forced paperwhites
on a sill in my kitchen
this winter
I find myself searching
more closely for miracles

Moonbathing, Issue 7, Autumn/Winter 2012-2013

I just received the newest copy of Pamela A. Babusci’s Moonbathing: A Journal of Women’s Tanka.  Thank you, Pamela, for including my work alongside so many lovely tanka.

Day of the Dead altar by Katherine Shurlds

her altar set
for family and friends . . .
each calavera
flickering light that sparks
all of our memories

               –Margaret Dornaus

Once again, I’m privileged to share several images and small poems or calaveras (“skulls”) contributed by my friends and fellow poets for my annual Día de los Muertos posting.  Thank you all for the generosity of your contributions.  I hope you enjoy these offerings as much as I do.

–Maggie

cemetery pines
whispering among the needles
the gentlest of songs

this way and that
the oil lamp flickers–
unmarked grave

the last cigarette
before the aneurysm bursts–
pale moon

–Stella Pierides

this is no
ordinary prayer
that moves me to tears
anniversary
of my mother’s death

     –Pamela A. Babusci, The Temple Bell Stops , 2012

haiga by Cara Holman & Kirsten Cliff

 --Cara Holman, “morning mist,” Third Prize,
International Kusamakura Haiku Competition, September 2011

umbrellas open
to the sky
misty rain
across
the pink coffin

     –Pamela A. Babusci, The Temple Bell Stops, 2012

haiga by Cara Holman & Kirsten Cliff

waking
to your favorite view
of the foothills
you are never
far from me

–Cara Holman

planting a tree
in my family’s name –
generations
of Italians
etched into the bark

     –Pamela A. Babusci, AHG 1:4, 2012

disarmed
the cypress grove
bares my grief

pine sprigs—
discarded memories
on an old grave

candle drippings
on the epitaph—
a broken word

–Alegria Imperial

deep autumn . . .
walking barefoot
on my mother’s grave

–Pamela A. Babusci, White Lotus 9 (Fall/Winter, 2009)

  –Cara Holman, “winter grey,” Honorable Mention,
15th Mainichi  Haiku Contest, January 2012

autumn rain
on the stone virgin’s shoulders—
my tears

–Alegria Imperial

S imple and
E legant – this
R emembrance of
E nola
N ow and in
E ternity

             –Ellen Grace Olinger

never living up
to mother’s
expectations
now, i visit her grave
in silence

–Pamela A. Babusci, Blithe Spirit, March  2004 

a passport
stamped long ago with characters
I cannot read
the mute Pacific ocean
of your gaze

     –Jenny Ward Angyal
        Ribbons 8:1, Spring/Summer 2012

haiga by Jayashree Maniyil

tide pool clouds the ghosts of Nagasaki haunt me

–Johnny Baranski

a still lake
the evening
he stopped paddling

    –Jim Sullivan

for his ashes
blue moonlight
across the river

–Pamela A. Babusci, (In Memory of Bill Higginson),
7th Shiki Special Kukai (Toku), 2009

day of his death
a paddle of wings
forever

     –Alegria Imperial

overbright sun
the golden hills
where I left my heart

     –Cara Holman

somber madrigals
coyotes harmonizing
high on the far ridge

–Ward Chapman

my granddaughter
often mourns her dead father
in sad Facebook posts

     –Katherine Shurlds

Day of Dead altar by Katherine Shurlds

day of the dead . . .
homeboys jumpstart their
lifeless low rider

 –Johnny Baranski

If you’d like to see more of the work by these contributors,
check out the following websites:

Alegria Imperial, journales

Cara Holman, Prose Posies

Ellen Grace Olinger

Jenny Ward Angyal, The Grass Minstrel

Jim Sullivan, Haiku & Tales & Commentary

Kirsten Cliff, Swimming in Lines of Haiku

Stella Pierides

Thank you to all who’ve added their lovely voices here and helped to make my birthday a real celebration.   There’s still time (a week!) to enter your tanka here for a chance to win a copy of Modern Japanese Tanka.   I’ll keep updating this post as the moon tanka roll in through July 20 for my birthday countdown . . .

I’d also like to thank my friend Rick Daddario for sending me one of his beautiful haiga birthday cards (click on the image to see a larger version) again this year!

Rick Daddario
19planets

all day long
moving words on paper
hunting
what I meant to say—
a hazy moon

Jenny Ward Angyal
Moonbathing 5, fall/winter 2011

the frenzied dance
of moths around the light
a crescent moon
invites me
to slow down

Cara Holman

the moon is slipping
wafer strands over bare trees
their summer dressing
scattered in orange and russet
the moon and I are sisters
we wax and wane in darkness

Yousei Hime

moon child
a different face
every evening
still you come
to my light

Merrill Ann Gonzalez

Why did my DNA
mutate . . .
pacing this shoreline
my answers come bathed
in healing moonlight

Kirsten Cliff

will he watch her
being naughty tonight
through the hole
in the bamboo shade
the man in the moon

Johnny Baranski

moon sparkle
on a dew drop
at dawn
the sound of
a birthday kiss

Angelo B. Ancheta

born to
a summer moon
always yours
to hold
a firefly’s light

Andrea Grillo

summer of ’78
a fallow field at dusk
our first kiss
a flash of dancing fireflies
under a waxing crescent moon

Linda Hofke

marimba moon
the wild woman
restrained
dances herself through
my goosed flesh

Terri L. French

thunder moon
rises over the water
louder and louder . . .
the music thrums
in my blood

Aubrie Cox

oh! waning moon
riding the dark blue night
my love can you see
underneath the starry skies
does she too search for me

“just another wake up call”

creeping
out of daylight
old moon–
have you returned for the eyes
you lost on hers?

