Kenneth Rexroth: Sky Sea Birds Trees Earth House Beasts Flowers

I ran across this beautiful little Kenneth Rexroth book, Sky Sea Birds Trees Earth House Beast Flowers, in a local Pittsburgh used and rare bookshop, Caliban. The book comes from Unicorn Press, which I've written about before previously in a review of Hyakunin Isshu: 100 Poems by 100 Poets, back in April of this year. You can find plenty of info on this, one of America's finest small presses, back in that post, so I'll skip the background here.

This particular volume was published in 1971, is 1 of 375 trade copies and contains 11 poems with 13 pieces of art, all done by Rexroth himself. The poems, as well as the brushwork, are all Eastern inflected.

Slowly the moon rises
Over the quiet sea.
Slowly the face of my beloved
Forms in my mind.

The parallel feel of the two sets of two lines has the sensibility of haiku, minus the denouement. The comparison of memory to nature is an interesting one; there seems also to be an implied parallel as to time duration of the two events. Any poem that brings the human into nature, either in contrast or, even better, in harmony, has my close attention, as does this one.

Spring puddles give way
To young grass.
In the garden,
Willow catkins
Change to singing birds.

This might be easily characterized as waka, though the form is more specifically reminiscent of tanka, without the overt romantic element. Whatever it is called is not particularly relevant, except perhaps for the scholar. Here we are completely immersed in nature, presented with examples of the myriad changes which happen right before our eyes and yet so often go unseen. What I most admire here is that Rexroth has captured the miraculous quality of these changes by making them feel almost magical.

Of course that is just what it is, a miracle, a bit of natural magic, right before our eyes, which is seen so many times without seeing that it has become "ordinary" enough to ignore

A dawn in a tree of birds.
Another,
And then another.

This may be my favorite poem of the collection. Is it a haiku? Seen from one angle, not really, from another most definitely. How so? If seen as a series of days, it is closer in spirit to the previous poem, which takes place over a long period of time, hence not a haiku (if capturing a single moment is part of your haiku requirement). Seen from the other side, however, this could be a series of immediate moments, contiguous, taking place in mere seconds, as the rising light first hits one bird, than another, than another.

In fact, it doesn't have to be light at all directly hitting the tree - it could be the light breaking on the horizon and each individual bird's response, one after the other after the other, in song.

Yes, I like this poem very much.

Past midnight,
In the dark,
Under the winter stars,
Tendrils of ice
Creep through the duckweed.

This is another special poem, tanka-esque in form, which thrusts a human right in the middle of natural things. This poem has a bit of an ominous quality; it is past midnight, dark without moonlight, and our sense of hearing allows us to hear something creeping through the duckweed. Though the hearer realizes it is ice creeping and not some predator, still the tone of "creep" feels foreboding. The beauty here is that, though not a sentient being in our usual sense of understanding, ice does creep, so Rexroth has not committed any anthropomorphic hocus-pocus, something which would immediately turn me off.

In addition, ice creeping may have a truly ominous quality for one exposed to the elements without proper clothing and food. It may be winter that is doing the creeping, which may be something properly feared.

The years pass.
The generations
Of birds pass too.
You must watch carefully.
The same towhees and jays
Seem to have been in the same
Places
To thousands of generations
Of men.

This fifth poem captures some of the aspects of the poems already noted, particularly the passage of time. Thousands of generations of men pass through this poem, yet the poet admonishes his readers to watch carefully in the moment to see all time pass before you, a perfect conflation of eternity and the now.

One might almost say eternity in a moment: satori.

Fine, fine, fine stuff. Copies of this amazing little hand-sewn chapbook can be had much cheaper than I paid for it ($15) or you can pay a lot more. It's only money and this is only poetry (and art).

I'm thinking either way it's a bargain.  I know I got off cheap.

One of 13 pieces of art

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

This week's poem from the Lilliput archive comes from issue #102, January 1999.    Once again Alan Catlin's painterly eye is in evidence, a master at work.

