.
the owl
finally sees me
harvest moon
.
a handful of stones 10/29/2011
……..
fall/autumn
(fall pruning)
.
fall pruning
learning what not
to say
.
haiku: Frogpond 34.3
.
(day of the dead)
(leaf fall)
(nothing I didn’t know)
(Photo: William Warby)
.
nothing
I didn’t know
before
maple
after
maple
.
Notes from the Gean 3:2, September 2011
.
This haiku was also here before, in a slightly different version.
Maple trees are not as ubiquitous here in the Midwest, but in New England, in the fall, it can sometimes feel like the entire world is made of maples. This is not a bad thing. They are blazing and glorious. All summer you hardly notice them, they just blend in with the other trees, but then suddenly, in late September, there they are… maple after maple.
.
.
Across the Haikuverse, No. 24: Autumnal Equinox Edition
This season. This day. This darkness. This rain. This sky. This unspoken agreement. This repeated pattern. This internal quarrel. This blown litter. This temporary solitude. This empty box. These restless legs. These unwashed hands. This bent twig. This spent coin. This borrowed time. This vague memory. This dry leaf. This discarded assumption. This long pause. This interrupted stillness. This dark house. This hard fall.
.
tilted axis
I continue
to surprise myself
.
.___________________________________________________________________________
Haiku to Read Again
.
just because
the sky is navigable –
thistledown
— Stella Pierides, Stella Pierides
.
山を出るときどんぐりはみな捨てる 北 登猛
yama o deru toki donguri wa mina suteru
when I leave the mountain
I throw away
all acorns
— Tomo Kita, translated by Fay Aoyagi, Blue Willow Haiku World
.
things that can wait and a dying wasp ::: autumn darkness
ting der kan vente og en døende hveps ::: efterårsmørke
— Johannes S.H. Bjerg, 2 tongues/2 tunger
.
the difference
a sparrow makes –
bare branches
— Bill Kenney, haiku-usa
.
.
somehow
our shrinking shadows touch
harvest moon
— Alegria Imperial, jornales
.
.
banging about
inside my ribs
cherry blossom
— Sandra Simpson, DailyHaiku
With every step into
the lake, the water touches
me in a new place.
— Elissa, The Haiku Diary
.
These next two both originally appeared at the September Moon Viewing Party at Haiku Bandit Society and were then turned into spectacular haiga by their authors, which you can see at their blogs.
.
matchpoint…
the distance between
this moon and that
— sanjuktaa, wild berries
.
this pumpkin
as full as that, harvest
moon
— Angie Werren, feathers
.
Essayed
“Haiku as Poetic Spell”
I’m very grateful to Lynne Rees for republishing on her blog an open field this essay by Martin Lucas, which also appeared in evolution: the Red Moon Anthology of English-Language Haiku 2010.
It’s a challenging, exciting essay, well worth reading in full, that contrasts what Lucas calls the “Internationally Accepted Formula” for haiku —
seasonal ref’rence—
then two lines of contrasting
foreground imagery
with a haiku aesthetic that he considers “an ideal that is poetic as opposed to prosaic, and secondly, an expression that is more akin to a magical utterance than a mere report of an incident, however consequential or inconsequential.”
Of the “Internationally Accepted Formula,” Lucas points out, “It’s an intriguing mix, but almost all the interest is in this content, and almost none in the expression.” Using many striking examples, he argues for (or rather urges) a greater emphasis in haiku on an effective use of language to create a “poetic spell”:
“Words that chime; words that beat; words that flow. … words have power. They are not dead and scribbled on a page, they are spoken like a charm; and they aren’t read, they’re heard. This is what I want from haiku: something primitive; something rare; something essential; not some tired iteration of patterns so familiar most of us can produce them in our sleep. It’s not the information content that counts, it’s the way that information is formed, cooked and combined.”
— Martin Lucas, “Haiku as Poetic Spell”
.
Journaled
the zen zpace, Autumn 2011 Showcase
Marie Marshall, who also has a blog called kvenna ráð, put together this fine collection of haiku by seven poets. She’s calling for submissions for her next edition. A couple of samples:
.
the last leaf of all
it will be picked up
by hand
— David Cobb
.
the earliest of mornings
Substance presents itself
as an apple
— Johannes S.H. Bjerg
.
If you have any interest in haibun you should hustle over and read the recently released October issue of cho, especially my favorites: Sonam Chhoki’s “Last Journey“; Susan Diridoni’s “awakening in ‘The City'”; Peter Newton’s “The Goal”; and Carol Pearce-Worthington’s “I Read Everything”.
.
Applied
The Haiku Foundation, with their release of THF Haiku, their haiku app for the iPhone, has recently made waiting in line a task that is no longer fearful to me. I just pull out my phone, punch at the screen a bit to make the soothing THF Haiku backdrop appear, and then spend a relaxing few minutes shaking my phone (really, you just need to tilt it a little, so you won’t look completely insane in public) to see a new haiku with every shake. There’s a wonderful variety — 365 of them so far, with more promised for the future. Some I tilted into recently:
.
midsummer solstice
the bonfire luring me back
to my maiden name
— an’ya
.
the shadow in the folded napkin
— Cor van den Heuvel
.
