.
Melissa Allen, haiku; Jay Otto, photograph
bees
Across the Haikuverse, No. 16: National Library Week Edition
Hi haiku folk,
This is the beginning of National Library Week in the U.S. I don’t care where you live, you are going to be celebrating this with me, because in case it hadn’t registered with you before, I am studying to be a librarian when I grow up. (In case, you know, the whole fame-and-fortune-through-haiku thing doesn’t pan out for me.)
So here’s my obligatory public service announcement: Please do your part to support libraries so that I will be able to find a job when I graduate from library school so that we can facilitate the free flow of information that is necessary to the health of a democratic society. Or something.
… No, seriously. I know you all probably love libraries already, but in case you didn’t know, a lot of politicians don’t. They think libraries are frivolous institutions that exist only to provide a lot of namby-pamby middle-class people with books of poetry (honestly, could anything be more…irrelevant…than poetry?) and the latest romance novels. They don’t see any relationship between the health of libraries and the health of the economy. They think everyone gets their information from the Internet these days anyway. They’d rather spend the cash on bombers.
Guess what? More people use libraries now than ever before. In America, a huge percentage of the population has access to the Internet only through their public library. Librarians help them look for jobs, figure out how to pay their taxes (did you hear that, politicians?), study to become more qualified for jobs, determine whether those emails from the nice Nigerian businessman are actually legitimate, and yes, occasionally even obtain print and audiovisual materials that improve their lives in a myriad of ways. And that’s just public libraries. Don’t get me started on all the other kinds.
So if you haven’t been to the library in a while, why not make a trip this week? And say something nice to the librarian. And if you happen to run into your local legislator somewhere, tell him or her about all the stuff I said. Forget the bombs…bring on the books.
(Note: Because this blog believes in truth in advertising, all the blatant public service announcements promoting libraries in today’s column will be printed in bold. Enjoy.)
___________________
Haiku of the Week
A couple of great red dragonfly haiku showed up in my feed reader this week. Because I am shamelessly self-centered, they get to go first.
.
From Lunch Break:
water aerobics-
the red dragonfly
flitting past— gillena cox 2011
.
From see haiku here (as always, includes a haiga that must be seen):
red dragonfly —
I am now alive
admiring the height of sky— Natsume, Soseki (with haiga by Kuniharu Shimizu)
*
Next in order of priority are the cherry blossom haiku. Japanese cherry blossom haiku. Need I say more? Both of these are from Blue Willow Haiku World.
From March 31:
花冷えの鍵は鍵穴にて響く 冨田拓也
hanabie no kagi wa kagiana nite hibiku
.
cherry blossom chill
a key resonates
in the key hole— Takuya Tomita, translated by Fay Aoyagi
.
From April 2:
文字は手を覚えてゐたり花の昼 鴇田智哉
moji wa te o oboete itari hana no hiru
.
characters remember
who wrote them
cherry blossom afternoon— Tomoya Tokita, translated by Fay Aoyagi
*
Okay, the rest of you can be seated now.
From La Calebasse (sorry, no translation today, but French really isn’t a difficult language to learn — run along now and pick up some instructional tapes from your local library):
la première abeille
jusqu’au quatrième étage
pour la première fleur— Vincent Hoarau
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From old pajamas: from the dirt hut:
Hurry, children we could not have // Come cross the lotus bridge //
Play with mother under the plum tree— Alan Segal
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From Mann Library’s Daily Haiku:
spring plowing
a flock of blackbirds
turns inside out— Tom Painting
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From Crows & Daisies:
a housefly
on the tax form…
all day rain— Polona Oblak
.
From jornales:
magnolia petals
in the wind—
the rush at my wedding— Alegria Imperial
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From Morden Haiku — a great echo of Basho’s famous haiku:
day after day
on the inspector’s face
the inspector’s mask— Matt Morden
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From Beachcombing for the Landlocked:
following their directions i find myself in someone else’s lost
— Matt Holloway
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From haiku-usa:
long afternoona squirrel’s leapfrom tree to tree— Bill Kenney
(Bill’s helpful kigo note: “Like ‘long day,’ ‘long afternoon’ is a traditional spring kigo. To be sure, summer days are longer still, but our awareness that the days are growing longer is a phenomenon of spring.”)
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From Haiku Bandit Society:
the queue come full stop
a stolen glance
at the nape of her neck— William Sorlien
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From Daily Haiga (with, naturally, a haiga…go look, pretty please)
summer solstice
i touch it
four times— Brendan Slater
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Wonders of the Web
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Springtime with Issa
Tom Clark of Beyond the Pale gives us an explosion of Issa spring haiku, accompanied by amazing photography. Just go read it and look at it and breathe. We made it through again. (This link courtesy of Don Wentworth . He always knows about the coolest stuff. Probably because he’s a librarian.)