The Poet's Room

  Frayed chairs, shadows
  curve from windows
  mirrors silent as footprints
  covered by dew.

                  Alan Catlin

looking younger than me
the scarecrow casts
his shadow

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,

Don

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Snow Storm by Tu Fu

A poem for those alone, away from home, or with no home at all.

Snow Storm

Tumult, weeping, many new ghosts.
Heartbroken, aging, alone, I sing
To myself. Ragged mist settles
In the spreading dusk. Snow skurries
In the coiling wind. The wineglass
Is spilled. The bottle is empty.
The fire has gone out in the stove.
Everywhere men speak in whispers.
I brood on the uselessness of letters.

Tu Fu
translated by Kenneth Rexroth

Happy holidays, all.


best,
Don

Kenneth Rexroth: Songs of Love, Moon & Wind, and a Bashô Haiku Challenge Update

Night Without End

Night without end. I cannot sleep.
The full moon blazes overhead.
Far off in the night I hear someone call.
Hopelessly, I answer, "Yes."

Anonymous (Six Dynasties)

Songs of Love, Moon & Wind: Poems from the Chinese is the companion volume to Kenneth Rexroth's Written on the Sky: Poems from the Japanese, which I discussed in a previous posting. Utilizing Scribd, New Directions has provided some sample poems from the collections, a nice touch, which I've linked to via the titles.

As companion volumes, they make a fine set in their physically attractive and appealing designs, and as an introduction to the overall body of Rexroth's Japanese and Chinese translations. The same flaws with the previous volume stand; no bibliographic history of where these poems previously appeared is provided, so those owning volumes such as and 100 Poems from the Chinese and 100 More Poems from the Chinese have no idea if these selections come from these, or for that matter, any other volumes by Rexroth.

Again, all that being said, this is another fine selection of work, although personally my preference is with the Japanese selection Written on the Sky. This, however, probably reflects my overall attraction to Japanese poetry.

The following two poems chronicle a closeness to nature; in addition, an affinity with the first two of the Buddha's Four Noble Truths makes that closeness readily apparent, something this volume illustrates again and again. First, Master Tu Fu:

Loneliness

A hawk hovers in the air.
Two white gulls float on the stream.
Soaring with the wind, it is easy
To drop and seize
Birds who foolishly drift with the current.
Where the dew sparkles in the grass,
The spider's web waits for its prey.
The processes of nature resemble the business of men.
I stand alone with ten thousand sorrows.

Tu Fu

How easy it is to seize birds that foolishly drift in the current! And the business of men seen as the extension of the preying hawk and lurking spider. Ten thousand sorrows, indeed.

As was frequently the custom in Chinese poetry, poems were set to the tunes of well-known songs. Here is a song that one day we all must sing:

To the Tune "The Fair Maid of Yu"

Once when young I lay and listened
To the rain falling on the roof
Of a brothel. The candlelight
Gleamed on silk and silky flesh.
Later I heard it on the
Cabin roof of a small boat
On the Great River, under
Low clouds where wild geese cried out
On the Autumn storm. Now I
Hear it again on the monastery
Roof. My hair has turned white.
Joy--sorrow--parting--meeting--
Are all as though they had
Never been. Only the rain
Is the same, falling in streams
On the tiles, all through the night.

Chiang Chien

Today, this is a song of life sorrow familiar to admirers of Jack Kerouac, Albert Huffstickler, the Romantics in general, and so many of the great poets. This astute, resonating collection by one of the master translators and major poets of 20th century, Kenneth Rexroth, fits neatly in the palm of your hand or the back pocket of your jeans. Take into the woods. Read it. Breath it. Live it.

Then leave it for the next seeker.

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

Jim Kacian of red moon press has written to me and generously offered to sweeten the pot for the 2nd Annual Bashô Haiku Challenge. Jim is going to provide 5 books from red moon's exemplary catalogue to be given away to participants. So, with his approval, I've decided to give a book to each of the first five runners-up to the first prize winner. To recap, here's the full dope:

1. Until October 31st, send up to five haiku via email to:
lilliput review at gmail dot com (spelled out to fend off
pesky bots). I will need a minimum of your name and
email.

