Frogpond44 1

frogpond
vol. 44.1 winter 2021

frogpond
volume 44:1
winter
2021
HSA Patrons for 01/01–31/12, 2020
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Memorial
Merill Gonzales—In memory of Vincent Tripi
Howard Lee Kilby—In memory of Kristen Deming
Francine Banwarth—In memory of Kristen Deming
Francine Banwarth—In Memory of Gretchen Graft Batz
2 frogpond. volume 44:1

Contents
Note from the Editor page 7
Haiku and Senryu page 9

Sequences and Linked Verse page 71

Haibun page 87

Essays and Articles page 99
Ekphrastic Haiku
Bashō on War: Glory or Emptiness?
Welcoming The Reader

Book Reviews page 149
Corrections page 179

Index of Names page 182

Frogs:
Priya Hema, p. 70; Seren Fargo, p. 100; Kate MacQueen, p. 148
frogpond. volume 44:1 3

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frogpond Submissions
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issue, July for the autumn issue, November for the winter issue. Send
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Copyrights, Views
All prior copyrights are retained by contributors. Full rights revert to
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publish the work on HSA social media, with proper citation. The Haiku
Society of America, its officers, and the frogpond editors assume no
responsibility for the views of any contributors whose work appears in the
journal, nor for research errors, infringement of copyright, nor failure to
make proper acknowledgment of previously published material.
ISSN 8755-156X
Listed in the MLA International Bibliography, Humanities International

Complete, and Poets & Writers. © 2020 by the Haiku Society of America,
Inc.
Michael Ketchek, Editor

Tom Clausen, Associate Editor
Cover art: Donald Ketchek
Back cover: Julie Warther
Back cover tan renga: Bill Pauly & Julie Warther
Layout: Ignatius Fay
HSA Officers
President, Jay Friedenberg: jay.friedenberg@gmail.com
1st Vice President, Gary Hotham: hsavicepres@aol.com
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Frogpond Editor, Tom Sacramona: 51 Green Street, Watertown,
MA 02472, frogpondsubmissions@gmail.com
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600 William Avenue, Unit 33, Sudbury ON P3A 5M9
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Mountains, no coordinator at present
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1079 Winterhawk Drive, Saint Augustine FL 32086

Museum of
Haiku Literature Award
$100 for the best previously unpublished work appearing
in issue 43:3 of Frogpond as selected by vote of the
HSA Executive Committee.
waiting for the butter

to soften
summer rain
Francine Banwarth

Note From the Editor
This will be my last issue as the editor of Frogpond. I have
enjoyed my time as editor, but it is time for someone else
to take the helm. That someone is Tom Sacramona, whom I
wholeheartedly welcome to the post.
I want to thank all the people who made my time as editor
pleasant and possible. First, let me thank Ignatius Fay, whose
layouts give Frogpond the beautiful look that it has. I also want
to thank the two people who served as associate editors, Jay
Friedenberg and Tom Clausen. Their fine sense of haiku
esthetics helped guide my choice of haiku. Of course, I want
to give a shout out to Randy Brooks for his excellent book
reviews that have graced the pages of this journal. Also, a big
Thank You to all the poets and readers of Frogpond for your
fine poetry and encouragement.
Lastly, just in case you were wondering, let me mention that,
of late, over 500 poets have been submitting to Frogpond a total
of almost 4,000 poems each issue. One time I counted, and
out of those thousands of haiku, 302 of them mentioned the
moon or moonlight. So now you know what is undoubtedly
the most popular topic. Again, thanks to everyone who made
my time as editor enjoyable and rewarding.
Michael Ketchek

&
Haiku Senryu
no sound—
another foggy night shrouds
my neighborhood
Lenard D. Moore

dog days
the grandiose emergence
of the late bus
J.B. Robertson

summer moon
a tenant’s belongings
on the curb
Dominic Dulin

empty fountain
coins and wishes
left behind
Roy Kindelberger

low rumble
a far away
freight train
Michel Montreuil
Juneteenth
on one side of town
fireworks
Mark Forrester

oh say
can you see
I can’t breathe
Gil Jackofsky

the sting
of bearing witness
pepper spray
Matthew Caretti

world in flames
all day I fiddle
with poems
Mark Dailey

another try
with the plunger
election week
Christopher Patchel
Election Day
all the leaves
aquiver
Deanna Tiefenthal

election day—
measuring the distance
between us
Sondra J. Byrnes

election day
sleeping in the sun
Schroedinger’s cat
Sarah Paris

untwisting vines
in the dead garden
Election Day
Kat Lehmann

awaiting
the election results—
deadheading mums
P M F Johnson
ancestral home
I see my roots
in the old Banyan tree
Manoj Sharma

small town—
mamma has a story
for each name
Ashish Narain

sunday dinner
lingering at the table
scent of basil
Carol Ann Palomba

a home-made birthday cake
on the verandah
under paper lanterns
Marshall Hryciuk

loneliness—
one cookie left
on the party platter
Joan C. Fingon

covid quarantine—
reacquainting myself
with myself
Frank K. Robinson

pandemic
no tan lines
where I wear my watch
Daniel Shank Cruz

self-isolation
folding memories back
into their box
Nika

pandemic winter
every invitation
a siren song
Sharon R. Wesoky

unmasked
disbelief fashioned from
whole cloth
Jackie Maugh Robinson
rat race
every face mask
better than mine
David Jacobs

covid pandemic
she wears lipstick
under the mask
Luminita Suse

travel photos
from another world
my unmasked smile
Ann K. Schwader

the mouth
behind the mask
asks for change
Judson Evans

drawing attention
in the bank lobby
the unmasked man
Theresa Mormino
plague season—
every little thing
a big thing
Ruth Holzer
every sniffle
is suspect
the deepening snowdrifts
Carrie Ann Thunell

daily gratitude practice getting old fast
Nathanael Tico

after a last drag
she secures the other side
of her virus mask
John Sullivan

yesterday’s news
real good
for starting fires
Frank Boehm
Sun Ra at sunrise at the coffee stand birds of paradise
Derek Sprecksel

trumpet jazz
street birds pull apart
a beignet
Bryan Rickert

scout troop
circled at the evening campfire
singing a round and around and around…
Jan Stewart

waxing moon
lighting the contrail—
Zepplin’s “Stairway”
George Skane

when
the music
ends
tinnitus
Sam Bateman
Okinawa—
grandpa’s stories
not one about the war
Linda Weir

stuttering home movies—
tree sparrow shadows
on a lime-washed wall
Ingrid Baluchi

coastal walk
cataracts slow his steps
milky sea glass
Lorraine Carey

neglected garden
my old neighbor
going to seed
Dan Curtis

Flowers withering
into grass still green—
this late life tranquility
Rebecca Lilly
full moon—
polishing an apple
before i bite it
Tony Williams

even the fallen contribute to the cider
Robert Beveridge

when did I miss
the last firefly’s light?
autumn deepens
Kelsey Shook

sharing our bounty—
leaving a few apples
on the trees
Anna Eklund-Cheong

grandma’s garden
a green bean left
to wither
Antoinette Cheung
scuffing
through fallen leaves
my autumn
Terri L. French

cognitive slippage
half the grand glacier
already in the bay
George Swede

power out
cracking walnuts
by firelight
Adelaide B. Shaw
bleak morning
the empty snail shell
full of dew
Mona Iordan

morning fog
a peddler cries
hot dumplings
David He
thick forest
lost in the depth of
an old book
Mallika chari

after a day’s reading
lying in bed
thinking others people’s thoughts
Max Gutmann

midwinter
alone with a pile
of half-read books
Debbi Antebi

handwriting
my mother’s voice
in the margins
Debbie Olson

Chaco Canyon
the still small voice of
petroglyphs
Michael Henry Lee
through a hole
in a metal sheet
the wind speaks
Mantas Stočkus

Gregorian chant
The generator drones
through the winter night
Allyson Whipple

music school—
a door creaks
in D minor
Rob Scott

earphones
my seatmate conducts
with one finger
Ferris Gilli

when the music stops
and you can’t find a chair
keep dancing
Charles Harmon
scorpion tail
raised up to threaten
the very stars
Michael Galko

spring wind
a bull’s big
balls
Rick Tarquinio

only goldfish
survivor
named Jaws
Michael Battisto

botanical garden
behind the latin label
a spider wraps a bee
Jim Laurila

dive bar buzz—
neon lights and
mosquitos
Rick Jackofsky
sparkling lights
along the embarcadero
her glass bracelet
Dianne Garcia

champagne bubbles
fleeting
moments of joy
Jerry Levy

chilly evening
grandpa’s nightcap
of schnapps
Dian Duchin Reed

fullness of summer
a fat man drinking beer
from a bulky mug
Ernest Wit

a man drinking wine
asks the sea
don’t drown the sun
Benno Schmidt
tide line…
every step taken
taken back
Michele Root-Bernstein

painted toenails
the sands of time
warm between my toes
Frances Greenhut

summer night air
drifts through the dog-eared pages
of my father’s Bashō
Rob Taylor

beneath porch fans
debating how hot it is
round and round
Noel Sloboda

not where
I left them
summer clouds
Tia Haynes
sultry night
a ripple in her nightie
from the dog’s breath
Lew Watts

cormorant
clothes drying
on the line
Arch Haslett

rest stop heat
one by one they visit
the pony in its trailer
Barbara Ungar

back from vacation
the camping permit
still taped to the windshield
Linda Ahrens

summer noon
the slow change
of a cloud shape
Nikolay Grankin
cloud viewing
my daughter catches a glimpse
of my childhood
m. shane pruett

paddle boat
round and round
with grandma
Mohammad Azim Khan

seesaw
father and son
exchanging height
John Hawkhead

the two-year-old
tells granddad all about
dinosaurs
Robert Witmer

joyride
in Dad’s old clunker
spring breeze
Marilyn Powell
birds take off
in the muezzin’s call
sunset time
Lakshmi Iyer

candlelight
whispers flicker
between the pews
Joanna Ashwell

late night
hallelujah chorus
coyotes
Jeff Hoagland

at the Wailing Wall
even the shadows
perform their prayers
K.D. Wirth

mountain summit
I let go
off all my grudges
Tomislav Sjekloća
his hand
releases her body
to memory
Margaret Anne Gratton

grain silo...
the silence in
a Hopper painting
Angela Terry

country cemetery
its oldest tombstone
for a child
John J. Dunphy

softness…
a cardinal alights
on a snowy pine tree
John J. Han

for vince tripi:
whistling along
with the hermit thrush
whistling with him
Brad Bennett
at the pond’s edge
a solitary frog
making no sound
Bonnie Stepenoff

old pond
the sound of water!
slowly, the moon reforms
Frank Dax
Sunday morning
watching the great blue heron
watch the water
Ryland Shengzhi Li

outdoor Friends Meeting
a thirty minute sermon
from the wood pigeon
Wyntirson

bookmarking
mother’s prayerbook
a four-leaf clover
Jocelyn Ajami
morning stillness
I tune out
my inner monologue
Bona M. Santo

dry leaves rustling monkey mind
Meg Arnot

to relax, first, you have to relax
Michael Fessler

Buddhist insight
nothing lasts …
but the Dude abides
Amy Losak

weary of fretting over
my life’s elusive purpose
hot fudge sundae
Fred Andrle

Day of the Dead—
turning children’s tongues red
the skull shaped lollipops
Frank Higgins

surviving the kindergarten party - one daisy
Bisshie

school project
construction paper people
all hold hands
Greg Schwartz

wet fingers
smoothing his cowlick
Mother’s Day
Genevieve Wynand

belly-flopping penguins
the inner child
I never knew
Sheila Sondik

newborn’s bedtime
we plug in
the stars
Lucy Whitehead

shared custody
a bedtime story read
past the need
Joe McKeon

leaving her
and her
balloon animals
paul m.

starry-eyed
the vast galaxy
of a child’s imagination
Mary Kendall

I wait
for my newborn to cry
quiet rain
Pragya Vishnoi
spring flurries…
a raven flaps by
with a stick
Lorin Ford
sunbeams
an unspoken promise
in the morning mist
Gary Hittmeyer

little green spots
in the brown field
an early rain
Anirudh Vyas

Easter brunch
even the teen
is risen
Annette Makino

spring cleaning
a shoe box full
of old poems
Edward J. Rielly
winter moon what will my last words be
Meik Blöttenberger

my grandpa said
no grave
redwood forest
Aidan Castle

milky way nearly there sequoia
Debbie Strang
e

glaciers melting so much faster than grief
Amy A. Whitcomb

winter grove
the deep dark silence
of an owl’s flight
Kristen Lindquist
evening sun
the dog chases pigeons
across the plaza
Tim Murphy

nighttime romp
a jasmine scent comes in
on my black lab
an’ya

senior cat
the ball of yarn now
just yarn
J Hahn Doleman

he gets things done
between
naps
Lori McDonald

half awake
my urge to step back
into the same dream
james won
frosty dawn
the brittle film
on sugared porridge
Robert Davey
mountain chocolate
with a pinch of sea salt
the sound of flute
Ken Sawitri

shelling peas telling her stories about shelling peas
Ben Oliver

old food magazines
all the recipes
I never cooked
Maya Daneva

saturday snowfall
in the warmth of the kitchen
yeasted doughnuts rise
Meredith Ackroyd

winter morning
snow blowing across snow
a swirl of cream in my coffee
Mariam Kirby
winter sky—
hundreds of crows push the clouds
above the forest
Réka Nyitrai

snow on birch trees
the evening landscape
dissolves into white
Jay Friedenberg

winter birch
just one small bird
fills it with song
Susan Constable

light from your window
warms the night
…angel-prints in snow
Ellen Compton
but when we untied the knots
they were dead
Christmas lights
Benedict Grant
Christmas
the children grown and away
I shake the snow globe
Caroline Wermuth

Christmas day
a seagull circles
the empty mall lot
Crystal Simone Smith

Christmas afternoon
a discarded sweet wrapper
unfurls
Steve Dolphy

a present
for the snowman
snowfall
Christine Eales
snow into rain
Santa takes the late bus
home
Roland Packer
heavy rain
a steady rhythm
of hazard lights
Kyle D. Craig

rain sleet mix
windshield wipers keeping time
singing to myself
Robert Erlandson

dodging
city traffic
city traffic
Jennifer Burd

Seeing the bridge
That took me home
Before we moved
Matthew Perry
at anchor…
northern lights above
and below
Gary Evans
a fisherman
speaks of his life
fog from the sea
Daniela Misso

hope...
a sailor’s dream
barren ocean
Oshadha Perera

in passing
another stone added
to the cairn
Mike Gallagher

evening star
the hills beyond
the hill
Bill Kenney
trouble sleeping
moonrise
over the mountain
Rob Simcox
late night alone—

a distant train whistle
deepens the silence
Mike Spikes

telling it
like it is
winter breeze
Stephen A. Peters

moonlit snow
white hare tracks
crisscross the meadow
Mary Stevens

white morning
on grandfather’s grave
fox footprints
Małgorzata Formanowska
Requiem Mass
dust floating
in a sunbeam
Jeff Kressmann
family that’s gone

under a tree not there
fading snapshot
Robert Moyer

still wet
the gravestones sparkle
grackles
Chuck Brickley

ghost town graveyard
only the wind
comes and goes
Sharon Rhutasel-Jones

top of the dune
tip of a steeple
the lost town
Jill Lange
hanging flower basket
unable to hide
decaying townhouse
Noel King
among oaks
an old apple tree
gone wild
Dan Spencer

abandoned house—
through the broken window
the mist
Oana Aurora Boazu

peeling paint
on the old picket fence
wild with white roses
Mimi Ahern

what we didn’t know
when we bought the house
peonies
Barrie Levine

fog rolling in
I set the fish soup
on simmer
Hannah Mahoney
tossing
a salad
I make peace
Dane Andersen

my needle
slipping in and out of cloth…
a shaft of sun
Jenny Ward Angyal

sitting on top of
whatever i’m looking for—
the orange cat
Stanford M. Forrester/ sekiro

somewhere
within walking distance
reading glasses
Alanna C. Burke

summer camp
my best friend’s name
I don’t remember
Frank Hooven
forget-me-nots
we let her talk to
the wrong gravestone
Mike White

old diary
so many memories
I don’t remember
Louise Hopewell

stiff breeze
she touches the sea
for old times’ sake
Glenn G. Coats

the immense weight
of Greenland’s glaciers
melting
Jon Hare
summer evening—
we walk through the shadow
of the Ferris wheel
James Knippen
wet sand…
remembering the kiss
that never happened
Chris Minton

wine from a box…
on the porch reading
the sky
Francine Banwarth

August evening
trains lie idle in the sidings—
dark moon
Maeve O’Sullivan

pier
over the quiet lake
solitary fish bubble
Darlene O’Dell

small talk
only our coffee steam
touches
Madelaine Caritas Longman
he can’t stop
thinking about her
pink toenails
Melissa J. Fowle

under stars our sleeping bags touching
Joseph P. Wechselberger

oolong
steeping
her longing
Sarah E. Metzler

the way a heart
leaps into the arrow—
it wants what it wants
Marilyn Fleming

young lover’s in the field—
a scarecrow’s eyes
wide open
Dan Salontai
bride’s bouquet
from an osprey’s eyrie
something borrowed
Jo Balistreri

new couple
their furniture
naked surface
Reshida Coba

sultry night
a strand of her blonde hair
between my teeth
Chen-ou Liu

mosquito…
so
there!
John S. O’Connor

spring training
Gil McDougald’s foul tip
rolls under a Ford
Bill Cooper
home run
the Barber shaves
the next batter
Frank Yanni

fixed grins
on a mute crowd
cardboard fans
Marietta McGregor

county fair
rows of teddy bears
staring me down
Martin Duguay

backyard birding
I learn to follow
the cat’s gaze
Beverly Acuff Momoi
dirty cluttered house
I will scold the maid when I
next look in the mirror
Babs
i practice
catch and release
if the spider’s small
Nancy Shires

kitchen policing
a worrisome ease
in killing ants
Aron Rothstein

jedi mind trick
tuning out the sound
of the dentist’s drill
Robert A. Oliveira

suppose after all
it’s just scatting
crickets
Stuart Bartow
morning haze
the indecipherable
meaning of a dream
Olivier Schopfer
November drizzle
instead of love
making nachos
Warren Decker

road trip
we drive each other
crazy
kjmunro

instead of
a goodbye note
persimmon
Fay Aoyagi

divorce—
the eagle’s cry left
in the canyon
Kemar Cummings

drifting around
the draining pool
a birthday balloon
Ted Sherma
after the hurricane…

the breezeless heat
of a lockdown prison cell
Jack Vian

cloud shadows
scale a wall….
an inmate dreams
Ronald K. Craig

when the wind blows my thoughts out of my mind
Michael Rehling

a lamplit bench—
in the park
soaked by rain
Tomislav Maretić
lighting the path
of a falling leaf—
autumn moon
Arvinder Kaur
cold snap
the fir tree collecting
maple leaves
Ben Gaa

forest walk…
song
we gather
without words
fallen berries
the moon
Kala Ramesh

yellow leaves the path to our imagination
Scott Mason

calm night air
inhaling
so many stars
Mark Powderhill
autumn morning
sunlight glistens
off a cow’s nose
Alan S. Bridges
turkey vultures
the skeleton
of a tree
Agnes Eva Savich

yellow leaves
fall gently
her wispy hair
Louise Dandeneau

wall of books
a cat
filling space
Jeffrey Ferrara

snowfall her footprints fade flake by flake
Paul Kulwatno

soft sudden rain
preparing my father
for burial
Othuke Umukoro
pallbearer
my first time shouldering
manhood
Keith Polette

his funeral
the weight of words
not said
Elizabeth Black

winter funeral
a warm hand
on the shoulder
Gary Hotham

this loss
the moon disappears
behind a cloud
Wanda Cook
poinsettia petals
on the floor
his empty bed
Jone Rush MacCulloch
notice of his death…

water cascades
over jagged rocks
Charlotte Digregorio

stone sober among grave stones
Tom Hahney

saying nothing
at the funeral
let them believe it’s grief
Joseph Robello

still filled with
self-importance
huge headstone
R. P. Carter
A single crane stands
in the muddy corn stubble
—it begins to snow
John Vukmirovich
movement in stillness
stillness in movement
green heron hunts
Bill Sette