Every second, a tree, a bird, a chimney, a woman
— James Kirkup
.
Dead Tree News
Beyond My View, by Joyce Clement. Endionpress, 2011
My Journey, by Lidia Rozmus. Deep North Press, 2004
Twenty Views from Mole Hill, by Lidia Rozmus. Deep North Press, 1999
I am overdue to talk about these books. I bought the three of them this summer, one at each of the communal haiku events I attended. Joyce’s book I picked up at the Haiku Circle in Massachusetts in June, where she gave a wonderful reading and I enjoyed getting to know her. Twenty Views of Mole Hill I bought at Foundry Books in Mineral Point, Wisconsin, when I attended a Haiku Retreat there in June. Lidia was not in attendance there, but she was, as I have mentioned, my roommate at Haiku North America in Seattle in August, where I bought My Journey. So these books have bracketed my summer and followed me through it. I’ve read them each several times, because somehow they make me feel a little bit more like myself every time I read them.
.
Beyond My View
Joyce does things with language and images that only she can do — the best writers are like that — but that make you feel like what she said was just on the tip of your tongue, because the best writers are like that too.
.
age 88
all the whatchamacallits
in the spring wind
That’s what I was going to say.
.
rolls over again
the earth, us with it
spring mud
This one I keep reading over and over again to see if I can see how she did it. The syntax seems awkward and garbled at first and then you see — oh! that’s the point! And then you see that there’s no other way to say it. And you feel like lying down and rolling in some warm mud.
.
the
pine
grove
when
I
exhale
Yes, that’s it. I keep trying to do this kind of thing all the time. It’s not as easy as it looks.
.
used to think
I’d want a gravestone
falling leaves
I still do want a gravestone, but something about this makes me think that maybe I won’t always.
.
deep winter
their weight
milkless breasts
There are not enough haiku about the way women’s bodies feel — maybe there aren’t enough about the way anyone’s body feels. This one is perfect. Thanks, Joyce.
.
Twenty Views of Mole Hill
Lidia calls the work she does that combines haibun and sumi-e painting “haibun-ga,” and the title page of Twenty Views … proclaims tongue-in-cheek that it is “The Last Haibun-ga of the Twentieth Century.” What is also is, is a meditation on place, a place seen in every season with the especially careful seeing of someone who is both an exemplary visual artist and a particularly sensitive poet.
Mole Hill is a hill, a small Illinois hill, that can be seen from Lidia’s apartment, and so she sees it.
.
first snow
I turn the lights off —
……………..to see
.
The seeing continues from December to December. The book takes the form of a series of unbound square cards, on each of which there is a haibun or a solitary haiku, as well as an evocative sumi-e painting. These are not illustrations of Mole Hill; they are minimalist evocations of a state of mind, a shape of thought, a unique vision. Lidia stays in one place; the world turns around her, and her mind travels. It’s as if these cards fall, one by one, into place as the seasons change.
.
late afternoon
mosquito and I —
same blood type
(This is one, I think, that Issa would have written if he’d known about blood type.)
.
.My Journey
In contrast to Twenty Views…, My Journey roams all over the world, from Poland and other locales in Eastern Europe, to North America, Western Europe, Japan. It also roams in time, or rather ventures through it, over fifty years of Lidia’s life, beginning with the first memory of a toddler. Again, the form of the book is important: it’s folded like an accordion, and the hinge point — the place where you turn the book over to begin folding through the pages on the reverse side — is Lidia’s immigration to the United States as a young adult.
.
immigration office
seeing my fingerprints
for the first time
Like so many of Lidia’s haiku this one says so much more than it says.
.
This book, too, contains both haibun and standalone haiku, illustrated with small black-and-white photographs — they read more as illustrations than as photos; you can’t see much detail, just enough to evoke a feeling or sense of place, so the overall effect is very similar to that of Lidia’s sumi-e. There is also an ink wash traced through with a wavy ink line that runs continuously along the bottom of the entire book, which of course is all in one uninterrupted piece, like a life. One continuous stretch of time, but paradoxically remembered by us in discrete chunks of episodic memory — pages, if you will.
geographical atlas
on one page
the whole world
As usual, Lidia said it better than I could. This is the last haiku in the book. Lidia’s life goes on, though, fortunately for us all.
___________________________________________
.
As for me, I’m standing with my back to the wind these days. It seems to help. I wish I’d thought of it before.
.
.
.
(creeping)
(Photo: Jay Otto)
.
autumn
something’s creeping up
on us
.
(harvest moon)
.
.
harvest moon –
wishing for it to fall
butter side up
.
Haiku Bandit Society, September Moon Viewing Party
.
