Ray Rasmussen: TWICE IN THE GARDEN

I cross an arched bridge over a pond to reach Kurimoto Garden’s bell gazebo. It’s there I’ll escape the hot sun and the noisy crowd. Sitting next to the cast iron bell, I read Buson:
.

resting
on a one ton temple bell
moon moth

Eyes closed, my hand becomes the moth, fingers antennae, exploring the bell’s cool decorated surface . . . settling . . . resting . . .

Footsteps, a child's voice, Mom, can I? A rattle of chains as the massive wooden clapper is pulled back and released. A low pitched “goooooong” fills my chest, sings in me. The Moon Moth stirs, flutters out into the garden . . .

stone lantern
in the clouds
drifting
.

.
Note: the Buson haiku is my rendition of a translation by X.J. Kennedy
.

.

by Ray Rasmussen
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

Ray Rasmussen: AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT

Eratosthenes, a Greek astronomer, determined that the earth was a sphere and calculated its rough circumference in the third century BC. By the 15th century, most educated people in Europe had abandoned the notion that the Earth is flat.

Enlightenment on the matter only came to me this week when I purchased a silver bicycle with narrow tires that had the look of being very fast. But nothing, as it turns out, in my prairie city is flat. Even small inclines constrain my speed to just above a slow walk.

I can't be blamed for not knowing. Mostly I've viewed my city through the windows of airplanes and cars, whereas many ancients lived near an ocean where they could see the tall ships approaching, the mast top appearing first.

On today's ride, two kids zip past on an uphill, gleefully sounding their warning bells and yelling "You're almost there!"

downhill race—

neck to neck

with a jackrabbit
.

.

by Ray Rasmussen
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
first published in Blithe Spirit 18:1, March 2008

Ray Rasmussen: HOW IS IT . . .

I hear her voice from time to time on the answering service—a call directed to our daughter. Like a remembered song, her rhythms and tone mirror the strong words uttered during our divorce proceedings. What's not brought to mind are memories of walking together, of shared meals over talk of children and work, of trips taken together, of love making. Instead, there's this ducking away from the phone, the need to escape.

Today, I pick up the receiver thinking the ring was on my line, and hear her voice directly for the first time in two years, asking for our daughter.

"Not home," I say.

"Oh," she says, and after some silence, "My mother has had a fall. It's serious. I wanted her to know."

Silence again ... then, "Why not call back and leave your message. She'll be in later."

How is it that after 25 years together I have no words to share? How can I have failed even to offer commiseration about her mother with whom I spent so many family meals and holidays—this woman who said at our wedding, "I always wanted a son. Now I have one."

November chill

the hammock filled

with leaves

by Ray Rasmussen
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
first published in Moonset 3:1, 2007

Review of THE TANKA PROSE ANTHOLOGY

The Tanka Prose Anthology. Edited with an Introduction by Jeffrey Woodward. Baltimore, MD: Modern English Tanka Press, 2008. ISBN: 978-0-9817691-3-4. Perfect Bound, 6” x 9”, 176 pp., $12.95 USD.

Reviewed by Ray Rasmussen

The Tanka Prose Anthology edited by Jeffrey Woodward features 75 works by 19 good writers whose pieces I selectively read in whichever genre they appear. As someone who is well published in the haibun genre, but not very familiar with or published in either tanka or tanka prose—in short, a ‘non-expert’—I offer my thoughts about the anthology.

Woodward’s 17-page introduction and the bibliography of tanka prose serve as an useful introduction to the history of tanka in Japanese literature and of the present status of English-language tanka. It covers the relationship, historical and present, between haiku, haibun and tanka. Having already published numerous reviews and essays, Woodward is a thorough researcher and is serving in an important educative role for writers in any of the haiku genres.

I started with the suspicion that what the anthology presents as “tanka prose” is simply prose with tanka instead of haiku. However, Woodward clearly states that tanka prose is distinct from haibun prose:

“... In comparing tanka prose to haibun, I stated that it would be reasonable to anticipate that the prose element would be “written in the spirit of tanka.” This implies that tanka prose differs qualitatively from haibun—not only that tanka and haiku differ, but that their prose accompaniment does as well.”

So I read with the thought that the difference between tanka and haibun prose would become obvious as I read through the collection. I’ll begin by examining a few pieces in chronological order to address the difference issue.

Hortensia Anderson’s piece, “Maybe You Can Come Home,” leads off the anthology. Anderson presents either a fantasy based on historical record or a remembered event followed by two 5-line poems and one 3-line poem. While fantasy and remembered events are less usual in published haibun prose, as Ken Jones has aptly pointed out, they have a place in contemporary English language haibun:

“It (the haibun prose subject) may be the vivid recollection of a long forgotten childhood episode. It may even be a dream, a myth, or an imagined story collaged from fragments of our own real life. Such experiences may feel more real, more truthlike, than anything in our mundane daily round. Many fine haibun are poetic fancies, inspired imaginings, and yet the imagery is so direct and fresh and vivid, our imagination is so awakened, our feelings so stirred, that we are drawn into and enriched by the poet’s “reality”. (Ken’s Corner #3, Contemporary Haibun Online, March 2006, vol 2 no 1).

Thus, the fact that the provenience of the piece is ambiguous doesn’t lead to the conclusion that it is not haibun prose and instead might qualify as tanka prose. We can find pieces akin to this in many of the journals that publish haibun.

Marjorie Buettner’s piece, “The Presence of Absence” is a touching account written in present tense about her home empty of children. It wouldn’t be a surprise to find this piece in any of the haiku-genre journals under the haibun section. Strip the 5-line poem of its last two lines and it would be called a haibun. I’m not a journal editor, but I believe that most editors would readily accept this piece as a haibun.

Goldstein’s piece “Tanka Walk” (along with several by other writers) is an example of unusualness for published haibun in terms of its length and form. However this may simply be due to the fact that most editors would prefer to publish a number of small pieces than use a lot of space with several lengthy ones, however compelling. The piece is a mix of Goldstein’s practice of walking written in alternative paragraphs, one in the present tense describing his walk (as is the case with most contemporary haibun), the second containing his thoughts about his practice of tanka-walking practice (some philosophizing is also found in most contemporary haibun). The descriptive paragraphs easily fall into the category of typical haibun prose. It’s unusual to find a published haibun that relies extensively on philosophical meanders. Again, this doesn’t disqualify the piece as haibun prose.

