5 Spring, 2010 - Atlas Poetica

Transcription

ATLAS
POETICA
A Journal of Poetry of Place
in Contemporary Tanka
Number 5
Spring, 2010
ATLAS
POETICA
A Journal of Poetry of Place
in Contemporary Tanka
Number 5
Spring, 2010
M. Kei, editor
Alex von Vaupel, technical director
ISSN 1939-6465 Print
ISSN 1945-8908 Digital
2010
Keibooks, Perryville, Maryland, USA
KEIBOOKS
P O Box 1118
Elkton, Maryland, USA 21922-1118
AtlasPoetica.org
[email protected]
Atlas Poetica
A Journal of Poetry of Place in Contemporary Tanka
Number 5 - Spring 2010
Copyright © 2010 by Keibooks
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic
or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems without permission
in writing from the publisher, except by reviewers and scholars who may quote brief passages.
See our EDUCATIONAL USE NOTICE at the end of the journal.
Atlas Poetica : A Journal of Poetry of Place in Modern English Tanka, a biannual
print journal, is dedicated to publishing and promoting fine poetry of place in modern
English tanka (including variant forms). Atlas Poetica is interested in both traditional and
innovative verse of high quality and in all serious attempts to assimilate the best of the
Japanese waka/tanka/kyoka genres into a continuously developing English short verse
tradition. In addition to verse, Atlas Poetica publishes articles, essays, reviews, interviews, letters
to the editor, etc., related to tanka poetry of place.
Published by Keibooks
Printed in the United States of America, 2010
Print Edition ISSN 1939-6465
Digital Edition ISSN 1945-8908 [PDF & HTML versions]
AtlasPoetica.org
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Editorial
A New Era, M. Kei............................ 7
Letter to the Editor, Kath Abela
Wilson ........................................ 8
Educational Use Notice.................... 8
Tanka in Sets and Sequences
Cormorant Surfacing,
Rodney Williams, ....................... 9
Trans-Canada Greyhound,
Angela Leuck............................ 10
frames in a film : Nobody Knows,
Sanford Goldstein..................... 12
Thunder Snow, M. Kei.................... 16
Semblance, Gary Lebel...................17
A Turn Around Central Mongolia,
Bob Lucky................................. 18
Lonely Planet,
Andrew Cook-Jolicoeur, ........... 19
Canadian Experience, Chen-ou Liu.20
Another Garden,
Jeffrey Woodward..................... 21
Rita, Nette Mencke.........................22
Sipping Pomegranate Juice,
Gerry Jacobsen, ....................... 23
Port Arthur Notebook,
Mary Mageau ........................... 24
Missing, Bob Lucky.........................25
Athens, Carmella Braniger, ............ 26
A Pocketful of México,
James Tipton............................. 27
Acrostic Tanka, Bernard Gieske...... 28
Immersion, Tracy Royce................. 28
Black Jack Judy and the Crisco Kids,
Alexis Rotella,........................... 29
Extended Tanka, Bruce England ...... 31
a sky of stars, Janet Lynn Davis....... 32
beaches, Andrea Grillo...................32
Lavender Fields, Patricia Prime....... 33
Ley Lines, Alex von Vaupel,............ 34
words, Owen Bullock .................... 35
To Vanuatu With Love,
Claudia Coutu-Radmore............ 36
Topical Tanka
Women.......................................... 37
Rainy Weather................................ 38
Individual Tanka.................................. 38
Articles
Review: All the Horses of Heaven, by
James Tipton,
reviewed by Sanford Goldstein ...... 57
Not Again! Tanka Strings and Sequences,
Sanford Goldstein.......................... 59
Announcements.................................. 65
Biographies ......................................... 67
A New Era
With this issue we open a new era for
Atlas Poetica. For the first two years,
Atlas Poetica was one of many fine
journals published by MET Press.
However, last summer circumstances
required Denis M. Garrison, founder of
MET Press, to reduce his workload.
Several journals ceased publication.
ATPO has moved to Keibooks and will
be known as Atlas Poetica : A Journal of
Poetry of Place in Contemporary Tanka to
reflect that change.
ATPO is unique in the field of tanka
and has helped expand the poetic
vocabulary, both in terms of subjects
addressed and how they are addressed,
bringing together works from poets and
critics around the world. Deliberately
large format, ATPO is the only journal in
existence which can publish epic tanka
sequences, tanka prose, shaped tanka,
book reviews, articles, resources,
announcements, and other material
while still leaving plenty of room for
individual tanka. ATPO will continue in
digital and print versions.
Readers will find minor changes in
the print journal, but it will continue to
offer the same great tanka poetry of place
that is its hallmark. Most importantly, we
are engaged in updating our
international and multi-lingual services
with the journal and website. Planned
updates to all the international language
blurbs are planned with expanded
international support.
Volunteer translators are sought to
assist with increasing the number and
quality of translations on the website.
The website is being completely
revamped and has a new address:
AtlasPoetica.org. We will be able to host
a variety of 'Special Features' on the
website with our redesign.
In addition, we seek submissions in
languages other than English for both
poetry and articles. While we prefer that
tanka be accompanied by English
translation, we are able to provide
translations from some languages (please
inquire). We will publish announcements
and articles in any language without
translation.
ATPO 7 (Autumn, 2010) will be a
special feature dedicated to publishing
international resources as well as tanka
and articles in various languages. Please
send your international materials!
One major change has occurred: I
am pleased to welcome Alex von Vaupel
as the technical director for ATPO. An
excellent poet in his own right, Alex's
assistance with the journal's cover,
website, and related technical matters
has been invaluable. In addition, Alex is
a native Dutch speaker who will assist
with international outreach.
~K~
M. Kei
Editor, Atlas Poetica
Coahuila, Mexico. This desolate landscape is
part of the Sierra Madre Oriental mountain range,
on the border between the Coahuila and Nuevo
Leon provinces of Mexico.
Cover Image courtesy of Our Earth As Art by
NA S A < h t t p : / / e a r t h a s a r t . g s f c . n a s a . g o v /
index.htm>.
Atlas Poetica • Issue 5 • Page 7
Letter to the Editor
Dear M. Kei,
Your approach, your Atlas Poetica is
an inspiring, beautiful work. I plan to
dedicate time to being lost in that world.
Looking through some of what you have
done made memories well up from our
travels, small incidents that remain in
mind and assume significance, I intend
to continue this trail and hope to send
you more as I collect more. Poetry of
place is perfect for me.
A coincidence, today is the day after
we had at our home salon, a poetic
world tour, it was a spontaneous
improvisation, each poet was a country
and all brought poems to represent it,
from their travels. My husband played
wo r l d fl u t e s , a u t h e n t i c f r o m h i s
collection to intro each one! An unusual
tour, it really was exciting and took about
2 hours . . . for 20 poets and music. (It
was all kinds of poetry . . . )
Thanks for your work, and your
reading.
Kath Abela Wilson
Letters to the editor may be edited for
brevity, clarity, or grammar. Send to
[email protected].
Educational Use Notice
Keibooks of Perryville, Maryland,
USA, publisher of the journal, Atlas
Poetica : A Journal of Poetry of Place, is
dedicated to tanka education in schools
and colleges, at every level. It is our
intention and our policy to facilitate the
use of Atlas Poetica and related materials
to the maximum extent feasible by
educators at every level of school and
university studies.
Educators, without individually
seeking permission from the publisher,
may use Atlas Poetica : A Journal of
Poetry of Place in Contemporary Tanka's
online digital editions and print editions,
as primary or ancillary teaching
resources. Copyright law “Fair Use”
guidelines and doctrine should be
interpreted very liberally with respect to
Atlas Poetica precisely on the basis of
our explicitly stated intention herein. This
statement may be cited as an effective
permission to use Atlas Poetica as a text
or resource for studies. Proper attribution
of any excerpt to Atlas Poetica is
required. This statement applies equally
to digital resources and print copies of
the journal.
Individual copyrights of poets,
authors, artists, etc., published in Atlas
Poetica are their own property and are
not meant to be compromised in any
way by the journal’s liberal policy on
“Fair Use.” Any educator seeking
clarification of our policy for a particular
use may email the Editor of Atlas Poetica,
at [email protected]. We welcome
innovative uses of our resources for tanka
education. Website: AtlasPoetica.org
Cormorant Surfacing
A tanka sequence from Cape Conran and the village of Marlo, at the mouth of
the Snowy River, on the East Gippsland coast of Victoria, Australia
Rodney Williams
For my daughter Sophie
from the cape
we watch for humpbacks
breaching
bound south for summer ice—
ears straining for whale song
past the pier
a cormorant surfacing
well away
from where it dived—
your message safely home
~Marlo, Austalia
yacht under sail
beyond the river-mouth
with its slow beat
over the sandbar
a heron plays pilot
a fourth call
from your brand-new love . . .
our last stay
by the sea together
as father and daughter
tossed by surf
into tide-line kelp
this lightest
pebble of pumice . . .
laughter alongside loss
Trans-Canada Greyhound
Angela Leuck
a bench in a garden
covered with frost
bitter cold
in the town
where my mother was born
snow-covered fields
flashing past
then rows
of tiny houses
strangers call home
~Humboldt, Saskatchewan
~Portage La Prairie, Manitoba
beyond
the frozen wasteland
of a parking lot
a neon palm tree
shimmering green
Quantum of Solace
at the cinema—
barbed wire
around
the Kenora jail
~Saskatoon, Saskatchewan
~Kenora, Ontario
early morning
my face under the too-bright
fluorescent lights—
patches of dirty snow
outside the rest stop
casually scanning
the bus’s empty seats
the man
with the printed t-shirt:
I’m Your Worst Nightmare
~Brandon, Manitoba
~Thunder Bay, Ontario
swallowed
in a cloud of fumes
the girl
in red cowboy boots —
I board a bus heading East
covered with snow
a truck of the Ministry
of Natural Resources—
everyone on the bus
craves a shower
~Winnipeg, Manitoba
~Dryden, Ontario
!
A t l a s P o e t i c a • I s s u e 5 • P a g e 10
~Leuck, cont.
under the lights
of North Bay
the last of the sunset
fades
quietly as a prayer
stranded Greyhound
north of the Sault
the exotic dancer
complains:
I’m not dressed for -10
~North Bay, Ontario
~Ignace, Ontario
smell of grease
outside the Treehouse
Restaurant—
the bald-headed man
removes his tuque
sunlight
on snow banks—
a sign over a shop
promises
Mystic Messages
~Chalk River, Ontario
~Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario
piles
of pure white snow
in The Paper Town—
the bus pulls in
for a smoke break
~Espanola, Ontario
all the loud people
disembark
to catch
the next bus
for Toronto
outside Central Station
a poster for HIV
awareness:
if you were always rejected
would you tell the truth?
~Ottawa, Ontario
waiting in Berri Station
for the subway home—
a two-story ad
for James Blunt’s
Back to Bedlam
~Montreal, Quebec
~Sudbury, Ontario
frames in a film: Nobody Knows
Sanford Goldstein
once
I sang the spiritual
"Nobody knows,"
how the music, how the words
made sublimity
the haunting face
of that twelve-year-old
son,
with resolve he takes care
of his kid brother and sisters
nobody knows
the trouble of those four
young kids,
their mother their own
their fathers each different
at first
money was sent and in a month
the mother returned
only to leave again promising
to be back by Christmas
moving
to a new apartment
in Tokyo
the three youngest hidden
in suitcases on a truck
at long last
the cherry blossoms
bloom in spring
and still no sign
of the mother they wait for
inside
the rented apartment ,
rules by their mother:
they must not yell or leave the room
must always keep the door locked
so full of energy,
that younger brother who finds
the rules difficult—
a piece of clay rolls
and he crawls on the porch
the twelve-year-old
the only child given the freedom
to wander outside,
the mother runs off,
the oldest left in charge
not enough money
in the son's wallet to call
the mother
his coins consumed
and the continual buzz
!
~Goldstein, cont.
the younger
of the two girls
loves crayons
always the faces she draws
show smiles
no longer
does the washing machine
work,
the refrigerator
holds nothing cold
confident
that sweet face
waiting—
on her fifth birthday
her mother will be back
the older boy sets
the three kids' shoes
at the kitchen door,
such joy at the children's park,
such laughter on the turn-around
no money
for gas, electricity, water
all turned off
and still the rule of silence
even as order crumbles
the teen-ager
desperate for money
visits a father—
the man rejects the girl as his:
he always used condoms
the older boy
seeing a girl throwing
her textbooks away,
bullied she was
and he walks with her
outside
the crowded pachinko parlor
where the man works,
he hands the troubled boy
five thousand yen
she would earn
money for the group
she says
the boy sees her walk off
with a well-dressed man
at a shop
picking out gifts for
his three siblings,
these they accept
without a word
what
she brings back
refused,
the twelve-year-old
runs off in frantic disorder
the bullied girl
is led to the apartment
the door left unlocked—
the landlady opens it in shock
they are all cousins, they say
!
