black

April 25: Black and White

/ Melissa Allen / 10 Comments

.

.

.

black light
poems appear
in the rocks

.

white butterflies unbreathable atmosphere

.

horsetail sky
another story about you
in the newspaper

.

.

___________________________________________________________________________________

(NaHaiWriMo prompt: Black and white)
.

Moving on: NaHaiWriMo prompt for April 26th:

Playgrounds and playground equipment


See this post for an explanation of what this is.

See the NaHaiWriMo website.

See the NaHaiWriMo Facebook page, and contribute haiku there if you want. (It doesn’t have to have anything to do with this prompt. It’s just a suggestion.)

April 24 (Easter Sunrise)

/ Melissa Allen / 3 Comments

.

.

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Easter sunrise
all the dyed eggs
regain their colors

.

.

(NaHaiWriMo prompt: Eggs)
.

___________________________________________________________________________________

Moving on: NaHaiWriMo prompt for April 25th (in honor of World Penguin Day):

Black and/or white


See this post for an explanation of what this is.

See the NaHaiWriMo website.

See the NaHaiWriMo Facebook page, and contribute haiku there if you want. (It doesn’t have to have anything to do with this prompt. It’s just a suggestion.)

Across the Haikuverse, No. 6: Telegraphic Edition

/ Melissa Allen / 10 Comments

Hello fellow inhabitants of the Haikuverse,

There was so much to explore in the Haikuverse this week that I feel a little overwhelmed by it all. If I’m ever going to get through the list I’ve got in front of me I will have to be brief and efficient, possibly even telegraphic. So … here goes.

First of all, congratulations to Andrew Phillips, of Pied Hill Prawns, and his wife on the recent birth of a baby boy. Andrew wrote a lovely poem, Sacred Space in the Suburbs, with haiku-like stanzas, about the home birth — I highly recommend it. Here’s an excerpt:

This is a room for women. I clamp
a hose to the tap, filling the pool
with warm waters.

— Andrew Phillips

*

Lots of haiku journals published new issues in the last week. I naturally feel compelled to start with Notes from the Gean, which contains my first published haiku (reposted in this space last week). (Yes, I am excited. Thanks for asking.) They also published one of my haibun. (Excited, again.) But there are so many other wonderful things in this issue that are not by me that I demand you go over there and take a look.

For instance: There are the amazing photo haiga of Aubrie Cox and Carmella Braniger. There are some stunning renku — I like “Scribing Lines” (The Bath Spa Railway Station Renku) in particular. And, of course, there are dozens and dozens of great haiku. I was especially excited to see this one by Lee Gurga, which was thoroughly dissected in a workshop I attended in Mineral Point:

an unspoken assumption tracks through the petals

— Lee Gurga

*

Heron’s Nest also published last week and is also full of wonderful haiku. Here are a couple that particularly struck me (and I just noticed they both mention the wind, what’s that about?):

north wind
the holes
in my beliefs
— Christopher Patchel

autumn wind
the leaves too
made of oak
— Joyce Clement

This issue also contains a lengthy and interesting commentary by Alice Frampton on the following amazing ku (winner of the Heron’s Nest Award), well worth reading if you’re interested in getting a better insight into how haiku are put together:

ragged clouds
how it feels
to hold a rake
— Robert Epstein

*

A very exciting development last week was the publication of the first issue of Haijinx since 2002! Congratulations to the team who put this together. Because of a mouse-related incident that took place in my house this week, I was attracted to this haiku by the great Peggy Willis Lyles, who, sadly, died in September:

sharp cheese
I sometimes
feel trapped
— peggy willis lyles

*

Yet another December publication: Haibun Today. They usually have a great selection of haibun, though I have to admit I have not had time to make my way through all the contents of this issue yet. Of those I’ve read, one that I really loved, especially because I am always thinking that there should be more short-story or fiction haibun, was Weight, Balance, and Escapement by Jeffrey Harpeng. This is wildly imaginative and may make your brain explode, so watch out.

