Across the Haikuverse, No. 25: The Necessarily Brief Edition

It’s getting to be that time of the semester. The time when you start muttering, “Oh, that’s good enough.” Not that I don’t have unwaveringly high standards of excellence. (Did you hear that, professors? Unwavering!) It’s just that… life is a matter of priorities. A balancing act. Term papers, haiku, term papers, haiku… okay, haiku, but just this once.

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poems

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however the planets align a stack of pumpkins

— Mark Holloway, Beachcombing for the Landlocked

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A spring evening I ride a car with an ordinary man

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Having got used to the depth of war I love a dog

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A spring evening is wound down toward the apple skin

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— Fujiki Kiyoko, translated by Hiroaki Sato on antantantantant’s blog

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針金と針金からみ秋の暮　　　　奥坂まや
harigane to harigane karami aki no kure

a wire and a wire
twining—
autumn dusk

— Maya Okusaka, translated by Fay Aoyagi, Blue Willow Haiku World

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the morning glories
gain the second floor
half a million dead in Iraq

— Ellis Avery, on antantantantant’s blog

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poems and pictures (please visit the links to see the pictures)

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Hear the sough of rain
I whisper a secret
so that I can get in

— Tomas Tranströmer, most recent winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, illustrated by Kuniharu Shimizu at see haiku here
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blossoming witch hazel
I pound a stuck storm window
with a Chinese dictionary

— Dave Bonta, Woodrat Photoblog

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winter sun
I think twice about
destroying this web

— Kirsten Cliff, Swimming in Lines of Haiku

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night rain –
he tells me
he slept well

— sanjuktaa, wild berries

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ʈɧɛ ųɳįѵɛŗʂɛ
ą ɖįƒƒɛŗɛɳʈ čȏɳѵɛŗʂąʈįȏɳ
įɳ ʈɧɛ ɳįǥɧʈ

— Rick Daddario, 19 Planets

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divorce finalized—
a monarch floats
among falling leaves

— Aubrie Cox, Yay Words!

(Also, written anything about tea and/or monsters lately? You might want to think about contributing to Aubrie’s Monster Mash. Deadline Oct. 29.)

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interviewed

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Not long ago Johannes S.H. Bjerg gave a wonderful interview to an Indian magazine, okiedoks. Read it here.

Excerpt:

I like to “stretch” the language, I want to take it where it almost loses sense because of its inadequacy to express exactly what is inexpressible. This sounds cryptic, and it is. Language can go only so far … but how far before it becomes sheer nonsense … It’s a bit like pricking a hole in “reality” to find another “reality.” And this is where it makes no sense talking about anymore. Only the poem can do that.

— Johannes S.H. Bjerg

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essayed

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This passage by Randy Brooks from his Modern Haiku review of Richard Gilbert’s Poems of Consciousness has been some of my favorite food for thought recently.

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It has always been my contention that the haiku community needs to get past the beginner’s mind of definitions and rules and get on with the celebration of the diversity of the genre that is rich and strong only to the extent that there is a wide range of practice, a surprising freshness of voices and perspectives. We need to embrace and celebrate haiku writers who relish dense language and the naming function of words, haiku writers who live in the woods and tap into the biodiversity of ecosystems there, haiku writers who protest injustice and go to jail, haiku writers who resist the male ego dominance of English, haiku writers who meditate and seek the quiet voice within, haiku writers who celebrate being social and the significance of being in community, haiku writers who are religious within a variety of spiritual traditions, haiku writers who are all about people, haiku writers who write senryu and don’t care about the distinction, haiku writers who are international citizens of the world using haiku to bridge cultures, haiku writers who are so local nobody but friends at the local pub understand them. This diversity of writers and approaches to haiku is the strength and rich surprise of elasticity found in this literary genre.

— Randy Brooks, Modern Haiku 40:1, Winter 2009

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Dead Tree News

I generally hate to quote and run but this time I think I’ll just toss a few of my favorites from the most recent issues of two of my favorite journals at you.

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From Frogpond 34:3 —

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after the argument
separating
lights and darks

— Kristen B. Deming

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after she leaves
the weight
of hanging apples

— Marsh Muirhead

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lightning strike
the mean streak in me
deepens

— Aubrie Cox

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From Modern Haiku 42:3 —

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as if each promise
carried a different weight
breaking waves

— Angela Terry

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Halbmond
die Baukräne
in Berlin
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half moon
the construction cranes
of Berlin

— Dietmar Tauchner

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summer afternoon
the salamander basking
in inattention

— Ernest Wit

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table talk
the knife resting
on the spoon

— Francine Banwarth

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imaginary mouse
i feed him
fear

— Tyrone McDonald

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the need to formulate an archival appraisal policy for born-digital materials … what was that? Oh, sorry, I opened the wrong window on my desktop again… well, while I’m here at this window I guess I’ll look at the sky for a while.

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into the fog the stars are no exception

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