2. Accepted works will be published in the 2nd Annual Bashô Haiku Challenge Chapbook to be published some
time in 2010.

3. The winner of the challenge will receive a copy of
Bashō and His Interpreters: Selected Hokku with Commentary, edited by Makoto Ueda, a 15 issue
subscription to Lilliput Review and two contributor
copies of the chapbook.

4. 5 runners-up to the winning haiku will receive a
book from red moon press, a 6 issue subscription to
LR, and two copies of the chapbook.

5. Everyone else whose work is published will receive
a 6 issue subscription and two copies of the chapbook.

So, that's the update. Again, the deadline is October 31st. Send work along and good luck.


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

Cover by Wayne Hogan

Poems highlighted this week come from issue #159, November 2007, something of a menagerie, human and otherwise. Enjoy.




At the Marsh in Wartime

With its too-big head
the kingfisher in federal blue

dives and dives into the much
and brings up a fingerling every time.

Jennifer Wallace

concave
nut-shard
next to

convex
mushroom

thank you
brother
squirrel

John Martone

Split the Lark--and you'll find the Music--
--Bulb after Bulb, in Silver rolled--
Scantily dealt to the Summer Morning
--Saved for your Ear when Lutes be old.

Loose the Flood--you shall find it patent--
--Gush after Gush, reserved for you--
Scarlet Experiment! Sceptic Thomas!
--Now, do you doubt that your Bird was true?

Emily Dickinson

And one from 159, to introduce Master Issa:

bored
i found a new haiku
on my tongue

John Grochalski

ripples on water--
mingling with the larks
a fishing boat

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

Jim Carroll 5

Here is one of three poems printed and distributed at the funeral for Jim Carroll:

Poem

Alright
Buddha gets
A backstage pass

But his friends have to pay

Jim Carroll

As some of you may have guessed, I'm having a bit of a hard time with the passing of Jim Carroll. I only met him once, briefly, and he was very kind to a book store clerk helping to set up an offsite signing. The reading itself was full of humor, pathos, and an unflinching look into the great maw of Being.

It is a comfort to know that his words and music live on.

Fires
Burn in my heart.
No smoke rises.
No one knows.

Kenneth Rexroth from The Morning Star

my province--
even the smoke
an ancient thing

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

Written on the Sky: Kenneth Rexroth

There is a new collection of the Japanese translations of Kenneth Rexroth, entitled Written on the Sky: Poems from the Japanese," published by New Directions. Although the copyright page lists the years 1974, 1976, and 1977 (with a co-translator, Ikuko Atsumi, listed for 1977), nowhere is it stated what volumes these translations originally appeared in. Only on the fly leaf
is found the statement: "Written on the Sky is a selection of some of Kenneth Rexroth's perfect and enduring translations from the Japanese ..." This lack of clarity is unfortunate; from this statement, the reader must assume all of these translations have previously appeared, either in book or journal form.

Of course, the exact opposite might also be assumed. For those who might wish to trace back a poem to its original appearance, in search of context and companions, no trail is provided. The only other volume of translations listed for Rexroth is Songs of Love, Moon, & Wind: Chinese Poems, a new companion collection. It would seem New Directions' only interest is in these two volumes, despite having published Rexroth's seminal collections in the past (most of which are still in print and available from New Directions).

That being said, Written on the Sky is a handsomely produced volume, with 88 poems, each appearing on a single page. Many of the poems originally appeared, as might be imagined, in One Hundred Poems from the Japanese and One Hundred More Poems from the Japanese. The difference in presentation from previous volumes is readily apparent. Transliterations of the original poems are not provided (though the original Japanese script for the names is, to the cynical allowing for the vertical use of much white space). Translations of some of the names have changed, making collation between the original volumes and the new cumbersome.