Naked under midnight waves—
the moon wobbles
just out of reach
Andy Fogle

rain water
the early morning light
soaking in it
Michelle Schaefer

empty mailbox new moon
Natalia Rudychev


my neighbor’s extra long wave
autumn quiet
Anne Elise Burgevin

cancelled parade—
brittle leaves
shuffle down the street
Rob DePaolo

Thanksgiving…
a feeder filled
with feeding birds
Michele L. Harvey

virtual Thanksgiving
finally
at the grown-up table
Caroline Giles Banks

masked
squint lines flex
at my eye smile
Erin Castaldi
arrivals gate
my son’s embrace
is different
Paul Murray
a single candle…
for the ailing world
night before diwali
Milan Rajkumar

giving thanks
no family table
no arguments
Marsh Muirhead

bathing in moonlight—
for just tonight a reflection on hope
in these times
Risë E. Daniels

cloudless night
at the compost pile
deer tracks in the snow
Daniel Brown
wildflowers
each one a love
of hers
Jamie Wimberly
pocket watch
her words engraved
in my heart
William Scott Galasso

into the night
a couple crack and shell pecans
at the kitchen table
Johnnie Johnson Hafernik

sliced beet greens
amid lemon peel on the cutting board…
cool summer rain
Wally Swist

tulip magnolias
the first pale blossoms
of morning light
Renée Owen

evening walk
the touch
of his shadow
Jacquie Pearce
windstorm flickering lights we hold our breath

Bob Redmond

snowmelt…
all that remains
five black buttons
Kathryn J. Stevens

shadowbox
medals
he needs to forget
Jim Haynes

stroke of midnight
exhaling the old year
inhaling the new year
Anna E. Markus
snow gathers on snow—
all day
watching smoke
from a neighbor’s chimney
Phillip Nolley

my father’s shoes
waiting to be polished
deep winter
Barbara Moore

snowy night
the warmth
of dad’s pipe tobacco
Maxianne Berger

warmth
roasted chestnuts
in a paper bag
Marta Chocilowska

singing
silent night
until it is
Mike Nierste
twirling yellow leaf
how i wish
you were a butterfly
Marshall Hryciuk

beneath a smattering
of stars
tireless crickets
Michael Baeyens

autumn
the shadow of the mountain
covers the village
Slobodan Pupovac

a crescent moon
in the autumn sky
a playground see-saw
Anthony Franco

Labor Day
holding up my end
of the piano
J. Zimmerman
white cloud breaking up gondwanaland
Gregory Piko

weight of night
a burnt orange horizon
ribbon thin
Jann Wright

desert night
stars all the way down
to the ground
David Watts

second chances
the soft pink underbellies
of predawn clouds
Sandi Pray

coffee on the terrace
drinking
the gift of dawn
Luis Cabalquinto

golden
gray
gone
dandelion
Cyril Ioutsen

after all the promises
not to overdo the role
— walrus mustache
Aparna Pathak

the talk…
dad actually uses the word
gazongas
Aaron Barry

dear dad
see me
walking in your shoes
Julian Heylinck

just like home
socks
under her hospital bed
Mark Teaford
As the plane takes off,
I relax
amidst the clouds
Tanya Andrious

snowflakes fill
the air between
home and here
Catriona Shine

uncertainties...
a kitten
paws the mirror
C.D. Marcum

Monday morning coffee
adding cream and sugar
to my attitude
Jennifer Hambrick

visiting a blind friend—
I comb my hair
anyway
Mykel Board
anthropocene dreams
praying for something left
to pray for
David McKee

morning after the election results a fresh shave
Bruce H. Feingold

evening
comes

the
snow
falling
quietly

into
the
unfinished
house
John Barlow


&
Sequences Linked Verse

Where The Heart Is
closing day
one last goodbye
at the dog’s grave
a new name stenciled

on the mailbox
driving past
a baby swing
on the old oak
spring morning
my prize tulips bloom
in someone else’s yard
getting a fresh start

the old deadheads
settling in
the puppy’s pillow
next to mine
Bryan Rickert
Terri L. French

Midnight Sun
summer solstice
the uppermost blooms
of a foxglove
catching the last out

at the midnight sun game
blazing sky
all the way to the top
of the fire tower
on the horizon
only a hint
of dusk
a deep dive
into the blue hole
at depth
but still…
a lingering light
Julie Schwerin
Angela Terry

Illicit
autumn sunset
the taste of weed
in her kiss
lingering rain
I breathe him in
naked weekend
her moans
shift the incense smoke
scent of leather
the crackle of
his belt
the rise of her miniskirt hem

as she adjusts her high heel
first goodbye
I leave behind
my lipstick
Joshua Gage
Lori Minor

SUMMER WINDS
After a painting by Pham Hau, 1940

In the Fine Arts Museum, Ha Noi, Viet Nam
I am a red dragonfly
clinging to the swaying stem
of a blossoming lotus
I am a speckled frog
content beneath lotus leaves
bending and dripping with rain
I am a broad green leaf

bowing my wide lobes
to ripple and kiss the pond
One white petal is torn off by the wind

I am that petal
flying away
Edward Tick

Stars Through the Window
on the thatched roof

of an old cabin
a cloud of poppies
a simple meal
of jam and bread
reading her a chapter

of Little Women
just before bed
transported
back in time
stars through the window
those places I remember

from a different life
eating by candlelight
macaroni and cheese
on a milk crate table
Angela Terry
Julie Schwerin

without subtitles
long distance
bourbon
in his voice
rewatching the film

without subtitles
falling leaves
I tell myself
change is good
storm warning—
playing another
murder ballad
the hand I reach for

deep in his pocket
breakup—
deleting
his ringtone
Harriot West
Ce Rosenow

A Covid Evening
tonight
more dark windows
in the nursing home
burial at dusk
only fireflies
in potter’s field
her last words

looking up I see
a shooting star
between the sirens

of the ambulances
a faint church bell
William Cullen Jr.

For Henry
placing my own stone

onto the cabin-site’s cairn—
whippoorwill calling
now with his grandson

sauntering by Walden Pond…
the first leaves of fall
again the story

on our walk through Walden Woods
of that arrowhead
Michael Dylan Welch

Brine Rhyme
an ocean breeze
mingles with the jingle
of an ice-cream truck
day moon stumbling

over the sand dunes
all looks well

the hermit crab moves in
to its new shell
monarch butterfly
the dull orange
fire-season sky
the nonstop rock and rolling

of a buoy’s ceaseless tolling
coastal highway
the snaggle-toothed grins
in a row of pumpkins
John Thompson
J. Zimmerman

“#oregonisonfire”
wildfires—
in the falling ash
my neighbors’ homes
ash in the air…

the town of Blue River
is gone
another fire
0% controlled—
we pack our go bags
Facebook carries
a new hashtag:
#oregonisonfire
smoke-filled skies—
evacuation sites overwhelmed
by donations
another friend
loses everything
and asks for poems
Ce Rosenow

Back in Time
songs of the 40’s—

syncopated tap-tapping
on the Underwood
Mother’s recipes
typed on 5x7 cards
in the file box
onion skin papers

smudged from carbon duplicates—
our high school essays
Carol Judkins

After Midnight: a sudo-ku
sleep stages counting the leaps of one sheep
edges of the night hours— zombies grazing
each owl nocturne feeding on insomnia
monster somniloquies beneath our brains sometime
waking in dreams the Sea of Tranquility is enough
sudo-ku has a theme and can be read both horizontally and

vertically, like a sudoku puzzle
Kat Lehmann

Five unpublished haiku
by Sydell Rosenberg as chosen by
her daughter Amy Losak.
all of a sudden
a spray of white butterflies—
summer afternoon
in among pigeons
and forsythia in
out petals spring
rain
downhill
the little maple
now big
squirrel
finding a roller coaster
in the maple tree
handing out flyers

for a massage parlor—
summer student
Sydell Rosenberg

Haibun

March Madness
It shows up like an unwanted house guest. Wind and lashing

rain are its calling cards. Just when you think the cold grip
of February is loosened, March storms in and strips you of
all hope. March is a two-faced liar. It coaxes snowdrops and
crocus from the flowerbed, then buries them under a blanket
of ice and snow. What was only a day before a tribute to rebirth
presents itself shrouded in a glaze of white, the wind moaning
a funeral dirge. Alas, March exits like a shamed dog with its
tail between its legs, leaving behind a battered landscape; one
in need of healing. Patches of snow mold pockmark the yard;
downed branches and leaf litter strewn about. April shows up
with promise but can be equally duplicitous. I remember one
year it snowed 13 inches on my birthday. April fool!
restless sky
a tight formation
of snow geese
Tom Painting
ji
What I Found on My Search for a Cup of Coffee
a chimney poking out of the fog, a barking dog, a window

across the street, blinds raised, peering into the morning like
a Cyclops, the sibilant caress of waves brushing the shore, the
smell of wild fennel scenting the air, a crumpled five Euro
note in my jacket, what I meant to say last night
muted sunrise
the café crowd
glued to the tv
Bob Lucky
Pounding the Darkness
Month three of the pandemic, and I have become a manic

walker. After reading about another postponement of a
possible vaccine, I slip on sunglasses, a hat, snuggle a mask
deep inside my pocket just in case. Tread, tread, tread across
Meadowbrook, down Morningside, up Park Lane—the roads
of my neighborhood. What a rush of excitement when I notice,
a new plant flowering; doubly so if it is outrageously orange or
pink. Feel the same about teens with their freshly dyed purple
hair.
Sometimes, Mr. Darcy, our lab, and I climb into the old red
Honda and ride to the city reservoir, now a lake surrounded
by trails. There I watch spring unfold from winter dormancy
to full greenery. Wildflowers shoot up, and the dark green
mayflower bob their heads before gradually disappearing
behind more undergrowth. Phlox and columbine suddenly
appear, color-rioting next to the path.
Six miles, my daily goal. But as the weather warms and humidity
rises, I know this phase of my pandemic peregrinations is
changing. Less speed, more sweat, fewer miles, and once every
week or two, a mad race home beneath a dramatic lightshow
and slashing rain.
lifting
her solitude into sky
blue heron
Doris Lynch
ji
Throw’d Aways
On an autumn afternoon I am at the vet’s office chatting

with an old gent in Western North Carolina, not far from
the Appalachian Trail. His dog is curled up next to him, the
leash as weathered as the man’s hands. My pup is playing with
a chew stick. Two hikers join us with their Aussie shepherd.
After some tales from the Trail, they’re interested in how local
mountain folks pronounce “Appalachia”. Not being a native, I
leave it to the gent who helps them out with a tip: “I’ll throw
an apple at ‘cha”—which brings two big smiles.
The conversation turns to our dogs at home. We have three
other dogs, all rescues. Two lab mixes and a border collie with
one blue eye. The hikers describe the dogs they grew up with.
I ask the gent about his. “They’re throw’d aways”. I’m puzzled.
He goes on, “I live back up the mountain at the end of a long
road. Folks can fall on hard times or don’t pay no mind and
drive up and leave their dogs. They throw them away and I
give them a home. They’re better off.”
Soon we’re done. The gent heads back up the hollow and I offer
the hikers a ride back to the Trail. Our journeys continue.
dogs romping
cool wind in the chimes
made of rabies tags
Mary Teslow
ji
Talk Talk
I recently participated in a project to evaluate an AI’s ability

to carry on a human-like conversation. It involved a game in
which I had a direct conversation (via text) with an unseen
player in another room and tried to determine whether the
player was human or computer. Well, I must admit I was
completely fooled. My conversation with the AI was just
like the conversations I often have with people—after a few
exchanges, I come to the conclusion they have no idea what
they’re talking about.
used bookstore
beyond the genius
of the algorithm
Tim Cremin
January 1, 2020
narcissus
gathering up the dawn light
on New Year’s morning
The Christmas tree is still up, its tinsel dancing in the draft
from the heater. Opened presents cover one table, next to the
pile of the week’s unopened mail. A half-finished jigsaw puzzle
hunkers down on another table, determined to hold its spot
until someone pays enough attention to finish it. The fridge
holds enough leftovers to get us to the Rapture and beyond.
I’ve done my exercises today—some yoga asanas, a few weights.
Already the slip of paper with my new year’s resolutions has
vanished. I should have made more promises to myself, so
there would have been a bigger piece of paper.
new year’s vows

already glimpsing
their certain demise
Teri White Carns
ji
Nurture
Two heads peeped out of a nest twenty feet up—green herons!

Then a third and fourth hatchling appeared. After a couple of
weeks the four chicks became juveniles, and began to explore.
I would sit, with tea and book, noting the parents as they came
and went. As the children wandered, the parents landed in
trees farther away. It was a game for foraging and strength
building. Many hours could go by as the four young green
herons waited for their next meal, and then only the fastest
would be rewarded.
dusk dwindles
the fledgling pecks
at a pine cone
John S Green
Home Sweet Home
Wake up! I wanna sleep. Up! Get up! Hurry! Don’t bother me…
Leave me alone! We have to go! Where? Why? My eyes hurt! Where
are your slippers? I’ll get your walker! Are we going to breakfast?
No, you must come! Quick! Where are we going? I don’t wanna
go! I wanna stay home!
THE BUS IS HERE! Are we going to the beach? CLEAR THE
DOORWAY! WHEEL ‘EM TO THE BUS! I have to go to the
bathroom. CLEAR THE PATH! Don’t lose my walker! LOAD
‘EM ON! Help me! I’m frightened! Where are we going? MOVE IT!
mid-night bus ride

leaving wheelchairs and walkers
to the whim of the flames
Diane Wallihan
ji
Sudhir’s Gift to Tsung-gi at Darchen
lengthening day
I climb the Himalayas
into Tibet
The Chinese military are ejecting Sudhir when I cross the
frontier. I talk to him for his last three minutes, till he palms
me the photos of the Dalai Lama that he’d hoped to hand to
Tibetans himself.
lengthening day
the permit solidifies
with my guide’s bribe
Half a week later on Buddha’s birthday, I reach Darchen, the
staging outpost for pilgrims to walk the circuit around Mount
Kailas. A young Tibetan woman with waist-length, jet-black
hair peers into my tent. Her gaze is gentle and alert. I grab my
guidebook for a phrase to ask her name. “Tsung-gi,” she tells
me. Reaching for my book’s color photos, she touches a picture
of a monastery. “Gan-den,” she says. Two thousand monks
worked there for centuries till its destruction by the Chinese.
lengthening day
mud-bricks
almost dry
She points to other photos, naming the Potala Palace and many
more monasteries. With each Tibetan word, she seems to name
a person as much as a place, someone beloved, respected, and
missing. When she cries out at a small black and white photo
of the Dalai Lama, I hand her Sudhir’s first smuggled photo.
The Dalai Lama sits in sunglasses and a sunflower-yellow robe.
He leans toward her, listening. She holds the picture to her
forehead and prays.
lengthening day
steadily the prayer wheel spins
the earth
J. Zimmerman
ji
Climbing
The climb is easy but takes me a long while none-the-less. I’m

distracted by the scattered flowers and the vibrant green of
new growth in the recently burned area. The native lupines
blooming on the hillside are striking blue. Each palmate leaf
is covered in fine, hydrophobic hairs and hold at their center
a single morning jewel of dew. The densely covered hillside is
proof that careful management is working to restore native
diversity.
precipice
a butterfly flutters back
from the edge
A riot of flowers covers the high meadow. Pink gentian,

yellow paintbrush, and deep purple larkspur dot the carpet
of mariposa lilies. Just over the ridge on the western slope is a
great, thick blanket of knee-high spring grasses swaying gently
in the late day sun, interspersed with craggy oaks. I take many
pictures, but they just can’t capture the scenery. The wetlands
below teem with great numbers of wintering waterfowl and
the clatter of their voices ebbs and flows with the breeze over
the mountain.
after the rain

sunlight filters through
a finch’s song
I continue up ridge into the moss heavy forest. The intensity
of the silence is tangible in my ears, broken by the scuff
and shuffle of small birds and squirrels in the underbrush.
A pacific wren erupts into cascades of song and I’m baffled
that so much sound can derive from such a small thing. The
deepening shadows and a creeping chill remind me the day is
short. As easy as it is to get comfortable and linger too long in
one place, it’s time to move on.
climbing
higher in latitude
departing geese
m. shane pruett
ji
Southern Journey
Father and son, we make a pilgrimage to Mississippi to visit

the gravesites of the great country blues musicians. You pick
me up at the Memphis airport in a rent-a-car with the top
down, an ounce of weed under the driver’s seat. All week we
crisscross the state paying our respects, in church cemeteries
and weedy fields, to our heroes: Memphis Minnie, Robert
Johnson, Sam Chatmon, Charley Patton, John Hurt. We do
most of our talking on the long highways between towns,
telephone poles on both sides of the road teetering like leaning
crosses all the way to a point on the horizon.
overgrown grave
a UPS driver
points the way
For years I planned to type up our journals into a glossy book
as a present to you, our side-by-side accounts sandwiched
between color photos. I carried the notes in my travel bag
when I arrived to visit you in the final stages, thinking there
might still be time, but you died in my arms five hours later. I
returned home to the long nights of winter.
bluesman’s passing
the levee breaks
with grief
One day, I open the notes and set them out, lift the laptop
open, and begin to peck.
along the bottom

of Sonny Boy’s headstone
rusted harmonicas
Mark Dailey
ji
One Spring Morning
“Sixty-five years. Now that’s a long time,” Pap said, leaning

toward me on the glider we were sharing and pointing to the
front of the eight-page local paper.
“What’s that?” My husband of four months asked from his
perch on the front porch rail.
Pap showed him the picture of the couple. “They’ve been
married 65 years. Now that’s a long time,” repeated the man
who had celebrated his 54th anniversary at our wedding
reception that January.
first date—
pressed petals from a rose
he grew himself
Elaine Wilburt

&
Essays Articles

Ekphrastic Haiku
from A Field Guide to North American Haiku1
Charles Trumbull
T his chapter of A Field Guide began with the working title

