise be blank, but we acknowledge that the economics of printing may not permit this.

Both John Cage and Joseph Beuys would likely approve. Sigmund Freud would probably appreciate it as well! How odd that a form more steeped in tradition than even the sonnet so perfectly provides a container for avant-garde conceptual pieces. This happens all the time in haiku, particularly in regard to its concrete elements, that is, how text is laid upon the page. Marlene Mountain is another haiku poet renowned for pushing the envelope. Her work — especially her vividly imagistic longer pieces — have engendered debates about whether they may truly be considered haiku. Here is one of her many memorable concrete pieces: rain dr p o

Personally, for me, this crosses a line. I would not consider this a haiku, but rather a very charming and witty concrete poem. It lacks internal comparison, transcendence of the physical, or transferable experience, which in general, are the content of haiku. On the other hand, this almost purely concrete piece by Alan Pizzarelli: flinging the frisbee skips off the ground curving up hits a tree petals

does merit the term because it captures a translatable moment. That is, like van den Heuvel's "rain in every window", this piece conveys an image that is accessible, relateable. The layout supports a sense of play. Pizzarelli has dropped two lines before his last word not only out of whimsy, but to anchor it. The voice tends to drop when reading the final word aloud. The Frisbee has settled and come to earth. The moment is over. It is fun to compare the following two pieces by Michael McClintock and Anita Virgil respectively: a poppy . . . a field of poppies! The hills blowing with poppies! walking the snow-crust not sinking sinking

The simple, unabashed, joy of the McClintock piece is pellucidly expressed. Obviously the poem is constructed by building layers of repetition. The physical layout creates a hill, the punctuation — heavy for a haiku — is decorative, a suggestion of its floral subject. Yet the temporal necessity of apprehending English slows the unveiling of the poppies. We are left to discover them — and delight in them — for ourselves, as if panning a camera or walking a trail. The experience is successfully transferred. Virgils's "walking the snow-crust" reverses the strategy. The lack of punctuation adds to the suggestion of snow cover. Not sinking/sinking economically creates a tension which resolves into humor. Physical reality is reflected with the eye's steady thrust downward. It is likewise fun to compare the following pieces by Alan Pizzarelli, Myra Scovel, and Raymond Roseliep, respectively.


the bearded lady hangs her wash against the wind the silence while the gift is being opened pacing the shore the ship's cat

The Pizzarelli piece reminds me of the annual backwards day at my grade school during which we ate our chocolate pudding before our sloppy joes and put our mittens on the opposite hands. Everything is wrong; the lady has a beard, the margin keeps moving left, and the wash is making a slapstick of the whole event. Scovel, on the other hand, uses spacing to effectively amplify anticipation, while Roseliep moves the margins to and fro in imitation of his subject.

The Nature of Elastic From the above examples it is clear that haiku is a surprisingly elastic form. That is to say, there is a spaciousness within the confines of the form not generally appreciated by readers unfamiliar with contemporary haiku. A piece may be considered haiku for no other reason than that it is fundamentally minimalist and relates a translatable form. Three lines of long-short-long, one of them being a season reference, are common, but not always present. In this way, haiku bears comparison the American blues. Deceptively simple at first appearance, both forms manage to provide containers for a wide variance of tonal modes, from the sabi of Bashö and Robert Johnson, to the giddiness of Michael McClintock and James Brown. Just as the blues encompass work songs from the Delta and dance songs from Chicago, a range of tempos are possible to achieve in haiku. From Betty Drevniok's slowly steeping tea to Alan Pizzarelli's crashing Frisbee, the words fall from our tongues at different rates. Finally, like the blues, a variety of forms, from avant-garde concept pieces to collaborative linked renga, are engendered by contemporary haiku. After all, is it not the nature of elastic to stretch? Resolving Not to Resolve In so many ways — from encompassing the infinite to page layout — contemporary haiku is exploiting its inherent quality of incompletion to lead the reader beyond the scope of the poem. Because, by its very nature it is a trailing off — an arrow pointing to nowhere: winter burial :

a stone angel points his hand

at the empty sky

—Eric Amann

Because it is brief, it expands beyond itself:

i end in shadow

—Bob Boldman

The intentional ellipses of haiku allows, indeed forces, a moving forward toward what is next. Stubbornly, it resolves

not to resolve, for


There was a great guru of Zen

Who ran out of ink in his pen

All the better, he said

For these words in my head

Now are "now" but in time will be "then".