~Goldstein, cont.
not once
did any of the three
cry
each day they waited
for the brother and food
later
the new-found buddies refuse
to visit again
the apartment stinks,
they say, and abandon him
with a blue bucket
the boy sits alone outside
a convenience store—
a kind clerk brings him
food past the expiration date
home
from his roaming
one day
the oldest finds the youngest
eating a ball of newspaper
the fast-food noodles
need hot water to soak in
to slurp up,
in the cold weather
how hard they are to devour
her crayons
now in bits and pieces
and still her belief
her long-gone mother
will return for her fifth
their mother
had told them all
no school—
there they would be bullied
for having no father
the youngest,
who loves crayons,
stands on a tall chair
to scan beyond the porch
hoping her brother's coming
the older brother
yearning to go to school
meets two students
he refuses their call
to steal
now they defy
rules, dishes not washed,
clothes dirty,
they go outside to wash,
to play, to see a world
to have friends
one has to treat them
to this and that,
the twelve-year-old
keeps tabs on his small savings
one evening
the youngest wants to pee,
the older brother angry
says she should have done it
at the park
!
~Goldstein, cont.
on her birthday the brother
and the excited younger girl
wait for the mother,
the girl in silly squeaking shoes
to celebrate outdoors
on a bus
to a shopping
area
they marvel at the monorail
to Haneda where planes fly
late
that long anguished night
outside Haneda
they dig a grave
using sticks
covered
with hard dug-up earth
over the suitcase
the five-year-old is left
where nobody knows
the four
in the cluttered
kitchen,
small boxes of chocolates
for the funeral meal
he promises
he will take her
to Haneda
big planes will soar
to the sky
a still-shot:
the new quartet
on the steps
to the disordered apartment,
their only place for life
one day
the five-year-old stands
on a tall fragile chair
that cup for her crayons
so difficult to reach
~Tokyo
she falls
and the brother
returning
touches her cold hand,
the bullied student knows too
*The movie "Nobody Knows" was entered in the
Cannes film festival for 2004—the twelve-year-old
boy was awarded best actor. The film is based on
a family whose mother was arrested.
the brother
opens the suitcase
to put his sister in
and with the sad bullied student
they take the monorail
Thunder Snow
M. Kei
The weather service warns us of a snowstorm
coming with the possibility of lightning; they
call it 'thunder snow.' The forecast predicts
ten to fifteen inches.
how bright the moon!
it gives no warning
of the coming storm
Day turns to white, and the softest and most
picturesque of white flakes fall out of a
Christmas card and into our sky.
the first snowflakes
no sign of
the brewing fury
as they drift
gently down
We've already had a power outage. We open
the curtains to capture the last of the fading
light so my son can finish his homework.
Desperate without her electronic gadgets,
my daughter resorts to an old-fashioned
entertainment: other people.
the silence
of the snow,
cribbage pegs clicking
in the light
of the oil lamp
Fortunately, my daughter had made a big pot
of corn chowder earlier in the day, so we're
well content. We won't be going hungry any
time soon. We're as prepared as we can be.
hot corn soup!
enough to last
the blizzard
The silence is immense. No wind, less traffic,
nothing but the squeak of my neighbor's
floor over our heads. The snowfall is very
gentle, flocking the young loblolly pine
outside our window until it looks like it is
covered in cotton wool. Outside, nothing
moves. Not a bird or squirrel or human
being.
beneath
the skirts of
the pine tree,
a patch of earth
without snow
We settle in for a long quiet evening, but
within the hour the lights flicker and return.
It's almost a disappointment. When we go to
sleep, the snow is still drifting down. Night
passes uneventfully.
we wake to a world
of fluffy white silence
"How deep is it?"
barefoot I run into the snow
to show my son
I t ' s t h e g e n t l e s t b l i z z a r d I ' ve e ve r
experienced. All around me are Christmas
cards come to life and not a trace of the
wind and thunder we were warned about.
But under the burden of ten inches (and still
falling!), the fences lean and the branches of
the evergreen droop down. Nothing is
plowed. For those of us who live in the
country, it is a beautiful prison.
~Perryville, Maryland, USA
Semblance
Gary Lebel
" . . .and her hair
fell as darkness on her back and shoulders."
Archilochos of Paros, (8th century BCE)
The full moon has turned the field to alabaster. Fleeced in blue, a chair and table are
clearly visible beyond the hallway. It may be a half century or more since someone
lived here.! Cracked and weathered clapboards have taken on the look of hammered
silver. We slip around the back.
As we wade through the waist-high grasses, each step yields a fresh weedy scent. After
a short climb, we reach the summit of a hill overseen by an enormous tree, its girth of
spreading branches far wider than its height.
After removing each other’s clothes, we arrange them into a makeshift blanket under
the apple tree. Shivering in a pool of moonlight, our ardors speak through simpler,
luminous masks.
With the fields and distant woodlands lightened by the cries of peepers to the brink of
levitation, the tree-line is all that holds the semblance from turning into air: though
invisible, we know that ‘They of the Bright Eyes’ are near,!
but in surrendering ourselves to other things, we’re as lost to them
as they are to us.
Because they drank
so deeply of the rain last night
she stoops
to rub the heads
of swollen mushrooms.
The verse of Archilochos was taken from Willis Barnstone’s Greek Lyric Poetry,
Schocken Books, NY 1962
A Turn Around Central Mongolia
Bob Lucky
four hours
in a Russian saddle
black and blue
gathering clouds darken
the Mongolian sky
if I had not
been born in the century
of Freud
would the path through the outcrop
look like a vagina
inside the ger
the camel-dung fire glows
I crouch outside
and watch the snowflakes
land on my arm and melt
on the shore
of Great White Lake
people watch sunset—
I turn my back and catch
the full moon rising
the singer
demonstrates the four types
of throat singing—
as hard as I try
I can’t suppress a cough
after a week
without toilet or shower
a kind of joy
back in the Soviet gray
of Ulaanbaatar
~Mongolia
careful
not to startle the yaks
I keep my flashlight
steady on the path
that leads to the outhouse
Old Man Rock
looks like a puffed up toad
to me—
a magpie’s white breast
the only cloud in the sky
Lonely Planet
Andrew Cook-Jolicoeur
sinuous
China’s
Pearl River
and my life’s
twists & turns
the bits
in this murky
broth
my friend says
he eats caterpillars
hunched
over grey Guangzhou
map
they say the skies
are never blue
a sip
of Wang Kan Tian
could I acquire
a taste
for China
in armchair
poring
over guidebook
do I pursue
this job offer
the sounds
of the bamboo chimes
even with
the door shut
a call to the Orient
streaming sun
through
door window
am I on the threshold
of a brand new life
statue
of Norman Bethune
a daisy posy
to the man who
answered the call
toilet paper roll
on table
at my Chinese friends’
at least they
have chopsticks
the sun sets
my feet
firmly in the West
comfortable
just where I am
~Montreal, Canada
Canadian Experience
Chen-ou Liu
piece by piece
I packed 40 years
into 60 boxes
once in Canada
they fill an Ajax attic
the autumn moon
over Ajax rooftops
hangs also above
Taiwan's fields—
rice grains falling
the crescent moon
shines over Ajax
my nostalgia
hangs
on its lower tip
I met her
in an airport
we talked openly
as if we'd been stranded
on a desert island
my sleepless eyes
hiding behind the blinds
massage
the moonlit lane
under autumn nights
time is signed
on the debris
of memories—
morning in Ajax
I live Taipei’s nightlife
Taiwan was safe
in my heart
years later I opened it
over the Pacific—
a worn map
on a moonless night
as I left for Canada
you gave me oranges
every now and again
Taiwan orange hangs in the sky
your sunny face
smiling at me
in my drink—
like Ho Yi
I take nine shots
(Note: Ho Yi, a legendary Chinese hero,
comes to earth to shoot down nine of the ten
suns that are burning up the earth at the
same time)
Canadian dream
locks me in the attic
even during the day . . .
no good time for sex
because I sleep with winter
!
~Liu, cont.
Another Garden
my little brother
stands at full attention
for the first time—
no Canadian Experience
needed when writing poems
Jeffrey Woodward
(Note: In Canada, every new immigrant
knows what the term "Canadian Experience"
means for them. The discrimination against
foreign sources of human capital places
immigrants at a considerable disadvantage in
the labour market. No Canadian experience,
no job; no job, no Canadian experience)
when being shouted at
go back where you came from
the gray wings
of the Canada goose
skim my heart
side by side
our dictionaries
French-English
and Chinese-English—
exchange of solitudes
there is that place
where one may go
and deep within a garden
peacefully abide and watch
an apple harden
or so the tale is told
that he who will may find it
hidden there beyond a wall
where the one who comes to stay
does not hear an apple fall
nor is there any day
nor is there any night
but the young leaves lately known
to murmur ever lightly
soon are quieted and stone
~Woodmere, Detroit, Michigan, USA
bathed in sunshine
outside a laundry store
in Ajax, I smell
the scent of clothes
on wash lines in Taipei
~Ajax, Ontario, Canada; Taipei, Taiwan
Rita
Nette Menke
Paul Mercken, translator
op goede vrijdag
moesten we afscheid nemen
hoewel de zon scheen
het vaarwel zeggen verliep
rustig - er waren koekjes
on good friday
we had to bid you farewell
although the sun shone
the departure did run
smoothly— there was cake
op goede vrijdag
natuurlijk wist jij niet dat
het weer mooi zou zijn
of was je intuïtie
zelfs nog beter dan ik dacht
on good friday
of course you didn’t know
the day would be fine
or was your intuition
even better than I thought
op goede vrijdag
ik heb je aanwezigheid
gevoeld en gemist
zo lief van je dat je ons
voor onze komst liet danken
on good friday
I felt your presence
and I missed it
so nice of you to let them
thank us for our being there
op goede vrijdag
een kerkelijke feestdag
aan het kruis de heer
om binnen een paar dagen
weer op te staan - hij wel
on good friday
a christian holiday
on the cross the lord
to rise up again
after a few days— he yes
op goede vrijdag
afscheid nemen en de dood
een plekje geven
het is leven en sterven
waar het allemaal om draait
on good friday
to take leave and give death
a place
to live and to die
is what it’s all about
!
~Menke, cont.
Sipping Pomegranate Juice
Rita Kaagman was a dedicated
coordinator of the Dutch Haiku Society
HKN for ten years. She died on April 6,
2009. A devoted Catholic, she was
cremated on Good Friday 2009 in
crematorium Ockenburgh in The Hague.
Nette Menke, a former secretary of the
HKN, attended the cremation and
poured her impressions in a tanka series
that was translated into English by Paul
Mercken, the present secretary.
Gerry Jacobson
city of gold
city of light
grey smog obscures
your eternal hills
your heavenly sky
new Jerusalem
railway station—
a soldier
asleep on the platform
gun pointing at Heaven
sheltering
in a café in the Old City
feeling the heat
breathing the madness
sipping pomegranate juice
and did those feet
walk this cobbled laneway?
tortured jew
carrying a cross
for two thousand bloody years
oh wall
oh wailing wall
my backpack
contains no bombs
my eyes contain no tears
black hats
skullcaps . . . machine guns . . .
The Holy One
deploys his forces
in the holy city
~Jerusalem, Israel
Port Arthur Notebook
Mary Mageau
The penal colony . . . a machine to grind
rogues honest. ~J. Bentham
The day has arrived for our long awaited
visit to Port Arthur and we orient
ourselves as my partner reads aloud, ‘The
cogs of this machine include the church,
administration buildings and staff
accommodation . . . the penitentiary and
asylum . . . farms and several gardens.
Founded in 1833 and closed officially in
1877, over two thousand prisoners and
staff lived here.’
long ago
a brutal prison colony—
now visitors picnic as
children play among the ruins
of confinement cells
In 1897 a bush fire raged through the
colony, burning down many timber
cottages, gutting all the shingle roofed
buildings. Perhaps it’s the juxtaposition
of lush lawns and stately oaks with the
ruins of once magnificent sandstone
buildings, that creates Port Arthur’s eerie
atmosphere.
enduring years
in the penitentiary
asylum, hospital—
the final pardon granted
in a place of rest
We board the ferry at the penal colony’s
eastern shore on Carnavon Bay, to visit
the Isle of the Dead. Nearly 1100 people
are buried here. On the high ground,
families of the civil and military lie in
graves marked by elaborate headstones.