“Allusion in Haiku” and was intended to be an analysis
of haiku that I had tagged in my Haiku Database “Poetics:
allusion: art.” That is to say, rather than a topic such as the
traditional “Animals” or “Landscape,” these haiku have in
common that they all refer in one way or another to a work of
graphic or plastic art, to an artist, or to a style or technique.
Strictly speaking, this is not “allusion” (“an expression designed
to call something to mind without mentioning it explicitly;
an indirect or passing reference,” according to the Google
Dictionary) because by and large, the poets included here do
explicitly mention a work of art.
Allusion is an essential element of haiku, both Japanese and
Western. It is a basic means by which a poet can enhance the
meaning of a poem. The most common varieties of allusion in
haiku are, of course, kigo (seasonal words), a sine qua non of
classical haiku, and utamakura,
using the name of a place or thing that possesses an
aura of significance, presumed to be understood by
a reader. The old masters used utamakura frequently
to magnify the meaning of their haiku, as did Bashō
here:
Nara’s Buddhas,
one by one —
essence of asters.
Japanese readers would immediately conjure up the
image of the huge bronze Daibutsu whose nostril was
said to be a path to enlightenment. 2
The key caveat in using allusion in poetry, especially haiku, is
that it only works if it conjures up a specific image in the mind
of the beholder. Most metaphors and similes are not allusions
because they make general, not specific, references.
So the reader of an allusive or ekphrastic haiku is expected
to recognize the work of art. This suggests that haiga are not
allusive works, though the relationship between haiku and
image in a haiga is essential: generally speaking, the artwork or
photograph in a haiga will be the original creation of a single
poet/artist and is not expected to be familiar to the reader.
Ekphrasis
According to the Poetry Foundation website, “an ekphrastic
poem is a vivid description of a scene or, more commonly, a
work of art.” As it pertains specifically to a haiku inspired or
stimulated by a work of art, I would suggest that ekphrasis
comes in three types:
(1) Pure description; a record of what the poet saw
or experienced; analogous to Shiki’s theory of shasei,
real-life sketching (a term Shiki originally derived
from painting);
(2) An interpretation or appreciation of what the
poet saw or a suggestion of the real meaning in the
artwork; subjective human responses by the observer
to the reality of the painting or sculpture;
(3) Parallel meaning that transcends a physical
description of the artwork and the artist’s creative
process and intentions; this is Shiki’s makoto, or poetic
truth, the true essence of the thing, which is not
exactly the same thing as reality.3
In the pages below I have tried to examine ekphrastic haiku in
terms of these criteria, but alas, I often succumb to digression.
I would also like to have included an image of each of the art
works that inspired the haiku poets, but space considerations
and the cost of color reproduction prevented that. In all cases,
however, if I could identify a likely inspirational painting or
sculpture, I have provided a full description of the piece and a
link to an image online in the notes.
Haiku describing works of art
Salvador Dalí [29 haiku, about 11 of them containing watches]
is a frequent subject for haiku poets; for example, Bernard
Lionel Einbond’s descriptive take on the surrealist The
Persistence of Memory:
Salvador Dalí, The Persistence of Memory, 1931 4
over a barren branch

a clock drooping —
memory persists
Bernard Lionel Einbond, The Tree As It Is (2000)
Einbond here achieves a haiku hat trick: he alludes to Bashō’s

famous “crow” haiku in the first line, points to a key element
of the painting in the second, and names Dalí’s painting in the
third.
Chilean-born poet Humberto Gatica writes in a style similar
to Einbond’s. His haiku
his words
her words …
the breaking news
Humberto Gatica, in Iliyana Stoyanova, ed., Ekphrasis:
The British Haiku Society Members’ Anthology 2017
was written to Edward Hopper’s painting Hotel by a Railroad,5
and apparently alludes to Lee Gurga’s iconic haiku “his side
of it. / her side of it. / winter silence” in the first two lines.
Mysteriously, though, the man and the woman in Hopper’s
painting do not seem to be conversing, and there is no
indication of the arrival of news or that any is expected.
The descriptive approach in ekphrastic haiku is particularly
welcome if the work cannot be instantly visualized, as in this
haiku by Elizabeth Searle Lamb celebrating the work of San
Ildefonso Pueblo potter María Martínez:
María Martínez, blackware pot, 1930s6
earth, sky,
and an eagle’s feather
Maria’s black pots
Elizabeth Searle Lamb, Hermitage 1:1/2 (2004)
The same is true when the haiku points out aspects of a well-
known painting that we might otherwise have overlooked:
Johannes Vermeer, Girl with a Pearl Earring, c. 16657

candlelight
the whites of her eyes
outshine the pearl earring
Sue Schraer, in Iliyana Stoyanova, ed.,
Peonies: Haiku Anthology (2019)
Poet Malcolm Williams itemizes the things he finds interesting

in an 18th century French etching:
Norbert Goeneutte, The Boulevard de Clichy under Snow, 1876 8
monochrome snowscape of
bonnets, bustles, top hats —
the crunching carriages
Malcolm Williams, in Iliyana Stoyanova, ed.,
Ekphrasis: The BHS Members’ Anthology 2017
David Bingham points out Henri Matisse’s [17] novel view of a

kimono-clad woman by the water:
Henri Matisse, La Japonaise: Woman beside the Water, 19059

lost in blossom
a young woman hidden
in the foreground
David Bingham, in Stoyanova, ed., Ekphrasis op. cit.
In their haiku, poets often express their appreciation of an
artist’s technique, as does David Kelly with M. C. Escher’s
famous Drawing Hands. Note Kelly’s clever inversion of the first
line in line three — a reflection of what Escher accomplishes
in the print:
M. C. Escher, Drawing Hands, 1948 10
all it does is this

recreate the creator
yet this does it all
David J Kelly, in Stoyanova, ed., Ekphrasis op. cit.
Ekphrastic poems often use synesthesia to magnify the sense

of reality of an artwork. The sense of scent, for example, is
evoked for poet Marian Olson in the reds of Rufino Tamayo’s
Watermelons:
Rufino Tamayo, Watermelons, 197711

gallery show the scent of Tamayo’s red melon
Marian Olson, from the sequence “Sketches of Mexico:
From a Poet’s Notebook,” Modern Haiku 40:2
(Summer 2009)
Color, of course, is an essential aspect of painting, and many

haiku poets key their ekphrastic poems to the painter’s
palette. The tropical colors of Paul Gauguin [15] are referenced
by haiku poets:
in the meat
of the papaya
Gauguin’s orange
Frederick Gasser, Frogpond 19:2 (September 1996)
in winter
a shadow on bricks
blooms Gauguin-pink
John Sandbach, Invisible Castle (2013)
The same is true of other artists’ work as well:
through Picasso’s blue

and on the other side a crimson
sea slug swims
Dhugal J. Lindsay, Fuyoh (2010)
blues are the big thing

with Monet, she said,
spreading the Roquefort
Raymond Roseliep, Cicada (Toronto) 1:3 (1977)
Grant Wood’s
black oaks windbreak
the white framed farmhouse
Driscoll, Kevin, Frogpond 9:3 (August 1986), 8
The Scream of Edvard Munch [9] evokes a variety of strong

reactions in viewers, from Sister Mary Thomas Eulberg,
who distinctly hears sound released by the oil and pigment,
to the Japanese poet Matsumoto Chiguta, for whom terrible
memories are awakened by the painting, to two British
haikuists who enter into The Scream totally and reflect on what
they find in Munch’s mind:
Edvard Munch, The Scream, 189312
no sound:
“The Cry” of Munch
pierces my ears
Sister Mary Thomas Eulberg, from the sequence
“Gallery,” Wind Chimes 14 (1984)
ムンクの叫び胸にひしひし原爆記
Munku no sakebi mune ni hishihishi genbaku-ki
Munch’s “Scream”
coming home to me
A-bomb stories
Matsumoto Chigusa, Haiku International 73
(November 2007)
the danger of being absorbed

cell by cell you curve
imploding upon canvas
Joanna Ashwell, in Stoyanova, ed., Ekphrasis op. cit.
atop the winter hill
a view of the world
as it falls away
Doreen King, in Stoyanova, ed., Ekphrasis op. cit.
Much the way Sister Mary Thomas Eulberg “hears” Munch’s
scream in the example above, Mike Spikes perceives birdsong
as abstract expressionism:
open window —
a sparrow sings
a Pollock
Mike Spikes, Modern Haiku 43:2 (Summer 2012), 98
A digression in re Pollock: It is not entirely clear if the following

haiku by James Kirkup was intended as a critique of his fellow
British poet W. H. Auden, or of Jackson Pollock, or both:
Auden’s ravaged face —

an action-painting savaged
by Jackson Pollock
James Kirkup, from his sequence “In an Art Dealer’s
Window” in Formulas for Chaos (1994)
Stella Pierides also hears colors, for example in Wassily

Kandinsky’s Color Study:
Wassily Kandinsky, Color Study — Squares with Concentric Circles, 191313

squares with circles —
listening to the colours
sing
Stella Pierides, in Stoyanova, ed., Ekphrasis op. cit.
J. W. Hackett, however, has a totally different take on a not

dissimilar cubist work by Ben Nicholson. No synesthesia here:
Ben Nicholson, 3 circles, c. 1946–194714
Scene from six miles up

midwest fields full of circles —
Ben Nicholson’s career?
James W. Hackett, A Traveler’s Haiku (2004)
Other aspects of the artists’ techniques capture the attention

and imagination of haiku poets as well. Japanese poet
Yoshimura Reiko, for example, marvels at how the 18th-
century ukiyo-e master Hiroshige managed to get motion into
a painting:

Hiroshige, Sudden Shower Over Shin-Ōhashi Bridge and Atake, 185715
広重の絵が動き出す大夕立
Hiroshige no ega ugokidasu oyudachi
heavy rain shower —

ukiyoe by Hiroshige
starts moving
Yoshimura Reiko, trans. Kakutani Masako, Nihon Keizai
Shimbun Award of the 14th HIA Haiku Contest (2012)
Before proceeding, permit me an aside about ekphrastic haiku

and works by Japanese artists. As one might expect, Hokusai is
most often written about, with 36 haiku, principally about his
magisterial Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji (富嶽三十六景, Fugaku
sanjūrokkei) of 1830–1832, and at least 16 treating a single painting,
The Great Wave off Kanagawa (神奈川沖浪裏, Kanagawa-oki nami
ura).16
Interestingly, Hokusai apparently wrote a jisei (death poem):
hitodama de yuku kisan ja matsu no hara
Now as a spirit
I shall roam
the summer fields.
Hokusai, trans. Yoël Hoffmann,
Japanese Death Poems (1986)
Hiroshige, also an ukiyo-e, master, has been honored with 22

haiku, including:
high autumn sky

I ride on the back
of Hiroshige’s hawk17
Fay Aoyagi, Modern Haiku 42:2 (Summer 2011)
Other Japanese artists whose work is represented in haiku

include Utamaro, Sesshin, Sesshyū Tōyō, and Yoshitoshi.
There is even an occasional haiku about a classic haijin, Yosa
Buson, who was equally famous as literati painter.
Buson hangs
in the first gallery
traveler cold mountains18
Melissa Stepien, from the sequence “Distance,”
Modern Haiku 37:2 (Summer 2006)
Now returning to the Hiroshige print, it is interesting to

compare his technique for getting his painting to “move” with
that of his near-contemporary Claude Monet [72] a few years
later:
Claude Monet, La pluie, 1886-188719
brush
strokes
I
step
back
step
into
Monet’s
rain
Roland Packer, Moongarlic 8 (May 2017)
Consider also this cross-cultural French-Japanese allusion:
among these lilies

in Monet’s pond
Bashō’s watersound
Sylvia Forges-Ryan, Modern Haiku 17:3 (Autumn 1986)
And, speaking of Monet, several poets have referenced

paintings of his as distortions of reality that occur when the
poet’s vision has been altered in some way:
bandages off
Monet’s haze
covers the mountain
Gloria H. Procsal, Modern Haiku 33:2 (Summer 2002)
garden
through reading glasses
a Monet painting
Aalix Roake, Kokako Haiku and Senryu Contest, 2015
British painter J. M. W. Turner [5] is a favorite subject of haiku

poets as well. Known for his vivid landscapes and seascapes,
and especially his luminous skies, for example:
a slave ship —
Turner paints light
in the wind20
Anne Elvey, Simply Haiku 7:2 (Summer 2009)
a Turner
without a frame …
winter sky
Claire Everett, from her haibun “A Blank Canvas,
Frogpond 39:3 (Autumn 2016)
Marlene Mountain and especially Anne McKay were especially

fond of the techniques of French post-impressionist painter
Pierre Bonnard [4] and referred to them in their haiku. Neither
of these haiku seem to refer to specific paintings but rather to
the painter’s style, his way of distorting reality:
after the storm puddles of bonnard

Marlene Mountain, HSA Frogpond 1:4 (November 1978)
torn lace
and tincan geraniums
on sills of secondstory rooms
a bonnard
face
anne mckay, Wind Chimes 2 (1981)
Haiku masters Raymond Roseliep and Sister Mary Thomas

Eulberg both were impressed by Spanish master El Greco’s [3]
mannerist distortions of physical reality:
El Greco clouds
that never were
are21
Raymond Roseliep, Outch 7:2 (Autumn 1983)
early morning
bike-rider
El Greco long22
Sister Mary Thomas Eulberg, Gallery (1988)
(Re)interpretation of what the poet saw

Perhaps the poet’s usual approach to writing a haiku about
a work of art is to try to go beyond a purely objective
description to reveal its underlying truth. Kate B Hall
jumps directly to subjective interpretation in her haiku
that poignantly recapitulates the squalor and despondency
of installation artist Tracey Emin’s Turner Prize–
nominated work My Bed:
Tracey Emin, My Bed, 1988 23
so untidy
such sadness
still unmade
Kate B Hall, in Stoyanova, ed., Ekphrasis op. cit.
Another of the most-cited artists is Vincent van Gogh [76], and

many of the poets’ works offer an interpretation of a painting.
One example is the premonitory composition, Wheatfield with
Crows, supposed by some to have been van Gogh’s last painting:
Vincent van Gogh, Wheatfield with Crows, 1890. 24
These two haiku are basically descriptive in nature, but veer

into an interpretation of the finality of van Gogh’s work in
various ways:
Yellowing cornfield,
black crows predict the death
of Van Gogh.
Lilia Racheva, Simply Haiku 8:1 (Summer 2010)
last canvas
crow-shaped gashes in a field
of yellow corn
Phillip Murrell, in Stoyanova, ed., Ekphrasis op. cit.
In The Potato Eaters, van Gogh portrays the country folk as one
with the soil, 25 and the Bulgarian poet Lydia Lecheva pens an
archetypical interpretive haiku about it:
The Potato Eaters

their hands and faces —
the Earth itself
Lydia Lecheva, Asahi Haikuist Network, May 15, 2015
Diana Webb finds extra meaning in another van Gogh
masterpiece, Le Pont-levis:
Vincent van Gogh, The Drawbridge, 1888 26
small black clad figure

poised on the drawbridge
a threshold in time
Diana Webb, in Stoyanova, ed., Ekphrasis op. cit.
“Interpretation” might also encompass irony or parody, as

Sister Mary Thomas Eulberg does with a famous portrait by
Thomas Gainsborough:27
before “The Blue Boy”

youth in jeans
Sr. Mary Thomas Eulberg, from her sequence “Gallery,”
Wind Chimes 14 (1984)
In search of deeper meaning in the artwork

Poets who write ekphrastic haiku often seem to be searching
for deeper or alternative meaning in a work of art, something
beyond what is immediately visible. This might be a perception
of an objet d’art’s application to life or to art generally. It might
seek to place the given work in the continuum of art history or
link to another work. The link could even be to another type
or genre of art, such as music or literature. Several early 20th-
century artists, for example, explored the relationship of their
art to native and folk art, in particular African masks. Matisse
was one of these artists, and poet Francine Porad noticed a
similarity with the mask art of the Pacific Northwest:
(a) Haida mask

(b) Henri Matisse, Mademoiselle
Yvonne Landsberg, 191428
Haida face mask

in green, red and black —
predating Matisse
Francine Porad, Modern Haiku 28:3 (Fall 1997)
Haiku poets are fond of critiquing paintings by Paul Cézanne

[14], both positively and (probably) negatively:
Cezanne’s pears
so lifelike
I feel painted29
H. F. Noyes, Modern Haiku 19:1 (Winter–Spring 1988)

still life
Cézanne’s apples more like
Warhol’s soup cans30
Carolyne Rohrig, DailyHaiku, March 24, 2011
And Mona Lisa’s smile has a new meaning for an American

poet:
late home from a date

daughter’s mona lisa smile
confirms my fears
Lesley Einer, Modern Haiku 23:3 (Fall 1992)
Interaction with nature or the immediate environment

For example, Auguste Rodin’s [20] sculpture “The Thinker”
has been the subject of at least eight haiku prompted by
first-hand observation. Several of these haiku having the
masterpiece covered by something of beauty, such as fallen
yellow leaves (Masuda Juichi and Muō Kōtaro), “slant window
light” (Paul O. Williams), “a towel of snow” (Florence Vilén),
or something frivolous, such as a Budweiser can stuck on the
thinker’s thumb (L. A. Davidson).
Larger sculptures are often installed outside, where they

interact directly with nature:
snow
blowing
through a Henry Moore
Sandra Fuhringer, Still 4:1 (Spring 2000)
or for winter shadows:
sunset on ice
my slow shadow
by Giacometti31
Paul Wigelius, The Heron’s Nest 5:5 (May 2003)

or a single leaf in a mobile by Alexander Calder [4]:
Calder sculpture;
a single brown leaf tumbling
from the sky
D. F. Tweeney, The Heron’s Nest 8:2 (June 2006)
or are points of reference, for example, for other man-made

landmarks, such as Seattle’s Space Needle:
Isamu Noguchi, Black Sun, 1969 32
Needle in the eye

of Noguchi’s Black Sun
only from this spot
Connie Hutchison, in Ann Spiers, ed., Fleeting Beauty, 2012
Michelangelo, Pietà, 1498–1499 33

Among Renaissance artists, Michelangelo [17] is perhaps
most often the subject of haiku poets. These three samples
demonstrate an interpretive haiku, a speculative haiku, and a
haiku possibly suggesting the 1972 vandalism of Michelangelo’s
Pietà:
Michelangelo’s Pietà
Childlike in death
His fingers seem to know
His mother’s robe
H. F. Noyes, Hummingbird 5:3 (March 1995)
waiting for God’s touch

Bruce H. Feingold, Bottle Rockets 28 (14:2, 2013)
spray-paint vandals —
a red cross dripping
from the pietà
Carlos Colón, Clocking Out (1996)
Pablo Picasso, Bust of Sylvette, 196734

By far the most celebrated sculpture in haiku, however, is
Bust of Sylvette by Pablo Picasso (who, with more than 120
haiku about his works, is the most celebrated artist in haiku).
Elizabeth Searle Lamb lived within sight of University Place
in New York’s Greenwich Village, and she watched the
construction project and chronicled it in several haiku series.
it takes a while
to know her:
Picasso’s “Bust of Sylvette”
Elizabeth Searle Lamb, in Elizabeth and Bruce Lamb,
Picasso’s Bust of Sylvette: Haiku and Photographs (1977)
moonlight
and a jazz riff, playing
across her face
Elizabeth Searle Lamb, from the sequence
“Sylvette: 1984,” Christian Science Monitor, August 1, 1984
L. A. Davidson, a friend and neighbor of Lamb’s in the

Washington Square neighborhood of Greenwich Village also
wrote several descriptive “Sylvette” haiku:
Sylvette’s shady side

sun-lighted by reflections
from a south window
L. A. Davidson, The Shape of the Tree (1982)
Tanka poet Sanford Goldstein compiled a three-verse

“Sylvette: A Tanka Sequence for Elizabeth Searle Lamb” that
was published in High/Coo 3:10 (November 1978).
Among Picasso’s paintings, the most gripping for haiku poets

has been Guernica, his lament for the Spanish Civil War:

Pablo Picasso, Guernica,193735
bulls crash
through canvases, hooves
pound down the spine
Geraldine C. Little, from the sequence “Pablo Picasso
Exhibit — Manhattan, Summer, 1980,”
Modern Haiku 11:3 (Autumn 1980)
Guernica the mask my father wears

Lorraine Pester, Blithe Spirit 28:1 (February 2018)
Poet Patricia Neubauer discovered in a Picasso painting a case

of nature recapitulating art and recorded it in her haiku:
midnight museum
Picasso’s harlequin patched
with moonlight
Patricia Neubauer, Woodnotes 11 (Winter 1991)
Exaggeration, surrealistic interpretation
Here are two haiku by American poets making reference to

paintings by James McNeill Whistler. Of the eight “Whistler”
haiku I have found, nearly all are about his famous Arrangement
in Grey and Black No.1 (“Whistler’s Mother,” 1871),36 for example:

bedridden with the flu
on the wall Whistler’s mother
rocking
Helen E. Dalton, 10th annual Hawai‘i
Educational Association contest, 1987, 3rd Place
but Scott Mason views another painting of Whistler’s and
embarks on a flight of fancy:
the night watchman

whistles
Whistler’s Nocturne37
Scott Mason, from the sequence “Six Degrees of Seeing,”
Frogpond 36:1 (Winter 2013), 46
In her typical fashion, poet Anne McKay takes a truly cosmic

view of one of Georgia O’Keeffe’s famous flower paintings.
O’Keeffe [87] is surpassed only by Picasso in the number of
haiku written to her paintings. She wrote more than 60 haiku
to O’Keeffe paintings, most included in her 1991 book, Shaping
the Need.
Georgia O’Keeffe, Yellow Calla, 1929 38

yellow calla …
a new planet
a nova
noon sun
anne mckay, Shaping the Need (1991), 12
Reality and surreality: What’s real and what’s not?

