ATLAS POETICA Number 3 Spring 2009

A Journal of Poetry of Place in Modern English Tanka

ATLAS POETICA

A Journal of Poetry of Place in Modern English Tanka

Number 3 Spring 2009

M. Kei, Editor

ISSN 1939-6465 Print ISSN 1945-8908 Digital MODERN ENGLISH TANKA PRESS Post Office Box 43717 Baltimore, Maryland 21236 USA www.modernenglishtankapress.com [email protected] Atlas Poetica : A Journal of Poetry of Place in Modern English Tanka Number 3 - Spring 2009

Copyright © 2009 by Modern English Tanka Press.

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 of tanka). 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 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.

Send all submissions to: [email protected] Editorial Address: [email protected]

Atlas Poetica : A Journal of Poetry of Place in Modern English Tanka Number 3 - Spring 2009

Published by MODERN ENGLISH TANKA PRESS

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 2009.

Print Edition ISSN 1939-6465 Digital Edition ISSN 1945-8908 [PDF & HTML versions] www.atlaspoetica.com TABLE OF CONTENTS

Editorial Legs of Invisible Desire, M. Kei...... 25 You Can't Take a Bus Up a Cliff, In de Oostertuin genietend van M. Kei...... 7 chrysanten / Enjoying Chrysanthemums in the Eastern Tanka in Sets and Sequences Garden, Paul Mercken...... 26 Old Memories in the Valley of the Sun, Entrance and Exit, Terra Martin...... 27 John Daleiden...... 8 Rewinding Fort William, On the Beach, Marje A. Dyck...... 9 Guy Simser...... 28 Sky Walker, Mary Mageau...... 9 Short Flashbacks of a Long-Ago Trip to Understanding the Patient, The Philippines, Ella Kirsty Karkow...... 10 Wagemakers...... 29 The Black Straw Hat, Patricia Prime 11 On a Beach at Polillo Island, Ella generations, Owen Bullock...... 11 Wagemakers...... 29 Vecernie / Vespers, Vasile Moldovan12 remembering Do's and Dont's, war rubble, stanley pelter...... 13 stanley pelter...... 30 Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the surviving the Shadow, Congo, Paul Mercken...... 14 stanley pelter...... 31 Midday Lunch, Michele L. Harvey.. 14 Seamen's Bethel, Jeffrey Woodward 15 Topical Tanka Pre-Holocaust: Growing Up in War and Peace...... 32 Cleveland, Sanford Goldstein .... 16 Mourning...... 34 Along the Way, Bob Lucky...... 18 Urban...... 36 I Follow Your Course, Alexej von Summer...... 38 Glasenapp...... 19 Winter in de Gambia / Winter in Individual Tanka...... 39 Gambia, Paul Mercken...... 19 Middle Lake, Sasakatchewan, Angela Book Reviews Leuck...... 20 Cicada Forest, by Mariko Kitakubo 59 Lost and Found, Terra Martin...... 21 Tor House, Jeffrey Woodward...... 22 Announcements...... 61 Death in the Afternoon, Bob Lucky.. 23 Imagining the Space, Owen Bullock 23 Biographies...... 70 Gippsland waters, Jo McInerney..... 24 Lime Tree, Magdalena Dale...... 25 Index...... 73

You Can't Take a Bus Up a Cliff

Atlas Poetica : A Journal of Poetry of to this cricket song." For Amelia Fielden Place was founded to provide a home for "ten dolphins" become a nursery song right tanka that could not easily be published in before her eyes. the mainstream journals. It publishes long, The poets of Atlas Poetica call things by including extremely long sequences, tanka their real names. They write about real prose, multiple author works, experimental places, real events, real issues, real people. works, and content that demands more of The poetic imagination is unleashed by the the reader than the comfortable challenge of telling the unnoticed truth. sentimentality the characterizes much of Stereotypes and conventions, knee jerk modern tanka in English. reactions and travel guide advertisements Through the medium of place the poets do not do justice to the complexity of our in the current issue tackle difficult topics, lives or the places in which we live. By such as war, crime, racism, xenophobia, grappling with reality poets are forced to anti-Semitism, poverty, environmentalism, dig deep into themselves. They must bear adoption, and more. These are topics that witness to all that they have seen—for make up only a small portion of the good or ill. The 'controlled ambiguity' that published ouvre of tanka in English, yet is a hallmark of tanka includes moral they are vitality important, bringing us ambiguity. They reach deep into the some of the most wrenching and human soul and pull out something of demanding works of literature in the lasting value, something that inhabits the canon. mysterious wilderness deep inside our In describing his military training hearts. during WWII when Americans are fighting You cannot take a bus to scale the cliffs to end Nazism, Sanford Goldstein is still of history. You must pull yourself up with frightened that his comrades in arms might your own hands, bark your knees on the "shoot this “dirty-jew” me." Ella rocks, and take the risk of falling. The Wagemakers presents the other side of poets of Atlas Poetica have abandoned Amsterdam's famed liberalism when she comfort in the quest for truth, and what tells her children "the women are selling / they have discovered is wondrous, beachwear and lingerie." Kirsty Karkow frightening, and inspiring. promises a friend afraid of HIV "to go with her / to the inner city clinic." ~K~ Yet amidst the terrors of the real world, there are pleasures and sustenance for the M. Kei soul. John Daleiden celebrates "our burden Editor, Atlas Poetica lightened / my sisters and brothers" in honor of Junteenth, the anniversary of the Gosses Bluff. 142 millions years ago an asteroid emancipation of the slaves in the United or comet slammed into what is now the Missionary Plains in Australia's Northern Territory, forming a States. Vasile Moldavan takes heart from crater 24 km in diameter and 5 km deep. the song of a cricket and begs his minister, Cover Image courtesy of USGS National Center "give up the vespers service [. . .] to listen for EROS and NASA Landsat Project Science Office

Atlas Poetica • Issue 3 • Page 7 Old Memories in the Valley of the Sun John Daleiden

Sultry night— air conditioned— over Estrella Mountain a John Deere tractor lumbers a full moon through the cotton field; my passionate longing gran’pa and gran’ma picked like the drenching monsoon those fields by hand in three days echoes remembered— Aunt Jemima a dusty country road, without her bandana— an old horse corral; little Missie Jaycinda, in irrigation ditches I hardly know you now the children laugh and splash without pigtails and braids

Yucca blooms in place of the fields bent to the torrid sand rows of red tiled rooftops— from mountain shadows a jammed-up freeway; ancient sounds of the past only the distant mountains, borne on obscuring dust stark, empty against the sky from the window our burden lightened of Santa Maria School— my sisters and brothers— cotton fields junteenth stark green and white rows for some, the curious shackles against distant mountain peaks a bleak museum exhibit

~California, USA “Buenos días—“ the voices of children on the playground; alone among so many my brown skin different than theirs

Atlas Poetica • Issue 3 • Page 8 On the Beach Sky Walker

Marje A. Dyck Mary Mageau the beach O’Reilly’s aerial walkway stretches high has a story above the rainforest. A signpost cautions, that waves obliterate— ‘Only two persons at a time permitted on this fresh page the third section.’ My partner, a strong of shining sand climber, takes the lead. We watch the first tree tops come into view then fall away. birds and foxes ‘Let’s take a break,’ I call minutes later. We have marked my spot stop to rest, pausing for a cold drink before the place I write we press on. on this long empty beach with a flash of colour after days in the city the parrot that startles us the flies disappears on this quiet beach with the forest floor seem a trivial nuisance Near the end of our climb the sky walk sways with each gust. My hands ache from persistance clutching the guide rail ropes as I glance is eight hairy legs- through gaps in the boards under my feet. like fatal attraction We reach the last viewing platform out of to this checkered breath and gaze over the Lamington beach blanket Mountains at the open sky. out of the woods high above a sip of water an eagle flicks her tail surfs the thermal waves— back into gliding gracefully the bush winging free small beach fire burns low how the years have brought me so quickly to this day

~Saskatchewan, Canada

Atlas Poetica • Issue 3 • Page 9 Understanding the Patient

Kirsty Karkow tenements used in court loom tall and gray simple!crayon!pictures! in!the city drawn by!a!child a health team struggles daily all too!vivid!evidence! with the!darkness of distrust of!his!mother's murder where does a home health aide a doctor start to help? connects with!her patient the littered street as she listens health and social issues the!emigrant's!blood pressure piled behind!each!door drops by thirty points a lonely widow while children play sees!and knows too much my new!friend whispers who can she!trust? fears of HIV those who sell burned down the promise to!go with her the house of one who told to the inner!city clinic a car backfires bowling spares she pulls the curtains by himself each night even tighter he cheers loudly impatient for the!woman to!fight the!loneliness bringing meals on wheels of!a!crowded city fresh samples all shadows lost from an urban stream to!the!jailhouse lights the scientist a watchman has concerns with!aging pipes gives up his search and waste water systems for Orion's belt

~Baltimore, Maryland, USA a stunted pear tree screens!the concrete bench where women meet talk turns to fears for!those! who have no friends in town

Atlas Poetica • Issue 3 • Page 10 The Black Straw Hat generations

Patricia Prime! Owen Bullock

“ . . . dressed completely in black, with a Granfer drew cartoons dreadful shiny black straw hat on her when he got sick head.! She said the hat gave her courage.! with diabetes It had cost us all our spare pennies.”! & Gran went to Chapel to listen to the Preacher it’s a dream standing here in search father sat of a lost era in the fowl’s house among a dead in the autumn woman’s possessions! & mother went shopping for bargains at the op shop Emptied of everything except a few mementos and sticks of furniture, the I learnt to write brittle shell of Katherine Mansfield’s house through the gloom shivers in winter sunshine. The kauri of the bush shack boards underfoot.! Windows chatter like you baked bread rolls teeth.! And we are the sole visitors to this & thought about another man vacancy.! Outside, the wind offers its own leitmotif as it whispers through the ~Cornwall, UK & New Zealand branches of ancient oaks.! Unfazed, we pore over old letters, notebooks, a lock of shining chestnut hair, a sampler, the brass crocodile nutcracker and French crystal perfume bottles.!

she was her own artist in black a sensual catalyst surprised to say the least what black meant to her!

a slight breath is all that holds her here, a keepsake anchor for the little life expressed in words!

~Auckland, New Zealand

Atlas Poetica • Issue 3 • Page 11 Vecernie / Vespers

Vasile Moldovan

Ziua tuturor sfin!ilor- un greier !inând isonul popii în altar; Dup" plecarea !ârâitul lui mai tare enoria#ilor- biserica goal", decât corul bisericii dar pe clopotni!" atâtea ciori disputându-#i All Saints' Day— cel mai bun loc de pe cruce a lost cricket accompanying the priest in altar; After the flock's his chirping was heard departure — the empty church, louder than the church chorus but on its spire so many chirpy crows claiming the best place on a cross Te rog, p"rinte opre#te pentru-o clip" ~Bucharest, Romania vecernia s" ascult"m cântul de greier în lini#tea înser"rii

Father, please give up the vespers service for a moment to listen to this cricket song in the stillness of the even

Sfâr#itul slujbei- fumul lumân"rilor înnegrind toate icoanele, dar fe!ele oamenilor atât de surâz"toare

End of prayer— the candles' smoke blackening all the icons, but the people's faces are so smiling

Atlas Poetica • Issue 3 • Page 12 war rubble

stanley pelter

firework sky splinters shapes of a peregine falcon dive no camouflage in any white field

Twisted and smoke layered His charred tears land on she is war rubble. splintered wood.

sweet eyed girl pins butterflies to a card impassive face bears scars of a volcano

~Newark, England

Atlas Poetica • Issue 3 • Page 13 Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo

Paul Mercken

washing and bathing is dit een masker? under the eyes of Tintin nee, onbewogen is dit and Lucky Luke een Bantoegelaat behind those rapids again maak je maar kwaad, blanke man, a capital, Brazzaville wij vouwen dubbel van pret ~Bunnik, The Netherlands is this a mask? no, unmoved it is a Bantu face just be furious, white man, we roll over laughing wat is er gaande Midday Lunch achter de brede waaier van de koningspalm? een Salesiaan geeft les Michele L. Harvey aan de straatjeugd van de stad midday lunch qu’est ce qui se passe in a bustling city park derrière le vaste éventail below chinatown du palmier royal? between knotted roots un Salésien instruit the dimpled dens of rats la jeunesse de la rue he took me what is happening to a faceless city block behind the giant fan devoid of trees of the royal palm? there, he said, a Don Bosco priest teaches we shall build a little nest youngsters from the city streets and call it home

just we two onder de ogen at the reception van Tintin en Lucky Luke in a diner wassen en baden on that first day of spring achter die stroomversnelling just outside city hall nog een hoofdstad, Brazzaville ~Manhattan, New York, USA

Atlas Poetica • Issue 3 • Page 14 Seamen’s Bethel, New Bedford

Jeffrey Woodward

the boys would have grog The light of this world for a time is dipped with and mealy hardtack, mother, whalers in the blood of their prey, the flesh and are gone a-sailin’, and harpoon together cleansed. Ego non the boys for grog are gone down baptizo te in nomine patris—how cleverly to the hold with the captain Melville put a sinner’s Latin in the mouth of his mad captain!—sed in nomine diaboli . . . . The That rasping shanty of a drunken nor’easter wick in the oil lamp gutters. comes and goes briefly to come, again, and rattle the panes in this chapel with stammering would he send me sleet. a fin of that Whale ! on the devil’s tines Why did I come here? Perhaps, as Melville forged in a hail of sparks once did, for a respite from December’s bitter yet raw from snout to tail weather. Thirty-one cenotaphs on the wall name and number the men who did not dock, Melville has, yes, and does. The winter light of again, at this port—an Icarus who fell New England is constant and pewter on the headlong from topmast to deck, a Jonah who panes. I rise to take my leave but the thirty-one paled as a shark’s morsel, a Joseph somehow tablets stay, the winding-sheet of the wind lost by his seafaring brethren. A ship’s log unraveling below in the harbor. preserved each of their names, though their bodies it could not. I’ve sat in his pew, then, not unpredictably far thirty-one tablets back from the pulpit . . . of stone on the wall I shut the chapel door, sleet and what then? what on the cobbles of Johnny Cake Hill then should one tablet happen to fall? (Herman Melville, Moby-Dick, Chapter 6: But in New Bedford . . .) But in New Bedford, Melville wrote, actual . cannibals stand chatting at street corners; (Melville, op. cit., Chapter 113: Ego non savages outright; many of whom yet carry on baptizo . . .) their bones unholy flesh. It makes a stranger . stare. (Melville to Nathaniel Hawthorne, June 29, 1851: Shall I send you a fin of the Whale by way of a specimen mouthful? The tail is not yet cooked— Yes, that it would, without question. The though the hell-fire in which the whole book is Quaker merchants, too, fretted over the souls broiled might not unreasonably have cooked it all of sailors who’d snuggle up with a fifth in a ere this. This is the book's motto (the secret one), local brothel and founded, after gnawing on —Ego non baptiso te in nomine—but make out the that bone, the New Bedford Port Society for rest yourself.) the Moral Improvement of Seamen. Hence, this salt-cured and seasick chapel.