*

I can’t believe I didn’t know about before about this seriously awesome site: Haiku News. They publish haiku based on news stories, along with links to the story in question. This sounds like a gimmick (well, I guess it is in a way) that might involve mediocre or silly haiku, but in fact the haiku are very high quality and the interaction between haiku and news story is thought-provoking. Like this one by Claire Everett, based on the headline “Hunger index shows one billion without enough food.”

nothing left
but the wishbone
November sky
— Claire Everett

*

Troutswirl this week published an essential read for those interested in the history of English-language haiku: an essay about Anita Virgil and Robert Spiess, who were two of the most prominent and innovative haiku poets in this country in the sixties and seventies and whose haiku still seems original and exciting. Here’s Anita:

walking the snow crust
not sinking
sinking

— Anita Virgil

and here’s Robert:

Muttering thunder . . .
the bottom of the river
scattered with clams

— Robert Spiess

*

I don’t know how I have happened not to write about John McDonald before, because his blog Zen Speug was one of the first I discovered when I first started writing haiku and I still love it devotedly. For one thing: Great haiku, often very Shiki-ish, with wonderful nature images. For another: Scots! John (who is a retired mason, which is another reason to love him) writes his haiku in both Scots and English, and Scots, in case you weren’t aware, is one of the best. languages. ever.

In fact someone called David Purves has written an essay about how Scots may be a better language for haiku than English (actually, I think lots and lots of languages are better for haiku than English, and I’m not even counting Japanese, which is one reason why I am so devoted to foreign-language haiku).

This was one of my favorites of John’s from this week:

snaw –
the treen
aw yin flourish

snow
the trees
all one blossom

— John McDonald

*

Over at Blue Willow Haiku World Fay Aoyagi this week translated and shared this amazing haiku:

my husband with hot sake
he, too, must have
a dream he gave up

— Kazuko Nishimura

*

At Beachcombing For the Landlocked the other day, Mark Holloway posted the following tanka, which I took to immediately because it perfectly expresses my feelings about living in the, ahem, landlocked (but very lake-y) Midwest. (Note: I can’t get the formatting of this to work right here; the fourth line should be indented to begin about under the word “lake” from the line above.)

no matter
how beautiful
the lake
it’s still
not the sea

— Mark Holloway

*

At Issa’s Untidy Hut Don Wentworth shares with us his review of a great used-book-store find he made this week (note to self: go to used book stores more often): an autographed copy of The Duckweed Way: Haiku of Issa, translated by Lucien Stryk. Stryk’s translations are highly minimalist and often (no pun intended, I swear) striking. For instance:

First cicada:
life is
cruel, cruel, cruel.

— Issa, tr. Lucien Stryk

*

Over at Haiku Bandit Society there is always so very much to love. This week I watched a rengay in the process of composition — every day or two when I checked back a new verse had been added. It was like a magic trick. Here are the first couple of verses — go read the rest yourself.

I’ve had sake
only once or twice
but, as for dreams… / b

a walk on the moon
with Neil Armstrong / l’o

*

Recently I discovered a Japanese newspaper, The Mainichi Daily News, which publishes English-language haiku every day — go ahead, send yours in, they have a submission form and everything. I really like today’s entry, in fact:

fog thinning out–
more and more visible
the way to nowhere
— Marek Kozubek (Zywiec, Poland)

*

Check out this Japanese haiku blog by Hidenori Hiruta: AkitaHaiku. The author posts his haiku in both Japanese and English, accompanied by wonderful photographs. They’re grouped seasonally. Here’s an Autumn one that for obvious reasons I am very fond of:

red dragonflies
hiding in dahlias
the blue sky

— Hidenori Hiruta

*
Chen-ou Liu is a very well-known English-language haiku (and tanka, and free-verse) poet whose blog Stay Drunk on Writing, for some reason, I just came upon this week. Here’s a great pair of ku about the upcoming Chinese Year of the Rabbit:

New Year’s Eve
a white rabbit falls
into my dream

New Year’s morning
standing before the mirror
it’s me, and yet …

— Chen-ou Liu

*

Okay … so why didn’t anyone ever tell me about zip haiku before? Geez. You people.

What are zip haiku, you ask? Well, they’re an invention of the amazing John Carley, probably best known for his great work with renku (check out Renku Reckoner). At some point around the turn of the millennium John got fed up with all the squabbling about what constitutes an English-language haiku and decided to invent his own form of haiku that would be unique to English and capitalize on its special properties. You can read his essay about this yourself, but basically he got all scientific about it and crunched numbers with translations and did a little rummaging around in the basement of linguistics and ended up with this 15-syllable poem, divided into two parts, that he called a zip haiku. (You must understand that I am seriously oversimplifying what John did, and I won’t be surprised if he writes and tells me I’ve got it all wrong.)