Convicts, lunatics and paupers rest in the
lower ground in unmarked graves. John
Barron, a convict gravedigger and
gardener, lived on the island and grew
m a ny fl ow e r s ye t h e s t e a d f a s t l y
maintained, ‘I will not eat vegetables
grown from this soil.’
Returning to the mainland we conclude
our afternoon in the colony’s Heritage
Garden. ‘Not only important visitors but
families of the administrative, civil and
military officials at Port Arthur (so says
my guide book of this unique garden)
could take the air here, free from the
disturbing presence of the convicts.’
a scent
of climbing roses
shaded spaces
under English elms
welcome the visitor
The plantings capture my attention first.
Based on an original design from the
1840s, masses of colourful snap dragons,
forget-me-nots and scarlet impatiens are
offset by tall stalks of hollyhocks and
larkspur. Roses and French lavender
perfume the air. Large shrubs and mature
!
~Mageau, cont.
Missing
oaks define the height of its scale. At the
garden’s central hub, marked by the
convergence of several pathways, a four
tiered fountain rests in its circular
reflecting pool. I move slowly, savouring
its peaceful beauty and charm.
Bob Lucky
Leaving Port Arthur and driving up the
Midlands Highway we stop at the
historic town of Oatlands for coffee and
a short walk. Even here we are surprised
to find evidence of Tasmania’s convict
past still haunting the population.
Admiring the authentic Georgian
buildings along the main street, I notice a
series of tiles. Each is the size of a brick
face, set end on end, bordering the
concrete footpath. A hundred, at least,
stretch before us. On closer inspection
each tile bears a three-line inscription.
One catches my eye so I bend down and
read:
Peter Brannon, age twelve
transported for life in 1834
stole a handkerchief
A guest complains bitterly that someone
has stolen his underwear. He details the
missing pair for the hotel staff, down to a
tag sewn in by the last laundry service.
Somewhere in Kathmandu, someone is
wearing his underwear, and he is
outraged.
at reception
a laughing Buddha
flashes a smile—
a garland of Christmas lights
blinking off and on
Unpacking after the Pokhara-Kathmandu
flight, I discover the Swiss army knife I’d
lost in my carry-on bag.
~Nepal
like a cancer
they were cut away
from society
I place a flower
on his memorial plaque
~Tasmania, Australia
Athens
Carmella Braniger
before the sun
a cock crows
we walk these ruins
the dead below our feet
always ahead
i slip
out of our room
before dawn
find a lighted shop
warm sugar donuts
sharing a room
with three others
i recall again
what it means
to be nineteen
processional
up the acropolis
each step
a prayer
honoring the dead
we’ve come
so far
to see these relics
opening a closet
to the past
i lose myself
to the flurry
of the crowd
my body no longer
my own
street vendors
oh no
there go
the police
again
we stop to rest
on a fallen column
from the temple
our desires
no longer secret
agora
we start out
together
slowly slip
onto our own paths
in the shadow
of the acropolis
i eat
strawberries
from a brown bag
!
~Braniger, cont.
A Pocketful of México
James Tipton
on the way back
from the Plaka
i stop
to watch a man
make glasses sing
bitter campari
he makes me
a pink bitch—
a pun
on beach
acropolis
from the rooftop
one more night
to cradle
this sliver of moon
~Athens, Greece
That middle-aged woman
in the street market
has only one eye—
but, handing me a mango,
she winks at me.
Day of the Dead—
street altars fill with food
and photos of the departed,
and old women in black
chase dogs.
That beautiful señorita
throws herself again and again
into the waves at Sayulita.
Now I know why
the sea speaks only Spanish.
As I kissed you
I noticed just behind you
a thousand bougainvilleas
were breaking
into blossom.
Saturday night Mass—
I pray for that blonde
in front of me
whose black dress
is partly unbuttoned in back.
~Chapala, Jalisco, México
Acrostic Tanka
Immersion
Bernard Gieske
Tracy Royce
t wisting trout
a dvancing up
n orthern streams
k nifing through torrid waters
a mbling anglers cast their barbs
t reasures
a ligning the beach
n ature’s
k aleidoscope of dawns
a wakens desires
~Bowling Green, Kentucky, USA
the lone gaijin
at the sento—
six pairs of eyes
urge me on
to the spigots
With my round, ample curves and pale
skin, I am conspicuous, another
bumbling tourist. Until I show that I
respect the unspoken rules of the
bathhouse, the other patrons are
concerned about my presence. Will I
contaminate the baths, submerging
without first crouching underneath the
hot and cold spigots that line the wall
and washing myself? They watch as I
rush to demonstrate my competence,
scrubbing and rinsing again and again
until I am immersed in the rhythm of the
ritual.
~Sakurayu, Kyoto, Japan
Black Jack Judy and the Crisco Kids
Childhood Memories of Growing up Italian in New York, a Biography
Alexis Rotella
Birthday party—
I cry inconsolably . . .
some other kid
gets to wear
my captain’s hat.
Spanish house on the corner—
their son died in battle . . .
his replacement
a little German
orphan girl.
After Saturday night’s bath
shadow of the enema bag
on the wall . . .
Ma’s you gotta be clean
on the inside too.
Another Catholic wedding—
in the last pew
the same unmarried girls
their eyes
wide with longing.
In the kitchen doorway
Frenchie,
an old black from Louisiana
deep frying
the legs of frogs.
Dirt pile from an excavation
big as a mountain . . .
while climbing I cut my finger
on a broken mirror
the shape of Sicily.
First lesson in the School
of Hard Knocks—
after giving him my best comic books
he wasn’t on the corner
with the hunk of promised jet.
He came to seventh grade
the creepy kid
with eyes like daggers
the Nazi who had
no mother.
Chewing Black Jack gum
in her long black braids
pink ball in one fist,
silver jacks in the other . . .
the lovely Black Jack Judy.
For his next trick
Jerry, the wildest kid
in the neighborhood,
dangles a garter snake
into his open mouth.
!
~Rotella, cont.
For Aunt Millie
no man is good enough . . .
at the kitchen sink
she beats up
on the crabs.
The dog I wanted
for Christmas never barked
and for years
it obeyed by holding open
the kitchen door.
A Chinese girl
on the back of his bike—
in silence my brother picks
a bouquet of lilacs
before pedaling off.
My mother’s
You gotta have
clean underwear
and there they are
Christmas-wrapped.
Jack-in-the-pulpit:
my brother
shows me what’s inside—
a little preacher dressed
in a crepe-paper suit.
My father in a fez
smoking a Turkish pipe . . .
the paisani at our Sunday table
spellbound by his lectures,
his lofty intelligence.
In bed with fever—
my brother special delivers
a perfumed letter
from The Sultan,
its edges scorched
After the house is asleep
the side of my father
I never knew—
he in a dark brown kimono
lighting mail-order incense.
Our attic a millinery shop
and a depository
for old letters
and my Scorpio brother’s jar
with the pickled human ear.
Loft’s chocolates
the only gift
Dad ever game my Mom
except for my brother
and me, the accident.
Christmas Eve:
Aunt Millie massacres
the eels with a hammer
blood splattered all over
the white kitchen tiles.
In the subway
with my parents . . .
I pretend I’m not with them
ashamed that they speak
in loud Italian.
!
~Rotella, cont.
Extended Tanka
The only time
they ever really fought—
Mom washing
Dad’s books
under the faucet.
Bruce England
First my mother blames the boss
then a little later, him—
the day Dad lost
his job
at Il Progresso.
My father not demonstrative
but at night he carried me
high on his shoulders up to bed
then told me tales
from the Arabian Nights
My grandma hurries out
to buy tulips
and never comes back . . .
was it ordained,
the hit-and-run driver?
~Bronx, New York City, New York, USA
Having listened to my husband reminisce
about his Italian childhood in the Bronx for
the last 40 years, I decided to write his
biography in tanka/kyoka form. Black Jack
Judy and the Crisco Kids can be read in its
entirety by ordering from MET Press <http://
www.themetpress.com>.
An Eskimo girl
met a young man on the shore
together they fell
she never felt such a deep
reaching between her thighs
In time she gave birth
sweating out a baby boy
she went outside
plunged him through an air hole
his shape shifting into whale
~Alaskan Myth
In the high desert
on the side of a mesa
are twisted tree limbs
you can see the adjustments
needed to stay there alive
Most of us just see
straight-standing trees in our world
it’s a shock to learn
their real nature is plastic
any way to light will do
~Bandelier National Monument, New
Mexico, USA
a sky of stars
Janet Lynn Davis
the first night
at our rural home
a sky of stars
I’m unaccustomed to
is staring inside me
no telling
if it's a horse down the road
or the whinny
of some wild creature
we've been taught to fear
inside the house
where no one yet has lived
the ghosts
trying to inform me
I'm only a guest
the back half
of this long, woodsy lot
left bare of sod,
allowing some rawness
to enter our lives
~Grimes County, Texas
large wounds
where the tractors hit them—
I have no salve
to restore a pine forest
to its once-pristine state
beaches
a burst
of scarlet berries—
the scruffy shrub
reinvents itself
after a summer-long drought
Andrea Grillo
groans and whines
from the outdoor fans
camouflage
the cries of animals
this black, hollow evening
moonbathing
on a slow curve of beach
the pull
of so many tides
those long lusty years ago
shack
by the causeway
spine thin
an artist's motif
now leans with the wind
~Randolph, New Jersey, USA
Lavender Fields
Patricia Prime
wind and rain rip
the canvas umbrella
over the table . . .
through a rain-streaked pane
a wild flower bends, sways, bends
in the café
I choose a card for a friend
from the display
break a sprig of lavender
to include in the envelope
finches have deserted
the jacaranda
leaving us to write
words in the silence
of lavender-scented air
sunshine at last
catching the leaves
shining with rain
a thin jet of water spills
from a stone lion’s mouth
deciding on lunch
two elderly ladies’ gasps
of pleasure—
the scent of lavender
in bowls of ice cream
At the window the light rises out of dark clouds; and I see as if for the first time, the
piercing blue shoulders of the mountains, a chevron patch of firs below. And there, a
horse, head down, stalking past. You swear you hear all the lost conversation we might
have had; the few years a vanished time. And time again, so little being said when so
much is meant. You are waiting for more than this paltry small-talk across a lunch
table, a leaf-fall of thought, one of those moments when little is said and always it’s
meant to mean more. You say, “I know words don’t do well; they don’t like to dwell in
solitude.” “And who can blame them?” I ask, thinking that here we are again inside the
nutshell of misunderstanding.
Ley Lines
Alex von Vaupel
in church
after consecration
his whisper
how he wants
to touch me
wandering around
this old cathedral city
your confusion
when i point out
phallic monuments
exploring
slowly mapping
the layout of his skin
my distant
promised land
hopeful i ask
about his youth
in boys' boarding school
but no, he insists, Never
a crush on a classmate
sunrise
over the slight curve
of his chest
a silver hair turns
briefly golden
your touch
just a loving
reminder
that i curve
in all the wrong places
together
we spend our days
reading the Classics
yet my love poems
are all Greek to him
you try to make me
feel better
unaware the lines
your fingers trace
are self-inflicted scars
in the library
his hand feeling up
my behind
wishing he would
teach me a lesson
when i cut off
my hair
his helplessness
trying to guess at
how i had changed
!
~von Vaupel, cont.
words
so carelessly you play
the Rubik's cube
contorted in your hands
how can i make you
understand?
Owen Bullock
side by side
we walk on ancient streets
it occurs to me
you've no idea
where i'm going
ley lines
gleaming in the sun
all the roads
radiate
away from here
stalemate
in the chess café
forgetting my new name
he buys me coffee
for the last time
his first
were ‘no’ and ‘nose’
and soon
a trail of others
before he could walk
her first
‘mumma’, ‘daddy’ ‘Owa’
then silence until
“you mik up some
vita-resh, daddy!”
our youngest’s
were ‘mum’ and ‘dad’ —
then she shuffled
on her bottom
and never learnt to crawl
~Aberystwyth, Wales and Nightcaps,
New Zealand
~Utrecht, Netherlands
('sunrise' previously appeared in Tanka
Splendor 2009.)