Atlas Poetica • Issue 3 • Page 15 Pre-Holocaust: Growing up in Cleveland

Sanford Goldstein

I imagine a Sunday night supper, the painful circumcision cry rye bread with corned beef I made decades ago, and a pickle, that honed razor-sharp knife I did not say Jewish food, held in a synagogue hand only mother's potato salad how in kindergarten after a day at school I loved the colored strips of paper it was to study Hebrew pasted into circles that I rushed, as if worlds could be put up we sometimes laughed at the man with joyous ease and freedom with his long black beard and curls recalling Christmas once coming home at my elementary school in darkness after studying when carols were sung— Moses in a basket, a Jewish friend told me to shape I saw a man rush from a store my mouth as if I were saying Christ as if chasing me and I ran once in sixth grade at Hebrew school excited about seeing a play hearing about manna at the high school, during the Exodus, my teacher knuckled my head, I asked the old teacher if we could telling me to settle down imagine the taste of lemon pie just about everyone the depression on my Cleveland east-side street I knew it was in my early was Jewish, years and after, and still, not once did I and still how precious ever hear the word ghetto that fifteen-cent ice cream soda such joy carrying Negro the good word a big empty milk bottle, we used in those early days, twenty-cents in hand, I remember the kind man my mother warning me not to spill who lived with his white wife the bubbly chocolate phosphate next to my grandmother's house

Atlas Poetica • Issue 3 • Page 16 Goldstein, cont. once at a drugstore once looking for a Superman on a dirty wall in a gas station comic book, latrine by me a man asking another, scrawled in large red letters: did you jew-him down? jew-women good at it

I did not know then a newsboy I was, that "to jew down" was delivering the war to a common term— Jewish neighbors: not once to my English teacher how I yearned for questions about that strange verb Finland to beat the Russians in the synagogue in the newsreels I heard some of the old-timers at the exciting!Saturday tell the Cantor to be faster, matinee, and still that pure strong voice a distant fear in those neat rows was the only other-world I felt of marching German soldiers ignorant we were, Hitler, we Jewish kids even in smug with triumph high school— in Paris, no one ever told us and my adolescent fear Christ was a Jewish messiah cringing over popcorn at summer camp no one warned me I used the leather phalacteries that I would be hounded in a morning-prayer rush, by revenge-seekers, embarrassed before kids unwritten signs in places in my tent out only for fun I stood in front of my aunt said no Crucifixion this and that were sins did I hear of in those and I listened; early years, later I felt I was a sinner elders said we were sinners, while I lay in bed, hands clasped Atonement Day made us pure to eat pork they came rushing to get I was told as a kid freshmen to their frat lunch, was not kosher, those tidy seniors in blue, and still our meals at the Chinese, I was grabbed and went and heard delicious egg rolls and chow mein the hymn to their three-person'd God ! ~Goldstein, cont.

Atlas Poetica • Issue 3 • Page 17 Along the Way asked to attend a midnight mass, I went, Bob Lucky how vivid and deep and sonorous the words I could not know because our son is sleeping in late we drive into town because of a detour on at times Xihu Da Dao we get lost because we get young people came lost we walk up a hill because we walk up to our door a hill we come across a Kuan Yin temple and I let them in because we have to get down we decide to speak about faith to take another path because we take a different path we find a Uyghur stall naive in Cleveland, selling flatbread stuffed with onions and I never once thought anyone unidentifiable spices piquant and sweet would say I killed Christ until a soldier in my army platoon long metal tongs bruised my ears on a full-pack march remove a flatbread from the tandoor— during maneuvers handing over a few coins I too threw a window grenade I singe the hair on my arm I knifed a straw figure: my one fear was that someone squatting would shoot this "dirty-jew" me before a plastic tub full of dead sparrows ~Cleveland, Ohio, United States an old man laughs at me while I wave the bread to cool it

because we can’t remember where we parked the car we chew slowly

~Hangzhou, China

Atlas Poetica • Issue 3 • Page 18 I follow Your Course Winter in de Gambia / Winter in Gambia Alexej von Glasenapp Paul Mercken The glance you shed I followed its course advent of a breeze— in de ochtendmist curving mighty dunes visserbootsilhouetten embracing the ocean op de pier een kat zacht glijden op het water Each day I listened prauwen vogelliefhebbers timbres of your sound— joyous tambourine sullen violin in the morning fog my hypnotic drum fishing boat silhouettes on the pier a cat Your laughter echoed softly glide on the water spread by candlelight canoes full of bird watchers cascaded in falls rushed my veins trembled my senses in de baobab zit een reuzenijsvogel ~Giessen, Germany hoog cirkelen gieren overal waar de bus stopt! duiken er kinderen op

in the baobab sits a giant kingfisher vultures circle high every time the bus stops children pop up from nowhere

~Gambia

Atlas Poetica • Issue 3 • Page 19 Middle Lake, Saskatchewan

Angela Leuck

alone for the first time passing a rock pile in decades!! I come at the edge to this prairie house— of a field— black flies batter against windows you are the memory now that summer's gone I put to one side grain elevators on the street torn down !!railway lines of widows and widowers abandoned the energy in their voices— my inner landscape, too people who know the land has changed for what it can grow at The Lucky Dollar in the country cemetery with my milk and single lemon a simple stone with the words a good natured farm boy "A Winter Baby"— lets me go ahead even after frost at the cash the sweet pea blooms

Main Street on the edge of town a small prairie town's a row of evergreens false fronts— to block the wind— I'd be lying if I said my list of friends I wasn't looking for love has grown!thin the smell of smoke after the leaves from stubble fields have fallen! a wasp's nest this autumn exposed— I am burning the clarity that comes burning from this time alone standing on the spot in the regional park where grain elevators once rose— benches and picnic tables even after years covered with ice I am still I have come here in your shadow in the coldest season

!

Atlas Poetica • Issue 3 • Page 20 ~Leuck, cont. Lost and Found two deer Terra Martin walking slowly through the field opposite the house— Half-buried, a tiny glitter catches my the line we never cross attention. I loosen sand and debris, then scoop up my briny treasure—a pair of in the middle earrings. of a dried up slough explaining In the cove I rinse them several times. They to the cattails are solid gold. The workmanship on the why I am here filigree is exquisite and the design of moon and star reminiscent of the Art Deco a small rise period. in a farmer's field-- in this land of the living skies Twirling them in my fingers I gaze as their I no longer need a mountain rainbow reflection bounces here and on which to stand there.

~Middle Lake, Saskatchewan, Canada short of dropping the moon in your lap would you settle for a falling star

in your universe I become a shimmering canyon vast and yet unapproachable

suspended between moon and stars the remnants of you and me drifting, drifting

~Toronto, Canada

Atlas Poetica • Issue 3 • Page 21 Tor House

Jeffrey Woodward

You coveted a savage beauty and settled I, too, regard on this headland. Insisting that man will be the red-tail hawk and watch blotted out, the blithe earth die, you in the sunset where gathered granite from the cove below, above your sea-battered cliff placed stone on stone, built a refuge with he rides the wind alone your hands from the vanity and violence of man’s numbers, man’s progress. Though you were well aware that go, then, with the grain of this, your granite— I see you there, a child The square-limbed Roman letters of the wind, of the tide . . . Scale in the thaws, wear in the rain and brother to a stone you praised this coast in poems, you loved (Robinson Jeffers, "To the Stone-cutters," in Tamar & a woman and here raised two sons, Other Poems (1924): Man will be blotted out . . . foreordained, like all flesh, to oblivion. Or and The square-limbed Roman letters . . .) so your stubborn eloquence would have it. (Robinson Jeffers, "Carmel Point," in Hungerfield & Other Poems (1954): an unbroken field of poppy Before your death, you witnessed this and lupin . . .) granite perch being hedged by others’ houses and lamented your loss of an unbroken field of poppy and lupin. Even so, these pilgrims that you living sometimes pitied, sometimes despised, they come now to marvel at your handiwork, even now to rest their hands upon your stone.

not far from the house I find the wind-worn Monterey cypress did you plant this twisted one, this gaunt one, this evergreen

Atlas Poetica • Issue 3 • Page 22 Death in the Afternoon imagining the space

Bob Lucky Owen Bullock

The way the light from the setting sun it’s about comes through the glass door and spills finding everything across the marble floor of the lobby would but not all at once be comfort enough if not for the body of a rain slides down dead fly ripping into the light and lying in the physicist’s window the puddle of its shadow. I sweep it aside ! with my shoe before the crowd behind me she is alone tramples it underfoot. in that barn looking for sinking lower the boundaries of art into the worn sofa— & where the ants come in doctor’s waiting room ! the face of a clock reflected if I work hard enough in the TV’s dark screen I may give up this broom ~Hangzhou, China for a clip-board & a lunch break ! the real problem is reducing the calls; she still thinks he should be fair even in the lawyer’s office

~New Zealand

Atlas Poetica • Issue 3 • Page 23 Gippsland waters1 Ninety Mile Beach5 . . . who would seek to measure Jo McInerney the wind the sky, the furrowed water reaching to world’s end silt jetties at Eagle Point Bluff ~southeast Victoria, Australia the Mitchell’s alpine springs now sift through Lake King’s fingers ! over slow water 1.! Gippsland is a region in south-eastern a dragonfly’s flickering Victoria.!Victoria is a south-eastern state of florescence Australia. The Gippsland Lakes are a network of lakes, marshes and lagoons in east Gippsland covering an area of about Tambo River 600 sq kms. The largest of the lakes are cormorants spread drying wings Lake Wellington, Lake King and Lake as our wake Victoria. They are fed by the Avon, laps rock and stirs rushes Thomson, Latrobe, Mitchell, Nicholson long afternoon’s procession and Tambo rivers. ! 2.! Sperm Whale Head is a large spit of pumping for sand worm land projecting into Lake Victoria. torches of old fishermen ! bob in the dark 3.! The Southern Ocean, also known as the Great Southern Ocean, comprises the Sperm Whale Head2 . . . southernmost waters of the World Ocean our young love had us south of 60° S latitude. ! rocking offshore 4.! Lakes Entrance is a tourist resort and in each other’s arms fishing port in eastern Victoria on a drifting under stars naturally occurring channel connecting the Gippsland Lakes to the Bass Strait.! Bass two pelicans Strait gives into the Southern Ocean. waddle along the pier ! 5.! Ninety Mile Beach starts at Seaspray off season evening and continues until Lakes Entrance. The beach is made up of long sandy dunes doors which separate the various lakes and should open out not in lagoons from the Southern Ocean. the Southern Ocean3 beckons beyond Lakes Entrance4 I look toward wild water cold and deep currents run from sand to ice

Atlas Poetica • Issue 3 • Page 24 Lime Tree Legs of Invisible Desire

Magdalena Dale M. Kei

Day dreaming in the mud the taste of the tea next to the asphalt, on your lips a broken doll’s head, this fragrance of lime a crow pecking between you and me at plastic eyes

Chilly wind derelict memory, on my windowsill a broken watch washed up a sere lime leaf . . . on a muddy beach I! wait uselessly next to the orange foot to hear again your steps of a Canada goose

A! passerby walking the street together with the wind with legs of invisible desire, at your window . . . looking in windows a lime tree shining at the people for sale in the soft moon light but I have no money

A lime tree without an audience, try to find its place the poet’s heart has no meter, among moonbeams ears give voice like my yearning to the red paper looking for you brushing along the ground

~Elkton, Maryland, USA ~Bucharest, Romania

Atlas Poetica • Issue 3 • Page 25 In de Oostertuin genietend van chrysanten * / Enjoying Chrysanthemums in the Eastern Garden

Paul Mercken

Hoe belandde ik, Geleid door lusten, een eenzame bejaarde, kende ik bij ’t zien van wijn in de oude tuin, geen tijd en geen maat. waarin! de najaarsgrassen Toen was ik al opgetogen alles overwoekeren? voordat ik had gedronken.

How did I arrive, Desire directing, a lonely elderly man, at perceiving wine I knew in the ancient garden, no measure, no time. where tangled autumn grasses I was already joyous are infesting everything? before I started drinking.

Wind en dauw zijn kil, De dagen tellen, de zon is mat, de heesters ’t! genieten! wordt moeilijker. verlept, gehavend. Schept drank nog vreugde? Bij de schutting ontluiken De chrysant bloeit, niet voor mij. slechts enkele chrysanten. Toch voel ik me opgemonterd.!

