LYNX XXV:3, October, 2010


Table of Contents XXV:3 October, 2010		LYNX A Journal for Linking Poets



		BOOK REVIEWS Jane Reichhold Home to Ballygunge: Kolkata Tanka by William Hart. Modern English Tanka Press: June, 2010. Trade paperback original, 4 ¼ x 7 inches, 72 pages, ISBN: 978-19359817-2, $11.95. Available at Lulu.com Somehow I am on a journey of seeing how differently the tanka form can be filled with the thoughts and feelings of such a wide assortment of people. Here we have a Los Angelos kind of guy who meets and falls in love with a girl from India. Over the years they have made many trips back to India, back to Kolkata (formerly known as Calcutta), to visit her family. Out of this cosmopolitan combination, this coming together of very different worlds, come the tanka of William Hart. As I read the tanka, one to a page, I thought of how different this picture of India was to me – someone who only knows India from books (most recently The Death of Vishnu by Manil Suri) or a favorite film (Passage to India based on E.M. Forester’s book) – when it comes by tanka. From the film and book, the pictures came to me as if watching someone’s vacation slide show or reading a really well-kept journal – as if they were handed to me across space. Maybe even second-hand. Surely with the cleansing space distant time gives to an image. However, with the tanka from William Hart I had the feeling that I had slipped into another person’s skin – so that it was I who experiencing India firsthand. Yes, in very small ways but in very intimate, honest ways. I was in his poems and what had happened to him was now preserved in spite of time and space so that it was real for me right here. out on the lake seeded by sun and plowed by wind a garden of diamonds spreads like wildfire It is good to see that Denis Garrison is recovered and is again making his marvelous books at Modern English Tanka Press. May his tribe increase! Flecks of Blue by Maya Lyubenova. Bulgarian / English Haiku. Flat-spined, 48 pages, 5 x 6 ¼ inches, 4.80 coin of that realm. Contact:mayflowerbg@yahoo.com I guess I really am already traveling as I write these book reviews on a sunny morning in August. The Flecks of Blue on the lovely cover of Maya’s first book of haiku allow me to journey to Kotel Bulgaria where Maya teaches at the Philip Kutev National School of Folk Arts. However, thanks to the Internet I have met Maya in the AHAforum and there I have gotten to know her and even more, came to admire her work in haiga. No wonder that in 2009 she was declared a Master Haiga Artist. Though Flecks of Blue do not contain any of her haiga, the book does show how adept she is in writing haiku. She makes it look so easy! Because each of her haiku are flecks of perfection, the reader can relax and sink down into the pleasure of her timeless observations. noon shadows a dwarf lingers at my feet From this you can see Maya has a fine sense of humor that is exactly at home in haiku. She is not telling jokes or slipping into senryu, but is seeing her world anew and showing it to us. shallow spring – the lights in the puddle freeze TAKBOCT 2 /Suchness 2 by Slavko J. Sedlar. Published by Sasa Vazic. Contact: sasa vazic at vazicsasa@gmail.com. Perfect bound, 5 x 8 inches, 264 pages, ISBN:978-86-7746-216-1. The journey continues as the next book in the stack is Suchness 2 which is bilingual with Serbian and English. Here we meet Slavko Sedlar. Unfortunately I missed seeing his first book of haiku, Suchness published in 2008. But I am glad to see his work in this, the second book of a planned trilogy. The book opens with several very good prefaces. One by Milijan Despotovic, another by David G. Lanoue – the translator of Issa, and by Ranko Pavovic. Each writes so well about haiku and about the importance of Sedlar’s position as a haiku master in Serbian that I feel they have had first chance and used up all the right words. There is nothing I can say that they have not already said better. What I can write about is how I felt reading this very generous offering of Sedlar’s haiku. The poems are printed three to a page with the Serbian on the left and English on the right. The poems are each numbered beginning with 254 which forms a connection to the haiku in Suchness 1. I like this idea very much and it is with a good feeling that I start this book knowing that 244 previous poems have laid the groundwork for this series. And I love the idea that the next book by Sedlar will carry on. Haiku are so tiny, it is easy to lose them, and we are all searching for a method to organize them into longer, larger works of poetry. Sedlar has given us another valuable tool for this job. However the numbers alone do not form the continuity in the book. By reading poem after poem the reader detects a subtle connection between the poems – as if they were all conceived or found while in a certain state of mind. Take for instance the three poems on page 129. 