NEW HOPE INTERNATIONAL REVIEW

This is an international and multilingual haiku magazine, with contributors from all over the world, although it is predominantly in Japanese.

This issue includes a fascinating article, in Japanese and English (English text in conjunction with Jack Galmitz), from Ban'ya Natsuishi HAVE EAST AND WEST TRULY MET THROUGH HAIKU? in which he claims that no-one can truly understand Japanese haiku in translation and that all haiku fans and poets should learn Japanese to truly appreciate the form. He is right, of course, much is lost in translation in any poetry and the concentrated form of the haiku loses more than longer poems. Natsuishi gives us examples of poorly translated haiku and we find that not only does the language prove inadequate, but that there are some images, which are significant in a Japanese context, which come across as meaningless in translation. He also claims that the Western reader and writer of haiku often misunderstands the purpose of the form and so we have trite haiku that, as Natsuishi says, here describing a haiku from Allen Ginsberg,

captured a moment in his ordinary life. But the question remains as to whether this moment really mattered? ...does this haiku reverberate? Does it remind us of anything than a trivial discovery?

it may be one of the 20th century's poetry's characteristics to find some trivial beauty of some trivial truth in ordinary life, but something trivial which always remains trivial is not a main subject for genuine poetry.

The rest of the magazine includes examples in many languages to give substance to Natsuishi's hopes. I don't read Japanese, though I can certainly admire the script and the layout of the Japanese haiku, it looks beautiful! I was very interested to read the haiku that had been multipli-translated, for example, Natsuishi's sequence: GENOA: A SWORD OF LIGHT, which is here in Japanese, French, English and Italian. It's interesting to compare the translations with each other, though I couldn't compare them with the original. A sample haiku from the sequence:

	The fever of Genoa:
	poetry, soccer 
	and ambulances.

	Tombe l'ombre
	d'une colombe d'Automne
	davant ma fenetre.

	night storm
	I'm thinking about
	the dolls in the attic

		too many blossoms
		under the tree
		after the earthquake

	the longest night
	a raven steals the eyes
	of a snowman

The international haiku magazine GINYU edited by Ban'yu Natsuishi aims to raise the level of haiku in each of the languages published in the magazine. It also aspires to respect the haiku poet's individuality and to promote exchange between haiku poets.

The content of the magazine covers featured haiku poems, critiques, news, book reviews, two essays and haiku by poets from several countries; also included is a gallery of haiku selected and commented on by the editor.

The majority of the journal is in Japanese, with featured haiku entitled WING OF DUST IN MASEDONIA by Ban'ya Natsuishi translated into English by himself and Jim Kacian and Macedonian translations by Aleksandar Prokopiev. Among the featured haiku two of my favourites are:

	The border in the background
	the sacred family
	of peacocks

		So hot in Skopje
		grass is withering
		among grasses

The first book review is of Ban'yu Natsuishi's collection RIGHT EYE IN TWILIGHT, which I reviewed for New Hope International. Among the poems I enjoyed are two senryu:

	On the professor's way home
	a calico cat, a stump
	and amaryllis

		Within the hospital
		Hawaiian mineral water
		house-dust hovering

There are 111 haiku inside this tiny pocket sized book. ... There are some wonderful haiku contained within, but one or two have missed something in being translated or adapted into English. However, notwithstanding, the majority are well written.

	During the operation
	many times I saw
	a solar eclipse

		The first view:
		a singing blue
		in the corner of my eye

	Mother is a spring —
	drinking water
	to her heart's content

		I wonder if I can fly —
		the bagworm thinks hard

	All of the poems
	in the dandelions —
	the roots are all

	Swimming in the pond of
	A thousand years —
	Buddha drowns

		Only when
		Poets find it natural
		Is the moon natural

	Showers in a sunny day
	Someday the world will end

	I meditate under a tree
	A couple of white butterflies
	have come to play

The GINYU HAIKU GALLERY 33, selected and commented on by Ban'yu Natsuishi, contains haiku from USA, Serbia, France, Israel and Estonia. One example from Serbia and a comment by the editor (marked with *) will suffice:

	A Cry of the boy
	heard in the darkness —
	his tyrant father

	Slobodan Cekic

	*A painful scene found in Serbian life.