Woodnotes — #16

Spring 1993

This issue excelled in essays and reviews, along with many fine poems. To start, Patricia Neubauer offered the third of her “Go to the Pine” essays: “Go to the Pine: The Making of a Haiku,” in which she explored such matters as season words, imagery, juxtaposition, the order of images, surprise, mystery, and allusion, with example poems by a variety of poets to demonstrate her observations. And near the end, William J. Higginson wrote a review about “Bashō and His Best Interpreter,” meaning Makoto Ueda and his book Bashō and His Interpreters. In between was a vibrant mix of haiku, senryu, tanka, and haibun, plus a healthy set of mini-reviews and four longer book reviews. Every year, too, HPNC’s president would announce what Garry Gay dubbed the “Gavel Award,” later renamed as the “Chime Award.” Announcements of these awards, celebrating a poem chosen from the previous year’s issues of Woodnotes, would usually appear briefly in the “Woodnotes” news section of Woodnotes, but in this issue the award was given a page-and-a-half appreciation by Paul O. Williams. The poem itself was engraved on a gavel awarded to the poet. This issue also began the tenure of Ebba Story as associate editor, replacing Christopher Herold who was a coeditor.

Staff

  • Editor: Michael Dylan Welch

  • Associate Editor: Ebba Story

  • Typesetting and layout: Michael Dylan Welch

  • Cover art: clipart

Pages 36

Haiku/Senryu 86

Tanka 2

Haibun 1

Essays 1

Reports 2

Book Reviews 5

Mini-Reviews 9

Contents

  • Meeting Report by Tom Lynch

  • Woodnotes Award, won by Kathy White

  • “Go to the Pine: The Making of a Haiku” essay by Patricia Neubauer

  • Haiku and Senryu (and two tanka)

  • “The 1992 President’s Gavel Award to Laura Bell” by Paul O. Williams

  • “North Country” haibun by Evelyn Lang

  • Woodnotes (news)

  • Of Books and Things, with notes by Michael Dylan Welch

  • Book Reviews by Michael Dylan Welch and Ebba Story

Drawings Among Haiku by Ion Codrescu

The Rice Papers by Pat Shelley

Tanka Splendor 1992, edited by Jane Hirshfield

Waterlily Shadows by Margaret Molarsky

  • “Bashō and His Best Interpreter” review by William J. Higginson

Bashō and His Interpreters by Makoto Ueda

  • Haiku and Senryu

Woodnotes Award

planting alyssum

morning sunlight, purple

on the earthworms

Kathy White

Selected Poems

morning walk

warbler’s song

changes my route

Naomi Y. Brown

such a small pebble . . .

the big dipper wobbles

in a mud puddle

Christopher Herold

Reflected

in the sword’s blade

soft summer clouds

Garry Gay

the touch of the air

just before

the touch of your paw

Regina F. Smith

evening silence;

beneath the street lamp

rain becomes snow

Ce Rosenow

a warm bus seat—

my breath clouds initials

left on the window

Ebba Story