February
you bake me a sweet cake
in a sugarless country
.
skiing in Gorky Park—
suddenly realizing
where we’re going
.
March
a snowstorm
settles it
.
April
babushkas chiding us
for our warmth
.
May
blossoming
at last
.
_________________________________
Happy birthday, honey.
.
.
.
the cold
our shadows
shiver
a field
of wind and deer
the cold
the cold
moonlight
and snowlight
_______________________
First published in LYNX, XXVI:1, February 2011
I’m feeling a little bossy this week, maybe because I’ve spent so much of it being bossed around now that I’m back at school and work after my long winter break. “Read this! Write that! Discuss! Answer these questions! Learn this XML syntax! Go to this meeting! Hand in the proper forms! Scan these photos!” Yes, yes, I know it’s the way of the world. And of course, all these things I’m being commanded to do are tons of fun and highly educational. It’s for my own good, really. But it does get a bit wearying. And I start to think, “So why can’t I give people orders to do things that are entertaining and edifying?”
So as your tour guide this week I will be issuing firm commands rather than making quiet observations or gentle suggestions. Obviously, you’re always free to ignore me and wander away to find a cup of coffee and a slightly more soft-spoken guide. But try to just go with it, okay? Pretend you’re taking, I don’t know, Haiku 101, and if you don’t do your assignments, a door will be opened and a man-eating tiger will be released … no, wait, that’s a Monty Python skit. Well, whatever. Humor me, is all I’m saying. I’m tired.
__________________
Read These
That is, the haiku (and tanka) I stumbled on this week that made me stop and go, “Wait…what? That was cool. Say it again!”
.
From Morden Haiku:
winter rain
sometimes it’s hard to know
if it’s ending or beginning— Matt Morden
.
From Daily Haiku:
twilight
the silver statue of a man
i don’t know
.
From scented dust:
biting an applethe silent skyof midwinter— Johannes S.H. Bjerg
.
Two tanka from jars of stars:
Who is to say
that the restlessness
will endafter I tear a few pages
and break a few things?
.
I love you
she’d said until
the words were hieroglyphs
faded, in need
of interpretation
.
From Mann Library’s Daily Haiku:
monarch
folding and unfolding
its shadow– Christopher Herold
.
From Blue Willow Haiku World:
毛糸編はじまり妻の黙（もだ）はじまる 加藤楸邨
keito-ami hajimari tsuma no moda hajimaru
knitting starts
my wife’s silence
starts— Shuson Kato, translated by Fay Aoyagi
.
From The Outspoken Omphaloskeptic:
the past
lives
where lightning bugs flash— Max Stites
.
From Beachcombing for the Landlocked:
old obsessions
fall away, and yet …
pine needles— Mark Holloway
.
From Yay words!:
raspberry jam
grandma asks
if I’m still
doing that
poetry thing— Aubrie Cox
A note about this one: As with all good poetry, you can easily understand and appreciate this piece without having any additional knowledge of the backstory. But in this case, the backstory happens to be really fun. And there is actually a long tradition in Japan of publishing haiku with explanatory commentary (according, anyway, to Abigail Freedman’s The Haiku Apprentice, a book I’ll talk about more in “Dead Tree News” today). I’ll let Aubrie do the explaining, since it’s her story:
“My grandmother has never understood much of anything I do. On several occasions when she asked what classes I was taking I’d say something like, ‘Haiku writing roundtable,’ being exceptionally vague. I’ve always been apprehensive about showing her anything, because I know she’d take everything at face value. A couple times she picked up one of the collections I’d made of my work and opened to a random page, only to grill me for answers as to what the micropoems meant. So when I published my first haiku:
confessional
alcohol breath
from his side of the grate
(bottle rockets #21)I wrote a senryu that reflected how I thought she’d react:
first serial publication
grandma asks
when I started drinking
(bottle rockets #22)“One day she said she had Googled me and found my haiku. For a moment, my brain just shut down. It’s not that I don’t love my grandmother, but I had a really hard time trying to think where to begin when she started asking what this and that meant. Even more so when she asked, ‘So how do you write a haiku?’ She noted on her own that all of them seemed to have two images, but couldn’t figure out the significance. Mum and I tried to explain it to her, but I felt hard pressed where to start. That was probably about a year (or more) ago.