Dragonfly Dreams
Did I have any idea what I was getting myself into when I announced this topic? No, I did not. I had no idea that so many people would send me so much varied and amazing poetry about dragonflies. Just as I had no idea there were so many kinds of dragonflies until I started doing a little (okay, a lot) of research…
I’ll launch into the poetry in a minute, but first off, for those among you who like me have to know every. single. thing. there is to know. about something before you can possibly just enjoy reading about it (yes, we are annoying)… here is the Wikipedia article on dragonflies (which fascinatingly contains an entire section on the role dragonflies play in Japanese culture and even references haiku) and here is the page on dragonfly kigo from Gabi Greve’s World Kigo Database.
Okay, I’ll shut up now and let you enjoy this dream of dragonflies.
_________________________________________________________________________
.
(Photo by Jay Otto)
.
aki no ki no akatombo ni sadamarinu
The beginning of autumn,
Decided
By the red dragon-fly.
— Shirao, translated by R.H. Blyth
.
toogarashi hane o tsukereba akatonbo
red pepper
put wings on it
red dragonfly
— Basho, translated by Patricia Donegan
.
(Photo by Jay Otto)
a dragonfly lands
on a stranded paper boat…
summer’s end
— Polona Oblak, Crows and Daisies
.
within his armful
of raked leaves
this lifeless dragonfly
— Kirsten Cliff, Swimming in Lines of Haiku
.
(Artwork and poetry by Rick Daddario, 19 Planets)
dragonflies
the soft blur of time
in another land
.
(Photo by Jay Otto)
.
out of myself just briefly dragonfly
.
adding a touch
of blue to the breeze –
dragonfly
(Magnapoets Issue 4 July 2009)
.
fading light –
everything the dragonfly
has to say
— Paul Smith, Paper Moon
.
(Artwork by Amy Smith, The Spider Tribe’s Blog)
.
a crimson darter
skims the mirror-lake…
your lips on mine
tomorrow
may never come
.
twisting and turning
a dragonfly splits
a ray of light …
he says he loves me
in his own way
(Simply Haiku Winter 2011)
.
catching
the blue eye of the breeze
dragonfly
(Simply Haiku Spring 2011)
.
— Claire Everett, At the Edge of Dreams
.
(Photo by Jay Otto)
.
on the water lily
remains of a dragonfly
morning stillness
(Evergreen English Haiku, 1995)
.
from sedge
to sedge to sedge
dragonfly
.
with a few brushstrokes the dragonfly comes alive
.
autumn dragonfly
waning
like the moon
a few scarlet leaves
silently fall
.
— Pamela A. Babusci
.
(Artwork by Rick Daddario, 19 Planets)
.
Dragonfly rising
everything shining
in the wind
.
Gold dragonflies
crisscross the air in silence:
summer sunset
.
A cirrus sky
one hundred dark dragonflies
with golden wings
.
— Kris Lindbeck, Haiku Etc.
.
.
(Photo by Jay Otto)
.
The dragon-fly,
It tried in vain to settle
On a blade of grass.
— Basho, translated by R.H. Blyth
.
The dragon-fly
Perches on the stick
That strikes at him.
— Kohyo, translated by R.H. Blyth
.
the instant it flies up
a dragonfly
loses its shadow
— Inahata Teiko (1931-), translated by Makoto Ueda
.
(Artwork by Rick Daddario, 19 Planets)
.
red dragonfly
on my shoulder, what
rank do I have?
.
spiderweb down,
a damselfly touches
my lips
— Michael Nickels-Wisdom
.
born in the year
of the dragon-
fly!
— Mary Ahearn
.
(Photo by Jay Otto)
.
sunset
from the tip of my shoe
the red dragonfly
(South by Southeast 18:2)
dew on grasses
the dragonflies
are gone
.
in a wrinkle
of light
dragonfly
.
— Donna Fleischer, word pond
.
(Poetry by Melissa Allen; illustration clip art)
.
.
through and through the gate dragonfly
— Melissa Allen
.
.
coupling dragonflies
at break-neck speed—
HOT!
(Modern Haiku 35.1)
— Susan Diridoni
.
(Photo by Jay Otto)
.
on the dried husk
that was an iris blossom
black dragonfly
.
we came here
seeking solitude
the loon
the dragonfly
and the speedboat
— Christina Nguyen, A wish for the sky…
.
(Artwork by Kitagawa Utamaro: “Red Dragonfly and Locust [Aka tonbo and Inago]”, from Picture Book of Selected Insects with Crazy Poems [Ehon Mushi Erabi]). From the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City.)
.
this brief life a dragonfly
.
dragonfly
where there is water
a path
.
— angie werren, feathers
.
tombô ya ni shaku tonde wa mata ni shaku
dragonfly–
flying two feet
then two feet more
— Issa, translated by David G. Lanoue
.
(Photo by Jay Otto)
.
a break in the rain…
the stillness
of the dragonfly
— sanjuktaa, wild berries
.
dragonfly—
how much of me
do you see?
— Alegria Imperial, jornales
.
noonday heat
dragonflies slice
the still air
(South by Southeast Vol. 12 #1)
— T.D. Ingram, @haikujots (on twitter)
.