Alegria Imperial

so bright
my reflection
in the car window
the moon
smiles back

Christina Nguyen

Bali moon
you drift in and out
my thoughts . . .
as if you have the right
to keep me mesmerized

Asni Amin

I rarely gaze
at the moon,
one thing in my life
I know
will never change

Janet Lynn Davis
Simply Haiku, Autumn 2006

at the end
of a lonely day
craving
the company of the moon
he’s a faithful man

Patricia Sullivan

chrysanthemum moon
i peel off another layer
of sorrow
that nobody
will notice

Pamela A. Babusci
A Thousand Reasons, 2009

milk moon
my bare feet on this
wood floor
if I walk to the edge
will I hear your voice?

Angie Werren

new summer moon
on your birthday the mystery
of life deepens
hidden among woodland blooms
the pathway to bold journeys

John Daleiden

summer dream . . .
under the moonlit sky
your soft whispers
telling me how much
you’ve missed me

Christine L. Villa

strangers before,
strangers after the night–
you leave no footprints
on sand, only the shimmer
of sea in amber moonlight

      Sanjukta Asopa

July moon
the aesthetics
of joy
so seamlessly I hold in
the name of your rugged lips

Ernesto P. Santiago

]]> http://caraholman.wordpress.com/2012/06/16/moonbathing-issue-6/ Sun, 17 Jun 2012 02:11:54 +0000 Cara Holman http://caraholman.wordpress.com/2012/06/16/moonbathing-issue-6/ And today I received my copy of Moonbathing: a journal of women’s tanka, edited by Pamela A. Babusci. It contains wonderful tanka by some of my favorite tanka writers, and I am proud to have this one of mine included in it:

her face so small
on the pillow
I ask
how it is possible
to hold onto starlight

So, after each guest’s favorite picks, I’m sneaking in a few italicized selections, all of which I’ve collected from Bruce Ross’ Haiku Moment: An Anthology of Contemporary North American Haiku.  Feel free to take one or two or three of any of the poems you find here to stuff in your own pocket and share with someone else today.  And thanks to my friends and fellow haiku poets for sharing some of their favorites here with me.

–Maggie

Chiyo-ni from Angie Werren (feathers):

From the mind
of a single, long vine
one hundred opening lives.

Again the women
come to the fields
with unkempt hair.

What the butterfly
wants to say–
only this movement of its wings.

–Chiyo-ni

remembering the lie
     i told her
crocus in midwinter

deep in the faded wood a scarlet maple

–Nick Avis

Roberta Beary from Aubrie Cox (Yay Words!):

the cool kids
walk arm-in-arm
. . . wild narcissus

--Roberta Beary, The Heron’s Nest, vol. 4, 2008

Tea fragrance
from an empty cup . . .
the thin winter moon

–Peggy Lyles

Basho, Buson, & Kusatao from Yousei Hime (Shiteki Na Usagi):

from every direction
cherry blossom petals blow
into Lake Biwa

–Matsuo Basho

this piercing cold I feel
my dead wife’s comb, in our bedroom
under my heel . . . .

–Yosa Buson

to hold my wife
treading spring noon’s
gravel going home

–Nakamura Kusatao

          piano practice
through an open window
          the lilac

 –Raymond Roseliep

the thousand colors
in her plain brown hair–
morning sunshine

–Bernard Lionel Einbond

Issa, Shiki, & Basho from Alegria Imperial (jornales):

Just by being,
I’m here—
In snow-fall.

–Kobayashi Issa

at the full moon’s
rising, the silver-plumed
reeds tremble

–Masaoki Shiki

a cuckoo cries
and through a thicket of bamboo
the late moon shines

–Matsuo Basho

for this one moment
curve of the horned owl’s flight
above the frozen meadow 

–Elizabeth Searle Lamb

Soin from Cara Holman (Prose Posies):

Life? butterfly
on a swaying grass that’s all . . .
but exquisite!

–Nishiyama Soin

cow pasture–
beyond NO TRESPASSING
     egrets

–Kenneth C. Leibman

 Kerouac from Kirsten Cliff (Swimming in Lines of Haiku):

The taste
of rain
–Why kneel?

–Jack Kerouac

The clock
     chimes chimes and stops,
          but the river . . .