The only difference I can distinguish between Larry Kimmel’s evocative pieces and haibun that I read elsewhere is that each is followed by a 5-line poem. The 5-line tanka form allows much more leeway than haiku in terms of permitting thoughts to be expressed (telling rather than showing) and therein is the key difference.

Perhaps one of the greatest deviations from “the usual” haibun that I read are Gary LeBel’s pieces. For example, in "Sea-change” we see a series of letters from his fictional character Captain William Horton to his wife. But “unusual” doesn’t equate with “not haibun.” This sort of creative work, likely based on LeBel’s imaginings about what it was to be an Englishman living in America in the 1700’s and perhaps based on LeBel’s visits to historical plantations in his region (my guess) does go beyond what I see as an important distinguishing characteristic of haibun from fiction, namely that the reader can sense the presence of the writer and feels that the account is about personal experience. The key here is whether the presence of the writer is found in the tanka used throughout the series of letters. Here I have the sense that LeBel brings us his own experiences.

Bob Lucky, one of my favourite storytellers, is clearly present in his pieces. Again, the key difference I can find is not between tanka and haibun prose, but simply in the presence of a 5-line instead of a 3-line poems. I do think that this series of pieces are among the most inventive I’ve read of Lucky’s work. In some cases, as with the other pieces in the anthology, one might ask the question whether the tanka could as easily be expressed as a haiku. For example:

all night
tick tick tick tick
from the clock—
I can’t sleep
without the tock

Would work as well, in my view, as a more understated haiku, although the haiku I’d suggest below lacks the wit of the more explicitly stated tanka:

all night
tick tick tick tick
from the clock

And so it goes with each writer. My reading of these pieces begs a question not raised by Woodward, namely, does a tanka poem that permits both greater expressiveness and expansiveness than a haiku produce a piece that is so distinct from haibun that it merits its own genre—tanka prose? I think not for reasons I’ll get to below.

Up to this point, I’ve discussed the work of a few of the 17 writers in the alphabetical order presented in the anthology. Skipping ahead, several of Patricia Prime’s and Jeffrey Woodward’s pieces deviate from the typical published haibun in that they offer a series of three or more tanka sometimes interspersed with prose in paragraph style. With respect to the tanka, we might ask the same question of these works that Ken Jones addresses to a haibun writer:

“... try folding it (the haiku) back into prose. If it reads just as well there, then leave it there; better strong prose than a “haiku” which is really no more than three chopped up bits of prose. On the other hand, if your haiku stands out as somehow different from the surrounding prose, then leave it as a haiku. (Ken’s Corner #4, Contemporary Haibun Online, June 2006, vol 2 no 2)

In these pieces I could imagine the tanka as being written in the more typical haibun prose style—as paragraphs. Whether the impact of reducing a series of tanka to one or several prose paragraphs would substantially change the piece is open to question. Certainly there’s a difference between free verse poetry and haibun, in that the line breaks are essential parts of the reading. Similarly, a series of tanka demand more of a reader than a prose paragraph does and the line breaks and two theme structure produce signals for a reader different than prose. A series of tanka, or for that matter of haiku, causes the reader to take a break between each tanka to absorb the individual tanka, but also to consider the relationship between the tanka in the series. Here perhaps more than anywhere else in the anthology, I do sense a difference between the prose typically offered in a haibun and what Woodward calls tanka prose. This begs the question as to whether the editors of journals publishing haibun would accept these pieces as haibun. I’d guess the answer is ‘yes’. And here I am suggesting that in its present stage of development, the arbitrators of what is and isn’t a good haibun are particularly the editors of our good journals who themselves have gotten to their positions by years of successful writing in one or more of the haiku genres. Of course, some of these editors accept more experimental or different work than others.

Elsewhere, haibun has been described as a unique form of poetry and writing, different than free verse poetry, essays, journals and fiction, not just because the prose tends to be whittled down to the bare essentials and descriptive in feel, but also because of the presence of a haiku. In addition, Ken Jones suggests that haibun prose is akin to haiku. I would add that by implication such prose is itself different than these other forms:

“This is the haiku-prose of haibun, where all the work is done by careful and feeling observation expressed in concrete imagery. As in haiku there is little that is superfluous and almost every word has work to do.” (Ken’s Corner #2, Contemporary Haibun Online, Part 2, December 2005, vol 1 no 3)

In my view, it’s not just the distinctiveness of the prose style or the presence of a worthy haiku that makes a haibun. There’s also the break between prose and haiku that causes the reader to shift from one kind of receptiveness (as in reading a short story or account) to being receptive to a presentation of an image, brief like a snapshot, that carries an association with the prose. Reflective time must be spent not only with the haiku (or tanka), but also with the relationship between haiku and prose. In my experience, the shift from one form (prose) to another (short poem) causes a shift in the reader’s mental state. I don’t experience this need to shift when reading free verse poetry or fiction.

Coming back to the present volume, my experience in reading the pieces in this anthology is much the same as in reading haibun in any of the contemporary journals. The need to shift receptive states is strong when the short (5-line) poem is encountered and is not essentially different as I read these pieces than when I read haibun and encounter a haiku. However, I do generally find tanka poems more assessable than haiku poems – perhaps because tanka, as I read them, are often a mix of showing and telling. This is not meant to denigrate the tanka form which I find quite refreshing and in which this anthology has sparked my interest.

I might have suggested that this excellent anthology be labeled “The Haibun with Tanka Anthology” (yes, that’s a very awkward title) so as to avoid adding yet another genre to the collection of works written by today’s haiku-genre poets. Trying to distinguish between the prose found in this collection from that found in any of the haibun journals is a difficult exercise at best and perhaps best left to more scholarly minds than mine. Such speculation might be important in the haibun vs. tanka prose question; it’s just that there’s not been a convincing case made that there is an essential difference. To make the case, I would suggest that Woodward produce an essay that shows similarly themed pieces, one tanka prose the other haiku prose, and let us see the difference (show us) rather than simply tell us. The anthology doesn’t permit this sort of comparison.

