character study

She wakes up sometimes, thinking about her dilemma. It always takes a minute to remember what the dilemma is because it’s always a different dilemma than the last time she woke up. It’s that kind of story. The solution to her dilemma is often obvious to her, as it is to every reader of that kind of story, but she knows her own judgment makes no difference to the resolution of the dilemma. She’s made efforts in the past–to leave the man, to save the child, to cross the street, to pursue her ambition–but whether she succeeds or not is entirely up to the storyteller. He might be trying to write a cautionary tale, or make his readers cry, or make the heroine of the story look good in contrast to her, in which case she will surely make the wrong choice, do the foolish thing, die in poverty, be shunned by the townsfolk. By now she’s used to failure. By now she’s used to contempt. By now she’s used to losing things that seemed impossible to lose. It’s almost exhilarating to her now, that kind of loss. She knows it doesn’t really matter. The next time she wakes up, she’ll be a character in a new story. There’s always the possibility that this time, she’ll have magical powers, or a mighty army, or an uncanny ability to bend people to her will. There’s always the possibility that by the end of the story, she’ll be ruling the world.

these damn cicadas
with their confessional tone
I promise myself
I’ll admit everything
when nothing’s left to admit

(Prose: here, now. Tanka: Eucalypt, November 2011.)

(so I start)

.

so I start thinking
about the next thing I’ll be…
all day the scent
of pine sap I can’t scrub
from my fingers

.

Notes From the Gean 3.4

.

(This has also been previously published on this blog, so if you’re scratching your head wondering where you saw it, that’s where.)

.

(skirting)

.

skirting
the wings
of the effigy mound
I hold your hand to prove
it isn’t time to let go

.

Atlas Poetica 11

.

Across the Haikuverse, No. 29: The Not-Haiku Edition

It is not strictly true that there is no haiku here. There’s a bunch of haiku. There’s just a lot of other stuff too. It’s all poetry, though. Short poetry. Relatively short. It all makes me happy, okay?

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about how haiku is different from other kinds of poetry and wondering how different it is, exactly, and whether and what writers of haiku can learn from other kinds of poetry about how to write haiku. I know there’s a school of thought that haiku is haiku and Western poetry is Western poetry and ne’er the twain shall meet. That Western poems employ all kinds of tricky, slippery literary devices so their meanings are hidden in a miasma of metaphor, whereas haiku are clear as water and they mean just what they say they mean.

I wonder, I wonder. I’m not sure I believe any more that any particular linguistic feature is absolutely necessary to haiku, except extreme brevity, or that any particular linguistic feature is absolutely foreign to it. I think the salient feature of haiku is an almost painfully heightened awareness of some feature of the universe. I could say something about connections, too, and about concreteness, and perhaps about some sort of sense of the existence of time.

But basically, if I don’t feel, when I read haiku, as if my chin has been grabbed and my attention insistently focused on something outside my own skull, then I don’t feel as if the poem has done its job. And you can achieve that effect with very plain and unmetaphorical language or you can achieve it with metaphor or personification or literary allusions or surrealism or wordplay or pretty much anything else in the bag of tricks that Westerners use, that anybody in the world uses, to direct the attention of the poetry-reading public.

So if you’re going to write haiku — and we are — it seems wise to be aware, to stay always aware, of the full range of options available to poets to describe the universe they experience. Even if you choose not to use many, or most, of those options, at least you know what you’re not using, and hopefully why. You also might realize that something you need to say needs to be said in not-haiku. It’s been known to happen.

________________________________________________________________________

Poetry. It’s All Good.

.

— Johannes S. H. Bjerg, 3ournals and frags

Lately Johannes has been on a roll with these parallel poems of his: two poems running side by side, intertwined but able to stand independently. If you find this one interesting I recommend you dig around over at 3ournals and frags to see what else you can find, it’s a bit of a treasure chest over there.

.

暮れそめてにはかに暮れぬ梅林　　　日野草城

kuresomete niwakani kurenu umebayashi

sun starts to set…
a plum grove suddenly
grows dark

—Sojo Hino, translated by Fay Aoyagi, Blue Willow Haiku World

.

