Hyakunin Isshu: 100 Poems by 100 Poets (Unicorn Press)

The term of "print on demand" has radically changed in recent years (or should I say months) and the idea that it has revolutionized publishing has been proudly touted and summarily decried from cubicles and garrets all over the world.  Not surprisingly, what might be thought of as the original idea of print on demand has taken something of a backseat.

Looking back at that original idea might just be instructive for the future of publishing, particularly poetry publishing.

All of this is by way of an intro to a new translation of the Japanese classic waka anthology, Hyakunin Isshu: 100 Poems by 100 Poets, by Dennis Maloney and Hide Oshiro, published by Unicorn Press. In the introduction, Dennis mentions that through the years there have been a dozen or so English translations, most of them being woefully out of date.  He also notes that, along with this new translation, there are also two others of recent vintage to compare and enjoy.

The story of this truly classic anthology is well-known.  It was compiled by Fujiwara no Teika and consists of one hundred waka by one hundred different poets.  The poems are in a rough chronological order, from the 8th to the 12th century, and as such represent something of a snapshot of Japanese court poetry.  It is one of the most famous anthologies of poetry of all time and Maloney and Hideo Oshiro have brought their considerable skills to task in this slim volume.

As you may see from the illustrations above and below, each copy of this title is handmade, handmade as in the original print on demand handmade, and Dennis Maloney tells me that they are produced a few at a time and no two are exactly the same.  If you look closely at the back cover, you'll see the backing used in the "production" of this copy is the cover of an Amy's vegetarian meal.

Unicorn Press recycles.

In fact, Unicorn Press is famous in American small press history.  Longhouse  has a catalogue of many of their famed items for sale, some of them now quite pricey.  This is a catalogue of Unicorn titles through the years via a ISBN finder website.  The following is a brief interview with Alan Brilliant of Unicorn Press:

For a wonderful, in-depth interview with Brilliant, which will fill in some of the history of the small press in America, check out Farrago's Wainscot.

I have a serious bias when it comes to this book and I'll state it plainly: two of the volumes in the Modest Proposal Chapbook series are thematic selections that Dennis made from the manuscript before publishing the collection in its entirety with Unicorn: Unending Night: Japanese Love Poems & The Turning Year: Japanese Nature Poems.   

That being said, it was real pleasure to receive this wonderful little item in the mail and to sit down with all 100 poems in a new translation for the first time.  Here is a small selection of a few of my favorites .

The mountain pheasant's tail

trails long behind

- longer still

my loneliness 

in the endless night.

Kakinomoto no Hitomaro

Like the wild swirling patterns

dyed into cloth from the north, 

my love thoughts

are becoming tangled

because of you.

Kawara no Sadaijin

My heart is torn

since I've not seen you.

Like the tidemark in Osaka Bay

I measure my life

waiting to meet you again.

Prince Motoyoshi

The people of my native village

have changed after many years,

but at the gate

the fragrance

of plum blossoms remains.

Ki no Tsurayuki

My sleeves never dry,

like the rocks

beneath the sea

never seen,

even at low tide.

Lady Nijo

If you'd like to get a unique copy of your very own, here is the info you need.  The price is $12.50 (+ 2.50 shipping) to be mailed to: 

Unicorn Press, Inc.

1206 Grove Street

Greensboro, NC 27403-3410

The poetry is timeless and the craftsmanship unique.  I'm sure you'll enjoy it.

------------------------

This week's selection from the archives comes from Lilliput Review, #148 and is by the very fine poet of the short form Dorothy McLaughlin, whose work has graced the pages of Lillie many times over the years.  Here is one of her little beauties:

leaving home

leaving the shadow

of home

Dorothy McLaughlin

at your house
the sparrow, too
makes a home

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

PS  Get 2 free issues    Get 2 more free issues     Lillie poem archive

Send a single haiku for the Wednesday Haiku feature.  Here's how.

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Hear 'em all at once on the the LitRock Jukebox

Subscribe to Lilliput Review

Some Thoughts of R. H. Blyth

 Monkey by Tōhaku

It's been over three years since I speculated that it would take me awhile to read and report back on the 4 volume colletion of Haiku by R. H. Blyth and it seems I was right.

That's some delay.

Over those years, volume 1 has sat next to my bed, moving up and down the immediate pile of books to be read, occasionally picked up, dipped into, and very much enjoyed.  Lately, I've been reading a section on haiga and haiku.  Having to lead two groups over the last two weeks through appreciation of haiku sessions, I was particularly attentive to the following:

What Bashō wanted to do, however, was to condense without heaviness, to refine without dilettantism, to philosophize without intellection.  This he could find done in pictures already.