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Asahi Haikuist Network
Sheesh. Somebody should have told me about this a while ago…a whole column in a Japanese newspaper featuring English-language haiku. There’s a different theme for every biweekly issue, which includes commentary by the editor, David McMurray. (You can send him your own haiku — see the directions at the bottom of every column.)
Stacking firewood
my son wants to know
all about tsunami–Ralf Broker (Germany)
.
“Chances”
.
On the NaHaiWriMo Facebook page the other day, Alan Summers shared a link to an amazing animated haiku presentation by Jeffrey Winke, and now I have to go there every single day and stare at it. Very moving haiku. In both senses of the word “moving.”
cooling grasses
tears that start in her eyes
run down my face
— Jeffrey Winke
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At the Border of Silver and Tacky: Meet Ed Baker
Ed Baker is a sui generis poet whose poetry sometimes looks like haiku and sometimes like itself; he likes to call a lot of what he writes “shorties,” which works for me. He’s also a painter and a sculptor. You should get to know him a little bit, which you can do by going to visit him with Geof Huth of dbqp: visualizing poetics. Geof spent a day with Ed a few years ago and has the photos to prove it. (Thanks to Joseph Hutchison over at The Perpetual Bird for sharing this link.)
Afterwards (or beforehand, I suppose, might be even better), you should go over to Ed’s own site and read what he writes. Like this:
far beyond___frog___moon leaps
— Ed Baker, from Neighbor Book 6 Afterwards
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How To Get Rid Of Your Money
An anonymous haiku fan who apparently has some spare cash (I knew there had to be at least one!) has offered to triple any donations given to The Haiku Foundation in the month of April. So if you got a bigger tax refund than you expected and you have all the groceries you need for a while, you could send them some money to fund, you know…haiku stuff.
(Then if you have any more spare money? There’s this deserving not-quite-young-anymore haiku poet and blogger who’s accepting donations to fund her lavish haiku-writing lifestyle. Contact me for details about where to mail the check…)
_____________
Dead Tree News
I really hope I’ve mentioned this before, but all the women out there in the Haikuverse need to think about submitting your best haiku (and senryu) to Aubrie Cox for her groundbreaking anthology of women’s English-language haiku. The deadline is April 15th. The relevant email address is paperlanternhaiku AT gmail DOT com and you should include 5 to 15 poems, your name, country, a brief bio of 150 words or less, and any applicable publication credits of submitted poems.
When Aubrie started this project she mentioned that although no anthology of women’s English-language haiku had yet been assembled, Makoto Ueda had put together a fine one of Japanese women’s haiku, called Far Beyond the Field. So I got it and I’ve been wandering through it delightedly for the last month or so. It’s a physically lovely object, tall and narrow and outwardly dressed in spring green, with lots of white space inside to create room for thought around every haiku. There’s lots of space for thought around every poet, too; Ueda has created a substantial section for each woman with a preceding brief critical and biographical essay.
I don’t want to blather on about this too much because the haiku stand on their own, and if you’re interested you should find yourself a copy of the book. (This is a link to the WorldCat library catalog, which will help you find a copy of this book at a library near you.) I’ll just throw out a few of my favorites to make your mouth water and then run away and leave you hanging, because I’m heartless that way.
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the butterfly
behind, before, behind
a woman on the road
— Chiyojo
.
lost in the woods —
only the sound of a leaf
falling on my hat
— Tagami Kikusha
.
no longer seeking
the sun, a magnificent
sunflower
— Takeshita Shizunojo
.
home from blossom viewing —
as I disrobe, many straps
cling to my body
— Sugita Hisajo [1919]
[Ueda’s note: “Kyoshi said at the time that this was a woman’s haiku that no man could imitate.”]
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the baby carriage
and the wild waves
side by side in summer
— Hashimoto Takako
.
up on a hydro pole
the electrician turns
into a cicada
— Mitsuhashi Takajo
.
their lives last
only while aflame —
a woman and a pepper-pod
— Mitsuhashi Takajo
.
at spring dawn
something I’ve spat out
gleams serenely
— Ishibashi Hideno
.
a man enters
the room, disturbing the scent
of daffodils
— Yoshino Yoshiko
.
the instant it flies up
a dragonfly
loses its shadow
— Inahata Teiko
.
saffron in bloom—
the movie yesterday
murdered a man
— Uda Kitoko
.
each fresh day
inflicting new wounds
on a white peony
— Kuroda Momoko
.
with a pencil
I torture an ant
on the desk at night
— Katayama Yumiko
.
choosing a swimsuit —
when did his eyes
replace mine?
— Mayuzumi Madoka
.
______________
Thanks for your attention, folks…Hey, where did everybody go? Oh, to the library? That’s all right, then.