OCDC – mixing hard rock aesthetics with an anxiety disorder*

riff 
spliff 
& 
dry ice 
precise

Not to mention three lines of lemon sherbet, each exactly 294 millimetres long, on a mirror, and a bowl of red M&Ms

[*by special request]

— Marie Marshall, kvenna rad

.

I found a lion’s mane in our old shed
made of string and raffia
when we were young we used to chase antelope
I have scars on my knees*

— Kaspalita, a handful of stones

.

the bride posin
bi the watterside  –  a swan
gaes intil the derk burn

.

the bride posing
on the riverbank  –  a swan
enters the dark stream

–John McDonald, zen speug

.

⅔ written
damn
my life
doesn’t really work
in the 1st person

–Mark Holloway, Beachcombing for the Landlocked

.

signs of spring
one day rhyming
with the next

–William Sorlien, Haiku Bandit Society

.

–Aditya Bahl, dipping butterflies

.

a red apple
a green apple
on top of the table

— Shiki, translated by Burton Watson, R’r Blog

Over on the R’r [Roadrunner] Blog, Scott Metz put together a whole applepalooza of haiku about apples, which I highly recommend you take a look at.

.

all the way
around the oak tree
no squirrel

— John Hawk, DailyHaiku 3/30/2012

.

— Johannes S. H. Bjerg, Scented Dust

.

rick of new-mown hay
someone left the gate open
a little horse flew
the wildest urgent creature
between the vault of my ribs

–Alan Segal (“old pajamas”), old pajamas: from the dirt hut

_______________________________________________________________

Blogged

Some more words of wisdom from the R’r Blog… about cooking and haiku.

“Tradition is everything. . . . The press . . . they love to separate avant-garde from tradition. At the end they are not two things. They are the same thing. . . . There’s only two kinds of cooking: the bad cooking and the good cooking. What happens is if we forget our traditions, if we don’t keep looking to the past, it’s very difficult to understand who you are, and even more difficult to be looking to the future.”

— José Andrés, chef and owner of minibar, Zaytinya & é & teacher, with Ferran Adrià, of culinary physics at Harvard University

.

To expand a little on what I wrote up top about the relationship between haiku and “regular” poetry… Ron Silliman, over on his blog about contemporary poetry, has written a very interesting consideration of contemporary haiku as seen in the pages of three books — the anthology Haiku 21 (which I’m going to review soon, I swear), John Martone’s ksana (ditto), and Jim Kacian’s long after (tritto).

Silliman is not a haiku poet — he writes long, very long poetry, as a matter of fact — but he is sympathetic to haiku, or more or less sympathetic; he eyes it a bit skeptically, but lovingly. (Entertainingly, he is very bemused that none of the poems in Haiku 21 have titles. Um, really? That’s the oddest thing about haiku for you? That ten-word poems don’t have titles? I don’t know, maybe we do have some kind of giant blind spot there and haiku could rock titles just fine, but they just seem kind of … unnecessary.)

Anyway. I feel indulgent toward Silliman because he loves John Martone and so do I — I could say more about that and I will, I will. His review is thoughtful and helpful, check it out.

.

David Marshall wrote a haiku every day for a while and that made me really happy, and now he’s writing weekly (or so) essays and they make me really happy too.

“When I was writing a haiku a day, I hit upon an idea I could never express properly in that form. What if every haiku about a bird, a tree, a swinging backhoe, or a boulder blocking a path set that thing aflame—what if observing it made it burn with eternal fire? What would the world look like, blazing with attention? What might be left cool and untouched?”

— David Marshall, “One Essay With Separate Titles” from Signals to Attend

.

______________________________________________________________

Journaled

Oh, Modern Haiku, how I love you…

Some meditations on light and dark from issue 43.1.

.0

one bird sings inside another autumn dusk

— Francine Banwarth

.

on the edge of a forest though I tried to avoid it

— David Boyer

.

a Coleman lantern
lighting the compromise
quarter moon

— Cherie Hunter Day

.

all that dark matter        white peony

— Billie Dee

.

deep fall–
sparrows adding
color to the trees

— Bill Pauly

.

trying to switch on a light that already is late October

— Alison Williams

.

one road in,
one road out–
late winter

— Jeffrey Woodward

.

