(they say)

Across the Haikuverse, No. 30: All Fall Down

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The flowers are hardening, tightening up. You look at them expecting to see their familiar open faces, warm-hearted smiles, but they look back at you stiffly, politely; the entire encounter is awkward. You avert your eyes, hurry by. Just last week you had a friendly conversation, they seemed to approve of you. Now you’re their son’s girlfriend from the other side of the tracks, the salesman who’s about to lose the sale, the kid no one wants to choose for their team. Cold. They’re cold. You can see the future, your future, and they’re not in it.

This whole side of the street–rust. That brick wall–crumbled. All the newspapers–faded. (And no one reads them anymore.)

You feel a pain you’ve never felt before and you know it’s just the first of many.

Andante, adagio, largo, decelerando, decelerando.

first frost
but the key still fits
in the lock

.

~~~~~~~~

In this (extremely belated) edition of the Haikuverse:

Autumn wind:
Everything I see
Is haiku.

– Takahama Kyoshi (tr. Geoffrey Bownas)

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– Johannes S. H. Bjerg, 3ournals & Frags 

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everyone waits
for the light to change–
little chestnut moon

– Angie Werren (haiku and image), feathers 

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You are gathered to go,
Strip-lining phone wires,
Faced to the south,
After all that’s been said,
I wish I was with you.

– Matt Morden, Morden Haiku

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dog days
the universe still
a thrown stick

–Rick Daddario (haiku and artwork), 19 Planets 

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approaching autumn
in my pocket
a chain for the black dog

–Johannes S. H. Bjerg, Scented Dust

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off
looking for paradise–
cicada husk

– Josh Hockensmith, No More Moon Poems

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my friends say leaf-fall
but I say apple-fall
dull-drubbing the grass

– Marie Marshall, Kvenna Rad

(See also: Marie’s “Fragment 200“)

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The casualty report,
made into a bag
for ripening an apple.

– Sanki Saito (1939), on R’r Blog

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taiheiyô nomikomeba aki futto kuru

when I swallow
the Pacific Ocean… unexpectedly
autumn

– Fay Aoyagi, Blue Willow Haiku World

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an octopus trap
in the pawn shop, still wet—
harvest moon

– Mark Harris, from Sea Bandits, edited by Aubrie Cox, downloadable from Yay Words!

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Scent of burning leaves
the four chambers
of my heart

– Patrick Sweeney, on Issa’s Untidy Hut

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invited to feel
the stubble on her legs
autumn rain

–Shawn Lindsay, on ant ant ant ant ant’s blog

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This new venture looks interesting: Bones: Journal for New Haiku. Editors: Johannes S. H. Bjerg, Alan Summers, Sheila Windsor. They are poets whose work and taste I admire, and they have a manifesto that I like a lot. In part it reads: “Haiku that stands on the firm ground of tradition but has internalized it and is now written for today and the future.”

Fall is always a good time to start things, especially things that require a flow of brisk air to the brain. I hope this venture flourishes. I hope we all do. Have a gentle fall.

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Mayday

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I started this blog two years ago today. Thank you all, you wild flowers.

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I’d say more, but I might start bawling and get salt water in my keyboard.

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(spring wind)

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spring wind
the color
of his diagnosis

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Acorn 28

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(day moon)

photo by ayukim

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day moon
the ghost story
of my ovaries

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A Hundred Gourds 1.2, March 2011

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Striking

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Photo by Rishab Mishra

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lightning
through the skylight
conversation strikes
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Tommy Knockers: Mineral Point Retreat Anthology 2011

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Go ahead, click on the picture to make it bigger and more interesting. I’ll wait for you to get back.

… Back already? Here’s the deal with this poem — I wrote it last summer at the Mineral Point (Wis.) Haiku Retreat, which was an extremely stimulating and relaxing weekend (what? Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself…) spent writing and reading and talking with other poets at The Foundry Bookstore, where Gayle Bull likes to invite people over in swarms and feed them a lot and make sure they have a good time, which they always do. One night I stayed up late with some people talking. There was lightning. I rarely write haiku that are such faithful descriptions of something that actually happened. Or, you know. Metaphorically happened. (Since conversation doesn’t actually strike.) But it seemed appropriate in this case.