–William J. Higginson

David Caruso from Jim Sullivan (Haiku & Commentary & Tales):

the clouds the day most of his son came home

–David Caruso

another autumn
  still silent in his closet:
     father’s violin

–Nick Virgilio

Issa from Christina Nguyen (A Wish for the Sky)

in this world
we walk on the roof of hell
gazing at flowers

–Kobayashi Issa

from Ellen Olinger (Poems from Ootsburg, Wisconsin):

Earth Day
my new-blue sweater
from the thrift store

–Ellen Olinger

on the lowest shelf
jars full of
autumn sunlight 

–Anita Virgil

from Johnny Baranski:

dusky twilight
a full moon begins to fill
the empty lantern

from a moonlit stump
the frog is outsprung
by its shadow

(from his Fish Pond Moon, sunburst matchbooks 1986)

–Johnny Baranski

everything’s strange
in this boarding house
only the moon is real

–Sister Mary Thomas Eulberg

from Pamela A. Babusci:

hard rain . . .
the weightlessness
of petals

Yellow Moon (Aust.) Haiku Contest 2004, Commended

kimono
stained with love
pure moonlight

Evergreen (Japan) 12:5, May 2002

morning winds
separating the chimes
separating the notes

Northwest Literary Forum 24 (1997)

–Pamela A. Babusci

 sleepless night–
in every room
the sound of the wind

–Adele Kenny

 a barking dog
                     little bits of night
                                        breaking off

–Jane Reichhold

each waiting
for the other’s silence–
April birdsong

–Lee Gurga

Moonbathing, no. 5, Fall/Winter 2011-2012

Anyone who reads this blog on a regular basis knows that there are multiple reasons why I have a special fondness for Moonbathing, Pamela A. Babusci’s biannual journal of women’s tanka.  Pamela, a wonderful tanka poet and editor, led me to my discovery of tanka just a little over a year ago when I saw a call for submissions to her journal.  It was a call that, literally, changed my life.  When Pamela agreed to publish my first poem shortly after I began writing tanka, I was beside myself with gratitude.  Little did I know how much I would grow to appreciate and love this ancient five-line form.  Or how much I would love the feeling of community I share with other tanka writers–both male and female–whose work I respect and admire.  

It is especially gratifying, then, for me to introduce others in some small way to tanka . . . and to Moonbathing.  (I know several other poets learned of the journal here; now, their tanka are among the many beautiful poems featured in this new issue.)  To subscribe to or learn more about Moonbathing, e-mail Pamela at: moongate44@gmail.com.  I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.  I know I’m not.  And, Pamela, thank you . . .

falling leaf…

I, too, would have the Dharma

written in my veins

light of my heart

now cast upon the stream…

red maple leaf

where is the sun

when flesh falls as shadow

but there

breaking through the clouded hearts

of those who love us

dark moon…

all the poems you left

in the inkwell

~

for those we have lost… and for all who have lost loved ones this year, especially Svetlana, Paul and Pamela. It’s a small world in a universe of poetry.

Did I have any idea what I was getting myself into when I announced this topic? No, I did not. I had no idea that so many people would send me so much varied and amazing poetry about dragonflies. Just as I had no idea there were so many kinds of dragonflies until I started doing a little (okay, a lot) of research…

I’ll launch into the poetry in a minute, but first off, for those among you who like me have to know every. single. thing. there is to know. about something before you can possibly just enjoy reading about it (yes, we are annoying)… here is the Wikipedia article on dragonflies (which fascinatingly contains an entire section on the role dragonflies play in Japanese culture and even references haiku) and here is the page on dragonfly kigo from Gabi Greve’s World Kigo Database.

Okay, I’ll shut up now and let you enjoy this dream of dragonflies.

_________________________________________________________________________

.

(Photo by Jay Otto)

.

aki no ki no akatombo ni sadamarinu

The beginning of autumn,
Decided
By the red dragon-fly.

– Shirao, translated by R.H. Blyth
.

toogarashi hane o tsukereba akatonbo

red pepper
put wings on it
red dragonfly

– Basho, translated by Patricia Donegan

.

(Photo by Jay Otto)

a dragonfly lands
on a stranded paper boat…
summer’s end

– Polona Oblak, Crows and Daisies

.

within his armful
of raked leaves
this lifeless dragonfly

– Kirsten Cliff, Swimming in Lines of Haiku

.

(Artwork and poetry by Rick Daddario, 19 Planets)

dragonflies
the soft blur of time
in another land

.

(Photo by Jay Otto)

.

out of myself just briefly dragonfly

.
adding a touch
of blue to the breeze -
dragonfly
(Magnapoets Issue 4 July 2009)

.
fading light -
everything the dragonfly
has to say

– Paul Smith, Paper Moon

.

(Artwork by Amy Smith, The Spider Tribe’s Blog)

.

a crimson darter
skims the mirror-lake…
your lips on mine
tomorrow
may never come
.

twisting and turning
a dragonfly splits
a ray of light …
he says he loves me
in his own way

(Simply Haiku Winter 2011)
.

catching
the blue eye of the breeze
dragonfly

(Simply Haiku Spring 2011)

.

– Claire Everett, At the Edge of Dreams

.