“This last Friday, I went over to my grandparents’ to pick up some dishes my mother had left at Christmas. While handing me the dishes (saying there was a surprise for me inside), my grandmother asked about school. I glossed over my tanka and renga courses by calling them, ‘Writing classes.’ That’s when she asked, ‘So are you still doing that poetry thing… sudoku?’ Immediately, she caught herself when I started to crack up and I told her the word she was looking for. I told her yes and left it at that. When I got into the car, I peeked inside the bag to find a homemade jar of raspberry jam. And thus a kyoka was created.”
— Aubrie Cox
Me again: I think from now on whenever anyone asks me what kind of poetry I write I will say “sudoku” and see how many of them register any kind of confusion.
___________________
Check It Out
The journals published recently, that is. First, Contemporary Haibun Online. This is one of my favorite places for haibun, always worth perusing for an hour or three. Most haibun are really too long to post here in their entirety (I mean, you already think this column is way too long, don’t you?), but my favorites in this issue by author’s last name were these: Baker, Coats, delValle, Felton, Harvey, Kessler, Lucky, Myers, Rohrig, Rowe.
Oh, okay, you talked me into it, I’ll just throw in one here because it’s really short.
Mindfulness
Nothing lasts. Closet doors, light bulbs, refrigerators, paint, jeans – they break, burn out, quit, fade, fray. Even the breath dies. In my fifth decade, I try to pay attention, but mostly, my lungs go unnoticed.
crescent
waxing moon disappears
in a wisp of cloud
— Deb Baker
*
LYNX also published this week — you may have noticed. This is the journal edited by Jane and Werner Reichhold, and I am thrilled to be published by them since Jane was so instrumental in inspiring me to write haiku and helping me get started learning about it.
LYNX focuses on collaborative and linking forms of poetry, as well as sequences by individual poets, but it also publishes some stand-alone poems. I’ll start with some excerpts from the collaborations — although they are well worth reading in their entirety, again, they’re a little too long to post here. Consider this an amuse-bouche. (I had dinner at a fancy restaurant last night, can you tell?)
.
From “Four Elements Cycle: Cleaved Wind” by Claudia Brefeld, Heike Gewi, and Walter Mathois:
Traffic jam
at the lilac bush
breathing deeply— Heike Gewi
.
From “Doors” by June Moreau and Giselle Maya:
the name
I was trying to remember
came to me
just as I put my hand
on the doorknob— June Moreau
.
From “Making Soup” by Alex Pieroni and Jane Reichhold:
only the best tea
is drunk
from an empty bowl— Alex Pieroni
.
And some verses from solo efforts:
.
From the sequence “The Woods Road“:
the woods road
never going
to the end of it— Jenny Ward Angyal
.
And a couple of untitled tanka and haiku:
my mother and I
in fading summer light—
stand still, she says
adding a pin
to the jagged hem— Lisa Alexander Baron
.
first frost—
the last of the roses
have lost their names— Alegria Imperial
.
____________________
Be There
In the Chicago area, that is. So close to where I live! Charlotte DiGregorio, the Midwest Regional Coordinator of the Haiku Society of America, has announced a couple of fun events to take place there in the next few months. In all likelihood I will be at both of them. Come see me! Really. I’m not scary at all, except sometimes when I’m really tired and first I start bossing people around and then I cry. But I probably won’t be doing that at these events.
Here’s the scoop, from Charlotte’s press releases:
Jan. 12 event:
“You can learn to appreciate and write haiku in English from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., Saturday, Feb. 12 at the Winnetka Public Library, 768 Oak St., Winnetka. The program is free and open to the public. …Pre-registration is required.
“Three haiku poets will speak on topics for both beginning and experienced haikuists. …[The presentation ] ‘Learning The Fun Art of Haiku’ [will be given by] Charlotte Digregorio. The second presentation will be ‘Hey, Sparrow! The Poetry of Issa,’ given by poet Heather Jagman. … Haiku poet Michael Nickels-Wisdom will speak on ‘Beneath The Waterflower: Currents of Haiku in Lorine Niedecker’s Poetry.’ … After the presentations, participants may read some of their haiku to be critiqued by the group.