.
evening breeze
teetering on its perch
a red dragonfly
(Haiku Pix Review, summer 2011)
.— G.R. LeBlanc, Berry Blue Haiku
.
high notes
a red dragonfly skims
across the sound
— Margaret Dornaus, Haiku-Doodle
.
(Haiga by Polona Oblak, Crows and Daisies)
.
the heat
between downpours
blue dragonflies
— Mark Holloway, Beachcombing for the Landlocked
.
Steel blue flash
flies wing
drifts
— Robert Mullen
.
.
dragonfly dreams
the hospital intercom
repeats her name
.
with the password
to her sanity
darting dragonfly
.
iridescent dragonfly
hard to see
how her Ph.D. matters
.
tell me the old stories
one last time
convalescent dragonfly
.
discharge papers
the dragonfly returns home
on new meds
.
letting go of her walker
she lifts into the night sky
dragonfly
.
— Susan Antolin, Artichoke Season
.
Multimedia Interlude:
Sick of everything around here being flat and quiet? I found some moving stuff that makes noise for you too.
- First, there’s this amazing (very) short film by Paul Kroeker of the last moments of a dragonfly’s life, which I discovered via Donna Fleischer at word pond. It’s set to music and is incredibly compelling:
- Second, there are several versions of the well-known Japanese folk song (I mean, well-known to the Japanese) Aka Tombo, which means “Red Dragonfly.” This is apparently an indispensable part of every Japanese child’s upbringing. There are an almost infinite number of variations of this on YouTube so if these four aren’t enough for you, feel free to go noodling around over there looking for more.
.
and on this general theme…
.
perched on bamboo grass
the low notes
of a dragonfly
(Haiku inspired by Tif Holmes’s Photo-Haiku Project: http://tifholmesphotography.com/cphp/2011/07/july-2011-series-entry-11/)
— Kathy Nguyen (A~Lotus), Poetry by Lotus
.
for when even
the music stops—
dragonfly wings
— Aubrie Cox, Yay words!
.
(Photo by Jay Otto)
.
mid-morning
a dragonfly and I
bound for Mississippi
.
in and out of view
the computer-drawn dragonfly
on the web page
— Tzetzka Ilieva
.
dragonfly
at 60 miles per hour
those giant eyes
— Johnny Baranski
.
(Photo by Jay Otto)
.
first impressions
a dragonfly hovers
before landing
— Cara Holman, Prose Posies
.
.
.
.
— Linda Papanicolaou, Haiga Online
.
In this forest glade
The snail gone, a dragonfly lights
On the mushroom cap
— P. Allen
.
.
‘Oh! Catch it!’
‘I heard they eat their own tails’
When I was a child, living on an Air Force base in Okinawa, it was a common belief, among the elementary school set, a dragonfly would eat itself if you caught it and fed it its own tail. I looked online and didn’t find any references to this notion so maybe we were all sniffing the good Japanese glue.
Anyhow, even though we constantly snagged lizards and grasshoppers and cicadas, I never saw any one ever catch a dragonfly, as common as they were.
dragonfly
we play in the puddles
afraid to get close
— Steve Mitchell, Heed Not Steve
.
(Photo by Jay Otto)
.
dragonfly—
wings vibrating
on the rock face
(From the sequence “Ten Haiku: For the Dodge Tenth Anniversary Hike” in The Monkey’s Face)
dragonfly
on my fingernail
looks at me
(From Wind in the Long Grass, edited by William J. Higginson [Simon & Schuster, Books for Young Readers, 1991])
— Penny Harter, Penny Harter homepage, A Poet’s Alphabestiary, Etc.
.
An old tree
No bud and no leaf
full of dragonflies.
— @vonguyenphong22 (on Twitter)
.
.
neti neti
a dragonfly hums
raga Megh
(raga Megh(a)=a raga for the monsoon season. Neti neti= a key expression from the Upanishads: “not this nor this” or “not this nor that” alluding to the essence of things.)
.
”the sky’s gone out”
on the radio – and then
a dragonfly
.
dragonfly –
I mark an unpaid bill
“later”
— Johannes S.H. Bjerg, 2 tongues/2 tunger
.
(Photo by Melissa Allen)
.
in and out the reeds
a blue dragonfly
mother keeps sewing
.
stitching
water and sky together
– damselflies
— Paganini Jones, http://www.pathetic.org/library/5644
.
boys playing games
stones miss the darning needle
— Jim Sullivan, haiku and commentary and tales
.
dragonfly heading to the lemon hanging in the sun
— Gene Myers, genemyers.com, @myersgene (on Twitter)
.
(Artwork by Kitagawa Utamaro, “Dragonfly and Butterfly,” from A Selection of Insects)
.
bluetail damselfly
escapes the empty cottage
where children once played
(1st place Kiyoshi Tokutomi Memorial Haiku Contest 2009)
.
on the bus
to the children’s museum
first dragonfly
— Roberta Beary, Roberta Beary
.
flitting idly
from flower to flower
a blue damsel
lights upon the lotus
unfolding iridescence
— Margaret Dornaus, Haiku-Doodle
.