Ribbons 7.4. Tanka. Yes.

.

I hold a slice
of freshly cut maple
wondering
whether to lacquer the wood
or burn it to tracelessness

— hortensia anderson

.

it is taking
all my life
to understand
what is real —
spring begins

— Marilyn Hazelton

.

hidden
by the maples’ red curtain
six kids
two dogs and a pending
foreclosure

— Christina Nguyen

.

awake
during the procedure–
a tender light
wends its way
through my intestines

— Sheila Sondik

.

Lilliput Review #184. If you haven’t seen Lillie before, please go over and visit Don Wentworth and order a copy or two, or ten. They cost a buck, unless you buy five or more, in which case they cost even less. There is no possible way you will ever find a lower cost-to-value ratio for poetry.

.

white flesh peaches

— Renee Albert

.

Prairie Dog Spoken Here

When speaking of things
you might desire but hesitate to do,
change all your “but”s to “and”s and
all your “asteroid”s to “VW van”s.

— Wayne Hogan

.

into
my
nightly
coffin
of bone

— George Swede

.

__________________________________________________________________________

.

What If This Poem Didn’t Have a Title?

moonrise 
the wind stops

at the window
the face of
a disappointed man

—not enough
time now—

for all his
belief systems
to catch on

fire

.

(sky)

.

sky
the same color
as runway
why don’t I ever dream
about flying

.

Notes from the Gean 3.4, March 2012

.

(you tell me)

.

you tell me
about the boy
you once were
clouds overhead
in the shape of Batman

.

red lights 8:1, January 2012

.

Across the Haikuverse, No. 28: The On Beyond Zebra Edition

Sometimes 26 letters are not enough. Dr. Seuss fans will know what I’m talking about.

Anyone who writes seriously at all, I’m guessing, is frequently frustrated by the inadequacy of language to express the full range of things there are to express in the world. There aren’t words for everything. There aren’t even combinations of words for everything, although one of the things that great writers (and sometimes even we lesser writers) do is find new combinations of words to express things that haven’t been expressed before, or that have been expressed before but are in need of refreshing.

On my journeys around the Haikuverse that’s chiefly, I believe, what I’m looking for — people saying things in ways that are new, or new to me. I read a lot, I always have, so it’s not that easy for me to find words I haven’t found before. But it happens, still, many times each month. It’s one reason to keep going. There are others, but I keep coming back to words. I think language, for me, might occupy roughly the same space in my brain that religious awe occupies in the minds of many. We are endlessly finding new things to describe and inventing new ways of describing old things, as individuals, as a species; this seems like reason enough to believe in some form of eternity. Thanks to everyone who’s given me some reason to believe this month.

______________________________________________________________________

Haiku

.

just
kidding

you’re
not

alive –

morning rain

.

driller
kun

du
lever

ikke –

morgenregn

— Johannes S.H. Bjerg, 2 tongues/2 tunger

.
Dear Malvina,
It’s been a long time since we It’s already autumn here . . .
lonely evening

— Rafael Zabratynski, DailyHaiku, 12/21/11

.

うごけば、　　寒い　　　　　橋本夢道

ugokeba,        samui

if I move,                  cold

—  Mudo Hashimoto, trans. Fay Aoyagi, Blue Willow Haiku World

.

Slime trail—
glancing back at
the glinting

—Don Wentworth, Tinywords

(Also, you should read this lengthy interview with Don from Christien Gholson’s blog.)

.

crow watching –
the unseen tree branch suddenly
seen

— Angie Werren, feathers

.

dusk at the beach
a stone and I
touch each other

— Dietmar Tauchner, International Second Prize, The 15th Mainichi Haiku Contest

.

冬蜂の死にどころなく歩きけり　　村上鬼城

fuyu-bachi no shini-dokoro naku arukikeri

a winter bee
continues to walk
without a place to die

— Kijo Murakami, trans. Fay Aoyagi, Blue Willow Haiku World

.

dark
the TV ignores
everything

— John Stevenson, ant ant ant ant ant’s blog

.

cave mouth
a scream beyond my range
of hearing

— George Swede, Mann Library Daily Haiku

.

first
snowflakes

like me
made to last

till
they’re

gone

— Johannes S.H. Bjerg, 3ournals and frags

.