This isn’t to suggest that Woodward’s introductory essay is trivial speculation nor that the collection isn’t worthwhile. The essay is not only an addition to the understanding of the history of tanka, haiku and the practice of combining prose and short haiku-genre forms. It also invites an examination of the issue whether there is a difference in the prose found in what this collection labels as ‘tanka prose’ and that found in haibun. The more important question of how haibun/tanka prose differs from the various other genres such as free verse, short stories, flash fiction, personal and travel diaries, essays, etc. is not addressed in the essay, but it has been and will continue to be addressed elsewhere. Speculation about the differences in tanka and haibun prose may eventually lead to a distinction between the two forms that goes beyond “one has a tanka, the other a haiku.” Meanwhile, the number of haibun writers, while growing, remains small and to split that genre into two separate sub-genres is premature at best and perhaps even counter productive. In short, there is a need to grow the readership and understanding of the haibun form whatever the type of short poem is utilized with the prose.

In closing, I do want to congratulate Woodward and his colleagues in bringing out this volume. There needs to be more print and online space devoted to the haibun form for the genre to grow and more critical analysis is needed for the understanding of the genre to grow among haibun writers and people who read the more established forms of poetry (e.g., free verse), but not haibun. This volume contains a collection of creative writing that is unusually good and that goes well beyond the normal descriptive prose found in the great majority of published haibun. One would hope that Woodward would continue to edit and publish similar collections. Perhaps a good reason to call the collection “tanka prose” is that the writers were evidently motivated to submit what Ken Jones calls “literary haibun” or what I’d call experimental or unusual haibun. In short, the anthology breaks us out of the orthodoxy that is already being established in the relatively short life of English language haibun and allows us to consider greater variation in both form and content. That being the case, I’m all for such collections whatever the collection is called.

by Ray Rasmussen
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

Ray Rasmussen: STORYTELLER

.

Terra, my eight-year-old, tags along behind, making up stories as we wind our way along the trail to Peek-A-Boo Springs. Glamding, who I gather is an elf, seems to be having trouble with goblins.

I drift in and out, from time to time inserting an "uh, huh" while enjoying the sandstone pinnacles, an occasional claret cup cactus in bloom, the trill of a canyon wren.

"So, what do you think Glamding should do, Dad?"

"Um, maybe he should fight him."

"Dad! Glamding is a girl."

"Well ... I meant she should fight him. Elf against goblin."

"Dad!! Buckwart is a dwarf; he's her best friend."

"Ah, yeah, perhaps they should fight them."

"Dad!!! They're trying to help the feather people find a new home."

emerging
from a patch of sand —
sweet vetch

by Ray Rasmussen

Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

first published in Contemporary Haibun Online, V3, N2, June 2007

GRAPHIC HAIBUN: An Interview with Linda Papanicolaou

.

by Ray Rasmussen

.

Linda Papanicolaou lives in the Bay Area of California. A middle school art teacher and art historian, she is editor of Haigaonline, assistant director of WHChaikumultimedia, a resident artist at Moonset and a member of the editorial board of Modern Haiga. She became interested in haiku and haiga while teaching an art lesson that combined leaf printing and haiku. This fascination led to further experiments in the combination of image and text, especially in the area of graphic haibun.

Ray Rasmussen – technical editor of Contemporary Haibun Online, web-designer for various online literary ventures and widely-published author of haibun – recently discussed with Linda, for Haibun Today, the various practical problems and future possibilities of her wedding of haibun and art.

Ray: Linda, I'm looking now at your "The Oseberg Find," an account of your visit to a Viking ship museum in Oslo. Instead of using literal photographs of the various parts of the museum and artifacts, you've made up panels composed of digitally modified images that look a bit like newspaper images in their texture and your text and haiku are placed strategically in different places. I think that your approach to this sort of presentation is rather unique. Could you tell us how you came to it?

Linda: As a style, it's actually rather easy because the frames, photo filters and font are all in the software package I'm using, Comic Life. If you go to the company's website, there's an online gallery where you'll see others that are recognizably similar to mine.

As an art teacher, I've noticed that many of our students are avid readers of graphic novels. Graphic novels are comic books that have novel-length plots, character development and a more complex graphic style than the old "funnies" that we remember from when we were kids. Asterix the Gaul and Tintin qualify as graphic novels, but so is Art Spiegelman's Maus. There are also science and history-based novels, and of course a huge market in the US for the Japanese style, called "manga". I started looking at them and realized their practical applications for integrating images into haibun.

Ray: Right, they have the look not of the comic books of my childhood, but of artistic pieces with a different artwork than fine art drawings or paintings or than the literal photography one usually finds in haiga. So, how do you think about them? Why do they work as they do? And am I right that this is a rather unique approach?

Linda: There are others who have put images to haibun. In online presentations, there are two ways to do this. The first is to make a two-column table in html, put the text in one column and a jpeg of the image in the other. This can make for a handsome web page, but text entered in html tends to stay text, while the image tends to sit in its jpeg as an illustration rather than participate in the haibun as a coequal to the prose and the poem.

The second is to treat the haibun like haiga text, inserting it into the jpeg itself. The problem here is that there may not be room for it in the image itself. That means creating a very large jpeg so that you can surround the image with a frame big enough for a column of text. There will be problems of large file size, slow download and inflexibility in adapting to various readers' screen sizes.

I tried both approaches but with neither could I achieve the kind of aesthetic unity one gets with haiga where the text is a simple, short haiku.

Comics have been called "sequential art" and have a highly developed set of graphic conventions that are designed to display the image and text in dynamic relationship so that meaning is created by their juxtaposition. These conventions bring text and image closer together than other art forms, and they offer a ready-made set of design conventions that work very well for combining haibun with haiga. By dividing the page into panels, pictorial imagery can expand beyond the single image to depict narrative progression, zoom or shifting point of view, while the text is in speech or thought balloons, captions, or cartoon effects, each of which comes with a visual code that cues us how we're to interpret it. In other words, images are 'read' and text is 'seen'. The aesthetic of page design in comics and graphic novels allows for every bit of space to be used economically, and the very arrangement on the page follows the reading order of a printed page – for us in our own print culture, that’s top to bottom, left to right.

Ray: Each frame of your “Oseberg Find” graphic haibun has three elements: text that explains the displays; images to illustrate your impressions of the ships and artifacts; and haiku or short poems. Let's start with the artwork. I see a mix of small, digital images that seem to be modifications of photographs and that show us the setting and artifacts, and you have background graphics that give your impressions of the character of the place. And the entire layout, the way these images are mixed, could be called a composite work of art.

