Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

The Smell of Rust: Margaret Chula, Katsura Press 2003, Lake Oswego, OR (softbound, 100pp, coloured cover photo by John A. Hall) US $14.95
                  
The Smell of Rust, by a former resident of Kyoto, Margaret Chula, is a haiku collection of a very high order. All the senses are there. I particularly liked the verses provoked by touch, an aspect often missing from our contemporary haiku world in which visual poems are so dominant.

   Indian summer                           outdoor sitting –
   the ground-fall pear                    hard under my limbs
   warm in my hand                        the ancient roots of trees

Besides the haiku, we find two rengays (short linked verses composed in tandem with another poet), both of which are excellent. This again is unusual: so often linked verse proves a source of satisfaction for practitioners but is anathema for those who have to read them but were not there! There is also a haiku-tanka sequence, Searching for Emily, which has a vivid, actual feel, although in terms of poetic cadence it leaves, I feel, a lot to be desired.

   the only tombstone                 in the family plot 
   covered with green moss        a dying hemlock – Emily   
   her green thumb                     would have watered it
    
                          good luck stones
                          placed by tourists on top
                          of the family graves
                                 thirteen for Emily
                                 two for Lavinia

This last point is the real bugbear I have with much North American haiku poetry: generally it lacks musicality and individual tone, and without the attribution of poet’s name, the haiku could have been anyone’s. Fortunately, this book has an author’s name, - and it is one to conjure with.