(Photo by Jay Otto)

.

on the water lily
remains of a dragonfly
morning stillness

(Evergreen English Haiku, 1995)
.

from sedge
to sedge to sedge
dragonfly
.

with a few brushstrokes the dragonfly comes alive
.

autumn dragonfly
waning
like the moon
a few scarlet leaves
silently fall
.

– Pamela A. Babusci

.

(Artwork by Rick Daddario, 19 Planets)

.

Dragonfly rising
everything shining
in the wind
.

Gold dragonflies
crisscross the air in silence:
summer sunset
.

A cirrus sky
one hundred dark dragonflies
with golden wings

.

– Kris Lindbeck, Haiku Etc.

.

.

(Photo by Jay Otto)

.

The dragon-fly,
It tried in vain to settle
On a blade of grass.

— Basho, translated by R.H. Blyth
.

The dragon-fly
Perches on the stick
That strikes at him.

— Kohyo, translated by R.H. Blyth
.

the instant it flies up
a dragonfly
loses its shadow

— Inahata Teiko (1931-), translated by Makoto Ueda

.

(Artwork by Rick Daddario, 19 Planets)

.

red dragonfly
on my shoulder, what
rank do I have?
.

spiderweb down,
a damselfly touches
my lips

— Michael Nickels-Wisdom
.

born in the year
of the dragon-
fly!

— Mary Ahearn

.

(Photo by Jay Otto)

.

sunset
from the tip of my shoe
the red dragonfly

(South by Southeast 18:2)

dew on grasses
the dragonflies
are gone
.

in a wrinkle
of light
dragonfly
.

– Donna Fleischer, word pond

.

(Poetry by Melissa Allen; illustration clip art)

.

.

through and through the gate dragonfly

– Melissa Allen

.

.

coupling dragonflies
at break-neck speed—
HOT!

(Modern Haiku 35.1)

– Susan Diridoni

.

(Photo by Jay Otto)

.

on the dried husk
that was an iris blossom
black dragonfly
.

we came here
seeking solitude
the loon
the dragonfly
and the speedboat

– Christina Nguyen, A wish for the sky…

.

(Artwork by Kitagawa Utamaro: “Red Dragonfly and Locust [Aka tonbo and Inago]”, from Picture Book of Selected Insects with Crazy Poems [Ehon Mushi Erabi]). From the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City.)

.

this brief life a dragonfly
.

dragonfly
where there is water
a path
.
– angie werren, feathers

.

tombô ya ni shaku tonde wa mata ni shaku

dragonfly–
flying two feet
then two feet more

– Issa, translated by David G. Lanoue

.

(Photo by Jay Otto)

.

a break in the rain…
the stillness
of the dragonfly

– sanjuktaa, wild berries

.

dragonfly—
how much of me
do you see?

– Alegria Imperial, jornales

.

noonday heat
dragonflies slice
the still air

(South by Southeast Vol. 12 #1)

– T.D. Ingram, @haikujots (on twitter)

.

.

evening breeze
teetering on its perch
a red dragonfly



(Haiku Pix Review, summer 2011)

.– G.R. LeBlanc, Berry Blue Haiku

.

high notes
a red dragonfly skims
across the sound

– Margaret Dornaus, Haiku-Doodle

.

(Haiga by Polona Oblak, Crows and Daisies)

.

the heat
between downpours
blue dragonflies

– Mark Holloway, Beachcombing for the Landlocked

.

Steel blue flash
flies wing
drifts
– Robert Mullen

.

.

dragonfly dreams
the hospital intercom
repeats her name
.
with the password
to her sanity
darting dragonfly
.
iridescent dragonfly
hard to see
how her Ph.D. matters
.
tell me the old stories
one last time
convalescent dragonfly
.
discharge papers
the dragonfly returns home
on new meds
.
letting go of her walker
she lifts into the night sky
dragonfly
.
– Susan Antolin, Artichoke Season

.

Multimedia Interlude:

Sick of everything around here being flat and quiet?  I found some moving stuff that makes noise for you too.

• First, there’s this amazing (very) short film by Paul Kroeker of the last moments of a dragonfly’s life, which I discovered via Donna Fleischer at word pond. It’s set to music and is incredibly compelling:

http://www.petapixel.com/2011/08/11/spontaneous-and-creative-short-film-of-a-dying-dragonfly-shot-with-a-canon-7d/

• Second, there are several versions of the well-known Japanese folk song (I mean, well-known to the Japanese) Aka Tombo, which means “Red Dragonfly.” This is apparently an indispensable part of every Japanese child’s upbringing. There are an almost infinite number of variations of this on YouTube so if these four aren’t enough for you, feel free to go noodling around over there looking for more.

Female vocalists

Male vocalists

Instrumental

With upbeat dance backing track added

.

and on this general theme…

.

perched on bamboo grass
the low notes
of a dragonfly

(Haiku inspired by Tif Holmes’s Photo-Haiku Project:  http://tifholmesphotography.com/cphp/2011/07/july-2011-series-entry-11/)

– Kathy Nguyen (A~Lotus), Poetry by Lotus

.

for when even
the music stops—
dragonfly wings

– Aubrie Cox, Yay words!

.