There seems to be no apparent unifying theme or approach; if there is, it isn't obvious to the non-scholar. It is 4 x 6," produced with an embossed cover of heavy mylar-like stock and beautiful to hold and behold. The poems are generally every bit as beautiful, which is as good a unifying theme as it gets, I suppose. Rexroth's translations from both the Japanese and Chinese have served over the last 50 years as the introduction to Eastern lyricism for the curious poetry reader. And this book, something of a curio one might expect to just as soon find in a museum shop as a large or independent bookstore, does not disappoint when it comes to the poems themselves.

A small selection illustrates the overall high quality:





The flowers whirl away
In the wind like snow.
The thing that falls away
Is myself.

Prime Minister Kintsune

No, the human heart
Is unknowable.
But in my birthplace
The flowers still smell
The same as always.

Ki No Tsurayuki

The fireflies' light.
How easily it goes on
How easily it goes out again.

Chine-jo

No one spoke.
The host, the guest,
The white chrysanthemums.

Ōshima Ryōta

If only the world
Would always remain this way,
Some fisherman
Drawing a little rowboat
Up the riverbank.

Minamoto No Sanetomo

If there is a unifying factor among all these delicate, beautiful pieces, perhaps it is the demonstration of the immortality of the moment. Even in the uncharacteristic conceit of "The flowers whirl away," wherein a direct analogy is drawn between the fleeting nature of the snow and human life, the lasting image in the mind is the flakes, whirling. The sadness, too, lingers, but there is a bittersweet quality to the moment that is at once painterly and transcendent. Another, deeper reading might suggest that the falling away of self for the Eastern mind in fact has no negative connotations, though for me the bitter lingers as an almost perfectly captured epiphanic episode. The tanka "If only the world" expresses a similar sentiment, perhaps with more emphasis on the sweet than the bitter; one has the sense of an immortal moment from a seaside jaunt, although it might just as well be an every day sight seen through fresh eyes. Again the image conjured is painterly. The speaker's realization in "No, the human heart" is potentially catastrophic, yet the focus returns to the beauty of the moment, the unchanging nature of all life, turning what begins in the negative to a seemingly positive realization.

I simply love "No one spoke." We have all had such moments. The resonance here, and in those shared moments, is thunderous. The question for the Western mind is "What would the chrysanthemums say if they could speak?" A Zen pretender might say, "Ha!", yet one need only look to the other poems in this selection for the answer.

The beauty of the Eastern approach is that the reader is as if invited to participate in the creation of the poem. For others, these images will conjure different feelings, possibly diametrically opposed interpretations. To paraphrase Whitman, the Eastern forms contain multitudes. What is shared for all is the perfectly captured moment, the artistic quality of the image, and, above all, a closeness to nature that the West has largely, sadly lost.

Let the chrysanthemums speak to you.

This week's selection of poems from the Lilliput archive comes from issue #20, originally published in 1990, 19 years ago.

Cover by Bobo

Because

you are tired, because I thirst for
salt, we turn to each other.
You are barefoot. It is winter.
This is going to be a difficult story.

Gayle Elen Harvey

Of Duluth I Sing

Oh Duluth.
Oh downtown Dul-
uth. Oh oyster-on-the-
half-shell Duluth. Oh
boarded-up poet-infested
storefront hole-in-the-wall
Duluth, oh.

Wayne Hogan

Song Of Advice

First, you must waken,
Then walk, in cool morning,
Into a meadow
Not of your making,
And listen intently.
Then you may answer.

Paul Ramsey

for the big
chrysanthemum too
autumn ends quickly

Issa
translated by David Lanoue

best,
Don

Threading Delightfully Loose Ends

Ryokan

Here's a tangle of loose ends that are coming undone, together, very nicely.

Recently I posted my semi-lame Top 5 Poetry Books for 2008. If anyone is looking for a comprehensive list of good work actually published in 2008, check out Cold Front Magazine's year end list of the best in poetry. Thanks to Ron Silliman, once again, for pointing the way.

