homeeditorsreviewsessaysmhbooks issues

 

Volume 33.1
Winter Spring
2002

book review

A Dozen Tongues 2001: Our Vanishing Wilderness
edited by Jim Kacian & Anthony J. Pupello

 

reviewed by Robert Spiess

A Dozen Tongues 2001: Our Vanishing Wilderness, edited by Jim Kacian as Project Creator, Anthony J. Pupello as Project Editor and Tom Swanton as Project Artist; Red Moon Press, P. 0. Box 2461, Winchester, VA 22604; 2001, 32 pp., paper, $10 (profits to The Nature Conservancy).

On each of twelve double spreads a haiku appears in the native language of one of the twelve poets represented. Each haiku is translated into the other eleven languages, plus Esperanto. Brief biographies in English of the poets and the translators are given at the end of the book. Each double spread has a horizontal full color painting across it by the Project Artist. Here is a sampling of every seventh haiku as translated into English, doubling back to include four:

here the river ends
no light
in this industrial city

Soshu Takaya
(Japanese)

 •

uncontrollable:
from cracks in the dune path
hedgebells bloom again

Inge LIEVAART
(Dutch)

 •

police raid
florists hide
wild Lilies-of-the-Valley

Yelena PERSKAYA
(Russian)

 •

Over the strand
And beyond the dune
The line of tankers

Alain KERVERN
(French)

A fine gift, especially for a person whose native language is not English.

 

 

 

©2002 Modern Haiku • PO Box 68 • Lincoln, IL 62656