When you are working on trying to communicate a cogent definition of haiku to folks new to the form, you pay attention when you run across a statement like this.  Further on, as Blyth sums up his thoughts on haiga and haiku,  he notes that roughness and humor are two admirable qualities of haiga.  He continues:

The insistence on the fact that humour is to be seen everywhere, under all circumstances, which is the special virtue of haiku, is also the distinguishing quality of haiga, and one which keeps it most closely connected with this world and this life.  Art comes down to earth; we are not transported into some fairy, unreal world of pure aesthetic pleasure.  The roughness gives it that peculiar quality of sabi (Ed. note: B's emphasis, not mine) without age; unfinished pictures, half-built houses, broken statuary tell the same story.  It corresponds in poetry to the fact that what we wish to say is just that which escapes the words.  Haiku and haiga therefore do not try to express it, and succeed in doing what they have not attempted.

Here are two of  Bashō's poems, as translated by Blyth, from volume 1 of his Haiku:



        Yield to the willow
All the loathing, all the desire
        of your heart.





         In the midst of the plain,
Sings the skylark,
         Free of all things.



---------------------------------------------


We all sit and wait and pray over developments in Japan.  There will be another post from Scott Watson in Sendai tomorrow. 

For now, this week's featured poem comes from Lilliput Review #143, June 2005.  It is a translation of a Japanese classic.

We wait and hope.

A spring day
filled with tranquil light.
Cherry blossoms,
why are you
falling so restlessly.

Ki-no Tomonori
translated by Dennis Maloney and Hide Oshiro

without you--
how vast
the cherry blossom grove

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

PS  Get 2 free issues     Get 2 more free issues     Lillie poem archive

Send a single haiku for the Wednesday Haiku feature.  Here's how.

Go to the LitRock web site for a list of all 94 songs
Hear 'em all at once on the the LitRock Jukebox

Subscribe to Lilliput Review

On the Scented Breeze: Yosano Akiko

"Modest Proposal Chapbook" #21 is just out. It is a selection of the work of Japanese poet Yosano Akiko, entitled On the Scented Breeze, translated by Dennis Maloney and Hide Oshiro. For those unfamiliar with this marvelous poet, here is info from Dennis:

Yosano Akiko (1878-1942) is admired as the greatest woman poet and tanka poet of modern Japan. Akiko infused her poems with an erotic and imaginative passion at a time when traditional poetry had grown lifeless and conventional.

In addition to Midaregami or Tangled Hair, from which this selection of poems is taken, Akiko published over 75 books including over 20 of original poetry, as well as novels, essays, fairy tales, children’s stories, an autobiography, and translations. She was a leader and strong supporter of the women’s rights movement in Japan.

Yosano Akiko transformed tanka poetry, instilling life in what had become a relatively stilted, tired form. Many well known translators have rendered her work, including Kenneth Rexroth, Sanford Goldstein, and Sam Hamill. On the Scented Breeze is a modest selection of 29 of some of her most moving, powerful tanka, translated in a clear precise lyrical manner that heightens this power. Here is a selection of 5 poems from this excellent collection:




Did we part
yesterday
or a thousand years ago?
Even now I feel
Your hand on my shoulder.

Goodbye my love
For a night at Fuzan spring
I was your wife.
Now until the end of the world
I demand that you forget me.

Spring so short,
In what can we
Find immortality?
I let his hands fondle
My vigorous breasts.

Poet, sing of this night
Alive with lights and
The wine served.
Our beauty pales
next to the peony.

God of fate, echo of my life.
This last world of mine
Please listen to
The notes of my koto
Played with an ax.

As with all "Modest Proposal Chapbooks," On a Scented Breeze is a $3.00, including shipping. If you'd like a copy, details to send along payment may be found here.


-------------------------------------------------------------------


This week's Lilliput archive poems, a pair, come from issue #141, January 2005, and are seemingly two sides of that same old coin:

bright red tulips
almost touch his name
spring rain

Joyce Austin Gilbert

May morning ...
sunlight fitting itself
around each blade of grass

Dorothy McLaughlin

blades of grass--
swallows start arriving
so pretty

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

Santoka: Some Further Translations

Last month, I did a post for which Scott Watson allowed me to share some of his thoughts on translation, along with 5 of his excellent renderings of the work of Santoka. In response, in order to prompt to continued thought and, perhaps, even talk on the subject, Charlie Trumbull sent along some translations of the same poems from his ongoing Haiku Database project. I asked him for more info on the project and he sent it, kindly granting permission to reprint the overview here:

The Haiku Database Project

A

while ago I was in the library looking for the text of a certain poem and was grateful for those anthologies that featured a first-line index of the contents. I had the thought that it would be wonderful to have a first-line or subject index of the best English-language haiku. But then, I continued, since haiku are so short, why not a full-text index? And while we’re at it, since we’re effectively talking only about 40 years of English haiku activity, why not a comprehensive, inclusive database?

The Haiku Database in an attempt to do just that: to put into a searchable, sortable, electronic database all important haiku that have appeared in English. I began working on the project in September 1998 and so far (end of June 2010) have captured almost 220,000 haiku. An unscientific guess is that the total number of English haiku published in the journals, anthologies, and individual collections is about twice that number. The Database grows at a rate of more than 20,000 haiku a year.

