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June 18: Well, I received my copy of the latest issue of Modern Haiku. It has the first magazine review of From Haiku To Lyriku. After a lengthy discussion of the book's typos, reviewer Charles Trumbull proposes "baffling" as "another appropriate adjective to describe" my book, the first adjective being, "sloppy." He seems to have missed the careful definitions of terms I give. Nowhere does he make any effort to see where I'm going or critique my reasoning (too baffling, I suppose)--but he reproduces seven specimens from the book, including my division of "existence" by poetry, which is surely the most reproduced mathematical poem of all time by now, which is a plus. He finishes off with "For our adjective describing From Haiku To Lyriku let's settle on 'wild' or 'heady.' If a bareback ride on a runaway stallion through the far edges of the forest appeals to you, this is a book for you!" That's reasonably unnegative, but I doubt that any reader of Modern Haiku will be willing to take that ride.
Amusingly, the issue has a fine piece by Guy R. Beining on its back cover. Hey, I recognized it as by him instantly! There's also my response to some found poems in the issue. Weird that Trumbull thinks so little of me as a critic but actually asked me for this (but didn't reproduce the poems I was responding to, so my response isn't of much use to the average reader).
A friend has promised to proof my pdf file of From Haiku To Lyriku, by the way. I've already corrected the mainest production flaws in it. I'm eager to go through it again when I have the correct copy to see if I can simplify it still further--and make its organziation more clear. I really did try my dangedest to make it accessible to people like Trumbull. Could he really not follow it, or was he just too little in sympathy with what I was doing to try?
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