Lilliput Review: the 20th Anniversary

Click on the cover to enlarge

Somehow, the day has arrived: it is the month of March and, incredulously, it is the 20th anniversary of Lilliput Review. I made (or perhaps that's dreamed) big plans for this moment. An anthology chapbook or, better still, a "best of" Lilliput, the first 20 years, a collection that another, adventurous press would be willing to take the risk and publish.

All of which I haven't taken step one toward.

Publishing the magazine and its imprint, Modest Proposal Chapbooks, got in the way. An impromptu haiku contest, prompted by an unexpected comment to a post about Bashô, resulted in the first annual Bashô Haiku Challenge, and a chapbook of the best work resulted (more about this below). I fell behind in getting the new issues out. There were piles of submissions to attend to. I got mixed up with Facebook and the wonderful deluge that's resulted.

To put it simply I was just too damn busy to do another thing. Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans, as the cliché goes.

And I wouldn't have it any other way.

So, for now, this post will serve as a celebration.

Lilliput started on the floor of a bungalow at the Jersey shore, amidst books and sand and ubiquitous crickets, me on my knees, cutting and pasting little bits of paper on to other little bits of paper. It was inspired by other small press publications that took that term very literally, such as Pig in a Pamphlet and This is Important. As a regularly published poet in the little magazines in the 80's, it seemed a good way to tap into the creative juices when my own poetry would hit a wall. I received the support of many other small mags, that helped to get the word out and the mag afloat. The camaraderie of the small press, which is a blessed thing and continues to this day, is something I cherish.

The first "issue," which I put together in March 1989, was essentially a test run to see if I could actually do it and what it might look like if I did. For the test run, I printed up 10 copies of 7 of my poems in a 4.25 x 5.5" format which was to be the size for the first 8 issues, before switching over to the current 3.5 x 4.25." The cover is pictured above. I won't burden you with any of the work, which was in a slightly surreal style I was sporting at the time and, though I remember it fondly and still fall back on some its stylistic anomalies, is frankly painful to read beyond the circle of two it was intended for. Succinctly put, this was a set of poems for the woman I was dating who, happily, I married. Since I seem to be bandying about clichés, I'll avoid the next one and just say she's been there with me since the beginning and her understanding, care and support have been as important as any other element to make this work. It also helps that she's spent time as a proofer and has a high tolerance for bs.

You'll notice that the original title was Lilliput Revue. The title change came with issue #2, not because I wanted to change it, but because the artist, Bobo, incorporated a "new spelling" into the artwork for the cover and I didn't have the heart to ask him for a redraw. There is much to be said for serendipity and going with the flow. Here's the cover:

Well, appropriately enough, that's the short version of the 1st 20 years. Let the party begin. I intend to celebrate all year. I'm happy to say that the entire run of 168 issues is still in print and still available. The standard rate of 15 issues for $10 is applicable; however, if anyone is interested in the entire run, query me for special pricing. The email address is at the bottom of the right hand column. If there is any publisher out there that thinks a 20th anniversary collection of the best of Lilliput makes a lot of sense, I'm listening. Meanwhile, it's time to keep on keeping on. There's lots more to do.

This past weekend, I'm happy to announce, the contributor copies of the Basho Haiku Challenge Anthology went out and should begin arriving in a mailbox near you. The chapbook, which contains 25 poems by 19 poets, is now available for $3.00, postage paid. It far surpassed my expectations and I believe any regular reader of Lillie will find much to ponder over and enjoy.

In addition, yesterday the contributor copies of issues #167 and 168 went out in the mail. Over the next couple of weeks I'll be getting out the full run of subscription copies. Individual copies of both are available for $1.00 a piece.

The same price as it was going for in 1989.

Finally, if it's Tuesday, it's back issue archive day. In the inexorable march back in time, this week we arrive at October 1993. This issue, #49, was the second of two All Women issues. Here's a sampling of what you'll find there. Enjoy.





Cover me
I'm going out
to write
a poem. Keep
firing
over my head.

Karen Alkalay-Gut

Where once they lined up

according to size, your words come
muzzled, rushing straight out of
colonial history, Master

and slave.

Gayle Elen Harvey

Empowered

is to be filled with a tank of yes

seeing behind the light of morning stars

a readiness in veins, singing through
--bone and sinew

it is all I ever wanted and didn't want
--rolled into a tight cigarette
--smoked at the end of the day

-----------------Vogn

Always

I'll keep writing
these poems
in the dark
pretending you're
near me rain falling
on my lips this flower
budding for no other
girl somewhere
inside me
a song you'll
never understand

Gina Bergamino

Quasimodos

Because we are deaf and hear stone
we make the most unbearably beautiful music.

Lorene Moore

After Forgiveness

you only come
when trees lift their branches
to kiss my wounds

Vogn

Resurrection

If there is to be a second
coming I wish it would
be Chagall

Suzanne Bowers

Fairy Tales

An ever-ever land
where happy endings
hurtle off the pages
into the emergency wards
of
our lives.

Janet Mason

best,
Don

Masaoka Shiki and the World When You Were Looking the Other Way

This past week at the library, I picked up and read Selected Poems by Masaoka Shiki. Shiki is one of the 4 cornerstone's of classic haiku (aka one of the 4 master poets), the others being Basho, Issa, and Buson. In the past, I've enjoyed Shiki's work in anthologies but had not run across a collection I was enticed by until this one, so I thought I'd give it a try. This collection is translated by the always fine purveyor of Eastern literature Burton Watson.