I began — because it was easy — by copying materials from on-line haiku sites and journals, including Dogwood Blossoms (the first Internet haiku journal), the Shiki Internet Haiku Salon biweekly kukai, Dhugal Lindsay’s Web site (which includes a few issues of Futoh), the wonderful sites constructed by Jane Reichhold, ai li, Elizabeth St Jacques, Randy Brooks, John Hudak, and others. Next, I targeted the major English-language anthologies, and have so far included Cor van den Heuvel’s The Haiku Anthology (all three editions), Bruce Ross’s Haiku Moment, Jim Kacian’s annual Red Moon Anthologies (1996–2008) and the first five volumes in the New Resonance series (1999–2007), the San Francisco, Canadian, Australian, and two New Zealand anthologies, the British Haiku Hundred and Iron Book of Haiku, Zoe Savina’s huge international anthology, and many others.

Journals and individual collections are next. I have finished entering systematically the full runs of a few journals including American Haiku, Haiku West, Haiku Quarterly (Arizona), Woodnotes, Black Bough, South by Southeast, Acorn, Still, and Frogpond, and have begun working on Modern Haiku, Cicada, Dragonfly, Blithe Spirit, and Brussels Sprout. As for Internet sources, the Database includes Reflections, Haiku Light, The Heron’s Nest, Tinywords, Roadrunner, and Simply Haiku as well as much material from the English-language haiku columns in Japanese newspapers such as Mainichi and Asahi.

The Database focuses on haiku in English, but translations into English are also included. The Database now includes the contents of first three volumes of R.H. Blyth’s Haiku, as well as all of his two-volume History of Haiku. All the Peter Pauper haiku books have been extracted, as has the first volume of Toshiharu Oseko’s Bashô’s Haiku and many other translations into English of Japanese haiku. David Lanoue’s astonishing online database of Issa’s work was added at the end of 2007. Important individual collections are being captured as well, including Jane Reichhold’s massive Dictionary of Haiku (both the print and on-line editions; more than 4,800 haiku), Richard Wright’s Haiku: This Other World, and Jack Kerouac’s Book of Haikus.

Criteria for inclusion of a haiku are basically that it should have appeared in print (or in an online journal) in English. A few haiku in other languages are included, some translated, some not; these may form the core of a non-English haiku database some time in the future. Verses included as part of haiga or haibun are included if, in our opinion, they can stand alone as independent haiku. Except for the hokku, verses of renku are generally not included, nor generally are rengay, tanka, cinquains, and the like. In the case of concrete poems and short verses of haiku length, we generally try to be inclusive rather than exclusive. Children’s haiku are included, but gathering them is a low priority.

Data collected for each haiku include the text (including as much of the formatting as possible), the author, publication history, date of composition (or, more commonly, date of first publication), and notes. For haiku translated from languages other than English, notably Japanese, the original text (in the original orthography and in a romanized version, if applicable), the name of the translator, and date of translation are also included. These data permit searches on specific kigo and comparisons of various translations of a haiku by, say, Bashô, even when the English texts are very different. Other fields in the database assist in sorting by season, season words, attributes (e.g., rhyme), etc.

The purpose of The Haiku Database is to make it easier for serious students to locate and study haiku — i.e., it is a finding tool. So far the database has proved useful to poets wishing to check the originality of their own work and in a few cases has helped identify cases of plagiarism in haiku contests. It has been useful for authors writing about haiku, preparing newspaper columns or journal articles, and compiling anthologies to have at hand large selection of examples, together with original publication information.

Clearly, any sort of commercial use or making the database freely available—e.g., on the Web—is out of the question, and I will not publish any raw search data. I would, however, like to make the existence of this resource known and make the search capability available to others in the haiku community. Please let me know if you are looking for a specific haiku or want to know what use has been made of, for example, “pampas grass” or “Christmas” in haiku. Within reason, I’ll be happy to run a search for you.

The poems that follow are in the order of the original post as translated by Scott Watson. I haven't reproduced Scott's renderings again as it isn't a question, in my mind (nor, I believe, Charlie's either), which one is better or worse etc. It is simply a further glimpse into the mind of the original poet, Santoka; more takes on his language, imagery, and thought. It is a way to expand our understanding and further the conversation. As Cid Corman said

Poetry is that
conversation we could not
otherwise have had.

Cid Corman
Lilliput Review, #103

落ち葉ふる奥深く御仏をみる
ochiba furu oku fukaku Mihotoke o miru

Dead leaves fall, in the depth, I see the Buddha

Hiroaki Sato, Cicada 2:3 (1978)



Fallen leaves
Deep in the forest
I see a Buddha.

John Stevens, Santôka, Mountain Tasting #223; different format with translator not given, in Simply Haiku [Web] 3:3 (autumn 2005)




空襲警報るいるいとして柿あかし
kûshû keihô ruirui to shite kaki akashi

The air-raid alarm
Screaming, screaming;
Red persimmons.