To Vanuatu With Love
Claudia Coutu-Radmore
the streets of Port Vila
lined with Chinese shops
French restaurants
from everyone a smile
especially to strangers
on the farthest
most pristine island
one or two villages
white sand and
empty deodorant cans
Ni-Vanuatu people
seldom wear shoes
yet don boots
and brass band uniforms
to play for tourists
after a hurricane
only the strongest buildings
are left standing!
churches
and politicians’ houses
miles
of white sand beaches
a bay of azure
between this quiet beach
and Devil’s Point
market women
in colourful island dresses
flower prints and lace
offer green papaya
live lorikeets in chicken wire
above the beach bar
an orphaned baby fruit bat!
you may hold it
against your chest
where it clings like a kitten
wild vines
cover everything
the graves too
of cannibals
and missionaries
climbing the stream
to the waterfall
local women look for snails
enjoy them
raw
pointed and as large
as elephant’s ears
taro’s profusion
of deep green leaves
that shine in moonlight
a channel
off the mainland island
the place of sharks !
on the beach in the morning
half body of a dog
do you see
why I could not stay
in paradise longer
city slums and walls
around rich houses
while waiting
at a small island airport
we browse trees and bushes
for starfruit
and custard apples
~Port Vila, Vanuatu
(A South Pacific nation; approximately 80
islands -about 16 are inhabited.)
Women
Saturday market
a leek and some mandarins
catch my eye—
I won’t even mention
all the women
in the post office queue
I run a finger
over my wife’s handwriting
this desire
to follow her every path
~Owen Bullock
Waihi, New Zealand
~Liam Wilkinson
Yorkshire, England
a beautiful woman
at the supermarket
check out
her ringless hand
packing my bag
rainy market day—
removing the horse droppings
with a stick
with a strained smile
SHE walks by
~Owen Bullock
Waihi, New Zealand
Jörgen Johansson
~Sweden
I’m told
I’m not supposed
to watch—
her breasts moving
side to side
verses of gold
truly wondrous bard
her way with words
singing like a blue bird
in Eden’s garden
~Mike Montreuil
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
Bernard Gieske
The Swede
steps into a sewer—
a woman sprays him
with perfume . . .
last ferry from Morocco to Spain.
her eyes say
“I know, I’m a victim”
the woman
sitting with her young son
playing with his first toy gun
~Alexis Rotella
Algeciras, Spain
~M. L. Harvey
Subway, New York City, USA
Rainy Weather
weeks after
the rhododendron's blossoms
have fallen and scattered
a single bud
has opened to the rain
rain
makes the hedge cobwebs
sag
tightly she wraps her
middle-aged body in a coat
~Fran Witham
Wrentham, Massachusetts, USA
~André Surridge
Hamilton, New Zealand
Hurricane coming
we throw tables and chairs
into the pool
and think about jumping in
with wetsuits and snorkels
dirty puddles
snake across the street
the aftermath
your words saturated with
stormy accusations
~Bruce England
Miami, Florida
~Terra Martin
Louisville, Kentucky, USA
on my verandah
balloon vine advances
between floorboards—
suffocation blues
and rows of mold-speckled shoes
in spite of rain
I walk a field with crows
swaggering along
to the tune in my mind
one of Sousa's marches
~Barbara A. Taylor
Mountain Top, NSW, Australia
~Kirsty Karkow
Waldoboro, Maine, USA
is it real
or imagined this memory
of rain falling
on a pram hood, my small hand
reaching out for raindrops
she’s looking at
a butterfly in the rain
so colourful
on her television screen
breaking news from Tahiti
~André Surridge
Hull, England
~Geert Verbeke
Tahiti
Planned topics for next issue include men, music,
and fair weather.
Bernard Gieske
we share
our origins
from station to station
happily—
the same destination
she calls
so many years
school days
some reunions
never happen
somewhere
a place
green mountain valley
fresh water stream
where winds blow softly
idle hours
surfing the net
riding the waves
sailing ships
above earth’s horizon
tender flower
the child in my lap
feet and hands
unfold
with desire
all these books
lined up
in their cases
summer fare
free dreams
your smile
puffs its way
across the smokey menu
laughing eyes
of desire
rendezvous
clawing back the shadows
breaking open the solitude
watching the sky
turn to flame
your car’s hum
as you left last night
held me tight———
bed
of dreams
summer time
rusty hinges
on a screen door
kids
wanting in and out
early years
finding
the four leaf clover
holding
her hand
James Tipton
I found a tiny bronze Buddha
in the crotch of the peach tree
behind the motel
in Ojo Caliente.
Tonight I will sleep easily.
~Ojo Caliente, New Mexico
Beach café, Puerto Vallarta—
who should show up but God
in the form of that young woman
from New Delhi, India
showing off her bangles.
Es hora que sucumbas
a mis esfuerzos de seducirte.
¿O preferirías estar arrastrada
por las calles de Ajijic
por un burro hechando pedos?
It’s time you succumbed
to my efforts to seduce you.
Or would you rather be dragged
through the streets of Ajijic
by a farting donkey?
~Ajijic, Mexico
~Puerto Vallarta, Mexico
Everything important to me
is now in the hands
of that young Mexican woman
making love
to those balls of masa.
It was near dawn
when I noticed
for the first time
that tattoo of Guadalupe
on her lower back.
~Puerto Vallarta, Mexico
~Chapala, Mexico
I wasted this whole day thinking
about that beautiful woman
who boarded the bus
just before I got off
in Guayabitos.
I got caught in that undertow
off the coast of Manzanillo
so long that I began
thinking about
my ex-wife.
~Manzanillo, Mexico
~Guayabitos, Mexico
Looking for mangoes
in the street market
suddenly the day fills
with the breasts of the señorita
who has just squeezed ahead of me.
~Chapala, Mexico
Amelia Fielden
Kath Abela Wilson
vacant yard
swings back and forthing
with the ghosts
of childhood summers,
crows blown into the sky
the storks
imagine their hunger
for Africa
and what of our wanting
for next and next
higher, higher
higher still, three ospreys
soaring beyond
the white magnolia tree
'somewhere over the rainbow'
~Seattle, Washington, USA
behind thick mist
the ocean's constant drone
I hear
but hate to accept
the truth of our aging
~Canyon Beach, Oregon, USA
towers of silence
almost a memory
still the gatekeeper
I imagine our bones
licked clean
~Yazd, Iran
we found a shortcut
the day before leaving
between the hills
each day a step closer
to when nothing matters
~Busan, South Korea
suburban yard
on summer afternoons
a small boy
playing in the dirt, like
small boys always did
~Seattle, Washington, USA
almost touching
my slow train window
magnolias
outlined in magenta—
I could live here again
~Winnert, Germany
in the garden of newborns
all white flowers
a new family
if only we could have known
such a clean beginning
~Kamakura, Japan
~Sydney, Australia
Liam Wilkinson
Mel Goldberg
a lilac ceiling
and the sun
a forty watt bulb
I pack a discarded year
into several stiff boxes
the wailing of bagpipes
creates an abyss
in my soul
I wonder what awaits
on the other side
these hands cold
as though I hold
the Solent air
tugging at England
to sail this ferry home
the golden maples
I see as I hike
on the hillside
tell me what my little dog
has no need to learn
from out of Accrington’s
drizzle-mirrored maze
eight waxed legs
and four pink Stetsons
the Blackpool train pulls in
burying my little dog
in the garden
along with memories
I shed a tear
for myself
disgruntled faces
preserved in amber
on Preston’s Victorian platform
ready for the off
she lifts her child by its arm
black bin-bags
full
of tight-fitting clothes
another long list
of new year’s resolutions
the gurgling fountain
in my yard
whispers old memories
of the life
I meant to live
~Ajijic, Jalisco, Mexico
no time no sense
of sprawling freedom
just the scent
of antibac soap
on my hands
~England
Scott H. Stoller
Barbara A. Taylor
Prozac
spiraling down
the drain—
swirling winds blast the dust
from father's headstone
along cobbled streets
on both sides by the canal
bright red lights"
in every window
sex for sale
an empty glass
and packed ash tray
a cricket chirps—the blushing young
redhead
hits all the high notes at last
~Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA
~Amsterdam
at the antiques sale
their centuries old ms
—latin prayers in gold
transcended
to his wife’s new kitchen
next to mine
her pungent scents
on a pillow . . .
when she left she stole
my every desire
all that’s left—
a line of blackened
buckled mailboxes
on the one-way road
to hell
David Rice
out early
with my binoculars
at the usual willow
if only a migrating warbler
were looking for me
~Point Reyes, California, USA
pretending
to be invisible
along the path
a bearded dragon stretches
in yoga pose
~Mountain Top, NSW, Australia
Patricia Prime
on the girl’s feet
two black swallow tattoos
perfectly
synchronised as she walks
barefoot on Muriwhai beach
the years have told me
I should love what happens—
good or bad—
nothing is ever wasted
from my ordinary life
at the bus stop
I’m writing poems
in my notebook
to see whether anyone
will ask what I’m doing
what more could I want
than half an hour to wait
on a bench
with coffee, a sandwich
and a book to read?
beside the chapel
a beggar plays
his tin whistle
the quick tunes
floating upwards
in the museum
the wrapped mummy’s
delicate shroud
a fragile work of art
that has escaped time
a sculpture
on the rocky shore
at North Head—
an old row-boat
stinking of fish and rust
with a gracious nod
I give the busker
five dollars . . .
it’s a day for extravagance,
the daffodils in bloom
he slips his tongue
into a Bluff oyster shell
sucking
its sweetness and the tang
of sand and salt water
along the Desert Road
which is more of a tussock land
of bleached weeds
there is pristine silence,
both dark and light at once
beside the river Whai
two herons loiter
wingtip to wingtip—
they are still together
when we return on the path
the sprawl of Auckland
reaches its fingers
into two harbours
the skins of beaches
at their edges
!
~Prime, cont.
Marje A. Dyck
the long harsh scar
across the Desert Road
begins to break
as the first triangles of lake
appear on the horizon
her fingers
trace words on the wet window
the same letters
I taught my children
all those long years ago
drawl of the tide
scrapes on shingle,
a wave picks
at the pier’s ribs
where boys fish for sprats
a blue buoy
hangs in a skein of nets
and a fisherman
paints a green and red name
on the hull of his boat
on our knees
two poets cluster around
to clear
the haiku boulder
of twigs and weeds
the rimu box
is not large enough
to hold a pair of shoes
but contains your ashes
lovingly placed in the small hole
~New Zealand
a few small stones
from a windswept beach—
in my hand
their weight
a kind of relief
mid November
leaves still falling
not wanting
to think of their destiny
nor mine
after meditating
I notice
a small, grey hawk
in a tall tree
sitting perfectly still
~Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada
ayaz daryl nielsen
starting over again
this much harder
as I grow older
another new city
ripe with loneliness
~Denver, Colorado, USA
M. L. Harvey
the talent
he kept to himself
beneath
the blue tattoo from prison
a man who grew great orchids
although
on social security
his credit card
maxed out to the limit—
always, that grin of the moon
~New York City, USA
~New York City, USA
a temper
lost to little things . . .
at the mall
indoor sparrows live too
on what’s left behind
~Syracuse, New York, USA
telling me
to trust him
this time
out in the spring orchard
the loud thrum of bees
~Poolville, New York City, USA
two by two
we played side by side
with the ark
a shy boy in Sunday best
who lost both his parents
~suburban New Jersey, USA
a bit of glue
to fix his dentures
sometimes
it must seem to him
that I’ll always be waiting
“I used to know
where things belonged”
the mother
putting dishes away
in her daughter’s kitchen
~Hamilton, New York, USA
~Hamilton, New York, USA
wondering
where its mate
has gone—
the puffed, red mitten
flattened, under snow
~Brooklyn, New York, USA
Alexis Rotella
Owen Bullock
A tiny dive
run by old men—
we order menudo for breakfast—
last night's beer talk
still bouncing off the walls.
~Palm Springs, California, USA
These scary men
who unload the ships—
their carbuncled faces
each bloodshot eye pointing in
a different direction.
~Algeciras, Spain
meditating
behind the meditators
in the square
so they won’t see me
and give me a leaflet
the way he
popped up his head
before the philosophy exam
began and said
where the fuck’s O’Brien?
sitting up
in a hospital bed
after an operation
how serene
my ex looks
only 50c
the lady
in the op shop
sells me
my own hat
Terra Martin
page after page
the Mayan sun beats
in time with
the steamy novel
I am reading
~Waihi, New Zealand
~Yucatan, Mexico
broken shards
like Grecian urns of all textures
stretched for miles
my eternal dream of finding
the perfect shell
~Sanibel Island, Florida, USA
Margaret Van Every
Aye de mi, Catrina*,
are you smart or simply vain?
You have set the style
with your fancy frills and hats,
and we are soon to follow.
(*Dapper skeleton, an image originated by
Mexican engraver José Guadalupe Posada
In 1910.)