Marian Olson experiences the satisfaction of standing where
the artist stood and confirming the truth of Ansel Adams’s
moment:
Ansel Adams —
just as he saw it
the moon over Hernandez39
Marian Olson, in Joseph Kirschner, Lidia Rozmus and
Charles Trumbull, eds., A Travel-worn Satchel (HSA
Members’ Anthoogy 2009)
Duane Hanson, Tourists II, 198840

Duane Hanson’s Tourists
another gallery guest
asks if I’m real
Caroline Giles Banks, The Clay Jar (2013)
James Kirkup’s poetry, especially his ekphrastic work, often

departs from reality and transports the viewer to a different
dimension, as in this haiku about Paul Klee:
My sleepwalker’s maze —
parting window-curtains on
more window-curtains
(Paul Klee: Harmonische Störungen)41
James Kirkup, Blue Bamboo (1993)
In the same rather surrealistic vein, Japanese haiku master

Yamaguchi Seishi viewed the heavens critically with a
surrealist eye:
峯雲の贅肉ロダンなら削る
minekumo no zeiniku Rodan nara kezuru
excess fat
of the cumulonimbus
Rodin would shave it
Yamaguchi Seishi, in Hirai Shobin, ed., Gendai no haiku
(1996), trans. Fay Aoyagi, Blue Willow Haiku World blog,
August 2, 2010
A palette cleanser
In conclusion, just for fun, here are a few haiku about the
tribulations of viewing fine art:
the wait in line

to wait in line:
Matisse exhibit
Pat Tompkins, Modern Haiku 48:3 (Autumn 2017), 96
a slow moving clock
the Norman Rockwell print
in the waiting room
Deborah P Kolodji, Haiku Headlines, September 2005
Ansel Adams exhibit

absolutely NO
photography allowed
Alan S. Bridges, Prune Juice 13 (March 2014)
Notes
1 “A Field Guide to North American Haiku” is a long-term project along the
lines of a haiku encyclopedia-cum-saijiki, a selection of the best English-
language haiku arranged by topic and illustrating what it is about a given topic
that attracts poets to write. When complete, the Field Guide project will comprise
multiple thick volumes keyed to the several topics in traditional Japanese saijiki
(haiku almanac) and Western counterparts, notably William J. Higginson’s
Haiku World: An International Poetry Almanac (1996). These topics are: Season, Sky
& Elements, Landscape, Plants, Animals, Human Affairs, and Observances.
The haiku are selected from my Haiku Database, currently containing more
than 463,000 haiku. “Ekphrastic Haiku” considers haiku tagged not according
to topic but rather by poetic technique, in this case haiku that allude in one
way or another to works of graphic and plastic arts. Critique and suggestions,
supportive or critical, of this chapter or the Field Guide project generally, are
warmly invited; please comment by email to cptrumbull\at\comcast.net.
2 Bashō’s haiku, in Lucien Stryk, trans., On Love and Barley: Haiku of Bashō (London
and New York: Penguin Books, 1985). Quote from Charles Trumbull, “Meaning
in Haiku,” Frogpond 35:3 (Autumn 2012), 92–118.
3 Lee Gurga discusses the stages of Shiki’s theory in Haiku: A Poet’s Guide (Lincoln,
Ill.: Modern Haiku Press, 2003), pp. 133–37. I also discussed the influence of
Western painting and the impact of English critic John Ruskin on Shiki’s
aesthetics in a paper titled “Masaoka Shiki and the Origins of Shasei” read at
Haiku North America 2009 in Ottawa, Ont., and published in Juxta 2:1 (2016).
4 Salvador Dalí, La persistencia de la memoria (The Persistence of Memory), 1931. Oil
on canvas, 24 cm × 33 cm. Museum of Modern Art, New York City. Image: https://
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Persistence_of_Memory.
5 See Edward Hopper, Hotel by a Railroad, 1952. Oil on canvas, 102 cm × 79.4 cm.
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, D.C. Image: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Hotel_by_a_Railroad.
6 María Montoya Poveka Martínez and Julian Martínez, blackware pot, 1930s.
Image: illustration from Allison Sheridan, “Learn about the blackware pottery
by Maria Martinez,” Iowa State University Museums website: https://www.museums.
iastate.edu/learn/digital-resources/blog/2020/03/17/learn-about-the-black-ware-
pottery-by-maria-martinez.
7 Johannes Vermeer, Meisje met de parel (Girl with a Pearl Earring), c. 1665. Oil on

canvas, 44.5 cm × 39 cm. Mauritshuis, The Hague, Netherlands. Image: https://
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girl_with_a_Pearl_Earring.
8 Norbert Goeneutte, Le boulevard Clichy par un temps de neige (The Boulevard
de Clichy under Snow), 1876. Etching and drypoint. National Gallery of
Art, Washington D.C. Image: https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/
boulevard-clichy-in-the-snow-le-boulevard-clichy-par-un-temps-de-neige/
ZQG6iWCyBamFRA?hl=en.
9 Henri Matisse, La Japonaise au bord de l’eau (La Japonaise: Woman beside the
Water), 1905. Oil and pencil on canvas, 35.2 cm × 28.2 cm. The Edward Steichen
Galleries, Museum of Modern Art, New York. Image: https://www.facebook.
com/NGVMelbourne/posts/in-henri-matisses-la-japonaise-woman-beside-the-
water-1905-the-womans-figure-can/10156328827041163/.
10 M. C. Escher, Drawing Hands, 1948. Lithograph, 28.2 cm × 33.3 cm. Cornelius
Van S. Roosevelt Collection. Image: © Cordon Art-Baarn-the Netherlands:
https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.54237.html.
11 Rufino Tamayo, Sandias (Watermelons), 1977. Oil on canvas, 1965. 45 cm × 60
cm. Museum of Modern Art, Mexico City [?]. Image: https://felixinclusis.tumblr.
com/post/139900729579/rufino-tamayo-watermelons-1965.
12 Edvard Munch, Der Schrei der Natur (The Scream of Nature), 1893. Oil, tempera,
pastel, and crayon on cardboard. 91 cm × 73.5 cm. National Gallery and Munch
Museum, Oslo, Norway. Image: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scream.
13 Wassily Kandinsky, Farbstudie — Quadrate und konzentrische Ringe (Color
Study — Squares with Concentric Circles), 1913. Watercolor, gouache, and crayon
on paper, 23.8 cm × 31.4 cm. Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich. Image:
https://www.wassilykandinsky.net/work-370.php.
14 Ben Nicholson, 3 circles, c. 1946–1947. Oil on board 27.4 cm × 32.8 cm. The
Pier Arts Centre: Image: https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/c-19461947-3-
circles-166983/search/actor:nicholson-ben-18941982/page/1/view_as/grid.
15 Utagawa Hiroshige. Sudden Shower Over Shin-Ōhashi Bridge and Atake (大は
しあたけの夕立, Ōhashi atake no yūdachi), No. 58 from One Hundred Famous
Views of Edo, 9th month of 1857. Woodblock print, 36.1 cm x 23.1 cm. Brooklyn
Museum. Image: Brooklyn Museum website: https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/
opencollection/objects/121666.
16 See the image and discussion in Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_
Great_Wave_off_Kanagawa.
17 Perhaps Aoyagi has in mind Utagawa Hiroshige, Fūkagawa Susaki and
Jumantsubo, No. 107 from One Hundred Famous Views of Edo, 1857. Woodblock print,
36 cm x 23.5 cm. Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Anna Ferris. Image: https://www.
brooklynmuseum.org/opencollection/objects/121719, although this print is a
winter scene.
18 See for example, Yosa Buson, Lone Traveler in Wintry Mountains (寒林山水図
屏風), c. 1778. Two-panel folding screen, ink and gold-leaf on paper, 64.7 cm ×
86 cm. Metropolitan Museum of Art, lent by the Feinberg Collection. Image:
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/78500.
19 Claude Monet, La pluie (The Rain), 1886-1887. Image: © Masterpieces of Art:
https://www.fineartphotographyvideoart.com/2017/11/Claude-Monet.html. In a
personal note, Scott Mason reminded me that “the Impressionists were familiar
with Japanese prints and doubtless influenced by them. That can be witnessed
directly in some of Mary Cassatt’s prints, but I suspect that was very much the
case for Monet (and other Impressionists) as well. When my wife and I visited
Giverny years ago we saw a room in his house filled with Japanese prints. The
website for Giverny indicates that Monet owned 48 prints by Hiroshige but I
don’t know if Sudden Shower Over Shin-Ōhashi Bridge and Atake was one of them … a
tantalizing possibility given the similar treatments in the Hiroshige and Monet
pieces.”
20 See for example, J. M. W. Turner, Slave Ship (Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead
and Dying, Typhoon Coming On), 1840. Oil on canvas, 90.8 cm × 122.6 cm. Museum
of Fine Arts Boston. Image: https://collections.mfa.org/objects/31102.
21 See for example, El Greco, Vista de Toledo (View of Toledo), 1596/1600. Oil on
canvas, 121.3 cm × 108.6 cm. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Image:
https://www.cherryjeffs.com/art-blog/el-greco-the-shoebox-and-impressionist-
clouds.
22 See for example, El Greco, Autorretrato (Portrait of a Man [presumed self-
portrait]), c. 1595–1600. Oil on canvas, 52.7 cm × 46.7 cm. Metropolitan Museum
of Art, New York. Image: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Greco.
23 Tracey Emin, My Bed, 1988. Installation: box frame, mattress, linens, pillows
and various objects; overall dimensions variable. Exhibited at the Tate Gallery,
London, 1999, on long term loan by The Duerckheim Collection, 2015.
24 Vincent Van Gogh, Champ de blé aux corbeaux (Wheatfield with Crows), 1890.
Oil on canvas, 50.5 cm × 103 cm. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent
van Gogh Foundation). Image: https://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/en/collection/
s0149V1962.
25 See Vincent Van Gogh, De Aardappeleters (The Potato Eaters), 1885. Oil on canvas,
82 cm × 114 cm. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam. Image: https://en.wikipedia.
org/wiki/The_Potato_Eaters.
26 Vincent van Gogh, Le Pont-levis (The Drawbridge), 1888. Oil on canvas, 49.5 cm
x 64.5 cm. Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, Cologne. Photo: Rheinisches Bildarchiv
Köln: https://www.wallraf.museum/en/collections/19th-century/masterpieces/
vincent-van-gogh-the-drawbridge-1888/.
27 See for example, Thomas Gainsborough, The Blue Boy, c. 1770. Oil on canvas, 177.8
cm × 112.1 cm. Henry E. Huntington Art Gallery, San Marino, California. Image:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blue_Boy.
28 (a) Haida mask. Stonington Gallery, Seattle. Image: Pintarest; (b) Henri
Matisse, Mademoiselle Yvonne Landsberg, 1914. Oil on canvas, 147.3 cm × 97.5 cm. The
Louise and Walter Arensberg Collection, Philadelphia Museum of Art. Image:
https://www.wikiart.org/en/henri-matisse/madame-yvonne-landsberg-1914.
29 See for example, Paul Cézanne, Trois poires (Three Pears), 1878/1879. Oil on canvas.
20 cm. × 25.7 cm. Permanent collection, National Gallery of Art, Washington,
D.C. Image: https://www.artsy.net/artwork/paul-cezanne-three-pears.
30 See for example, Paul Cézanne, Nature mort aux pommes (Apples), 1878–79. Oil
on canvas, 22.9 cm × 33 cm. Metropolitan Museum of Art. Image: https://www.
metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/435866. Also Andy Warhol, Campbell’s Soup
Cans, 1962. Acrylic with metallic enamel paint on canvas, 32 panels, each 50.8 cm
× 40.6 cm. Museum of Modern Art, New York. Image: https://www.moma.org/
collection/works/79809.
31 See for example, the photo of Man Pointing, 1947, from The Economist,
© Alberto Giacometti Estate, AC: https://espresso.economist.com/
f0282b5ff85e7c9c66200d780bd7e72e
32 Isamu Noguchi, Black Sun, 1969. Sculpture, granite, 2.7 m diameter. Volunteer
Park Conservatiory, Seattle, Wash. Image: https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/
LocationPhotoDirectLink-g60878-d141258-i147474708-Volunteer_Park_
Conservatory-Seattle_Washington.html.
33 Michelangelo Buonarroti, Pietà (The Piety), 1498–1499. Marble, 174 cm × 195
cm, St. Peter’s Basilica, Vatican City. Image: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pietà_
(Michelangelo).
34 Pablo Picasso, Bust of Sylvette, 1967. Designed by Picasso and constructed by
Carl Nesjar. 18.3 meters, sandblasted cement. University Village, Greenwich
Village, New York. Image: Daily Photo Stream, September 2008; https://
dailyphotostream.blogspot.com/2017/01/bust-of-sylvette.html.
35 Pablo Picasso, Guernica, 1937. Oil on canvas, 349.3 cm × 776.6 cm. Museo Reina
Sofía, Madrid, Spain. Image: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guernica_(Picasso).
36 See for example, James McNeill Whistler, Arrangement in Grey and Black No.1,
1871. Oil on canvas, 14.4 cm × 16.2 cm. Musée d’Orsay, Paris. Image: https://
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whistler%27s_Mother.
37 Whistler completed six paintings called “Nocturne,” and it is not clear which
one Mason has in mind. See https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/whistler-
nocturne-black-and-gold-the-fire-wheel-n03419 for a discussion of the paintings.
38 Georgia O’Keeffe, Yellow Calla, 1929. No other information available. Image
from https://66.media.tumblr.com/215bc09e490550c7375fdbaec74d11cf/tumblr_
o39n9iLVeI1s4zvvyo1_640.jpg. This painting and haiku were included with dozens
of others in Charles Trumbull’s slide show/presentation, “Georgia O’Keeffe and
the Haiku Aesthetic,” and published in Colin Blundell et al., Harmony Within
Diversity: A collection of papers delivered at the International Haiku Conference
in St Albans, UK, 31 May–2 June 2019 (Barking, Essex, U.K.: The British Haiku
Society, 2019).
39 See for example, Ansel Adams, Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico, 1941. Black and
white photograph. Image: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moonrise,_Hernandez,_
New_Mexico.
40 Duane Hanson, Tourists II, 1988. Installation, Van de Weghe Fine Art (Chelsea
location), New York. Image: http://www.artnet.com/artists/duane-hanson/
tourists-ii-chelsea-location-a-Lb6-8xNdf-HtOX4mC29zIw2.
41 I am not able to find a Klee painting with this name. Perhaps the reference to
“harmonic disturbances” was intended by Kirkup as commentary on Klee’s style
generally.