Linda: Yes, I use multiple images on a page. When I began doing graphic haibun, I quickly realized that multiple images in juxtaposition on a page are necessary not only to get what we expect as the look of a comic but also to take advantage of its visual conventions. In the page size I use for online presentation, optimal design seems to be four to six frames, including both image and text panels.

Within the four pages of “The Oseberg Find,” you'll see four different ways that the images relate to one another. On page 1, there are three image panels, all of the ship. Two of them are actually the same photograph, though one is zoomed and manipulated with a different Photoshop filter; the third is a view of the carved bowsprit, from a different angle. If you think about it, it's like cubism. A Picasso, for instance, though what may have influenced me more directly is a video from a PBS children's art series called "Behind the Scenes” that I show my art students. It’s about perspective and features David Hockney drawing a chair, conflating multiple viewpoints into a single image. "It's not a chair," comments one of the children in the video, "It's a walk around a chair."

That's in fact what's going on in the first page of “The Oseberg Find”. The text speaks of walking around the ship, gazing up at it from floor level. In the subsequent pages of the series, the relationships between the images shift and develop. Page 2, which speaks about the grave goods, is centered on the sleigh as it’s displayed in a glass vitrine (showcase) in the museum, with other vitrines visible behind it. The secondary images are other artifacts that you see in the gallery. So it's still multiple points of view, but opening out to mirror the larger experience of being there by including more than is in the visual imagery of the page.

On page 3, the background is a much grayed-down reconstruction of one of the tapestries that is thought to depict the funeral cortege, an historical photo of the excavation, and another current view of the ship. So the point of view has now shifted from spatial to temporal–distant past when the ship was buried, recent past when she was dug up again, and the present. Page 4 is also temporal shift–in sunset a Viking ship and an airplane, vehicles of then and now.

Ray: Let's move to the prose. It doesn't seem to follow contemporary haibun practice, in that some of it is a bit like what you'd expect to read at the museum on signs explaining the displays, yet it's more succinct like haibun tends to be. How do you think about composing the prose for these pieces.

Linda: You’re right, though I’d point out that “The Oseberg Find” is pretty traditional in that it’s a travel haibun. My other graphic haibun are more what you've called "contemporary haibun practice" in that they directly focus on personal experience. The expository nature of this one is because of the subject matter, though actually the museum visit was a deeply personal experience. I went with two friends; it was a beautiful day, exquisite spring weather, and it was also the first time that I and one of the friends had talked at any length about the death of her son. Looking at the haibun now, it feels to me that I may have channeled some of this emotion into the experience of the museum, though this of course is not there for anyone who reads the haibun. I considered whether I should include some of this context but decided not to because it seemed to pull the prose off-focus. The "exposition” is because that’s what’s on your mind in a museum when you’re trying to absorb what you’re seeing by reading the gallery labels.

Also, I'm an art historian and all of us who study history have at some moment or another experienced an intense empathetic connection with the past. Viking art isn’t my specialty. When I got home, I plunged into reading about it avidly. Getting the factoids under control was a problem. I dealt with it by balancing each page with a personal response centered on the haiku.

Ray: As for the short poems, or haiku: Here again you seem not to be following the more typical 17-syllables or less, 2-phrase methodology. This isn't to suggest that that's the only approach to haiku, but, given that some of the haiku aren't conventional, tell us how you think of them.

Linda: You’re right. Pages 1 and 2 are inverted-syntax haiku; page 3 doesn't have a poem at all, and page 4 has a tanka. And none of them are particularly compelling as stand-alone haiku, are they? Recently I’ve been reading Bruce Ross’s essays on haibun. In “Narratives of the Heart,” he recounts a session at 2001 HNA where they discussed which comes first in haibun writing, prose or haiku. For me, both tend to pop into my head about the same time, at least in embryonic form. They may change substantially but I always test multiple versions of the poem to make sure that it says what I want it to.

Ray: Tell us a bit more about how you think about integrating text, haiku/tanka images and page design. It seems that you have a lot more to manage than someone doing standard haiga [image + prose/haiku].

Linda: The first time I tried haibun with a graphical interface, I wrote the text, then put it into a page in Comic Life with images based on photos of the same locale. Later, I realized that the graphics and images were no more than add-ons rather than part of the living, organic whole. Now, I ask myself, what part of what I want to say is best allocated to the text, what to the images. Because there’s so much more at play here than just writing, graphic haibun are extremely labor-intensive–much more so than purely text-based haibun. In a graphic presentation, the minutest details count–how size and shape of the text box affects where the line breaks will occur, how position of text and image elements draw the reader’s eye across the page to create meaning. Text-based haibun are processed linearly, beginning to end. But in a graphic presentation, with visual processing, all the elements within the picture frame are simultaneously at play as the eye darts back and forth in response to compositional movement, focal point, repetition of forms.

I'm not a "broad shift" writer in general and in my graphic haibun the haiku tend to be even closer to the prose because the images introduce so much more complexity.

Ray: Let's get back to the haiku. In haibun composition, there's been some theory advanced about the relationship of the haiku to the prose. What about this more complex mix of images, prose and haiku?

Linda: The question that comes up often in the context of both haibun and haiga is how independent and self-sufficient must the haiku be? It's been suggested that both image and haiku must be able to stand alone within their respective forms yet achieve new meaning and depth in juxtaposition.

What does that mean? Obviously, if you have a haiku that can flower into its fullness as a text-only haiku, it would be pointless at best, overkill at worst, to stick it into a haiga or haibun. In the other direction, you don't want a haiku that’s simply redundant of prose or image. What is said of haibun is that the haiku shouldn't be able to be "folded back" into the prose; the equivalent in haiga is that the haiku should not describe what we already see.

There’s an idea that has taken hold–that the haiku has to be about something completely different. From time to time, submissions come to Haigaonline where the text is so close to the image as to be almost a caption. I look at them and think, according to the “rules” this shouldn’t work, yet it does. That’s set me to mulling the whole question of linking. In the current issue of Haigaonline, we have a workshop exercise in haikuing photographs in various link modes, from repetition of what's in the image out to juxtaposition, or "scent linking" as Basho called it in the context of renku.

The exercise will be part of an ongoing study of text/image relationships. I’ve found that text-image linking in comics uses the same categories we do, and they also have a concept of linking. They call it “closure”. It’s the “gutter”, that space between the panels where the reader has to leap in and construct how one framed image relates to the next––narrative sequence, zoom in, pan out, redundancy/emphasis, changing point of view, etc.

