Atlas Poetica 1: A Journal of Poetry of Place, edited by M. Kei.  Modern English Tanka Press, PO Box 43717, Baltimore, MD 21236, USA.  2008. 71 pp.  ISSN 1939-6465.  $12.95 USD.
www.modernenglishtankapress.com

Reviewed by Patricia Prime

The first issue of Atlas Poetica: A Journal of Poetry of Place includes over 500 poems from 42 poets who represent more than 20 countries and 12 languages.  In an A4 format, the journal features a high-quality cover image of the Anti-Atlas Mountains in southern Morocco as seen by satellite.  As the editor, M. Kei says in his introduction “Earth as Poetry”, “All future covers of Atlas Poetica will also be drawn from “Our Earth As Art,” showcasing different places around the world.”

Many of the poets included in Atlas Poetica are well-established American tanka poets writing in well-established traditions, exploring many experiences, but for the most part centred on a particular locality.  There are also many poems from poets around the world.  Although this collection of tanka is autobiographical in inspiration, based as it is on the poetry of place, it brings new levels of artistry, innovation and appreciation of the tanka form.

Sanford Goldstein’s “holy ground: a contrapuntal tanka string” opens this premiere edition with a string of 44 tanka ranging from his boyhood in America where

holy ground there was
in my twelfth or thirteenth
year,
on my pedalled bike in the wind,
endless possibilities whirling

to Japan, a country which he has chosen to make his home:

over the phone
the elderly soba-lady speaks
in a slow rhythm,
and I feel my cave of Japanese study
has a small hole for light

In “Europe,” Alexis Rotella makes an immediate impact with her tanka about France, Switzerland, Italy and Portugal.  The poems are the self-communings of someone concerned less with personal history than with a different culture:

It’s illegal to kill them –
yet roasted chamois
on the menu at a restaurant
tucked away
in the dwindling pines.

- Aosta, Italy

Gary LeBel’s “Joyous Lake” – Near Atlanta, Georgia, USA – is a group of 31 tanka with an intense physical observation of images he discovered in the area:

I went out
for fireflies
but soon found myself
a runway for stars –
such are plans.

In Barbara A. Taylor’s tanka rose “Manhattan on the Mountaintop,” the poet’s consciousness is arresting.  As all good poetry does, she directs one to the inexhaustible potential of human experience as a source of imaginative enlargement, even when that experience is exclusively the poet’s own.  Another of her tanka prose pieces is “The Fighting Cloud Woman” – based on an Australian Aboriginal myth:

an artist
mixing spit and ochre
on the bull-dust
creating fine masterpieces
of dots on weathered bark
                                          
The editor, M. Kei’s signature poems reflect his work as a volunteer crewman aboard the skipjack Martha Lewis and his obsession with the history of sailing. His poems appeal to the shared cultural experience of readers and writers who live or work by the sea:

I don’t think
I’d be lonely
on an island
with nothing
but herons

Guy Simser’s tanka sequence “Closing the Circle” focuses on Japan and contains interesting footnotes.  His other sequence of tanka, entitled “Back and Forth” is more reflective about his memories of boyhood:

nearing the reserve
after the school dance
unforeseen
she’s staggering
he’s DUI underage

The title of Liam Wilkinson’s tanka sequence “Winterside” alerts the reader to a preoccupation not only with the landscape but with a visit the poet made to London:

straight gin
in a Soho bar
goes to my head
via
my feet

an’ya and Alexis Rotella’s sequence of 87 tanka, entitled “Round Faces & Nesting Dolls,” one of the winners at AHApoetry’s Tanka Splendour 2008 (online) contest was inspired by the ideals of their Eastern Orthodox lifestyles and Slavic heritages.  Alexis calls it an “epic renga” and it may well be the first of its kind.  I quote one tanka from each poet, where the author’s tanka are differentiated by their layout:

Kept in Mother’s trunk
all these years . . .
my christening dress
with the wine spot,
along with a lock of my hair.

Ice cream social
a stamp on the forehead
to get back in . . .
only the prison camp
survivors refused it.

The following six pages of tanka are divided into titled sections: Spring, Book Shopping, Birds & Butterflies, Down to the Sea, and Dinner & Drinks.  There follow 18 pages of tanka by individual poets.  Jim Kacian’s lovely minimalist tanka being outstanding:

suddenly
sunglint
sparrows
suddenly
gone

- Winchester, Virginia, USA

Julie Thorndyke’s Australian-based tanka:

after the back burn
blackened trunks, scorched leaves
. . . the eucalypt
sprouting small green
prayers of resilience

Bob Lucky’s Chinese-based poem:

the bats
have gone –
autumn
the shrillness of the neighbor’s
bamboo flute

Andre Surridge’s New Zealand-based tanka:

Christmas holidays
pohutukawa in flower
you pick one blossom
a little blaze of scarlet
tucked into grey hair

The final pages contain “A Brief Statement on Tanka Definitions” by the editor, Announcements, an Obituary for the New Zealand poet, Bernard Gadd and International News and International Resources.