“For more information and to pre-register, contact Charlotte Digregorio, 847-881-2664.”
May 7 event: Haikufest
“Beginning and advanced poets will learn to appreciate, write, and enhance their haiku skills, from 1 to 5:30 p.m., Saturday, May 7 at the Evanston Public Library, 1703 Orrington Ave., Evanston, IL. The event with lecture, discussion, and exhibition of poetry and art, is free and open to the public. … [P]re-registration is required.
“The first presentation, [by diGregorio], ‘Haiku: A Path Leading to Conservation Thought,’ will integrate a lecture on haiku style, form, and history with a discussion of the underlying thought of reverence for nature. … ‘A Writing Life in Seventeen Syllables or Less,’ will follow, by award-winning Iowa poet Francine Banwarth. She will discuss what inspires her to write haiku, and her methods of writing with multi-layers of meaning. … Subsequently, Randy Brooks … will speak on ‘The Role of Kukai in The Haiku Tradition.’ … Preceding Haikufest, attendees may submit from three to five haiku by April 23 to Brooks at brooksbooks@sbcglobal.net. These haiku will be exhibited at Haikufest and judged. … The last presentation will be ‘Haiga: History and Technique.’ Poet and artist Lidia Rozmus will reveal the art of haiku accompanied by an ink painting. She will exhibit and discuss her work.
“For more information on Haikufest, and to pre-register, contact Charlotte Digregorio, 847-881-2664 or the Evanston Public Library, 847-448-8600.”
____________________
Enter Here
Just a reminder … The Haiku Foundation‘s HaikuNow contest is still going on, deadline March 31st, and you want to enter because if you win you could get money for nothing and if you don’t, all you’ll be out is the three minutes of your time it will take to paste your best haiku into the submission form. Don’t be lame, enter.
____________________
Listen Up…
… to this brand-new podcast from The Haiku Chronicles about (YES!) Issa! I don’t think I should really even have to say any more than that, unless this is the very first time you’ve read this blog, in which case you should click on the picture of the dragonfly off there to the right and get the scoop on my relationship with Issa. (We’re very close.)
This edition was written and read by legendary haiku poet Anita Virgil (it was originally published in the Red Moon Anthology in 1998 and is available at the Haiku Chronicles site as a PDF download). It is both scholarly and profoundly moving, in the details it reveals about Issa’s life and in Virgil’s response to his poetry. While deeply admiring of much of Issa’s work, Virgil feels that the extreme difficulty of Issa’s life (wicked stepmother; lifelong poverty; the early deaths of his wife and children) and the fact that he tended to use his writing as an emotional catharsis as often as an artistic outlet means that many of his haiku are either second-rate or can’t be properly considered haiku at all:
“Issa’s sheer volume speaks more of catharsis than of craftsmanship. Of the variety of Issa’s poems available to Western readers, it appears to me he wrote three very different kinds of poetry. Unfortunately, it is all presented under the umbrella of haiku. One kind manifests the aesthetic constraint which does belong to the special province of haiku. Another whose primary focus is clearly on human nature (whether treated humorously or not, containing so-called season words or not) is senryu. And the third which, no doubt, is responsible for Issa’s broad appeal as a vulnerable human being to whom all can relate, is a pure cri de coeur that cannot seriously be considered as haiku when characterized by unrestrained emotionalism, intellectualization, and a failure to stand alone without explanations. These run counter to Bashô’s advice: ‘But always leave your old Self behind, otherwise it will get between you and the object.’ Too often, Issa cannot.”
— Anita Virgil
I can’t say I really disagree with Virgil on these points — I am one of Issa’s biggest fans, and I too think that the vast majority of his 20,000 haiku are not really worth reading. But I guess I tend to think that the same is true of most poets. Maybe the effect is magnified with Issa, because he wrote so much and has had so much popular appeal, but really, poets tend to get judged by their greatest hits, and get forgiven (thank God) for the bulk of their work, which is usually not nearly to the same standard. Most of us aren’t “on” most of the time. Most of us, to one extent or another, use our poetry to help us work through what’s going on in our hearts and minds. Most of us probably feel, in retrospect, that the majority of our work would better not have seen the light of day. (Or is that just me?)