So that’s one reason why I find that haibun takes so readily to a graphical presentation in the Comic Life layout software. Graphic novels and comics come ready-made with a vocabulary and syntax for doing just that. By treating texts and images as semiotic systems, turning text into graphics and making images read as text they collapse the differences between the two. There’s flow and unity in the whole.

Because of the way linking is embedded in comics format, I have taken to heart what Bruce Ross has said about renku-style linking being central to haibun as a form. Haiga is another form that privileges the link–on some level we all know this, though I wonder how many of us have taken the next step of recognizing that haiga and haibun are like renku except that the poem links to prose or image rather than to another poem. It’s my opinion that everyone who wants to practice either haibun or haiku should seriously look at renku.

First, in renku only the hokku or first verse has the fragment/cut/phrase structure that is fundamental to haiku; in all the links that follow, whether two- or three-lines, there is no cut. Renga practitioners do not conceive of their links as self-contained because their meaning derives not from within but rather from linking to what’s before and after.

Second, renku has a highly developed and codified approach to linking that offers a much wider range of possibilities than most of us imagine when we’re writing for haibun or haiga. There’s an article on the Renku Home page that I’ve found indispensable: “Link and Shift: A Practical Guide to Renku Composition” by Tadashi Shôkan Kondô and William J. Higginson. I recommend it to anyone who wants to build their haiga or haibun skills. Another is Ferris Gilli’s essay, “English Grammar: Variety in Renku.”

Now, regarding my single-image haiku on pages 1 and 2 of “The Oseberg Find”: Neither has a cut but rather, inverted syntax and I think of them as really more like renku links. Also, both haiku proceed from their pages’ prose narratives rather than leap away to different subject matter or locale. This is something that seems to be frowned on in haibun and haiga, but why? Janice Bostok said that she’d like to see this kind of linking “allowed” rather than only the “leaping away” method (“Must haibun contain haiku?” in Stylus Poetry Journal). In renku context, it’s also what Kondo and Higginson call “object linking” and in renku it’s not a no-no, though you’d want to vary it and use other modes of linking too.

I think I’ve done that. On pages 1 and 2, the haiku proceed from the prose but neither repeats what has already been said–as if prose and haiku ever could say exactly the same thing. I’ve tried to follow Ross and center the “epiphany” of these pages in the haiku by writing them as personal response to the factual narrative of the prose. If you look at the progression of the haibun across its four pages, you’ll also see a widening relationship between the prose and poetry. On page 4 the epiphany of the whole haibun is a tanka that leaps away to the departure area of the Oslo airport.

Ray: That brings up the subject of tanka versus haiku in haibun and haiga.

Linda: There's also been a suggestion that tanka shouldn't be used in haibun. I respect the writers who say this, with reservations. Haigaonline has always accepted haiga with tanka; they work in haiga very differently from haiku, but sometimes you want that. In graphic haibun, I find that they bring a different pacing to the page. In “The Oseberg Find,” I did try to cut this one down to a haiku but it just didn't say what I wanted it to. The prose text is much shorter on that page, so I guess that the two have found their own equilibrium.

Ray: Which graphic haibun among your works combines the three elements –prose, verse and image–more convincingly than in your other graphic haibun? Can you explain where and how this particular work succeeds in ways that others may have not?

Linda: It’s more a matter of progressing as I learn the possibilities of comic mode, especially the different ways of treating text. In my early efforts, I put everything, prose, text and image in frames. With experience, I’ve learned how to articulate the parts of the page for different levels of meaning. Text that is boxed tends to be read as the author’s voice; text laid directly on an image or against an open section of the gutter has more–how shall I call it?–“is-ness”. Similarly, the experiential level of the images differs whether they’re framed in panels, laid across the background as gutter, and whether they’re left as photographs or filtered so as to move them more into the realm of imagination. There are so many possibilities; so far I’ve barely scratched the surface.

Ray: Thanks Linda for taking the time to tell us about the whys and wherefores of this intriguing approach to linking images and text and the idea of doing sequential as opposed to single image/poem presentations. We'll list links to your other graphic haibun pieces so that readers can have a feel for this treatment on a variety of subjects, and, as you pointed out above, they'll be able to see that some of the accounts are more personalized than the museum piece.

________________________________________

LINKS TO THE GRAPHIC HAIBUN OF LINDA PAPANICOLAOU

“Keepers,” haigaonline V7 N2 Autumn / Winter 2006

“Lingering Snow,” haigaonline V7 N1 Spring / Summer 2006

“Mnemosyne,” Santa Fe Poetry Broadside #49, October 2006

“The Oseberg Find,” haigaonline V8 N2 Autumn / Winter 2007

“Putting By,” Simply Haiku V4, N2, Summer 2006

Ray Rasmussen: FLY-FISHING

.

Lost Canyon, remote enough to offer the twin pleasures of solitude and daydreaming. I'm surprised to encounter a man casting a fly line in sweeping arcs along the curved sandstone walls. We nod and I ask what he's doing.

“Same as you," he replies, "fly-fishing.”

Is he deranged? Since he's carrying nothing more harmful than fly rod and tackle, I risk saying: “But, there’s no water, no fish here."

"I know that you think it's strange. There’s no use denying it. I can see it in your eyes. But Sara's approach to fishing is even stranger.”

The Sara that I know? I walked with her just last week in Moab, her black hair flowing over a flower-print dress, where all males regardless of age turned to gape.

“Sara is a wonder to look at, isn’t she?" he says, reading my thoughts. "Did you know that she writes poems in matchbooks and leaves them in bars with her post box address included in case someone wants to respond?"

“But how is that like fly-fishing?”

“Fishermen use a slender rod and colorful flies strung together by a spider’s filament. The best of them cut the barbs off their hooks, making it almost impossible to land a fish. It isn’t the fish they want—many neither keep nor eat them. It’s the perfect and immediate communication with another being.”

“And Sara?”

“Sara knows that there's no skill in communicating through her body. She’s cut off the barb of her beauty and instead offers poetry.”

“And me?”

“Like Sara, you cast your lines into near empty places. Like her, you often open an empty mailbox.”

flute music
in an empty canyon
kokopelli

by Ray Rasmussen

Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

Ray Rasmussen: UNSADDLED

Breakfast without a newspaper is a horse without a saddle.