The anthology contains one poem each from most of the retreat attendees, and great illustrations, by local poet and artist Charlie Baker, of Tommy Knockers, who are these sort of Cornish elves who live in mines and like to wreak havoc. (Mineral Point was settled by Cornish lead miners, so this is not a non sequitur.) The haiku describe the weekend, our surroundings, our activities, our quiet impressions and our loud conversations. (Not to mention the roar of the tractor parade that went by Saturday morning. What? Does your community not have a tractor parade on a random Saturday morning in July? Obviously you don’t live in rural Wisconsin.)

I was back in Mineral Point again this weekend for a shorter but no less food-and-conversation-filled event, and picked up this newly-published book. It was good to be reminded in frigid February of that warm (in more ways than one) weekend in July. A lot has happened since then. But friends, friends are still there. And books. And poetry. And Tommy Knockers. Thanks to all of you.

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(winter sky)

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winter sky
snipping out stars
for the children

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see haiku here, 8 January 2012

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(This haiga is a lot bigger and more impressive-looking at Kuniharu Shimizu’s blog, so click on that link up there to see it there. That way you can also see the whole sequence of haiga Kuni san did about children, and the related sequence he’s working on now, about toys.)

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Across the Haikuverse, No. 28: The On Beyond Zebra Edition

Sometimes 26 letters are not enough. Dr. Seuss fans will know what I’m talking about.

Anyone who writes seriously at all, I’m guessing, is frequently frustrated by the inadequacy of language to express the full range of things there are to express in the world. There aren’t words for everything. There aren’t even combinations of words for everything, although one of the things that great writers (and sometimes even we lesser writers) do is find new combinations of words to express things that haven’t been expressed before, or that have been expressed before but are in need of refreshing.

On my journeys around the Haikuverse that’s chiefly, I believe, what I’m looking for — people saying things in ways that are new, or new to me. I read a lot, I always have, so it’s not that easy for me to find words I haven’t found before. But it happens, still, many times each month. It’s one reason to keep going. There are others, but I keep coming back to words. I think language, for me, might occupy roughly the same space in my brain that religious awe occupies in the minds of many. We are endlessly finding new things to describe and inventing new ways of describing old things, as individuals, as a species; this seems like reason enough to believe in some form of eternity. Thanks to everyone who’s given me some reason to believe this month.

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Haiku

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just
kidding

you’re
not

alive -

morning rain

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driller
kun

du
lever

ikke -

morgenregn

— Johannes S.H. Bjerg, 2 tongues/2 tunger

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Dear Malvina,
It’s been a long time since we It’s already autumn here . . .
lonely evening

— Rafael Zabratynski, DailyHaiku, 12/21/11

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うごけば、　　寒い　　　　　橋本夢道

ugokeba,        samui

if I move,                  cold

–  Mudo Hashimoto, trans. Fay Aoyagi, Blue Willow Haiku World

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Slime trail—
glancing back at
the glinting

—Don Wentworth, Tinywords

(Also, you should read this lengthy interview with Don from Christien Gholson’s blog.)

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crow watching –
the unseen tree branch suddenly
seen

— Angie Werren, feathers

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dusk at the beach
a stone and I
touch each other

— Dietmar Tauchner, International Second Prize, The 15th Mainichi Haiku Contest

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冬蜂の死にどころなく歩きけり　　村上鬼城

fuyu-bachi no shini-dokoro naku arukikeri

a winter bee
continues to walk
without a place to die

– Kijo Murakami, trans. Fay Aoyagi, Blue Willow Haiku World

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dark
the TV ignores
everything

— John Stevenson, ant ant ant ant ant’s blog

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cave mouth
a scream beyond my range
of hearing

– George Swede, Mann Library Daily Haiku

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first
snowflakes

like me
made to last

till
they’re

gone

— Johannes S.H. Bjerg, 3ournals and frags

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Tanka

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hour upon hour
a veil of simple snow
falling without reason
I feel an urgency
to risk everything I know

— William Sorlien, Haiku Bandit Society

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trailing my hand
through the water
for a moment
more river
than man

– Paul Smith, Paper Moon

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Haibun

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Another grey day has fallen as a pall on the new calendar as if what makes a difference really doesn’t. Only the ticking clock and the distant squawking of a crow or better yet, complaint, as well as the deep sigh of engines passing by tell the trudge goes on. I look on the cypress with a creeping sense of sorrow. The deep cold has darkened its twigs.  Gifts piled beside it now holiday debris. A black garbage bag rests folded in the bin. I gather the cards. The wishes slide off my fingers. A bag of pebbles waits to be planted on the vase. Like wishes that might take root, I would have to water them each day. But for now

blue notes waver under the lamp

– Alegria Imperial, jornales

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No, It’s Not Japanese Short-Form Poetry, But It’s My Blog And I Can Do Whatever I Want

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Almost Ready

five forty five a.m.