_____________________ The Intentional Ellipses: Haiku and its Relationship to Space was originally published in Triplopia (Volume III, Issue 4: Spaces), an online literary magazine of contemporary free verse poetry. An abridged version was reprinted in the publication of The New Zealand Poetry Society. The Intentional Ellipses: Haiku and its Relationship to Space won first place in the 2004 Springfield Writers Guild competition and received an Honorable Mention in the 2005 CNW/FFWA Florida State Writing Competition (both awards were in the category of previously published nonfiction). As Triplopia no longer exists on the web and The New Zealand Poetry Society archives are only available to its members, Notes from the Gean is pleased to republish The Intentional Ellipses in its entirety. More can be found out about the author on her website: www.TracyKoretsky.com

1 Translations from The Essential Haiku: versions of Basho, Buson & Issa, edited by Robert Hass, (The Ecco Press: 1994).

Permission to reprint from Robert Hass. In this addition to The Essential Poets series, arcane or geographically untranslatable references are

explicated in endnotes. The humor and significance of these haiku are unlocked for the contemporary reader. 2 This essay contains 27 examples of contemporary haiku, representing 22 authors. The vast majority have been taken from The Haiku

Anthology edited by Cor Van Den Heuvel (Second edition —Simon and Schuster : 1986). Please note, a third editon (W.W. Norton: 2000) is

currently in print. Permissions to reprint were obtained from individual authors.

A note on permissions: of the 25 authors cited in this essay, permissions were explicitly obtained from 17. Of the 8 remaining, 5 are

deceased, and 3 untraceable, despite my best efforts. In all cases, repeated attempts were made to locate the individuals who hold the

rights.

Obtaining permissions is of particular concern to those writing about haiku because the form falls into a legal gray area. The "Fair Use"

laws intended for critical purposes such as this essay allow for the free use of some portion of a poem. However, when a piece is as brief as

a haiku, using a portion becomes a major impediment to understanding. Should haiku poets allow their pieces to be reprinted in their

entirety for critical purposes? This is a currently active debate within the haiku community

For my part, as an author unable to obtain 100% of the reprint rights, I have a difficult choice to make. I can drop a given example

from the essay and risk failing to make a point. I can "write around" the example, that is use description to explain what the poet tried to

achieve, not only possibly failing to make a point but also adding considerably to the essay's overall length. Or, I can go ahead and reprint.

I have chosen the latter. I do so not only because I have made every reasonable effort to obtain permissions in good faith, but because

I do not truly believe these permissions are necessary. Though I have willingly extended considerable efforts as a courtesy to the poets I

have included, I do believe that it is within the spirit of the "fair use" law to fully quote haiku without specific permissions in a critical essay.

I have had this opinion validated in numerous personal correspondences, including a former poet laureate and the current president of the

Haiku Society of America. If the discourse of haiku is to be open to more than a select inner core, full quotation of haiku within critical

contexts must be accepted, even welcomed.

With the exception of a few poets who have made specific requests regarding the attribution of their poems, this statement will serve

for all pieces herein. 3 For an informative and entertaining history of Japanese renga, see One Hundred Frogs: From Renga to Haiku in English, Hirosaki

Sato (Weatherhill : 1983) 4 Public domain 5 William J. Higginson with Penny Harter, The Haiku Handbook: How to Write, Share and Teach Haiku, (McGraw Hill : 1985) 6 Ibid. Hass 7 Poems appearing in this essay originally appeared in A 2nd Flake (publication of author: 1974). Ms. Virgil's other books are available

from [email protected] 8 The Power of Now (New World Library : 1999) 9 Mr. Fratecelli's books are available from www.kingsroadpress.com 10 Ibid. Sato 11 Ms. Harter's books are available from http:penhart.home.att.net 12 Ms. Lamb's most recent book is available from http:www.laalamedapress.com/catalog.html 13 "Beyond Kigo: Haiku in the Next Millennium", (Haiku Moment Magazine) 14 William J. Higginson, Haiku World: An International Poetry Almanac (1999) and companion volume The Haiku Seasons: Poetry

of the Natural World (1996) both published by Kodanasha International. 15 Reprinted from Chrysanthemum Love (Blue Willow Press : 2003) available from [email protected]. 16 Harold G. Henderson's An Introduction to Haiku, (Doubleday, 1958)

http://www.tracykoretsky.com/

http://www.kingsroadpress.com/

http://penhart.home.att.net/

http://www.laalamedapress.com/catalog.html

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