For your infraction
the “kissing cop” will offer
un compromiso—
a smack, a peck, a pucker up—
toothless mordida* with a bite!
Raúl the gardener,
who speaks the language of flowers,
kneels among the callas
and asks why gringos expect
him to speak only English.
Mamá named him Jesús
in hopes he’d be her savior,
take care of mama.
That is why those named Jesús
prefer to be known as Chuy.
Throughout the village,
spontaneous cacophony.
The Canine Chorus,
tutti poochie unrehearsed,
lifts up every voice and barks.
(*lit. bite; a traffic fine)
Obstructing the path,
a blind beggar sings off key.
I’ll plunk my pesos
in the cup of the one who
winks at me and sings in tune.
The full moon ascends
high over the malecón*,
the fishermen’s boats,
the fish, and the fishermen.
On benches gorditos** make out.
The gate that keeps them out
keeps us in.
Like alacranes,*
those beyond the pale
will come to us over the wall.
(*scorpions)
Your ring that’s missing,
don’t think of it as stolen.
It has a new life now
on someone else’s finger.
Like your love, it’s traveled.
(*sea wall, **fat people)
La regla de oro*:
You must always be home
for your repairman
and he must always be late
or postpone till manaña**.
He sells his paintings
at the Wednesday tianguis.*
The one I purchased
is far better, he boasts,
than Rivera’s original.
(*golden rule, **tomorrow)
(*outdoor market)
!
~Van Every, cont.
In my wallet
only as many pesos
as I care to lose.
Wanting their share: thief, beggar,
and law enforcement officer.
The diners wear jeans;
meseros* tuxedos,
neither out of place;
each dressed according to role,
both frayed around the edges.
(*waiters)
Men follow her home
like starving curs seeking scraps.
They’ll slink back later
to howl beneath her window
for whatever she may toss.
Thirty minutes drag
between each charro* event.
Los Mexicanos
ask me ¿where is your picnic
and where is your cerveza?**
Every day the dust!
She flicks water on the floor
then deftly wields
her broom of bundled branches
before earth reverts to dust.
Alacrán*
in my dry tub,
not your fault really.
I must do away with you.
We cannot bathe together.
(*scorpion)
(*Mexican horseman/cowboy, **beer)
Las señoritas*
of the charro** ride sideways
lest they discover
too soon the pleasures
of straddling a galloping steed.
They never slack off,
las hormigas mexicanas.*
They just don’t get
the concept of siesta,
like us before we moved here.
(*Mexican ants)
(*The young ladies,**Mexican
horseman/cowboy)
Horse and farrier
share an exchange of trust:
the horse gives his hoof
to be pried, hammered, nailed,
while secured in the farrier’s crotch.
The body of Christ
sees the light of day today,
leads the procession
circling the zócalo*
to the beat of a brass band.
(*plaza, or town square)
~Jalisco, Mexico
Jörgen Johansson
Bruce England
emerging
from the dust cloud
a war painted child
crying as he cannot play on
because he is dead
Each wildebeest
may shudder somewhere deep,
though the grass is sweet,
the air warm, the herd rambles
as a giant meat locker
~South Africa
on my knees
in the moist soil
a tooth lost
during the struggle
with myself
wolfing down
4 oranges and a half head
of cabbage . . .
on its third week
my anti-medicine campaign
new years day . . .
already broken my promise
i held yesterday
in a state of loneliness
and an empty blue nun
~Sweden
I thought I saw
Ryokan with a laptop
waiting in San Jose
for a bus that would take him
near the coastal mountains
~Downtown San Jose, California
Kirsty Karkow
seeing the space
among my favorite books
I picture him
lost, this rainy day,
in The Riddle of the Sands
among the aisles
women push their carts
complaining
about the price of bread
yet buying caviar
~Waldoboro, Maine, USA
Paul Smith
Bob Lucky
now that
you’ve gone
my heart
has emptied
like the sky
outside the hotel
the tiger balm tout squats
in the dust
always three jars of ointment
lined up for inspection
a young man
smiling beside my mother
in the wedding photo—
the face of a father
I never really knew
in fog
a few high branches
point out
where the sky
once was
~Kathmandu, Nepal
after coffee
and an hour rowing
on Phewa Lake
I learn the value of two rupees:
a piss at a public toilet
~Pokhara, Nepal
the drone
of steady rain
all night
the clouds on my screensaver
drift nowhere
~Worcester, UK
~Hangzhou, China
Ted Jean
Say we encounter
a field that is flat, unfarmed.
In the winter sun
the long dead weeds make white light.
Why this accidental joy?
~outside Brownsville, Texas, USA
Joanna M. Weston
Angela Leuck
her Vogue dresses
and luxurious furs
the aunt in high heels
who leaves marks
on our new kitchen tiles
square-riggers surge
across the wind
a gull hovers
eye-bright
at the shoreline
70 years old
after her Vegas wedding
coming home
to the sign on her lawn
ain't love ducky
a sunlit red door
always with me
in my pocket
a ten-year-old orange
from San Diego
used to
pitching bales
my aunt hurls a rock
the length of the rink
and out the back door
a line of pebbles
kelp and broken shells
the story
of last night’s
loving tide
~Shawnagan Lake, British Columbia,
Canada
Andrew Cook-Jolicoeur
new babysitter—
when I develop my latest
roll of film
pictures of her smiling
in a room full of boys
bored in the country
she sends him
a long letter
written
on birch bark
how long will I wait
for him to make up his mind
the bright red
hibiscus bloom
lasts only a day
finding a tiny flaw
in the finish
of a lacquered box—
the woman
with the crooked tooth
~Montreal, Canada
~Canada
André Surridge
I’ve heard
the Sicilian language
has no future tense . . .
was it fear of invasion
or Etna’s shadow
one wet Sunday Mass
in November at Blackfriars
she removed her
engagement ring and placed it
on the collection plate
~Sicily, Italy
~London, England
she died
in a car crash going
to the meeting—
before the race is over
greyhounds catch the electric hare
at night
no-one looking but the moon
she runs
naked onto the lawn
for an air bath
~Auckland, New Zealand
the return
of Quetzalcoatl
is almost here
the celestial court assembles
& the ball game must be played
~Mexico
wearing scuba gear
my son-in-law waves to me
in the blue lagoon
through the window
of the glass bottom boat
the hair on my legs
moving left and right
with the tide
how much of me is like
a sea anemone
sometimes at night
she wakes thinking he’s there
& talks to him . . .
her hand feels for his & then
she remembers
watching
interminable winter rain
drench the lawn . . .
how long is it now
since this illness began
~Hamilton, New Zealand
death bed—
suddenly the scents
of autumn
she lifts her weak head
looking for strewn leaves
~London, England
~Rarotonga
!
~Surridge, cont.
arms
that have ploughed
planted
& gathered into barns
now hold her in moonlight
waiting
in half-light for a lover
long overdue . . .
around her shoulders
a shawl of shadows
~Knaresborough, England
~Knaresborough, England
hand-feeding
stingrays off the Gisborne coast
its gummy mouth . . .
a bit like grandpa
without his teeth
~Gisborne, New Zealand
the sepia photo
has no hint of a smile
only great grandma’s look
of steely determination
& a strong jaw
every meal
for the last seven years
she has set
this place at the table
for their lost son
our tiny world
on the rim of known creation . . .
how many
distant galaxies
exist beyond ours
~Hull, England
Yeats was right
too long a sacrifice
can make a stone
of the heart . . . his wife
of forty years goes into care
Raquel D. Bailey
winter moon
this quiet night
my thoughts
try to find a place
amongst a field of stars
premiere
Zurich opera house
red curtains rise
like a grand old lady
lifting her crinoline
the shape
of her birthmark
in the light of the moon
makes me remember
why I am still here
~Zurich, Switzerland
~North Florida, USA
David Caruso
Guy Simser
oceans
in a seaside gallery . . .
the painted waves
of old-time seafarers
and lonely spouses
from his hand built shack
across the boreal lake
that grand piano
he pushed across winter ice
WW1 hermit Mozart
~Long Beach Island, USA
in costa rica
(the closest i have been
to the equator)
shacks along the mountain road
climb up towards to the mansions
~Costa Rica
The shroud
of Christ.
A blood, semen and shit-stained pair
of children's
underwear.
~many Roman Catholic churches in the
United States of America
~Loon Lake, Northern Ontario
(Precambrian Shield), Canada
country grade school
pen nib into my inkwell
cursive magic
alphabet words rhymes
that love poem at sixteen
~Port Credit Village, Lake Ontario fishing
port 1930s.
now, well on in life
the hanging scarecrow
this is not whimsy
draws me out
to his bleak snow field
~Carp, Ontario, farming community
outside of Ottawa, the nation's capital.
that sultry night
meeting a stranger
at Carnival
what passionate bliss
dressed only in masks
Carol Raisfield
I'm drawn
to her nape, exposed
in the sea air . . .
will she feel my eyes
tasting the salt?
~Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
~Catalina Island, California, USA
privet flowers
the smell takes me back
Monterey by the sea
sun shadows on the wall
your poems beside the bed
~Central Park, New York, USA
plovers cry out
their shadows rising
in waves
slowly he tastes the salt
in the curve of her neck
~Atlantic Beach, New York, USA
dinner for one . . .
touching her photo
he says grace
in this quiet house
that held her life
~Venice, California, USA
breast to breast
in the rush hour crush
we sway
a flicker from her eyes
in the space of a smile
~'A' train, Brooklyn, New York, USA
Patrick M. Pilarski
climbing
the subway steps to a drizzle
in Times Square
you with flowers and the smile
that still curls my toes
~Manhattan, New York, USA
nightfall
under open sky
a string
of northern lights
tethering the moon
~Skagafjör!ur, Iceland
ARTICLES
Atlas Poetica welcomes book reviews and non-fiction articles relevant to poetry of
place. We accept non-fiction submissions year round.
All the Horses of Heaven by
James Tipton reviewed by Sanford
Goldstein
Modern English Tanka Press
Baltimore, Maryland, 2009
pp. 90, paperback
This is my first contact with the poems of
James Tipton who, according to Denis M.
Garrison's press release, has been writing
haiku and tanka for forty years. I missed
Tipton's haiku publication by MET Press
entitled Proposing to the Woman in the Rear
View Mirror, 2008. Tipton has the usual long
string of publications, especially in poetry
chapbooks . His work has appeared in such
famous anthologies as Cor van den Heuvel's
The Haiku Anthology and The Red Moon
Anthology of English Language Haiku edited
by Jim Kacian and others. Tipton also
appeared in William J. Higginson's The
Haiku Handbook. Tipton's collection of
poetry entitled Letters from a Stranger won
the Colorado Book Award for 1999.
Michael McClintock has written a very
positive introduction to All the Horses of
Heaven in which he says Tipton is "perhaps,
the horniest and healthiest man over sixty in
the Western world." That statement may be
enough to attract readers. On p. 98 of All the
Horses is a picture of Tipton with his wife
Martha, who has translated under each tanka
her Spanish version of the poem. Writes
Tipton in his Acknowledgements, "My
beloved wife Martha Álcantar is the person
who is primarily responsible for the
translation of these poems from English into
Spanish. Thank you . . . for the many days
you devoted to this book."
When I told James Tipton that I had not
studied Spanish and could not comment on
these translations, he said it was all right. As
the "unhorniest man over sixty in any world,"
I may not be the person who should criticize
these poems, yet I will try. Two poems in my
first collection (This Tanka World, 1977) have
a sexual emphasis which is, I feel, quite
different from Tipton's frequent joy in sexual
encounters:
all night
as if this skin
splattered
with oil
in crucial places
this niche
for sperm
overflows
these fall
days
What I feel is the major emphasis in
Tipton's collection of unusual tanka is the
utter joy he has in seeing women, in seeing
their bodies, in viewing them even from a
distance or in watching them up close.
Tipton, in thanking Michael for the
introduction, refers to it as "sweet and
playful," so perhaps Michael's use of the
word "horniest" can be taken in that playful
way.
For In the first poem in the collection
Tipton reveals his struggle in waiting for
the perfect woman:
I used up my whole life
waiting for her to arrive
and now there is nothing left
but her presence here
in a thousand poems. (p. 11)
Another tanka reveals his anguish in
waiting for a woman to telephone:
The snow finally melted away
and all day and all night
I waited, excited
for spring,
but still you did not call! (p. 14)
In many of the poems there is anguish
about leaving a woman yet wondering if he
will still see "the moon/on her hair" (p. 15).