very cold

I move
close to a heater

night like wind

forming

itself

By god
I hear
a rooster

Crow

I had
only heard
a rooster

Crow

In the movies
before

this

To think
of the beautiful things

Your memory
has led me
into

And this poem

Almost ready!

— Aditya Bahl, dipping butterflies

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Essayed

Gene Myers, the blogger over at The Haiku Foundation, asked a bunch of poets in December what their hopes were for English-language haiku in 2012. One of my favorite answers to this question, part of which I’ve quoted below, came from Scott Metz:

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“One of my hopes is that the aesthetics and techniques—the poetics—that have become traditional (classical?), and entrenched, in English-language haiku (with all its wonderful and creative misreadings, limitations, misinterpretations and ahistorical stances) continue to flourish and intensify, and deepen. With an emphasis on transparency (and directness) of language, simplicity, plainness, literalism, direct experience, season words, and ‘ordinary reality,’ a remarkable, timeless foundation has been created.

“Another one of my hopes for English-language haiku is that it will continue to diversify and evolve; that poets will continue to play (the hai in haiku) artistically (with language, modi operandi, imagery, structure, culture, media, history, literature), go where they need to go—go where they must go—and continue to question and resist. …

“I look forward to the craft and artistry and invitations in everyone’s poems: all the doors and windows left open and/or cracked, all the lights on in the attics, all the latches and locks left undone. I hope for more of all of it and thank everyone for sharing it.”

– Scott Metz, Hopes for English-Language Haiku in the New Year

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Linked

Alan Pizzarelli and Donna Beaver, the team behind the haiku-podcast goodness of Haiku Chronicles, have once again teamed up with the astounding Anita Virgil to produce something amazing: a video exploration of the many dimensions of modern English-language haiga, narrated by Anita and set to music. You need to spend half an hour watching this: Haiga Gallery.

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Journaled

ant ant ant ant ant 12

Contact Chris Gordon at mrcr3w@yahoo.com for a copy of the most recent issue of his intermittently-published and mind-altering journal, featuring the poetry of the great Jack Galmitz. [Apologies to Jack for leaving his credit off the original version of this post. All I can say is, I need new glasses.] I highly recommend the ant ant ant ant ant blog too.

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The Heron’s Nest

just how
to hold you
paper kite

— Dan Schwerin, The Heron’s Nest, Dec. 2011

Amongst the usual THN goodness in the most recent issue was this haiku? senryu? which was discussed at length at the most recent meeting of (one of) the real-life haiku groups I attend, during a session on senryu led by the great Bill Pauly. The author, Dan, a wonderful person and poet, is a member of our group — he drives two hours each way to join us every month, which makes us all feel very lucky. This poem of his is so light and deft and well-constructed that it reminds me of a paper kite; I keep expecting it to lift into the air any minute.

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bottle rockets #26

pinwheel –
as if a second thought
starts to turn it

– Satoru Kanematsu

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Booked

One day in December when I was feeling very gloomy Peter Newton’s new book showed up in my mail, with a cover illustrated by Kuniharu Shimizu and an interior designed (oh, and written, of course) by Peter, with the kind of attention to detail that one normally associates with the finer still-lifes of the Flemish Old Masters. Or, you know, something like that. What I’m trying to say, in my usual pretentious way, is that this book is a lot of fun to hold. And page through. And look at. And read. Plus, there aren’t enough orange books in the world.

