This issue is devoted to honoring Hilary Tann. Where we normally
include the work of a guest poet, we are displaying a few favorites
among our many favorite Hilary poems.
I met Hilary in January of 2000. She had been Yu Chang’s friend and
fellow professor at Union College for many years before then. The three
of us began meeting on a monthly basis at Tai Pan, almost immediately.
In the beginning, what we had was a haiku study group but, by 2001,
something more was happening, in several ways. One of them was that
we began publishing some of the best work from our monthly sessions
in this biannual anthology – Upstate Dim Sum. Another was that we
became very close friends. In fact, the late summer of 2001 saw the
three of us beginning the annual tradition of vacationing together
in Maine. Over the next two decades, we spent time together on the
Maine shore and at Paul MacNeil’s camp on Onawa Lake, in central
Maine. The Onawa visits centered around the composition of renku,
many of which were recognized in various contests and publications.
But they also featured memorable meals and shared kayaking, hiking
and other activities. Tom Clausen, who was our first guest poet, and
a member of our group from 2003, began to join us in these annual
trips to Maine, starting in 2013.
We miss Hilary. But we have also come to realize that her presence
has a great sustaining power in each of us. Even our newest member,
Mary Stevens, who joined us in 2021, has remarked upon this feeling
that Hilary is still with us in spirit.
Here are three more of Hilary’s poems; well loved, all:
noh-play—
watching the throat
behind the mask
winter solstice
pale sunlight reaches
the piano keys
watching the sun disappear
then standing to watch it
disappear again
js
Sample Poems:
drifting off
NPR on
the size of the universe
tc
my half of yesterday missing
js
in no special need
of watering
moonlit garden
ms
birdsong
so many ways
to say I love you
yc
Upstate Dim Sum 