(Photo by Jay Otto)

.

mid-morning
a dragonfly and I
bound for Mississippi
.

in and out of view
the computer-drawn dragonfly
on the web page

– Tzetzka Ilieva
.

dragonfly
at 60 miles per hour
those giant eyes

– Johnny Baranski

.

(Photo by Jay Otto)

.

first impressions
a dragonfly hovers
before landing

– Cara Holman, Prose Posies

.

.

.

.

– Linda Papanicolaou, Haiga Online

.

In this forest glade
The snail gone, a dragonfly lights
On the mushroom cap

– P. Allen

.

.

‘Oh!  Catch it!’

‘I heard they eat their own tails’

When I was a child, living on an Air Force base in Okinawa, it was a common belief, among the elementary school set, a dragonfly would eat itself if you caught it and fed it its own tail.  I looked online and didn’t find any references to this notion so maybe we were all sniffing the good Japanese glue.

Anyhow, even though we constantly snagged lizards and grasshoppers and cicadas, I never saw any one ever catch a dragonfly, as common as they were.

dragonfly
we play in the puddles
afraid to get close

– Steve Mitchell, Heed Not Steve

.

(Photo by Jay Otto)

.

dragonfly—
wings vibrating
on the rock face
(From the sequence “Ten Haiku: For the Dodge Tenth Anniversary Hike” in The Monkey’s Face)

dragonfly
on my fingernail
looks at me
(From Wind in the Long Grass, edited by William J. Higginson [Simon & Schuster, Books for Young Readers, 1991])

– Penny Harter, Penny Harter homepage,  A Poet’s Alphabestiary, Etc.

.

An old tree
No bud and no leaf
full of dragonflies.

— @vonguyenphong22 (on Twitter)

.

.

neti neti
a dragonfly hums
raga Megh
(raga Megh(a)=a raga for the monsoon season. Neti neti= a key expression from the Upanishads: “not this nor this” or “not this nor that” alluding to the essence of things.)
.

”the sky’s gone out”
on the radio – and then
a dragonfly
.

dragonfly -
I mark an unpaid bill
“later”

– Johannes S.H. Bjerg, 2 tongues/2 tunger

.

(Photo by Melissa Allen)

.

in and out the reeds
a blue dragonfly
mother keeps sewing
.

stitching
water and sky together
-       damselflies

– Paganini Jones, http://www.pathetic.org/library/5644

.

boys playing games
stones miss the darning needle

– Jim Sullivan, haiku and commentary and tales
.

dragonfly heading to the lemon hanging in the sun

– Gene Myers, genemyers.com, @myersgene (on Twitter)

.

(Artwork by Kitagawa Utamaro, “Dragonfly and Butterfly,” from A Selection of Insects)

.

bluetail damselfly
escapes the empty cottage
where children once played
(1st place Kiyoshi Tokutomi Memorial Haiku Contest 2009)
.

on the bus
to the children’s museum
first dragonfly

– Roberta Beary, Roberta Beary

.

flitting idly
from flower to flower
a blue damsel
lights upon the lotus
unfolding iridescence

— Margaret Dornaus, Haiku-Doodle

.

(Photo by Jay Otto)

.

dark waters
a dragonfly dreaming
its reflection
.

iridescent wings
the flying parts of
the dragon

– Stella Pierides, Stella Pierides
.

silhouetted dragonfly
reeds pierce the moon
(The Mainichi Daily News, May 30, 2009)

– Martin Gottlieb Cohen

In recognition of my 50th post here, and because July is my birthday month (which is, astrologically speaking, ruled by the moon), and because I like to celebrate my birthday all month long, and, oh yes, because 42 years ago, a few folks did celebrate my actual birthday by walking on the moon, I’ve decided to give away a year’s subscription to Moonbathing–Pamela A. Babusci’s journal of women’s tanka–to one lucky U.S./Canadian reader (or, half a subscription if you live outside of North America).  Really. 

If you haven’t already discovered Moonbathing, you should.   (Not that you asked for my opinion, but since it’s my birthday–well, almost–I feel entitled to give you an obviously unbiased one.)  Pamela, a wonderful poet herself,  generously provides a forum for women’s tanka through her biannual journal which comes out in January and June. 

All you have to do to enter is post a comment (or a ku or a tanka) here between now and my birthday, July 20.  After I’m through celebrating, I’ll compile a list and have my husband draw the lucky winner’s name out of my birthday hat.  (Old-fashioned, I know, but I like to keep things uncomplicated whenever possible.)  And a few months later (perhaps sooner, if you prefer), after you’ve totally forgotten about winning anything and you’re reeling from holiday overload, a copy of Moonbathing will, somehow, magically appear in your mailbox.  So?  What are you waiting for?  Let’s party!

I’m pleased to be a part of Pamela A. Babusci’s latest issue of Moonbathing, a biannual journal filled with an amazing range of women’s tanka.  I’m especially pleased to see my own five-line poem  surrounded by the poetry of women whose work I’ve come to know and admire, including: Melissa Allen; Sanjuktaa Asopa; Margaret Chula; Claire Everett; Amelia Fielden; Giselle Maya; Polona Oblak; Adelaide Shaw; and many others.  