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on my ceiling
the untraceable wanderings
of an ant
someone’s words carved deep
on a tree in my mind

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(blackbirds)

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blackbirds on the moon…
the frustration
of wings

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January 2012 Moon Viewing Party, Haiku Bandit Society

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(at the heart)

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at the heart
of the garden maze
a staked lily

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HaigaOnline 12.2

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Multiverses: Ready for Launch

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Hey everyone,

Every once in a while someone makes you an offer you can’t refuse. This happened to me not long ago when John Hawk, who is a wonderful poet whose poetry I have featured in the Haikuverse, asked me to become the haibun editor of a new journal he was starting, called Multiverses.

I can’t tell you how excited I am to take on this challenge. Haibun have a special place in my heart because I started out as a prose writer and have been wrestling with that craft for so long, and then along came haiku to become my new obsession. Combining the two forms skilfully, imaginatively, and artistically is a goal I have been working toward for quite a while now. (You can read some of my efforts on my “Site Archive” page, in the “Haibun” category.)

I love to read what other people are doing to shape the relatively new form of English-language haibun and I’m looking forward to being part of the process of putting some of that work out there in the world. I’m also looking forward to working with the great crew of editors that John has assembled from around the world (see below). Send us what you’ve got, we can’t wait to read it!

_______________________________________________________________

Here’s John’s announcement:

It is my honor to announce the launch of Multiverses, a new online journal dedicated to publishing modern English haiku and related forms of Japanese poetry, as well as to make an initial call for submissions for our first issue (due out in Spring of 2012). From our editorial statement:

“Each moment of our lives is a haiku waiting to happen. The unique way in which we experience these moments creates an authentic and personal reality known only to ourselves—our own little universe, so to speak. Yet we are all part of the same sum. By sharing our individual experiences and observations, we gain perspective and insight into the world of others, therefore becoming better attuned and more intimate with our own. It is with this idea in mind that Multiverses happened into existence.”

We are so excited and pleased to have an incredible team of editors, including:

Paul Smith, Tanka Editor
Melissa Allen, Haibun Editor
Alexis Rotella, Haiga Editor
Johannes S. H. Bjerg, Features Editor

Please feel free to share this post and spread the word about our launch. For more information about Multiverses, including details on submitting your work (deadline for our inaugural issue is February 15!), please visit www.multiversesjournal.com. We’re all looking forward to reading your work!

John Hawk
Founder, Haiku Editor
Multiverses

Across the Haikuverse, No. 27: Okay, So I Lied Edition

I know, I know. I said I wasn’t going to do this again for a while. But I’m so used to it! I keep reading haiku I love! And then I cut and paste them to a document and then I paste them into WordPress and then I fiddle with the formatting a little and then I press “Publish” and you get to read them. It’s not really that hard. No, really! It’s not! I totally can do it… at least one more time. Right? Please?

…Thanks!

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Haiku

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brittle moonlight
self-immolations
drawn on a map

— William Sorlien, Haiku Bandit Society

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hiding their faces well snowflakes
.
de skjuler deres ansigter godt snefuggene

— Johannes S.H. Bjerg, 2 tongues/2 tunger

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change of seasons
I catch myself talking
to the wind

— Margaret Dornaus, Haiku-doodle

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a break
in the clouds
how small we are

— Alegria Imperial, jornales

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in the second-hand book shop, the purr of the three-legged cat

— Mark Holloway, Beachcombing for the Landlocked

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千の矢の描く千の弧師走空　　青柳　飛

sen no ya no egaku sen no ko shiwazu-zora
.
one thousand trajectories
of one thousand arrows—
December sky

Fay Aoyagi, Blue Willow Haiku World  (her blog’s 1000^th post)

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目をつむりセーター脱げば剥製です　　　渡部陽子

me o tsumuri seitaa nugeba hakusei desu
.