(Photo by Jay Otto)
.
dark waters
a dragonfly dreaming
its reflection
.
iridescent wings
the flying parts of
the dragon
— Stella Pierides, Stella Pierides
.
silhouetted dragonfly
reeds pierce the moon
(The Mainichi Daily News, May 30, 2009)
— Martin Gottlieb Cohen
(first frost)
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Melissa Allen, haiku; Jay Otto, photography
Notes from the Gean 3:1, June 2011
.
.
.
April 22 (Bruised Apples)
.
.
bruised apples
he wonders what else
I haven’t told him
.
______________________
Acorn 26
.
.
March 17: Autumn Wind (in Wet Cement)
This looks like it’s from a printed page because it is. It’s from Wet Cement, which is a lovely little conference anthology from the “Cradle of American Haiku” Haiku Society of America conference back in September. Mike Montreuil edited it, Aubrie Cox laid it out (check out her beloved Optima typeface) and Lidia Rozmus did some understated, beautiful artwork (in her usual style) for it. It was a delight to get it in the mail last week and be reminded of that wonderful weekend and so many of the wonderful poets I met.
The title comes from a haiku by Gayle Bull, the proprietress of Foundry Books, where part of the conference was held (and where I really need to get back to, soon, to check out the mind-blowing haiku section, because, ha ha, I don’t have enough to read). It is, fittingly, written in concrete on the ledge of a window in her shop. (Also in ink, on page 24 of the anthology.)
wet cement —
kids hide in the bushes
giggling— Gayle Bull
March 3 (Indian Summer)
.
Indian summer —
pretending
we’re in love
.
______________________________
.
First published in Notes from the Gean 2:4, March 2011
.
.
February 17: Numerical Order
“To Really Learn, Quit Studying and Take a Test” (New York Times)
..
seven or eight sparrows count them again
..
This haiku appeared on this blog last May, and on Haiku News last week (with the headline above).
For some reason, even though I wrote it in pretty much my first week of writing haiku, it is still one of my favorites of my own poems. Beginner’s luck, I guess.
Why do I like it so much? (You don’t have to ask so incredulously.) Well…first of all, there’s the whole “it’s true” thing. It’s impossible to count birds. (Impossible for me, anyway; maybe you’ve had better luck.) They keep moving. They’re transient, they’re transitory.
So many things in life are. You can’t pin them down. You look one minute and things look one way; the next minute they look entirely different. Don’t even ask about the differences between years.
But for some reason we (and by “we” I mean “I”) keep trying to get some kind of firm fix on the situation, whatever the situation is. Seven or eight sparrows? Well, does it matter? Rationally, no … but so much of life is spent trying to count those damn sparrows.
Also, I like numbers. I like numbers in general; I like arithmetic; I count things and add and subtract and multiply things all the time, just for the hell of it. Give me your phone number and I’ll tell you something interesting about the digits in, like, four seconds. “The sum of the first three digits is the product of the last two digits!” Or something. It’s a little weird. Kind of Junior Rain Man. (I do know the difference between the price of a car and the price of a candy bar, though. So your longstanding suspicion that I really should be institutionalized has not yet been entirely confirmed.)
I like numbers in poetry because they are so specific. Other things being equal, generally the more specific a poem is the more powerful it is, so numbers to me seem like high-octane gas or something for poetry.
Gabi Greve, on her mindblowingly complete haiku website, has a great page about numbers in haiku. Here are a couple of my favorites of the examples she gives:
咲花をまつ一に梅二は櫻
saku hana o matsu ichi ni umi ni wa sakurawaiting for the cherry blossoms
one is the sea
two is the cherry tree— Ishihara 石原重方
.
ビタミン剤一日二錠瀧凍る
bitamiinzai ichi nichi ni joo taki kooruvitamin pills
each day two of them –
the waterfall freezes— Ono Shuka (Oono Shuka) 大野朱香
Also, Issa is great at haiku that feature numbers. (Does this surprise you? I thought not.) A few examples, all translated by David Lanoue (and if you want more you should go over to David’s spectacular database of Issa translations and type your favorite number in the search box):
three raindrops
and three or four
fireflies.
houses here and there
fly kites, three…four…
two.
three or five stars
by the time I fold it…
futon.
rainstorm–
two drops for the rice cake tub
three drops for the winnow.
lightning flash–
suddenly three people
face to face.
mid-river
on three or four stools…
evening cool.
cool air–
out of four gates
entering just one.
on four or five
slender blades of grass
autumn rain.
a five or six inch
red mandarin orange…
winter moon
and one of my favorites of all time —
first snowfall
one, two, three, four
five, six people
Interesting how many of these involve the kind of uncertainty about exact count that my own haiku does. I don’t remember whether I had read any Issa at the time I wrote it. I might have been shamelessly imitating him, or I might just have been trying to count sparrows. You try it. It’s not as easy as it sounds.
December 12 (Fall After Fall)
fall after fall
how hard will it be
next time?
