Someone Else: Rick Daddario

So the other day I pasted three haiku from my blog comments into a document on my computer and noted with satisfaction that yet another round number had been achieved: Rick Daddario had just left his 100th haiku as a comment on this blog. And I know I am going to be celebrating all my amazing commenters in just a couple of days, but I had long planned to feature Rick in a post of his own as soon as he hit 100 haiku (which I had no doubt he would), and this is when it happened, so here goes.

Rick has been commenting here prolifically, entertainingly, thoughtfully, helpfully, philosophically, supportively, and … oh, let’s not forget ramblingly … since back in June, which is almost as long as this blog has been around. There is no such thing as a pointless or boring comment from Rick. (Well, okay, maybe a little pointless. But in a good way. You know, the way surrealism is pointless. But definitely not boring.) It is so much fun having him around. Also, he writes some very cool haiku. (“Cool” is one of Rick’s favorite words.)

I’ve scattered just a sampling of my favorites of Rick’s ku down below, rambling all over the page in a way I hope Rick can relate to. Also, I’ve tried to link whenever possible to the original post that Rick was referring to, because a lot of the connections he makes between my ku and ideas and his are really interesting.

I hope you go check out Rick’s own blog, 19 Planets, where he mostly features his fascinating art (which I appreciate but can’t say much intelligent about because I am woefully ignorant about visual art), lots of which has words on it (I really appreciate that part). He also has some cool audience-participation activities on his site, including the great ku-me and the brand-new ku-on.

(By the way, there are several other people who have left me tons of ku in my comments. Rest assured, their turns are coming.)

Okay. Without further ado, heeeeeeeeeere’s Rick.

_______________

breath count
slowing the wings
of a butterfly

one Buddha
a perfect circle
on the road

 

muddy hand
against the wall
a street poet

 

wet feet
in the water
a dance

 

butterfly breeze
the flapping of lace
curtains

 

the shadow
around this keyhole
a locked door

 

the rain stops
outside my window
the crickets

 

 

wild life
the dance floor
a beehive

 

 

ku-me your ku
across a red dragonfly
splattering mud

 

carving the damp soil
taking away the spatter
yellow mud dauber

 

 

wet ink
on her shoulder
red dragonfly

 

crickets tonight
the passing rain clouds
have left music

 

fireflies
above the creek
a roadway

 

summer tea
the temperature
of moonlight

 

bed bound
in the tree house
a nestling

 

dandelion fluff
the last mouthful
of summer wine

 

 

lost ticket
the journey begins
now

 

big moon
the sky has become small
in my old age

 

a crash
of fallen leaves
red

 

 

 

groggy mind ~
this mountain veil
of volcanic haze

 

white birch
hidden in the snow
exclamation point

 

 

around in a circle
voices back and forth
a round in a circle

 

midnight
the stars so sharp
my eyes ache

 

 

upside down can
the garbage truck moves on
life

 

back eddy
this slow current
of childhood

 

 

the light tink
of rain in the gutter
storm break

 

 

constellations ~
each snowflake
in perfect place

 

the Milky way
a sprinkle of salt
in ink

 

the milky way
laughing so hard tonight
it comes out my nose

 

night blossom
beyond this dark tunnel
the moon

 

frog blossom
ripples in the pond
leave a moon

 

more moon
through avocado leaves
a soft glow

The 400 Posts (An Invitation)

Dear readers,

It’s that time again: Round number time. I’m coming up on my 400th post. (January 12th, if my calculations are correct.)

I like to celebrate these little occasions by giving you a break from me for a day and inviting you all to be my guest bloggers. (Note: This is an idea for which I am indebted to Matt Morden of Morden Haiku, who did this for his thousandth post a while back.)

The details, for those who haven’t played before or need a refresher course:

• By “you” I mean “anyone who has ever commented on my blog.” (If you haven’t commented before and want to participate, go ahead and comment sometime before the 12th and you’re in.)
• By “participate” I mean “send me one or two of your haiku, tanka, senryu, gogyoghka, haiga or other forms of Japanese short-form poetry or micropoetry.” Published or unpublished, I don’t care. Don’t agonize over whether they are good enough. They are. See below.
• Let me know what name, or haiku name, or alias, or other identifying information you wish to sign your poems with. If you have a blog or webpage or a Twitter or Tumblr account or some other online presence you want me to alert people to, include that information too.
• These poems will ALL (OK, I guess I reserve the right to leave out anything I find in mind-bogglingly bad taste, but I can’t really believe any of you are less squeamish than I am) be posted here on January 12th.
• They will not be judged, juried, or edited. They will be cut and pasted into my blog. They will be signed with whatever ID and URL you sent me.
• This entire thing will be wildly entertaining and inspiring for everyone involved. Really. That’s what everyone always tells me. It is really fun to see all the different styles of poetry by all the different participants. And, perhaps most important, not have to read anything I’ve written for an entire day. (Except my obligatory interminable introductory essay. I’ll try to keep it snappy this time, though.)
• I really want YOU (that’s right, buster) to send me your stuff. It’s only fair, you’ve been reading mine all this time. Sharing is nice.
• The deadline is 7 a.m. U.S. Central Standard Time on January 12. If you’re not sure how that translates to your local time, Google it. I will post sometime in the couple of hours after that.
• Don’t leave your submissions in the comments, it spoils the surprise for the other readers. Email them to MelissaLAllen AT yahoo.com.
• Any other questions? Go ahead and ask.
• Have fun!