Bashō on War:
Glory or Emptiness?
Selected, translated, and explored by Jeff Robbins
T he literary critic Masaoka Shiki established the

convention “that poetry should apply... only to nature
and leave human affairs to the modern novel.”1 However two
centuries before Shiki, Bashō often explored human affairs in
his tsukeku, the stanzas he contributed to linked verses. In this
article are one nine tsukeku, and two prose passages revealing
his feelings about war. May these works enter the hearts of
people worldwide to become resources in the search for peace.
One of Bashō’s most famous haiku was written on the hilltop in
the Far North where 500 years before, the hero Yoshitsune and
his 16 retainers fought against an army, and Yoshitsune killed
his wife and infant daughter then committed ritual suicide
before the enemy could defile his life. The haiku appears at
a climatic moment in Bashō’s travel journal Oku no Hosomichi
which I translate as A Narrow Path in the Heartlands:
Rank summer grasses

where warriors went to war,
traces of their dreams
Natsu-gusa ya / tsuwamono domo ga / yume no ato
Each year since that epic tragedy came to pass, the various
grasses on the neglected hilltop have put forth new shoots,
grown tall and coarse in the moist summer, shivered in the
chill, and withered in the long frigid winter. Haruo Shirane –
who titled his book Traces of Dreams from this haiku – says that
“natsukusa (summer grasses) is both the rich, thick replenished
grass of the present, and the blood stained grass of the past,
an image both of nature’s constancy and of the impermanence
of all things.”2 Then “the four successive heavy “o” syllables in
tsuwamonodomo (plural for warriors) suggest the ponderous
march of warriors or the thunder of battle”;3 I have tried to
imitate this military rhythm with repetition of ‘w’ and ‘r’
sounds. Nothing remains of all those men killing each other,
however Bashō sees in spirit what is hidden in Time, the traces
of dreams lingering among the grasses.
Some believe that this haiku glorifies war, however, as I see
it, the verse highlights the futility of war—the vanity of male
achievements in comparison to the prolific fertility of summer
in the Far North:
I have seen all of the works that are done under the Sun
and behold, all is vanity and a chasing after wind.
Ecclesiastes 1: 14
Vanity, vanity, vanity. Men chasing after the wind of self-

importance, creating conflicts, sending young men to die,
making women and children suffer, all for nothing.
In each tsukeku which follows, the question arises: did Bashō
glorify war as men do, or along with women mourn its
emptiness?
The Night before a Battle
The poet Koeki begins with a nature scene and Bashō continues
with two armies waiting for daylight to allow them to kill each
other.
In the cold wind
at sunset, long drawn-out
cries of hawks
Foretell the heads to fall
in tomorrow’s battle
Kaze samuki yuuhi ni / tobi no koe hikite
Ikusa ni asu no / kubi o uranau
(BRZ 4: 1624) Koeki’s stanza is magnificent by itself, but even

more stunning is the way each element – the wind, the sunset,
the “long drawn-out cries” – feeds energy into Bashō’s ode to
Fate. In the link between the stanzas is the horror and cruelty
of war. Bashō took the elements Koeki provided and blended
them into that great question of existence which can never
be answered: Are the future and death ordained? Or are they
random?
“Tomorrow strangle!”
goose alive and squawking
into straw bag
The moon breathtaking,
market for army camp
Ashita shimen / kari o tawara ni / ike-oite
Tsuki sae-sugoki / jinchuu no ichi
(BRZ 6: 110) Fugyoku imagines a bird fighting against

containment while the farmer does not care what the bird
wants and is just doing his job. We hear his annoyed and
ungrammatical exclamation about tomorrow when the real
violence will silence this life. Bashō leaps to another scene which
could become violent tomorrow: a military encampment,
warriors here to do battle, but under a temporary truce,
they wait. While they wait, they have to eat, so a market has
sprung up to supply their needs; here the farmer brought the
goose to sell. Bashō’s stanza contains no violence, however
renku scholar Miyawaki Masahiko explains that the words
‘tomorrow strangle’ regarding the goose “give rise to a feeling
of coarse brutality which Bashō applies to the army camp.”5 My
daughter Jean says, the two stanzas “make each other shine.”
To become a nun?
parting in the night
By moonlight
at him in battle gear
she looks, searching
Ama ni naru beki /yoi no kinuginu /
Tsuki-gake ni / yoroi to yara o / mi sukashite
(BRZ 6: 260) The poet Rotsu conceives a husband leaving to
join the troops gathering at night, so early next morning they
can go into battle. If he dies, she can only survive as a nun.
Bashō complements her grim reality with an environment
(moonlight), a masculine and interesting image (the samurai
in his armor) and then the double-verb mi-sagashite, literally,
to “look, searching,” which in both original and translation
ends the verse. William Strunk, Jr. in The Elements of Style, tells
us to “place the emphatic words at the end.”6 Thus the double
verb emphasizes the woman’s activity and consciousness;
the comma between ‘looks’ and ‘searching’ makes the reader
pause on line, placing the woman’s stillness in contrast to the
movement of her leaving husband. She looks at him, searching
to see into the future: the division in the road tomorrow will
bring, either the world with him alive, or him dead.
Tomorrow to the enemy

our heads shall be sent
Having Kosanda
hold my cup of sake
one song to sing
Asu wa tataki ni / kubi okurisen
Kosanda ni / sakezuki torase / hitotsu utai
(BRZ 3: 199) Jugo begins with the thoughts of a general:

tomorrow is the great battle and they outnumber us, so their
swords shall cut off our heads. Miyawaki explains the feeling
of Japanese samurai bonding here:
“Kosanda (a name Bashō made up) is my trusted
retainer who has followed me for many years. By
giving him my cup of sake to hold while I sing, I thank
him for his devotion, and our vow to die together
tomorrow is all the more refreshing. In ‘one song I
sing’ is my feeling that, as I think of death, I have
settled without change in my resolution.”7
Bashō portrays the general and retainer glorifying war,
maintaining with the aid of sake the masculine illusion that
war is the ultimate human activity – but, as we see in the
following section, Bashō himself does not concur with this
glorification; he transcends the illusion of splendor that men
imagine in war.
Seeing through the Illusion
With iron bow

go forth to confront
a brutal world
Tigress at daybreak
yearns to be pregnant
Kurogane no / yumi tori kakeki / yo ni ide yo

Tora futokoro ni / yadoru akatsuki
(BRZ 3: 100) Kikaku begins with an “iron bow” which suggests

the Japanese folk tale of Yuriwaka, a general and provincial
governor betrayed by a subordinate and abandoned on an
island. The subordinate took over his governorship and tried
to take over his wife, but she—like Penelope in the Odyssey—
stalled while praying for the Gods to bring back Yuriwaka.
Her prayers reached a fisherman who rescued him, then
Yuriwaka took vengeance on his betrayer with his gigantic
bow. Elements of the story are so similar to the Odyssey that
some scholars believe that Portuguese missionaries in the 16th
century told the ancient Greek legend to Japanese who made
it their own.
Kikaku expresses the masculine fighting for vengeance (or
whatever men seek), then Bashō reaches for the ultimate in
female power. No sweat little girl, she is a fierce tigress—
and the tiger is usually associated with strength, courage,
independence, and determination—yet in her bosom, the
most intimate part of her body, she creates new life. She joins
the Sun-Goddess at daybreak giving birth to the new day.

In the prose passage that concludes his travel journal Backpack
Notes, Bashō describes the Battle of Ichinotani, in 1184 on the
beach at Suma (western Kobe), where the Genji forces led by
Yoshitsune, overwhelmed the Heike who had possession of
the infant Emperor. The surviving Heike panicked and ran for
their boats to escape:
The chaos of that era, the clamor of that day, float upon my
heart:
Empress Dowager reverently hugging the Infant,
Royal Mother’s legs catching in her royal skirt,
noble folk all tumble onto the cabin boat,
court ladies run back and forth with precious items,
lutes and harps wrapped in cushions and futons are thrown
onto the boat,
delicacies for the Emperor spill to become food for fish,
vanity boxes scatter like seaweed divers discarded.
A thousand years of sadness linger on this shore
even in the sound of waves breaking.
The Empress Dowager carries her six-year-old royal grandson;

her daughter-in-law has more mundane problems. The feeling
of confusion piles up with each of the seven images, then
releases in “sound of the waves breaking.” The amazing thing
about this passage is the profusion of women with no male
image anywhere. In the actual battle, there were thousands
of men here, killing each other or dying horrible deaths, yet
Bashō has eyes only for the women and what they are doing
to survive and continue their service in this madness created
by men. By focusing only on the women in these final words
of his journal, Bashō suggests that they are more gallant than
the famous warriors.
In A Narrow Path in the Heartlands, Bashō views the tombstones
of two women married to two brothers who died in battle to
protect Yoshitsune:

Although they were women,
the fame of their heroic bravery
is indeed heard in the world.
Onna naredo mo kaigai shiki na no yo in kikoetsuru
Bashō praises these women for their kaigai, a word usually

used for the heroism and bravery of men, such as the two
brothers who died—but instead of the masculine Chinese
characters 甲斐甲斐, he uses hiragana かいがい, the round
flowing script of women, which feminizes the word so the
reader will pause to wonder how kaigai can apply to women.
He says nothing at all about the brothers, but instead honors
their widows for progressing through the lonely years doing
the utmost they could for their children and household. Only
Bashō would consider this female conduct to be as brave and
gallant as dying in ferocious battle to protect a hero. He sees
through the illusion of male glory.
Outcomes of War
Chisoku begins and Bashō continues in this masterpiece of

war poetry:
After the years

of grieving…finally
past eighteen—
Day and night dreams
of Father in that battle
Uki toshi o /torite hatachi mo / yaya suginu
Chichi no ikusa o /oki fusa no yume
(BRZ 4: 233) Father died in war when I was small, and I have
grown up under the weight of that grief. Now, finally having
reached the prime of youthful vigor8 I look back over those
years of dreams constantly reverting to that one moment on a
battlefield I have never seen in reality.
The Japanese of the tsukeku does not indicate the teenager’s
gender; Miyawaki imagines a male:
“For a boy, his father is his model to learn from by

observation, his goal in life. Having reached the age
when now he can go to war, to see a dream of father in
battle is the same as being on the battlefield himself.
His regrets for his father can never be forgotten. The
bond between father and son is well expressed by this
tsukeku.”9
Can this verse reach the heart of one—girl or boy—whose
parent died in war or terrorism? I encourage teenagers who
have lost a parent to explore this link, especially as you
approach eighteen. If adults who counsel the bereaved show
them the verse along with the commentary, the clear, straight-
forward expression of personal feeling may be consoling.
In the next tsukeku, Bashō wrote both stanzas in succession:
Even monks
and old men regardless
forced to march
Earth pounded into mochi,
our offerings fearful
Bōzu tomo / toi tomo iwazu / oi-tate-bu
tsuchi no mochi / shinji osoroshi
(BRZ 8: 173) All the men, even bald monks and grandpas, have
been conscripted. Enough crops cannot be grown, so there is
famine. Without sufficient rice, the villagers pound dirt in with
rice on the mortar in to make rice-cakes for the divine spirits—
who will be dissatisfied and continue to send this endless war.
Ritual wands aflame
spirit of a white dove
Prayers for the dead,
moon shines on the mirror
stained with blood
Nusa hi ni moete /shiro-bato no shin
sōmon ( ) / tsuki teru kagami /chi nururan
(BRZ 3: 50; one sound-unit, a grammatical particle, is missing.)

Gyōun begins with Shinto purification rituals in which a
priest or female shaman waves a nusa, a wooden wand with
white paper streamers, left and right to absorb unclean energy.
Death being the ultimate pollution, at a funeral many wands
are used and defiled, so must be burned. To the Japanese, the
dove is the messenger of Hachiman, the Shinto god of war, and
patron saint of the Genji warrior clan, and white is the color
of that clan, so the white dove rising from burning wands is
the warrior’s spirit parting from Earth. Bashō continues the
opposition of red and white: the mirror represents the purity
of the soul, but the bloodshed in war stains the surface so it no
longer reflects the moon. Dreams of dead father, dirt mixed
with rice, mirror stained with blood, are all outcomes of war,
tragic but devoid of glory.
In conclusion is this tsukeku in which Bashō follows a stanza
by Sora in 1686, three years before they went on their journey
to the heartlands:
The punitive force

already has set forth
in solemn dignity
For one night’s vow
he empties his purse
Sude ni tatsu /utte no tsukai / ikameshiku
Iichiya no chigiri / zeni ga kazukeru
(BRZ 4: 109) The emperor has ordered troops to subjugate

the rebels; the samurai gather at night, and when morning
comes, leave camp with strict, solemn military precision.
Miyawaki, complying with the title of his book, Bashō’s Verses
of Human Feeling, explains the feelings of Japanese people in
Sora’s imagery: the troops following an imperial proclamation
feel kinpaku, “pressured and tense”; their genshuku, “gravity,
solemnity,” makes them monomonoshiku “pretentious, pompous,
showy”10
Meanwhile, the commander of the rebels (Han Solo) has spent
the night in a brothel, and at dawn hastily departs to prepare
his army. Before he leaves, unlikely to need cash ever again, he
gives all he has to his partner in “one night’s vow.” (Military
commanders carry considerable funds.) She is not mentioned
in any word, but still we can appreciate this indentured slave
who got lucky: instead of living out her days until every night
sex with a different customer brings her syphilis and death,
she can pay back the money the brothel loaned her family and
return to her village. We may feel her joy when she realizes
what this powerful man has given her, and also her grief
knowing why he is giving away all his cash.
Bashō contrasts the pretentious and contrived dignity of
the ‘punitive force’ with the noble altruism of the rebel
commander who rescues a human being from slavery, and also
with the glory of the woman ready to go forth on her new life,
fortified by the money she now has and by her memories of
the man who loved her for one night then gave her the means
to freedom.
Endnotes
1 Shirane, Haruo. Traces of Dreams: Landscape, Cultural Memory, and the Poetry of
Bashō. Stanford: Stanford University, 1998: p. 39.
2 Ibid, p. 239 - 240
2 Ibid, p. 238
4 BRZ 4: 162 means that this tsukeku appears in volume 4, page 162 of Shimasue
Kiyoshi (ed.) Bashō Renku Zenchōsai (Complete Anthology of Bashō Renku with
Interpretations) in eleven volumes. Tokyo: Ofuusha, 1970.
5 Miyawaki Masahiko. Bashō no Ninjōku: Tsukeku no Sekai (Bashō’s Verses of Human
Affection: The World of Tsukeku) Tokyo: Kadokawa, 2008: 207. I recommend this
inexpensive paperback to anyone who wants to study Bashō’s “bone marrow” in
Japanese.
6 Strunk, William Jr and White, E.B. The Elements of Style. Boston: Allyn and
Bacon, 2000: 32-33.
7 Miyawaki, op. cit. p. 209.
8 The Japanese says “age twenty,” however they counted birth as age one, and
each New Years as one year older, so the Western count averages a year and a
half younger. “Age twenty” was when a child became an adult, so the Western
eighteen corresponds.
9 Miyawaki, op. cit. p. 78
10 Ibid: p. 142 – 143
Jeff Robbins has lived in Japan for 30 years and studied in Japanese the haiku,
renku, tanka, journals, haibun, letters, and spoken word of Bashō. His website
https://www.Bashō4humanity.com explores several hundred Bashō works which
appear nowhere else in English. Jeff’s great wish is for affiliation: to join with a
group who will take over this material, work with him to improve it, and spread
it worldwide. Please send feedback to Bashō4humanity@gmail.com.

Welcoming the Reader
by Marilyn Hazelton
I t was an honor to be one of two judges for the 2019 Haiku

Society of America’s Merit Book Awards. I received 55 book
submissions from Gary Hotham, HSA’s 1st Vice-President,
toward the end of February last year (2020). Covid-19 soon
followed. I focused on the Merit Awards as a way of moving
through a terrifying new reality.
It worked. The writers who submitted books for the
competition had wrestled with aspects of the mystery of
this life, this earth, and the nature of illumination. Reading
the books was fascinating. Selecting was difficult. Once I
completed initial selections, Gary introduced me via email
to Rebecca Lilly, who had also completed her selections. We
emailed back and forth in April. In May, we sent our final
selections and comments to Gary.¹
After the winners were notified and announced on the HSA
website, I began to wonder how physical aspects of the books
had contributed to their effectiveness in turning toward the
reader. I chose six of the books that received awards and
began to look carefully at the covers, layout, opening and
closing pages, white space between poems, the photographs
or sketches included, as well as the typefaces. I was looking
for aspects that support the writing, and acknowledge the
reader’s presence. That effort taught me that physical aspects
of a book can become another kind of language that affects
the reader indirectly and directly.
The first book I considered was Wild Rhubarb: one line haiku by
Stuart Quine. The glossy cover photograph shows branches of
wild rhubarb with green leaves and buds with pink mouths
opening wildly as if gasping for sunlight against a hazy green
and pinkish background. The title and Stuart’s name are also
set in radiant white. Its back cover is calmer, dark green with
a few sentences about the author in radiant white type. The
book itself is in a landscape orientation, wider than it is tall.
Inside, a one line haiku floats above the middle of each page
as if rising toward and beyond the top of the page. White
space below each poem provides a foundation supporting that
rising.
Wild Rhubarb is remarkably easy to open and keep open while
reading. Appreciating this aspect taught me about the beauty
of accessibility for a reader who may need extra support; a
reader like Stuart. Before he died of Covid-19 in March of this
year, Stuart became disabled from myotonic dystrophy (an
inherited illness which can cause muscle loss and immobility).
He left behind a publication that is dignified, accessible and a
testament to a love of life.
That was quite emotional for me to think through. I want to
take a short break from considering HSA Merit Book Awards,
to think about the page you’re reading in Frogpond.
Preparing to write this, I reread several of the essays in the
spring/summer 2020 issue. Because I tend to focus on content,
I had not appreciated how beautifully the pages of Frogpond are
organized concerning typeface and spacing. Michael Ketchek,
the journal’s editor, suggested that I ask Ignatius Fay, who is
responsible for the design of Frogpond, about these details.
Via email, Ignatius told me that the typeface is Cormorant
Medium, 12-point, on 14-point leading.2 This means that
the type is large enough to read comfortably and the space
between lines allows the pages to breathe. Which is another
kind of accessibility.
Also, typefaces have stories. Cormorant is a relatively new font
developed by Christian Thalman, a designer in Switzerland
who was inspired by Garamond fonts.2 Those fonts were
developed by Claude Garamond, a designer in Paris in the
1500s, before Matsuo Bashō (1644–1694) began his travels.3
In looking carefully, I also noticed that the height of the first
letter of the first word in Frogpond essays is enlarged. A quick
look on the internet showed that it’s an “initial” or “drop cap,”
a type of capital letter that has “…been around for several
thousand years to…mark the start of a text.”4