ANYWAY. Here’s an example, and I am going to go off and write some of these myself. Soon.

orange and tan
 tan orange and tan
the butterflies
beat on 

— John Carley

.r*

The Irish Haiku Society announced the results of their International Haiku Competition 2010 this week. Lots of great winners. Here’s an honorable mention I liked a lot.

recession
more tree
less leaf
— Hugh O’Donnell

*

Few editions of the Haikuverse are complete for me without a French haiku by Vincent Hoarau, posted this week on Facebook. Please don’t ask me to translate.

Sinterklaas –
tombent les flocons
et les poemes inacheves
.
— Vincent Hoarau

*

I absolutely loved this highly minimalist haiku by Angie Werren, posted this week both on Twitter and on her blog feathers. I wrote Angie a long comment about it talking about all the ways I love it (you can see it if you go over there), which may seem over-the-top because it’s only four words long and how much can you say about four words? A lot, it turns out.

snow
black crow
tea

— Angie Werren

*

Bill Kenney of haiku-usa continues with his fine series of “Afters,” loose interpretations of classical Japanese haiku. This week: Basho and Issa on radishes. Really, there is nothing better. I could use a radish right now.

the chrysanthemums gone
there’s nothing
but radishes

— Basho (1644-1694)

the radish grower
pointing the way
with a radish

— Issa (1763-1827)

*

It’s that time again — the topics for the December Shiki Kukai have been announced. The deadline is December 18. The kigo is “Winter sky,” and the theme for the free format is “ring” (used as a noun). Get composing.

And without further ado, I am going to bed. It’s been an exhausting whirl around the Haikuverse … but what great company! See you all next week.

August 4: 1-5: Times two

/ Melissa Allen / 2 Comments

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

June 17: 1-29: Webbing (A Sequence)

/ Melissa Allen / 2 Comments

“we do not really mean, we do not really mean that what we are about to say is true.

a story, a story;
let it come,
let it go.”
— Traditional way of beginning an Ashanti tale

*

One summer everything
I made turned back into
what it was made from.

I wove all day
and unpicked my weaving
at night, in my dreams.

Over my house
the clouds dissolved
without releasing rain.

Do you understand?
Are you the kind of person
whose knots all untie themselves?

This is the beginning
of my story. We will proceed
to the middle.

*

In the country here
the roads are straight and open.
The horizon features food.

At summer’s height
we are enticed by others
to pick raspberries.

Blue Sky, the sign reads.
We receive green baskets. The berries,
needless to say, are red.

The brambles pain us.
The pain and the sweetness
are one.

We discuss the paradox.
A wolf spider appears
alongside a thorn.

The largest spider
I’ve ever seen:
The sun alights on her fur.

This vision is for
the children. I call them
to witness it.

The spider is black and yellow.
The children’s mouths are red
like the things they eat.

White clouds attain focus.
The children recall stories
that feature spiders.

Shelob and Aragog:
the children make a song,
the spider listens.

Charlotte — preserved by
her eloquence. This happens,
I tell the spider.

I think of Arachne,
who insisted on beauty.
The spider’s eyes.

Anansi — we know his tricks,
but we can’t teach them
to the spider.

The berries in our baskets
have been eaten
while we tell stories.

There is a tear
in the spider’s web.
The children suggest glue.

My shoelaces are untied,
because it is that
kind of summer.

This is the middle
of my story. We will proceed
to the end.

*

Late at night
I long for raspberries
but I have picked none.

The children are asleep,
the children are sleeping,
the children will sleep all night.

Are those cobwebs in the
corner of the room, are those
the corpses of flies?

I am afraid to dream,
I am afraid
of what will dissolve.

I hold the broom
in my right hand, I hold the broom
in my left hand.

I put the broom away
and let the spiders sleep.
I eat what I can find.

In the morning
my failures are still numerous.
The spider forgives me.