He obviously admires the female sex, but he
can be hesitant as in the poem on p. 22
written in a playful way—
I knew she was not for me
which is why I permitted
only part of me
to follow her
into her apartment.
Perhaps his most sexual poem in the
collection is the following, which also
includes satirizing himself:
Was it because I yawned
in the motel room
that you tried to put
your body, one part at a time,
into my mouth? (p. 75)
Still, in tanka after tanka he offers his
admiration of female beauty: brown legs,
bare breasts, even a "sensuous hand"
reaching for brown rice. Feminists would
probably object to his term "big tits" and
probably to most of the poems. One woman
offers him "bites of her ripe mango/with her
strong brown fingers" (p. 35). He watches a
woman cross and uncross "her Heavenly
legs" (p. 37). This list of his admiration of the
feminine and sensual and sexual bodies of
women could go on and on.
Yet what especially interests me is
Tipton's kyoka (the above tanka on p. 75 is
one), humorous tanka in which he ridicules
himself. Often he realizes the limits in a
relationship, and often he presents himself as
exhausted by the energy required to satisfy
his female partner:
It's getting late.
Do you still intend to go
to Confession or do you
want to make love
one more time? (p. 25)
Or he makes the sexual activity into a
joke:
You apologize because
you forgot my name
while we were making love.
It's easy to forgive you
because I forgot it myself. (p. 29)
One hundred years
is a long time to make love
to the same woman,
but for tonight, at least,
I like the commitment. (p. 30)
My favorite poem in the collection is the
following parody of himself:
After she forces me to make love
still another time
I slide off the bed
and hide in the bathroom
to read Readers Digest. (p. 48)
Michael McClintock, who as we all
recognize is a nature enthusiast, knows
much more than I do about Mexico, where
James Tipton lives. We are bombarded in the
news these days about the drug wars in that
country, other types of violence, and the
easy availability of a great many things. But
McClintock writes that Tipton and he
exchanged many letters in which "James
talked a lot about the salubrious climate of
the Lake Chapala area where he lives, about
the food, about the simple and good life to
be had there generally." A number of the
poems suggest these positive aspects of
Mexico:
Again I hike into that canyon
that keeps sending me messages
all the way to the bottom.
It is like a woman who is both
sensual and intellectual. (p. l8)
The moon itself in Mexico has a special
appeal to Tipton.
What puzzles me is the title, "All the
Horses of Heaven." Of the comments I have
read about the book, no one has tried to
analyze these five words. My ignorance may
have made me miss an important allusion
somewhere. In at least four poems horses are
mentioned. But one of the poems offers me a
suggestion:
All the horses of Heaven
are in the pasture tonight
and before morning
each one will be
her dearest companion. (p. 93)
I imagine the power of a stallion, the
beauty of its form, the strength in which it
moves, its vitality. Somehow I am left with
the impression that Tipton relates himself to
such an animal in nature.
Seek out back roads
that run like prayers
about to be answered.
For the same reason seek out
those back roads in people. (p. 95)
She's lived by the San Miguel River
so long that at night
it runs through her heart.
Now she will never know
what emptiness is. (p. 83)
Not Again! Yes, Tanka Strings and Tanka Sequences
Sanford Goldstein
On several occasions since 1989, I have
written about tanka sequences and tanka
strings, the latter focused on in This Tanka
World of Strings (1995), whose introduction I
wrote defining strings, the strings in the slim
volume by Kenneth Tanemura and me.
Rarely nowadays do I see strings written,
though Denis M. Garrison has listed the term
among the tanka forms as have others. When
I was co-editor of the short-lived journal Five
Lines Down (1994-1996), I published my
own tanka string entitled "Sexual
contrapuntals #2: a tanka string" in Summer
l995, No. 3 (see Five Lines Down: A
Landmark in English Tanka, edited by Denis
M. Garrison, 2007, p. 90). In the fourth and
final issue of Five Lines Down, strings
appeared by Miyoko Aomi, Gene Doty, Ce
Rosenow, and Pat Shelly. What I then called
a "Double Tanka String" by David Rice and
me was in the issue as well.
Had the journal continued, I think strings
would have really been established, but
lately the only strings I see have been written
by me, though Robert D. Wilson has recently
called tanka strings, a series of tanka
followed by a haiku. All of which reminds
me of an incident that happened years ago.
An on-line journal had decided to have a
tanka competition, and the editor had
selected me as the first judge. When a
special anniversary of this competition took
place, the editor thought it would be good to
ask me to be the judge a second time. I
wrote back saying I would be glad to, but
adding that I could write an essay about
strings and sequences. What rage that
brought on by the editor. In an abusive letter
to me, I was accused of trying to publicize
myself at the expense of this competition. I
was of course jarred since I had been
reading sequence after sequence for a long
time without seeing why they were what I
call sequences, but I apologized and, wimp
that I am, said I would not write such an
e s s a y. A p p a r e n t l y f o r g i v e n e s s w a s
impossible, though I could not for the life of
me see what I had done that was so bad.
Sequences, of course, continue to be
written, and while this essay also deals with
tanka strings, my main aim is to examine
tanka sequences. To briefly state the
differences between tanka string and tanka
sequence: A string is a group of poems that
are transitionally connected and focus on a
major topic, but there is usually no
chronological order, and no conclusion—
earlier I said there might be a change in the
poet or his view of the world, but I have
changed my mind on that. As for a tanka
sequence, it focuses on a problem, has a
beginning, a middle, and an end, and the
end or conclusion shows a change in the
poet's character or his way of seeing the
world. Mokichi Saito's Red Lights (l913,
translated by Seishi Shinoda and Sanford
Goldstein, 1989) includes thirty-eight tanka
sequences, each analyzed in the notes
explaining why each of them is a sequence.
In these notes the translators reveal that
Mokichi said the simplest way of making a
tanka sequence is through chronology (p.
284).
In Take Five: Best Contemporary Tanka
[for 2008], edited by M. Kei, Sanford
Goldstein, Pamela A. Babusci, Patricia Prime,
Bob Lucky, and Kala Ramesh, a special
section focuses on "Tanka Sequences." One
of the poems in this section is cited as a
string, "holy ground: a contrapuntal tanka
string," written by me (pp. 183-191). Among
a number of sequences in this section, I have
chosen one by M. Kei, "for Sean, a
sequence" (p. 194). In my string the basic
transitional element is holy ground and
unholy ground, the music is contrapuntal, so
the tanka bounce off each other as holy
ground or unholy ground. The concluding
tanka
over the phone
the elderly soba-lady speaks
in a slow rhythm,
and I feel my cave of Japanese study
has a small hole for light
cannot be, obviously, any kind of conclusion
or change in my character or my world view.
It is another example of holy ground, a
personal and emotional example of my
feeling that progress in the speaking of
Japanese, which I have struggled with for
decades, is a moment of holy ground.
In M. Kei's "for Sean, a sequence," I am
led to believe Kei is talking about his lover
Sean, all the poems having a homosexual
emphasis. The transition is there in terms of
each poem having this emphasis. There is no
beginning, middle, and end, and there is no
conclusion as seen in the last of the five
tanka:
his relatives don't like him,
so he tells them
that he's sleeping with
a famous male poet
twice his age
The fourth tanka refers to another
moment in which on a carpet, Kei's denim
leg is over Sean's bare one, a book resting
against Sean's back. So why, I ask myself,
didn't Kei call this a string?— for it is a tanka
string, not a tanka sequence. But as tanka
they have the emotion and personal element
one sees in tanka, especially if readers
remember Takuboku saying tanka is a diary
of the emotional life of the poet.
At this juncture it may be good to give an
example of a tanka string by the famous
Akiko Yosano, though she does not label it as
string or tanka sequence. A different example
that follows this string will show how even a
short tanka sequence can work in terms of
chronology, transition, and a change in the
poet or his world view.
First from Akiko's Tangled Hair, which
Professor Shinoda and I did together. I
always think of myself as merely a cotranslator, for without Professor Shinoda, I
could do nothing. At any rate, in this tanka
string, Akiko, who does not label her poems,
399 of them in the original collection dated
1901, offers us eleven poems about the
dancing girls of Kyoto and Osaka. They go
through rigorous training in dancing, singing,
playing an instrument, conversation,
manners. In the modern world these dancers
entertained wealthy clients. Among the
poems two (the fifth and sixth) focus on
dancing girls in the Heian period
(794-1192).
So obviously the chronology is broken.
The tanka will be presented in their order in
the collection.
Soft morning rain,
Kimono sleeve
Striped, multicolored, bright,
Over
Her small hand-drum.
One of the instruments the dancing girl
plays is the small hand-drum.
That pink band
Worn
To bind her hair in front
Ought to have been
Bright bright red!
Kimono pale blue,
A pattern of dancing fans,
And her long long
Waistband
Longer than her long long sleeves.
These first three tanka are descriptive of
the attire worn by dancing girls.
Lovely
That dancing girl
Dozing this spring morning,
Pleasure boat
Down a Kyoto stream.
The pleasure boat is drifting along the
stream, passengers viewing the cherry
blossoms, but the dancing girl is dozing,
making us aware of how hard she works,
often up late with parties to attend.
In the dark
Palace corridor
Suppressing her cry
With the sleeve of her dancing robe
It was he!
There is no chronology, for the dancing
girl here is a maid-in-waiting at a palace in
the Heian era. The girl is clever enough to
subdue her surprise when she realizes the
person reaching out for her is her lover.
These maids-in-waiting usually danced for
the court.
Sleeve raised
As if to strike her love,
She tries to turn the gesture
Into
A dance!
The transition comes with the use of the
sleeve again. This dancing girl raises her
sleeve as if to strike her love, but she is again
clever enough to turn the gesture into a
dance pattern.
The same song
Again and again,
Three times, four—
Oh
These tycoons!
Again we see the hard life of these
modern dancing girls, forced to entertain
their rich clients by singing or dancing to the
same song numerous times.
How can I meet him?
Four years ago
His tears fell
On this hand
That now beats a dancer's drum.
When she had been younger, the girl
rejected the advances of the young man, but
now, after four years as a dancing girl, she is
ashamed to have him see her in this position
of beating the drum to the accompaniment
of the dancers.
Those innocent days
Before I could lift
This large and heavy drum,
My only thought—
The dancer's robes I would wear!
Again a poem on the difficulty of the
dancer's life. Earlier all she had thought
about was the dancer's elegant clothing, but
now the reality of the hard of work of lifting
the large, heavy drum is foremost.
So inured to this life,
Even in the cold night wind
Along the river
Where the plovers cry,
I hear the drum's beat in each step I take!
So used to the difficulties of the dancer's
life, the woman even in the cold wind hears
the drum beat in each step she takes.
Dissolving colors
To paint on taut silk
A Kyoto dancing girl
In brilliant robes,
I hear the rain this spring night.
An artist preparing a dancing girl's
kimono in this slightly shifting tanka created
a lonely mood suggestive of the life of the
dancing girl.
(See Akiko Yosano, Tangled Hair:
Selected Tanka from Midaregami, translated
by Sanford Goldstein and Seishi Shinoda,
Cheng & Tsui Company, 2002, tanka
#124-134, notes, pp. 154-157.)
In these eleven tanka, without any
beginning, middle, or end, the tanka focus
on various aspects of a dancer's life. Most of
the poems involve the dancer in some kind
of difficulty, the emphasis being on the hard
life of a dancing girl or fleeting pleasures. By
knowing it is a string, the reader does not
expect any kind of important conclusion, but
the emotion behind each poem is real,
understandable, and engages the reader's
sympathy.
As an example of tanka sequence, I have
chosen Mokichi's second sequence in his
Red Lights entitled "Stones on a Roof," pp.
94-95:
along ravines
in these ageless mountains,
streams
here, there,
foaming white
innumerable mountains
have I crossed
searching for a woman
pearlish white, translucent,
even as she veils her sorrow
balsam pinks fall
and pile, fall and pile;
these castle ruins
at twilight
where we met in secret
beautiful this place
of towering mountain ranges—
I embraced her
in the lingering light
of evening
cold, cold
these stones on shingles—
at last I've arrived
in this mountainous country,
this Shinano!
only a moment
wagging its tail
on this shingled roof,
that smallish bird,
and then how it flitted away!
the sadness I feel
just standing
on this roof
and watching a man counting eggs
in the shop below
on this roof
my faint sorrow
welling up
seeing them
at their trades along the street
The sequence is about Mokichi's trip to
meet his former love Ohiro in July 1913 in
Nagano or Shinano as it was then called in
Nagano Prefecture. The woman is not named
but is believed to have been a servant in the
home of the relative who adopted Mokichi.
