litzine, Vll:3 – fall 2001, $6, Dorothy Howard (editor), 67 Court St., Aylmer, QC, J9H 4M1
Most journals of English haiku are awful, this one isn’t. Writing haiku, tanka, or senryu in English is a sketchy thing to do in the first place, so phrases like “autumn moon” or “night fog” sound fake, I think, to anyone except a raving haiku fanatic. Dorothy Howard doesn’t choose too many of those kinds of poems, which is why RAW NerVZ works so well. It’s bursting with re-re-re-readable stuff; how many mags of any kind can boast that? Plus, it’s just so right to make a haiku publication on a photocopier; the unpretentious feel lets us hear the intimate tones of the (mostly) microscopic poems better than any other format can. (Donato Mancini)