taking off a sweater
with eyes closed
I am a stuffed specimen

— Yoko Watabe, tr. Fay Aoyagi, Blue Willow Haiku World

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platelets—
the trip we were planning
to plan

— Roberta Beary, Tinywords

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itallcomestogether in the darkness for the owl

— Johnny Baranski, Monostich

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longue recherche
des lunettes pour mieux voir
le brouillard

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a long search
for glasses, the better to see
the fog

— Vincent Hoarau, La Calebasse (dubious translation by me)

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Haibun

she envies her her boyfriend that never fools around and her cherry-red convertible that never needs repairs and her outfits (complete with shoes and accessories) that can be had for less than ten dollars and the perpetually-shining plastic sun outside her practically-immaculate plastic house but most of all she envies her her god-damn nearly-perfect never-faltering ability-to-smile . . .

she says
“we can’t help who we love”
to no one
in particular
“all guys are assholes”

— Eric L. Houck Jr., haiku

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Haiga

Kindly click on the links to see the haiga that are not posted here.

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mouth of the cave
we enter as eagles
exit as sparrows

— an’ya, DailyHaiga

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opening emergency door,
head-on spring moon

— Kikko Yokoyama, with haiga by Kuniharu Shimizu, see haiku here

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— Aubrie Cox, Yay Words! (Click on the image [or the link to Aubrie's blog] for a larger, more legible version)

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Essayed

Chen-ou Liu posted a great essay recently on his blog Poetry in the Moment (originally published in A Hundred Gourds 1.1) about the phenomenon of “deja-ku”: “Read It Slowly, Repeatedly, and Communally.” Here’s a sample, but please go read the whole thing, it’s fascinating and there are lots of great examples.

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Today, high poetic value placed upon originality remains ingrained in the Western literary culture. This fear of unknowingly writing similar haiku or the reluctance or disuse of allusion proves that Thomas Mallon’s remark still holds true: the poets live under the “fearful legacy of the Romantics.” Could those poets or editors who are constantly worried about “not being original or fresh” imagine that a poet deliberately using a direct quote as the first two lines of his haiku can achieve a great poem?

– Chen-ou Liu, “Read It Slowly, Repeatedly, and Communally”

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Hey, thanks for indulging me. I feel better now.

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bitter night
I keep reminding myself
I’m a poet

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(indecision)

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indecision I tear off one wing at a time

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Modern Haiku  42.3

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(lullaby)

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lullaby
milk dripping
from the moon

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December 2011 Moon Viewing Party, Haiku Bandit Society

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(deep autumn)

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deep autumn
the arsenic
at the apple’s core

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A Hundred Gourds 1:1, December 2011

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(box turtle)

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box turtle
stepping from mud
to mud

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DailyHaiku 8/26/2011

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(what I thought)

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what I
thought of you
when I wasn’t
thinking
driftwood

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Acorn 27

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Across the Haikuverse, No. 26: The Z Edition

So: number 26. If I’d been lettering these editions instead of numbering them, I’d be up to Z by now. And Z, as we all know, is the end of the alphabet. This is convenient for me, because circumstances are such in my life right now that I am afraid I must put the Haikuverse on hiatus indefinitely. The blog, too, will probably be seeing far less frequent postings for a while.

I will miss you guys. Spinning around the Haikuverse, taking in the sights, shooting the breeze… it’s been fun. I’m not planning on disappearing completely, but I have things to tend to in other corners of the universe at the moment.

Stay in touch.

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underneath
the ice
of the poem
an imaginary frog
slows its heartbeat

.

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__________________________________________________________________________

haiku

.