In returning to look through more Merit Books, I was delighted
to see that the last page in Furrows of Snow by Glenn G. Coates
contains a Colophon which includes information about the
book. In the Colophon, I learned that the cover and title page
typeface are set in Futura Light. (It was designed by Paul
Renner in 1927, who was influenced by styles of the Bauhaus
era.) Also, the haiku and prose are set in Goudy Old Style.
Which was created in 1915 by Frederic W. Goudy, inspired in
part by the lettering on a Renaissance painting.5
The looking forward and looking back effect of these typefaces
matches the pull of time backward and forward in this Glenn’s
haiku. This movement complements photographs (listed in
the Colophon) of his mother as a young woman, of himself
fishing in hip deep water while turned away from the camera,
and of his daughter holding up a fish almost as large as she is.
Furrows of Snow is a slim book with one (sometimes two) haiku
on each off-white page. The photographs and Glenn’s’ poems
hold the writer and perhaps the reader within the soft comfort
of celebration and acknowledged sorrow.
The mood of Ludmila Balabanova’s book of haibun, Sunflower
Field, is a witness to the complexity of life. For example, her prose
and poems are written in Bulgarian and English. Bulgarian’s
Cyrillic alphabet was commissioned for development by the
Bulgarian Tsar, Simeon I the Great, in the 9th Century. 6
The front cover is divided into four unequal parts with
sketches in each part. Its title, in Bulgarian and English, floats
in the upper right quadrant. In the lower right quadrant, a
blueprint pictures an entrance to a house or apartment. To
its left, a woman stands patiently beneath shelves of fragile
dishes, glasses and teacups. The background looks as if blue,
green and black were lightly applied by pencil and rubbed
together to suggest an internal and external fog.
The back cover tells a different story. Testimonials in white
text on green and beige backgrounds recommending the book
in both languages are decisive. Even before the reader opens
the book, there is a suggestion of contrasting moods. Inside,
Bulgarian versions of the haibun are on pages to the left of the
spine, while English translations lie on the right. All of the
pages contain significant white space above and below each
haibun. Sketches included within the book pivot away from
and dance with the haibun. Sunflower Field feels alive, as if it
has a heartbeat.
I saved Haiku As Life: A Kaneko Tohta Omnibus, Essays, an
Interview, Commentary and Selected Haiku in Translation for a final
consideration. Within 504 pages, Haiku As Life contains four
smaller books which offer a wealth of information on Kaneko
Tohta (1919–2018) a Japanese haiku poet, as well as translations
of a number of his haiku. Kaneko’s poems reflect the time in
which he lived, including the death and destruction he saw as
a Naval officer during WW II and the aftermath of that war.
It was produced by a team of writers and translators, led by
Richard Gilbert. The team, also known as the Kon Nichi
Translation Group, includes Richard Gilbert, Itō Yūki,
David Ostman, Masahiro Hori, Koun Franz, Tracy Franz
and Kanamitsu Takeyoshi. Having closely examined the
books mentioned earlier, I was able to see how the typefaces
and spacing of Haiku As Life made this volume accessible and
readable. I asked Jim Kacian, the owner of Red Moon Press,
who published Haiku As Life, about the typefaces and spacing.
He replied that he had chosen Adobe Garamond at 13 points
as a standard for the prose, and the same typeface at 11 points
for the footnotes. (Claude Garamond and the 1500s appear
again!) However, Kaneko’s haiku were printed in English
using the Kozuka Mincho typeface recently developed by a
Japanese designer. 7
Considering Kaneko’s impact on contemporary Japanese
haiku, using old and new typefaces seems fitting. Also, Jim
explained that the spacing between the lines of prose is a
generous 15.6 points (slightly larger than the type). And, there
is extra space between the paragraphs of prose as well as in
the footnotes.
I consulted Richard Gilbert on how Kaneko’s haiku are
displayed in in this publication. Via email with Richard,
I understood that the three versions of each selected haiku
appear first in Japanese in kanji mixed with kana; then in
romaji (a romanization of the kanji and kana); and then in
English. This helped me appreciate the dynamic interplay of
these versions as they sometimes appear to dance with each
other on the pages.
The front cover of Haiku As Life provides a foundation for
the book with a photograph of a monument stone on which
a haiku by Kaneko has been elaborately carved. This stone
straddles two smaller stones set apart to allow space beneath
the monument. It feels like an illustration of how Kaneko’s
haiku connects older and newer writings of haiku in Japan.
This is the haiku carved in large kanji and kana:
a wild boar
comes eats air
spring mountain path
The design of the front cover leads a reader’s eyes from the
top, where Haiku As Life is printed in Adobe Garamond Pro
36-point type in white followed by A Kaneko Tohta Omnibus
in 30-point type below the title and above the photograph of
the monument. The carved poem in the photograph is larger
than the title or subtitle. Below the photograph, in 24-point
type, is the information: Essays, an Interview, Commentary, and
Selected Haiku in Translation. On the back cover white text floats
on a background of green the color of spring. The effect is
beautifully profound.
In the end what I learned while writing this essay is that
typefaces, white space that cradles and enhances language, as
well as photographs and sketches, are ways writers, editors and
publishers can support the journey contained within a book
while turning toward the reader to extend a hand in welcome.

1 https://www.hsa-haiku.org/meritbookawards/merit-book_archive.htm#2020
2 https://www.behance.net/gallery/28579883/Cormorant-an-open-source-
display-font-family
3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garamond
4 https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2012/04/drop-caps-historical-use-and-
current-best-practices/
5 https://www.sessions.edu/notes-on-design/type-in-history-futura/
https://www.fonts.com/font/linotype/goudy/story
6 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyrillic_scrip
7 https://www.fontspring.com/fonts/adobe/kozuka-mincho-pr6n

Book Reviews
Reviewed by Michael Ketchek
a small tree of tender leaves by K Ramesh (2020, CinnamonTeal

Design and Publishing, Margao Goa, India) 54 pages ISBN
978–93–87676–61–9
a small tree of tender leaves is full of the details that come from
life carefully observed. There are many places where Ramesh
catches the small important moments that make up his haiku.
Some of those places are nature:
the ant hole

too small for the potato
chip piece
Some of the places are in town:
barber shop…
only one fish left
in the aquarium
Sometimes the moments happen right at home:
winter night…
mother and I search
or a pill on the floor
With 54 pages and two haiku to a page, there are plenty of

places to visit with Ramesh and share his insights. A fine
collection of haiku that I highly recommend.
ji

the silence of cymbals and a tiny wobble by the Spring Street
Haiku Group (2020) 4 ⅛” by 5 ½” stapled. $10 postpaid (US only)
Spring Street Haiku Group c/o Seidboard World Enterprises,
POB 137 New York NY 100012. Cash or check made out to
Seidboard World Enterprises or Paypal@seidboard.com
Foreign orders inquire at mykelboard@gmail.com
Remember those old westerns or sci-fi paperback books with

two front covers and two novels in one volume. The Spring
Street Haiku group brings the flip-over book to haiku. One
side is a tiny wobble haiku from 2017 (the year Spring Street
forgot to publish an anthology of their members’ poems) and
the other side is the silence of cymbals haiku from 2019. The
Spring Street Haiku Group is made up of many well-known
poets and in this double volume we get a sample of their best
work. Two from each year, first 2017:
courthouse ladies’ room

the man in the stall
avoiding I.C.E.
Miriam Borne
winter beach
a mylar balloon snagged on driftwood
parties on
Scott Mason
From 2019
the circus in winter seclusion

the elephant chained to a palm
trumpets to the moon
Cor van den Heuval
dusk
rabbits quietly
eat the windfalls
Doris Heitmeyer
Where the Tide Meets the Stream by Glenn G. Coats (2020,
Pincola Publishing, Carolina Shores, North Carolina) 68
pages, 6” by 9” perfectbound. ISBN 9798670630597 $8.00 on
Amazon Books.
Glenn Coates, in a note accompanying this book, describes

this collection of haiku as, “a tribute to my father and all he
has taught me about fishing and water.” The lessons have sunk
deep as can be seen in this poem:
they drip
even in my dreams
water from oars
The connection that Coats has with nature is evident in the

following two haiku:
a life on the line mountain trout
and
scent of pine
I pour the river
From my boots
Fifty poems, one to a page, each a testament to what a father

has taught his son.
ji
One Breath by Ben Gaa (2020, Spartan Press, Kansas City,

Missouri) 63 pages, 5” by 7” perfectbound. ISBN 978-1-952411-
21-2. $13.00 available at amazon.com.
Ben Gaa’s new book of haiku and senryu is neither rooted in

nature nor in an urban environment. Gaa travels effortlessly
back and forth between the two. From life in a pond:
alone again
at the water’s edge…
white egret
To life in a pub:
catching the wrong eye across the bar

cocktail bitters
A very fine collection of poems that make you pause and listen
to what is said as well as to what isn’t. As in this haiku which
conveys much feeing without falling into sentimentality:
the pub
full of old friends
that aren’t mine
With three haiku to a page there are many haiku to savor in

this coaction.
ji
The Helping Hand Haiku Anthology (Including Senryu, Tanka,

and Haiga) Edited by Robert Epstein (2020, Middle Island
Press, West Union WV) 256 Pages, 6” by 9” Perfectbound.
ISBN 9798691997808
Epstein’s book The Helping Hand Haiku Anthology is dedicated

“To All Those Who Help & Care Everywhere.” It starts with a
variety of quotes by well- known people from Mother Teresa
to Mohamad Ali. The quote from the man who floats like a
butterfly and stings like bee is one I especially like, “Service to
others is the rent you pay for your room on earth.” Following
the quotes is a thoughtful preface by Epstein on the nature of
compassion, kindness and helpfulness. This book of 256 pages,
with mostly four haiku per page, is an outpouring of love.
Examples of all sorts of kindness are touched upon. There is
the kindness given to a dying friend by John J. Dunphy:
hospice
I summarize the book
He won’t finish
The kindness to one’s fellow creatures as told by Bill Kenny:
come back sparrow

I make a lot
of crumbs
Even the unintentional kindness of a child:
tender green
naming his friends
my child includes me
Marcus Larsson.
This book is an antidote to the pessimism and helplessness of

the troubled times in which we live. So, allow yourself to feel
the compassion that comes from the hearts of the poets that
are in this fine anthology and read.
ji
Spring Visitors by Joseph M. Kusmiss (2020 Red Moon Press,

Winchester, VA) 4 ½” by 6 ½”, perfectbound, ISBN 978-1-
947271-64-7 $15.00
Spring Visitors with its four chapters, one for each season, takes
us not only through the year but also travels through space.
Starting on the ground:
though unbidden
they arrive—
dandelions
A haiku that rises up:
morning supermarket
in the gray sky
sea gulls circle
Up to the heavens:
unable to sleep
the seven sisters
keep me company
And even a poem to an ethereal place well known to all us

poets:
very close
another haiku returns
to limbo
With its cheerful cover Spring Visitors is an enjoyable read

through the seasons and more.
ji
Cricket Dusk by Carolyn Hall (2020, Red Moon Press,

Winchester, VA) 4 ½” by 6 ½” perfectbound. ISBN 978-1-
947271-59-3. $15.00
Cricket Dusk is divided into four parts. Each part takes its name
from a haiku in that section. The four haiku that give title to
those sections are.

unfurling oak leaves
a burst of birdsong
brings out the binoculars
hungry but for what winter moon
bend in the heron’s neck

minnows catch
the sunlight
patched crack
in asphalt
these autumn poems
These four poems are a fine example of how carefully chosen

words can paint a scene and suggest a variety of emotions.
From the exuberance of spring in nature the “unfurling” of
leaves, the “burst” of song and how it leads to the same in
people; time to get those “binoculars” out of winter storage.
hungry but for what winter moon is nicely open ended. It leaves
me wondering if the poet couldn’t decide between cheese or a
cookie or maybe love.
The last two haiku both show Hall’s ability to say a lot by not
saying too much. This is a fine collection of poems by a highly
esteemed haiku poet.
ji
Travel Souvenirs haiku from near and far by Adelaide B. Shaw

(2020, Cyberwwit.net, Allahbad, India) 94 pages, 5 ½ ” by 8 ½ ”,
Perfectbond, ISBN 978-81-948271-3-9 $15.00
Adelaide Shaw’s Travel Souvenirs is truly a trip around the

world and through time, and as Shaw warns us, “Changes
occur over time, and what I wrote about ten, twenty, thirty
years go and more, may not be true now.” Going back to a
Swiss village in the 1970s:

night life
the café’s German Shepard
snaps at flies
Time is most fluid in Rome where the ancient mingles with

the living moment:
Coliseum at dusk
the hungry eyes of cats
in the arena
Smell, taste and sight are all present to give the reader a sense
of the Seychelle Islands in 1993:
scented darkness—
the waitress serves
spicy curry
Not everything is from distant lands and I picked this haiku

because it might have been written less than ten miles from
where I live in Rochester New York:
autumn ritual
crowding the apple orchard
city day trippers
So from the foreign to the familiar ( I have been part of those

“city day trippers” at a “U-pickem” apple farm) this collection,
with between three to five haiku per page, covers a wealth of
places and experiences.
ji
Zigzag of the Dragonfly Writing the Haiku Way by Patricia J.

Machmiller (2020, Yuki Teikei Haiku Society) 98 pages, 8 ½ ” by
8 ½ ” Perfectbond. ISBN 978-1-7357235 $18.00 at wwwyths.org
Zigzag of the Dragonfly, as is plainly stated in the introduction,
“is about how to write haiku.”
It is divided into three sections, the first entitled, A Way of
Writing gives the reader several exercises to get the creative
juices flowing as well as the time-tested advice to take a walk.
Machmiller also offers suggestions on what to do while taking
that walk, “Experience the world through your senses and
absorb it…” and practical advice to take along a notebook “as
an aid to remembering your experience.” The next sections of
this first chapter is advice on how to turn the jottings in one’s
notebook into poems. The second chapter, Elements of Haiku
is divided into eight sections which goes into more technical
aspects of haiku such as kigo, seasonality, juxtaposition, sound
and form. The last short chapter Revision and Developing Your
Critic offers a fine list of books that will help a poet cultivate a
better understanding of what makes a good haiku. Machmiller
also suggests personalizing your inner critic in order to develop
a working relationship with him or her. In closing Machmiller
lets the reader know that besides having guided the reader to
be a better haiku poet, “my wish for you: an open and growing
mind filled with wonder and appreciation for the world as you
find it in your daily life. “
ji
Legacy: Thirty Years of Haiku by William Scott Galasso (2020,

Galwin Press, Laguna Woods California) 163 pages 6” by 9”,
perfectbound ISBN 978-1=7327527-2-6 $14.95 US at Amazon.
com For further information on previously published books
contact galwinpress@yahoo.com
Legacy: Thirty Years of Haiku is 163 pages with most pages
containing four haiku. And I do mean haiku. If you are looking
for senryu you need to go to last year’s book by Galasso, Rough
Cut: Thirty Years of Senryu. In these 163 pages there is not only
a wealth of haiku, but a wealth of really good haiku. It is with
great difficulty that I pick a few haiku to highlight the work
of this splendid poet. Divided into the five traditional seasons
of haiku I will chose one from each section.
From New Year’s Day:
New Year’s Day

the couch conforming to
my well fed bulk
From Winter:
snowflakes…
until the sea joins them
no two alike
From Spring:
fair exchange
birdsong for
birdseed
From Autumn:
resting my axe
for spiced cider,
for blackberry pie
ji
Rattled haiku, Corine Timmer editor (2020, Bicadeideias

Publishing, Estoi Portugal) 48 pages, 20,5 cm by 13.5 cm,
paperback. ISBN 978-989-99760-4-7 Available www.
bicadeideias.com
2020 is the year of the rat according to the Chinese calendar.

This may seem appropriate to those people who have a negative
opinion of rats, but not Corine Timmer who says, “My aim with
this anthology is to present the rat in a more positive light. But
let’s not forget about the mouse. In the Chinese language, rat
and mouse share the same root word—shu—and the Year of the
Mouse sounds a whole lot better to some.” So. mice haiku are
also included in this anthology. For those people with negative
opinions of rats let it be known that proceeds of this book will
go to, APOPO a charity “known for its HeroRATs. These are
African giant pouched rats (Cricetomys ansorgei) trained to
find landmines, and good at it. For twenty years, APOPO’s
scent-detection rats have been sniffing out landmines.”
Part of the charm of this book are the cover and six delightful
pages of art that depict rats made out of leaves and other
natural objects. The haiku, many from well-known poets, are
as varied as the lives of rats and mice.
attic mice
building a nest from
his love letters
Carol Raisfeld
ninja-like
the kangaroo rat eludes
a rattlesnake’s strike
Alan S. Bridges
gothic teenager
her pet rat dressed up
in leather and studs
Ron C. Moss
ji
All This Talk Yuki Teikei Haiku Society Members Anthology 2020
edited by Charles Trumbull (2020 Yuki Teikei Haiku Society,
San Jose California) 140 pages, 6” by 9” ISBN 978-1-7357235-
0-1 $15.00
All This Talk is composed of seven chapters plus an introduction
by the editor. From my reading of this anthology, I learned
that the Yuki Teikei Society was founded in 1975 as the
“English-language Division of the Yukuharu Haiku Society
of Japan.” It became an independent entity in 1978 when it
took the name Yuki Teikei. This,and more of the history of the
society, can be found in several of the chapters. Of course, no
members’ anthology would be complete without a section of
members’ haiku, and as a bonus this anthology also contains
a chapter featuring black and white haiga. With artwork
ranging from painting to photography, this chapter showcases
the many varieties of haiga. One of the chapters that I found
most interesting was the one that featured the winners of the
Tokutomi Haiku Contest. The contest guidelines, in part, are
as follows, “writing haiku in English along traditional Japanese
guidelines, using three lines with a 5-7-5 syllable pattern and
a seasonal reference.” Reading the winners and honorable
mentions of this contest highlighted what dedicated haiku
poets can do following these traditional rules. A few examples
beginning with the winner of the contest:
acorn on my palm
the life of a mighty oak
flashes before me
Priscilla Lignori
immediately
our conversation lightens
two soaring skylarks
Alison Woolpert
park closes at dusk

the plaintive howling of wolves
from deep in the zoo
Linda M. Papanicolaou
With its many fine haiku and other interesting features this
anthology is a worthy addition to any person’s haiku library.
Backwards: senryu by Vasile Moldovan (2020. Editura UZP,
Bucharest Romania) 94 pages, 5 ¾” by 8” Perfectbund. ISBN
978-606-9654-25-5
This delightful book of senryu by Vasile Moldovan, the

former president of the Romanian Society of Haiku, also
features humorous full color drawings by Crisiti Vecerdea
at the beginning of each of the six sections. There is also an
informative Forward to the book by Dan Norea.
In the chapter titled The Old Scarecrow was one of my favorite
senryu in this book
In my pocket
as in that of scarecrow
no coin
From the chapter The Snowman a senryu that reveals how the
current pandemic is the same worldwide:
All in quarantine
only a man outside…
and that is made of snow
ji
Roaming the World: Photo-haiku anthology edited by Cornelia

Atunasiu (2019 Romania) 190 pages 5 ¾” by7 ⅞” perfetbound.
ISBN 978-606-8412-68-9
This book of photographs and haiku was graciously sent to me

by Vasile Moldovan who kindly translated the title for me as
it and the introduction are only in Rumanian, but thankfully
the haiku are translated into English, and of course the black
and white photos need no translation. A photograph of a
statue that depicts an eagle tearing at the liver of Prometheus
(his punishment for giving us mortals fire) is accompanied by
this haiku:
Promethean torture—
But are we worthy
of this wonderful gift
Jules Cohn Botea
A photo of Montreal’s Olympic stadium with a haiku that

honors the achievement of Nadia Comăneci a Romanian
gymnast:
The Olympic Games—

In Montreal a mark ten
Romanian girl
Dumitru Rosu
This book is another example that haiku is alive and well in

Romania.
ji
Recycled Virgin by Lori A Minor (2020, Human/Kind Press,

Wilmington, DE) 62 pages 6.5” x 6.5”. Perfect Bound, Soft Cover
$10 from https://www.humankindjournal.org/bookschaps.html
Reviewed by Joshua Gage
Haiku and senryu poets are no strangers to the topic of sex.