John Stevens, Santôka, Mountain Tasting #160; different format with translator not given, in Simply Haiku [Web] 3:3 (autumn 2005)




死人とりまく人々に雲もなきそらや
shinin torimaku hito-bito ni kumo mo naki sora ya

no other translations




うれしいたよりもかなしいたよりも春の雪ふる
ureshii tayori mo kanashii tayori mo haru no yuki furu

Good news,
Bad news;
Spring snow falls.

John Stevens, Santôka, Mountain Tasting #215




しぐるるや死なないでゐる
shigururu ya shinu naide iru

Cold winter rain;
I am still alive.

R.H. Blyth, Blyth, History of Haiku II:181





Downpour, dead I’m not

Hiroaki Sato, Cicada 2:1 (1978)





Winter shower I'm still not dead

Hiroaki Sato, Santôka, Grass and Tree Cairn, 7





late autumn rain;
not yet dying

and

late autumn rain;
yet not dying

Stephen Wolfe, Wolfe, "Wreath of Weeds," 219






It’s drizzling,
Here I am,
Still alive.

Hisashi Miura and James Green, Selected Haiku from Sômokutô


For further info on the Haiku Database Project, you may contact Charles Trumbull at:


trumbullc AT comcast DOT net (all one phrase, with AT standing in for @ and DOT standing in for .)


----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


This week's featured poem comes from Lilliput Review, #145 and, since this post has been about translation, what can be more fitting than this little tanka, from the seminal 100 Poems by 100 Poets collection (a full translation of which may be found here):

The mountain pheasant's tail
trails long behind
–longer still
is my loneliness
in the unendingly long night.

Kakinomoto-no Hitomaro
translated by Dennis Maloney & Hide Oshiro

completing
the green mountain
a pheasant cries

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

The Turning Year, WCW, & a Free 6 Issue Subscription to Lilliput Review

The first batch of new issues for subscibers went out this week and I am hopeful that the rest will follow over the next few weeks. Also announced is the publication of chapbook Number 19 in the Modest Proposal series, entitled The Turning Year: Japanese Nature Poems, translated by Dennis Maloney and Hide Oshiro.

The Turning Year is a companion volume to Unending Night: Japanese Love Poems, both of which are drawn from the classic 100 Poems by 100 Poets (Hyakunin Isshu). Both of these collections take a unique subject approach to a Japanese poetic classic and allow the reader to contemplate both the individual poems and their cultural milieu from distinctly unique perspectives. Those familiar with Dennis's translations of Yosano Akiko and others, both from this blog and as published in Lilliput Review, know that he stays true to the original while bridging the gaps from both classical and modern Japanese to modern English. His smooth, imagistic style is at once lyrical and economic, admirable qualities perfectly suited to the source material. Along with Hide Oshiro, they have put together a fine collection of nature poems that should entice anyone with even a casual interest in Eastern verse. Here are a few examples:

Beyond sight my thoughts
turn to Kasuga temple
near my home
where above Mt. Mikasa
the same moon shines.

Abe-no Nakamaro

At this place along the road,
the known and unknown
come and go,
meet and part again,
passing through the Osaka gate.

Semimaru

On this sudden trip to Takuke shrine
I bring no prayer offering;
God of the mountain path
please accept the brocade
of maple leaves surrounding us.

Kwanke

The Turning Year is a 19 page chapbook and sells for $3.00, postpaid. In a web-only publication launch, I'm offering the two volumes, The Turning Year and Unending Night, for $5.00 postpaid. For further information, email me at "lilliput review at gmail dot com".

In poetry info this week, it is Anne Sexton's birthday. She is a modern American favorite of mine and here she is reading her poem "Her Kind." This week the Best American Poetry Blog featured a posting on another personal favorite, Richard Brautigan. I'm not sure I agree with their contention that his poetry was not successful in his lifetime; I can't think of too many poets at the time who were more read than Brautigan but hey, maybe, all those funny mood altering whatzits beclouded me already fuzzy noggin. In any case, the posting reprints his "Your Catfish Friend," which seems to be hands down one of his most popular poems circa Internet 2008.

In small press news, a place called "The Shop" is featuring Vox Audio for sale, which includes readings by small press giants Todd Moore and Albert Huffstickler. I'm curious about the Huff reading, which is listed as taking place in Austin and Bisbee, Arizona. If anybody knows anything about this one, drop me a line. Another poetic favorite, Miriam Sagan, was recently interviewed by Patricia Prime for Haibun Today. Miriam has published frequently in Lilliput and is the author of The Future Tense of Ash, another Modest Proposal Chapbook. Congratulations are in order for Alan Catlin, whose book Effects of Sunlight in the Fog, is number 20 on the Small Press Distribution Poetry Bestseller list, eking out the fashionably happening Tao Lin.

Finally in poetic news, William Carlos Williams' granddaughter has put out and appeal for folks to vote for WCW for the New Jersey Hall of Fame. Bruce is in already, so maybe it's time for someone a tad more lyrical. Williams is listed under the general category (Walt Whitman is listed under history - I'm wondering if there isn't going to be some nasty vote splitting there). You don't have to be politically minded or even from Jersey to vote and though they ask for your name, you can always dust off your old nom de plume if need be. Nobody is checking. If you are strategizing, you may want to tone down the Abbott and Costello vote - only two folks get in across all the categories so if you vote for other famous folks ... well, you get the idea.