Your blog friend,

Melissa

December 15: The Past is a Different Country

There is always something new to learn about yourself, I’ve found — in particular, there are always things you’ve forgotten about yourself that when you remember them, or are reminded of them, you are astounded by. In my case, I was astounded the other day when, rummaging around in an old filing cabinet, I pulled out a small sheaf of paper torn from a 2003 page-a-day diary and discovered that apparently at least once before in my life — in the first week of 2003 — I attempted to write a haiku every day for a year.

I only made it a week, so I guess it’s not surprising that this venture didn’t leave much of an impression on me. I guess it’s also not surprising that all these haiku are 5-7-5 and that none of them are much good, although a few of them are not completely terrible either. What does surprise me is that when I started writing haiku (again) back in May, I honestly thought it was the first time I’d ever seriously considered taking up the form. I mean I knew I’d written the odd haiku in the past because that’s just the kind of odd thing I’m always doing, but I’d had no idea that I’d once spent an entire cold week fixated on them.

I’m glad I didn’t remember, in a way. If I had, I might have been discouraged — “Oh, haiku. Tried that once. Didn’t work out.” It just goes to show that you never know exactly what’s changed in you and in what way you might catch fire next.

I know you’re dying to read some of these. I’ve reproduced them below exactly as I wrote them, punctuation and capitalization and similes and incredibly embarrassing diction and all.

.

January first
Christmas trees like bad habits
discarded at curbs

January cold:
even the seed pods shiver.
Hand me a sweater.

 

This winter landscape
everything is different
except the stone wall

Down by the duck pond
we trace letters in the snow:
“Please don’t feed the ducks.”

 

low sun in my eyes
I walk holding my head down
shy until spring comes

 

a fir tree sideways
beneath the lilac bush —
the corpse of Christmas

 

 

.

(I also must share an entertaining piece of commentary from this notebook: “I really wanted to write a haiku about how the garbage men turn the garbage cans upside down after they collect the garbage, but it turns out that’s a really difficult thing to write a haiku about.”

I’m (pretty) sure that was meant to be deadpan humor …)

October 5 (The compost pile)

apples in the compost pile —
giving sweetness another chance

_________________

(Edited 10/6/10)

I think Alegria was right. The first line wasn’t quite there. She suggested getting rid of the apples altogether, just leaving the compost pile, but I’m not ready to do that.

For one thing, I’m using the apples as a fall kigo (Midwestern version), for another, just “compost pile” doesn’t conjure up a strong enough image in my mind for me to find the ku wholly satisfying. I need the image of those half-rotten apples atop the compost to make the ku vivid and complete to me.

I’ll definitely entertain other suggestions for how to make this better, though!

September 27, 1-3: What are these things, anyway?

1.

nothing in my mind that was not there before the moon

2.

he tells the story without remembering it        longingly

3.

no longer afraid of mice I look to see what you’re afraid of

______________

Not haiku, not really American Sentences … I think what I’m calling them is “the things I write when my brain hurts too much to write haiku but I feel guilty if I don’t write anything.”

September 6: Labor Day

Nine ku for my son’s beginning        on its sixteenth anniversary

January

1
a positive test        field mice breed in the walls

2
barely alive you already disagree with me about what to eat

March

3
wind from the west        a body shifts in my body

4
Ides of March        on the ultrasound screen your state of incompletion

May

5
love’s effects visible        I read from Corinthians to the wedding

July

6
drawn by heat        you try to arrive but they restrain you

September

7
after my water breaks    another solitaire loss

8
the maze of my bones cracking open too slowly

9
I don’t know
anything about you,

then you emerge

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

August 1: 1-3: Three of one

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:

• The late, great Bill Higginson seemed to think that if there were spaces in your one-line haiku, it wasn’t really a one-line haiku (because you were indicating, apparently, where a line break could go, and so why not write it in more than one line). To me, this seems to ignore the visual advantage to displaying a ku all in one line — it can be scanned more rapidly by the reader so gives more of a sense of wholeness or urgency, yet sometimes you still want to give a visual cue as to where a pause should occur.
• Marlene Mountain has a page where a number of her ku are displayed both as three lines and as one, so you can decide which way you think works better.
• Jim Kacian categorizes several of the effects that can be achieved by English one-line haiku (“one line–one thought,” “speedrush” and “multi- stops”). (Click on the big X:2 on the linked page to download the issue of “Roadrunner” this essay appears in.)
• Charles Trumbull, in a July 29 comment, makes the sensible observation (I say it’s sensible because it’s what I think myself) that “[b]ecause of the internal rhythm of the material, sometimes one line works best. Period.” (He is slightly cranky about people imitating Japanese poetry or referring to historical precedent to justify their one-liners.)

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 …

July 30: 1-4: The Technique of Above as Below

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

Jane:

“… Some say one should be able to read the first line and the third line to find it makes a complete thought. Sometimes one does not know in which order to place the images in a haiku. When the images in the first and third lines have the strongest relationship, the haiku usually feels ‘complete.’ For exercise, take any haiku and switch the lines around to see how this factor works, or try reading the haiku without the second line.

holding the day
between my hands
a clay pot”

– Jane Reichhold, Haiku Techniques

*

Me:

This was way harder than it looked. And it looked hard.

I think part of the problem was that I really loved Jane’s example and none of my efforts came anywhere near her standard. I even resorted to breaking down her ku into parts of speech hoping that would provide some sort of formula for success:

gerund, noun object
prepositional phrase
modifier, noun

It didn’t.

But now I am a little bit obsessed with making one of these work, somehow, sometime. Anyone else got anything?

*

summer rain
one leftover cloud
frustrates

watching your eyes
by moonlight
the summer stars

a tree full
squirrels making lists
of supplies

night sheltering
from sunrise
our dark words

July 18: 1-2: The Techniques of the Paradox and the Improbable World

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

Jane:

The Technique of the Paradox:

“One of the aims of playing with haiku is to confuse the reader just enough to attract interest. Using a paradox will engage interest and give the reader much to think about. Again, one cannot use nonsense but has to construct a true (connected to reality) paradox. …

climbing the temple hill
leg muscles tighten
in our throats”

The Technique of The Improbable World:

“This is very close to paradox … an old Japanese tool which is often used to make the poet sound simple and child-like. Often it demonstrates a distorted view of science – one we ‘know’ is not true, but always has the possibility of being true (as in quantum physics).

evening wind
colors of the day
blown away

or

waiting room
a patch of sunlight
wears out the chairs”

– Jane Reichhold, Haiku Techniques

*

Me:

one blue egg
the shape of a bird
in my hand

dizziness
clutching my pen
to keep from falling

July 14 (Bastille Day)

Bastille Day
waiting for the storm
to begin

July 13 (The TV Switched On)

the TV switched on
the crickets’ song
loses meaning

July 1: 1-4: The Techniques of Wabi and Sabi

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

Jane:

The Technique of Sabi

“… [T]he Japanese have maintained for centuries that no one can really, truly comprehend what sabi really is and thus, they change its definition according to their moods. Bill Higginson, in The Haiku Handbook, calls sabi – ‘(patina/loneliness) Beauty with a sense of loneliness in time, akin to, but deeper than, nostalgia.’ Suzuki maintains that sabi is ‘loneliness’ or ‘solitude’ but that it can also be ‘miserable,’ ‘insignificant,’ and ‘pitiable,’ ‘asymmetry’ and ‘poverty.’ Donald Keene sees sabi as ‘an understatement hinting at great depths.’ So you see, we are rather on our own with this!

I have translated this as: sabi (SAH-BEE)- aged/loneliness – A quality of images used in poetry that expresses something aged or weathered with a hint of sadness because of being abandoned. A split-rail fence sagging with overgrown vines has sabi; a freshly painted picket fence does not.

rocky spring
lips taking a sip
from a stone mouth

coming home
flower
by flower”

[Note: In Jane’s book “Writing and Enjoying Haiku” (published later than and containing a revised version of this essay) she gives the example haiku for sabi as:

listening ears
petals fall into
the silence]

The Technique of Wabi

“The twin brother to sabi … can be defined as ‘(WAH-BEE) — poverty — Beauty judged to be the result of living simply. Frayed and faded Levis have the wabi that bleached designer jeans can never achieve.’ Thus one can argue that the above haiku samples are really more wabi than sabi – and suddenly one understands the big debate. However, I offer one more ku that I think is more wabi than sabi because it offers a scene of austere beauty and poignancy.

parting fog
on wind barren meadows
birth of a lamb”

– Jane Reichhold, Haiku Techniques

*

Me:

More on wabi and sabi:

I think that when Jane originally wrote this the concepts of wabi and sabi (or wabi-sabi, the way they’re usually conjoined and made into one concept these days) were not really familiar to Americans. Then, of course, a segment of the interior design industry got hold of it and the next thing you knew there were entire shelves of the home-decorating section at Barnes & Noble dedicated to explaining how to improve your home by bringing home junky things from garage sales (or pre-distressed knickknacks from Target), arranging them artistically on your coffee table, and telling everyone they were part of your Japanese Zen aesthetic.