Still, this is an amazing listen and read and I highly recommend it.
____________________
Think About It
Okay, here we are back at The Haiku Foundation again. This time for Essence #6, the latest installment of a column that “explores the roots of the ‘haiku movement’ in North America.” And, wow, is this amazing stuff: Carmen Sterba interviewing Canadian haiku poet Rod Willmot. I must humbly admit that I’d never heard of Willmot before but he appears to have lived a fascinating life and he certainly has plenty of fascinating things to say, some of which you may find controversial. I’m just going to quote a whole bunch of it and make you think about it. Discuss. Optional: Three to five page essay, properly cited, due next week.
“Let me emphasize that I never had any interest in things Japanese, that romantic enchantment that infects haiku circles across North America. Discovering haiku, for me, was like coming across an old tin can at a time of need. I need a drum—there’s my drum! I need a scoop—there’s my scoop! I need a knife, an amulet—there they are! I’ve got no need for an old tin can from Japan, to be preserved and worshipped and imitated.
“The best readers know how to let themselves fall apart as if they knew nothing.
“Haiku takes the four dimensions (including time) and smashes them into a point; well, it may not always seem that way, but when it does, it can make you feel as if you’re trying to spend your life standing on one foot. This is when poets bust out of the box and start stringing haiku together, whether alone or with others, to create a kind of living-space. In the early days we didn’t need that, were incapable of it. We had to start by getting to the point. But gradually a need evolved that was not mere imitation of Japanese renga, but rather a sign of maturity: an insistence on taking the point and extending it, giving it context, connecting points and connecting poets. In this vein, I consider the haiku sequence to be an American invention, from the hand of Marlene Mountain.
“Canadians have always had a more individualistic, experience-based approach to haiku. Americans have a tendency to be dogmatic, traditionalist, rule-oriented. I first saw this when [Bill] Higginson came to Toronto in the late sixties, making himself out as an authority because he could read Japanese. Fast-forward to the bunk about season-words, and the proliferation of Japanese terminology in writing about haiku. I’m talking about the overall picture; the brightest lights in haiku have been American, but they are an infinitesimal minority, swamped and drowned out by the noisy religiosity of dead-tradition preachers. Unfortunately, the fog has drifted into Canada. The amount of publishing activity is incredible, but for quality and originality—will any of it be remembered?
black dog
snatches a tulip bulb
and tears off down the street“This is my version of Blake’s ‘Tiger, tiger, burning bright.’ It is the seething energy at the heart of existence, the source of everything, death as well as life. It’s the wild joy I live for. And looking over my work, I see something emerging in my haiku that gives me hope, what I think I’ll call a nexus of narrative. This is different from haiku as distillation, experience imploded to a point. A nexus of narrative is the intersecting shafts of multiple dimensions, not just the four of physical experience but our countless human dimensions and others besides. Narrative, because in each shaft you sense a ‘comes from,’ a ‘oes to,’ the possibility of an entire person, a story, a mystery. This gives me hope, knowing that where I am in life now, I can write haiku as a witness, seeing with all my eyes, attentive to haiku that do not implode, do not stand still, but extend in rich and unpredictable ways . . . the ways of this reality.”
— Rod Willmot
__________________
Save the Trees. But Wait, Aren’t Books Printed on Pieces of Dead Tree? And Aren’t We Supposed to Revere Books? Oh, God, The Moral Conundrums of Modern Life Make Me Crazy.
I didn’t get around to reading any more of Donald Keene on the development of haikai this week, because I was too busy reading textbooks and stuff, but I do have some stuff from Abigail Freedman’s The Haiku Apprentice I’ve been meaning to discuss with you all for a while, so I will seize this opportunity to do so.