Wind and dew are cold, The days adding up, the sun is weak, the thicket pleasure comes less easily. faded and decayed. Will drink still bring joy? Only some chrysanthemums The chrysanthemum blossoms are opening near the fence. but not for me. Yet I’m glad.

Ik neem mijn kruikje * The classic poem by Bai Juyi (Po Tsu-ji), en ga daar zitten drinken. 813, rewritten by Paul Mercken into a Voor jullie blijf ik. tanka suite from the Dutch translation of Nu trekken voor mijn ogen the Chinese original by W. L. Idema, Bai mijn jongelingsjaren voorbij. Juyi. Gedichten en proza, gekozen, vertaald en toegelicht, Amsterdam/ Antwerpen: Uitgeverij Atlas, 2001, pp. I bring my bottle, 228-229: meaning to have a draught there. For you guys I stay. Professor Idema's original: I let the years of my youth pass before my very eyes. Mijn jonge jaren zijn allang verstreken,

Atlas Poetica • Issue 3 • Page 26 De jaren van mijn bloei zijn nu ook heen: Entrance & Exit Hoe ben ik met een hart vol eenzaamheid Daarbij beland in deze oude tuin? !!In deze tuin sta ik zo lang, alleen - Terra Martin De zon is mat en wind en dauw zijn kil. Het najaarsgras heeft alles overwoekerd, De fraaie heesters zijn verlept, gehavend.! Ms. Sandler signals to the class from the !! Er zijn alleen maar enkele chrysanten, piano. "Do, ray, me, faaaah." We begin Daar bij de schutting, pas voor kort and the door opens. ontloken. Ik breng mijn kruik en ga daar zitten Daffodil-colored shoes squeak as she drinken – enters. Bright purple leggings call attention Om jullie zal ik hier nog even blijven!! to her pixie-like build. A tangerine top !! ‘k Herinner me de dagen van mijn under the faded denim jacket is covered jeugd, with rhinestones. Her purse is an effigy of Hoe licht ik door mijn lusten werd geleid a foot and half long speckled trout Want zag ik wijn, ik kende tijd noch maat suspended on a nylon red shoulder strap. En was al vrolijk voor ik had gedronken. !! De laatste tijd, sinds ik wat ouder werd, " Oops wrong class," she says. Ms. Sandler Wordt het me moeilijker om te genieten, sniffs as the door closes. En takel ik nog verder af, dan vrees ik Dat mij geen drank nog vreugde brengen kan. embroidered !! Maar waarom, vraag ik de chrysanten, cushions, perfectly plumped bloeien jullie glitzy Als enige nog in dit laat seizoen? like the compliments Natuurlijk is dat niet vanwege mij – you throw here, there Toch voel ik mij door jullie opgemonterd.! scavenging Republished with permission. through the sock drawer my life dabs of color but not a pair in sight

once more that dream of sailing the indigo sky above foamy waves a spray of stardust

~Toronto, Canada

Atlas Poetica • Issue 3 • Page 27 Rewinding Fort William *

Guy Simser my public school’s now, hanging around human scale architecture his weathered front porch shuttered up a whiff neo-classicism spent of Dutch Amphora; that gift as am!I, tempus fugit unknown to my children in our old back lane front yard musing spring snow-bank melt on the cleft family tree Oedipus redux one-half buried in dad’s wet hockey mitt the other half turning again, my frozen horse bun the colour of autumn that shameful hole in the nor’wester in dad’s depression sweater three sparrows close ranks parsimony! amongst crackling leaves he said and then left us under my cold, damp feet to learn at our own peril mother, father, brother

~Fort William, Ontario, Canada nineteen fifty-two in dad’s first car (second-hand) * Small town in Northern Western Ontario, my first love established 1907 and me scared to death of running out of gas she’s an east-ender you’re from west fort street think about it! everything, but for that, is perfect, he said as a teen, I scoffed at dad’s thick wool plaid shirt today, I’d tell him it suits me to a “T” if I could

Atlas Poetica • Issue 3 • Page 28 Short Flashbacks of a Long- On a Beach at Polillo Island Ago Trip to The Philippines Ella Wagemakers Ella Wagemakers ! lying lazily my husband and I I want on holiday to show him our lakes eavesdropping as a couple and volcanoes argue about their affair the pride in my country I usually keep hidden on the beach that same coconut tree playing tourist with coconuts . . . in my hometown !!!!! I no longer wait I rush !!!!! for them to fall through a blur of older faces and three native languages my husband tries his hand sunshine on at haiku the pineapple field the English words a rich harvest with Dutch spellings back in The Netherlands they’ll cost "2,39 a tin one day he wants to retire at the market on the islands of one mountain tribe the same ones I left woven baskets when I married him a native woman in costume offers to take my picture ~The Philippines ~The Philippines

Atlas Poetica • Issue 3 • Page 29 remembering Do’s and Don’ts

stanley pelter

alone in the crowd who walk to his funeral dream of a poppy! inside red fires of a yesterday war

sometimes i think of dad.!!! remember him wearing!!! a silent face. sometimes i remember his resigned look; re-image others to refill silences of those on the wrong side of locked doors in a grey gas factory empty even of shadows. sometimes i remember excitement and acceptance; acceptance of!solutions to ills which might solve his own. i don’t remember him succumbing to the fatuous, or correspondences to blind faith. don’t remember him talking about conspiratorial outcomes or remember him carrying home a book. i do remember ‘hanging is too good’, and the ice-cold anger inside his stabbed voice. i remember fingering his face, contours of painful survival, detailed trails spread across maps of extensive carnage.

sometimes, i think of dad. remember him wearing a silent face.

alone on the road that is a reflection of his reflection man-made poppy angled in water

~Newark, England

Atlas Poetica • Issue 3 • Page 30 surviving the Shadow

stanley pelter

where mountain crags hide in ice he walks naked a camp of gas casts a concentration of shadows

Here I am, unanchored and with upturned sight, moving on, with mother’s mattress tied to me and a King James’s bible shredded through a distant grandfather’s mangled journey. An imposition from another place limps across a pulsing shadow. Trembles ricochet from coal to gas and echo through a cusp of lime-drenched pits. In adjacent dimensions Babel language tribes come and go. Rivers solidify in beds of ancient blood, their surfaces, even before sunrise, simulating mirrors. This may be the day differences are nailed. Who knows? Not ancient blood. Not that searing light casting Faustian shadows inside urban meltdown. Not anybody. Not anything. Only time can pan these mushroom sensations into gold. Today yet another path splits into the mass of tomorrow shadow. Yet another virginal fusion grasps fission. Each day of each crescent moon night connects and disconnects. Shadows learn darkness when left to outshine light. Flitting shapes enclose crumpled space and a black so turgid it tingles spines of even those with the secret of leaking shadows through multi-tasking showerheads. Here is shadow music that enhances a resounding silence.

strong hint of light and darkness crumbles incestuous snakes slither out of tight shadow skins

Today breaks the mould. Today is aromatic. Lost in icon-ingested flavours that penetrate subdued lights of anticipation, his path splits into sparkling emanations. His new smile sheen is viscous, rich in a translucency that darkly glows into the impalpable aura of blue-black recesses, like those spacious Japanese temple shadows designed to guide toward variety and mystery and safety. Before any light can refute and deny, simply heard vibrations quiver into a taut line. Carefree, he dances along this tightrope, singing with upturned sight and making such a noise as befits a person who is a Shadow survivor.

distant shape of geese rise above their shadow spread the last cut of grass covers a multitude of sins

(written after reading 'in praise of shadows' by Junichiro Tanizaki.)

Atlas Poetica • Issue 3 • Page 31 War and Peace

the sadness bird's eye view of women wearing burkas of the island never to know only the freedom wild birds have migrating flocks to sing in any tree can stop to rest

~Kirsty Karkow ~Margarita Engle John Hopkins School of Public Health, Cuba as seen from an airplane Baltimore, Maryland, USA

a teenage girl White wicker chair stoned to death at the edge of the sea . . . for daring to love— a man in white linen the evening sky reads Tolstoy, his trousers in full spectrum rolled over his knees. ~George Swede ~Alexis Rotella Bashika, Iraq Nice, France this damn war I’ll write a song for you lives lost and all that money if I can, my friend shot to pieces and I’ll pray for you when it could have done with all the saints so much good in the world dandelions and crickets

~André Surridge ~Owen Bullock Iraq New Zealand during WW1 my friend German soldiers shelled who has become Reims cathedral— a recluse the roof caught fire and gargoyles names the advantages spat liquid lead of solitude

~André Surridge ~Marje A. Dyck Reims, France Canada

Atlas Poetica • Issue 3 • Page 32 War and Peace, cont. his eyes came back from Iraq Shangri-La and joined the wall scent of yak-butter lamps with the eyes the chant of monks . . . from Vietnam I am here and not here awaiting the coming ~M. Kei Grundy Center, Iowa, USA ~André Surridge, Shangri-la in the college corridor, the faint ululation of an Arabic prayer . . . today's news which mirror are the students of unspeakable deaths looking into? disappears somewhere into memory— ~M. Kei first tomato blooms Harford Community College, Bel Air, Maryland, USA ~George Swede Seaton Village, Toronto, Canada autumn hunt: way down there in the village a sinner demolishing enters the clapboard church: Mt. Eden Prison God’s got binoculars too? excavators discover the remains of six prisoners ~Guy Simser and a disused railway track Canada

~Patricia Prime New Zealand summer and the world at peace . . . if only this were the calm as boys after the storm they blew on blades of grass held between thumbs ~André Surridge now they lie on the battlefield Hamilton, New Zealand steel between their ribs

~André Surridge Somme, France

Atlas Poetica • Issue 3 • Page 33 Mourning

At the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem the shallow dip I watch the tight pants dug at the woodlot's edge of the American tourist fills with leaves as she pushes with one longer finger the smell of rot mixed her prayer into the stone wall. with the bones of a cow

~James Tipton ~Michele L. Harvey Jerusalem, Israel Hamilton, New York tour bus she leaves through green rolling pastures a fistful of daffodils to Hobbiton on his grave Frodo and his friends her husband's!favorite flowers long gone from the garden he once dug

~André Surridge ~Michele L. Harvey Matamata, New Zealand Hamilton, New York

The long teeth just of winter newly widowed . . . hanging from clouds the eaves . . . rush past the window You in the spirit world. on the way to nowhere

~Alexis Rotella, ~Michele L. Harvey Cairnbrook, Pennsylvania, USA Hamilton, New York

Newly-widowed spectator slowing the neighbor hanging on the 101 freeway, clothes on the line— I’m late and yet no more pants even I hesitate kicking in the wind near the overturned car

~George Swede ~Deborah P Kolodji Seaton Village, Toronto, Canada Temple City, California, USA

!

Atlas Poetica • Issue 3 • Page 34 ~Mourning, cont. a tree full of fog, sealing although she's dead, the world the doe's eyes in a silent tomb still ask me questions about fate ~M. Kei and the deeds of men Perryville, Maryland, USA

~M. Kei Perryville, Maryland, USA !! ! All that remains

a FIRST and LAST NAME some mould !! ! ! ! ! ! a DATE from his childhood home a STATEMENT of LOVE his frat house and the old apple tree , mixed !! wind borne leaves in this landscape of graves

~Michele L. Harvey ~George Swede Hamilton, New York Old St. Paul's Burying Ground, Halifax, Canada lesser now, the off-chance sight of a stranger that wears some piece of your lost ways

~Michele L. Harvey New York, USA that cat who kept to himself still slides around half-seen corners only my mind can see

~Michele L. Harvey New York, USA Planned topics for next issue include winter and kyoka (humor).

Atlas Poetica • Issue 3 • Page 35 Urban

there I was farmers down in the grass bring him mortar shells groping from the battlefields— soon to learn that red ants he recycles them into had found my glasses first shining bronze coffee machines

~Kirsty Karkow ~André Surridge Baltimore, Maryland, USA Baghdad, Iraq city dressed in white cotton lights glimmering wearing a Gandhi cap below the dabbawalla in darkness parted mounts an old bicycle your open doors laden with tiffin tins

~Joe Christiansen ~André Surridge Atlanta, Georgia, USA Mumbai, India

As we look at a street map, passing a Japanese woman approaches the old graveyard to practice her English children and to hand us afraid to breathe a Watch Tower pamphlet. inhaling ghosts ! ~Alexis Rotella ~Margarita Engle Kyoto, Japan a Southern California small town

And to think Saturday morning— back in Baltimore a crow even flower pots picking at are chained the breadcrumbs of to window bars. my existence

~Alexis Rotella ~M. Kei Kyoto, Japan Chesapeake Bay, Maryland, USA

!