Art by Bobo

This week's tour of the Lillie archive brings us to issue #67 from April 1995. Ah, that simpler time of the Contract of America, the Oklahoma City bombing, and the seemingly ubiquitous Unabomber. Ya know, come to think of it, the 90's had a kind of 80's feel without all that hair. Here's what was happening in this little world of the short poem.



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

old fishing village
-----caught
---------in morning mist

Patrick Sweeney

A Woman

A woman standing
under the pier with her
back to me, staring
out at the ocean.

The water that slides
up the beachface stops
at her feet. I fall
in love every day.

Andy Fogle

One Idea

The music of the night
Calls me to come out
Where insect voices sing
Of universal peace
And annihilation as one idea.

B. Kim Meyer

Rage

The rope that ties
its own knots.

H. Edgar Hix

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



Finally, here is Brobdingnag Feature Poem #27 by Mark Sonnenfeld. I'll give a free 6 issue subscription to Lilliput (or a 6 issue extension to your current subscription) to the first person who can tell me what he's talking about:

lawrence, KS

what I think about
sometimes
is old bridgeboards
revving car engines
that drag-race their dust
to the rivers
eerie current
with all the mud + sand
so high as now this river is
nearby
a church
organist plays the daytime
workmen listening
from then her window
in the land ladys
rooming house sometime
the boards pop
at night
a part of her
left alone walking
the old deserted pavilion
she is drawn

Mark Sonnenfeld

For those who are not all that familiar with Lillie, the magazine features short poems, ten lines and under. Very occasionally, I will publish something longer under the heading Brobdingnag Feature poem. Hence, the above.

And, oh yeah, I do know what he's talking about ...

best,
Don

Basho, Burns, Brautigan, Amy Lowell, and Jacko?

Cover art by John Bennett

Busy, busy times, so posts for the next couple of weeks will be sporadic and brief. The Basho Haiku Challenge is off to a great start, with lots of entries coming in. Thanks very much to Poet Hound, Haiku and Horror , Blogging Along Tobacco Road, and trout fishing in minnesota for getting the word out. I'm sure there are some others, too, that I don't know about, but thanks all.

So, keep the haiku coming in, folks. Instructions may be found at the Basho Haiku Challenge link, above.

And keep spreading the word.

As alluded to above, not much progress on any fronts. I haven't read any fiction in over a month and I am seriously jonesing. When I see the piles as I go room to room, you can't imagine the variety of voices I hear calling to me from every corner: classic, modern, sci-fi, horror, any damn thing. They all want to be read and I want to read them all and the discipline is killing me.

I continue to read, however, for both the haiku challenge and a future Modest Proposal project, two different translations of Basho, one at work and one at home. At home, I'm reading the Jane Reichhold Basho: the Complete Haiku, which is the prize for the challenge and, I'm happy to say, I'm beginning to warm to it a bit. All the translations I've read so far have had one thing to recommend them: specifically, Basho himself. This may seem ludicrous but what I mean specifically is that I seem to be encountering different aspects of the same poet in the different translations. A poem I loved in one translation, I'm indifferent to the next and, of course, vice versa. At work, I'm still reading David Landis Budhill's Basho's Journey which, after the Reichhold, is the most complete and has notes for every poem. They'll be more details on both of these volumes in future posts.

Come mid-October, I hope to be working on the new issues, #'s 165 & 166, along with a new chapbook in the Modest Proposal series, a second volume of translations from 100 Poems by 100 Poets, by Dennis Maloney and Hide Oshiro. This volume will concentrate on poems of nature following the previous Unending Night, which contained love poems.

Jilly Dybka at Poetry Hut has pointed to a beautiful, pointed September poem by one of my favorite poets, Amy Lowell (particularly her shorter poems). Here it is, September, 1918; I think you'll enjoy it.

A Richard Brautigan poem, Star Holes, seems to be making the blog/live journal rounds. This guy just won't lay down and, of course, that's why we love him. Here it is:

Star Holes
I sit here
on the perfect end
of a star,

watching light
pour itself toward
me.

The light pours
itself through
a small hole
in the sky.

I'm not very happy,
but I can see
how things
are faraway.

Richard Brautigan

Finally, in the news of the truly odd, Michael Jackson has reportedly recorded musical versions of the work of Robert Burns. If I didn't read it in The Guardian, I wouldn't have believed it.

You know what: I still don't believe it.

This week's issue from the Lilliput archive is #78 from March 1996.



----------------------------------------------------



I sought my heart
among the shadows
and found instead
a burnished leaf

Albert Huffstickler

----------------------------------------------------

Drag me in,
you are a night that is just beginning.
You are a room I've seen
but have never slept in.
Your shoulder pushes against
the world's edge, and the sky
scrapes softly on my cheek.