Tanka

.

hour upon hour
a veil of simple snow
falling without reason
I feel an urgency
to risk everything I know

— William Sorlien, Haiku Bandit Society

.

trailing my hand
through the water
for a moment
more river
than man

— Paul Smith, Paper Moon

.

Haibun

.

Another grey day has fallen as a pall on the new calendar as if what makes a difference really doesn’t. Only the ticking clock and the distant squawking of a crow or better yet, complaint, as well as the deep sigh of engines passing by tell the trudge goes on. I look on the cypress with a creeping sense of sorrow. The deep cold has darkened its twigs.  Gifts piled beside it now holiday debris. A black garbage bag rests folded in the bin. I gather the cards. The wishes slide off my fingers. A bag of pebbles waits to be planted on the vase. Like wishes that might take root, I would have to water them each day. But for now

blue notes waver under the lamp

— Alegria Imperial, jornales

.

No, It’s Not Japanese Short-Form Poetry, But It’s My Blog And I Can Do Whatever I Want

.

Almost Ready

five forty five a.m.

very cold

I move
close to a heater

night like wind

forming

itself

By god
I hear
a rooster

Crow

I had
only heard
a rooster

Crow

In the movies
before

this

To think
of the beautiful things

Your memory
has led me
into

And this poem

Almost ready!

— Aditya Bahl, dipping butterflies

.

___________________________________________________________________________

Essayed

Gene Myers, the blogger over at The Haiku Foundation, asked a bunch of poets in December what their hopes were for English-language haiku in 2012. One of my favorite answers to this question, part of which I’ve quoted below, came from Scott Metz:

.

“One of my hopes is that the aesthetics and techniques—the poetics—that have become traditional (classical?), and entrenched, in English-language haiku (with all its wonderful and creative misreadings, limitations, misinterpretations and ahistorical stances) continue to flourish and intensify, and deepen. With an emphasis on transparency (and directness) of language, simplicity, plainness, literalism, direct experience, season words, and ‘ordinary reality,’ a remarkable, timeless foundation has been created.

“Another one of my hopes for English-language haiku is that it will continue to diversify and evolve; that poets will continue to play (the hai in haiku) artistically (with language, modi operandi, imagery, structure, culture, media, history, literature), go where they need to go—go where they must go—and continue to question and resist. …

“I look forward to the craft and artistry and invitations in everyone’s poems: all the doors and windows left open and/or cracked, all the lights on in the attics, all the latches and locks left undone. I hope for more of all of it and thank everyone for sharing it.”

— Scott Metz, Hopes for English-Language Haiku in the New Year

__________________________________________________________________________

Linked

Alan Pizzarelli and Donna Beaver, the team behind the haiku-podcast goodness of Haiku Chronicles, have once again teamed up with the astounding Anita Virgil to produce something amazing: a video exploration of the many dimensions of modern English-language haiga, narrated by Anita and set to music. You need to spend half an hour watching this: Haiga Gallery.

__________________________________________________________________________

Journaled

ant ant ant ant ant 12

Contact Chris Gordon at mrcr3w@yahoo.com for a copy of the most recent issue of his intermittently-published and mind-altering journal, featuring the poetry of the great Jack Galmitz. [Apologies to Jack for leaving his credit off the original version of this post. All I can say is, I need new glasses.] I highly recommend the ant ant ant ant ant blog too.

.

.

The Heron’s Nest

just how
to hold you
paper kite

— Dan Schwerin, The Heron’s Nest, Dec. 2011

Amongst the usual THN goodness in the most recent issue was this haiku? senryu? which was discussed at length at the most recent meeting of (one of) the real-life haiku groups I attend, during a session on senryu led by the great Bill Pauly. The author, Dan, a wonderful person and poet, is a member of our group — he drives two hours each way to join us every month, which makes us all feel very lucky. This poem of his is so light and deft and well-constructed that it reminds me of a paper kite; I keep expecting it to lift into the air any minute.

.

bottle rockets #26

pinwheel —
as if a second thought
starts to turn it

— Satoru Kanematsu

.