Atlas Poetica • Issue 3 • Page 36 ~Urban, cont.

summer walk sitting on the cold along an avenue of green marble steps in the porch and shadows of Britomart we drift closer each step a posse of students to the edge of!autumn waiting for the free bus ~Dawn Bruce ~Patricia Prime Art Gallery Road, Sydney, Australia New Zealand

sleeping dark city street with the windows open— the red light the thwack thwack of an ambulance of the night watchman’s staff growing larger loud and comforting growing smaller ~Bob Lucky ~Peggy Heinrich Hangzhou, China New York City, USA

the garbage truck new city came early today— dots on my angry monkeys coffee cup lid bang an empty can remind me of and hiss at me your face ~Bob Lucky ~Rose Hunter Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia!!! Tlaquepaque, Mexico

Thirty-eight years here a night out and leaving as the bare trees in swinging Amsterdam get their new buds— we tell the kids my steps cautious the women are selling on the icy campus street beachwear and lingerie

~George Swede ~Ella Wagemakers Ryerson University, Toronto, Canada Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Atlas Poetica • Issue 3 • Page 37 Summer

ten dolphins beyond the breakers in a nursery rhyme: aluminum dinghies two leaping out fishing three surfing the waves the day’s catch brought to shore five cruising further out gutted on the beach

~Amelia Fielden ~Patricia Prime Australia New Zealand mockingbirds hot summer day flirting and flitting the sliding screen door in the parking lot — sticks in mid-track beige beauties outside, the flash in the summer sun of a hummingbird

~M. Kei ~Peggy Heinrich, Chesapeake Bay, Maryland, USA Bridgeport, Connecticut, USA summer picnic Texas summer a sudden gust of wind at the height of the season sends your strawboater not a fig in sight— cartwheeling into the river my grown-up niece scattering ducks asks what they look like

~André Surridge ~Bob Lucky Cambridge, England Houston, Texas, USA summer orchard summer garden the territorial overflows in red bickering i look sideways of two squirrels at swollen eyes while I claim deep shade and see only black

~Margarita Engle ~stanley pelter California's Central Valley United Kingdom

Atlas Poetica • Issue 3 • Page 38 James Tipton Por ahora su deseo de amarla es más grande todavía! Martha Alcántar and Gabriela que el deseo de ella Ocampo Ocampo, translators de estar enojada.

¿Café de Arbol— For the time being quien necesita cielo his desire to love mientras hay todavía is still larger meseras! hermosas than her desire en este mundo?! to be angry.

Coffee Tree Café— who needs Heaven Supe que ella no era para mi while there are still que es porque permití beautiful waitresses solo una parte de mi in this world? seguirla adentro de su apartamento.

(Previously appeared in El Ojo del Lago, Chalapa, I knew she was not for me Mexico, November, 2008) which is why I permitted only part of me to follow her (I like to hang out at this popular coffee shop in into her apartment. Chapala, Mexico. The women who work there— Claudia, Clio, and Rocío—are very beautiful. I have fallen in love with all of them.) (English version previously appeared in El Ojo del Lago, Chalapa, Mexico, November, 2008)

¿Quieres saber por qué me gusta su no muy extraordinario cuerpo? No hace mucho tiempo Porque dentro de ese cuerpo dijiste que fui el hombre perfecto. es otro cuerpo que sólo llega Ahora que estoy con la noche. enamorado de ti no dices nada. You want to know why I like her rather unremarkable body? Not so long ago Because inside that body you said I was the perfect man. is another body Now that I have fallen that only comes out at night. in love with you you say nothing. (Previously appeared in Meretrices, Chalapa, Mexico, November, 2008) ~Chalapa, Mexico

!

Atlas Poetica • Issue 3 • Page 39 ~Tipton, cont. Tu preguntas: ¿Como estaba ella En la Catedral de Lima cuando hizo el amor? el hombre viejo Esa bahía cálida en Guayabitos quien ha perdido a su esposa lavando cada pulgada cuadrada muy fuerte maldice de tu cuerpo.! Padre, Hijo, y Espíritu Santo. You ask what she was like In the Cathedral of Lima when she made love? the old man That warm bay at Guayabitos who lost his wife washing over every square inch loudly curses of your body. Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.! ~near Puerto Vallarta, Mexico ~Lima, Peru (Guayabitos is a lovely little resort community on (I was sitting with a rather exquisite young Peruvian the Pacific coast of southern Mexico, about one lady one afternoon in the Cathedral of Lima—a hour north of the far more sophisticated Puerto huge baroque cathedral that was actually designed Vallarta. I like Guayabitos, which is more popular by Francisco Pizarro who conquered the Incas and with Mexicans than Americans. The bay is sweet founded Lima (the chapel was built beginning in and gentle and very satisfying.) 1564). At the main altar, shouting loudly and shaking his fist at the figure of the suffering Christ, stood an old man, in worn but mended clothing, who had recently lost his wife. As two priests En esta alta meseta desierta approached him, he turned and strode past us de vez en cuando las noches down the main aisle and then through the huge doors. His weary face was wet with tears.) son tan claras que cada palabra dicha en el universo habla ahora. ! Ella ha vivido junto al Rio San Miguel tanto tiempo que en la noche fluye por su corazón. On this high desert mesa Ahora nunca sabrá ella sometimes the nights que esta vacio. are so clear that every word ever spoken in the universe She’s lived by the San Miguel River speaks!now. so long that at night ~near Grand Junction, Colorado, USA it! runs through her heart. Now she will never know (I lived for almost a decade on a high mesa (7000’) what emptiness is. in western Colorado, near the Utah border. At night the moon and the stars were so bright and the ~near Telluride, Colorado, USA mesa was so silent that the silence itself seemed to become sound.) (There are many San Miguel Rivers in north America, but this lovely one is near Telluride in the mountains of southwestern Colorado.) !

Atlas Poetica • Issue 3 • Page 40 ~Tipton, cont. André Surridge No, no te he ovidado, y antes de la ultima nevada te conoceré otra vez en el agua caliente Station Hotel abajo del Paso de la Montaña Roja.! while guests enjoy breakfast grey squirrels No, I have not forgotten you, in the back courtyard and before the last snow forage through rubbish bins I will!meet you again in the hot springs ~Knaresborough, England below Red Mountain Pass.

~near Ouray, Colorado, USA we board the night tram (Red Mountain Pass is in southwestern Colorado, along the Golden Mile above the little mountain town of Ouray, and passengers cheer popular for its hot springs. The Pass, when covered as the mayor switches on with snow, is a dangerous one.) Blackpool’s Illuminations

Solo otra vez en esta mesa salvaje ~Blackpool, England miro estos caballos peludos enfrentando el invierno largo. Y tu, encaminandote a Perú, ¿Voy a verte otra vez!?! tea and scones at Betty’s Café in Harrogate Alone again on this wild mesa where my dear I watch these shaggy horses little sister, you work facing the long winter. your beautiful smile And you, headed back to Peru, will I ever see you again? ~Harrogate, England ~near Grand Junction, Colorado, USA

(In western Colorado, near the Utah border, are several large tracts of wild land set aside for wild Samso horses.) the eco-friendly carbon-free Danish island— their strawberries and potatoes that much sweeter

~Samso, Denmark

!

Atlas Poetica • Issue 3 • Page 41 ~Surridge, cont. blues and yellows lunch of the Swiss Guard’s uniform at the Dirty Duck are also here baked potato with cheese on walls and vaulted ceiling half a pint of best bitter of the Sistine Chapel watching the canal boats

~Vatican City, Italy ~Stratford-on-Avon, England the freeze starts photograph over Iceland . . . of Earth from space dancing oh what a world . . . in the northern sky, the ghosts when I was a boy I had of aurora borealis a marble just like it

~Iceland ~Knaresborough, England chef says forced north if you visit for unknown reasons without trying penguins the chilli crab, you really wash up dead or wounded haven’t been to Singapore on Brazilian shores

~Singapore ~Brazil the pond girl meets boy in my father’s garden boy meets girl a heritage site— where’s it going to end once a watering stop when the world’s in a whirl for the coachman’s horses this blue, blue, blue world

~Shalden, Hampshire, England ~Knaresborough, England the best ten pounds I ever spent got me a seat on an air plane to these shaky isles at the bottom of the world

~Hamilton, New Zealand

Atlas Poetica • Issue 3 • Page 42 Alexis Rotella I keep waiting for little people to climb out of My brother who won’t take off his beard— a day to attend a funeral Bill Higginson. thinks nothing of ! missing a day ~Haiku Society of America meeting, New to go on a mushroom hunt. York, USA ~Indiana, Pennsylvania, USA Shanty town— On the shoulder wedding at the Central Hotel . . . of this busy autumn highway, A cigarette burn an old man on the bride’s on a bike towing home hoop skirt. his wooden canoe.! ~Sagamore, Pennsylvania, USA ~Severna Park, Maryland, USA Hitchhiker These stone steps I walk up waving to see my mother after surgery a milkweed stalk— the same steps I bet he also I hurried down writes haiku. in first grade after mine. ~Fryeburg, Maine, USA ~Windber Hospital, Pennsylvania, USA

At the Shinto shrine The hummingbird the sumo wrestler and my mother collide— drops off a pumpkin “Run for ice” she yells, that no one else blood running could possibly lift. from her third eye. ~Kyoto, Japan ~Cairnbrook, Pennsylvania, USA At the shrine Amish market— I ask for nothing on the counter even though propped among I could use the fryers, a break. a baby. ~Kyoto, Japan ~Annapolis, Maryland, USA !

Atlas Poetica • Issue 3 • Page 43 ~Rotella, cont.

Trattoria— Driving away robed monks from city lights . . . with silver spoons Tonight I will sleep twirling spaghetti in my childhood bed around a fork. and listen to the peepers.

~Kyoto, Japan ~Cairnbrook, Pennsylvania, USA

Some women look for Before dusk— their spouses Mrs. Patrick’s cows in bars . . . walk up our road . . . Mine hangs out Their bells jangling, in the kitchen gadget shop. the sound of home.

~Annapolis, Maryland, USA ~Cairnbrook, Pennsylvania, USA

First refrigerator— On a Bahama Beach neighbors come to visit my husband says it will be our Coldspot a long time before he touches fish, as if it were the PERFECT STORM a shrine. read cover to cover.

~1949, Cairnbrook, Pennsylvania, USA ~Bahamas

Everyone on this I thank the host Santa Cruz street for a wonderful party a Tibetan Buddhist . . . then realize Yet not one of them I’ve been at speaks to their neighbors. the wrong house.

~Santa Cruz, California, USA ~Georgetown, Washington, D.C., 1965

The Japanese professor Four star restaurant— says he’d like to translate in my tossed salad my book of tanka . . . a tiny caterpillar It’s not that I don’t believe him, emerges from just that sake has its own voice. the Thousand Island.

~Kyoto, Japan ~New York City, New York, USA

Atlas Poetica • Issue 3 • Page 44 George Swede The door open all day yet the fly stays on the sealed window much like some among us The scents of who seek the light seaweed and salt the squish of mud . . . ~Ajijic, Mexico my sense of self ebbing with the tide As I clean, new dust ~English Bay, Vancouver spirals in a sunbeam to settle behind me— stubborn, the hints! of our destiny Just leaf scraps in the fence corner web ~Ajijic, Mexico but the hidden spider! is doing better than I— the page still blank My dream life has become more engaging ~Our backyard, Seaton Village, Toronto, than the real one— Canada the dewdrops on the thorns hold red roses

~Oyama, British Columbia, Canada Without the thousands of hours of intense work what would I be? Light rain! The windowsill cat stretches and lingering mist— and gapes a long yawn it's hard to stop dreams mingling ~Our backyard, Seaton Village, Toronto, with plans for the day Canada ~Seaton Village, Toronto, Canada

The Amazon rank A new hand-held gizmo— for my last book now even fewer will sunk even deeper— read the poems! the street lined with bags over which we labor of fallen leaves and find sustaining joy

~Seaton Village, Toronto, Canada ~Future Shop, Toronto, Canada !

Atlas Poetica • Issue 3 • Page 45 ~Swede, cont. stanley pelter A movie about soft body a family! in great working order much like ours . . . her medusa fuzz the moon at zenith makes him break we talk many of their rules

~Ajijic, Mexico ~London, England

Desert highway: sand filled air the pool of water streams across high waves evaporates as we near— on the blurred beach like hope examined before gull alarms sound too closely sea filled shells close!

~Mojave Desert, Nevada ~Isle of Arran, Scotland

Over two-thirds steep dive of the way to the age of a kittiwake of one hundred— into a grey sea the sunset-lit slow eyes gull's glide see little of it ~Isle of Arran, Scotland ~Newport News, Virginia, USA

ignoring ethics The body knows more science than the mind and much else about many things— the two of us gazed at from behind face a moonglow night the woman looks back ~Isle of Arran, Scotland ~Downtown Toronto, Canada

she hides her tooth under a bloodstained pillow mum much too tired to act the wish fairy

~Newark, England !