To learn more about subscribing and/or submitting to Moonbathing, you can contact Pamela via e-mail at moongate44@gmail.com.  

               –issue #3, Moonbathing: A Journal of Women’s Tanka

I just received my copy of Pamela A. Babusci’s Moonbathing, which contains my first (above) published tanka.  I’m thrilled and humbled to have my work included in the journal, which showcases tanka by an amazing collection of women tanka poets, including: an’ya; Margaret Chula; Aubrie Cox; Patricia Lidia; Giselle Maya; Claudia C. Radmore; Kozue Uzawa; Joyce Wong; and Michele L. Harvey, a wonderful painter as well as a poet, who also won the journal’s contest for her tanka on moonbathing. 

In all, 52 poets and poems (three to a page) appear in this slim volume filled with tanka on a diversity of topics ranging from manicures and pedicures to graveside visits to love and loneliness.  For Pamela–a tanka poet herself–putting out a bi-annual journal that showcases other women tanka poets is an act of enormous generosity as well as a labor of love.  Thank you, Pamela.

To learn more about subscribing and/or submitting to Moonbathing, you can contact Pamela via e-mail at moongate44@gmail.com.  

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Dead Tree News

Contrary to my usual practice, I’m starting out this week with my section on print resources, in order to do justice to the great snail mail I’ve been receiving lately. You see, I finally got around to subscribing to a ton of print haiku journals, which I really should have done a long time ago. But better late than never.

You can’t find this stuff online, folks. I know it seems like everything is online these days, but this is a mirage. A whole world of otherwise invisible but glorious haiku (and other short poetry) awaits you if you will take the time to send a few hard-working editors a few bucks. In return, they will send you their lovely printed-on-actual-paper collections of lovingly selected poetry, in nice big fat envelopes that do not, praise the Lord/Allah/Buddha/Zeus, contain credit card solicitations.

So just this week I got bottle rockets No. 24 (brand-new), Lilliput Review #177 & 178 (from December), and Acorn No. 25 (from last fall, but new to me). Bottom line: They’re all worth it, get out your checkbook. More details:

• bottle rockets: a collection of short verse. Edited by Stanford Forrester, this snazzy-looking journal the size of a trade paperback contains copious amounts of haiku, tanka, and haibun. A few examples that stood out for me:

beginner’s mind …
an afternoon spent
with back issues

— Jennifer Gomoli Popolis

.

next to the temple
the industrial plant
swept spotless

— Michael Fessler

.

the kitchen clock
trying to keep
up w rain

— john martone

.

cicadas the itch under the cast

— Bob Lucky

.

first violets
it’s all about
staying small

— Peggy Willis Lyles

.

early snowfall
places the flakes miss
at first

— Jay Friedenberg

.

the most respect
we can show the dead
is not to tell them how it is:
the candle I lit
flickers

— Mike Dillon

.

still waiting
for an apology,
on my walking route
passing a garden
of forget-me-nots

— Charlotte DiGregorio

.

and I won’t quote the whole thing, but I enjoyed the haibun “To Wondering Eyes” by Liz Fenn (among others).

• Lilliput Review: In keeping with its name, this is a tiny (3.5″ x 4.25″) stapled-together zine-like publication. It’s edited by Don Wentworth (see also: Issa’s Untidy Hut), who sends two issues out into the world together to keep each other company, and contains not only haiku but short poems (up to 10 lines) of whatever form. A couple that especially struck my fancy (of the many, many I enjoyed):

.

From # 177:
snow flurries
yes and no
melt away
– Scott Watson
.

From #178:
at home
a full two hours
before I remove the hat
– paul m.

• Acorn: a journal of contemporary haiku: An attractive, minimalistic publication, about the size of a rack-sized paperback, printed on high-quality paper and laid out with care and lots of white space. Edited by Carolyn Hall, it contains only haiku, which is somewhat of a rarity for haiku publications, but makes for a nicely focused journal. Again, just a few of the poems that impressed me here:

.

rain all day
I carve the darkness
from a peach
— Marilyn Appl Walker
.

before I know it
my mind has changed …
whitebait shoal
— Lorin Ford

.

the cherry blossoms arrive without a god
— Gregory Hopkins
.

the need
to need
gull shrieks
— George Swede

.

a shadow under the pier
what it is
and isn’t
— Francine Banwarth

.

where does the time go squids of Wyoming
— Dave Russo
.

Arcturus
a pine cone glows
in the campfire
— Allan Burns

.

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Haiku in Ones and Zeroes

Back to the digital world. It all feels so ephemeral now, I must say. But no less worth reading for that. Here’s some posts from this week you might want to take a look at, starting with a couple about this week’s full moon, which haiku poets will never, ever be able to let alone:

• From Elissa at the haiku diary:

Stop and Glow

She gets off the bus
where I’m waiting. Time to view
the moon together.

