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Martin Lucas' 'dream' haibun, HAGGIS, in this issue, is something of an apologia for all overworked poetry editors (Lucas edits Presence). At his left-hand is a red-inked stamp pad and in his 'right-hand is a stamp that says HAIKU". He is standing by a conveyor belt sorting edible meat, 'the size of small footballs', from the inedible. As these rather formless, plastic covered balls 'chug past' they get stamped — the others are given a 'forceful nudge' into a bin. There seems no end to this work: 'stamp, stamp, nudge, nudge, stamp...' I won't spoil it for the reader by giving away the end haiku. Well, faced with literally hundreds, if not thousands of submissions even the most stalwart of editors must wonder when 'the shift will end'. Reviewers can feel like this too! — so it's always a shot in the arm to receive a magazine to review that you know is going to be stimulating.

The very feel of Blithe Spirit is good — substantial, but manageable. Its pages are filled with poems that represent what is going on in Haiku and Haibun, etc., now. Colin Blundell's editorship does not disappoint (despite that 'long shift').

Here are two poems that share a similar subject but are very different: one ruminative, slow burning; the other matter-of-fact, almost humorously observed, despite its implications.

	Outside the hospital
	stubbed out cigarettes
	still smouldering
	
	Maureen 0'Sullivan

		outpatients'
		his medical file thicker
		than his wrists

		David Cobb

This issue features two pages of tanka. Here is a particularly fine one from Leslie Giddens on which to end:

	zillion empty rice bowls
	full of the world's hunger
	yet why do you & I
	resist our heart's desire
	for something more

This is a surreal issue of the well-established magazine — or rather it is an organized and thoughtful exploration of surreal haiku, with a lot more besides. In her editorial, Annie Bachini explains that the pursuit of the unusual is inevitably an experiment, and sensibly implies that it will be for the reader to decide which are the 'surreal and more familiar forms of haiku'.

One might suspect the magazine to be creaking under the positive weight of the readers' responses to the theme. It's not quite that simple, since the whole serves as a search for definition via its parts. Not surprisingly, there is an intention to have a 'surreal section' in the next issue, so that the explorations in this one can be refined.

In any case, Stanley Pelter is one of several contributors who offers a helpful thumbnail essay on the theme, embedded in which are some useful signposts for where to find surrealism in BLITHE SPIRIT. For example:

The surrealist image is manufactured by the chance juxtaposition of two different realities, and it is on the spark struck by their meeting that the beauty of the image depends.

	a rook sleeps with her
	slowly he tears at his watch
	until tears appear.

	a butterfly flits
	from grave to grave
	out of my mouth
	the naked and the dead.

	Forget-me-knots and
	the daily ration of tobacco
	as burial gifts.

Dadaist/Surrealist strategy of exploiting chance as a method of composition.

          On the map/ an attractive birch veneer/ improves breathing.

Colin Blundell sees it another way. By unearthing Dadaist writings, he undermines the new surrealistic haiku writers, by arguing that the originals

are not far removed from the poems of the self-proclaimed haiku avant-garde.

	the cockatoo
	under the skirts of the Spanish dancer
	sings sadly like a headquarters bugler

	only the fire department
	can drive the nightmare from the drawing room
	but all the hoses are broken.

	stripper shapes a room
	moon lifts over a lobster pot
	skewer a sky.

	radiant sunset
	beyond the ripening grain
	burnt-out poplars

	in the flower shop
	the tattooed biker
	looks lost

	Catching your laugh
		I snap it up tight and safe
	in a black spool.

This issue has excellent articles by Stanley Pelter and Giovanni Malito on the surreal in haiku, following on apparently from explorations of the subject in earlier issues. One of the reasons I like haiku is that it can have a surreal aspect, so it is good to see this aspect being explored in a thoughtful way.

In the main part of the magazine, Andrew Detheridge has a haiku with a surreal tinge to it:

	blue sky:
	so full of mountain
	so full of silence

	winter passing
	in the time it takes
	to light the fire

	Ants digging
	their holes deeper and deeper
	for atomic war

BLITHE SPIRIT is a thought-provoking magazine which is not afraid to explore the wider poetic world and try to relate it to the world of haiku.

Another rich and varied helping from the British Haiku Society. This is a tasty batch for mind and imagination — also the eye. There's something deeply satisfying about crisp stanzas descending through the void of the page. It has the flavour of Zen painting.

Quality control is set high across the entire range of forms. Haiku mix with senryu, are grouped into meditations on Autumn, and appear in the five-seven-five form. There are linked sequences, renga and haibun. It's undesirable to single any out for special attention, but AAMarcoff opens the Journal with a haiku which might serve as an emblem, in its immediacy and its elusiveness.

	a butterfly appears
	when there seems no hope
	to speak of

the presentation of a mysterious surplus that is suitable to turn common words into poetry.

The article that strikes the most sparks, however, is Alison Williams' exploration of the alchemy of haiku. Like the haikuist, the alchemist is concerned with evidence and experience. These are practical, if obscure, arts. Both subscribe to the notion of correspondence; as above, so below. As Williams puts it, haiku

seeks to discern the shared essential qualities in natural phenomena and in the human being's inward experience.

The alchemists of BLITHE SPIRIT offer new haiku and new ways of looking at haiku. Highly recommended.