Shiki is the most recent of the big four haikuists, born in 1867 and dying in 1902. In his succinct introduction, Watson sketches out the life, the work, and its historical importance without ever deviating into the academic. As some folks may know, haiku (or hokku) was originally the first verse of the longer renga form. According to Watson, what Shiki did

"... first of all was to establish the haiku as completely separate from the renga, a poetic form fully capable of standing on its own. To emphasize this step he rejected the older term hokku, as well as haikai, another term by which the form was known in earlier times, and replaced them with the designation haiku.

It was thought that 17 syllables was to0 brief a form to be considered seriously, but Shiki maintained and went on to prove that its very brevity was its strength. Though haiku up to this time was generally thought to be the first verse of the linked renga form, of course Basho, Buson, and Issa had used it independently and helped establish its individual predominance. Shiki helped to codify its importance and almost single-handedly revived haiku, which has since become one of the world's most predominant forms. We have Shiki to thank for this reformation and the resultant burgeoning of haiku.

One of the things I found most appealing about Shiki's own work is that he, for the most part, rejected literary allusions, puns, and wordplay, as Watson points out. Some of the cultural difficulty that I experienced in the work of Basho falls away as a result and, so, in my view, the work overall connects more easily for modern, non-Japanese readers. This is not to say I like Shiki better than Basho per se, just that his work is on the whole more accessible.

Watson translates Shiki's work in three forms: haiku, tanka, and kanshi. Watson translates 144 of the over 20,000 haiku he wrote. I marked 16 down of special interest and found enough that grabbed me that I will seek out other collections (there must be others worth reading of the 19,800 plus that Watson didn't translate). 2 of the 33 tanka he translated were enjoyable and I didn't connect with any of the 4 kanshi, though they all had things to recommend them. Here's a brief selection from the 16 haiku.


*****************************************************


A carp leaps up,
crinkling
the autumn moonlight

Poppies open,
and the same day
shatter in the wind

To ears
muddied with sermons,
a cuckoo

After I squashed
the spider -
lonely night chill

For me, who go,
for you, who stay behind -
two autumns

Year-end housecleaning -
gods and buddhas
sitting out on the grass

Working All Day and into the Night to Clear Out My Haiku Box

I checked
three thousand haiku
on two persimmons

Crickets -
in the corner of the garden
where we buried the dog

They've cut down the willow -
the kingfishers
don't come anymore

*****************************************************


Also this week, there are lots of tidbits of interest, gathered from here and there. Here's a poem from Albert Huffstickler, from somewhere that no doubt would have bemused him.

As noted recently by Ron Silliman, The Outlaw Book of American Poetry is on google books almost in its entirety. In my capacity as a standard mucky-muck at my place of employment, I have to note that a ton of google book previews seem to contain nearly the entire book, with a few pages blocked here and there. Amazing, scary, and exhilaritating all at once. One way to kick that Robitussin jones, I guess.

At The Ultra-Mundane, a gentlemen by the name of R. Alan is reading In Watermelon Sugar by Richard Brautigan, chapter by chapter. I haven't gotten used to his voice, but here it is if you'd like to give it a try.

Here's an extended take on Thomas Hardy's early novel Under the Greenwood Tree that I put together for a post at my day job for those so inclined. Regular readers of The Hut will remember I briefly mentioned when I was reading this in a previous post.

Courtesy of Poetry and Poets in Rags here is a timely posting of "Let America Be America Again" by Langston Hughes at World Changing. Powerful as well as timely.

Mary Karr's Poet's Choice column this week has a very resonant poem on dying sparrows by Brenda Hillman entitled "Partita for Sparrows." I haven't connected as often with Karr as with her predecessors at the Poet's Choice column, but I'm warming to her and think she's found a diamond (or, at least, a shiny, tinsely thing to start a nest with) in the post-modern poetry rough with this one.

This week's sampling of poems from Lilliput Review comes from #68 (replete with the nifty title "Geomorphology for Poets" - what was I thinking, you may ask), from April 1995. Enjoy.

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Cabin

Sleet,
winter's intricate crystal calculus

Earl Grey tea. Good fire in the stove

Out-of-season fly
lights on poster of the Milky Way.

Mark Blaeuer

Tel Aviv

They are sitting next to each other
at the bus stop.
The old woman who in Germany
was 897876421
and the young girl with a blue butterfly
on her bare shoulder.

We are witnesses, my daughter and I.

Karen Alkalay-Gut

At the Hoh River

The river slides by like a column of bells.
Our marriage is now a week old.
You smile and ask me to guess
in which hand you hide the moon!

Scott King

from the mountaintop

if a monday evening
drive home from work
in traffic is no
place for a sudden
illumination
then,
fuck you,
neither is this place.

Andrew Urbanus

Senryu

----even -if all the others
are running, if you walk to heaven
----you'll still be there in time.

Harland Ristau

¶ and the homeless, the truly homeless
-are we
-who separate ourselves
-from the rest of it
-w/ walls

scarecrow

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The new issues, #'s 165 and 166, should begin shipping in about a week. Also, a new Modest Proposal Chapbook, #19, entitled The Turning Year: Japanese Nature Poems, translated by Dennis Maloney and Hide Oshiro from 100 Poems by 100 Poets, and a companion volume to Unending Night, will be forthcoming very soon.

best,
Don