356. Why calling at the cemetery, cuckoo? Here, everyone “Rests in Peace” 357. Running around their home – children run in the former cemetery 358. Thanks to the wind and the squeaking of my neighbor’s door I can watch the moon There is a feel that one is reading renga. Perhaps because 357 is actually a two-liner though it is written in three. From looking at the Serbian on the opposite page, I can see that Sedlar’s originals are more form-true than the translation in 356. I have a suspicion that his haiku in Serbian would appeal to me much more than the English versions do. Another language barrier that can only be overcome by reading with heart instead of head. Do read Suchness 2, not only for those excellent prefaces, but for a marvelous journey through a haiku landscape. Go to the Pine: Poetry in Japanese style by Izak Bouwer and Angela Sumegi. BuschekBooks, P.O. Box 74053, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Perfect bound, 6 x 9 inches, 92 pages, plus CD. CAN $17.50; USA$15. When two educators combine to make a book, you can be sure you will not only be inspired but also educated gently in the process. Go to the Pine is the perfect title for these works based on the legend that when Basho was asked about how to write, he said, “About matters of the pine, go ask the pine.” As Izak Bouwer and Angela Sumegi bring to you their tanka, haiku and renga, they also include short, concise essays on how to write in these forms. They do follow their own instructions and write very well in each of them. It is a delight to find such accomplished tanka sequences. In the 1980s this adding of instructional materials was seen as a ‘must have’ in English books. We were introducing new genres and for some readers, they needed the clarification to ‘explain’ the poems. Then we got away from this kind of introduction. Working from the premise that ‘our’ readers knew and understood the genres, we dropped the pedagogic. Maybe by now, we have a new generation to educate and it is time for books like Go to the Pine. One good thing from the practice is the fact that the author is forced to think about what is really known of the genre and how that knowledge is manifest in the poem. There are teachers and there are poets. Happily in Go to the Pine we have both. Izak Bouwer is a retired mathematics professor who became interested in Zen. Angela Sumegi is an assistant professor of Religion at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada where she heads the Palyul Cenre for the practice of Tibetan Buddhism. This unique blend of East and West fosters such poems as “Padmasambhava and his Eight Main Manifestations,’ a nine poem sequence in which Sumegi and Bouwer each write a three-line poem about each form. The poems are side by side which allows the reader to read and compare the various conceptions these two different people have formed about a similar idea. MAIN FORM ( as) second Buddha revealing the masks of the guru (ib) Padmasambhava – on his lotus hat a vulture feather Included with the book is a CD containing the files of artwork from the book in addition to calendars featuring the photographs of Museki Abe of Tokyo with verses from Izak Bouwer and Angela Sumegi. The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating by Elisabeth Tova Bailey. Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill: 2010 Hardcover with color dust jacket, 5 x 7 inches, 186 pages, ISBN:978-1-56512-606-0, $18.95. Available on Amazon.com The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating by Elisabeth Tova Bailey is a healing book. While a woman recovers from a life-threatening condition she has the time and patience to observe one small wild snail. Her thoughts, research, and experiences help her, and us, to heal our damaged relationship with the world of nature. The result of careful and heartfelt observation of even the smallest bit of life can not only enrich a life but also find and give life anew. This book is the perfect gift for anyone recovering from a set-back or in need of inspiration. I love how Elisabeth, while appreciating the small things of life, also brings in haiku of Issa and Buson. Perfect. Not only does the reader find a well-written story of what it is like to be so ill that even rolling over in bed is exhausting through all the stages of her gradual recovery. The story of how a common garden snail comes to be the perfect companion for here is very heartwarming. How her observations of the life of the snail send her off into researching everything she can find on snail-lore appeals to even the non-scholar. Did you know the snail has 280 teeth? and that they can drink through their ‘foot?’ You may end learning more about these small creatures but you will also understand why Issa and Buson, in addition to Elizabeth Bishop, Billy Collins, and Rainer Rilke included them into their poems. Autumn Loneliness: The Letters of Kiyoshi & Kiyoko Tokutomi translated by Tei Matsushita Scott and Patricia J. Machmiller. Hardscratch Press, 2338 Banbury Place, Walnut Creek, CA 94598. Trade paperback, 6 x 9 inches, 366 pages, ISBN:978-0-9789979-4-6, $27.50. Bay Area Independent Publishers Association awared the book “Best Memoir 2010.” From July to December, 1967, Kiyoshi Tokutomi left his wife and daughter in San Jose California to return to Japan with the hopes of finding a doctor or treatment to cure his deafness caused by medicines given for tuberculosis. When he returned to America his deafness had not improved but his wife Kiyoko had an idea how to engage his mind with his interest in language. She encouraged him to write and study haiku at the local Yukuharu Haiku Society which had its headquarters in Japan. In 1975 the couple started what later came to be called the Yuki Teikei Haiku Society. At the same time Kiyoko had joined the Japanese Haiku Group of Shugyo Takaha in Japan. The result of this configuration, Yuki Teikei Haiku Society was the only haiku organization in America that formed a direct descendent from Japanese haiku writing. While translators and enthusiastic writers in English were forming other informal schools of haiku based on monthly meetings and journals, the Yuki Teikei Haiku Society had the strongest ties to Japan. Even though Kiyoshi was totally deaf, he and Kiyoko devised methods of writing Japanese in the air to inform him of what was being said. They were a team. Kiyoshi had an upbeat attitude in spite of his weakened condition. He died in 1987, Kiyoko continued her leadership of the haiku group until her death in 2002. To honor this amazing pair, Patricia J. Machmiller, one of the pillars and supporters of the group, joined with Tei Matsushita Scott to translate the letters they had written during their separation in 1967. Their story is greater than just and exchange of letters. It is how a Japanese American, who marries a Japanese woman in post-war Japan, makes a new life in both languages and in the process founds one of America’s premier haiku groups. First Winter Rain: Selected Tanka from 2006 – 2010 by Denis Garrison. Modern English Tanka Press, www.themetpress.com. Trade paperback, 6 x 9 inches, 158 pages, ISBN: 978-193539821-9, $13.95. Order from Lulu.com. Denis Garrison first appeared on the haiku scene in 2006 when he took over editorship of the failing magazine, Haiku Harvest, for its final issue. Since then he has published and edited a series of magazines in the Japanese genres: Prune Juice for senryu, 3 x 5 for short form poetry, Modern English Tanka from which his press takes it name, Ambrosia: Journal of Haiku, and Concise Delight Magazine of Short Poetry. At present the later two are still under his editorship. In addition he has published 45 books and anthologies of haiku and tanka. In his spare time he is moderator of the Tanka forum, with Chris Hawes, at AHAforum. And he writes tanka. Denis Garrison is widely published. The credits in the back of the book attest that every poem has been previously published somewhere sometime. They read like a ‘who’s who’ of tanka magazines. So now we have a book of his own tanka. What to say? Dare I question his practice of setting each line with a capital letter? Why not? I have asked him personally about this and he claims he does it to give importance to each new line. Okay. But is that something we want to do in tanka writing? I thought tanka should not be about five separate lines but five lines of phrases and fragments that combined in various ways. In Garisson’s tanka here is rarely any end-line punctuation, aside from the occasional dash, so why start each line as if it is a sentence? Most often when I encounter line caps I judge the author to be a carry-over from Western literary forms who is unable or unwilling to understand that new ideas need to be presented in new ways. Sorry I am not convinced that his caps are a helpful idea for displaying tanka. Now that I have gotten over that quibble, we can discuss the poetry of Garrison’s tanka. He is good. He will suck you into the beauty within a couple of stanzas. He knows how to leap and makes some so wide your appreciation can only stare in amazement that he pulls it off. But he does. In that way Garrison’s tanka are very modern. And to a large extent he keeps the tanka form. 133. Mayflies You swarm and die In days – I will not pity you I am the childless one While I am quoting I want to show you the poem used to advertise the book. Denis knows it is an excellent one and I agree with him. I am a speck On this rock in this ocean Lost in endless space But for this puppy I hold I am a warm breathing world This one also touched me. These unstrung beads Each is a work of art by itself Fragments of a piece But each a thing of beauty— They know the snowflake's secret After 146 single poems, Denis Garrison presents a series of tanka sequences, strings, and even an anaphoric crown cinquain and a tanka sonnet with varying degrees of success. The man has been around the block and is widely knowledgeable. You have to expect that he will continue to experiment and thank goodness he shares his journeys with us.