Booked

One day in December when I was feeling very gloomy Peter Newton’s new book showed up in my mail, with a cover illustrated by Kuniharu Shimizu and an interior designed (oh, and written, of course) by Peter, with the kind of attention to detail that one normally associates with the finer still-lifes of the Flemish Old Masters. Or, you know, something like that. What I’m trying to say, in my usual pretentious way, is that this book is a lot of fun to hold. And page through. And look at. And read. Plus, there aren’t enough orange books in the world.

. 

.

.

_____________________________________________________________________________

.

.

on my ceiling
the untraceable wanderings
of an ant
someone’s words carved deep
on a tree in my mind

.

.

(the stars I see)

.

the stars I see
and the stars
themselves
your voice a few feet away
in the darkness
.

American Tanka 20: A Few Feet Away

.

Multiverses: Ready for Launch

.

Hey everyone,

Every once in a while someone makes you an offer you can’t refuse. This happened to me not long ago when John Hawk, who is a wonderful poet whose poetry I have featured in the Haikuverse, asked me to become the haibun editor of a new journal he was starting, called Multiverses.

I can’t tell you how excited I am to take on this challenge. Haibun have a special place in my heart because I started out as a prose writer and have been wrestling with that craft for so long, and then along came haiku to become my new obsession. Combining the two forms skilfully, imaginatively, and artistically is a goal I have been working toward for quite a while now. (You can read some of my efforts on my “Site Archive” page, in the “Haibun” category.)

I love to read what other people are doing to shape the relatively new form of English-language haibun and I’m looking forward to being part of the process of putting some of that work out there in the world. I’m also looking forward to working with the great crew of editors that John has assembled from around the world (see below). Send us what you’ve got, we can’t wait to read it!

_______________________________________________________________

Here’s John’s announcement:

It is my honor to announce the launch of Multiverses, a new online journal dedicated to publishing modern English haiku and related forms of Japanese poetry, as well as to make an initial call for submissions for our first issue (due out in Spring of 2012). From our editorial statement:

“Each moment of our lives is a haiku waiting to happen. The unique way in which we experience these moments creates an authentic and personal reality known only to ourselves—our own little universe, so to speak. Yet we are all part of the same sum. By sharing our individual experiences and observations, we gain perspective and insight into the world of others, therefore becoming better attuned and more intimate with our own. It is with this idea in mind that Multiverses happened into existence.”

We are so excited and pleased to have an incredible team of editors, including:

Paul Smith, Tanka Editor
Melissa Allen, Haibun Editor
Alexis Rotella, Haiga Editor
Johannes S. H. Bjerg, Features Editor

Please feel free to share this post and spread the word about our launch. For more information about Multiverses, including details on submitting your work (deadline for our inaugural issue is February 15!), please visit www.multiversesjournal.com. We’re all looking forward to reading your work!

John Hawk
Founder, Haiku Editor
Multiverses

Across the Haikuverse, No. 27: Okay, So I Lied Edition

I know, I know. I said I wasn’t going to do this again for a while. But I’m so used to it! I keep reading haiku I love! And then I cut and paste them to a document and then I paste them into WordPress and then I fiddle with the formatting a little and then I press “Publish” and you get to read them. It’s not really that hard. No, really! It’s not! I totally can do it… at least one more time. Right? Please?

…Thanks!

.

_________________________________________________________________________________

.

Haiku

.

brittle moonlight
self-immolations
drawn on a map

— William Sorlien, Haiku Bandit Society

.

hiding their faces well snowflakes
.
de skjuler deres ansigter godt snefuggene

— Johannes S.H. Bjerg, 2 tongues/2 tunger

.

change of seasons
I catch myself talking
to the wind

— Margaret Dornaus, Haiku-doodle

.

a break
in the clouds
how small we are

— Alegria Imperial, jornales

.

in the second-hand book shop, the purr of the three-legged cat

— Mark Holloway, Beachcombing for the Landlocked

.

千の矢の描く千の弧師走空　　青柳　飛

sen no ya no egaku sen no ko shiwazu-zora
.
one thousand trajectories
of one thousand arrows—
December sky

Fay Aoyagi, Blue Willow Haiku World  (her blog’s 1000^th post)

.