Atlas Poetica • Issue 3 • Page 46 ~pelter, cont. walk through mirrors the blossom into reflections is almost gone of reflections from the cherry tree thoughts morph time to into smiles get on with things

~Newark, England ducks like boats drifting towards the night sky and the past

the rose is still there on the stem pink and fragrant though the woman has gone

in a shallow swamp the vast blue sky reflected Owen Bullock I walk carefully to the edge why am I so sad just when about her life? everyone seems to she may be happier want something from me than most people I know— the branches are bare the sun glares as it sets on the beeches

I’m showing off again the sight of in front of a beautiful woman a female— at the post office will these urges reminds me ever fail? to post my letter

~Waihi, New Zealand

Atlas Poetica • Issue 3 • Page 47 do their calls Amelia Fielden criss-crossing the park signal the close two mallards of this winter's day sail across Green Lake, for the five o'clock birds ? their wakes never quite intersecting— I have friends like that the 373 slows, instinctively I hail it— but why, the train sways I haven't lived at Coogee with its smell of dust for over forty years and oranges— through scratched windows perfect reflections on a lake high tea once in an Oxford garden unshadowed a snowfall by all the actions of blossom petals of my adult life cloaks our driveway— cries the child "you musn't ~Australia crush those fairy wings" no microphone, the political speakers outperformed by a magpie chorus perched above the dais little finches in the camellia bush stirring green— Guy Simser 'if winter's here, can spring be far behind' kneeling, head over this boreal forest pond reflecting on winter field: a bobbing fish head a magpie scavenging in blackfly egg scum in the snow summer memories (thanks to W. C. Stevens) half-buried like first love ~Canada

Atlas Poetica • Issue 3 • Page 48 Rose Hunter the pelican plunges emerges with nothing on the TV you were not warnings of who I thought you were “tornadic activity” keep shifting to ~Tlaquepaque, Mexico where I’m heading motel room ceiling wallpaper border with proscenium arch we!fall asleep watching the performance Trish Fong

For Shaun Nutana Birks trampling over the shells, you say text message our architecture is from an old flame not modern winter rain . . . form doesn’t follow function long after midnight still staring at the embers iguana Pierrot our seed costume planted all those years ago and you fooling lies dormant, still next to the pyramids without sunlight, who knows the depth of its beauty lying under the broken today I found ceiling fan, you ask me a pale blue egg if you could be any laying in the grass candy bar I took it inside, kept it warm which one would!you be? and thought of second chances in the shower a blue sheen the whirr of the stretched across wet sand air-conditioner delays my walk I think of a time even the beauty of clouds I could never get warm and sky are within our reach

~Gisborne, New Zealand

Atlas Poetica • Issue 3 • Page 49 Margarita Engle mountain stream the fallen log a bridge green landscape between two green the patient oxen shades of forest a horseman stops to visit ~California's Sierra Nevada Mountains the witches' hut

~Cuba fences the old woman answers white sand when asked and black coral what had changed most a pineapple since her youth on the beach ~California's Sierra Nevada foothills crisscrossed by ghost crabs

~Cuba alone in the foothills old sea wall I sit beside centaurs and mermaids and listen of stone to the mountain lion's cry the patience of people watching the sea ~California's Sierra Nevada foothills

~Cuba poison oak even in my throat insomnia and yet on an island on this spring morning of hammocks a goldfinch returns from afar no border between night and day ~California's Sierra Nevada foothills

~Curacao ant hills on the orchard road migration reclaiming painted lady butterflies the wild terrain and azure moths of peaches fly together away ~California's Central Valley

~California's Sierra Nevada Mountains !

Atlas Poetica • Issue 3 • Page 50 ~Engle, cont. Bobbette A. Mason farm night blooming daylilies in Orion's Belt !!!!!!!!! a neighbor’s cat a thread of cloud beds down in splendor weaves its way rises from a morning nap between stars indifferent to my gaze

~California's Central Valley ~Wilmington, Delaware, USA after the crash bright blue cornflower a roadside memorial !!!!!!!!! tucked into his buttonhole the wind !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! commuting to Wall Street gathers wildflowers star sapphire cufflinks all around the haunted tree !!!!!!!!! pawned for daily bread

~California's Central Valley ~Brightwaters and Bowery, New York, USA country road on a knoll of lush moss in the season !!!!!!!!! pristine bones picked clean of yellow !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! curled in perpetual rest . . . school buses the vixen waited too long horses watch !!!!!!!!! to cross thin ice ~Green Island, Upper Saranac Lake, New ~California's Central Valley York, USA feedstore just once more . . . I yearn the scarlet macaw !!!!!!!!! to paddle in solitude in a cage !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! across to Green island together we dream longing to find of travel !!!!!!!!! my sacred place

~California's Central Valley ~Adirondack Mountains, New York, USA

one might speculate !!!!!!!!! peripheral neuropathy !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! left her feet numb . . . abandoning her adopted son !!!!!!!!! left her soul dead

~Long Island, New York, USA

Atlas Poetica • Issue 3 • Page 51 Bob Lucky half asleep sitting on the toilet working backwards the first through every meal good pomelo the last two days this season we go to the market ~Hangzhou, China and don’t even haggle

~Hangzhou, China the Blue Angels over Lake Washington— along the river who else notices a bamboo forest the fly that lands of fishing poles on the poached salmon leaning into the breeze coming in from the sea ~Seafair, Seattle 2008

~Hangzhou, China in the rain my son runs to the river and back because he felt like it he says, and why not

~Hangzhou, China Deborah P Kolodji we brace ourselves sonic booms with tea and Chinese phrasebook— as the space shuttle lands Great Wall Motors at Edwards . . . afterwards we aren’t sure my Star Trek plates what color car we bought rattle in the cupboard ~Hangzhou, China "for sale sign" late at night in front of our old house the rattle of the sewer I wish I could buy it again cover but without you doesn’t disturb me this time as much as the neighbor’s dog ~Temple City, California, USA ~Hangzhou, China

Atlas Poetica • Issue 3 • Page 52 Patricia Prime dragonflies while fossicking snap at the headlands in the black dunes hovering of Whatipu beach above an ice-cream sea we find a seahorse skeleton, before heading into the blue a lost shoe and a tyre just below on a cold spring day the flagstaff I stand outside on Bastion Point the art gallery a cycle race passes where an enveloping fire, on the slick, wet road a red painting invites me on the North Shore Heads Karakare Beach there’s the taste of the sea with its incomplete memory the glow of sun of your death— highlights the Gulf islands always the black sand & surf and a yacht race out at sea to remind me of that Christmas at Raglan the waters black sands and a grey heron of Tolaga Bay where maned breakers sweep across the ocean, break on the point gulls circling the slipping cliffs and our words disappear fall back into the wind in the spring air we tramp of a Northland dairy to the steep valley it’s not just ice cream of Huia Falls you offer but the subtext lean against the bridge rail of your eyes, clear and bright from which people have leaped the small plane from her rest home a winged finger a lone survivor pointing of the Titanic across Cook Strait sells her memorabilia towards the South Island for 31,000 pounds

~New Zealand

Atlas Poetica • Issue 3 • Page 53 Dawn Bruce here and there in the field the farmer left a toddler a few tufts hides in Moore's Corn Maidens, as sacrifice 'reclining mother and child' for the geese and the crows is he the whisper from our!secrets we dismantle! and move the woodpile touched to another spot by dappled light!I walk deep in its heart Art Gallery Road the skin of snakes Monet's water lilies touches me from within a jay ~Art Gallery Rd, Sydney Australia whittles!away the suet while the sun eats into the snowbank this side of the hill

the mind Michele L. Harvey of mother! tortured!by demons . . . at the bend after her death, the tool shed I hear the freight train blow filled with pitchforks and rakes turtle eggs hatch by riverside tracks in the soft depths of cinder he said, that cat formed a bridge of laughter between us much like us we'll keep him in the freezer the scarecrows hold hands until the spring thaw comes this spring some wren has nested in the pocket of your pants she never made that promised rag doll between buttons seeking quiet in her tin sewing box after the argument . . . the cold stare of eyes in her garden she plants peonies with the eyes facing up ! ~Harvey, cont.

Atlas Poetica • Issue 3 • Page 54 a loaded hay wagon barren trees I share stand knee deep in their own leaves the slow rising moon when you with a lone coyote have seen enough of me will the wind be my friend? alone after his passing hydrangeas blush his dog in the cool autumn dawn for a full fortnight a robin lingers calls the moon down between tall, white heads of tombstones ~Hamilton, New York the lover she never saw again after her husband chased him down the street Sean Wills with a shotgun in his hands the River Liffey is slow today it ends workmen trudging home about a quarter mile in the city cut in two a rough-hewn wall glass and old brick trapped in the forest glade with the day's last rays ~River Liffey, Dublin, Ireland the wind thick English coins scatters dandelion seed a bookshelf in disarray far and wide dusty and old the tinkling bells scattered volumes of the shepherd's flock read and unread

~Ashbourne, Ireland the noise of the school bus louder at the turnaround piano music a whitewashed cross playing festooned with beer cans in a red room the laughter of bar patrons ignores the music sitting atop ~Dublin, Ireland

Atlas Poetica • Issue 3 • Page 55 Marje A. Dyck Brian Zimmer toward evening forest exudes the scent of pine— the habit two tiny sandpipers of his madness share my stretch of sand boys follow their raving father to the harbour’s edge fat fox sparrows on the beach ~Hamilton Harbour, Lake Ontario, Canada brisk air tells me (The poem is based on a scene that visibly upset they will soon leave witnesses who appeared fearful for the young boys trying to be invisible and keep close to their disturbed father. The shared look on their faces suggested this was not a one-off experience.) against a tree I shelter from the wind May sunshine trickles into my bones your favourite season the earth still damp gilds the distant hills impossible to stanch the reddening escarpment in the blue distance impossible your passing through binoculars Mallard and his mate ~Niagara Escarpment above Hamilton, draw a silent path Ontario, Canada. over still waters (In memory of my mother born September 1936, died April 2008.) luna your pale green wings into the flame the moon sinks slowly pine needles on the horizon gentle the forest floor another boy in a place we could country road trust to be safe clover and fleabane nod in the wind— ~Southwestern Ohio woods, mid-1970s the everlasting things of childhood

~Canada

Atlas Poetica • Issue 3 • Page 56 M. Kei

“Library” there's a prison says the sign, in your heart and it keeps me but who stops captive, dangling to read the between your breasts Book of the World? on a silver chain the vines cover the sudden clatter the chainlink fence, of birds crashing against determined sky blue windows— that it too will return how many hearts have from whence it came made the same mistake?

I didn't like my job, once upon a time but I miss in America not having it— ! !I was a child these empty days ! !with a tabby cat of withered leaves ! !and faith in dreams the waitress and I long, long ago, compare broken fingers in a land called while she makes 'America' change for ! ! the days were made of gold my breakfast ! ! and every dream came true

~Chesapeake Bay, Maryland, USA a recruiter for the corrections department . . . petite, blonde, and ladylike, she assures us that the jail is clean and not too dark the only man in the Breast Health Center contemplates images of women growing gracefully older

Atlas Poetica • Issue 3 • Page 57 Peggy Heinrich Ella Wagemakers old bible we enter recording generations a Leidseplein coffee shop of births and deaths to look for weed mine was the first divorce you wonder whether to hold in our family . . . or not to hold my hand

~New York City, USA a lovely ride as I show you around Outside the glass door the grachten a giant spider web — on a bridge a barrel organ reluctant to tear it earns enough parking fees I choose another path. the day you left ~Bridgeport, Connecticut, USA I waded through a downpour in Breda walking in and out of shops This circus act without a backward glance — levitation — outside my window while the long needle of its beak at last straws nectar. this spot on the cliff a place ~Santa Cruz, California, USA to sit together and say nothing

road songs . . . I used to hitchhike to the city the old house nothing but a roof between rides

~Oudenbosch, The Netherlands

Atlas Poetica • Issue 3 • Page 58 Book Reviews

Atlas Poetica welcomes book reviews context from which the work is drawn. The and non-fiction articles relevant to poetry selections in Cicada Forest overcome this of place. We accept non-fiction submission by addressing topics and feelings that are year round. Please contact us with your universal to humanity but with a special idea to see if it is something that might affinity for women. Motherhood is a interest us. subject that translates well. Cicada Forest Reviewed by a memory now, my son's M. Kei soprano voice like the myth Cicada Forest : An Anthology of Tanka of the stars Mariko Kitakubo Amelia Fielden, trans. Many of the poems in Cicada Forest will Kadokawa Shoten be readily received due to their similarity Tokyo, Japan, 2008 to other works and treatments popular in 189 pp, perfect pound, color cover, 9" x 6" English-language tanka.

Cicada Forest is a personal anthology by even rainy days Japanese tanka poet Mariko Kitakubo. It at the beach presents Japanese and English translations aren't bad of excerpts from her previous Japanese I whisper into the ear books I Want to Tell You in the Words of of a jet-black labrador Waves, When the Music Stops, WILL (published in English as On This Same But some of her tanka are ambiguous in Star), new writing, a preface by Michael ways that will make North American McClintock, and a greeting from the poet. readers uncomfortable. The following As such it qualifies a sampler of work from verse appears in a sequence that contains one of Japan's major tanka poets, both maternal and erotic poems. Is 'my deliberately intended for an English- boy' a son or a lover? If the poems were all speaking audience, but including Japanese one sort or another we could make that in full page renditions so that the two decision with confidence, but even if we languages are presented as co-equals. decide that this is a poem about a mother's Fielden is a translator dedicated to love for her son we have had to stop and bringing the works of contemporary tanka think. poets to the anglophone audience, and we are in her debt for expanding our sunshine filtering knowledge of modern tanka poets. through the trees, pooled between Translation is never easy, and it is also my boy's slender collar bones never easy to introduce some one to an music from a water harp audience that has a limited grasp of the

Atlas Poetica • Issue 3 • Page 59 Many of the poems in the book address men's sizes too wide, her relationships with men—her ex- kid's size husband, lovers, men she encounters in not long enough, the travels—all appear with a great this is the time frequency, and sometimes with surprising of the voice-changing size intensity. The appreciation that Kitakubo has for men of all sorts, including those do you remember who are presumably much younger than yourself herself, is new territory for North American when you would smile readers. Male tanka poets have often as if your cradle praised younger women, but the older were a warm pool of sun? woman who is equally frank about younger men is still a relatively rare coaxed phenomenon. by my boy to keep my hair long, is he an evil spirit I began 1999 or a god, without cutting it that handsome Masai boy? his gleaming body his back has the gloss of silk in a navy-blue dufflecoat, is lost in the swirl Kitakubo can address the intangible as of the subway entrance . . . well as the physical. an eddy of chaos

when did I Kitakubo's work is powerful, full of start to drift away— memorable images and intensely felt once more it is feelings, all delivered with the confidence that season of a mature woman and artist. Cicada of the knife-sharp moon Forest is an excellent introduction to one of Japan's major poets. An important element of Kitakubo's work is how the tanka are arranged in M. Kei sequences. Here the master's hand is Perryville, MD clearly at work and shows the gap 22 December 2008 between the ancient Japanese and modern English tanka. Sequences in English tend to be organized in simple ways and often suffer from a lack of balance. In Kitakubo's work the sequences are brilliantly organized, each poem playing off of those next to it, differing in substantial ways, yet in harmony. The following tanka are an excerpt from 'like the myth of the stars.'