Ali Kress

----------------------------------------------------



Selfless
-----The pulsing
of the soft brown muslin curtain,
for example

And the quietness of rain,
taking you apart

Mark Jackley

----------------------------------------------------

Thank You
To the pirate faced biker
streaming slowly down
Marshall Avenue,
colors jazzed in the
night time light,
front wheeled Harley
out to here, black
jacket man with beard
of steel, who saw my
one year old boy craning
in his blue stroller
and waved.

Michael Finley

----------------------------------------------------



Poem Inspired by Hokusai, #7

Hokusai
in hell
draws perfect
circles
one inside
the other.

Alan Catlin

----------------------------------------------------

When My Ashes Have Cooled Down

Pitch me to the nearest wind.
I'll find my way home.

Bart Solarczyk

----------------------------------------------------

best,
Don

Japanese Love Poems & New Issues

The contributor copies of the new issues of Lilliput Review went out in the mail this past Monday and regular subscriber copies will begin hitting the mails over the next two weeks. It usually takes about a full month to get out the entire run, what with letters to be written, poems to be read and all the attendant details in getting scores of envelopes out each week.





#161 is graced with the photographs of Keddy Ann Outlaw, dedicated to the memory of her brother, Wade Stanton Outlaw. Among others, poems appear by John Martone, W. T. Ranney, Peggy Heinrich, Donny Smith, Charlie Mehrhoff, George Swede and translations of the Japanese tanka great, Yosano Akiko, by Dennis Maloney, 25 poems in all. 25 poems for a buck: you do the math.






#162 is a broadside issue by David Chorlton, who has been appearing in Lillie since its inception, way back in 1989. David is a consummate artist; this issue, entitled Venetian Sequence, showcases his beautifully lyrical poetry and his own artwork, as seen above. Here's a poetic taste:


Paganini

His audience applauds,
convinced he is the devil
who never sleeps.
After the performance
he sails to the dead.
Their breath steams out of frozen marble
when he plays. They whisper
each one to the next, that the time has come
to grow back their flesh
and complete abandoned vices.




Cover by Edward O'Durr Supranowicz

Spotlighted this week is LR #148, published in February 2006. The issue opens with 5 poems by a variety of poets with the common thread of our place in nature: they are deceptively simple. It is a fine coming together of work by 5 grounded poets; it was a privilege to publish. Issa would be proud.



Stopping as a crow
alights in a snowed pine copse
-the poem composed

Rebecca Lily

yesterday's snow---
the place it melts
to

Gary Hotham

this spring
the birds are nesting
where his garden was

Joyce Austin Gilbert

Monet
in his private garden
and vice versa

Pete Lee

Suddenly

spring
like

and
so

are
we

Bob Arnold

Besides these 5, there are 24 more poems in #148, many like-minded, all worth a look. As with regular issues, back issues from #1 through #160 are available for a buck apiece or a SASE (self-addressed stamped envelope). If the price is still too dear (and who's to say) more free samples may be found in the past posts of this blog or in the back issue archive at the Lilliput homepage.

Finally, there is that matter of Unending Night, as pictured at the top of this post. Unending Night is a selection of Japanese love poems drawn from the classic Japanese tanka anthology, The Hyakunin Isshu or 100 Poems by 100 Poets. The Hyakunin Isshu was compiled in the thirteenth century by Fujiwara no Teika and is the most popular of the classic poetry anthologies of Japan.

This selection from 100 Poems ... is translated by Dennis Maloney and Hide Oshiro and is #18 in the Modest Proposal Chapbook series published by Lilliput Review. The chapbook features the poetry of 18 different classic Japanese poets and provides a unique lens through which to view this much loved anthology. The finishing touches are being put on Unending Night even as I type (i.e. it's being printed) and will be available by the end of the week. Price, as always for chapbooks, is $3.00, postpaid.

best till next week,
Don

Kenneth Rexroth and Gary Hotham

This week, while doing collection maintenance at my day job as a librarian, I ran across a small volume of poems by Kenneth Rexroth, which I had not seen before. I was intrigued by the at once old school and small press looks of the book, which is entitled The Silver Swan: Poems Written in Kyoto, 1974-75. A very early publication of the mainstream “small press” Copper Canyon, it is comprised of 16 short poems with facing characters in the Japanese style, fairly primitive in execution. Though uncredited, they may possibly be by Rexroth himself.

I enjoyed the volume; three poems in particular seize the day, as it were. Here they are:



For Ruth Stephen

Twilit snow,
The last time I saw it
Was with you.
Now you are dead
By your own hand
After great pain.
Twilit snow.



Asagumori

On the forest path
The leaves fall. In the withered
Grass the crickets sing
Their last songs.
Through dew and dusk
I walk the paths you once walked,
My sleeves wet with memory.




Late Spring.
Before he goes, the uguisu
Says over and over again
The simple lesson no man
Knows, because
No man can ever learn.