I’ve mentioned Freedman’s book several times before, but apparently not for a long time. This seems strange to me, because I’m constantly thinking about it and rereading parts of it and, you know, planning to write about it, but I guess I always get overwhelmed by how much I have to say. I need to stick to one topic at a time. And the topic that feels closest to my heart right now is what Freedman (or really her Japanese mentors in the art of haiku) have to say about making sure that haiku are “the vessel into which you pour your feelings.”
That phrase comes from Momoko Kuroda, Freedman’s haiku master, who critiques one of Freedman’s haiku about cooking noodles for a family dinner by pointing out, “It isn’t just the noodles, but what they evoked for you that is worth pointing out, in this case a feeling of family harmony.” She also refers to haiku as “a piece of one’s soul.” These things are clearly even more important to her than the technical details of writing haiku — the syllables, the kigo, the kireji — though she also takes these very seriously. For her, a haiku can meet all these technical requirements and be highly proficient, and still fail at the deepest level if it does not express something that is meaningful to the writer.
Another haiku poet friend of Freedman’s, whose haiku name is Traveling Man Tree, tells her that “if you write a haiku about your personal experience, it’s impossible to express the whole experience. So you have to think about what is the most deeply impressive part — the true essence of the thing or the event — and write about that.”
And later, yet another poet friend called Professor Kotani, in trying to decide why one of her haiku had been judged a failure by Momoko, finally realizes, “Perhaps I have put too much intellectual rumination into this poem. … It lacks the sensibility of a really good haiku.”
Various other people Freedman meets tell her about the experiences and, most importantly, feelings that led them to write some of their best haiku. They don’t talk about how they chose the kigo, or made the syllables come out right, or used the kireji to good effect. They talk about a profound emotional experience — love, loneliness, severe illness — and how a profound haiku grew out of it.
So. Here’s where I abandon my humorous, carefree air and admit that I have been feeling, for quite a while, that haiku have become too much of an intellectual exercise for me, something I was using to display verbal virtuosity (insofar as I possess such a thing, which is not very far) and superficial cleverness, rather than digging down inside me to get to the really good stuff that makes poems living things instead of dead artifacts. I really need to change that, both because I have a lot of other outlets for intellectual achievement and relatively few emotional outlets, and also because haiku means too much to me for me to treat it with so little respect.
There will probably be a few changes around here in the near future, is what I’m saying. In fact, one change that I am going to announce right now is that this column will be posted less frequently — it’s been every seven to ten days, and I’d like to make it fortnightly. (You know I just really needed an excuse to say “fortnightly.”) So the next edition will be Feb. 13. Don’t worry, it will still be insanely long. Probably even longer. More stuff to write about. But this will hopefully give me a little more time to, you know, write haiku itself, rather than writing about it.
Then I’ll need to be thinking about how else to adjust my life to make more room for the writing of non-trivial haiku. I don’t have much time to think, but I’ll try to get back to you soon with my plans. I’m sure you’ll be waiting with bated breath.
_________________
Okay, class, that’s about it for this week. I really enjoyed our little time together — the sharing, the learning, the giving out of onerous assignments, the stern warnings about academic honesty and citation procedure…I think we’re going to have a wonderful semester. But the tour’s over, so get back on the shuttle and go home. Shoo. That’s an order.
.
.
.
one
empty barn
first snow
.
first snow
the footprints of the neighbors
we’ve never seen
.
first snow
and again
the owl
_____________________________
First published in LYNX, XXVI:1, February 2011
Why do I say “again” in the post title? Because there are also these here.
Also, for a stunning graphic interpretation of the final haiku in this sequence, go take a look at Kuniharu Shimizu’s haiga at see haiku here: http://seehaikuhere.blogspot.com/2011/02/haiga-491-mellisa-allen-haiku-3.html
all winter
the cold outside
the robot inside
.
cloud drift —
a robot wonders
where it’s going
.
heat —
an afternoon spent
with robots
Another anniversary, another celebration. I have to say, these parties keep getting better and better. More people. More poetry. More kinds of poetry! In addition to haiku and haiku sequences and haiku sonnets and tanka and haiga and small stones, we have haibun* this time! (That’s how you know you’ve got a really great party going on — when the haibun shows up.)
