Brussels Sprout Statistics

by Michael Dylan Welch

For those interested in the numbers, the following are cumulative statistics from all issues of Brussels Sprout under Francine Porad’s editorship. The totals for each category are close estimates but may not be completely accurate. This is because different people gathered initial data for each issue, and inconsistencies may exist in how they counted different elements. The number of art pieces does not include the front cover of each issue. The numbers here do not include any poems quoted in reviews or book listings or occasionally quoted in letters from the editor. “Essays” includes formal essays and miscellaneous prose other than letters from the editor, book listings, reviews, artist bios/statements, readers’ comments, and “Favorite Haiku” appreciations. The unfolding of these numbers helps to tell the story of Brussels Sprout as one of the leading English-language haiku journals of its time.

Note: To fully explore the following table, you may want to use horizontal or vertical scroll bars to bring additional parts of the table into view. Optimized for viewing on personal computers, not smartphones or tablets.

Brussels Sprout might be characterized as still finding its way in its first few issues, as its page count and number of poems were relatively small. After the first three issues were guest-edited under Francine Porad’s guidance, the journal solidified its identity and direction under the joint editorship of Francine Porad and Connie Hutchison. The preceding statistics show that issues grew more complex (a greater variety of content) and reached its standard length of 48 pages by its seventh issue. The number of haiku and senryu amounted to 3,686. If we add tanka, and poems in sequences, linked verse, and haibun, the total number of poems is 4,701, or an average of 204.4 per issue. This does not count any poems quoted in letters from the editor, essays, or in book listings.

Some other observations are that Brussels Sprout was consistently friendly to tanka, sequences, linked verse, and haibun. A notable change was that after 17 essays appeared in the first 11 issues, only one essay would appear after that, in the second-last issue (see complete list of essays below). However, the journal was fairly consistent in publishing “Favorite Haiku” appreciations (written mostly by H. F. Noyes). Issues saw a notable increase in tanka in later years, although the number of tanka compared with the number of haiku and senryu was only about 2.1 percent, and an even smaller percentage (1.7) when counting tanka and poems in sequences, linked verse, and haibun.

Nearly all issues were 48 pages, which made for a readable journal, but may have also been an intentional limit because of mailing and printing costs. The highest number of individual poems (244) appeared in the final issue (perhaps after a bumper crop of submissions, when readers knew it would be the final issue). Not counting cover art, artists contributed 208 art pieces, at an average of about nine per issue.

The journal was published with consistent regularity, shared a variety of lively content that represented most leading English-language haiku poets of the time, and took a democratic and inclusive stance in welcoming differing voices and approaches to haiku. The art feature in each issue helped to set it apart from most other journals. The scans of all issues on this website will make Brussels Sprout available to new generations of readers and researchers.

Brussels Sprout Essays (in chronological order)

• “Who Am I?” by Marlene Mountain

• “Will I Ever Get Myself Explained (A Partial Autobiography)” by Marlene Mountain

• “Gender” by Marlene Mountain

• “belly up/pushy/pissed/mine” by Marlene Mountain

• “out in/ah” (excerpt) by Marlene Mountain

• “Regarding Marlene Mountain’s essay, ‘belly up/pushy/pissed/mine’” by Tom Clausen

• “haiku as crutch/the buck-naked empress: Marlene Mountain’s revolution” by Michael Dwyer

• “Haiku in English” (excerpts) by Raffael de Gruttola

• “The Rarity of the Subjective Haiku” by Tom Tico

• “Three Gems: A Reading of Harold G. Henderson” by Tom Tico

• “The Vanishing Act in Haiku” by H. F. Noyes

Read about “The Blooming of Brussels Sprout” and “The Brussels Sprout Legacy.”