Rexroth is widely known for his help in the continued popularization of Eastern forms in the West via his many collections of translations (100 Poems from the Japanese, 100 Poems from the Chinese etc.), which followed in the footsteps of such greats as Waley, Blyth, and others. The poems in this volume demonstrate the Eastern influence and his own mastery of the short form in English. Long out of print, Silver Swan can, of course, be found in the recent Complete Poems of Kenneth Rexroth and also in the more affordable Flower Wreath Hill: Later Poems. Both these later editions include 12 additional poems, including one long one among the short, which can be read in its entirety here.

Ah, yes, less is more, indeed.

Gary Hotham’s Modest Proposal Chapbook, Missed Appointment, has received another positive review, this time in the current Frogpond: check it out here (if blurry, zoom in).







Cover by Wayne Hogan


This week's sampling of poems from past issues comes from October 2005: Lilliput #147. It begins with a couple of my favorite kind of short poems, ones that might be characterized as presenting a cosmos in a teacup:



Stranger

I first saw her in the mirror of the burnt hall
Her white hair spreading across Europe ....

Daniele Pantano

History of the Moon

Nights go, sitting up
to tend this flame:

not the center,
where it burns fat and yellow

-the edge,
thin, blue and infinite.

James Owens

And here's a couple of more little beauties:


The people of my native village
have changed after many years,
but at the gate
the fragrance
of plum blossoms remains.

Ki-no Tsurayuki
translated by Dennis Maloney & Hide Oshiro

The Library of Why

The shelves are empty.

Noelle Kocot

fable

I've had
no luck
finding
the forest
I was supposed
to have been
lost in
forever
and ever

Mark DeCarteret

Hopefully, by next week's posting I'll have an announcement about the next volume in the Modest Proposal Chapbook series and some more info about when to expect #'s 161 and #162 to hit the mails. Until then ...

best,
Don

Keith Reid and Cid Corman

Perhaps the single most neglected writer of rock lyrics is Keith Reid, the non-playing sixth member of Procol Harum. Among other non-playing lyricists, there is Robert Hunter of the Grateful Dead and Peter Brown of, among others, Cream. In a post from last year at the old Beneath Cherry Blossoms blog, I placed the Reid penned "Conquistador" side by side with Shelley's "Ozymandias" for comparison and resonance.

Currently, I have the first four Procol albums on my mp3 player and have for the last month or so. It might seem odd to call them timeless; perhaps the more apt description would be out of time. Here are the lyrics from "Pilgrim's Progress," the cut that closes their masterwork, A Salty Dog:

Pilgrim’s Progress

I sat me down to write a simple story
which maybe in the end became a song
In trying to find the words that might begin it
I found these were the thoughts I brought along

At first I took my weight to be an anchor
and gathered up my fears to guide me round
but then I clearly saw my own delusion
and found my struggles further bogged me down

In starting out I thought to go exploring
and set my foot upon the nearest road
In vain I looked to find the promised turning
but only saw how far I was from home

In searching I forsook the paths of learning
and sought instead to find some pirate’s gold
In fighting I did hurt those dearest to me
and still no hidden truths could I unfold

I sat me down to write a simple story
which maybe in the end became a song
The words have all been writ by one before me
We’re taking turns in trying to pass them on
Oh, we’re taking turns in trying to pass them on

In the history of rock, there has been many a concept album; most of them have been noble, if pretentious, failures. The reason A Salty Dog is, in my opinion, the very best is simple; the concept is metaphoric, not literal. To sustain an entire story over a whole album strains believability, mostly because the medium cannot bear the weight (if truth be told, herein lies where many an opera fails, but, of course, that's not the point: so, too, rock fans might argue with, perhaps, less credulity). But the subtle art of suggestion, one of the writer's most powerful tools, within a loose conceptual framework is what gives this album its incredible power, a staying power that only grows over the passing years. Because A Salty Dog, magnificently executed by a fine band at the top of its game, is quite simply one man's story: the story of one particular writer.

Keith Reid.

The enigmatic quality of "A Whiter Shade of Pale," with its allusion to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, has often stumped the casual listener of popular music. The allusion in "Pilgrim's Progress" is even more overt. The words "anchor" and "pirate's gold" tie the song to the overall concept, but no one would mistake this for a song about anything other than a metaphoric salty dog. This album smokes; if you can listen to "Crucifiction Lane" without a wince of recognition, you're a better person than I.

I was very happy to see this week that Garrison Keillor is doing his bit to keep the memory of Cid Corman alive. Check out his rendition of "Someone I cared for" by Cid from Monday's The Writer's Almanac.

Long live Cid.

Cover art by Keddy Ann Outlaw

The ongoing tour of past issues of Lilliput Review brings us to #145. For those following along, #144 is a broadside by Christien Gholson entitled Spiral, that does not lend itself to excerpting so has been skipped.

Enjoy.

The Arrival
We have arrived without luggage
in a country we don’t recognize
among people who distrust us
where the walls have no windows
and the doors open only
for the chosen. We are home at last.

