1. a red wheelbarrow this time there’s no significance
2. that last shriveled orange those last two drops of juice
3. he never trusted yellow until he tasted lemonade
4. asking for green and being given an uncertain shade of blue
5. there will always be more blue than anything else
6. the indigo pods that shake in the autumn wind beetles dying
7. trying to revive her the child holds violets to her nose
(See this post for an explanation of what’s going on here.)
Jane:
“This is a technique that seems to happen mostly without conscious control. A writer will make a perfectly ordinary and accurate statement about common things, but due to the combination of images and ideas and what happens betwen them, a truth will be revealed about the Divine. Since we all have various ideas about what the Divine is, two readers of the same haiku may not find the same truth or revelation in it. Here, again, the reader becomes a writer to find a greater truth behind the words.
smoke
incense unrolls
itself”
– Jane Reichhold, Writing and Enjoying Haiku
*
Me:
Jane played a terrible trick on me by adding a new technique in her book (Writing and Enjoying Haiku — get it, read it). In addition to the 23 previously published in her online essay, she tacked on this one, which is a problem for me because in the strictest sense I don’t actually believe in any Divine.
I mean I believe that there are things in the universe that are a lot bigger and more important than piddly little human beings, but I don’t think they’re supernatural, or conscious, or in any way direct or guide any of the affairs of heaven or earth. I think that most of what there is to know about the universe we don’t, can’t, and will never know, and I am in awe of the unimaginable complexity of it all, but I don’t think that just because our tiny brains don’t understand it and can’t explain it we must invent some other entity that does understand it.
Anyway. Enough of my heathen metaphysics. I felt that if I wanted to complete this project, I was duty-bound to attempt to write some kind of haiku that referenced or implied the existence of some kind of divine entity. But I was utterly at a loss for how to do this. So I decided to cheat. (See, I told you I was a heathen.)
I turned to my trusty friend the Book of Psalms (King James Version), one of the world’s great literary achievements, reasoning that somewhere in there must be something that resembled a haiku in some way … right?
You tell me.
*
moisture …
turned into the drought
of summer
(Ps. 32:4)
out of the miry clay …
my foot
upon a rock
(Ps. 40:2)
deep calleth
unto deep …
the noise of waterspouts
(Ps. 42:7)
the noise of the seas …
the tumult
of the people
(Ps. 65:7)
blow up
the trumpet …
the new moon
(Ps. 81:3)
speaking
and being heard
fire
summer vacation
the trees have the voices
of children
rain-streaked window
the last of the milk
in my spoon
looking at mushrooms and saying they are clouds
the sixth of August waiting for all this to detonate
those memories shadows burned into the pavement
*
Hiroshima Day is a summer kigo that is, obviously, very significant to the Japanese. As you’d expect, most haiku on this subject are quite somber and serious, and are much more likely to refer to history, politics, and social issues than your typical haiku.
I didn’t want to write something light and frivolous for Hiroshima Day, but I also didn’t want to write haiku that were specifically about the bombing — I wanted to write haiku that used images of nuclear bomb attacks to comment on more personal matters. It’s hard to know whether this approach is respectful of the suffering of the bombing victims or whether it’s cluelessly callous — after all, it was my country that dropped those bombs, albeit a generation before I was born.
I will say that I spent a large part of my later childhood and adolescent years, which coincided with the heightening of and then the end of the Cold War, very, very fearful of nuclear war, and so these images for me do have a personal significance that goes beyond the history of Hiroshima. I think there is an almost universal fear of nuclear war now in the human psyche, which has arisen from what we know of the horrors of those Japanese bombings. So it’s not really that I’m trying to appropriate someone else’s experience here for the purpose of making poetry, more that I’m trying to express what has become universal about that experience.
Man, sorry to be such a bummer on what is, here at least, a really beautiful summer day. I promise to have something more fun to read tomorrow …
eggs and peaches
light beginning to smear itself
across the sky
I do lots of three-liners, I frequently do one-liners. But for some reason today, when I sat down to write haiku, feeling tired and hot and grumpy, the ku all split into two lines and refused to consider any other configuration. Feel free to psychoanalyze this turn of events.
*
yellow warbler —
clothes line full of black clothes
the funeral —
his dog walking proudly down the street
watermelon —
in the kitchen discussing their options
new potatoes —
a boy and girl trade shy compliments
river currents —
swimming with her glasses on
Here’s an announcement of a haiku festival that is taking place about an hour from my house (in southern Wisconsin) in September. I’m very excited to go and meet some other haiku groupies in person. (I’m also very curious about their assertion that southwestern Wisconsin is the birthplace of American haiku. Anyone know anything about the history behind that?)