December 10 (What Autumn…)
what autumn
would like us to believe —
the end
Across the Haikuverse, No. 6: Telegraphic Edition
Hello fellow inhabitants of the Haikuverse,
There was so much to explore in the Haikuverse this week that I feel a little overwhelmed by it all. If I’m ever going to get through the list I’ve got in front of me I will have to be brief and efficient, possibly even telegraphic. So … here goes.
First of all, congratulations to Andrew Phillips, of Pied Hill Prawns, and his wife on the recent birth of a baby boy. Andrew wrote a lovely poem, Sacred Space in the Suburbs, with haiku-like stanzas, about the home birth — I highly recommend it. Here’s an excerpt:
This is a room for women. I clamp
a hose to the tap, filling the pool
with warm waters.
— Andrew Phillips
*
Lots of haiku journals published new issues in the last week. I naturally feel compelled to start with Notes from the Gean, which contains my first published haiku (reposted in this space last week). (Yes, I am excited. Thanks for asking.) They also published one of my haibun. (Excited, again.) But there are so many other wonderful things in this issue that are not by me that I demand you go over there and take a look.
For instance: There are the amazing photo haiga of Aubrie Cox and Carmella Braniger. There are some stunning renku — I like “Scribing Lines” (The Bath Spa Railway Station Renku) in particular. And, of course, there are dozens and dozens of great haiku. I was especially excited to see this one by Lee Gurga, which was thoroughly dissected in a workshop I attended in Mineral Point:
an unspoken assumption tracks through the petals
— Lee Gurga
*
Heron’s Nest also published last week and is also full of wonderful haiku. Here are a couple that particularly struck me (and I just noticed they both mention the wind, what’s that about?):
north wind
the holes
in my beliefs
— Christopher Patchelautumn wind
the leaves too
made of oak
— Joyce Clement
This issue also contains a lengthy and interesting commentary by Alice Frampton on the following amazing ku (winner of the Heron’s Nest Award), well worth reading if you’re interested in getting a better insight into how haiku are put together:
ragged clouds
how it feels
to hold a rake
— Robert Epstein
*
A very exciting development last week was the publication of the first issue of Haijinx since 2002! Congratulations to the team who put this together. Because of a mouse-related incident that took place in my house this week, I was attracted to this haiku by the great Peggy Willis Lyles, who, sadly, died in September:
sharp cheese
I sometimes
feel trapped
— peggy willis lyles
*
Yet another December publication: Haibun Today. They usually have a great selection of haibun, though I have to admit I have not had time to make my way through all the contents of this issue yet. Of those I’ve read, one that I really loved, especially because I am always thinking that there should be more short-story or fiction haibun, was Weight, Balance, and Escapement by Jeffrey Harpeng. This is wildly imaginative and may make your brain explode, so watch out.
*
I can’t believe I didn’t know about before about this seriously awesome site: Haiku News. They publish haiku based on news stories, along with links to the story in question. This sounds like a gimmick (well, I guess it is in a way) that might involve mediocre or silly haiku, but in fact the haiku are very high quality and the interaction between haiku and news story is thought-provoking. Like this one by Claire Everett, based on the headline “Hunger index shows one billion without enough food.”
nothing left
but the wishbone
November sky
— Claire Everett
*
Troutswirl this week published an essential read for those interested in the history of English-language haiku: an essay about Anita Virgil and Robert Spiess, who were two of the most prominent and innovative haiku poets in this country in the sixties and seventies and whose haiku still seems original and exciting. Here’s Anita:
walking the snow crust
not sinking
sinking
— Anita Virgil
and here’s Robert:
Muttering thunder . . .
the bottom of the river
scattered with clams— Robert Spiess
*
I don’t know how I have happened not to write about John McDonald before, because his blog Zen Speug was one of the first I discovered when I first started writing haiku and I still love it devotedly. For one thing: Great haiku, often very Shiki-ish, with wonderful nature images. For another: Scots! John (who is a retired mason, which is another reason to love him) writes his haiku in both Scots and English, and Scots, in case you weren’t aware, is one of the best. languages. ever.
In fact someone called David Purves has written an essay about how Scots may be a better language for haiku than English (actually, I think lots and lots of languages are better for haiku than English, and I’m not even counting Japanese, which is one reason why I am so devoted to foreign-language haiku).
This was one of my favorites of John’s from this week:
snaw –
the treen
aw yin flourishsnow
the trees
all one blossom— John McDonald
*
Over at Blue Willow Haiku World Fay Aoyagi this week translated and shared this amazing haiku:
my husband with hot sake
he, too, must have
a dream he gave up— Kazuko Nishimura
*
At Beachcombing For the Landlocked the other day, Mark Holloway posted the following tanka, which I took to immediately because it perfectly expresses my feelings about living in the, ahem, landlocked (but very lake-y) Midwest. (Note: I can’t get the formatting of this to work right here; the fourth line should be indented to begin about under the word “lake” from the line above.)
no matter
how beautiful
the lake
it’s still
not the sea— Mark Holloway
*
At Issa’s Untidy Hut Don Wentworth shares with us his review of a great used-book-store find he made this week (note to self: go to used book stores more often): an autographed copy of The Duckweed Way: Haiku of Issa, translated by Lucien Stryk. Stryk’s translations are highly minimalist and often (no pun intended, I swear) striking. For instance:
First cicada:
life is
cruel, cruel, cruel.— Issa, tr. Lucien Stryk
*
Over at Haiku Bandit Society there is always so very much to love. This week I watched a rengay in the process of composition — every day or two when I checked back a new verse had been added. It was like a magic trick. Here are the first couple of verses — go read the rest yourself.