the closest
I’ll ever be
to sentimental
a room full of hats

— William Sorlien, Haiku Bandit Society

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spring cleaning . . .
the rhythmic sound of her
sharpening pencils

—Kirsten Cliff, DailyHaiku

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lark’s song -
in an old landscape
I part my hair to the left

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lærkesang –
i et gammelt landskab
laver jeg skilning i venstre side

– Johannes S.H. Bjerg, 2 tongues/2 tunger

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Turning on the light I become someone alone in the house

— Sam Savage, ant ant ant ant ant’s blog

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autumn leaf already i am attached

:

without permission part of me starts to bloom

:

winter day barely one language

:

winter night she knowingly reveals another arm

:

another day of snow my jurassic layer

:

the only sound that’s come out of me all day firefly

:

at this point i just assumed they come alive at night

– Scott Metz, ant ant ant ant ant’s blog

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he thinks again of turning leaves her hands

– Angie Werren, Tinywords

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autumn days     straying from the text to marginalia

— Mark Holloway, Beachcombing for the Landlocked

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人ひとに溺れることも水澄めり　　　　保坂リエ

hito hito ni oboreru kotomo mizu sumeri

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a human wallows in
another human…
clear autumn water

– Rie Hosaka, translated by Fay Aoyagi, Blue Willow Haiku World

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swollen rosehips
if you found God
in your body you’d die

– Anonymous (“Jack Dander”), Masks 2

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on 60 televisions the scissors hesitate

– Anonymous (“Bridghost”), Masks 2

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haiga and other art

.

dog star
the origin
of poetry

— Aubrie Cox, Yay Words!

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two red butterflies
play strange attractor
in the garden

— Kris Lindbeck, haiku etc.

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– Rick Daddario, 19 Planets

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tanka

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if we had known
this would be
our last winter
when we professed
our love for the bomb

snow swirls
into light at the end
of the tunnel
echoes of the conductor’s
last call

postscript
for the apocalypse
countless years
from now — a cherry tree’s
first blossoms

– Aubrie Cox, Yay Words!

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hand in hand
a teenaged boy and girl pass
a cigarette
back and forth on their way
to being twenty

– David Caruso, DavidHaiku

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haibun

Revisit

I thought I had been sucked into the past. That sort of thing happens from time to time. I sat on the train on the way to the big city – well, as big as they come in Denmark – when a hippie-looking guy boarded with his monstrous Big Dane dog. My thoughts went in two directions. I thought: now, there’s a weirdo, knowing very well that in this part of the country many “off-siders” have found a cheap place to live as it’s rather poor. And I thought: great!!! Nice to see a flash of the past, and my nose replayed all kinds of smells associated with the early -70′s. Patchouli, sandalwood, fenugreek, hashish and wet and dirty “Afghan” fur coats, which was a bit of a turn-off, that last part. After having put his corn-pipe away he sat himself down in a very upright position: straight back, both feet on the floor and looking us, the other travellers, straight in the eyes. I nodded. He nodded. Dog said nowt. Then he padded the seat at his left side (he’d taken the window seat) and the dog, big as half a horse, jumped up and sat perfectly cool beside him, straight as a statue. The dog had a colourful tie as leash. We bumped on while I was listening to Incredible String Band.

straightened stream
a mirrored swan
asks twice

– Johannes S.H. Bjerg, 3ournals and frags

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Dead Tree News

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Some gems from the most recent edition of the always stunning Acorn (No. 27):

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enough said…
the moon rises
out of the sea

— Francine Banwarth

.

isolated showers —
the genes that matter
the genes that don’t

— Michele L. Harvey

.

never touching
his own face
tyrannosaurus

— John Stevenson

.

all night love
the candle
reshapes itself

— Jayne Miller

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dad’s shed
a ladder folded
in the shadows

— frances angela

.

full moon
from each shell
a different ocean

— Mary Ahearn

.

autumn quarry
the feel of a dozer
going deep

— Ron Moss

.

starfish…
to feel so much
of what we touch

— Peter Newton

.

spring melancholy
I cut my tofu
smaller and smaller

— Fay Aoyagi

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_______________________________________________________________________

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Hey, seriously, I meant that about staying in touch. Drop me a line. Send me a poem. Tell me how your day went and where your life is going. I’m interested.

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away from the window
hearing the rain
trickle down the window

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(forgiving)

.

.

fireflies
forgiving you
on and off

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Frogpond 34.3

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(finally)

.

the owl

finally sees me

harvest moon

.

a handful of stones 10/29/2011

……..