....................................― Edward R. Murrow

I am six months into my experiment of not reading the daily newspaper at breakfast. Instead I read essays, including one by E.B. White, who, in response to Murrow's metaphor, called breakfast "the hour when we sit munching stale discouragement along with fresh toast." Breakfast is more enjoyable now, but I sometimes feel I've missed something important – something others know that I don't but should. Stretching Murrow's metaphor, it's me that’s unsaddled – riderless. This morning, as I walk the dog on the berm overlooking the Whitemud Freeway, there's the usual tangle of commuters, all hurrying somewhere.

winter morning –
the cat mews
over her empty bowl

____________________

Note: both the Murrow and White quotes are taken from E.B. White, Newspaper Strike, The New Yorker, December 12, 1953.

by Ray Rasmussen

Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

Ray Rasmussen: THE BAMBOO RAKE

A warm spring sun, the fields finally free of snow. Yellow warblers, freshly arrived from places south, sing from the just budding trees and shrubs.

An old man works a small patch of ground with a bamboo rake. He's short, stocky, brown-skinned and has the eyes of the orient. He wipes sweat from his brow, glances up at me and then swings his eyes towards a second rake.

I drape my coat on a wooden fence and begin to work. The rake's pliant tines allow me to clear winter's debris without damaging the plants beneath. He stoops from time to time and places his hands above the green shoots. I stoop and do the same, but feel nothing.

He shakes his head, then tugs my shirtsleeve and leads me to a nearby field—to a bloom of white flowers, to the fragrance of violets, the hum of bees. He tugs again and leads me to a beehive, dips in a twig and offers a taste. Sweetness explodes in my mouth.

On our return to the unfinished field, we once again stoop and place our hands over the ground, welcoming the plants into the world of sun and air.

We finish the field and he turns to me and bows. Awkwardly, I return the bow and reluctantly, I hand him my rake.

spring sun —
cedar waxwings fill
the leafless plum

by Ray Rasmussen

Edmonton, Alberta

haiku first published in Heron's Nest, 2005

haibun first published in Contemporary Haibun Online, V1, N1, June 2005

Ray Rasmussen: SPICY NOODLE SOUP

The Vietnamese restaurant is dimly lit, just a few tables, fewer people. The two of us, old friends, scan the menu, order spicy noodle soup.

“I’m okay with living alone,” she has often said. “I can’t give myself over to one demanding man.”

Yet, it has been a long dry spell for her: no romance, no lovers, none of the physical contact that she craves. She had become increasingly resentful that the world of men render women in their 50s invisible. That resentment may be a reason why some men hesitate to cast an amorous look in her direction.

But today is different. She sports a hint of a smile and even giggles, a sound that I usually associate with teen-aged girls, as she announces, “I have a lover. I met him several weeks ago.”

Good for her, I think to myself. We slurp the spicy noodles, our foreheads beading with sweat.

Her eyes are sparkling. “It may be love, I don’t know, I don’t care,” she says. “I’ve jumped off the cliff.”

I don’t say, I hope it’s a long way to the bottom.

late spring romance ―
a thorn bush
flush with wild roses

by Ray Rasmussen

Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

first published in Haiku Harvest, V5, N1, Fall/Winter 2oo5

Ray Rasmussen: CHARACTERISTICS OF CONTEMPORARY ENGLISH-LANGUAGE HAIBUN

There are three primary sources to consider in looking for guidelines for writing contemporary English language haibun: 1) Basho's famous travel journals which are said to be the origin of contemporary haibun; 2) the definitions proffered by prominent writers in the haiku/haibun genre; and, 3) an examination of what is being published in the haiku journals edited by well-respected editors. With the number of good print and online journals publishing haibun and the ever increasing number of writers in the genre, the question of "what is a haibun" is ripe for examination. While an examination of Basho's style and of definitions offered by prominent writers are of interest, these have been addressed elsewhere. (For definitions see: "Haibun Definitions" at Contemporary Haibun Online).

When I read haibun in journals like Frogpond, Contemporary Haibun Online, Modern Haiku, Bottle Rockets, Blithe Spirit, Lynx and Simply Haiku, I see some characteristics that can serve as guidelines for aspiring writers.

1. The Presence of the Writer

The first of these is that the writer is usually, but not always, present in the piece. That is, haibun tend to be accounts of personal experiences in the present or past that the writers have had, that somehow stand out in their lives, that are deemed worthy of writing about (call them 'haibun moments') and that might be of interest to others. This doesn't mean that the writers use a plethora of self-referential pronouns, but instead that even when such words aren't present, the identity of the writer is felt to be known and the reported experience is felt to be authentic.

While much fiction is said or guessed to be autobiographical, most published haibun pieces don't read like fiction. For one thing, the characters seem real, the writer and his or her family, friends, or people he or she is observing; they don't seem made up. This isn't to say that haibun adhere religiously to reporting the who, what, when, why and where of an experience. My own writing embellishes the facts in an attempt to recreate the feelings and milieu I've experienced and in order to make the piece interesting and relevant to a reader. I assume that other writers do the same. In short, haibun is a mix of story telling and reporting. Some writers stick closely to the reporting end of the continuum; some stray in the far regions of storytelling. Still, in most cases it's clear that the writer is present in the piece.

Being present in a piece doesn't mean that all haibun focus on events that are current in the writer's life. Many haibun relate memories of childhood, parents and past relationships, and some even report dreams or fantasy. Even most fantasy haibun make it clear that the writer is the source or is part of the fantasy.

2. Fictional Accounts

A related issue is whether writers present fictional or inauthentic 'stories'. Of course, it isn't possible to tell whether a piece is reality based and it's dangerous to think that one could tell. In recently commenting to a friend that a piece about her father had 'touched me', she wrote back "I'm going to let you into a secret – the one with 'my mother' is fictional," and she asked, "Does that make you feel less attached to it?"

In a recent article, Ken Jones called for future haibun to involve more of what he calls "imagined reality." He states that "It may be argued that such a departure into the fiction of “imagined reality” is a betrayal of tradition, whether it be in the “desk haiku” (as opposed to those springing from “lived experience”) or the invented prose narrative. And yet experience may be lived no less vividly, and be no less “real”, in a dream, in the reading of a striking piece of literature, or through our own imaginative creations." (Ken Jones, "Writing Reality: Fictional Haibun Stories," in Contemporary Haibun Online, V3, N3, September 2007.