And because this is a technology-forward blog (um, right), we’ve got an exciting new party activity this time — I created a Scribd doc to showcase your poetry and embedded it here. This allowed me to format stuff nicely (I mean, as nicely as someone who is completely lacking in graphic design talent and experience can format things) so you aren’t stuck looking at my horrible blog formatting of your brilliant words. And look at all the cool stuff you can do with it! Full-screen it! Download it! Print it! (No, I am not being paid by Scribd. I just really like new toys.)
I’m not going to blather on anymore because I know you’ve already stopped reading this and you’re scrolling through the document looking for your own poetry, or your friends’, or your kid’s. I’m just standing here in front of the mike talking to myself. I’d like to thank all the little people who helped me get this far … no, wait, that’s my Oscar speech. Actually, I would like to thank all the people who helped me get this far, but none of you are little, you all loom impressively gigantic in my mind. (Of course, I’m really short, so most of you probably are gigantic compared to me. What? Were you imagining me as some kind of six-foot Amazon or something?)
They’re making neck-slashing motions backstage now. Okay. Thanks for reading, and commenting, and making me laugh and making me think, and sending me your poetry to read, and giving me the day off* from writing. See you again tomorrow.
*I have to admit I cheated a little bit. I wrote the haiku for my friend Alex’s haibun. But it’s okay, right? Right? Alex doesn’t write haiku, but I love her prose, and we’ve collaborated before and I wanted to do it again. I hope it isn’t too annoying to have to read my haiku on the day you were supposed to get off from me.
.
.
Please note that this doc has been revised a few times since it was first posted, to add in a couple of late submitters and fix some formatting problems. So if you haven’t looked at it since right after I posted or if you downloaded an early version, you might want to take another look. (I apologize to those whose poems’ formatting was off for a while.)
.
these lights in the tunnel and then the moon
.
I tried not to notice but under the moon
.
this one will never be back the moon
.
how hard it is to grow the moon
.
alone something in common with the moon
.
the way you always looked at me and the moon
.
your face in my mind half a moon
.
waiting to feel complete the moon
.
______________________
.
Can’t. Stop. Writing. About. The. Moon.
Somebody hide it from me, quick.
first snow
I finally
track you down
.
first snow
we’re warm
under that blanket
.
first snow
you’re starting
to drift away
________________________
By now here in Wisconsin, our first snow is a long distant memory — I think we’re about on our ninth. But “first snow” sounds, you know, more poetic than “ninth snow.” Although now that I have written this I think I will go off and write some haiku about snows other than first snows, because they deserve a little attention too.
geese
in the winter
in my mind
the memory
of last year’s geese —
this year’s lake
passing by
the v of geese
the i of us
Protest
This is why I’m here, after all. This is why I left. This is why. Do you understand now?
Do you want to go? Of course, do you? Should we go together? When should we go?
Voices on the train. At first we understand them only in theory. Stand very still, listening. Look at each other, calculating.
What are they saying?
They’ve closed the metro stations all around Red Square.
Why? I guess to make it harder to get there?
The train stops short, and we see it has no intention of proceeding. All the passengers get off and walk away in the same direction. It’s as if the world has ended and everyone understands it but us, everyone else knows the way to the afterlife.
Do we really want to do this? How will we get there? Is it this way? Well, that’s the way everyone else is going, right?
There are a million people in the street — not hyperbolically, but literally. One million people with no concept of personal space. Two million feet, just missing mine. I feel like a stick that’s fallen into a swollen stream. I feel like a penny tossed in a jar and shaken. I feel like a stranger. I feel like someone who left home and isn’t sure how to get back.
Hold my hand. We don’t want to get separated.
I’m terrified of being lost. I’m holding on tight, being pulled along. I remember this feeling. Do I want to feel like this again?
Can I trust you?
Up ahead, someone is calling for freedom. He shouts so loudly that the voices in my head quiet in response. He shouts so loudly that I understand everything he says.
birthday cake
the first taste
of you
_______________________________
I am taking the many helpful suggestions on my last haibun into advisement. Feel free to dissect this one too. I still feel like I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing in the haibun arena, so I am just throwing things up against the wall to see if they stick.