I’ve had sake
only once or twice
but, as for dreams… / ba walk on the moon
with Neil Armstrong / l’o
*
Recently I discovered a Japanese newspaper, The Mainichi Daily News, which publishes English-language haiku every day — go ahead, send yours in, they have a submission form and everything. I really like today’s entry, in fact:
fog thinning out–
more and more visible
the way to nowhere
— Marek Kozubek (Zywiec, Poland)
*
Check out this Japanese haiku blog by Hidenori Hiruta: AkitaHaiku. The author posts his haiku in both Japanese and English, accompanied by wonderful photographs. They’re grouped seasonally. Here’s an Autumn one that for obvious reasons I am very fond of:
red dragonflies
hiding in dahlias
the blue sky— Hidenori Hiruta
*
Chen-ou Liu is a very well-known English-language haiku (and tanka, and free-verse) poet whose blog Stay Drunk on Writing, for some reason, I just came upon this week. Here’s a great pair of ku about the upcoming Chinese Year of the Rabbit:
New Year’s Eve
a white rabbit falls
into my dreamNew Year’s morning
standing before the mirror
it’s me, and yet …— Chen-ou Liu
*
Okay … so why didn’t anyone ever tell me about zip haiku before? Geez. You people.
What are zip haiku, you ask? Well, they’re an invention of the amazing John Carley, probably best known for his great work with renku (check out Renku Reckoner). At some point around the turn of the millennium John got fed up with all the squabbling about what constitutes an English-language haiku and decided to invent his own form of haiku that would be unique to English and capitalize on its special properties. You can read his essay about this yourself, but basically he got all scientific about it and crunched numbers with translations and did a little rummaging around in the basement of linguistics and ended up with this 15-syllable poem, divided into two parts, that he called a zip haiku. (You must understand that I am seriously oversimplifying what John did, and I won’t be surprised if he writes and tells me I’ve got it all wrong.)
ANYWAY. Here’s an example, and I am going to go off and write some of these myself. Soon.
|
orange and tan
|
tan orange and tan |
|
the butterflies
|
beat on
— John Carley |
.r*
The Irish Haiku Society announced the results of their International Haiku Competition 2010 this week. Lots of great winners. Here’s an honorable mention I liked a lot.
recession
more tree
less leaf
— Hugh O’Donnell
*
Few editions of the Haikuverse are complete for me without a French haiku by Vincent Hoarau, posted this week on Facebook. Please don’t ask me to translate.
Sinterklaas –
tombent les flocons
et les poemes inacheves .
— Vincent Hoarau
*
I absolutely loved this highly minimalist haiku by Angie Werren, posted this week both on Twitter and on her blog feathers. I wrote Angie a long comment about it talking about all the ways I love it (you can see it if you go over there), which may seem over-the-top because it’s only four words long and how much can you say about four words? A lot, it turns out.
snow
black crow
tea— Angie Werren
*
Bill Kenney of haiku-usa continues with his fine series of “Afters,” loose interpretations of classical Japanese haiku. This week: Basho and Issa on radishes. Really, there is nothing better. I could use a radish right now.
the chrysanthemums gone
there’s nothing
but radishes— Basho (1644-1694)
the radish grower
pointing the way
with a radish— Issa (1763-1827)
*
It’s that time again — the topics for the December Shiki Kukai have been announced. The deadline is December 18. The kigo is “Winter sky,” and the theme for the free format is “ring” (used as a noun). Get composing.
And without further ado, I am going to bed. It’s been an exhausting whirl around the Haikuverse … but what great company! See you all next week.
December 2: 1 line, 3 lines, 2 lines, 4
.
without a miracle doubt creeping into the violets
.
if things were coming to an end
fireflies
here and there
.
nothing I didn’t know before
maple after maple
.
if x then y
all my logic
buried under
the first snow
December 1: Straggling Geese
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
Across the Haikuverse, No. 5: Too Much Homework Edition
Dear Fellow Travelers,
Some weeks the Haikuverse seems to stir up a lot of Deep Thoughts in me, but not this week. This week I was too busy for Thinking Deeply. (I can hear you sighing in relief. Stop that.)
So what have I got for you? Well, a lot of really great haiku (other people’s, natch), snatched out of the ether during moments stolen from homework, fiction writing, Thanksgiving dinner, and sleep. For some reason, most of them seem to relate to one of two themes: astronomical phenomena or snow.
(It’s snowing in a lot of places these days, apparently. So interesting, the sense you can get of world weather patterns by following the world’s daily haiku output.)