*

“this is my story
which I
have related.

if it be sweet, or if it be not sweet, take some elsewhere, and let some come back to me.”
— Traditional way of ending an Ashanti tale

*

Here are the rules:
Each stanza is itself
and a part of it all.

13 Ways of Looking at Wallace Stevens: Found haiku, and a poetic tribute

/ Melissa Allen / 8 Comments

Make sure you make it to the bottom of this post. There is a delicious candy surprise waiting for you. Or, um, a pile of Brussels sprouts, depending on your opinion of derivative, semi-parodical poetry.

The other day somebody compared some of my work to Wallace Stevens’s. This was hugely flattering to me because, although I don’t really believe in picking favorites when it comes to poetry (or really anything else), if someone held a gun to my head and said, “Name your favorite poet or else,” I would have to say (or rather, probably, shriek in desperation), “Wallace Stevens! Wallace Stevens!”

Like everyone else who knows a fair amount about both Wallace Stevens and haiku, I’d noticed the resemblance between haiku and probably his best-known poem, “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird.” William J. Higginson and Penny Harter, in The Haiku Handbook (great book! read it!), quote the first stanza as an example of the influence of the haiku on early-2oth-century poetry:

Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.

I could probably go on for a while about what Stevens’s theory of poetics was and why he’s so great and everyone should love him, but you don’t really care and if you do you can go read about him on Wikipedia or even better, pick up a copy of The Palm at the End of the Mind from someplace and just read his poetry until you fall over in a dead faint.

What you are really looking for here is some pseudo-haiku culled from Stevens’s work. And although I have some reservations about this exercise because I don’t think it gives all that accurate an impression of what his highly metaphorical, dense, intellectual poetry is about, I can oblige you, forthwith:

At night, by the fire,
The colors of the bushes
And of the falling leaves
(“Domination of Black”)


 

the grackles crack
their throats of bone
in the smooth air
(“Banal Sojourn”)


 

The white cock’s tail
Streams to the moon.
Water in the fields.
(“Ploughing on Sunday”)


 

The skreak and skritter
of evening gone
and grackles gone
(“Autumn Refrain”)


 

A bridge above the … water
And the same bridge
when the river is frozen
(“Like Decorations in a Nigger Cemetery”)


 

Long autumn sheens
and pittering sounds like sounds
on pattering leaves
(“Mr. Burnshaw and the Statue”)


 

The grass in in seed.
The young birds are flying.
Yet the house is not built
(“Ghosts as Cocoons”)


 

Slowly the ivy
on the stones
becomes the stones
(“The Man with the Blue Guitar”)


 

A newly-fallen snow
At the end of winter
when afternoons return
(“The Poems of Our Climate”)


 

a bough in the electric light…
so little to indicate
the total leaflessness
(“An Ordinary Evening in New Haven”)


— All selections from Wallace Stevens, The Palm at the End of the Mind: Selected Poems and a Play

*

Did you make it all the way through that? Okay…as either a reward or a punishment (you decide), I am now going to inflict on you a rare example of my non-haiku poetry. It is of course haiku-ish (being modeled on a haiku-ish poem), so it’s not too terrible. I don’t think. Oh — be sure you’ve actually read “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” before you read it, or the full effect will be lost on you.

Something else you need to know to fully appreciate this is that Wallace Stevens famously had a day job as an insurance executive in Hartford, Connecticut.

Thirteen Ways of Looking At Wallace Stevens

I.
The view from the window
Of the poet’s office:
Thin clouds spread
Over a hazy sky.

II.
I drive down the avenues of Hartford
Looking for Wallace Stevens
Or for what he has left behind.

III.
Precision, quiddity, and fancy,
The shape of Wallace Stevens’ mind.

IV.
A man sits at a mahogany desk
Holding his pen completely still over
An empty ledger book.

V.
The black marks on an actuarial table
Look much like the black marks
On a page of poetry.

VI.
Wallace Stevens walks to work
Down streets blackbirds have flown along.

VII.
What will you pay me, Wallace Stevens,
Not to finish this poem?

VIII.
I wake from a strange dream
Through which Wallace Stevens was flying.

IX.
The shadowy quality of a day in the mountains
Spent reading Wallace Stevens.

X.
Unassimilable,
Like the thing and the image of the thing,
Like the two parts of Wallace Stevens’ life:
The doing, and the being.

