Japanese Forms

Conversation with
Richard Gilbert

Rattle #47 features 25 poets writing in Japanese forms, and an extremely insightful conversation with haiku scholar Richard Gilbert about the often misunderstood form, and how it relates to Japanese culture. Spanning haiku, senryū, tanka, haibun, haiga, renku, and rengay, the issue demonstrates the wide range of possibilities that these forms allow, from Billy Collin’s witty seventeen-syllable haiku, to Michael Mejia’s photopoetic exploration of salaryman culture. It’s an issue full of deep insight and deft humor. It’s also the first time we’ve ever published collaborative poems—here we have two, including the lyrically stunning “Midday Heat” by Jonathan Weinert and Debra Kang Dean.

As if that weren’t enough, we’ve returned to our old habit of splitting issues, so #47 provides a dozen open poems to rattle you in the usual fashion.

 

	Open Poetry
	Mike Bove	Our Neruda
	Jackson Burgess	Trigger Warning
	Erik Campbell	Anniversary
		What I Mean When I Use the Term …
	Rhina P. Espaillat	One Defense
	L.M. Ferreira	Muybridge
	Lola Haskins	Mortality
	John Herschel	KGB Orchestra at the High School Prom
	Greg Kosmicki	Whenever I Peel an Orange
	Abby E. Murray	Phantom Limb
	Christopher Presfield	Deep Water
	Amber Rambharose	Portrait of the Second Wife as Understudy
	Japanese Forms
	Roberta Beary	Genetics
		Presbyopia
	David Bowles	Three Translations
	Helen Buckingham	Three Haiku
	Billy Collins	Five Haiku
	Michael Luis Dauro	from Haiku in Concrete [ankles splashed]
		from Haiku in Concrete [from winter hands]
	Peter Fiore	What If
	Richard J. Fleming	Three Haiku
	Richard Gilbert	Three Haiku
	Jeff Haas	Four Senryū
	Mariko Kitakubo	After Fukushima
	Jee Leong Koh	Three Haiku
	Deborah P. Kolodji	Four Haiku
	Timothy Liu	Five Senryū
	Bob Lucky	Working with Ghosts
	Michael Mejia	from Salaryman [Umami]
		from Salaryman [To arrange oneself]
		from Salaryman [No George]
		from Salaryman [A certain sorrow]
	Marsh Muirhead	Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms
		Willows on the Crow
		Four Haiku
	George Swede	Three Haiku and a Tanka
	Kenny Tanemura	Bashō’s Hut: A Haibun
	Charles Tarlton	Simple Tanka Prose for the Seasons
	John Samuel Tieman	Haiku Sequence
	& Walter Bargen
	Jack Vian	Musashi-san
	Jonathan Weinert	Midday Heat: A Twenty-Stanza Renku
	& Debra Kang Dean
	Michael Dylan Welch	True Colours
	Conversation
	Richard Gilbert
	Photography
	Gail Goepfert