He became engaged to the daughter of the
adopted father, a common practice for a man
without sons to adopt someone to take the
family name and continue the family line.
Perhaps the family knew about Mokichi's
relationship and perhaps sent the servant
back to her home. This sequence is about
Mokichi's clandestine meeting with her in
Nagano. We see Mokichi in his love of
nature, going along ravines in mountains and
noting the streams as he heads for Nagano.
The second tanka tells us why he is there, to
meet a beautiful woman even as he notes
how she has silently withheld her sorrow. He
passes a place of castle ruins, notes the pink
flowers falling and piling up, probably a
reference to the destruction of his own love.
The trip continues as he again looks at the
beauty of the mountain ranges where he had
in times past embraced the maid in the
evening light. The scene on his journey shifts
to the town of Nagano or Shinano, the
shingled roofs usually held in place by
stones laid on the roofs in the mountainous
areas of Nagano. After meeting his love and
seeing her departure, he remains in the town
at the inn they were staying at. Suddenly he
notices a small bird on the roof, there an
instant and gone, suggesting again the loss of
his love. Suddenly climbing from his
window to the roof of the inn, he sees a man
counting eggs in the shop below. His sorrow
again increases, but the realization comes
that all people suffer, work hard, yet
continue to carry on their lives.
Thus we see the beginning of a previous
problem, its continuation in memory on a
trip to meet his love, and the final situation
in which Mokichi's sorrow is transferred to
the human race, all humans struggling and
suffering, doing their daily chores, focusing
on the duty before them. The problem that
was a personal one becomes a problem
connected to all human beings and offers a
kind of relief to the saddened poet.
My own tanka sequence, At the Hut of
the Small Mind, AHA Books, 1992, also
found in Four Decades on My Tanka Road:
The Tanka Collections of Sanford Goldstein,
MET Press, 2007, pp. 109-167, contains 120
tanka, perhaps making it the longest tanka
sequence in English or even in Japanese,
though I have no way of proving this point.
That it follows the demands of a tanka
sequence is, I feel, beyond question.
I have analyzed M. Kei's "sequence" for
Sean" earlier, so now I want to spend a
m o m e n t a n a l y z i n g wh a t a r e c a l l e d
"sequences" or "sets" that appear in Atlas
Poetica. The first is by Alexis Rotella, whose
poems have always been a source of
enjoyment for readers. She does not cite this
group of poems entitled "Everybody
Dies" (ATPO, Autumn, 2009, pp. 32-33) as
string or sequence, but the editor places it in
the category of sequences and sets. So it
must be a sequence (I will define set later),
all tanka shifting between sadness and mirth.
Alexis ends with the ninth tanka: "For
funerals,/ no invitation necessary—/ it's
always open house,/ the more/ the merrier."
How she came to that strange and joyous
conclusion is not clear, so I cannot classify it
as a tanka sequence or a transitional and
focused string. But as a set it may be
acceptable. In response to an e-mail from
me, Denis M. Garrison on October 26,
2009, defines set in the following way: "I use
the word 'set' for a group of tanka meant to
be published together, usually titled, which
do not have a strong enough organizational
schemata to be called a 'sequence' or a
'string.' The organizational principle of a 'set'
may not be readily discernible to the reader;
there must be such, but it may be very
subtle." I am dogmatic about strings and
tanka sequences, but I know poets write as
they wish. In Alexis' poems the situations are
generally clear enough and energetic
enough to carry the reader along.
In The Dreaming Room: Modern English
Tanka in Collage and Montage Sets, edited
by Michael McClintock and Denis M.
Garrison, MET Press, 2007, McClintock in
his introduction writes: "Tanka collage: an
assemblage of tanka with other forms (haiku,
senryu, cinquain, sijo, etc.) composed as a
set and intended as an aesthetic whole. In
tanka collage, the tanka form is numerically
dominant in its number of lines." As for tanka
montage, continues McClintock, "two or
more tanka composed or arranged as a set,
intended as an aesthetic whole." McClintock
says, "Usually these sets are given a title" (p.
l0).
Patricia Prime in Gusts, No. 7, Spring/
Summer 2008, p. 24, reviews The Dreaming
Room and its special terms favorably. But in
her discussion of Beverley George's collage
entitled "Time and Silence" and in Tom
Clausen's montage entitled "A Word of
Love," I could not see how these poems were
working as collage and montage. Had she
perhaps been given more space, the needed
analysis might have come through.
When haiku and tanka alternate, as Jo
McInerney (p. 17) and Robert Wilson (p. 30)
do in Atlas Poetica, Autumn 2008, we are
faced with another problem. The alternating
of forms may leave one surprised or
confused, for a reader does not know what
to expect and the result may not be as
satisfying as knowing where we are headed .
But in fairness to Robert Wilson, his tankahaiku sets are so unusual in content that the
reader is carried along as readers are in his
magnificent Jack Fruit Moon, MET Press,
2009, Even Guy Simser's cross-shaped
image in "North of Superior" (ATPO, Autumn
2009, p. 24) needs analysis for its newlyshaped tanka presentation. The poem
includes a series of moments in a geographic
space, the language itself memorable,
"petroglyphs," "precambrian," "druid's
shadow," but the rationale behind its
presentation requires analysis.
The world of tanka is extending beyond
its clear definitions of tanka sequence and
tanka string. The tendency is to create new
worlds in place of an older, more stable
order, an increasingly complex world that
seems to go along with the complications of
modernity. This diffusion includes the writing
of haibun, the word itself originally used to
include haiku with prose as in Basho's Oku
no Hosomichi, his Journey to the Far North.
Jeffrey Woodward in The Elements of Tanka
Prose, MET Press, 2008, volume 2, no. 4, p.
20 said, "Sanford Goldstein may have
authored the first example of tanka prose in
English with his 'Tanka Walk,' circa l983,
which intersperses tanka with excerpts from
a diary of his exercise regimen as well as a
general journal which offers the poet's
reflections on life in Japan, his daily walks,
his meditations upon Takuboku Ishikawa's
tanka and more." I had wanted to call my
essay with tanka a tanka-bun, but no one
picked up on that term. Woodward in an email to me on October 28, 2009, said that
Jane Reichhold had asked readers of her
journal for suggested terms for prose with
tanka that included one cited as tanka-bun,
one as "tanbun." I find this latter title an
impossible choice since "tanbun" in Japanese
means "short sentences."
Short prose pieces with tanka continue to
be published as "haibun." Woodward
published his The Tanka Prose Anthology
with MET Press, 2008 and is himself
dissatisfied with the term "tanka prose," and
he noted in another e-mail to me that he
received some criticism about the term even
though Ken Jones, famous for his haibun
which he often calls haiku prose and even
uses the term "haiku stories," has not
received any criticism for his choice of
terms. So why not "prose tanka" seems to be
the implication.
And so the wayward tanka world
continues. I would, of course, be pleased if
my definitions of "tanka string" and "tanka
sequence" are understood and accepted.
And if tanka-bun were accepted, of course I
would be overjoyed.
Sanford Goldstein
Shibata, Japan, November 2009
***
TANKA SOCIETY OF AMERICA
Established in 2000 by over a dozen
founding members, the Tanka Society of
America aims to further the writing, reading,
study, and appreciation of tanka poetry in
English. TSA is a nonprofit volunteer
organization that relies on the creativity and
energy of its members to carry out its
activities, which include conducting an
annual open Int'l Tanka Competition each
spring and publication of the quarterly
journal, Ribbons, which features! tanka,
articles, essays, translations, book reviews,
and competition results. TSA also publishes
annual and biannual anthologies featuring
tanka by members and, as a public service in
cooperation with Modern English Tanka
Press, maintains and regularly updates the
Tanka Teachers Guide and the standardized
Tanka Venues List. Annual membership:! $30
United States, $35 Canada and Mexico, $42
elsewhere. <tankasocietyofamerica.com/>.
ANNOUNCEMENTS
A t l a s Po e t i c a w i l l p u b l i s h s h o r t
announcements in any language up to 300
words in length on a space available basis.
Announcements may be edited for brevity,
clarity, grammar, or any other reason. Send
announcements in the body of an email to:
[email protected]—do not send
attachments.
***
Take Five : Best Contemporary
Tanka, Vol. 2 Published by MET
Press
Take Five: Best Contemporary Tanka,
Volume Two (2009), is edited by M. Kei,
Sanford Goldstein, Patricia Prime, Kala
Ramesh, Alexis Rotella, Angela Leuck, and
Collin Barber. The editorial team set out to
read the entire field of tanka publication for
2009, regardless of source, without any
dogma regarding definition, form or content.
Over the course of fourteen months, they
read over sixteen thousand poems from more
than 130 different venues. The results form
the second installment of one of the best
new poetry series currently being published.
***
Tanka Online
Tanka Online (www.tankaonline.com)! is
an educational website that includes articles
and essays on how to write and edit tanka.!
The website also features interviews! with
guest poets, their poetry and the poetry of
founding poets Jeanne Emrich (USA),
Michael McClintock (USA), Margaret Chula
(USA) Tom Clausen (USA), Mariko Kitakubo
(Japan), and Amelia Fielden (Australia).
Submissions by invitation only. Website
u p d a t e d t w i c e y e a r l y. C o n t a c t :
[email protected].
***
A Thousand Reasons : Tanka by
Pamela A. Babusci
Th e fi r s t c o l l e c t i o n o f t a n k a by
internationally award-winning poet and
acclaimed artist Pamela A. Babusci is now
available from the author. A Thousand
Reasons contains 120 individual tanka by
Babusci—whose work is familiar to readers
of literary journals and online sites in the
U.S. and around the world—as well as an
introduction by award winning U.S. poet
Tom Clausen, and an afterword by British
poet/songwriter and editor of Three Lights
Gallery Liam Wilkinson.
For more information about A Thousand
Reasons, or to order, contact Pamela A.
Babusci at: 150 Milford Street, Apt. 13,
Rochester, NY 14615-1810 USA; or e-mail
her at: [email protected].
July 2009; Rochester, NY, USA
Softcover; 80 pp.
Cover price: US $14.00
S&H US & Canada $2.50
Foreign $5.00
Free to Read: Alexis Rotella
P u b l i s h e s Ta n k a B o o k s o n
Scribd.com
Slow Motion : The Log of a
Chesapeake Bay Skipjack, by M.
Kei, available from MET Press
Hailed as 'waterman poetry', Slow
Motion is a boat log kept in poetic form.
Compiled principally during two extended
voyages made on the historic wooden
sailboat, Martha Lewis, the tanka and other
short poems within its pages chronicle the
daily routine of the waterman. Presenting
pictures the early-rising routine of the men
and women who make their living from the
water, natural beauty, history, and the
precious vulnerability of a vanishing world,
it is a unique document that is both a work
of literature and an ode to a special breed of
people.
"The kind of poetry Hemingway would
have written if he had written poetry." —
Capt. Greg Shinn
Buy at: themetpress.com
Read for free: Scribd.com
***
All the Horses of Heaven / Todos
los Caballos del Paraíso, Tanka by
James Tipton, published by MET
Press
James Tipton's latest book, All the Horses
of Heaven/Todos los Caballos del Paraiso,
wh i ch A l e x i s R o t e l l a c a l l s a " r a r e
combination of mostly erotic tanka . . . that
at the same time celebrate . . . the poet's life
in Mexico," is available through
www.themetpress.com.
Maria Maziotti Gillan, editor of Paterson
Literary Review and author of Italian Women
in Black Dresses writes, "Lip Prints by Alexis
Rotella is her most beautifully crafted and
imagistic book to date." And Michael
McClintock, in his preface to Lip Prints,
states, this book ". . . has no equal in
American tanka literature." Lip Prints (MET
PRESS) may be read at Scribd.com. Also on
Scribd.com is Looking for a Prince (MET
PRESS) contains many tanka. Cor van den
Heuvel states, Rotella's work reflects the
wide spectrum of the Creation itself--glowing
with the special light of art. With just a few
words, she catches life's revealing moments
with an insight and depth that the movies—if
they were able—would take millions of
dollars and the talents of hundreds to
capture."
***
Free to Read: Modern English
Tanka at Scribd.com
MET Press has posted all twelve issues of
its journal Modern English Tanka (about
3,000 pages) for free reading and
downloading on Scribd.com at <http://
www.scribd.com/dmgarrison>. The journal
Prune Juice which includes kyoka is also
archived there, as well as some haiku
journals and collections.
***
Magnapoets
Magnapoets (www.magnapoets.com ) is! an
online resource and bi-annual print
publication for all forms of poetry, including
tanka.