This one’s connected to the last one, obviously — actually it comes right before it in the sequence. How does that work out for you? Are you mystified? Do you mind being mystified? (I often quite enjoy it, but I find that most other people are far less tolerant of the sensation.)
I am foreseeing that all these haibun will end up looking very little like their original versions — when I get them into something more like a final state I’ll put them all up together in order. Then you can tell me what’s wrong with them as a whole instead of just individually.
arguing over the route —
the red squirrel scolds
our departure
northern light leaks between the birch trunks
last summer light
sunning on a log
turtle guts
after crashing into the rocks strange and beautiful mushrooms
filtering lake water
sediment collected
in my throat
into the wind she never looks like she’s trying
*
I finally got some kind of ku mileage out of my canoe trip. I think this may be about the end of it, though. Unless in a few years I’m sitting around bored and a sudden memory of northern lakes inspires me …
summer’s end —
the thunder strikes
an unfamiliar chord
where summer goes
when it feels blue —
damson plums
last summer heat —
the flap of the envelope
too easy to loosen
*
It isn’t really the end of summer yet. Actually, it’s warm and sunny here, and I’m sitting out on my deck basking as I write this. But last week it was so cold I went shopping for wool long underwear. And the last time I went running I was crunching leaves underfoot.
It’s nice to be back to posting haiku. The ironic thing about going to a haiku conference is that it doesn’t leave you much time to write haiku. Neither does spending hours and hours writing about the haiku conference.
I hope, by the way, that that was a nice change of pace for you and not just an interminable annoyance. At any rate, it’s back to a steady diet of mediocre haiku for the foreseeable future as I try to catch up on my homework …
*
on the birthday of a childhood friend, of which I was reminded by Facebook but had never really forgotten
*
the dog greeted me first
she was sienna
by name and color
my friend next
and then her mother
jeans and long hair
the kitchen
and its massive fireplace
big enough to roast a pig
the house was old
and felt more like my own
than my own
the past and the present
lived there together
without argument
jazz records on the shelves
classical music on the piano
above the Chiquita Banana stickers
paintings on the walls
with tilted points of view
and flower-gaudy colors
both parents painters
two studios to peek in
and feel small and colorless
an old, gray, small cat
wandering from room to room
like a fragile ghost
books I’d never seen before
and wanted
the minute I touched them
two sets of stairs
narrow and wide
so many ways to get everywhere
but in the summer
the house was no match
for the brook
paper bags of lunch
the sienna dog
following us across the fields
I didn’t always like
the sandwiches,
or not until I tasted them
I never remembered the way
but my friend led
as if there were signposts
after sun-filled fields, the wood
sometimes brambly
dark and disconcerting
and then, after a period
of approaching its sound
the brook
the brook
a swift, wide, cold, dark path
in a hot world
glacial rocks lined the streambed
the debate was always
shoes or no shoes
no shoes always won
despite the pain of the rocks
I was the less brave one
I whined as we walked
on the water
thrilled and aching
sneakers tied around my neck
I vowed to wear shoes next time
but I never did
I always chose the pain
over the inconvenience
of wet sneakers
to travel the road of the brook
to the paved road
took forever and no time
when we climbed out
and put our sneakers back on
the world seemed heavier
it was hard to believe
there would ever again
be adventures
we were tired of each other
and our feet hurt
and it was almost five o’clock
time to go home
where the water was a pool
with a smooth lined bottom
chlorine kept the water clear
and a filter removed
everything undesirable
only sometimes in the night
a possum drowned, or
some other unfilterable animal
my father would remove
the dead things with a pole
before we saw them
that was what it was like
at our house, that was what
it was like at my friend’s
thirty years ago
in the hills of Connecticut
ten miles apart
the heat index
the argument
subsides
July heat
wishing the grass
had a cool side
phlox droops
over the sidewalk
heat rises
Happy Independence Day, to all the Americans out there. And to all the rest of you … enjoy your freedoms too.
In that vein …
“fireflies are indeed a fascinating topic. of course, they allow total freedom.”