Atlas Poetica • Issue 3 • Page 60 ANNOUNCEMENTS Atlas Poetica will publish short breaths, and his heart beat on, slowing announcements in any language up to 300 down, for about ten minutes until he died words in length or on a space available basis. peacefully at 3:45 p.m. today. His Announcements may be edited for brevity, daughter Beth and I were holding his clarity, grammar, or any other reason. Send hands and singing Amazing Grace to him. announcements in the body of an email to: [email protected]—do not send He'd awakened early this morning saying attachments. Announcement may be in any language and do not need to be accompanied he was "composed" and ready to stop by English translation. fighting, then asked the nurses to call to tell Beth and me he wanted to speak to us. * * * We came in early and though his voice was sometimes labored, we had an Bill Higginson Passes Away animated conversation much of the morning. He made it clear he wanted a straight DNR after all (no intubation, etc.), The following account was posted to the and then we talked about how he wanted Blogging Along the Tobacco Road site to be remembered (memorial celebrations . spring), as well as personal things. And Penny Harter is Bill's wife. then I guess he was ready and just let go.

He knew we agreed with his decision, and Dear Curtis, though Beth and I cried, we affirmed that decision and said that though we'd miss Bill had been in the ICU since Monday him terribly, it was time. He'd been early morning, and he was weakening through enough. He will be cremated, and some each day. And sadly, just after we the only service anytime soon will be a were making plans today for Bill to go to family graveside ceremony in about two hospice care within the hospital (his weeks or so. I have Beth with me and decision), his heart went crazy, suddenly family coming tomorrow. I'll be going beating up in the high 190s / 200s, he down to my daughter Nancy's for about a glazed over, his rapid labored breathing week to recover a bit from the strain of slowed dramatically to the last few

Atlas Poetica • Issue 3 • Page 61 recent weeks, leaving on Tuesday or so. Marjorie Buettner announces Then I'll start dealing with things here. Seeing It Now, haiku & tanka

Bill and I both have been most grateful for Marjorie Buettner's new collection, Seeing all the cards and e-mails of support we've It Now: haiku & tanka, is available now received over the past weeks. Bless you from all! I won't be checking e-mail much while at my daughter's, but may do so once in a Red Dragonfly Press, 307 Oxford Street, while. I'm not ready for engaging in much Northfield, MN 55057 [tel.: personal correspondence yet. 507-664-3892]. The book lists for $15.00. ! Love, Penny * * * * * * Rusty Tea Kettle: A Tanka Journal - Tanka Central research desk Call for Submissions updates: M. Kei's Bibliography and Rusty Tea Kettle: A Tanka Journal TSA Tanka Venues list Rusty Tea Kettle is a quarterly online Two important updates have been made to journal that is seeking the absolute best in the Research Desk page of English tanka. Each issue will feature no www.tankacentral.com which is at more than ten poets. Each of these poets http://www.tankacentral.com/library/ will have no more than five of his or her research/ . poems showcased. The focus of Rusty Tea Kettle will be quality over quantity. Issues The Bibliography of English-Language will come out in January, April, July and Tanka, Version 2.7 compiled by M. Kei & October. Rusty Tea Kettle cannot pay its updated on 6 November 2008 has been contributors. Rusty Tea Kettle and its posted.! This has become the standard editors hope to publish an anthology of its bibliography for tanka in English. finest poems in 2010.

The document Tanka Venues is a listing of Rusty Tea Kettle, a brand new online tanka tanka publications with citation journal, is now accepting submissions for abbreviations as approved by the Tanka its first issue, which will be released in Society of America. The updated second January. Please send no more than ten of edition (April 2008) has been posted. y o u r b e s t p o e m s t o [email protected]. Rusty Tea Kettle does not accept postal submissions, * * * nor is it able to pay its contributors.

Note: Rusty Tea Kettle places most of its emphasis on subject matter, so form will not be held to any strict historical or

Atlas Poetica • Issue 3 • Page 62 contemporary guidelines. However, Rusty liberated heart, innocent and playful Tea Kettle's standards are extremely high, against the tapestry of the universe— so please don't become discouraged. Just keep in mind that, in this day and age, tonight boarded-up windows are perhaps a more I’m going out to count relevant topic than cherry blossoms. Of the stars— course, the best poems are those that if you wait up for me manage both. I might bring back a few http://rustyteakettle.blogspot.com/! It has been worth the wait." —William J. Higginson, author, The Haiku * * * Handbook, etc.

Meals at Midnight, Poems by "Michael McClintock has given us an Michael McClintock, published by exquisite collection where every poem, in its tight and masterfully-crafted lines, is MET Press rich with unexpected imagery and layers of narrative. Every poem vibrates with the Meals at Midnight, Poems by Michael eternal resonance of myth and seasons McClintock, his long-awaited new within its immediate story; every one gives collection, is here at last and it does not us something far beyond the moment. disappoint our expectations. Here is a With McClintock as our guide, we are heady banquet of the finest of modern with these poems ‘in that lucid hour/when tanka poetry in English—a feast for heart the sun’s a chariot/wheeling through the and soul. cedars.’" —Laura Maffei, Editor and Founder, Baltimore, Maryland – December 6, 2008 American Tanka – Meals at Midnight, the newest collection of poems by renowned poet Michael "Michael McClintock’s tanka bear the McClintock, has been published in both stamp of authenticity. Shot through with a hard cover and trade paperback by wry sense of humor, they contain the Modern English Tanka Press. Anyone who flavor of a man who has lived broadly yet loves tanka and haiku will be thrilled by deeply, who’s taken his share of knocks, this outstanding collection, already widely and who has no time for insignificant frills praised by poets and critics alike: or the lies so many people tell themselves. Beyond their rich craft and formal design, "Those who knew Michael McClintock as the poems of Meals at Midnight rest upon the foremost poet of ‘liberated haiku’ insight, character, and a gusto for life. decades ago will discover here a more Another of his outstanding achievements." deeply liberated tanka poet. In Meals at —Dave Bacharach, Editor of Ribbons: Midnight we find the utter simplicity of a Tanka Society of America Journal man who has found the world new, through love, and with that, a language "All these years I have thought of Michael free of artifice or struggles for effect. These McClintock as a tough old bird. How are deeply, purely, the poems of a

Atlas Poetica • Issue 3 • Page 63 delightful then to read this collection of viewing the world. However, it’s very gentle poems. The word ‘gentle’ may be difficult to use effectively. McClintock’s misleading, for the poet in his lonely animist tanka are very natural and vivid— moments responds with strength and one at a time acceptance to what such a moment brings. I step on stones The title itself resonates for me, for even and cross the stream— though only one poem is about a midnight when I’m across, the stones meal, I am reminded of Takuboku’s essay go back to what they were doing" ‘Poems to Eat.’ These are poems in that vein. That is to say, a tanka poem is the —Kozue Uzawa, translator of Ferris Wheel, very life blood of being, as important as winner of the 2007 Donald Keene food is. I feel in these poems the Translation Award for Japanese Literature, importance of nature, but it is not the and editor of Gusts nature so often seen in haiku and tanka, a nature used to conveniently fit a human "A fine meal indeed! It has been a great condition. No, these poems are the poet pleasure to immerse myself in this living in nature, concerned with nature, collection of finely crafted tanka. appreciative of nature. And with this love McClintock skillfully blends together of nature is the poet’s love of a woman. To moods and keen insights to the human share these feelings with Michael offers psyche. Many of these poems seem to something positive in this modern world have been penned during periods of gone berserk. As Michael shaves the solitude, more often in the spirit of being shadows from his face, so do we—finding alone-together rather than of being lonely. in these quiet poems a good deal that is I found many of these tanka to be relevant amid the turbulence of our permeated with a dreamlike, almost world." surreal quality. Some marvelous humor —Sanford Goldstein, Atellib House, Japan here too, and this poet doesn’t miss an opportunity to snicker at himself. Arranged "These tanka—and some haiku—speak of seasonally, the poems move through a a world that is both intimate and domestic broad spectrum of emotions, from and yet vast and ineffable. It is poetry that wistfulness to laughter, from incredulity to for all of us is instrumental in ‘making a rapture. McClintock is a talented chef." home between them’ as Michael —Christopher Herold, Found and Editor, McClintock says. He remains one of the The Heron's Nest strongest and original voices in contemporary American tanka." —Miriam Sagan, author of Map of the Lost About Author: (University of New Mexico Press) and columnist, Writer’s Digest Michael McClintock holds degrees from Occidental College and the University of "I like Michael McClintock’s poems of Southern California in English and animism . . . they are very attractive. In American Literature, Asian Studies, and Japanese literature, particularly in tanka, Information Science. McClintock’s poetry animism is a very traditional way of has been widely published and translated

Atlas Poetica • Issue 3 • Page 64 internationally, including by Nobel Laureate, Czeslaw Milosz. He resides in Looking for a Prince: a collection of Los Angeles and Fresno, California, senryu and kyoka by Alexis Rotella, following a career as principal librarian, film and recordings curator, and Published by Modern English Tanka administrator for the County of Los Press Angeles Public Library System. Looking for a Prince: a collection of senryu For media inquiries or to arrange an and kyoka by Alexis Rotella has been interview with the author, contact Michael published by Modern English Tanka Press M c C l i n t o c k b y e - m a i l a t in a trade paperback second edition. In [email protected]. Publisher this classic collection, "With just a few i n f o r m a t i o n a t : words, Alexis Rotella catches life’s www.modernenglishtankapress.com. revealing moments with an insight and depth that the movies—if they were able— Hard cover with dust jacket—Price: would take millions of dollars and the $24.95 USD. ISBN 9 978-1-935398-01-1. talents of hundreds to capture. Some of her Trade paperback—Price: $11.95 USD. poems throw off stars like a wand in a ISBN 978-1-935398-00-4. 104 pages, Disney cartoon, drawing pictures of the 6.00" x 9.00", perfect binding, 60# cream Cinderellas of this world as they try to interior paper, black and white interior ink, balance their romantic dreams with reality. 100# exterior paper, full-color exterior ink. Others lay bare, as in a Capra comedy, the foibles of all kinds of people, .... She can * * * create darker moods, too, reaching out a hand to open the curtain on psychological Announcing Kindle of Green, tanka dramas of silence and repression like those by Cherie Hunter Day and David found in Bergman. Or she may direct a love scene with such a bittersweet mixture Rice of emotion and humor it rivals one of Chaplin’s. She opens our eyes to nature, Cherie Hunter Day and David Rice are too, with the kind of love of rain and pleased to announce the publication of sunlight that stains with beauty the films of K i n d l e o f G r e e n , a b o o k - l e n g t h a Kurosawa. You may even find a few collaborative tanka sequence. Letterpress Hitchcockian mysteries!" —Cor van den on emerald Stardream cover and hand- Heuvel sewn binding by Swamp Press. Illustrations by Cherie Hunter Day. Baltimore, Maryland – September 7, 2008 – Looking for a Prince: a collection of ISBN 978-0-934714-36-5. 48 pages; 5.5 x senryu and kyoka by Alexis Rotella, has 8 inches. $13 postpaid in USA and been published in a second, revised Canada; $15 US for international orders. edition in trade paperback by Modern Available from: Cherie Hunter Day, P.O. English Tanka Press. This classic collection Box 910562, San Diego, California 92191. had been too long out of print and Modern English Tanka Press is proud to be make it * * *

Atlas Poetica • Issue 3 • Page 65 available to Rotella fans and the whole and The Persimmon Tree. Her haiku, reading public once again. senryu and tanka have won many awards and recognition. Her work appears in "Alexis Rotella’s work reflects the wide numerous anthologies including Global spectrum of the Creation itself—glowing Haiku (Twenty-five Poets World-wide), with the special light of art. With just a few George Swede and Randy Brooks, Mosaic words, she catches life’s revealing Press; How to Haiku, Haiku Moment, both moments with an insight and depth that by Bruce Ross, Tuttle; Beneath a Single the movies—if they were able—would Moon (Buddhism in Contemporary take millions of dollars and the talents of American Poetry), Johnson and Paulenich, hundreds to capture. Some of her poems Shambhala; The Haiku Anthology 3rd ed., throw off stars like a wand in a Disney Cor van den Heuvel, Norton; Haiku I cartoon, drawing pictures of the (Poesies Anciennes et Modernes) Jackie Cinderellas of this world as they try to Hardy, Editions Vega; Haiku for Lovers, balance their romantic dreams with reality. Manu Bazzano (MQP); Czeslaw Milosz/ Others lay bare, as in a Capra comedy, the HAIKU (Krakow, Poland); Synesthesia in foibles of all kinds of people, from heart- Haiku and Other Essays, Toshimi Horiuchi surgeons to innkeepers, from upper-class (University of Philippines Press) and Haiku matrons to feminists. She can create darker in English, Hiroaki Sato (Simul Press, moods, too, reaching out a hand to open Japan). the curtain on psychological dramas of silence and repression like those found in Rotella’s longer work and Japanese related Bergman. Or she may direct a love scene poems have appeared in hundreds of with such a bittersweet mixture of emotion journals and magazines including The and humor it rivals one of Chaplin’s. She New York Times (Metropolitan Diary), opens our eyes to nature, too, with the Christian Science Monitor, Family Circle, kind of love of rain and sunlight that stains Glamour, New Letters, The Paterson with beauty the films of a Kurosawa. You Literary Review, Chiron Review, Blue Mesa may even find a few Hitchcockian Review, The Madison Review, Lynx, mysteries!" —Cor van den Heuvel, Editor, Frogpond, Modern Haiku, Simply Haiku, The Haiku Anthology (Simon and Schuster) Red Lights, and Bottle Rockets. Alexis is author of the poem Purple which appeared "Alexis Rotella uses a paintbrush most of in numerous publications including us think is a song and calls in the invisible Chicken Soup for the Soul and Love, Magic scents we're all trying to see instead of and Mudpies by Bernie Siegel, M.D. feel.’ — HAIKU (The Art of the Short (Rodale Press). Alexis was the 2007 grand Poem), Tazuo Yamaguchi, Brooks Books, prize winner of the Kusmakura Haiku Decatur, Illinois, 2008 Competition where she traveled to Kumamoto, Japan for the awards About Author: ceremony. Rosenberry Books recently published A SPRINKLE OF GLITTER (one Alexis Rotella served as President of the liners). They will republish Alexis' ASK!, Haiku Society of America (Japan House) in aphorisms and zen drawings, as well as an 1984 and edited Frogpond, Brussels Sprout illustrated volume of PURPLE (A Parable).