I’m being facetious. Kind of. I mean, in some ways my house is Wabi-Sabi Central, if only because I don’t have any actual money to buy shiny new stuff. (Also, shiny new stuff hurts my eyes.) Lots of my furniture was retrieved off curbs on trash day. (“Oh look! Another not-completely-broken chair that doesn’t match any of my other chairs! Score!”)

I buy all my clothes at thrift stores so I never have to worry about breaking in my jeans. I like museums and antique stores because they’re full of worn-out objects that lots of other people have touched and left psychic imprints on, and I would love to bring home more of these objects — you know, like beautifully weathered old maple furniture, and frayed hundred-year-old quilts made by thrifty ladies using up their fabric scraps, and those gorgeous grayish-brown stoneware jars to store your dry goods, and — what’s that you say? That stuff all costs a fortune?

Yeah, see, that’s the problem with wabi-sabi — once everyone started thinking how great it was to have worn-out old stuff, the worn-out old stuff got really expensive. And it all started feeling a little trite and silly, this frantic rush to spend lots of money to make your house look like you were impoverished.

But that surface interior-decorating concept of wabi-sabi isn’t — I know, I know — what it’s really about. What it is about, exactly — as Jane points out — nobody exactly knows, and the Japanese, I believe, are not all that eager to explain — detailed explanations, obviously, not being very Zen. I did find a really cool essay on the subject by someone who appears to be an American tea expert (tea ceremony master? hard to tell from the site). Here are some of his or her thoughts on the matter (it’s a long and really interesting essay, so as usual I recommend reading the whole thing even though — sigh — I know nobody will):

“Pared down to its barest essence, wabi-sabi is the Japanese art of finding beauty in imperfection and profundity in nature, of accepting the natural cycle of growth, decay, and death. … It’s a fragmentary glimpse: the branch representing the entire tree, shoji screens filtering the sun, the moon 90 percent obscured behind a ribbon of cloud. … My favorite Japanese phrase for describing wabi-sabi is ‘natsukashii furusato,’ or an old memory of my hometown. …

“Wabi stems from the root wa, which refers to harmony, peace, tranquillity, and balance. Generally speaking, wabi had the original meaning of sad, desolate, and lonely, but poetically it has come to mean simple, unmaterialistic, humble by choice, and in tune with nature. Someone who is perfectly herself and never craves to be anything else would be described as wabi. …

“Sabi by itself means ‘the bloom of time.’ It connotes natural progression-tarnish, hoariness, rust — the extinguished gloss of that which once sparkled. It’s the understanding that beauty is fleeting. … An old car left in a field to rust, as it transforms from an eyesore into a part of the landscape, could be considered America’s contribution to the evolution of sabi. … We seek sabi in antiques and even try to manufacture it in distressed furnishings. True sabi cannot be acquired, however. It is a gift of time. …

“Wabi-sabi’s roots lie in Zen Buddhism, which was brought from China to Japan by Eisai, a twelfth-century monk. Zen, with its principles of vast emptiness and nothing holy, stresses austerity, communion with nature, and above all, reverence for everyday life as the real path to enlightenment.”

— From noble harbor, “What is Wabi-Sabi?“

So. Now that we are all hopelessly confused (and have concluded that wabi-sabi and haiku have a lot in common, chiefly the complete inability of any two people to agree on a definition of them) … on to the poetry.

your roses
how few petals
remain

the steam
from the kettle
floating dreams

one petal
on the tablecloth
your name

the empty bench
the wind sweeps away
memories

I had to throw this in … this is the most wabi-sabi-ish place I’ve ever seen. It’s part of the ruins of an old hotel that are now in the middle of a state park. This structure was a fish hatchery on a trout pond. You can click on it to get a much larger, more interesting view.

Decisions and Revisions (Mice and Their Parts)

I once threatened to display my revision process in broad daylight so that everyone could recoil in horror. When I looked at how this ku was stacking up I knew it was now or never. It was starting to look like one of those sandwiches Dagwood Bumstead likes to make, and if you don’t know who that is you are too young to be reading this, so go away.