***
BIOGRAPHIES
A l e x v o n Va u p e l l i v e s i n U t r e c h t ,
Netherlands, with his dictionaries and a balcony
veg garden. He is frequently found in Canterbury,
Kent, UK, with his fiancée. For more information,
see http://alexvonvaupel.com.
Bernard Gieske's poems have appeared in
moonset, SP Quill, Modern English Tanka,
foam:e, Poetic Hours, Words Words Words,
Chrysanthemum, 3LIGHTS, Shamrock, and
Sketchbook.
Alexis Rotella has been writing haiku, senryu
and tanka for 30 years. Her latest books include
Lip Prints, Ouch and Eavesdropping. Alexis
practices acupuncture in Arnold, Maryland, USA.
Bob Lucky lives in Hangzhou, China, where
he teaches history. His work has appeared in
various journals.
Amelia Fielden is a professional translator
and a poet. Ferris Wheel : 101 Modern and
Contemporary Japanese Tanka (Uzawa & Fielden)
won the 2007 Donald Keene Prize for
Translation. She co-authored in Two Minds with
Kathy Kituai (2008).
André Surridge, born in Hull, England,
André lives in the city of Hamilton, New
Zealand. He is the winner of several national and
international writing awards and his writing has
been widely published and anthologised.
Andrea Grillo lives and writes haiku and
tanka in northern New Jersey, USA.
Andrew Cook-Jolicoeur is a writer and
publisher currently based in Montreal, Canada.
He is single and his further reflections on love,
also using the tanka poetry form, can be found in
his book Feelings for You (forthcoming).
Angela Leuck is the author of Garden
Meditations and A Cicada in the Cosmos
(forthcoming) and Flower Heart. She is the Vice
President of Haiku Canada and cofounder of
Tanka Canada and its journal Gusts.
ayaz daryl nielsen is a poet/husband/father/
veteran and a hospice nurse—he is editor/
custodian of bear creek haiku.
Barbara A Taylor lives in northern NSW,
Au s t ra l i a . H e r p o e m s a p p e a r i n m a ny
international journals and anthologies. Poetry
with audio is at http://batsword.tripod.com
Bruce England began writing haiku seriously
in 1984. Other related interests include haiku
theory and haiku practice and the occasional
tanka. A chapbook, Shorelines, was published
with Tony Mariano in 1998.
Carmella Braniger's poems have appeared in
Sycamore Review, Poems and Plays, The Dirty
Napkin, MARGIE: The American Journal of
Poetry, and Modern English Tanka. Her
chapbook, No One May Follow, is forthcoming.
Carol Raisfeld is Director of
WHChaikumultimedia and a member of The
Tanka Society of America, The World Haiku
Association, The Academy of American Poets.
Her! poetry, art and photography have published
around the world.
Chen-ou Liu is a freelance writer in Toronto,
Canada, where he has been struggling with a life
in transition and translation. His poems appear in
many venues.
Claudia Coutu Radmore is editor of the
Haiku Canada Anthology, member of Tanka
Canada and Haiku Canada. She was a consulting
editor for Raw NerVZ and currently helps select
tanka for Gusts, the Canadian tanka magazine.
David Caruso's poems have appeared in
many journals and anthologies. He lives in
Haddonfield, New Jersey with his wife, Maggy,
and their three children.
David Rice lives in Berkeley, California, with
his wife. They are now in the grandparenting
years. He works as a psychologist and, when
time permits, like to go birding. He began writing
tanka in 1990.
Fran Witham works as a copy editor for an
online media company and also teaches English
as a second language. She holds an M.A. in
English Literature and studied poetry at the Fine
Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA.
Gary LeBel is a poet/painter living in the
greater Atlanta, Georgia area.!He earns his bread
as an industrial consultant!for a company he cofounded.
Geert Verbeke is born in Kortrijk, Flanders
1948. Author of poetry, novels, meditations &
fairy tales. Writes haiku since 1968. He don't
claim to be a guru nor a teacher.
Gerry Jacobson has been published in
Eucalypt, Ribbons, Moonset, and Atlas Poetica. In
2008 Gerry and friends walked 500 miles across
England following leylines. Their collective story
of this journey, Awakening Albion, was recently
published.
Guy Simser is an award-winning poet who
has written English/Japanese poetry since 1980,
including five years in Japan. He was co-chair of
Haiku North America Conference 2009, and is
on the selection committee for Canada’s tanka
journal Gusts.
James Tipton has been publishing poetry for
forty years. His credits include Haiku, Modern
Haiku, frogpond, American Tanka, The Tanka
Journal, and Modern English Tanka. All the
Horses of Heaven was recently published.
Janet Lynn Davis, a writer/editor by
profession, not long ago moved from Houston,
Texas, to a community out in the boondocks. Her
tanka and other poems have appeared in a
number of print and online publications.
Jeffrey Woodward's poems and articles are
published in periodicals around the world. He
edits Modern Haibun & Tanka Prose as well as
Haibun Today. His selected poems, In Passing,
were published in 2007 and he edited The Tanka
Prose Anthology in 2008.
Joanna M. Weston had poetry, reviews, and
short stories published in anthologies and
journals for twenty years. Has two middle-readers
published by Frontenac House of Calgary.
Jörgen Johansson born (1956) and bred in
Lidköping, located in the South West of Sweden.
He been writing Tanka off and on since 2005 and
has been published in various venues.
Kath Abela Wilson travels the world with her
professor husband. Her poetry appears in
Tinywords, Asahi, Ribbons and Red Lights. She is
the creator and leader of the band of Poets on
Site, a poetry performance group.
Kirsty Karkow was lately VP of the Tanka
Society of America, has been tanka editor for
Simply Haiku, and is the author of two books, in
print, published by Black Cat Press. These are
water poems: haiku, tanka and sijo and
shorelines: haiku, haibun and tanka.
Liam Wilkinson's poetry has been published
widely in print and on the Internet. He is the
editor of Prune Juice: Journal of Senryu & Kyoka
and 3LIGHTS Journal. Liam lives with his wife in
North Yorkshire, England.
M. Kei is the editor of Atlas Poetica, editor of
Fire Pearls, and editor-in-chief of Take Five : Best
Contemporary Tanka. He is the author of Slow
Motion : Log of a Chesapeake Bay Skipjack, Over
1200 of his tanka have been published in ten
countries and six languages.
M. L. Harvey divides her time between New
York City and rural Hamilton, New York. She
supports her haiku/tanka habit with her day job,
as a professional landscape !painter.
Margaret Van Every is in the process of
moving permanently to San Antonio Tlayacapan,
a village on Lake Chapala near Guadalajara,
Jalisco, Mexico. This community feels like home
and is the inspiration for much of her poetry.
Marje A. Dyck's poetry and art work has
appeared in Frogpond, Simply Haiku, The
Heron's Nest, moonset, and Modern English
Tanka. Her books include rectangle of light and A
Piece of the Moon.
Mary Mageau captures Australia’s trees,
flowers and foliage for her exploration of haiga.
Her haiku, tanka, tanka prose and haibun are
regularly published in literary magazines. She
lives with her husband in rural Samford,
Queensland.
Mel Goldberg published a book of poetry
and photography, The Cyclic Path and Sedona
Poems for the Sedona, AZ centennial. He now
lives in Ajijic, Jalisco, Mexico where he writes
detective novels.
has recently discovered a passion for longbow
archery and African (Djembe) drumming. He is
an award winning poet and his poems have been
published in numerous print and online journals.
Raquel D. Bailey is a Jamaican writer
submerged in Japanese short form poetry. She has
published poetry & fiction in more than 30
publications worldwide. She is a Founding Editor
of Lyrical Passion Poetry E-Zine.
Mike Montreuil lives in the old city of
Gloucester. Now retired from managing his son's
hockey teams, he is looking for other means of
inspiration.
Richard Stevenson has been a land lubbin’/
stubble jumpin’ prairie poet and teacher in
Lethbridge, AB, for the past twenty-four years.
Publications include The Emerald Hour, and
Tidings of Magpies. Windfall Apples, his first
collection of tanka, is forthcoming.
Nette Menke lives in The Netherlands where
she teaches Dutch language and literature. She is
a member of the Haiku Kring Nederland (Dutch
Haiku!Society)!for the last ten years. She lives by
the sea and feels inspired by the combination of
city and nature.
Rodney Williams is a rural high school
teacher in the Gippsland region of Australia. His
poetry appears in Eucalypt, Yellow Moon, paper
wasp, stylus poetry journal and famous reporter,
Modern English Tanka, Ribbons, Moonset, Bottle
Rockets, The Heron's Nest and Frogpond.
Owen Bullock has published tanka in Atlas
Poetica, Eucalypt, Kokako, Moonset, Presence,
etc. He recently published his first collection of
haiku, wild camomile. He lives in Waihi, New
Zealand.
Sanford Goldstein has been publishing tanka
for more than forty years. He is co-translator of
several collections of Japanese tanka poets.
Patrick M. Pilarski is the author of Huge Blue
and Five Weeks. His work appears in Modern
Haiku, Frogpond, Take Five, and contemporary
haibun, vol. 10. He is the co-editor of
DailyHaiku, and poetry editor for DailyHaiga.
Patricia Prime is coeditor of the New
Zealand magazine Kokako and reviews editor of
Stylus. She has published poetry in collaboration
with fellow NZ poet, Catherine Mair. Ongoing
work includes an essay on African poetry and an
essay on haiku by Indian poets.
Paul Mercken is a retired professor of
philosophy and secretary of the Nederlandse
Haiku Kring (Dutch Haiku Society). He regards
poetry and the art of translating as a powerful
means to build bridges between people.
Paul Smith lives in the city of Worcester, UK
with his wife and children. Alongside poetry he
Scott H. Stoller practices medicine full time
in Pittsburgh, PA. He is a graduate of Colgate
University and Albany Medical College.
Ted Jean is a recently retired AIG executive.
Career notwithstanding, he is not an evil
person . . . at least not routinely evil. With more
time on his hands, Ted is playing a lot of tennis
and writing more.
Terra Martin has published in American
Tanka, Asahi Shimbun, bottle rockets, Eucalypt,
Haiga Online, Lynx, Modern English Tanka,
moonset, Ribbons, Simply Haiku, 3Lights Gallery,
plus the Landfall & Streetlights anthologies.
Tracy Royce’s poetry appears in Frogpond,
Moonbathing, Ribbons, Modern Haiku, and Atlas
Poetica. The last time she was in Kyoto she hiked
in the snow and stuffed herself on yuba,
dengaku, and those crispy ginger cookies they
sell on Tetsugaku-no-michi.
INDEX
Alex von Vaupel, 34-35
Alexis Rotella, 29-31, 37, 47
Amelia Fielden, 41
André Surridge, 38, 53-54
Andrea Grillo, 32
Andrew Cook-Jolicoeur, 19, 52
Angela Leuck, 10-11, 52
ayaz daryl nielsen, 45
Barbara A. Taylor, 38, 43
Bernard, Gieske, 28, 37, 39
Bob Lucky, 18, 25, 51
Bruce England, 31, 38, 50
Carmella Braniger, 26-27
Carol Raisfield, 56
Chen-ou Liu, 20-21
Claudia Coutu-Radmore, 36
David Caruso, 55
David Rice, 43
Fran Witham, 38
Gary Lebel, 17,
Geert Verbeke, 38
Gerry Jacobsen, 23
Guy Simser, 55
James Tipton, 27, 40, 57-59
Janet Lynn Davis, 32
Jeffrey Woodward, 21
Joanna M. Weston, 52
Jörgen Johansson, 37, 50
Kath Abela Wilson, 8, 41
Kirsty Karkow, 38, 50
Liam Wilkinson, 37, 42
M. Kei, 7, 16,
M. L. Harvey, 37, 46
Margaret Van Every, 48-49
Marje A. Dyck, 45
Mary Mageau, 24-25
Mel Goldberg, 42
Mike Montreuil, 37
Nette Mencke, 22-23
Owen Bullock, 35, 37, 47
Patrick M. Pilarski, 56
Patricia Prime, 33, 44-45
Paul Mercken, 22-23
Paul Smith, 51
Raquel D. Bailey, 54
Richard Stevenson,
Rodney Williams, 9
Scott H. Stoller, 43
Sanford Goldstein, 12-15, 57-59, 60-65
Ted Jean, 51
Terra Martin, 38, 47
Tracy Royce, 28
Our 'butterfly' is actually an Atlas moth (Attacus atlas), the largest butterfly/moth in the world. It
comes from the tropical regions of Asia. Image from the 1921 Les insectes agricoles d'époque.

5 Spring, 2010 - Atlas Poetica

Transcription

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