— Scott Metz
1-4.
on the same wind
fireworks
and fireflies
shining
as if you weren’t there
fireflies
fireflies
spending the night
for the first time
the moon
waxing and waning
fireflies
5-8.
never to know
about fireflies
mayflies
bees
wits unsettled
by fireflies
reciting
multiplication tables
fireflies
fever dream
a thousand fireflies
breathing
9-12.
death
the consolation of
fireflies
white pebbles
imagining the afterlives
of fireflies
bitter oranges
spitting out the seeds
at fireflies
sweet jam
at the breakfast table
last night’s fireflies
13-16.
trust
a hand cupped
around a firefly
innocence
spending money
on fireflies
ignorance
looking away
from fireflies
chained men
the light from
fireflies
blue moon
escorting improbability
he comes back
Ella Fitzgerald
singing “Am I Blue”
a jay squawks
sky clouded over
for happiness
this blue pill
*
It started out as a coincidence that I had a couple of haiku featuring the word “blue” in my gigantic slush pile of rough ku that I need to either revise or flush down the toilet. Then I decided that I liked them (or rather their heavily revised reincarnations) paired together, except they needed another companion, because two haiku aren’t really a sequence, but three are. But I’ll shut up now with the boring commentary and let you discover what else you can about this grouping.
falling in love
robins grab worms
and pull
my hat sits askew
what this garden needs
is some worms
words coming out
in a whisper
worms underground
rain over
I step on a worm
and cry
I speak sternly:
robin — let go
of that worm
*
Yes, worms. It’s been raining a lot here, okay?
(not a narrative)
four a.m. bitterly spitting sleep out of my mouth
the speeds of light and sound meet in the storm
dying wind
where they were left
the dolls sleep
at the end of the storm the birds begin again
the newspaper brought
by the car in the night
the crane cries
light reorganizes itself around the edges of the leaves
dawn
the cat crows
in my ear
morning juice
a green bug climbs up
the broom handle
*
You’re not going crazy. I’ve revised a bunch of these since the last time you read them.
“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.
Morning: he sighs.
She changes the washing machine
to normal cycle.
A different number
every time —
brushing her hair thoughtfully.
Pregnancy test in the wastebasket —
tea bag dries
by the egg smear.
The newspaper predicts
the winners — the losers
get no consideration.
The future has been foretold.
He has difficulty
unfurling the umbrella.
Salad for lunch again.
She slides her wedding ring
up and down her finger.
Nothing is settled,
including the dust
on the light bulbs.
A misbegotten conversation.
She drops the cell phone
down the stairs.
Where are the plastic bags,
where the sea salt, where
the golden marigold seeds?
Buying bread
that tastes of yeast —
the chill of the supermarket.
Bruise-colored tulips
in cellophane. They ride
next to white tofu.
Clouds echoing
the asphalt.
The discharge of a burden.
Cars do violence to puddles.
In the rearview mirror,
a gray hair.
There were two
and then there was one. There was one
and then there were two.
Report: he needs a coat
warmer than the one
with the many pockets.
Lightning in the kitchen.
They are both
indifferent to the pasta.
Red sauce on white flesh.
There is nothing better
to devour at such moments.
A discussion of the show
about the weak-willed doctor.
The gutters overflow.
They join together
to dislodge the leaves.
A sudden flood.
Hand to hand, combat
abandoned. Rain slipping gently
down the windows.
Morning: she sighs.
He peers into the toaster.
There is nothing to see there.
*
As with my bird story sequence, my goal here was for each individual stanza to read like an individual haiku while still contributing meaningfully to the whole composition.
I wanted to write a poem that was almost a parody of the kind of novel that presents in mind-numbing detail the trivial and discouraging lives of its protagonists without yielding any significant insight or closure for their predicaments. I thought such a venture would be much more successful as a poem than as a novel — you would be able to appreciate the tiny accumulation of details that make up such lives, without being bored by the massive accumulation of overdetailed descriptions or depressed by their uninspiring inner lives. I developed a lot of sympathy for these characters as I developed the poem.
Red Dragonfly 