Christmas Eve
the houses across the street
all have fireplaces
streets
October 24: You and only you
So here we are again, exhibiting the peculiar human fascination with round numbers by celebrating my 300th blog post. It’s only fair that I should do this by letting some of you get a word in edgewise for a change — after all, without you there wouldn’t be a me. Or rather, there would, of course. I think. Or is it like the tree that falls in the forest with no one to hear it?
Anyway. You’re all such great listeners. And responders. The comments on this blog are like food and drink to me, and I say that as a person with more than a passing interest in food and drink. I have a suspicion I might have given up this whole crazy enterprise long ago if it weren’t for all of you, jollying me along, telling me politely what’s what, suggesting I might want to rethink one or two things, and just generally making me feel like I knew something but not too much, which is the right attitude to encourage in a blatant newcomer to any enterprise. There is some kind of charmed atmosphere around this blog which I can only attribute to the kind, thoughtful, and intelligent way all of you have received me, and each other.
These contributions were all so wonderful to read and made me feel luckier than ever. I loved seeing tanka and haiga among the contributions as well as haiku — I can’t do those things, or at least I haven’t tried yet, so it’s nice to have readers who can and are willing to share. I’ve posted all the contributions in the order they arrived in my email inbox. I hope you all enjoy.
Note: There were four haikuists who took up my (tongue-in-cheek) challenge to use the number 300 in their haiku in some way. They earn the promised bonus points, though I’m not quite sure yet what those can be redeemed for. 🙂 Congrats to Alan Summers, Steve Mitchell (tricky, that one), Max Stites, and Rick Daddario.
_____________________________________
at the cafe . . .
caught in the firing line
of the poetry slam
(Previously published, Modern Haiku, Vol. XXX, No. 1, Winter-Spring, 1999)
— Charlotte Digregorio, charlottedigregorio.wordpress.com
_____________
Prince’s 1999
was played on that New Year’s Eve
300 seconds
that’s all that was needed
to fall in love
(unpublished)
300 klicks
from my home to Hull
a renga love verse
(unpublished)
warm evening
goodnight to the needlemouse*
as I check the stars
(Previously published, Presence magazine [September 2010] ISSN 1366-5367)
—
*Linguistic notes on the word “needlemouse”:
Kanji: 針鼠 or 蝟
Kana: ハリネズミ
Rōmaji: harinezumi
English: hedgehog
Combination Meaning: needle ( ハリ) mouse (ネズミ)
— Alan Summers, area17.blogspot.com/
_____________
obituary notice
the last of his regulars
died yesterday
— Stacey Wilson, theoddinkwell.com and inkwellwhispers.com
_____________
acorn
buried among fall debris–
the waiting
(unpublished, inspired by the post “acorn time”)
symmetry
in the bare willows —
the shape of longing
— Alegria Imperial, jornales.wordpress.com
_____________
Down this road – alone
silent, solitary, still
watching autumn fall.
(after Basho’s Kono michi ya!)
— Margaret Dornaus, haikudoodle.wordpress.com
_____________
sunlit garden
when did my father grow
an old man’s neck?
(Previously published, Frogpond, Fall 2006)
sprinkling her ashes
on the rocks at high tide
the long walk back
(From the haibun, In the Air [Planet, The Welsh Internationalist Spring 2007])
— Lynne Rees, www.lynnerees.com
_____________
october roses
the last but the most vivid
than ever
faded petals
the scent of their soft touch
on my cheek
— Claire
_____________
first serial publication
grandma asks
when I started drinking
(Previously published, bottle rockets #22)
haiku history lecture
doodling
paper lanterns
(Previously published, tinywords 9.1)
— Aubrie Cox, aubriecox.wordpress.com
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Rivers Fast
Rivers fast!
Strongest
Clean…
Refreshing
Flower Waits
Flower waits
For bee
You see,
Bird told me
— Laz Freedman, lazfreedman.wordpress.com
_____________
crow lands on post
carries a grasshopper
can’t talk now
soft breeze
I regard nature, but wait —
I am nature
— Steve Mitchell, heednotsteve.wordpress.com
_____________
February wind
I want to believe
the crocus
early thaw––
the earth tugging
at my footsteps
(These two both took first place in the Shiki Kukai for the months in which they were submitted. I regard the first of them as my “signature haiku.”)
— Bill Kenney, haiku-usa.blogspot.com
_____________
reading history
seagulls gather on the beach
then fly away
(From Poems from Oostburg, Wisconsin: ellenolinger.wordpress.com)
turning the page
of a new book
branch of gold leaves
(From New Poems: Inspired by the Psalms and Nature: elingrace.wordpress.com)
— Ellen Olinger
_____________
the photo booth
becomes a grave-marker
our snapshots
how nice to see the sun
again, despite
returning spiders
— Ashley Capes, ashleycapes.wordpress.com/
_____________
who needs
three hundred facebook friends when
haiku are three lines
three fluttering notes
drift through the passage to find
the player and score
— Max Stites, outspokenomphaloskeptic.wordpress.com
_____________
a solitary bird calls to the space between lightning and thunder
(Previously published, http://tinywords.com/2010/08/11/2175/)
— Angie Werren, triflings.wordpress.com/
_____________
— Rick Daddario, www.rickdaddario.com/, 19planets.wordpress.com/, wrick.gather.com, www.cafeshops.com/19planets
_____________
spider song
eight syllables only
to tap your haiku
across my wall
— Lawrence Congdon, novaheart.wordpress.com
_____________
sharing full moon
with all the world’s
haiku poets
summer’s meadow
flowers too
inspire each other
— Kerstin Neumann
_____________
overcast midday sky-
her shrill voice calling
the ducks home
— Devika Jyothi
_______________________________________
October 6 (Street signs)
street signs under the new moon where to turn
August 4: 1-5: Times two
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
13 Ways of Looking at Wallace Stevens: Found haiku, and a poetic tribute
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 28: 3 (A Black Cat)
in the street,
a black cat with no tail
an old pain twinges
Red Dragonfly 