While Jones presents a strong case, so far as I can tell by reading them, most contemporary haibun are based on real events in the writer's lives. Jones himself states that in the current issue of Contemporary Haibun, "... there appear to be no fictional (haibun)."

3. Present or Past Tense

Occasionally someone suggests that haibun should be written in the present tense, as if the event is taking place now, even if the event is a memory. The argument is that writing in the present tense brings a haibun more to life, as if it's unfolding now for the reader. Of course, everything written is about the past, either recent or distant. My guess, prior to examining current practice was that I would find a mix of present and past and even some use of the future tense. An examination of the current contents of Contemporary Haibun Online reveals just that. Slightly more than half of the haibun, whether present or past events, are written at least in part in the present tense. Fewer are written in the past tense and only a few are written in the future tense. It is worth noting that regardless of tense and related to the first characteristic mentioned above, presence of self is evident in all but one of these haibun.

4. A Mix of Prose and Haiku

At present, almost all published haibun are accompanied by one or more haiku. The haiku serve either to intensify the feeling of the account conveyed in the prose or take the reader another step beyond what is expressed in the prose. Further, I think that the space between the prose and the haiku is a kind of long pause, one where the reader shifts mental states from reading a story to entering the sparsely styled world of the haiku – the word's shortest form of poem. In the prose part, many writers use poetic devices like metaphors to make the piece sing a little more than it might were only simple descriptive reportage utilized. However, some well published writers utilize very straightforward descriptive prose and it's the pairing of that prose with an evocative haiku that makes these haibun something different than just a journal entry.

However, the idea that a haibun must be a mix of prose and haiku poetry is being challenged. Two essays in Haibun Today explore some of the issues related to haibun without haiku (Charles Hansmann, "Haibun Poem: A Definition," Sat., Nov. 17, 2007, and Jeffrey Woodward, "Haibun Minus Haiku," Fri., Nov. 30, 2007). Woodward asks rhetorically whether any prose, e.g., an obituary accompanied by a haiku, would be considered to be a haibun. In answer to his own question, he provides this definition, "Haibun is haiku-like prose with or without one or more haiku." But given, as he points, out that 'haiku-like' is very subjective, I would suggest that a more precise definition rests in these characteristics of haibun found in contemporary publications. That is, a haibun is a combination of all or many of the characteristics addressed in this essay and that's what differentiates it from an obituary or an essay or a news story.

Hansmann's definition presents a challenge to the 'prose plus haiku' formula. He suggests that a "line break may take the place of haiku and serve a similar purpose (as the haiku)." While I am unaware of a single haibun without haiku in current journals, it is interesting to examine Hansmann's haibun published recently in Haibun Today, none of which has a discernible haiku, but each of which uses what Paul Conneally defines as haibunic prose: "Prose that has many of the characteristics associated with haiku—present tense (and shifts of tense though predominant voice 'present'), imagistic, shortened or interesting syntax, joining words such as 'and' limited maybe, a sense of 'being there', descriptions of places people met and above all 'brevity'" (from "Haibun Definitions," in Contemporary Haibun Online).

My impression is that while adhering to Conneally's definition of haibun prose, Hansmann's pieces lack that quality of a very long pause and shift in the reader's mental state in preparation for a haiku associated with the prose. I would argue that it's the going from one kind of writing (prose) to another kind of writing (haiku) that makes the difference. Indeed, as I read Hansmann's pieces, which I very much admire, I think that they could be restructured as free verse poetry, that is, poetry without haiku, but with haiku-like syntax.

In making this point, I would like to state that I'm a reader of, but not a student of free verse poetry. I'm aware that there is a large literature devoted to examining the characteristics of free verse poetry, likely including the use of line breaks. I suspect that someone will write an article in the future discussing how the haibun's prose plus haiku fits into this discourse.

5. Plain Spoken versus Literary Haibun

In terms of style or wordsmithing, I see a great variation in the level of prose craft in published haibun. Some pieces are highly poetic while others are involved with succinct descriptive reportage without poetic embellishment. One can readily imagine the more poetic pieces being rewritten as free verse poems minus the haiku or with the haiku folded into the prose. Indeed, one well-published free verse poet that I know has turned a number of his poems into haibun by eliminating the line breaks characteristic of free verse and utilizing the paragraph style more associated with haibun and by adding a haiku. He has had no problem in seeing them published in the top haiku-genre journals. For a second example, I've changed the free verse structure of a different friend's poems to correspond to the haibun form by using paragraphs and adding a haiku. He too had no problem finding publication for these modified pieces in current journals.

I believe that poetic expression will figure prominently in the future of haibun writing and publication and, to some degree, it does so now. In the same recent essay cited above, Ken Jones sees the future of haibun as leaning toward the literary end of the scale. He states: "It is increasingly appreciated that mere reportage of experience is not enough if we are truly in the business of literature. Even the humblest haiku moment is not usually just picked up from the ground but needs some polishing before being put into print. How much more so is this true of a complex thing like a haibun. Not only is well-burnished imagery required, but also some thematic shaping to a purpose (unless it is very short)" (Ken Jones, "Writing Reality: Fictional Haibun Stories").

Still, a significant number of haibun published currently utilize fairly straightforward reportage and it's mainly the haiku that makes them something different than other genres.

6. Must the Haiku Stand Alone?

An issue related to the prose plus haiku aspect of a haibun is whether the haiku must stand alone, viz., whether the haiku makes sense without the context supplied by the prose. When I started writing haibun, I did my best to compose haiku that would stand alone (and almost always failed). When I review my own published haibun pieces, I would say that most of the haiku don't stand alone. In fact, I haven't dared to submit them to haiku journals because I sense that they'd not be accepted. When I read haibun by other writers, I often sense the same, that the haiku usually depends heavily on the context supplied in the prose.

Is this a good or a bad thing? Is a haiku that doesn't stand alone really a haiku? These are questions that I'll leave for someone else to address. What I can state from my own writing and reading is that many published haibun contain haiku that rely heavily on the context supplied in the prose.

7. Telling vs Showing

Another aspect of most of the published haibun that there is an emphasis on showing rather than telling. This is an old distinction in other poetic genres. In short, most haibun refrain from telling the reader how to think, feel about or interpret the piece. Indeed, many pieces rely on understatement rather than overstatement in order to provide the reader with room for his or her own imagination. Here's how Jones puts it: "Noteworthy also is the concern of haibun, like haiku, to show rather than to tell. This means, for example, that emotions must be expressed metaphorically, through the imagery. And this, again, contributes to an open-ended effect which leaves a lot of space for the reader’s imagination."