Believe it or not, this all makes sense to me. Unfortunately it doesn’t really seem to be going anywhere. I don’t like any of these versions and I’m not even sure this subject will work for a haiku — there might be too much stuffed into it. It’s definitely a little heavy, not that that’s ever stopped me before.

Not all my ku revisions look like this — this is a particularly appalling example. But I frequently have a list of ten or twelve versions of a ku sitting around waiting for me to choose one or reject them all or write yet another one. What’s amazing is that I’m still constantly posting ku that make me shake my head afterwards and go, “What the heck was I thinking? Why didn’t I revise that?” Then (sometimes) I do. And sometimes I don’t.

If you can make any sense of this or construct a plausible version out of the scattered parts, feel free to let me know.

*

first lines:

[the] missed phone call
[again] [he doesn’t call/answer]
[the phone doesn’t ring]

second/third lines:

I clean [sweep] [pick] up the [head and tail] [parts]
of the mouse
[the mouse’s head and tail
on {from} {off} the carpet]
[the cats have abandoned
the mouse’s head {parts}]

lines 1, 2, 3:

after the [pregnancy] test
[I wait] [waiting] for him to call
the cats kill [toy with] a mouse

[the first thing I see
in the empty apartment {house}
a mouse’s head]

lines 1 and 2:

the phone rings:
[phone conversation:]
the cats have killed a mouse

[the head and tail
dismembered on the carpet]

line 3:

[and] the test was positive

Ku-me: a haiku game

Okay, Rick Daddario (my champion commenter) has a great haiku game going on over at 19 Planets Art Blog. It’s called ku-me and it’s kind of a hybrid between a linking verse and a haiku prompt. Rick starts the ball rolling with a one-word prompt, then the first commenter writes a haiku using the prompt and leaves a new prompt of their own that the next commenter has to use in their haiku. Et cetera. I just left the word “squirm.” Come on, tell me you can’t do something with that after reading all my charming worm haiku.

June 22: 1-6: The Techniques of Close Linkage and Leap Linkage

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

Jane:

The Technique of Close Linkage

“… In making any connection between the two parts of a haiku, the leap can be a small and even a well-known one. Usually beginners are easily impressed with close linkage and experiment first with this form. …

winter cold

finding on a beach

an open knife”

The Technique of Leap Linkage

“Then as a writer’s skills increase, and as he or she reads many haiku (either their own or others) such ‘easy’ leaps quickly fade in excitement. Being human animals we seem destined to seek the next level of difficulty and find that thrilling. So the writer begins to attempt leaps that a reader new to haiku may not follow … I think the important point in creating with this technique is that the writer is always totally aware of his or her ‘truth’. … Usually, if you think about the ku long enough and deeply enough, one can find the author’s truth. …

wildflowers

the early spring sunshine

in my hand”

– Jane Reichhold, Haiku Techniques

*

Me:

Okay, the problem I had here is that although I (think I) understand very well what Jane means by the difference between close linkage and leap linkage, and I have certainly seen many ku where the connection was either invisible to me or I had to think really hard to figure it out, I didn’t actually consider the connection in her second ku here to be any more of a leap than the connection in her first ku. So either I’m unusually perspicacious or I didn’t really understand the second ku at all, or maybe even the first.

I’m actually very interested in this because it does seem to me that how and whether people understand haiku depends much on their experiences and frame of mind, and what one person considers to be an obscure connection can be completely obvious to another. I also frequently wonder whether people get a lot of the connections in my ku at all, and whether, if they don’t, it’s my fault or theirs. I think I’m just going to throw a bunch of ku down here in order (more or less) from what I consider closely to distantly linked, and you can tell me whether you agree with me.

pins and needles
she sews a quilt for
the first baby

lines of code
ants march over the
breakfast dishes

spring downpour
eggshells float in
garbage cans

the hair-clogged drain
she whispers something
he can’t hear

speeding up to pass
we never eat anything
he doesn’t like

trimming square
will her mother give her
the money

June 18: 3-5: The Technique of Verb/Noun Exchange

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

Jane:

“This is a very gentle way of doing word play and getting double duty out of words. In English we have many words which function as both verbs and nouns. By constructing the poem carefully, one can utilize both aspects of such words as leaves, spots, flowers, blossoms, sprouts, greens, fall, spring, circles and hundreds more. …  This is one of those cases where the reader has to decide which permissible stance the ku has taken.

spring rain

the willow strings

raindrops“

– Jane Reichhold, Haiku Techniques

*

Me:
sunset
on the beach
red burns

the rain spells
come and go on
our bare backs

barefoot
sand spits
water on our toes

Innovators in English-language haiku: Gendai or not gendai…

Yesterday’s post on gendai haiku is now already my most popular post of all time, which kind of blows me away because I assumed a total of about three people would ever read it and at least two of them would hate it. This makes me think I should strike while the iron is hot and write my promised post on innovators in English-language haiku. Once again, try not to be put off by the fact that I have no idea what I’m talking about. Yes, I’m a newcomer to the haiku world, a rank amateur, probably nothing more than a poseur, but no one, at least, can accuse me of a lack of enthusiasm, which you will just have to accept in place of expertise.