The earliest masters of both forms readily accepted sex and
human sexuality as worthwhile topics for their poems, and
much has been written about this topic. In English Language
Haiku, numerous books and anthologies of erotic and sex
haiku and senryu have been published, and certain Japanese
short-form poets are known for their sexual poems. Similarly,
topics like abuse and feminism are also readily accepted in
modern English Language Haiku. Many poets have written
about such topics. However, rarely has a poet taken these two
topics—sex and violence—and combined them into a stirring
arch of abuse, guilt, pain and eventual triumph as Lori A
Minor has done in her newest collection, Recycled Virgin.
Readers are introduced immediately to the themes in the
book with the opening poem
a sin
just to say it . . .
s-xual intercourse
These themes—religion, guilt, abuse, sexual exploration—are

prevalent throughout the book. Minor’s narrative continues
with other raw, painful poems that explore and challenge
cultural taboos regarding sex:
small town gossip…

the pastor’s wife
tells me I’m dirty
Minor also isn’t afraid to talk about non-hetero sexuality, and

uses this book to celebrate sex and sexuality in all its forms
and variations across the human experience:
taste of cherry
I wrap my lips
around her clit
Clearly, there is an honesty and a fearlessness in the language

of these poems that other haiku poets might shy away from.
Instead of fearing that these topics aren’t poetic or are too raw
or raunchy for forms like haiku or senryu, Minor advances
fearlessly with her language in ways that are both bold but
tender and subtle.
Also, while many authors seek to glorify sex or sexual
encounters, Minor isn’t afraid to deal with the alternatives.
There are poems in this collection about awkward sexual
encounters, some of which read as humbling for the speaker:
blood moon
my period under
his foreskin
However, whereas some poets might use these topics in ways to

shock or upset the reader, Minor works them into a narrative
of sexual growth and ultimate triumph, so that they do not
read as shocking, but simply awkward and tender moments
with a larger narrative of sexual exploration and survival.
Ultimately, Lori A Minor’s Recylcled Virgin is a very young,
very exuberant, very bold book. She approaches the topic of
sex from the perspective of a young woman in an honest and
modern way. While some authors would approach the topic
with caution or veiled euphamisms, Minor fully embraces the
topic of human sexual relationships in all its glory. Her poems
are frank and unflinching, but also gentle and sensual when
necessary. If Recylced Virgin is any indication, Lori A Minor is
a poet to keep one’s eye on. This book certainly should be on
everyone’s shelves.
ji
All the Windows Lit by Rich Youmans, (2017 Snapshot Press,

Ormskirk, Great Britain) http://www.snapshotpress.co.uk/
ebooks/All_the_Windows_Lit.pdf
Reviewed by Taofeek Ayeyemi (Aswagaawy)
All the Windows Lit is a medley of masterpieces that cling to

the reader moments after reading them. A nostalgic haibun
collection with narratives of intense family relationship and
love affairs – right from his parents to his own, we are welcomed
with “On Finding a Photo of My Mother and Father’s First
Date,” wherein the poet shows how his parent sowed their seed
of love, basking in the aura of affection unknowing what the
future holds amidst better and worse experience:
“They stare so intently—can they see it all? The dates, the
wedding, the red-brick home, the daily insulin that toughens
her arm; the picnics and vacations, the midnight reactions,
the son whose birth prompts the first eye hemorrhage; more
hemorrhages, year after year, until blindness, failing kidneys,
infection, and then…”
dinner for two:

over a bitter wind
wishbone’s crack
The fleeting nature of haiku are impressively found in the

urgency with which the prose in this collection are crafted, their
one-paragraph-ness and the justifying alignment formatting
gives them a visual beauty that encourages readership.
In “Swish,” while narrating what seems to be his childhood
experience at basketball, his dexterity at jump shot and making
swish, he shows subtly the ecstasy of winning as follows:
“He closes his eyes, imagines it again: the court, the tiered
crowd, the ticking clock, the ball rolling off his fingertips and
rising over every shout and whisper, every wide eye, rising and
rising and then falling falling falling into that final sound of
entry, passage, deliverance…”
longest night—
a boy’s chalk outline
facing all the stars
Worthy of note is the brilliant use of kireji in the haiku which

help attain precision and, by way of experimentation, the
use of monoku and four-line haiku in some of the haibun. In
“Hospice,” we have this:
bird shadows across

the drawn shade:
the pulse in his neck
flutters

The skillful configuration of cosmic-banal elements throughout
the book makes one wonder if the author is an astronomer.
In the closing haibun “Hale-Bopp,” where the two lovebirds
await the comet that comes every 4,000 years, and where we
have the title verse, we read:
“Me, the house, the birches—all are swallowed by the deep
night. Then I look toward Ann. Her eyes, bright as planets,
peer toward the great sky, watching, hoping . . . ”
our small house

under galaxies—
all the windows lit
Every piece in this collection is a painstaking yet effortless

display of deftness by a Master of haibun – Rich Youmans –
an editor of the defunct Haibun Today and Editor-in-Chief of
contemporary haibun online, as he takes his reader by the hand
and walk him through haibun aesthetics. His exploration of
natural environment to set beautiful plots for his narratives
is commendable. And the spontaneity of these powerful and
personal stories make the work unputdownable.
ji
This One Life by Renée Owen (2020, Backbone Press, Durham,

NC), 7” by 5” perfectbound. ISBN 978-0-9994659-7-4. $10.00
from backbonepress.org.
Reviewed by Sharon Pretti
This One Life won 2nd place in Backbone’s Haiku Chapbook

Contest. It follows Renée Owen’s first full-length haiku
collection, Alone on a Wild Coast, and is equally rich, layered,
and skillfully written. Renée explores our relationship to
impermanence along with our connection to nature and our
fellow humans. These are poems by a poet who cares deeply
about the world and knows how to use language to shine light
on the world’s complexities. The chapbook is divided into four
sections and opens with “Borderless Days.”
needing
no permission
sky blue lupine
This poem sets the tone for the poet’s conversation with nature.
There is a feeling that the poet longs to be free of constraints,
to break free of the body and join what she reveres: indian
paintbrush, top-knotted quail, breaking waves. Renée is a
poet keenly aware of what it is to be human in this world and
she expertly expresses both the joy and sadness of this life.
dusk on the mountaintop as if I had wings
first light
titrating the edge
of longing
“Rippling Wind,” the book’s second section, continues to

explore the poet’s relationship with nature. Can the natural
world soothe or guide or strengthen us as we confront loss
and the passage of time? Renée inhabits these questions with
all of her senses.
a thousand shapes holes

in the river rocks in a long life
all with your name leaf skeletons
We aren’t told whose name or whose life. This openness

becomes a doorway the reader can walk through. The quietness
of these poems is deceiving. They accomplish the best of what
a haiku can accomplish: the poems are never static, offering us
a new journey each time we read them.
Renée is a poet who lives in northern California. She has
witnessed the devastating wildfires of the past several years.
In “Nothing But Smoke,” the third section, she directs her
unflinching eye to the human and natural losses that remain
all too relevant to present day climate changes.
cry atlas
of a screech owl of a lost neighborhood
burn zone sifting ash
This is docupoetry, an especially difficult achievement in haiku

form. Renée does not fall into simply recording an event. She
writes from within the event, using strong sensory images and
feelings that are never heavy-handed.
The tone of reverence for all that is alive continues in the
book’s last section, “Thin Line Of Hope.” Like all seasoned
poets, Renée offers no answers. Hope is not put forth as a balm
to remedy our losses. Renée respects the present moment. This
is where she grounds her experience and vision.
this one life whale spouts

I move the sparrow this thin line of hope
to higher ground migrating north
In a world that is overflowing with distraction, the understated

voice can be the one that is most arresting and most needed.
Renée Owen succeeds in making us stop and listen. This One
Life is a beautiful haiku collection that belongs in everyone’s
hands.
ji
Briefly Reviewed by Randy Brooks
The Ohio Haiku Anthology edited by Joshua Gage (2020,

Cuttlefish Books, Huron, OH) 164 pages, 4.5” x 6.25”. Four-
color card covers, perfectbound. ISBN 9781735025704. $10 plus
$3 postage from https://pottygok.wixsite.com/cuttlefishbooks/
books.
The Ohio Haiku Anthology features haiku by 38 contemporary
haiku poets who live or have lived in Ohio. After writing haiku
for several years on his own, editor Joshua Cage was delighted
to discover a growing haiku community in Ohio, led by Julie
Warther, former Midwest Coordinator of the Haiku Society
of America. With her encouragement, Joshua gathered this
excellent collection “celebrating haiku in Ohio, both its past
and present” (page 4). Here is a sampling of work from this
anthology: train’s whistle / the woods much deeper / than when I
was young by Francis W. Alexander (2). flooded cornfield / ribbons
of peach sunset / between each row by Sharon Hammer Baker
(21). distant thunder / my daughter’s laughter / on the carousel by
Matthew Cariello (41). summer heat— / the frayed embroidery / on
her jeans by Joshua Gage (58). powdered sugar snow / mom’s cursive
in the margin / of the recipe by Jennifer Hambrick (67). foster
home / the bitter sweet taste / of lemon meringue by Joe Mckeon
(105). room to room / we take them with us / the last sunflowers by
Holli Rainwater (115) and one more: pine needle path—/ ordinary
words / layered just so by Julie Warther (141). Thanks to Joshua
Gage’s anthology, it is clear that Ohio has blossomed with
haiku writers!
ji
Briefly in Spring: Haiku & Senryu by Judith E.P. Johnson (2020,

Ginninderra Press, Port Adelaide, SW, Australia) 64 pages, 5” x
7”. Four-color card covers, perfectbound. ISBN 9781760419196.
Available from amazon.com.
Briefly in Spring is Judith Johnson’s twelfth book of poetry.

This one features previously unpublished haiku and senryu.
From her opening haiku: swooping swallow / oh! the swooping
swallow / out of sight (7) to final haiku: briefly / in spring we meet
/ forget me not (62), we enter into Johnson’s quiet celebration
of ephemeral joys—a sense of whimsical wonder within the
space of each haiku. She expresses these discoveries with the
lightness of a child’s perspective. sparrow’s nest / child and I / share
the secret (9). Even something dark as a prosthetic leg becomes
a source of creative growth as in this haiku: old soldier’s cottage
/ geraniums grow / in a wooden leg (15). Johnson is also very good
at expressing quietude: eventide / the murmur of doves / fills my
thoughts (30). She knows loss as well as love: sunset lighthouse /
the long shadow / of white crosses (36). There are new generations
facing new problems: climate change / she nurses / a new grandchild
(55). This collection gives much to those willing to meet briefly
in spring.
ji
Park Bench Memories by Gary Hotham (2020, Yiqralo Press,

Scaggsville, MD) 42 pages, 5” x 8”. Four-color card covers,
saddle stitch. ISBN 9798667125679. $5 from amazon.com.
Park Bench Memories is Gary Hotham’s latest collection of

haiku that have been published in journals over the last ten
years. In the epilogue Hotham cites a favorite quote from
theologian John M. Frame: “All the wonderful things that we
find in personality—intelligence, compassion, creativity, love,
justice—are not ephemeral data, doomed to be snuffed out
in cosmic calamity; rather, they are aspects of what is most
permanent, most ultimate. They are what the universe is really
all about” (32). They are also what Gary Hotham’s haiku are
all about—moments that show our intelligent, compassionate,
creative, loving, justice-seeking humanity. Consider the title
poem: holding up the snowfall / the park bench / in her memory (1).
At first we think it is the park bench holding up the snow,
but then we discover that it is her memory holding the park
bench and the snow and of course much more. Several of the
haiku in this collection are about loss and what is left behind.
hospice walls / a print of the famous / still life (4). How do we recall
the past and bring it into our present? his death snuck by me /
last night’s storm measured / in the rain gauge (7). Hotham always
has an eye out for the layers of art beyond art as in this one:
The Louvre / one of the faces in the crowd / Mona Lisa (15). We live
amongst things but embody them with our imaginations and
memories: after the funeral / her clothes hanging / by themselves
(29). In the epilogue Gary Hotham notes that he has been
writing haiku since 1966 “making moments wear words.” This
collection features some of the best dressed moments I have
met!
ji
Gratitude in the Time of COVID-19: The Haiku Hecameron edited by

Scott Mason (2020, Girasole Press, Chappaqua, NY) 240 pages,
5” x 7”. Four-color printed hard-cover. ISBN 9781649706195.
Available for $24.95 (plus postage) at thewondercode.com.
Scott Mason states that “The inspiration and loose model

for this book is another literary classic. In the mid-14th
century, the Italian author Giovanni Boccaccio published
The Decameron, a collection of stories told over ten days by
ten young women and men who had decamped to a Tuscan
country villa to escape the plague in Florence. [Boccaccio’s
coinage ‘Decameron’ derives from ‘ten days.’] The book you are
holding consists of work in haiku and related forms written by
one hundred contemporary poets worldwide at the very height
of the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s arranged in one hundred
numbered day sections [hence ‘Hecameron’], each occupying a
two-page spread—we literarily turn the page to a new day. But
while The Decameron ostensibly served as a work of escapism,
the work featured in this collection celebrates a return to the
everyday wonders that surround us, even (and especially) in
a strange and fraught time. These pieces are imbued with the
haiku spirit of gratitude” (17-18).
For some, as in Lew Watts’ haibun, the quarantine is a time
of remembrance. He and his wife are listening to Abbey
Road “on repeat”. The haibun ends with a phone call to
grandchildren and this haiku: here comes the sun / I tell the little
darlings / it’ll be all right. In another haiku we see connections
between generations: quarantine haircut / a snowfall of mom’s hair
/ on the hardwood floor by Susan Antolin. Sometimes our only
consolation is from pets: time for a walk / I explain coronavirus
/ to my dogs by Rose Clement. The collection includes several
sequences including “Pandemic Day” by Penny Harter which
ends with this one: another dream— / I join strangers round a fire
/ and pray for them. Perhaps the title of the collection comes
from the haibun, “Words in Praise of Kentucky Soil” on page
22 by Jonathan Humphrey. Here is an excerpt: “Only now,
with the virus spreading, do I think of my mother and her
garden. The border to the north is closed. I will not see her
for some time. She will be placing things in the earth, and
digging things from it. Her back will be sore, and her hands
heavy, as she parts leaves, stalks, her own hair. She will pause
for the dragonfly that pauses for her. They will hover there
together. And the world will be righted when they land.”
Here is Jonathan’s closing haiku: late blossoms / another chance
/ at gratitude. Sometimes it is nature herself who teaches us
gratitude: shelter-in-place / the essential business / of sparrows by
Julie Warther. This is an outstanding collection of haiku from
and with the pandemic. They are not haiku of paranoia or odd
political partisanship. These haiku share in a humanity that is
thankful for all they ways we find comfort and hope from the
world and each other. I will end with this favorite from John
Stevenson: your book comforts me / its gentle weight / on my chest.
This is how we should read Gratitude in the Time of COVID-19.
ji
Blossom Moon: Waukesha Haiku Group edited by Lee Gurga and

Kelly Sauvage Angel (2020, Modern Haiku Press, Champaign,
IL) 32 pages, 5.5” x 4.25”. Four-color card covers, perfectbound.
ISBN 9780960085521. $10 from modernhaiku.org.
Blossom Moon is a first collection from a haiku group in

Waukesha, Wisconsin. The group has been meeting monthly
since 2015 at the First United Methodist where their host,
Dan Schwerin, is the pastor. At these meetings they read
contemporary haiku and discuss issues of haiku poetics. At
each meeting they also share one new haiku, seeking feedback
and suggestions for improvement. This collection features
some of the best work by ten participants: Dan Schwerin,
David McKee, Dennis Schleicher, Jill Whalen, Jo Balistreri,
Julie Warther, Kelly Sauvage Angel, Lee Gurga, Patricia
Gregory, and Phil Allen. Each author introduces themselves
with a short biography about their haiku journey, followed
by a sampling of their haiku. The title poem comes from Dan
Schwerin: off her meds / and taking out a wall / blossom moon (12).
In his short bio, Dan writes that “I find the aesthetic of jinen
or naturalness to be relaxing and a go-to place to reflect on
the Sabbath day. These aesthetics have been life-giving for
me.” Julie Warther writes that “I found haiku while writing
my way through the grief of cancer and a series of deaths in
my family. Today, writing haiku has become a way to help me
make sense of the world, to distill a moment in time to its
essence and record it into memory then share it with others.”
Here is one of her contributions: postpartum / a hole in the light /
the shape of me (38). I’ll share one more poet’s self-introduction.
Kelly Sauvage Angel writes that “For me, haiku is a way of
living. My practice is that which connects me to the natural
world and provides a means of communicating with others.”
Here is one of her more experimental haiku in two words:
bone brothel (48). This collection invites us into the Waukesha
Haiku Group briefly and lets us get to know a variety of
writers at different stages of growth on their haiku journeys.
ji
Along the Way: A Search for the Spirit of the World by Gilles
Fabre (2020, Alba Publishing, Uxbridge, UK) 180 pages, 5.75˝
by 8˝. Black and white card covers, perfectbound. ISBN 978-1-
912773305. €12.00 from AlbaPublishing.com.
Along the Way: A Search for the Spirit of the World is a collection
of haiku by a world traveler, exploring cultures and places.
For Fabre, the primary artifacts of exploration are the gifts of
language. As he explains in the prologue, “The Intuit people
had a custom, that comes from the depths of time and had
almost been forgotten, to offer a handful of powerful words to
another person in the form of an incantation. They believed that
words, presented in this way, made magical powers enabling
that person to see into things never seen or understood before.
All haiku, fragments, notes and quotations in this book are
presented in this spirit, as a gift for you” (5).
Invoking Bashō’s self-proclaimed identity as “wanderer,” Fabre
takes on a journey around the world. The book is organized
by places to be explored: Africa, Americas, Asia, Europe,
Oceania. Fabre starts his journey in Africa, with traveler
notes about local sights, history and environment. Here is one
of his haiku from the Ivory Coast: midday— / in the shade of a
baobab tree / a group of women (21). From Cameroon he writes:
machine gun— / strapped to the soldier’s back / like mums carry
babies here (23). He makes a cross-country trip across the USA
noticing Amish mother / hitting the linen / with a baseball bat (38)
in Pennsylvania and the Gateway Arch / reflecting the Mississippi /
reflecting the morning clouds (40) at St. Louis, Missouri. Evidently,
he partied hardily in Las Vegas, because when he gets to Los
Angeles he records: catching my first sight / of the Pacific / with a
massive hangover (48). He heads north along the west coast to
Seattle where he writes a homage haiku to Bashō: cold evening
/ and no chowder left—call me traveller! (51). After a short visit
to Vancouver, he heads to Mexico and South America. Then
his journey moves to Asia including Thailand, Singapore,
Malyasia, India and extensive travels in Japan. He makes a
short stop in Dubai, where he writes long hotel corridor— / male
and female prayer rooms / at each end (119). Then he writes about
sites in Europe, including his home country of France. The
book ends with travel to Oceania, New Zealand and Australia
where he writes: Christmas Day—/ some kids play cricket / with
brand new gear (162).
Gilles Fabre is a good travel writer so he is capable of carrying
out this ambitious project to write haiku around the world.
His aesthetic goal is clearly stated: “Haiku, with its focus going
from a local to a universal level, especially when it is taking
up, or even unearthing, natural and human elements, literary
and historical information, can provide us with a grounding,
a fresh starting point, a new way to go towards the other and
a different relation to our world, a new objectivity” (15-16). He
has succeeded in writing objectively about the sites and locales
around the world. It is difficult to say his haiku reach a level of
universality of shared experience, but he does share his local
observations along the way.
ji
Home After a Long Absence: Haiku, Senryu and Tanka by Olivier

Schopfer (2020, Ciberwit, Allahabad, India) 58 pages, 5.5” x 8.5”.
Four-color card covers, perfectbound. ISBN 97893902022768.
$15 from amazon.com.
This fourth book by Olivier Schopfer celebrates everyday life

and surroundings as inspiration for haiku. The book starts
with a quote from Goethe: “He is happiest, be he king or
peasant, who finds peace in his home.” The title comes from
this haiku: home after / a long absence / lilacs in bloom. Sometimes
a disruption in our routine helps us appreciate the familiar:
walking down a different street / to get home / my whole day changed.
Here is a quiet moment: adding milk to my tea / the many shapes
/ of morning clouds. Sometimes we feel a little trapped at home
as in these two haiku: confinement / my neighborhood / the whole
world and ticking clock / the time / inside the snow globe. Sometimes
home also calls up regrets: the words / I should have said / dying
embers. The collection ends with a moving day poem: moving
out / where the pictures used to hang / brighter spots.
ji

The Traces of Your Footsteps: Photo-haiku and Other Visual Poems
by Dan Doman (2020, Editura Societaii Scriitorilor Romani,
Bucurest, Romania) 194 pages, 5.5” x 8”. Four-color card covers,
perfectbound. ISBN 9786068412740.
In this collection by Dan Doman, each page features a

photograph illustrating a related haiku in Romanian which
is translated into English by Vasile Moldovan. This is Doman’s
third photo-haiku collection which is arranged to suggest a
seasonal progression. Here are a couple of samples from spring
and summer: a photograph of a crocus is accompanied by evening
on the road / cold breeze scent / of melted snow (16). A rusty barn
door latch photo is paired with latch pulled— / in the old stable /
a patch of sky (35).