– Elissa

• And speaking of viewing the moon: Instead of trying to pick three favorites from the entries for the January Moon Viewing Party over at Haiku Bandit Society, Bandit (and his dog Dottie) threw in the towel and found a moon haiku by Issa that’s way more worth reading than any of ours. (I also HIGHLY recommend that you watch the video here of Dottie snoring.)

a toy flute trills
a cane click-clacks…
winter moon

-Issa, translated David G. Lanoue

• From Johannes at scented dust:

stacking my coins
two for the ferryman
rest for the laundromat

– Johannes S.J. Bjerg

• From Andrew, Twitter name @coffeeperc, at jars of stars (originally posted on Twitter):
  

The swish of parting grass
as she searches
for a reason

– Andrew Rossiter/@coffeeperc

• From Tomoya Tokita via translator Fay Aoyagi at Blue Willow Haiku World, complete with fascinating translation notes:

人参を並べておけば分かるなり　鴇田智哉

ninjin o narabeteokeba wakarunari

.

if you arrange

carrots in a line

you’ll understand

– Tomoya Tokita

.

Fay’s Note:  This haiku has several ‘issues’ when it is translated; 1) it sounds like ‘a sentence,’ because there is only one image; 2) because Japanese does not use ‘subject,’ this could be ‘if I arrange…’ Even in Japanese original, a reader will not know what one will understand. About a carrot? About a poet himself? Yet, I am attracted to this haiku….

– Fay Aoyagi

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You Must Submit

This edition of the Haikuverse is going to mention Issa’s Untidy Hut a lot so you might as well get used to it. I am very excited about Don Wentworth’s upcoming new regular feature, Wednesday Haiku, for which he invites readers to send in their haiku for consideration (wednesdayhaiku AT gmail DOT com). One at a time only, folks; previously published poems okay. You’ll get a couple of copies of Lilliput Review (see above) if your poem is selected, which should be more than enough motivation for you to get something sent off to Don posthaste. As far as what qualifies as haiku, well, if you’re reading this you and Don are probably more or less on the same wavelength in that regard, but it’s still entertaining to read what he has to say on the subject:

I will not be supplying a definition of what a haiku is.  You are all big girls and boys.  I will simply say it is not what passes for haiku in the popular media; this site’s occasional patron and consummate poet/artist /curmudgeon, Ed Baker, likes to call them shorties, and I defer to that, since he doesn’t know so much more than I don’t know or am likely to ever not know.

– Don Wentworth

*
Another forum for publication that just sent out a call for submissions is MOONBATHING: A Journal of Women’s Tanka. This is a print journal that just published its third issue and is accepting submissions for Issue #4. Submission instructions: 
Send your tanka IN THE BODY OF AN E-MAIL TO: Pamela A Babusci … 
moongate44 (at) gmail (dot) com…PLEASE NO ATTACHMENTS!!! E-mail submissions only. (And oh yeah — in case this wasn’t sufficiently obvious from the journal’s title, they only accept submissions from women.)

And I know I haven’t provided much help on this blog in terms of explaining what exactly tanka are and what they do, but I’m hoping to rectify that soon because I have been writing a ton of them lately, which freaks me out a little because for a long time I had a staunch anti-tanka stance. In the meantime, a quick Google search should be able to help you out if you don’t already know what the whole tanka deal is.

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A Review. Wait, Two.

1.

Ever since I first heard about Fifty-Seven Damn Good Haiku By a Bunch of Our Friends, the brilliantly-titled collection edited by Alan Summers and Michael Dylan Welch which Michael’s press, Press Here, released at the end of last year, I have been eagerly awaiting the arrival of the first reviews. Well, here (again) is Don Wentworth, giving us the lowdown. The book sounds great, I think I’ll be whipping out my checkbook again soon. Here’s a fantastic sample of one of what Don calls “the many strong voices” among the collection’s poets:

a cloud across the sun
and suddenly
I am old

– Helen Russell

2.

The other day I was hanging out in the poetry section of my local Giant Chain Bookstore Whose Poetry Collection Is Not Exactly Stellar, But It Could Be Worse, and I came across a book called Haiku Mind: 108 Poems to Cultivate Awareness & Open Your Heart, by Patricia Donegan. I looked through it and thought that the selection of haiku was wonderful, but felt kind of “eh” about the commentary appended to each one, which seemed a little too, um, enlightening for me. (I tend not to be so much about the cultivating awareness and opening your heart, more about the cultivating skepticism and keeping an open mind. I have a slight allergy to anything mystical or inspiring.) Anyway, I ended up passing on it in favor of a couple of other books (which I brought home and instructed my husband to give me for my upcoming birthday, so I’ve already officially forgotten what they are and I can’t tell you anything about them. Yet.).

But then I read, in the Autumn 2009 edition of Modern Haiku online, a review of this book by Mark Brooks (who is, besides being the editor of haijinx, a wonderful haiku poet in his own right and also not exactly a sucker for mystical treatises). First off, I knew Mark and I were on the same wavelength as soon as I read the first sentence of the review: “I own multiple copies of books I love, that way I am unencumbered enough to gift a copy whenever one matches a friend.” I do that too, you may remember. Anyway, Mark’s in-depth analysis of what exactly was contained in the commentaries for each haiku made me reconsider my quickly-drawn impression that they were all about spiritual enlightenment — apparently there is also a significant amount of scholarly information included. As Mark says,

Every haiku includes the English text, an informed discussion, and a paragraph of biographical data. Donegan even includes the headnotes for the Japanese haiku when they exist. Reliably, case by case, Donegan the teacher enriches the material for every level of reader.