Also, an excellent collection of poems attributed to Han Shan can be found at Moon Soup (No Bowl, No Moon), in various translations.

A creditable job was done by James Campbell in the NYTBR looking at the Letters of Allen Ginsberg and The Selected Letters of Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder. I've read about a dozen reviews of these two books and this one was one of the best.

Stuck on the mp3 player (and computer) is Apples in Stereo's New Magnetic Wonder and though one could cop to the cynicism (try that for a title), download these two tracks for free in their entirety, legally, from amazon: "Can You Feel It" and "Energy" and let that cynicism wash over you awhile and see if it doesn't transmute into something else altogether.

Stumbled across an interesting site of book extracts entitled Books in the Darkroom. This post reminded me how wonderful Kenneth Rexroth translations from the Chinese and Japanese are.

Finally, a poem by Ryokan, Zen poet known as the great fool, perfectly captured on film:

Gary Snyder & Allen Ginsberg: Selected Letters

Snyder and Ginsberg, Walking Not Talking

A spring night in Shokoku-ji

Eight years ago this May
We walked under cherry blossoms
At night in an orchard in Oregon.
All that I wanted then
Is forgotten now, but you.
Here in the night
In a garden of the old capital
I feel the trembling ghost of Yugao
I remember your cool body
Naked under a summer cotton dress.
Gary Snyder

Allen Ginsberg - Father Death Blues

For those interested in all things Beat, a little something to brighten up a day: The Selected Letters of Gary Snyder and Allen Ginsberg, as reviewed by Jeff Baker at The Oregonian.

Here's the publisher Counterpoint's blurb:

One of the central relationships in the Beat scene was the long-lasting friendship of Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder. Ginsberg ventured west in 1956 and was introduced to Snyder by Kenneth Rexroth, a mentor to the Beats and the man who knew everyone. Snyder, a graduate student in the department of East Asian languages at the University of California, was living in a tiny cottage in Berkeley, sitting zazen, making tea, and writing poems. He had already spent some time as a merchant mariner and as a solitary fire lookout in the Cascades. Ginsberg introduced Snyder to the East Coast Beat writers, including Jack Kerouac, while Snyder himself became the model for the serious poet that Ginsberg so wanted to become. Snyder encouraged Ginsberg to explore the beauty of the West Coast and, even more lastingly, introduced Ginsberg to Buddhism, the subject of so many long letter exchanges between them. Beginning in 1956 and continuing through 1991, the two men exchanged more than 850 letters. Bill Morgan, Ginsberg's biographer and an important editor of his papers, has selected the most significant correspondence from this long friendship. The letters themselves paint the biographical and poetic portraits of two of America's most important--and most fascinating--poets. Robert Hass's insightful introduction discusses the lives of these two major poets and their enriching and moving relationship.

As Snyder more succinctly observed of their relationship: "I made him walk more, he made me talk more."

Yes, many an old fart's holiday list is now complete.


best,
Don

Mary Oliver, Pantheism, and the Big G

Cover by Kevin Friend

Lots of very interesting poetry related news this week, beginning with Mary Oliver. As something of an early preview to my posting of a review of her new book of poems, Red Bird, on Eleventh Stack (a blog from my day job), here's that post, which will be appearing next week, possibly in a slightly different form:

"Even at her most agnostic, her most atheistic, Mary Oliver was always a spiritual, even a religious, writer. Her embracing of nature is all-encompassing, recalling the preoccupation of no less a poetic figure than William Wordsworth. In recent years, as seen in her last few books, she has evinced a new found faith beyond the more general pantheism that always seemed to be just below the surface of many of her finest poems.

I have to admit, I approached this newer work with the kind of trepidation one has when hearing of a life-altering event involving a close friend; confronting a new found faith in others that one does not necessarily share can be a daunting thing, most especially when it concerns an old friend. I'm happy to report that, as may be seen in her new collection of poems, Red Bird, this faith is not only a logical extension of her previous beliefs, it in fact firmly accentuates what has come before.

