You recently published a children’s haiku book, H is for Haiku: A Treasury of Haiku from A to Z (Penny Candy Books), which your late mother, Sydell Rosenberg, wrote some years ago. Could you start by providing readers with some biographical information about your mother and her beginnings as a haiku poet?
Sydell Rosenberg (1929-1996) was a New York City teacher and writer. Syd wrote poetry, short stories, literary and word puzzles; and more. In the early 1950s, I believe shortly after graduating from Brooklyn College, she published a racy novel entitled, Strange Circle. From what I can remember or was told, Syd wrote this book (she had a different title, Sham Bottom) on a dare from her boss at a NYC publishing company where she worked as a copyeditor, after she had “complained” about the quality of the manuscripts she worked on. It was published under a male pseudonym, Gale Sydney, the reversal of her maiden name initials, Sydell Gasnick. I believe this potboiler sold a respectable number of copies for its time. The number that sticks in my head is 270,000. Interestingly, there are copies available online. Mom could be a gentle rebel at times. I love that she wrote this “dirty book!”
Sometime in the 1960s, she “found” haiku. And it found her. How, I don’t know. But this form and the haiku community became an important part of her creative and intellectual life until she died.
According to the 1974 Haiku Anthology, mom published her first haiku in 1967, in American Haiku. But I think she published haiku before then, in 1966, in the poetry column of a long-defunct newspaper. In 1968, she became a charter member of the Haiku Society of America. She attended the founding meeting that October. In 1975, she served as HSA’s secretary. Mom also served on two Merit Book Awards.