	BOOK REVIEWS Home to Ballygunge: Kolkata Tanka by William Hart. Modern English Tanka Press: June, 2010. Trade paperback original, 4 ¼ x 7 inches, 72 pages, ISBN: 978-19359817-2, $11.95. Available at Lulu.com Flecks of Blue by Maya Lyubenova. Bulgarian / English Haiku. Flat-spined, 48 pages, 5 x 6 ¼ inches, 4.80 coin of that realm. Contact:mayflowerbg@yahoo.com TAKBOCT 2 /Suchness 2 by Slavko J. Sedlar. Published by Sasa Vazic. Contact: sasa vazic at vazicsasa@gmail.com. Perfect bound, 5 x 8 inches, 264 pages, ISBN:978-86-7746-216-1. Go to the Pine: Poetry in Japanese style by Izak Bouwer and Angela Sumegi. BuschekBooks, P.O. Box 74053, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Perfect bound, 6 x 9 inches, 92 pages, plus CD. CAN $17.50; USA$15. The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating by Elisabeth Tova Bailey. Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill: 2010 Hardcover with color dust jacket, 5 x 7 inches, 186 pages, ISBN:978-1-56512-606-0, $18.95. Available on Amazon.com Autumn Loneliness: The Letters of Kiyoshi & Kiyoko Tokutomi translated by Tei Matsushita Scott and Patricia J. Machmiller. Hardscratch Press, 2338 Banbury Place, Walnut Creek, CA 94598. Trade paperback, 6 x 9 inches, 366 pages, ISBN:978-0-9789979-4-6, $27.50. Bay Area Independent Publishers Association awared the book “Best Memoir 2010.” First Winter Rain: Selected Tanka from 2006 – 2010 by Denis Garrison. Modern English Tanka Press, www.themetpress.com. Trade paperback, 6 x 9 inches, 158 pages, ISBN: 978-193539821-9, $13.95. Order from Lulu.com.



	Back issues of Lynx: XV:2 June, 2000 XV:3 October, 2000 XVI:1 Feb. 2001 XVI:2 June, 2001 XVI:3 October, 2001 XVII:1 February, 2002 XVII:2 June, 2002 XVII:3 October, 2002 XVIII:1 February, 2003 XVIII:2 June, 2003 XVIII:3, October, 2003 XIX:1 February, 2004 XIX:2 June, 2004 XIX:3 October, 2004 XX:1,February, 2005 XX:2 June, 2005 XX:3 October, 2005 XXI:1February, 2006 XXI:2, June, 2006 XXI:3,October, 2006 XXII:1 January, 2007 XXII:2 June, 2007 XXII:3 October, 2007 XXIII:1February, 2008 XXIII:2 June, 2008 XXIII:3, October, 2008 XXIV:1, February, 2009 XXIV:2, June, 2009 XXIV:3, October, 2009 XXV:1 January, 2010 XXV:2 June, 2010 Submit your works to Lynx Who We Are	*Next Lynx* is scheduled for February, 2011.** Deadline for submission of work is January 1, 2011.