Mary Oliver's wide appeal beyond the usual poetry reading community is easy to understand; her poems are rendered in simple basic vocabulary, are no less beautiful for that simplicity, and concern the every day world around us. Her perception of things is acute; she points out in nature what we all might see if we took the time and had the patience to truly look. Beyond capturing the moment, she also supplies the resonance from which meaning may flow. When she is good, she is transcendent. When she is average, she is at least always interesting. Red Bird is a volume that may be read straight through and then bears, in fact induces, repeated readings. It is cohesive in that its overarching theme is present throughout. There are more than a handful of excellent poems here. Listen to this excerpt from Straight Talk from Fox:

Don't think I haven't

peeked into windows. I see you in all your seasons

making love, arguing, talking about God

as if he were an idea instead of grass,

instead of stars, the rabbit caught

in one good teeth-whacking hit and brought

home to the den.

Highlights include this poem, along with Invitation, Night and the River, There is a Place Beyond Ambition, We Should Be Prepared, This Day and Probably Tomorrow Also, the fabulous Of Love, I am the one; well I could go on. There is even a powerful political poem, Of the Empire, that telescopes the general to the particular in a most damning fashion. If you listen closely, you may find there is a message just for you, as in the beginning of Invitation:

Oh do you have time

to linger

for just a little while

out of your busy

and very important day

for the goldfinches

that have gathered

in a field of thistles …

There is a wisdom here, the wisdom of long life, of loss, of longing, and of acceptance. But most of all there is beauty, a beauty not to be missed."

Oddly enough, while reading this book through a second time, I got to thinking once again about the idea of a near perfect volume of poems. Red Bird contains many, well, not very good poems. Yet, still and all, it is a very good collection, precisely because the inferior work in this case informs the overall collection. The overarching theme is consistent throughout and, in one sense, though obviously supplying its subject, it also strengthens its voice. Here is a little 4 line poem that perfectly captures what I try to get at in the review:



So every day

So every day
I was surrounded by the beautiful crying forth
of the ideas of God,

one of which was you.



Now, if the G word puts you off, so be it; for me, the spiritual element is almost Buddhist, especially in light of Oliver's preoccupation with nature and its resonance in our lives. If you do nothing, pick this book up in your local independent shop or Borders or B & N (or, better still, your library) and read one poem: Of Love. It alone is worth the cover price (and more).

Some interesting tidbits around the web include the Village Voice reprint of an article from April 1958 written by Kenneth Rexroth on the Beats. Ted Kooser, the subject of a recent post here, is participating in a project sponsored by the Poetry Foundation and the Library of Congress entitled American Life in Poetry, which supplies "a free weekly column for newspapers and online publications featuring a poem by a contemporary American poet and a brief introduction to the poem ..." Poetry bloggers take note: at 161 columns and counting, that's a lot of presupplied content. For poetry lovers there are a lot of new poems to be exposed to, by both well and relatively unknown modern American poets.

In addition, there is a great 20 minute documentary on one of my favorite contemporary poets, Gerald Stern, entitled Gerald Stern: Still Burning, at the website Poetry Matters Now, which features a parcel of video readings and is worth a bookmark.

And, finally, in the news department, can it be true that the poetry volume that moved an entire generation, A Coney Island of the Mind by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, is really be 50 years old? And, of course, anyone that would ask that question ... If by some chance you haven't read this one, don't hesitate; it most certainly would be on my list of the most important books of poems of the last century.

Well, believe it or not there is more, but the day job beckons. So, in closing, here are some sample poems from Lilliput Review #94 (December 1997), the cover of which appears above.


the rain
knits us
with threads
of silver

Albert Huffstickler

from Epistles

A word, once sent abroad,
flies irrevocably.

Quintus Horace

And then there is this one line gem - I do love one line poems:




celibacy, a masking forcibly redundant

Sheila E. Murphy

Finally,




Cosmoses were
swinging in the war-ruined city:
softly like now.

Kiyoe Kitamura

Till soon (or next Thursday, whatever comes first),

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