A good place to start, I think, would be with a comment Scott Metz posted on troutswirl quite recently in response to the essay of Richard Gilbert’s I mentioned in another post the other day: The Morning After: Haiku Faces a New Century. Be forewarned, these are some pretty polemical remarks (as remarks by poets go). If you are not entirely sold on the whole gendai/avant-garde haiku scene, try not to be offended by them but to take them in the spirit of sincere love for haiku and the English language with which I believe Scott offers them:

“…Japanese haiku are indeed, very much so, a word-based poetry, not the enlightenment-‘moment’/zen-image-sketching-experience-based mantra so many continue to espouse and cling to. … [English language haiku] are … for the most part, still, ‘slavish imitations’ of translations of what westerners *think* Japanese haiku are. Creative oversimplifications, most of which lack internal energy/dynamics. creative misreadings are cool. but i think they’ve lost their virginal glow in this case. …

“One direction i find interesting for [English language haiku] is that of symbolism and literary allusions/references being used within them, either in a mythological way, or in a more canonically literary way. knowingly or unknowingly. …

“Japanese haiku, at their root, are not simply, or only, about images at all, or moments, or ‘real/true’ experiences … but about language and culture and literature: an intricately woven rug of all these elements. …

“What also strikes me … is how strangely satisfied those writing [English language haiku] are with their nature imagery. Considering how radical Basho and his followers were about always trying to do something new and fresh with kigo, it seems a shame, and kind of mortifying, that so many writing [English language haiku] don’t try to experiment more with nature/environmental imagery. To try to turn them on their heads. To twist them. Play with them. …

“I think folks writing [English language haiku] need to play more: with images, words and techniques. and that not just western poetry/poetics should be considered and sampled, but anything and everything we can get our hands on. which is why it’s exciting to see things like ‘kire’ and ‘ma’ and vampires and sufism and gendai popping up. what can we do with these things?”

— Scott Metz, comments on troutswirl

Well…I think I should let what Scott said stand as most of the commentary here, and dedicate my efforts to displaying haiku by sundry poets that I think meet at least some of his criteria for “playing” with the haiku form, doing something “new and fresh” instead of, in Scott’s immortal words, remaining content with the “enlightenment-‘moment’/zen-image-sketching-experience-based mantra.”

Whether we use the word “gendai” to refer to these poets or whether we should stick to some term more familiar to us in English like avant-garde, experimental, non-traditional, I think we can all agree that most of them are attempting something different than is espoused by the mainstream haiku movement in the English-speaking world, and closer to what gendai haiku poets in Japan are doing with the genre.

It seems logical to start with Scott himself. On his blog lakes and now wolves, Scott republishes those of his haiku that have been printed in journals. References to pop culture, politics, and current events are par for the course; so is a fresh (if sometimes somewhat obscure) use of language.  A couple of examples:

5/21/2010:

the milky way . . .
we start to discuss
Pac-Man strategies

4/17/2010:

walrus with its mouth wide open war statistics

— Scott Metz

The next obvious place to go would be Roadrunner, the haiku journal Scott edits in accordance with his preferred haiku aesthetics. Here are some examples from issue IX: 4:

second dawn the dream ghosts re-rehearsing

— John Barlow

A candle is a sweet machine

to fly across the crow-

shaped night

—  Grant Hackett

A couple of other journals frequently feature non-traditional haiku, such as Modern Haiku. Here are a couple of examples from the Autumn 2009 issue (vol. 40:3):

reading a poem
of urbane intelligence
how dead it is

— William M. Ramsey

O what the hell
haiku poet finally
kills the fly

— Le Wild

Here are some examples from the journal Notes From the Gean (vol. 2 issue 1, June 2010).

waiting
for something to happen —
The Evening Standard

— Ruth Holzer – USA

the echo of fireworksthe echo ofthe echo

not speaking the boiled egg clings to its shell

— Bob Lucky – Ethiopia

Richard Gilbert, the gendai haiku scholar I referred to extensively in my essay on that topic, also is a haiku poet himself, some of whose recent, innovative haiku appear on the website Word Riot:

dedicated to the moon

I rise

without a decent alibi

a drowning man

pulled into violet worlds

grasping hydrangea

(Publication. NOON: Journal of the Short Poem, vol. 1, Philip Rowland, ed., Tokyo: 2004, pp. 25-27.)

blood orange:

the curving radius

of sunset

(Publication. NOON: Journal of the Short Poem, vol. 6, Philip Rowland, ed., Tokyo: Summer, 2008.)

