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Frogpond 41.3 • 2018

Museum of Haiku
Literature Award

Haiku & Senryu

Essay 1 - "Labor Day"

Essay 2 - "H is for Haiku"

Haibun

Haiga

Renku

Book Reviews

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H is for Haiku: A Treasury of Haiku from A to Z

by Sydell Rosenberg

Amy Losak Interviewed by Robert Epstein
(complete PDF version)

Here is a sample excerpt from the opening page of this interview:

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.

[feature continues for several more pages] . . .

Epstein, Robert. "Amy Losak Interviewed by Robert Epstein." Frogpond 41.3, Fall 2018, 109-113.

This excerpt inclues the first page of the feature: page 109. The complete feature includes pages 109-113. To read the complete feature, click on the link to the PDF version:

Amy Losak Interviewed by Robert Epstein
(complete PDF version)

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