Conclusion

I've described what I see as practiced in currently published haibun. Jones, Hansmann and Woodward are calling for more literate writing and even haikuless haibun and, as we have the opportunity to read pieces that are published in the future, it's likely that contemporary haibun will do some important shape shifting. After all, English language haiku has and continues to evolve from its Japanese originators. Consider for example the demise of the 5-7-5 syllable line count to today's "17 syllables or less." Why should we not expect the same of haibun which hasn't been practiced for nearly as long nor by nearly as many writers as haiku?

At the least it can be said that current success in publishing one's haibun rests with having ones piece meet most of the following characteristics:

* the self is present

* the context may be a present event, something from the past, a dream, or even a fantasized episode.

* the tense is somewhat irrelevant, ranging from present to past to future and sometimes a mix.

* the haibun reads as if it is reality-based as opposed to fiction.

* the prose style varies from those with a focus on description and succinctness to those that are poetically embellished, akin to free verse poetry, or what Jones calls 'literary.'

* there is a focus on showing rather than telling.

* there is one or more haiku that may or may not stand alone, that deepens or summarizes the prose or that takes the prose storyline a step further and that serves as a long pause calling for a mental shift.

by Ray Rasmussen

Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

Ray Rasmussen: THE BATHROBE

In the dream, I'm in a second hand-clothing store, wandering among endless racks of dress shirts and classy suits. Dust motes float in the dim light.

I notice a small room lit by a single overhead lamp. It contains but a single rack of elegant robes, each in vivid colors with fancy lapels, threads that James Bond might wear while seducing one of his many women. I reach for a plaid robe with bright red lapels. Suddenly, I’m awake, anxious, in my moonlit bedroom.

I know exactly what the dream portends. I glance at the hook on which my old robe hangs. Relief! Still there. If robe years are like dog years, it's older than me.

I can see the large patches where I've had a tailor salvage it after it grew some very large holes in the wrong places.

"Do you want exactly the same kind and color of cloth," I remember the tailor asking in an incredulous voice.

"No," I had said, "it's just a robe. Do your best."

Having had it patched doesn't relieve my present anxiety that it may one day disappear. When my wife looks at it, I see the rag basket in her eyes. When it falls to the floor, my dog sleeps on it.

I won’t soon be parted from this robe. My life isn't a Bond film. No one, besides my wife, cares whether a little flesh is hanging out here and there. And who else would see me as I stump around in it?

I pull the comforter over my head and drift back to sleep.

lucky moon —
even when waning no one
threatens to replace you

by Ray Rasmussen

Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

first published in Contemporary Haibun Online, V1, N3, Dec. 2005

A Note on the Writer's Workshop

The Writers Workshop, an online forum, was started in 2003 to serve as a place where writers in the haibun and haiku genres could post early drafts of their work and receive candid feedback from other members. Its aim is to help members prepare their pieces for submission to quality haiku and haibun genre journals. It was sparked as a response to the lack of readership and especially to the dearth of candid feedback occurring on most haiku-haibun genre Internet forums.

The past and present members of WW include people found often in the pages of Modern Haiku, Heron's Nest, Contemporary Haibun Online, Simply Haiku, Lynx, Blithe Spirit and other quality haiku genre venues. For example, the current issues of Contemporary Haibun Online and Simply Haiku have pieces by present and past members Sharon Dean, Lynn Edge, Charles Hansmann, Ray Rasmussen, Jeffrey Woodward, Roger Jones, Lynne Rees, Adelaide Shaw, Richard Straw, Robert Hecht, Tracy Koretsky, Zane Parks and Dru Philippou.

Writers interested in becoming a member of Writers Workshop should apply to Ray Rasmussen [ray@raysweb.net].

by Ray Rasmussen

Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

Ray Rasmussen: DRAGONFLY

Three days of steady rain pummeling the cabin's roof. This morning it has slowed to a soft hiss. The break comes in late afternoon, the wind gentling, spots of sun breaking though, clouds turning white, the surface mirroring the sky.

A gray heron rests on the red canoe. As I approach, it lifts off, wings tapping paired ripples.

My paddle dips & rises in a steady rhythm, stirs reflections of cloud and mountain. Water drips off, becomes lake again.

skimming
the surface
red dragon fly

by Ray Rasmussen

Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

first published in Ink, Sweat & Tears, Wed., 23 May 2007

Ray Rasmussen: CYBER CAFÉ

It's four weeks since I struck out for the Escalante Wilderness of Southern Utah. The roads are rough and clouds of dust kick up behind my truck. Signs warn that they are impassible when wet ― as if it ever rains here. Each day, I load my pack with food, water and camera equipment and strike off for remote canyons. I walk dry streambeds, cross arid cactus flats and search out places where the view through my camera lens fills with weathered sandstone spires and curving canyon walls.

In the desert silence, the only sounds have been an occasional birdsong, the rustle of lizards hidden in sage brush. At night, a small fire casts a ring of yellow warmth, the moon journeys through the sky, a coyote yips in the thrall of the hunt.

Today, I pass through a small town and enter a cyber-café ― it's a kaleidoscope of the senses: new age music, the fragrance of coffee and baked goods, a steady hum of voices.

In this Mormon dominated town, the café is an alternative gathering place for a mix of people who wear the down-to-earth garb of the 70s. Crafts and artwork decorate the walls. A bulletin board offers the usual in new age dalliances: massage, tarot, acupuncture, whole earth foods.

Like me, a number of people ply their computers. I don't speak with anyone except to order coffee and food. Yet, I feel connected. It's as if we solo travelers have each used a different path to find our way to this small oasis.

Email floods in-messages from friends and a wave of spam offering sexual aids and the companionship of wanton females. I feel like a 19th century sailor arriving at an island port, thrilled to find mail from home and, there for the taking, an exotic woman.

The messages rest in my mind like the flotsam and jetsam found on a beach-glad tidings and troubling news. I am torn by the urge to rush home to the complexities of everyday life and the desire to return to the simple elegance of the canyon lands.

desert streambed—
a scatter of debris from
the last flash flood

by Ray Rasmussen

Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

first published in Frogpond, Fall 2006