XI.
Wallace Stevens leaves the office,
Carrying an umbrella,
His briefcase swinging
At the end of the arm he writes with.

XII.
The two eyes of the poet,
Seeing in two directions.

XIII.
I sit down to write a poem.
I look up, and there is Wallace Stevens.
He casts his shadow over the paper.

May 26: 2-5: The Technique of Contrast

/ Melissa Allen / Leave a comment

(See this post for an explanation of what’s going on here.)

Jane:

“…most of the surprises of life are the contrasts, and therefore this technique is a major one for haiku.

“long hard rain
hanging in the willows
tender new leaves”

— Jane Reichhold, Haiku Techniques

Me:

warning cries of birds
hot clearing in the grass
we lie unspeaking

smell of cut grass —
on the flowerbed
dogshit

before the storm
white sky turns black
flight of cardinal

rain in the night
waking alone
skin dry

Oh please/ like THIS/ is a haiku? (May 24: 1-12)

/ Melissa Allen / 10 Comments

So the last few days got kind of heavy and I was starting to feel like I never wanted to see another haiku as long as I lived. Instant panic: I can’t be burning out already! Something must be done!

Well…what is the best thing to do when you start taking yourself way, way too seriously? Start acting incredibly silly, of course. Stand on your head. Do a funny dance. Write bad haiku.

Okay, maybe not bad, exactly. But…weird. Different. Not…haiku-like.

Oh! That reminds me of this thing I bookmarked the other day and vowed to come back to when I got a minute!

” ‘Haiku-like haiku aren’t particularly bad. But haiku that don’t seem haiku-like at all—nowadays that’s the kind I’m after.’

—Santoka (trans. Burton Watson)

“…The relatively narrow (and necessarily hybrid) basis of the tradition of haiku in English, with its emphasis on the here and now, can only take us so far; thus many published haiku seem ‘thin.’ Perhaps what’s needed is less striving to perfect the ‘same,’ more writing against the grain.”

–Philip Rowland,  The Problem

Yeah, Philip (and Santoka), I know what you mean. Read and write enough haiku, and eventually even the good ones start seeming like parodies of themselves. All that nature! All those tiny exquisite details! All those lower-case letters! All that lack of punctuation! All those moments of enlightenment!

What if for one day I tossed out all those precious little haiku rules (as represented in italics below), and tried to write haiku that seemed un-haiku-like, and yet somehow preserved the spirit of haiku (whatever the hell that is)?

I think it would make me feel better. Though it might make you feel worse.

*

“Use concrete images.” And, “Don’t make direct references to emotion.” (You know, “Show, don’t tell.”) Also, “Slang is so unattractive.”


1.

Yeah,
I’m sad.
Also happy.

*

“Three lines (or even one) are nicer than two. Or four. Five is right out.” Also, “Metaphors are kind of tacky.” Also, “Cliches? Don’t even get me started.”


2.
This cup of tea
isn’t everyone’s.

3.
Where I left the
balloon I bought
for your birthday:
On cloud nine

4.
Swimming
against the current:
Fish
passes me
like I’m standing still

*

“Don’t shout.” Also, “Don’t swear.”


5.

WHAT THE HELL
IS A FROG
DOING IN THAT TREE?

*

“If seventeenth-century technology was good enough for Basho, it’s good enough for us.” Also, “Write in the present tense. Not the past. Or the future.”


6.

My email vanished
before I hit “Send.”
Will Facebook reject me too?

*

“Please don’t be vulgar.” Also, metaphors, cliches, yadda yadda yadda.


7.

No pot to piss in
when I need to piss.
Which I do.

8.

My nose
in your armpit:
your long walk.

*

“Try to make at least a little bit of sense.” Also, “Minimize your syllables.”


9.

Sticky tape, sticky buns
Fine reticulations of burnt toast
Mud sponging over black shoes

10.

where it (oh who am I kidding anyway)
stopped (my stomach is growling, when did I have lunch)
Haiku (there is as much in the future as there is in the past)

*

“Rhyme should be used judiciously. If at all.”’


11.

In bed tonight
I know you’re right.
Just turn out the light.

*

“No entitlements.”


12.

The Box

I opened it up.
There you were,
turned into packing peanuts.