David Chorlton

moist petals open,
the tumor blooms

Karen R. Porter

cutting glass
the guy in the neat suit
picked his way into a part
of the mirror & began
to see everything backwards.

Guy R. Beining

The short space
between the joints
growing along the Naniwa shore
- may the time before
your next visit be as brief

Princess Ise
translated by Dennis Maloney & Hide Oshiro

Till next week,

Don

Gerald Stern and Chicken Pie

I'm in love with Gerald Stern. It is unabashed, it is obsessive, it is irresponsible, and it is nigh on devotional, this love for Gerald Stern.

It all started a couple of years back when I ran across a couple of poems in the much maligned anthology, Good Poems, edited by Garrison Keillor. Keillor was attacked, pilloried, really, by no less a poet, one whom I greatly admire, than August Kleinazhler. He has since been defended
by another poetic luminary, Dana Gioia, which ended up creating the proverbial poetic tempest in a teapot that ended up in a vaguely clicheish flurry of exchanges. Points were scored on both sides and, god forbid, people were talking about poetry in a semi-heated fashion.

Little of this mattered to me. I enjoyed Keillor's anthology very much, but more importantly I'd fallen in love; and though the white hot passion I had for 6 months or so has cooled a bit, still, my devotion is true. Which leads to the recent publication of Stern's new Quarternote Chapbook, The Preacher.

I am at a loss to describe my love. Stern, on the surface, appears staid enough, surely nothing unsafe here. Yet he plays like a wild-haired, poetic clarinetist, suddenly deviating seriously from the charts. The metaphors, the allusions, the connections are sparks flying from downed wires; careful there, isn't that water, rushing nearby?

The Preacher takes its title and begins as a rift on the narrator from the opening lines of Ecclesiastes in the King James version of Bible (yup, the version is important; not only which one, but which particular King James version). Or perhaps it actually began with listening to another riff, this one by one of the very few people I'll let preach to me: Charles Mingus.

Eat that chicken, eat that chicken pie: oh, yeah.

Or maybe it all really began with the poet executing one of his signature moves, well-known to devotees, lovers and acolytes alike: hugging a tree. Though you might not end up rich if you got a dime for every time Stern alludes to this most lyrical of occupations, you still could get yourself a cup a joe, possibly even at one of the upscale clip joints passing for coffeehouses these days.

What's it about, you say? Who cares, says I, it's by the loved one. It's about everything. We dip our big toe in Dante's (or was that Milton's) fine Lake in Hell (Cocytus 32-4), discover many lamentable holes, very black, indeed, throughout the miserable existence of our heroic human race. Truman, Sharon, and Genghis Kahn (typo, variant spelling, or just plain sic?) all get their fiery comuppance, with Kant, Leonard Cohen and Lord Mingus all strolling in and out for perspective and three-part harmony.

The whole is structured on a poetic riff of a conversation with fellow versifier Peter Richards; this conversation is spoken, however, in the language of Tongues, one long familiar to the Preacher, Mr. Stern, and the composer of that famed autobiography, Beneath the Underdog.

All in all, the dialogue is free associative, manically passionate and, probably, in the key of B flat. As is well known, my attention tends to wander after 10 lines or so, but Stern's standard 30 to 50 or so line work usually keeps me riveted. This 23 page, book-length poem might have been expected to tax that haiku-like attention span yet it kept me in my seat and brought me back for more (after reading a library copy twice through, I bought my own copy).

By way of disclosure, Mr. Stern started life in Pittsburgh, where I've ended up. He's hit many of the world's high spots in his journey, notably NYC, Jersey and Philadelphia, all places I touched base with in the beginnings of my journey. So, there is a corruption of place, a sort of geography of influence in this post I felt I had to confess, along with my above heralded love. I've never met Mr. Stern, am not shilling for any one particular agenda or another except the reader's agenda, specifically this reader's agenda: mine. If you are unfamiliar with his work, if you like things a tad untidy, if you sing off key or, perhaps, don't mind doing the dishes in the morning, get a hold of a copy of Leaving Another Kingdom: the Selected Poems.

He rarely disappoints.

Cover by Gyorgy Kostritski

This week, the tour of past issues of Lilliput arrives at #143, from June 2005. Enjoy.

Robins’s nest in the tangle

of climbing roses

Careful, bird! I, too,

have been pierced by the barbs

that kept out the wolves

Emily Rodgers– Ramos

Movement

I lean on the balcony rails

and breathe in the sun-spliced

winds of the west.

A cross glimmers on the front-range

mountains, blends with the light

of the sun. Hidden in the drain

shafts red-throated sparrows

trill to my steam heavy thoughts.

This morning, I try to bend

two waves of light into one.

Brian Dickson

Though I am departing for Mt. Inaba

I will return home at once,

-if I hear your voice

in the sigh of the wind

in the pines

Chunagon Yukihira

translated by Dennis Maloney & Hide Oshiro

on the phone

my daughter and I

watch different sunsets

Anne LB Davidson

the day departs

of course

without me

David Lindley

Till next time, Don