Atlas Poetica • Issue 3 • Page 66 Alexis Rotella maintains a personal blog at Modern English Tanka Press. The Tanka www.alexisrotella.com. She lives in Prose Anthology is vital evidence of the Arnold, Maryland where she is a first flowering in English of an ancient practitioner of Oriental Medicine. Japanese genre—tanka prose, the wedding of prose and tanka in one unified For media inquiries or to arrange an composition. The great diversity in subject interview with the author, contact Alexis and style of the individual writings in this Rotella by e-mail at [email protected]. volume testifies to the versatility of this Publisher information at: new medium in the hands of skilled www.modernenglishtankapress.com! practitioners. Whether the setting is urban or pastoral, an elegant interior or a rustic Price: $11.95 USD. ISBN retreat, whether the time is contemporary 978-0-9817691-5-8. Trade paperback. 124 and presently unfolding or archaic and pages, 6.00" x 9.00", perfect binding, 60# retrospective, the revival of the ancient cream interior paper, black and white medium of tanka prose has proven equal interior ink, 100# exterior paper, full-color to the immediate task. This first-of-its-kind exterior ink. collection draws upon the work of nineteen poets from eight different * * * countries. The introduction offers a detailed survey of the genre’s history and The Tanka Prose Anthology, edited of its evolving forms while an annotated by Jeffrey Woodward, Published by bibliography directs the reader to related literature. Why is tanka prose so novel? Modern English Tanka Press Because it is so old. The present anthology announces that it is here to stay. The Tanka Prose Anthology, edited with an superb Introduction by Jeffrey Woodward, About Editor: includes cutting-edge tanka prose by an international coterie of writers. Jeffrey Woodward resides in Detroit. His Represented in this ground-breaking poems and articles appear widely in anthology are: Hortensia Anderson, periodicals in North America, Europe and Marjorie Buettner, Sanford Goldstein, Larry Asia. He currently edits Haibun Today and Kimmel, Gary LeBel, Bob Lucky, Terra acts in the capacity of Associate Editor for Martin, Giselle Maya, Linda Papanicolaou, The Hypertexts. A collection of his Eastern Stanley Pelter, Patricia Prime, Jane and Western writings, In Passing: Selected Reichhold, Werner Reichhold, Miriam Poems, 1974–2007, was recently Sagan, Katherine Samuelowicz, Karma published. Tenzing Wangchuk, Linda Jeannette Ward, Michael Dylan Welch, and Jeffrey For media inquiries or to arrange an Woodward. interview with the editor, contact Jeffrey Woodward by e-mail at Baltimore, Maryland – September 5, 2008 [email protected]. Publisher – The Tanka Prose Anthology, edited with i n f o r m a t i o n a t : an Introduction by Jeffrey Woodward, has www.modernenglishtankapress.com! been published in trade paperback by

Atlas Poetica • Issue 3 • Page 67 string them together like beads in vivid Price: $12.95 USD. ISBN sequences. I particularly enjoyed the 978-0-9817691-3-4. Trade paperback. 176 kaleidoscope of voices that makes up the pages, 6.00" x 9.00", perfect binding, 60# central section, ‘Coney Catching’. Together cream interior paper, black and white they capture the jostling sensations of the interior ink, 100# exterior paper, full-color pleasure park, with its glimpses of flesh exterior ink. and exploitation, but every now and then a moment of personal grief or shame * * * intrudes to haunt the fun. The tension between the discipline of the form and the Greetings from Luna Park, Sedoka extravagant setting of Luna Park is at the by James Roderick Burns, Published heart of the collection as long-dead lives come briefly back into focus. The overall by Modern English Tanka Press effect is eerie and resonant like fairground music heard from a long-way off." —Esther Reviving the neglected sedoka form, James Morgan, author of The Silence Living in Roderick Burns’ second collection Houses explores the interplay of love and work in turn-of-the-century Coney Island: a "These postcards from a true Coney Island Scottish spirit merchant, marooned at the of the mind offer beautifully varied end of the season by an affair gone sour, privileged personal moments—narrative writes to his son in order to understand glances, quiet mood swings, implosive himself; the madam of a boardwalk epiphanies, sudden switchbacks in whorehouse sounds out seven of her perception. But what I admire most about customers; a carnival barker revolts against Greetings from Luna Park is the flat-out the crude methods he must use to pull in ambition of these poems as they gather, the crowds. Greetings from Luna Park, collectively, to illuminate a particular with its vision of duty and vanished historical moment and its implications. We pleasure, creates a place where for a all sense the failure of our franchised moment we find and lose everything. attempts to provide distraction from the quotidian, from the oppressions of work Baltimore, Maryland – September 5, 2008 and ‘duty.’ But I don’t know of another – Greetings from Luna Park, a collection of writer who has so persuasively argued not sedoka poetry by James Roderick Burns, for the nostalgic novelty of our sideshows has been published in trade paperback by and thrill rides but for their human Modern English Tanka Press. In this, his necessity. This is a startling, transforming second collection, Burns demonstrates the book. I love the risks this sequence takes ageless beauty of sedoka is not lost in as James Roderick Burns’ bright English. A marvelous collection, like a intelligence dances so gracefully with dream visit to Coney Island. imagination and memory in the ‘winter ballrooms’ of Luna Park. "I’m delighted Rod Burns’ collection has introduced me to the pleasures of the "Right now a sudden gust of wind is either surprisingly flexible sedoka form. These rustling the leaves outside or bringing rain. small poems distill intense moments then

Atlas Poetica • Issue 3 • Page 68 I’m not sure I would have heard that published by Modern English Tanka Press ambiguity before Greetings from Luna in 2007. He is also editor of the recent Park. It’s that kind of book." anthologies Miracle & Clockwork and Still —Ron Overton, author of Psychic Killed by Standen (Other Poetry Editions). He is Train currently completing the Creative Writing programme at Oxford University, and lives "The sedoka is a Japanese form seldom with his wife and daughter in Edinburgh, attempted by Western writers. It contains Scotland. two verses (katauta), each with a 5-7-7 syllable count. To have attempted the form For media inquiries or to arrange an is in itself an achievement, but James interview with the author, contact James Roderick Burns has succeeded brilliantly. Roderick Burns by e-mail at In his hands the two halves of each poem [email protected]. fit together like the necessarily dissimilar Complete publisher information is shells of an oyster. a v a i l a b l e a t : www.modernenglishtankapress.com. "Individually the poems convey a mood and illuminate a personality. Together they Price: $14.95 USD. ISBN tell three stories set against the background 978-0-9817691-1-0. Trade paperback. 108 of Coney Island. Each story has a different pages, 6.00" x 9.00", perfect binding, 60# narrator, distinguished clearly by cream interior paper, black and white vocabulary and voice: the merchant interior ink, 100# exterior paper, full-color missing his family; the shell-game exterior ink. specialist, himself trapped by Coney Island’s ladies of pleasure, and, perhaps most poignant of all, the intelligent and impoverished actor obliged to play the part of an uncivilised ‘savage’ in a sideshow. It’s a measure of Burns’ success that we can be caught up in the narrative without being conscious of the great skill he displays in sustaining the form in these extended sequences. "This is a brilliant work which fully realises the poetic and narrative potential of the form, and it reads wonderfully." —Colin Will, author of Sushi & Chips About Author:

James Roderick Burns was born in Stockton-on-Tees in 1972, and educated at Balliol College Oxford and the State University of New York. His tanka collection, The Salesman’s Shoes, was

Atlas Poetica • Issue 3 • Page 69 BIOGRAPHIES Dawn Bruce is an Australian poet, Vice- Amelia Fielden is an Australian who divides president of the Australian Haiku Society and a her time among the Pacific coast of Australia, member of Red Dragonflies haiku group. Her work Canberra, Seattle,and Tokyo. She is a professional appears in many journals, magazines, anthologies translator of Japanese and an enthusiastic poet. and newspapers in Australia and Overseas. She has Ferris Wheel : 101 Modern and Contemporary won poetry and short story prizes, leads creative Japanese Tanka (by Uzawa & Fielden, Boston: writing classes and has three free verse and haiku Cheng & Tsui,), was awarded the 2007! Donald collections, Stinging the Silence, Tangible Shadows Keene Prize for Translation of Japanese Literature, and Sketching Light (the latter containing tanka and NY. In 2008, In Two Minds, a book of responsive haibun too) published by Ginninderra Press. tanka written with fellow Australian, Kathy Kituai, was released by Modern English Tanka Press. Owen Bullock writes haiku and longer poems, scripts and stories. He is co-editor of Kokako and Trish Fong is 36 years old and has a working Associate Editor of Poetry NZ. His thesis on New background in tax, real estate and futures Zealand Poetry Anthologies is shortly to be trading.!She lives in Gisborne, a small seaside town published by VDM Verlag of Germany. on the east coast of New Zealand’s north island.! Her bloodline includes Maori, English, Scottish and Joe Christensen is a new writer living in Irish ancestry.! Creative writing is her passion with Altnata, Georgia and has had quite a few several works published in magazines, anthologies publications since he began writing in the Fall of and journals.! A matter of the heart juxtaposed with 2007, including short stories, free verse poetry and a striking moment in nature is the beauty of tanka. several Tanka. Sanford Goldstein has been publishing tanka Magdalena Dale lives in Bucharest, Romania. for more than forty years. He is co-translator of She is a member of the Romanian Society of Haiku several collections of Japanese tanka poets. and has published in Haiku, Albatros, Dor de Dor, Ribbons, Modern English Tanka and Fire Pearls : Michele L. Harvey is a professional landscape Short Masterpieces of the Human Heart. She wrote painter, living and working in New York since a bilingual tanka book Perle de roua/Dew pearls 1977. She divides her time between New York City and together with Vasile Modovan wrote!a bilingual and rural Central New York State, collecting renga book Mireasma de tei / Fragrance of lime. imagery and antique roses.! She is one of the winners of the Tanka Splendor Contest 2007. Peggy Heinrich’s poems have appeared in American Tanka, red lights, Ribbons, Moonset and Marje A. Dyck is a Canadian poet and artist.! many other publications and anthologies Her poetry and art work has appeared in various worldwide. She is a founding member of the Tanka journals and anthologies such as Frogpond, Simply Society of America and the Grand Central Tanka Haiku, The Heron's Nest, moonset, and Modern Café, a workshop of tanka poets. A native New English Tanka.! Her books include rectangle of light, Yorker, she recently resettled in Santa Cruz, proof press, l996; and A Piece of the Moon, Calisto California after many cold winters in Connecticut. Press, 2005. Rose Hunter is from Australia originally and Margarita Engle is the Cuban-American author lived in! Toronto for ten years, and has been of books about the island, most recently The teaching!in Mexico recently. She has had poems in Surrender Tree from Henry Holt & Co. in April, various journals, and her haiku and tanka! have 2008. The Poet Slave of Cuba (Henry Holt & Co., appeared in Roadrunner Haiku, Shamrock 2006) received many honors, including the Haiku,!Ribbons, and the 3Lights Gallery. Americas Award, presented at the Library of Congress.! Margarita lives with her family in Clovis, Kirsty Karkow lives on and!enjoys the coast of California. Maine even through the winter when her watery