— Richard Gilbert

Fay Aoyagi is another poet doing innovative work with haiku. In my gendai haiku essay I mentioned her website Blue Willow Haiku World, on which she presents many of her English translations of Japanese gendai haiku. Her own haiku are described by David Lanoue, in his Modern Haiku essay, Something with Wings:
 Fay Aoyagi’s Haiku of Inner Landscape, as “avant-garde” and “new-style.” Following are a couple of Fay’s haiku with enlightening commentary by David from his essay:

pre-surgery dinner

tiny ocean

in the oyster shell

[Lanoue’s commentary on this haiku:]

“I believe that haiku is about discovery: the deeper the feeling of discovery, the better the haiku, in my opinion. In a great haiku we sense the poet finding out something in the process of composition, not reporting on a thing that has been previously mentally digested. When Aoyagi brings us with her to the table for her pre-surgery dinner, we suspect that she has no a priori idea that the journey will take us to a tiny ocean in an oyster shell. We arrive there with her, sharing the ‘ah!-moment’ of the vision and sensing its nonlinear, non-logical connection to the poet’s (and our) interior life. Thoughts of mortality, the fear of the surgeon’s knife, a vague feeling of dread and lament … so many emotions ebb and flow in the tiny ocean in the shell. The shell on the plate is itself a post-op carcass that on closer inspection becomes a gleaming continental shelf enclosing a tiny, salty sea. Aoyagi doesn’t say what she feels about her vision, whether it comforts or terrifies her; she invites us into the intimacy of the moment to contemplate for ourselves what it might mean.”

ants out of a hole —

when did I stop playing

the red toy piano?

[David’s general commentary on Fay’s technique:]

“Her decision to probe her inner life is not new in haiku tradition, though few do it as well or as interestingly. The contemporary Japanese poet Hasegawa Kai (whose work Aoyagi has translated) describes the shift from outer to inner focus within a haiku as a sort of kire or “cutting.” In a interview with Richard Gilbert, Hasegawa defines zengo no kire as “The cutting which cuts a haiku from this reality within which we live — from the literal place / environment / atmosphere (‘ba’) of literal existence.” Such cutting, according to Hasegawa, entails a shift of focus from outward scenes to the “realm of the mind” — exactly Fay Aoyagi’s method.”

— Fay Aoyagi/David Lanoue, Something with Wings:
 Fay Aoyagi’s Haiku of Inner Landscape

There are a number of haiku bloggers I’ve discovered (many of whom also publish in journals, but I know their work mainly through their blogs) who, consciously or unconsciously, play with the traditional Western haiku form with interesting results. For example, John Sandbach of Crystal Dragon says, “I am deeply enamoured of the modern haiku of Japan, which, like modern art, is of many styles and energies, and which is constantly recreating itself as it unfolds. Unfortunately, the West is still primarily focused on traditional haiku and has not yet tuned in to the wonders of modern Japanese experimental artisans of this form.” Below is one of his haiku sequences:

Lettuce’s Bliss: 5 Haiku

1

To die
in a hippo’s jaws —
the lettuce’s bliss

2

Remorseful
for tearing up a violet
so I ate it

3

On T.V. a spider
liquifies a frog —
spring in Kansas City

4

In spring
a stone mason —
servant of the endless wall

5

Skin
smooth and white —
the pyramid’s youth

— John Sandbach

Nicole Hyde of the blog “noodle,” who commented on my gendai haiku post, “I’ve bought a ticket on the Gendai Haiku train too,” has some interesting examples of nontraditional haiku on her site. Since she is also a painter, her haiku often refer to art.

English Bay Lune

unbound, the English

Bay in fog —

not seen: some weird duck

Art Tiny Poem

soundless

in the night museum

Wyeth’s boots

Prairie Town

prairie town

from end to end —

one haiku

— Nicole Hyde

Alan Segal, or “Old Pajamas,” from the blog “old pajamas: from the dirt hut,” innovates in many ways, often describing what are clearly imaginary or fantasy scenes.

6/10/2010

mourner’s kaddish

does the fly, too,
wear a yamulke?

6/2/2010

unwrapping an impossibly blue bird, flown from a castle keep

— Alan Segal

Brian Pike of paiku describes his poetry as “Haiku. More or less.” In the Q&A for his site he explains:

But aren’t haiku meant to be exactly 17 syllables long?