It doesn’t seem like most of my readers live anywhere near the Midwest, but if you do, or are in the mood for a really long road trip, I’d love to see some of you there. Think about it …
Join haikuists from the U.S. and Canada for their Second Annual Cradle of American Haiku Festival, at 2 p.m., Friday, Sept. 10, to 1 p.m., Sunday, Sept. 12, at Foundry Books, 105 Commerce St., Mineral Point. The festival is open to the public, and beginning and experienced haikuists are welcome.
… The festival will include several workshops and presentations on the form and art of haiku/related Japanese poetic forms, readings of haiku, and Japanese art. This year’s theme is “Remembering Robert Spiess—His Life and Work.” Spiess was a longtime haikuist and author, and former editor of “Modern Haiku,” an international journal of haiku and haiku studies.
The festival will also feature an opening reception; a “Kukai,” a peer-reviewed haiku contest on the theme “Transitions;” Tai Chi, meditative exercises; a presentation on “Kodo,” Japanese incense; mini-critique sessions with award-winning poets and publishers; a social with cocktails and Midwest style picnic/tailgate; and a “ginko” walk to observe nature and write haiku. Haikuists may also participate in a sale of books they’ve authored.
At the festival, The Haiku Society of America will hold its annual national quarterly meeting to which the public is invited. However, the HSA is not sponsoring the festival.
Southwest Wisconsin is the birthplace of American haiku. Mineral Point is a scenic town of 19th century architecture, listed in the National Register of Historic Places, located in the region’s hills. It is about a 45- minute drive from Madison and Dubuque, IA.
The cost of the festival is $30 which includes workshops, all activities, reception, and picnic. For more information, with a schedule of events and lodging options, contact Charlotte Digregorio, Midwest Regional Coordinator, The Haiku Society of America, at email cvpress@yahoo.com or by phone at 847-881-2664.
swatting mosquitoes
they haven’t decided
if they’re in love
In the last ten days I’ve seen five performances of “Macbeth” with four different casts. So many lines of the play have become earworms for me, especially those (and there are so many in this play) that use either sound or imagery (or both) to gorgeous effect. For instance (in no particular order):
• If the assassination could trammel up the consequence, and catch, with its surcease, success …
• Weary sennights nine times nine shall he dwindle, peak, and pine …
• Tonight we hold a solemn supper, sir …
• Stars, hold your fires; let not light see my black and deep desires …
• There’s husbandry in heaven; their candles are all out.
• It will have blood, they say; blood will have blood. Stones have been known to move and trees to speak …
• By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes. Open, locks, whoever knocks.
• Safe in a ditch he lies, with twenty trenched gashes in his head.
Some of the lines echoed in my head in the same way that some haiku does, which made me wonder if you could pummel iambic pentameter into haiku. I’m not sure how well these meet the technical definition of haiku (whatever that is), but they do seem to have something of the haiku spirit in them. And Shakespeare and Basho were (rough) contemporaries … so that must mean something.
*
the earth hath bubbles as the water has
(I.iii)
the moon is down
I have not heard
the clock
(II.i)
the obscure bird
clamor’d
the livelong night
(II.iii)
the shard-borne beetle
with his drowsy hums …
night’s yawning peal
(III.ii)
light thickens …
the crow makes wing
to th’ rooky wood
(III.ii)
untie the winds
and let them fight
against the churches
(IV.i)
I have words that would be howl’d out in the desert air
(IV.iii)
1.
I can’t remember where I got this scar, or that one, or that one.
2.
streetlights switch on the child runs away from his mother
3.
Cassiopeia she refuses to stand next to her lover
*
Over at Troutswirl right now there is a great discussion about one-line haiku.
There are links to several other discussions of the subject, and several enlightening comments. Among other interesting points:
I keep finding more and more that if I am having a great deal of trouble with a ku, transforming it to one line frequently instantly solves my problem. This is when I say that the ku “wanted” to be one line.
Also, I think I am still treating American sentences and one-line haiku as more or less interchangeable, though they’re not, really. I mean, number 1 above seems clearly to be an American sentence to me; the other 2 one-line haiku. Must think more about this …
Red Dragonfly 