magnetic
dragonflies
after life
.
winter
rain
afterlife
.
dragonfly
afterlife
airplane
.
afterlife
this time
I’ll look
at the moon
for real
.
(that last one is also over at the March Moon Viewing Party at Haiku Bandit Society)
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
(summer lightning)
.
.
.
illustration: Rick Daddario, 19 Planets
.
summer lightning…
dragonfly
fused
to dragonfly
.
Frogpond 34.2
.
.
.
Chasing Dragonflies
Dear readers,
I know you’re probably sick of me by now after my interminable rambling about HNA, but here’s your chance to get your revenge by making me read your writing for a change.
Remember back last month when we all went crazy for mushrooms? Mushroom haiku. Mushroom tanka. Mushroom haiga. Mushroom photos. Mushroom drawings. It was so much fun I feel like doing it again. No, not with mushrooms. I think we’ve played out mushrooms. Wonderful as they are.
So how about … dragonflies?
Yes, I do have a vested interest in dragonflies. And I always feel like I don’t see enough dragonfly haiku. Issa wrote a lot of them, which makes me happy, but more recently I feel like their currency has fallen off. And you guys always surprise me. In a good way. I’d love to see what you have to say about dragonflies.
Not to mention, I have a large collection of dragonfly photos and artwork all ready to accompany your brilliant words. It’ll be awesome.
Once again, I’m taking haiku, tanka, and haiga. Published or unpublished. You can send them to reddragonflyhaiku AT gmail DOT com.
Deadline: Sunday August 14. (They’ll be posted next week sometime.)
The fine print:
1. If I post poems on my blog, they count as published for the purposes of most journals’ editorial policies, so don’t send me anything you are hoping to publish in an edited journal.
2. You will retain all rights to your work after it has appeared here. I will not publish it anywhere else or post it here more than once unless we make other arrangements to do so.
3. Make sure you send me whatever name you want your poem signed with and any link(s) you want me to include — to a blog, website, Twitter feed, whatever.
4. If your poem has been published, make sure to send me the publishing credits because publishers like it when you credit them.
5. Also, I can’t guarantee to post everything people send me, sorry. (What if I get 500 of these things? I won’t, but what if?)
6. Once again: Deadline: Sunday, August 14, 2011. Midnight, wherever you are. (Nobody in the world is more than seven or eight hours behind me, so whatever I see in my inbox when I get up on Monday morning is it.)
7. Feel free to spread the word about this request to your friends and enemies.
8. Any other questions or comments? That’s what the comments box is for. Or the email address above.
.
Thanks in advance for the wings,
Melissa
Off To the Festival
o-matsuri no akai dedachi no tombo kana
.
The dragonfly,
dressed in red,
off to the festival
— Issa, translated by Robert Hass
Yes, that is my front door. Yes, that is a red dragonfly door knocker next to it. Yes, I do have a perfectly functional doorbell. And a door to knock on. But if you ever come to my house you must use the red dragonfly door knocker that my sister gave me for my birthday, because otherwise how will I know that there is a haiku enthusiast standing outside?
I’m leaving my house and my door knocker today to go to Seattle for Haiku North America. Will try to report back at intervals. Stay tuned.
April 14 (Four in One)
every seed he plants a finger inserted deep
into
soil
that’s what we call the dirt
we don’t believe
in
fact
that dragonfly is me
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
.
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
.
From Mann Library’s Daily Haiku:
spring plowing
a flock of blackbirds
turns inside out— Tom Painting
.
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
.
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
.
From Beachcombing for the Landlocked:
following their directions i find myself in someone else’s lost
— Matt Holloway
.
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.”)
.
From Haiku Bandit Society:
the queue come full stop
a stolen glance
at the nape of her neck— William Sorlien
.
From Daily Haiga (with, naturally, a haiga…go look, pretty please)
summer solstice
i touch it
four times— Brendan Slater
___________
Wonders of the Web
.
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.)
.
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
.
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
____________
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.
.
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.”]
.
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.
Pseudohaiku: Search strings
what dives
in the water
red as a cardinal
usual syllables
haiku
for venus
haiku monastery
seen because flowers
have gone
folding knives
and pockets
in france
antique geisha screenprint
missing
left hands
____________________
It’s the end of a long, draining week. I thought we (at least we here in the U.S.) could all use some entertainment, and an opportunity to take ourselves not quite as seriously as usual.
So: The thing all these haiku have in common is that, clearly, they are not haiku. They are some of the eccentric search strings that have led people to this page from Google. I like to entertain myself by trying to imagine what was going through people’s minds when they entered these searches, and by what tortured logic the search engine directed them here in a vain attempt to fulfill their information needs.
I have a large collection of other search strings, most of which do not lend themselves so easily to being converted to pseudohaiku. Some of them are quite beautiful, though. Some are thought-provoking, probably in a way their author did not intend. Some I’m thinking of using as writing prompts in the future. (“Poems about bad wolves”? Yeah, I would read a poem about bad wolves.)
Here are a few of them. Enjoy. And take a few deep breaths this weekend.
the dragonfly land on you will they bite me or sting me
garden, fog, crescent moon, and stars
full moon and sleepless nights
haiku dragon shy rock
poems about bad wolves
why are the dragonflies red
why was the moon red last night
meaning of seeing a red dragonfly
“anxiety” “rustling leaves” “simile”
snowboarding villanelles
caterpillar incense cedar sphinx
Red Dragonfly 