You’re right. They’re also meant to include a seasonal reference (kigo) and a structural break (kireji). But I’ve never been good at following rules.

If your poems don’t meet the criteria for haiku, why confuse the issue?

I like haiku. I think these are similar in mood and intention. And I quite enjoy confusion.

A few of Brian’s “paiku” follow:

10 May 2010

Blackbird waiting
For idea of cat
To go away

21 March 2010

There’s a big field
Where you can dig up
Everything you ever lost

— Brian Pike

Yi Ching-Lin of the blog y writes primarily short free verse but occasionally writes haiku, and they are generally nontraditional, as in this recent example (the link on the second line connects to Yi’s photography):

it happens daily (6 June 2010)

it happens daily

a full Manhattan eclipse

with a wounded twist

— Yi Ching-Lin

Anne Lessing, the teenage writer of the blog “Phantasma,” who is just beginning to write haiku (and intends to start a project of writing haiku daily in January 2011), has produced some very interesting haiku about zombies based on the video game “Call of Duty,” one of which I’ve reproduced below:

6/4/2010

that flower looked so pretty

so I choked it

with my child’s blood

— Anne Lessing

Finally, Elissa of The Haiku Diary writes daily haiku describing events in her life, some of which are simply quotidian or jokelike, but many of which seem to transcend the category of mere diary-entry and evoke deeper feelings and meanings.

The second of the two haiku of Elissa’s I’ve quoted below is especially interesting in light of Scott Metz’s and Richard Gilbert’s discussions of the way haiku has always been in a dialogue with the past, constantly referring back to previous poetry and other literature and history. In a way this haiku of Elissa’s, referring as it does to a famous haiku of Basho’s (“The bee emerging/from deep within the peony/departs reluctantly”), is both modern and completely classical — so it seems like an appropriate place to bring this post to an end. Hope it was a fun ride.

Front and Center, June 8, 2010

Closing my eyes and

swaying with the music makes

me that girl, but so what?

Basho-em, June 3, 2010

I literally

watched a bumble bee stumble

out of a peony!

— Elissa of The Haiku Diary

June 9: 2-4: The Technique of the Sketch or Shiki’s Shasei

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

Jane:

“Though this technique is often given Shiki’s term shasei (sketch from life) or shajitsu (reality) it had been in use since the beginning of poetry in the Orient. The poetic principle is ‘to depict as is.’ The reason he took it up as a ’cause’ and thus, made it famous, was his own rebellion against the many other techniques used in haiku. Shiki was, by nature it seemed, against whatever was the status quo. If poets had over-used any idea or method his personal goal was to point this out and suggest something else. … Thus, Shiki hated word-plays, puns, riddles – all the things you are learning here! He favored the quiet simplicity of just stating what he saw without anything else having to happen in the ku.

evening 
waves

come into the cove

one at a time”

– Jane Reichhold, Haiku Techniques

*

Me:

wind in the maples
gray seeds spin
against gray sky

after the storm
fallen branch
dries to gray

Mississippi source
travelers
tiptoe across

June 6: 3-5: The Technique of Metaphor and the Technique of Simile

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

Jane:

The Technique of Metaphor:

“I can just hear those of you who have had some training in haiku, sucking in your breath in horror. There IS that ironclad rule that one does not use metaphor in haiku. Posh. Basho used it in his most famous ‘crow ku.’

on a bare branch
a crow lands
autumn dusk

“What he was saying in other words (not haiku words) was that an autumn evening comes down on one the way it feels when a crow lands on a bare branch.”

The Technique of Simile:

“Usually in English you know a simile is coming when you spot the words ‘as’ and ‘like.’ Occasionally one will find in a haiku the use of a simile with these words still wrapped around it, but the Japanese have proved to us that this is totally unnecessary. … [T]he unspoken rule is that you can use simile (which the rule-sayers warn against) if you are smart enough to simply drop the ‘as’ and ‘like.’ …[B]y doing this you give the reader some active part that makes him or her feel very smart when they discover the simile for him/herself.

a long journey
some cherry petals
begin to fall”

– Jane Reichhold, Haiku Techniques

*

Me:
I combined these techniques because it’s difficult for me to see how a simile that doesn’t use the words “like” or “as” is different from a metaphor. There obviously is a subtle distinction in Jane’s mind but I am not subtle enough to understand it. I’d love to hear from anyone who is.

tree climbing
boys taller
than last year

hot water running
your hands on
my shoulders

cats paw at the screen door
we sign
the papers

*

June 7: I edited one of these haiku slightly. Anyone who can tell me how gets a prize. 🙂