Anyway. To start off our journey … here are some of my favorite responses to a polite request that The Haiku Foundation’s Facebook page recently made of its followers: “Please share a haiku inspired by the onset of cold weather.” (They frequently make interesting requests like this. You should go over and oblige them occasionally. It’s nice to share.)
premières gelées blanches –
une envie soudaine
de carrot cake
.
…first white frosts –
…a sudden urge
for a carrot cake— Vincent Hoarau
first snow
she pockets a large carrot
for later use— Laura Sherman
(Yes, two carrot haiku, right next to each other. It freaked me out too.)
closure…
a ring around
the moon— George O Hawkins
listening to myself
on the walk home
fresh snow— Michael Rehling
Twitter was all cold this week too. And for some reason (okay, maybe my foreign-language fetish), it seemed very polyglot.
First of all, my Twitter friend Polona Oblak, or one cloud, whose username is cirrusdream, overheard me raving in a tweet about how much I liked foreign-language haiku and generously offered to translate some of her haiku into Slovenian, her first language. (Great quotation from Polona: “the problem is, although i’m not a native english speaker, my muse appears to be.”)
There are SO many things I love about this — first of all the fact that Slovenian is a Slavic language, so I can actually semi-follow what’s going on here. (All Slavic languages are alike, but some are more alike than others. [Whoa — Tolstoy/Orwell mashup! Didn’t see that coming.])
Secondly the fact that in Slovenian, this haiku is so highly alliterative and even rhymes a little. English haiku needs more of that. Remind me to do some of that some time soon.
first chill
a spider weaves its web
under a neon light
.
prvi mraz
pajek plete mrežo
pod neonsko lučjo— Polona Oblak (cirrusdream)
Then, I believe the very same day, I had the incredibly thrilling experience of discovering a Twitterer who writes haiku in Esperanto. Not just any haiku. Good haiku. (Excuse me: hajko.) I am still in shock that there is a person like this in the world. I like the world better now.
pelas norda vent’ unuopajn neĝerojn… sonoriladon
.
north wind drives snowflakes one by one… a bell rings and rings.
— Steven D. Brewer (limako)
David Serjeant, over at distant lightning, had a great snow moment this week too. I caught a whiff of Issa drifting from this haiku. (I’m very sensitive to that scent.)
midnight snowfall
my neighbour
coughing away— David Serjeant
I caught even more of a whiff of Issa, maybe even something more like a deliberate (and extremely successful) tribute, coming from Elissa’s recent snow haiku, “who’s counting,” at the haiku diary:
Watching the first one,
two, three . . . four, five, six . . . seven
snowflakes fall outside.— Elissa
(And okay … I got a little sidetracked here. I have a huge weakness, for some reason, for haiku with numbers in them. In fact, one of my favorites among my own haiku is still this one that I wrote way back in, like, the first week I ever wrote haiku. I went looking for more information about these number-haiku things and ended up, naturally enough, on Gabi Greve’s territory, reading this amazing essay-full-of-inspiring-examples. I have to read it again, when I can spend more time on it.)
(And another slight detour, this one possibly even verging on Deep Thought. This quotation, from a very famous Japanese haiku poet, got in my face when I read it on someone’s Facebook page this week — I’m sorry, Facebook person, I don’t remember who you are, but thanks for posting this! It reminded me of the essay by Aubrie Cox I wrote about a couple of weeks ago:
“The reader of a haiku is indispensable to the working of ma. This person must notice the ma and sense the kokoro of the poet. A haiku is not completed by the poet. The poet creates half of the haiku, while the remaining half must wait for…the appearance of a superior reader. Haiku is literature created jointly by the poet and the reader. A Western poem is the product of the poet alone, and thus here also the way of thinking about haiku is different.”
— Hasegawa Kai
I must say, I feel very fortunate to have had the occasional “superior reader” show up here to complete my haiku, because God knows they [my haiku, that is] need all the help they can get…)
This haiku from David Marshall, at haiku streak, is an exception to this week’s astronomy-and-snow theme, but it does seem somehow to complement Hasegawa’s words. It’s called Old Friends, and don’t tell me haiku aren’t supposed to have titles. They can if they want to. It’s a free country.
Silence that ripens,
silence that stays green, silence
fallen and sere— David Marshall
I’ll finish up with the astronomical phenomena, since this is, after all, a voyage across the Haikuverse…
Here’s one from Terri L. French’s recent week as the featured poet on the Daily Haiku blog — I love this image:
long road trip —
Orion’s belt rests
on the dashboard— Terri L. French
And here’s one I like a lot from the blog of extra special bitter:
November sky —
I used to remember
which planet that was— extra special bitter
As I recently mentioned to someone, I sometimes have difficulty myself even in recalling exactly which planet we are supposed to be on, so I can relate to this sentiment. You know — keeping track of where you are can get to be a challenge when you spend as much time wandering the Haikuverse as I do …
Have a great week, and don’t get lost in space.
_______________________________
The Haikuverse in the fourth dimension:
Red Dragonfly 