Corrections
In issue 41:3
On page 152
Spaces Between
woods’ edge—
birdsong
without borders
saltspray roses by the beach
wind tousles her hair
remnants of a wall
mice nesting now
in crannies of then
dark side of the moon
light-drawn moths
animal shapes
formed by clouds…
or the spaces between
spider’s web in the dew
drop within drop within
by Jennifer Burd, Michele Root-Bernstein

and Laszlo Slomovits
The correct authorship of the links is:
link 1 – JB
link 2 – LS
link 3 – MRB
link 4 – JB
link 5 – LS
link 6 – MRB
On page 153
Translating Twilight
almost spring
a shine to the redwing’s
ready whistle
a scent of stillness
day moon waning
translating twilight
into song
sunset-chested robin
wayside teasels
the scrape of dawn on dark
clearing sky…
the salt
of stars on our tongues
echoes off the wind chimes
sunrise
by Jennifer Burd, Michele Root-Bernstein
and Laszlo Slomovits
The correct authorship of the links is:

link 1 – MRB
link 2 – JB
link 3 – LS
link 4 – MRB
link 5 – JB
link 6 – LS

On Page 170 my German was not as good as I thought it was in
my review of Stimmen Der Steine in which I misspelt “Wölkchen”
and failed to realize that “chen” is a diminutive ending so “little”
is not missing in the German version of English haiku.
On page 171 Ann K. Schwader’s haiku should read
through a crack in the blue dragonfly
Marcyn Del Clements name unfortunately not listed in the

index. Her work appeared on page 74

Index of Names

Ackroyd, Meredith 38
Adam, Ansel 125, 127
Ahern, Mimi 45
Ahrens, Linda 27
Ajami, Jocelyn 31
Alexander, Francis W. 171
Ali, Mohamad 154
Allen, Phil 175
an’ya 37
Andersen, Dane 46
Andrious, Tanya 68
Andrle, Fred 32
Angel, Kelly Sauvage 174, 175
Angyal, Jenny Ward 46
Antebi, Debbi 22
Antolin, Susan 174
Aoyagi, Fay 53, 112
Arnot, Meg 32
Ashish Narain, 14
Ashwell, Joanna 10, 29
Atunasiu, Cornelia 163
Auden, W. H. 109
Ayeyemi, Taofeek (Aswagaawy) 166–168
Babs 52
Baeyens, Michael 65
Baker, Sharon Hammer 171
Balabanova, Ludmila 144

Balistreri, Jo 50
Baluchi, Ingrid 19
Banks, Caroline Giles 60, 126
Banwarth, Francine 48
Barlow, John 69
Barry, Aaron 67
Bartow, Stuart 52
Basho 101, 103, 113, 131–141, 143, 176
Bateman, Sam 18
Battisto, Michael 24
Bennett, Brad 30
Berger, Maxianne 64
Beveridge, Robert 20
Bingham, David 106
Bisshie 33
Black, Elizabeth 57
Blöttenberger, Meik 36
Board, Mykel 68
Boazu, Oana Aurora 45
Boccaccio, Giovanni 173
Boehm, Frank 17
Bonnard, Pierre 114
Borne, Miriam 152
Botea, Jules Cohn 164
Brickley, Chuck 44
Bridges, Alan S. 56, 127, 161
Brooks, Randy 170–178
Brown, Daniel 61
Burd, Jennifer 41, 180, 181
Burgevin, Anne Elise 60

Burke, Alanna C. 46
Buson 112
Byrnes, Sondra J. 13
Cabalquinto, Luis 66
Calder, Alexander 120
Caretti, Matthew 12
Carey, Lorraine 19
Cariello, Matthew 171
Carns, Teri White 92
Carter, R. P. 58
Castaldi, Erin 60
Castle, Aidan 36
Cézanne, Paul 118
chari, Mallika 22
Cheung, Antoinette 20
Chiguta, Matsumoto 107, 108
Chisoku 137
Chocilowska, Marta 64
Clement, Rose 174
Clements, Marcyn Del 182
Coats, Glenn G. 47, 144, 153
Coba, Reshida 50
Colón, Carlos 121
Comăneci, Nadia 164
Compton, Ellen 39
Constable, Susan 39
Cook, Wanda 57
Cooper, Bill 51
Craig, Kyle D. 41
Craig, Ronald K. 54

Cremin, Tim 91
Cruz, Daniel Shank 15
Cullen Jr., William 79
Cummings, Kemar 53
Curtis, Dan 19
Dailey, Mark 12, 95, 96
Dali, Salvador 103
Dalton, Helen E. 124
Dandeneau, Louise 56
Daneva, Maya 38
Daniels, Risë E. 61
Davey, Robert 38
Davidson, L. A. 119, 122
Dax, Frank 31
Decker, Warren 53
DePaolo, Rob 60
Digregorio, Charlotte 58
Doleman, J Hahn 37
Dolphy, Steve 40
Doman, Dan 178
Driscoll, Kevin, 107
Duguay, Martin 51
Dulin. Dominic 11
Dunphy, John J. 30, 155
Eales, Christine 40
Einbond, Bernard Lionel 103
Einer, Lesley 119
Eklund–Cheong, Anna 20
El Greco 115
Elvey, Anne 114

Emin, Tracey 115
Epstein, Robert 154
Erlandson, Robert 41
Escher, M. C. 106
Eulberg, Mary Thomas 107–109, 114, 115, 117
Evans, Gary 42
Evans, Judson 16
Everett, Claire 114
Fabre, Gilles 175–177
Feingold, Bruce H, 69, 121
Ferrara, Jeffrey 56
Fessler, Michael 32
Fingon, Joan C. 14
Fleming, Marilyn 49
Fogle, Andy 59
Ford, Lorin 35
Forges–Ryan, Sylvia 113
Formanowska, Małgorzata 43
Forrester, Mark 12
Forrester, Stanford M. / sekiro 46
Fowle, Melissa J 49
Frame, John M. 172
Franco, Anthony 65
Franz, Koun 145
Franz, Tracy 145
French, Terri L. 21, 73
Friedenberg, Jay 39
Fugyoku 133
Fuhringer, Sandra 119
Gaa, Ben 55, 153, 154

Gage, Joshua 75, 164–166, 170, 171
Gainsborough, Thomas 117
Galasso, William Scott 159, 160
Galasso, William Scott 62
Galko, Michael 24
Gallagher, Mike 42
Garamond, Claude 143, 145
Garcia, Dianne 25
Gasser, Frederick 107
Gatica, Humberto 103
Gauguin, Paul 107
Gilbert, Richard 145, 146
Gilli, Ferris 23
Goeneutte, Norbert 105
Goethe 177
Goldstein, Sanford 122
Goudy, Frederic W. 144
Grankin, Nikolay 27
Grant, Benedict 40
Gratton, Margaret Anne 30
Green, John S 92
Greenhut, Frances 26
Gregory, Patricia 175
Gurga, Lee 104, 174, 175
Gutmann, Max 22
Gyōun 139
Hackett, J. W. 110
Hafernik, Johnnie Johnson 62
Hahney, Tom 58
Hall, Carolyn 156, 157

Hall, Kate B 115
Hambrick, Jennifer 68, 171
Han, John J. 30
Hanson, Duane 125, 126
Hare, Jon 47
Harmon, Charles 23
Harter, Penny 174
Harvey, Michele L. 60
Haslett, Arch 27
Hawkhead, John 28
Haynes, Tia 26
Haynes, Jim 63
Hazelton, Marilyn 142–145
He, David 21
Heitmeyer, Doris 152
Heylinck, Julian 67
Higgins, Frank 33
Hiroshige, 110–112
Hittmeyer, Gary 35
Hoagland, Jeff 29
Hoffmann, Yoël 112
Hokusai 111, 112
Holzer, Ruth 17
Hooven, Frank 47
Hopewell, Louise 47
Hopper, Edward 104
Hori, Masahiro 145
Hotham, Gary 57, 142, 172, 173
Hryciuk, Marshall 14, 65
Humphrey, Jonathan 174

Hutchison, Connie 120
Iordan, Mona 21
Ioutsen, Cyril 67
Iyer, Lakshmi 29
Jackofsky, Gil 12
Jackofsky, Rick 24
Jacobs, David 16
Johnson, Judith E.P. 171, 172
Johnson, P M F 13
Judkins, Carol 83
Jugo 134
Juichi, Masuda 119
Kacian, Jim 145
Kandinsky, Wassily 109
Kaur, Arvinder 55
Kelly, David 106
Kendall, Mary 34
Kenney, Bill 42
Kenny, Bill 155
Ketchek, Michael 143, 151–164
Khan, Mohammad Azim 28
Kikaku 135
Kindelberger, Roy 11
King, Doreen 109
King, Noel 45
Kirby, Mariam 39
Kirkup, James 109, 126
Kjmunro 53
Klee, Paul 126
Knippen, James 48

Koeki 132, 133
Kolodji, Deborah P 127
Kōtaro, Muō 119
Kressmann, Jeff 44
Kulwatno, Paul 56
Lamb, Elizabeth Searle 104
Lange, Jill 44
Larsson, Marcus 155
Laurila, Jim 24
Lecheva, Lydia 116
Lee, Michael Henry 22
Lehmann, Kat 13, 84
Levine, Barrie 45
Levy, Jerry 25
Li, Ryland Shengzhi 31
Lignori, Priscilla 162
Lilly, Rebecca 19, 142
Linda M. Papanicolaou, 162
Lindquist, Kristen 36
Lindsay, Dhugal J. 107
Little, Geraldine C. 123
Liu, Chen–ou 50
Longman, Madelaine Caritas 49
Losak, Amy 32, 85
Lucky, Bob 89
Lynch, Doris 90
m., paul 34
MacCulloch, Jone Rush 58
Machmiller, Patricia J. 158, 159
Mahoney, Hannah 46

Makino, Annette 35
Marcum, C.D. 68
Maretić, Tomislav 54
Markus, Anna E. 63
Martínez, María 104
Masahiko, Miyawaki 133, 138, 139
Masako, Kakutani 111
Mason, Scott 55, 124, 152, 173,174
Matisse, Henri 105, 118, 126
McDonald, Lori 37
McGregor, Marietta 51
McKay, Anne 114, 124, 125
McKee, David 69, 175
Mckeon, Joe 34, 171
Melissa Stepien, 112
Metzler, Sarah E. 49
Michelangelo, 120, 121
Minor, Lori A 75, 164–166
Minton, Chris 48
Misso, Daniela 42
Moldovan, Vasile 163, 178
Momoi, Beverly Acuff 51
Monet 10
Monet, Claude 112–114
Montreuil, Michel 11
Moore, Barbara 64
Moore, Henry 119
Moore, Lenard D. 11
Mormino, Theresa 16
Moss, Ron C. 161

Mother Teresa, 154
Mountain, Marlene 114
Moyer, Robert 44
Muirhead, Marsh 61
Munch, Edvard 107–109
Murphy, Tim 37
Murray, Paul 61
Murrell, Phillip 116
Neubauer, Patricia 123
Nicholson, Ben 110
Nierste, Mike 64
Nika 15
Noguchi, Isamu 120
Nolley, Phillip 64
Norea, Dan 163
Noyes, H. F. 118, 120
Nyitrai, Réka 39
O’Connor, John S. 50
O’Dell, Darlene 48
O’Keeffe, Georgia 124
O’Sullivan, Maeve 48
Oliveira, Robert A. 52
Oliver, Ben 38
Olson, Debbie 22
Olson, Marian 106, 107, 125
Ostman, David 145
Owen, Renée 62, 168–170
Packer, Roland 41, 113
Painting, Tom 89
Palomba, Carol Ann 14

Paris, Sarah 13
Patchel, Christopher 12
Pathak, Aparna 67
Pearce, Jacquie 63
Penelope 135
Perera, Oshadha 42
Perry, Matthew 41
Pester, Lorraine 123
Peters, Stephen A. 43
Picasso, Pablo 107, 121–124
Pierides, Stella 109, 110
Piko, Gregory 66
Polette, Keith 57
Pollock, Jackson 109
Porad, Francine 118
Powderhill, Mark 55
Powell, Marilyn 28
Pray, Sandi 66
Pretti, Sharon 168–170
Procsal, Gloria H. 113
Prometheus 163
pruett, m. shane 28, 94, 95
Pupovac. Slobodan 65
Quine, Stuart 142, 143
Racheva, Lilia 116
Rainwater, Holli 171
Raisfeld, Carol 161
Rajkumar, Milan 61
Ramesh, K 151
Ramesh, Kala 55

Redmond, Bob 63
Reed, Dian Duchin 25
Rehling, Michael 54
Reiko, Yoshimura 110, 111
Renner, Paul 144
Rhutasel–Jones, Sharon 44
Rickert, Bryan 18, 73
Rielly, Edward J. 35
Roake, Aalix 114
Robbins, Jeff 131–141
Robello, Joseph 58
Robertson. J.B. 11
Robinson, Frank K. 15
Robinson, Jackie Maugh 15
Rockwell, Norman 127
Rodin, Auguste 119, 126
Rohrig, Carolyne 119
Root–Bernstein, Michele 26, 180, 181
Roseliep, Raymond 107, 114, 115
Rosenberg, Sydell 85
Rosenow, Ce 78, 82
Rosu, Dumitru 164
Rothstein, Aron 52
Rotsu 134
Rudychev, Natalia 59
Salontai, Dan 50
Sandbach, John 107
Santos, Bona M. 32
Savich, Agnes Eva 56
Sawitri, Ken 38

Schaefer, Michelle 59
Schleicher, Dennis 175
Schmidt, Benno 25
Schopfer, Olivier 53, 177
Schraer, Sue 105
Schwader, Ann K. 16, 182
Schwartz, Greg 33
Schwerin, Dan 175
Schwerin, Julie 74, 77
Seishi, Yamaguchi 126
Sesshin 112
Sette, Bill 59
Sharma, Manoj 14
Shaw, Adelaide B. 21, 157, 158
Sherma, Ted 54
Shiki, Masaoka 131
Shine, Catriona 68
Shirane, Haruo 131
Shires, Nancy 52
Shook, Kelsey 20
Simcox, Rob 43
Simeon I the Great, 144
Sjekloća, Tomislav 29
Skane, George 18
Sloboda, Noel 26
Slomovits, Laszlo 180, 181
Smith, Crystal Simone 40
Solo, Han 140
Sondik, Sheila 33
Sora 139

Spencer, Dan 45
Spikes, Mike 43, 109
Sprecksel, Derek 18
Stepenoff, Bonnie 31
Stevens, Kathryn J. 63
Stevens, Mary 43
Stevenson, John 174
Stewart, Jan 18
Stočkus, Mantas 23
Strange, Debbie 36
Strunk, Jr, William 134
Sullivan, John 17
Suse, Luminita 16
Swede, George 21
Swist, Wally 62
Takeyoshi, Kanamitsu 145
Tamayo, Rufino 106
Tarquinio, Rick 24
Taylor, Rob 26
Teaford, Mark 67
Terry, Angela 30, 74, 77
Teslow, Mary 90, 91
Thalman, Christian 143
Thompson, John 81
Thunell, Carrie Ann 17
Tick, Edward 76
Tico, Nathanael 17
Tiefenthal, Deanna 13
Timmer, Corine 160, 161
Tohta, Kaneko 145, 146

Tompkins, Pat 126
Tōyō, Sesshyū 112
tripi, vincent 30
Trumbull, Charles 101–129, 161, 162
Turner, J. M. W. 114
Tweeney, D. F. 120
Umukoro, Othuke 57
Ungar, Barbara 27
Utamaro 112
van den Heuval, Cor 152
van Gogh, Vincent 115–117
Vecerdea, Crisiti 163
Vermeer, Johannes 104
Vian, Jack 54
Vilén, Florence 119
Vishoi, Pragya 34
Vukmirovich, John 59
Vyas, Anirudh 35
Wallihan, Diane 93
Warther, Julie 171, 174, 175
Watts, David 66
Watts, Lew 27, 173
Webb, Diana 117
Wechselberger, Joseph P. 49
Weir, Linda 19
Welch, Michael Dylan 80
Wermuth, Caroline 40
Wesoky, Sharon R. 15
West, Harriot 78
Whalen, Jill 175

Whistler, James McNeill 123, 124
Whitcomb, Amy A. 36
White, Mike 47
Whitehead, Lucy 34
Wigelius, Paul 119
Wilburt, Elaine 96, 97
Williams, Malcolm 105
Williams, Paul O. 119
Williams, Tony 20
Wimberly, Jamie Haynes 62
Wirth, K.D. 29
Wit, Ernest 25
Witmer, Robert 28
won, james 37
Wood, Grant 107
Woolpert, Alison 162
Wright, Jann 66
Wynand, Genevieve 33
Wyntirson 31
Yanni, Frank, 51
Yoshitoshi 112
Yoshitsune 131, 136
Youmans, Rich 166–168
Yūki, Itō 145
Yuriwaka 135
Zimmerman, J. 65, 81, 93, 94


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frogpond

vol. 44.1 winter 2021

2 frogpond. volume 44:1

Note from the Editor page 7

Haiku and Senryu page 9

Corrections page 179

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Listed in the MLA International Bibliography, Humanities International

Michael Ketchek, Editor

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waiting for the butter

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late night alone—

family that’s gone

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after the hurricane…

notice of his death…

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windstorm flickering lights we hold our breath

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a new name stenciled

getting a fresh start

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catching the last out

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the rise of her miniskirt hem

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After a painting by Pham Hau, 1940

I am a broad green leaf

One white petal is torn off by the wind

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on the thatched roof

reading her a chapter

those places I remember

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rewatching the film

the hand I reach for

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her last words

between the sirens

William Cullen Jr.

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placing my own stone

now with his grandson

again the story

Michael Dylan Welch

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day moon stumbling

all looks well

the nonstop rock and rolling

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T his chapter of A Field Guide began with the working title