See Me There: Kuniharu Shimizu and Me (Times Two)
An inspiring story of faith, hope, and survival! Tune in to hear one woman’s testimony of how her lousy day was transformed by the power of Art …
So I was having kind of a blah day yesterday, feeling sorry for myself for no good reason (I like to do this, instead of, you know, drinking or something — everyone needs a vice). Hadn’t slept well the night before. Came home from a kind of wearying family event (love my family, but it was a five-year-old’s birthday party, enough said) and passed out on the couch for a two-hour nap without even checking my email (I normally check my email ninety-seven times a day). Had weird dreams of birds flying around and people speaking strange languages. Woke up feeling remarkably refreshed. Immediately checked my email.
The name of the sender of one of the messages was in Japanese characters. Intriguing. The name of the sender in English, when said message was opened, turned out to be Kuniharu Shimizu. Kuniharu is one of my favorite haiga artists and is the proprietor of one of my favorite blogs, see haiku here. A few days ago, I sent him some of my haiku because he had mentioned on his blog that he was sick of looking around himself for haiku to illustrate and wanted people to send him some. He replied thanking me for sending them but letting me know that he had a large backlog of haiku to work on so it would probably be a while before he decided on these.
But YESTERDAY (he wrote me to say) he posted his haiga of one of my haiku on his site! Me! Mine! My haiku! Kuniharu Shimizu! [Incomprehensible joyful babbling.] So much for feeling sorry for myself. It TOTALLY made my day, even before I actually looked at the haiga and realized how unbelievably beautiful it was.
In case you missed the link above, here’s the haiga:
http://seehaikuhere.blogspot.com/2011/01/haiga-476-melissa-allen-haiku.html
The haiku (which, unusually for me, is a pretty exact description of my son’s reaction to Comet Hale-Bopp back in 1997) is a rewritten version of a haiku that appeared on this blog back in June. Back then I wrote:
slash of a comet
the two-year-old’s
finger
The version I sent Kuniharu was:
comet
the slash of the two-year-old’s
finger
And I know you have already clicked on the link and gone to look at the haiga yourself so you know this already (right? right?) but he did an amazing job interpreting this haiku. I love the colors. I love the shapes. It looks like something out of a dream. It reminds me a little of Chagall, who is one of my favorite painters. Also, I love what Kuni had to say about his inspiration for this image. It is a poem all on its own.
In my imagination, a comet is like a swallow swishing in the sky…
— Kuniharu Shimizu
So now I have resolved never to feel sorry for myself ever again. Let me know if you catch me at it.
Thanks again, Kuni san.
_____
Addendum, 1/17, 9:00 p.m.: He did it again!
http://seehaikuhere.blogspot.com/2011/01/haiga-478-melissa-allen-haiku-2.html
I love this one too. Kuni! You are spoiling me!
The haiku is another rewritten one, from this post. Originally it was:
the year’s hottest day
her dress
is made of bees
but it became
the year’s hottest day
she dreams that her dress
is made of bees
Slightly less surreal, I suppose. But surrealism and I only occasionally get along.
We’re having a snowstorm here today, the idea of dreaming about heat and bees is very appealing to me. I might have to go to bed soon and do that.
June 27: Bees
new information
they dance intently
in the hive
a dance conjuring
pure sweetness
the cells shudder
a sweet day
my hands begin to buzz
as I approach the hive
draped in white
am I a moon to them
these burning suns
the messengers and I
stare at each other
there is so much to say
*
Yeah, there are more than there used to be. I started to write just one more in the comments in response to Rick’s ku … then something came over me and bees jammed my brain and the next thing I knew, there was a sequence … first worms, now bees, I wonder if I will be inspired by cockroaches soon …
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:
the milky way . . .
we start to discuss
Pac-Man strategieswalrus 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 fireworks
the echo of
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 manpulled 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 bliss2
Remorseful
for tearing up a violet
so I ate it3
On T.V. a spider
liquifies a frog —
spring in Kansas City4
In spring
a stone mason —
servant of the endless wall5
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.
unbound, the English
Bay in fog —
not seen: some weird duck
soundless
in the night museumWyeth’s boots
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.
mourner’s kaddishdoes the fly, too,
wear a yamulke?
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:
Blackbird waiting
For idea of cat
To go awayThere’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 dailywith 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:
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?
I literally
watched a bumble bee stumble
out of a peony!
— Elissa of The Haiku Diary
June 13: 2-4: feeling gendai. ish. and hot.
breathing the same wind
as the fireflies
I burst into flames
the year’s hottest day
her dress
is made of bees
balloon’s fire-
roar
singed thoughts
May 10: 3 (Apple Trees in Blossom)
apple trees in blossom
bees and I
probe for sweetness
May 3: 3 (I’m Alive This Spring)
I’m alive this spring
a bee
bangs on the window
Red Dragonfly 