Mark further suggests that this book is a good one for sharing and explaining haiku with those who are unfamiliar with it, since it does so much to clarify and expand on each haiku. So now I’m reconsidering my decision not to buy this book — I may have to head back to Giant Chain again before my birthday. Thanks, Mark.

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Essays About Fun Stuff You May Never Have Thought About Before, Or Even If You Have You’ll Want to Read These Anyway

Not long ago I had a little discussion with someone about the phenomenon of the appearance of haiku that seem uncannily similar to other, previously published haiku, which if you’ve spent a fair amount of time reading haiku you know is not a rare phenomenon at all. (I have had the experience both of writing haiku that I later discovered were remarkably similar to other published haiku, which I’m pretty sure I had never read, and of reading haiku that I thought were remarkably similar to haiku I had written earlier.)

My thoughts on this subject kind of boil down to: Perhaps occasionally this is a matter of deliberate plagiarism, but far more often it probably involves either unconscious recall of the previous haiku, the fact that haiku poets are not always fantastically original in choosing subject matter (see also: full moon; falling leaves; crows; geese; butterflies; cherry blossoms; sunset; sunrise; snowfall; cicadas; and I could go on interminably but you get the idea), and also the fact that haiku are so short that if two poets happen to independently come up with more or less the same, slightly unusual image, that image will take up enough of the space of their separate poems that they will give a strong impression of being more or less the same poem.

In his very interesting essay “Some Thoughts on Deja Ku” (which is a great name for this phenomenon), Michael Dylan Welch gives many examples of uncannily similar haiku and explores what he thinks is the reason for the similarity in each instance (or asks the reader to speculate on the reason). He explores the topic in much more depth than I have here and it’s well worth a read.

*

Here’s another interesting essay from Modern Haiku, this one not a review but a scholarly examination, by Paul Miller, of the work of Japanese haiku poet Ban’ya Natsuishi, specifically his well-known series of “Flying Pope” haiku. (I originally heard about this essay while eavesdropping on a Facebook conversation about Michael Dylan Welch’s entertaining series of “Neon Buddha” haiku, which were partly inspired by the Flying Pope, and which are also briefly considered in Miller’s essay.)

This essay, too, has a great first line: “As more and more modern Japanese haiku arrive at our shore, it is worthwhile to look closer at some of them before fully stamping their passports.” This sets the tone for Miller’s essay, which is respectful of much of Ban’ya’s work while remaining skeptical that all of it is effective or even particularly comprehensible. Falling squarely in the Japanese gendai tradition, haiku such as those about the Flying Pope, which often use language in non-straightforward ways and present confusing, incongruous images, frequently bemuse and infuriate Westerners (and I’m not claiming always to be an exception to this trend). As Miller says tartly,

[I]f all the reader is looking for is clever juxtapositions or clever wordplay, then randomly picked words/images from a dictionary will suffice—and the poet is not needed. Poets are needed to convey some sense of purpose to the chosen images, and in doing so they need to be conscious of the readers. Many modern Japanese haiku do not seem to do this, and one has to wonder how Japanese editors parse such mysterious verses for publication.

Miller goes on to discuss in more detail what qualities he feels makes for effective haiku, including examples from both classical and modern Japanese haiku and modern English language haiku such as Welch’s. Most centrally, Miller feels that “a successful haiku is one that moves from the known to the unknown. The shift from realism to strangeness can be an exciting adventure, but it can also be a risk…” I find this idea fascinating, and if you agree with me, you will certainly want to read all of Miller’s excellent essay.

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The News in Haiku

NOTE (2/9/11): HNA 2011′s final resting place is Seattle, Washington. The conference will take place from August 3-7. Details at the above link or at the HNA website.

You may remember that a while back I featured a news story about the moving of next summer’s Haiku North America conference from Decatur, IL to Rochester, NY. Well, the latest news out from conference organizers Garry Gay, Paul Miller, and Michael Dylan Welch is this:

“Regretfully, Rochester, New York will not be able to host Haiku North America in 2011. Since the conference is such an important part of the haiku tradition in North America, and because so many poets, scholars, and editors look forward to the biennial event, work is underway to quickly find a suitable replacement location. We plan to have more news shortly.“

This is unfortunate and must be very frustrating for the conference organizers. I wish them luck in quickly finding another hosting site. (Hint: Madison, Wisconsin is lovely in July …)

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So wait a minute …. wasn’t this supposed to be a short one? How does this keep happening? Someday I’m going to go too far and find myself out in some part of the Haikuverse that’s previously unexplored, having forgotten my GPS, maps, and compass, and with no one around, not even a dreamy, impractical haiku poet, to ask for directions…

This must stop! Just you wait and see, next time I will be positively terse. Terse, I’m telling you! You won’t even recognize this as the same column!

(You can start the betting pool now on how likely you think this is. Don’t worry, I won’t be offended.)