Atlas Poetica • Issue 3 • Page 70 environment turns to ice. This reflects in much of Bobbette A. Mason grew up along the shores her prize-winning poetry and in the two books that of the Great South Bay. For twenty-seven years she are in print. These are! water poems: haiku, tanka set children free to make quality observations and and sijo and shorelines: haiku, haibun and tanka, take fanciful adventures, which they recorded with both published by Black Cat Press. She has been pencil drawings, substantive data and creative vice-president of the Tanka Society of America and writing. She received an EPA Award "for a is currently the tanka editor of Simply Haiku. poetically written environmental program viewed through the eyes of a Native American".!Retirement M. Kei lives on the Eastern Shore of the has brought opportunities to! explore the world of Chesapeake Bay, USA. He crews aboard a skipjack, ideas, especially poetry at the Academy of Lifelong a traditional wooden sailboat used to fish for Learning.!! oysters. He is the editor of Atlas Poetica as well as the author of Slow Motion : Log of a Chesapeake Jo McInerney is an Australian writer who has Bay Skipjack, and the editor of Fire Pearls : Short had tanka published in Stylus, Eucalypt, paper Masterpieces of the Human Heart, and editor-in- wasp, American Tanka, Modern English Tanka, Atlas chief of Take Five : Best Contemporary Tanka of Poetica and Ash Moon. She has had haiku 2008. Over 1000 of his tanka have been published published in Kokako, Shamrock, Stylus, paper in ten countries and five languages. wasp, Famous Reporter, FreExpreSsion, Frogpond, bottle rockets, White Lotus, Wisteria and The Deborah P. Kolodji is a native Southern Heron’s Nest. Californian who lives in Temple City. She is the president of the Science Fiction Poetry Association, Paul Mercken is a 73-year-old retired professor a member of the Haiku Society of America and the of philosophy, living near Utrecht, and secretary of Tanka Society of America.! Her work has appeared the Nederlandse Haiku Kring (the Dutch Haiku in Modern Haiku, Eucalypt, Modern English Tanka, Society). His nationality is Belgian. After his PhD in Strange Horizons, and other places. Two of her Leuven (Belgium) he did post-doctoral work in short stories were published last summer, in Thema, England and Italy and taught in the U.S.A and in and in the Futuristic Motherhood Anthology by the Netherlands. He has two daughters in their MSP Media. thirties. He regards poetry and the art of translating as a powerful means to build! bridges between Bob Lucky lives in Hangzhou, China, where he people. teaches history. His work has appeared in various journals. Vasile Moldovan is a Romanian poet. He write both haiku and tanka. Here is his haiku books: Via Mary Mageau discovered the refined beauty of dolorosa (1998), The moon's unseen face (2001), Japanese culture when she studied the floral art Noah's Ark (2003) and Ikebana. Also,he translated form of Ikebana. Digital photography also remains the haiku book The Embrace of Planets (2006) and a favourite pastime as she captures Australia’s published together with Magdalena Dale a renku brilliant array of trees, flowers and foliage for her book, Fragrance of lime (2008).!He lives and works exploration of haiga. Mary’s writings in the verse as a journalist, in Bucharest, Romania. forms of haiku, senryu, tanka and haibun are regularly published on web sites and in literary Stanley Pelter was born a long time ago, magazines. She lives with her husband in rural surviving bombs and education (which, in truth, south east Queensland. opened many doors). Studied at the post-graduate Royal College of Art. Now retired, he has been the Terra Martin, a practicing therapist in Toronto, Principal of several Colleges. Married for 40 years, has poetry in American Tanka, Asahi Shimbun he has four children, umpteen grandchildren and 3 (Japan), bottle rockets, Eucalypt (Australia), Lynx, more that drift into the generation after that. A Modern English Tanka, moonset, Ribbons, Simply member of the British Haiku Society for 14 years, Haiku, 3 Lights Gallery (England), tinywords and he has held several of its Officer positions. He has many other journals. Her tanka may be read in the written several books of haiku, one on haiku Landfall and Ash Moon!anthologies. 'theory' and 4 collections of illustrated haibun.

Atlas Poetica • Issue 3 • Page 71 Patricia Prime is coeditor of the New Zealand publishing haiku and tanka for over forty years, and haiku magazine Kokako and reviews editor of his credits include! H a i k u , M o d e r n Stylus. Patricia has published several booklets of Haiku,! frogpond,! American Tanka, The Tanka poetry in collaboration with fellow NZ poet, Journal,!and Modern English Tanka.!Modern English Catherine Mair. Patricia recently judged the Junior Tanka Press published!his most recent collection of Section of the NZPS International Haiku haiku,! Proposing to the Woman in the Rear View Competition. Ongoing work includes the preface Mirror (October 2008) and they will soon publish a for Sanford Goldstein's latest collection, an essay collection of tanka,!All the Horses of Heaven. on African poetry and an essay on haiku by Indian poets. Alexej von Glasenapp was born in Oslo, Norway. Her mother is Norwegian and her father of Alexis Rotella has been writing haiku, senryu German-Brazilian descent. Prior to the age of six, and tanka for 30 years. ! Her work has appeared she had lived in 4 countries and spoke 3 languages. internationally in hundreds of publications. Her The family settled in Sweden. After receiving a latest books include Lip Prints (a collection of tanka Master’s degree in Business Administration at 1979-2007), Ouch ( a collection of senryu Gothenburg University she worked in France, the 1979-2007) and Eavesdropping (a haiku collection, United States, and later in Germany, where she has Modern English Tanka Press, 2007). Alexis practices remained ever since. She began writing poems in a acupuncture in Arnold, Maryland, USA. period of spiritual search and inner transformation.

Guy Simser, called an “imagist and Ella Wagemakers was born!in September 1961 “humourist” by lyric poet Marianne Bluger, Guy in The Philippines and emigrated to The has written in English and Japanese poetry forms Netherlands in December 1988 and became a since 1980, including five years service in Japan. Dutch citizen in 1993.! Her essay 'A Dutch His poems have appeared in over 50 anthologies/ Journey' was published in the anthology Not journals in Japan, USA, Canada, England and Home, But Here, edited by Luisa Igloria.! Her first Australia. Awards include the Diane Brebner Poetry poetry collection Sorrows of the Chameleon was Prize (Canada); Tanka Splendor Prize (USA); the published in February 2007 by XLibris.com Special Prize, Hekinan International Haiku (Japan). . She teaches English!at He currently serves as co-chair of the August 2009 the Dutch Police Academy, and lives in HNA Crosscurrents Conference in Ottawa, Canada. Oudenbosch, West Brabant! with her! husband, Adrian. André Surridge was born in Hull, England, and now lives in the heart of the Waikato in the city of Sean Wills is an Irish student who enjoys books Hamilton, New Zealand. He is the winner of of all kinds, travel, and writing fiction and, more several writing awards including Katikati Haiku recently, tanka. He studies English and Philosophy Contest, NZ, 2004; 8th Paper Wasp Jack Stamm at undergraduate level and hopes to eventually Haiku Award, Australia 2006; Elizabeth Searle enter academia. Lamb Award for Haiku, USA 2007; Kaji Aso Tanka Award, USA 2007 and the Kyoto Museum for Jeffrey Woodward, editor of Modern Haibun & World Peace Award, 2007. Tanka Prose, resides in Detroit. His poems and articles are published frequently in periodicals in George Swede has published 32 collections of North America, Europe and Asia. He recently poetry and edited six anthologies. His latest edited The Tanka Prose Anthology. He also collection is First Light, First Shadows which won currently edits Haibun Today. the Snapshot Press Tanka Collection Competition 2005. He is the editor of Frogpond: The Journal of Brian Zimmer is an ex-pat American poet now the Haiku Society of America. now lives on the Niagara Escarpment in Ontario, Canada. His poems have appeared in Gusts, James Tipton lives in the tropical mountains of Modern English Tanka, Ribbons, Contemporary southern Mexico where he writes poetry, short Haibun, Simply Haiku, Lynx, Frogpond and other stories, articles, and reviews. He has been publications.

Atlas Poetica • Issue 3 • Page 72 INDEX

Martha Alcántar, 39 Mary Mageau, 9 Dawn Bruce, 37, 54 Terra Martin, 21, 27 Owen Bullock, 11, 23, 32 Bobbette A. Mason, 51 Joe Christiansen, 36 Jo McInerney, 24 Magdalena Dale, 25 Paul Mercken, 14, 19, 26 John Daleiden, 8 Vasile Moldovan, 12 Marje A. Dyck, 9, 32, 56 Gabriela Ocampo Ocampo, 39 Margarita Engle,32, 36, 38, 50 stanley pelter, 13, 30, 31, 38 Amelia Fielden, 38, 48 Patricia Prime, 11, 33, 37, 38, 53 Trish Fong, 49 Alexis Rotella, 32, 34, 36, 43 Sanford Goldstein, 16 Guy Simser, 28, 33, 48 Michele L. Harvey, 14, 34, 54 André Surridge, 32, 33, 34, 36, 38, 41 Peggy Heinrich, 37, 38, 58 George Swede, 32, 33, 34, 35, 37, 45 Rose Hunter, 37, 39 James Tipton, 34, 39 Wilt Idema, 26 Alexej von Glasenapp, 19 Kirsty Karkow, 10, 32, 36 Ella Wagewakers, 29, 37, 58 M. Kei, 7, 24, 33, 34, 36, 38, 57 Sean Wills, 55 Deborah P Kolodji, 34, 52 Jeffrey Woodward, 15, 22 Angela Leuck, 20 Brian Zimmer, 56 Bob Lucky, 18, 23, 37, 38, 52

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.

Atlas Poetica • Issue 3 • Page 73

EDUCATIONAL USE NOTICE

MODERN ENGLISH TANKA PRESS, Baltimore, Maryland, USA, publisher of the biannual journal, Atlas Poetica, 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 Modern English Tanka Press publications, 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.

www.atlaspoetica.com www.modernenglishtankapress.com Also from MODERN ENGLISH TANKA PRESS

Jack Fruit Moon ! Robert D. Wilson Meals at Midnight ! Poems by Michael McClintock Lilacs After Winter ! Francis Masat Proposing to the Woman in the Rear View Mirror ! Haiku & Senryu by James Tipton. Abacus: Prose poems, haibun & short poems ! Gary LeBel Looking for a Prince: a collection of senryu and kyoka ! Alexis Rotella The Tanka Prose Anthology ! Jeffrey Woodward, Ed. Greetings from Luna Park ! Sedoka, James Roderick Burns In Two Minds ! Tanka by Amelia Fielden and Kathy Kituai An Unknown Road ! Haiku by Adelaide B. Shaw Slow Motion: The Log of a Chesapeake Skipjack ! M. Kei Ash Moon Anthology: Poems on Aging in Modern English Tanka ! Alexis Rotella & Denis M. Garrison, Eds. Fire Blossoms: The Birth of Haiku Noir ! Denis M. Garrison Cigarette Butts and Lilacs ! Tanka by Andrew Riutta Sailor in the Rain and Other Poems ! Denis M. Garrison Four Decades on My Tanka Road : Tanka Collections of Sanford Goldstein ! Sanford Goldstein. Fran Witham, Ed. this hunger, tissue-thin : new & selected tanka 1995–2005 ! Larry Kimmel Jun Fujita, Tanka Pioneer ! Denis M. Garrison, Ed. Landfall : Poetry of Place in Modern English Tanka ! Denis M. Garrison and Michael McClintock, Eds. Lip Prints : Tanka and Other Short Poems 1979-2007 ! Alexis Rotella Ouch : Senryu That Bite ! Alexis Rotella Eavesdropping : Seasonal Haiku ! Alexis Rotella Tanka Teachers Guide ! Denis M. Garrison, Ed. Five Lines Down : A Landmark in English Tanka ! Denis M. Garrison, Ed. Sixty Sunflowers: TSA Members’ Anthology 2006-2007 ! Sanford Goldstein, Ed. The Dreaming Room : Modern English Tanka in Collage and Montage Sets ! Michael McClintock and Denis M. Garrison, Eds. Haiku Harvest 2000-2006 ! Denis M. Garrison, Ed. The Salesman’s Shoes ! Tanka by James Roderick Burns Hidden River ! Haiku by Denis M. Garrison The Five-Hole Flute : Modern English Tanka in Sequences and Sets ! Denis M. Garrison and Michael McClintock, Eds.

Periodicals ! Modern English Tanka ! Atlas Poetica ! Modern Haiga ! Ambrosia ! ! Prune Juice ! Modern Haibun & Tanka Prose !

www.modernenglishtankapress.com www.themetpress.com Modern English Tanka

Print Edition: ISSN 1932-9083 Digital Edition: ISSN 1930-8132

Modern English Tanka Press, P.O. Box 43717 Baltimore, Maryland, 21236 USA publishes the quarterly journal of western tanka, Modern English Tanka, as a book-length print journal, an ebook, and an online digital edition. The best tanka poets in English are to be found in the pages of MET. Visit the MET website at www.modernenglishtanka.com. The Tanka Society of America, formed in Decatur, Illinois, in April of 2000, 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 the following:

~ Publication of the quarterly journal, Ribbons: Tanka Society of America Journal, featuring over two hundred original tanka in each issue, articles, essays, translations, book reviews, and contest results.

~ Publication of a quarterly newsletter containing news and announcements pertaining to Tanka Society of America business, its members, and events in the tanka community in general.

~ Sponsorship of the annual Tanka Society of America International Tanka Contest every April, judged anonymously by respected tanka poets. Results appear in Ribbons.

~ Publication of an annual anthology of tanka by members (copies are available for a nominal fee in addition to membership dues). For more information on this and other activities, please see the newsletter or contact an officer.

Tanka Society of America website: www.tankasocietyofamerica.com Call for Submissions Modern Haibun & Tanka Prose

Issue 1. Summer 2009

You are invited to submit haibun and tanka prose for the Summer 2009 premiere issue of Modern Haibun & Tanka Prose. The submission deadline is March 31, 2009. Submissions will NOT close earlier than the deadline.

Modern Haibun & Tanka Prose is a biannual journal—a print literary journal, a PDF ebook, and a digital online magazine—dedicated to the publication and promotion of fine English haibun and tanka prose. We seek traditional and innovative haibun and tanka prose of high quality and desire to assimilate the best of these Japanese genres into a continuously evolving English tradition. In addition to haibun and tanka prose, we publish articles, essays, book reviews and interviews pertinent to these same genres.

Modern Haibun & Tanka Prose specializes in fine haibun and tanka prose. All selection decisions will be made at the sole discretion of the editor.

Previously unpublished work, not on offer elsewhere, is solicited.

Modern Haibun & Tanka Prose, Baltimore, Maryland USA. Website: http://www.modern haibunandtankaprose.com/ Editor: Jeffrey Woodward. Email up to five haibun, five tanka prose, and five short works to the Editor at MHTP(dot)EDITOR(at)GMAIL(dot)COM . Before submitting, please read the detailed submission guidelines and haibun and tanka prose selection criteria on the website at www.modernhaibunandtankaprose.com/submit.html. Modern Haibun & Tanka Prose looks for top quality haibun and tanka prose in natural, modern English idiom. No payment for publication. No contributor copies. Publishes a print edition (6" x 9" trade paperback), a PDF ebook, and an online digital edition.

Thank you for sharing this call widely.

Sincerely, Jeffrey Woodward, Editor, Modern Haibun & Tanka Prose http://www.modernhaibunandtankaprose.com/