目をつむりセーター脱げば剥製です　　　渡部陽子

me o tsumuri seitaa nugeba hakusei desu
.
taking off a sweater
with eyes closed
I am a stuffed specimen

— Yoko Watabe, tr. Fay Aoyagi, Blue Willow Haiku World

.

platelets—
the trip we were planning
to plan

— Roberta Beary, Tinywords

.

itallcomestogether in the darkness for the owl

— Johnny Baranski, Monostich

.

longue recherche
des lunettes pour mieux voir
le brouillard

.

a long search
for glasses, the better to see
the fog

— Vincent Hoarau, La Calebasse (dubious translation by me)

.

Haibun

she envies her her boyfriend that never fools around and her cherry-red convertible that never needs repairs and her outfits (complete with shoes and accessories) that can be had for less than ten dollars and the perpetually-shining plastic sun outside her practically-immaculate plastic house but most of all she envies her her god-damn nearly-perfect never-faltering ability-to-smile . . .

she says
“we can’t help who we love”
to no one
in particular
“all guys are assholes”

— Eric L. Houck Jr., haiku

.

Haiga

Kindly click on the links to see the haiga that are not posted here.

.

mouth of the cave
we enter as eagles
exit as sparrows

— an’ya, DailyHaiga

.

opening emergency door,
head-on spring moon

— Kikko Yokoyama, with haiga by Kuniharu Shimizu, see haiku here

.

— Aubrie Cox, Yay Words! (Click on the image [or the link to Aubrie’s blog] for a larger, more legible version)

.

_________________________________________________________________________________

.

Essayed

Chen-ou Liu posted a great essay recently on his blog Poetry in the Moment (originally published in A Hundred Gourds 1.1) about the phenomenon of “deja-ku”: “Read It Slowly, Repeatedly, and Communally.” Here’s a sample, but please go read the whole thing, it’s fascinating and there are lots of great examples.

.

Today, high poetic value placed upon originality remains ingrained in the Western literary culture. This fear of unknowingly writing similar haiku or the reluctance or disuse of allusion proves that Thomas Mallon’s remark still holds true: the poets live under the “fearful legacy of the Romantics.” Could those poets or editors who are constantly worried about “not being original or fresh” imagine that a poet deliberately using a direct quote as the first two lines of his haiku can achieve a great poem?

— Chen-ou Liu, “Read It Slowly, Repeatedly, and Communally”

.

__________________________________________________________________________________

.

Hey, thanks for indulging me. I feel better now.

.
bitter night
I keep reminding myself
I’m a poet

.

Across the Haikuverse, No. 26: The Z Edition

So: number 26. If I’d been lettering these editions instead of numbering them, I’d be up to Z by now. And Z, as we all know, is the end of the alphabet. This is convenient for me, because circumstances are such in my life right now that I am afraid I must put the Haikuverse on hiatus indefinitely. The blog, too, will probably be seeing far less frequent postings for a while.

I will miss you guys. Spinning around the Haikuverse, taking in the sights, shooting the breeze… it’s been fun. I’m not planning on disappearing completely, but I have things to tend to in other corners of the universe at the moment.

Stay in touch.

.

underneath
the ice
of the poem
an imaginary frog
slows its heartbeat

.

.

__________________________________________________________________________

haiku

.

the closest
I’ll ever be
to sentimental
a room full of hats

— William Sorlien, Haiku Bandit Society

.

spring cleaning . . .
the rhythmic sound of her
sharpening pencils

—Kirsten Cliff, DailyHaiku

.

lark’s song –
in an old landscape
I part my hair to the left

.
lærkesang –
i et gammelt landskab
laver jeg skilning i venstre side

— Johannes S.H. Bjerg, 2 tongues/2 tunger

.

Turning on the light I become someone alone in the house

— Sam Savage, ant ant ant ant ant’s blog

.

autumn leaf already i am attached

:

without permission part of me starts to bloom

:

winter day barely one language

:

winter night she knowingly reveals another arm

:

another day of snow my jurassic layer

:

the only sound that’s come out of me all day firefly

:

at this point i just assumed they come alive at night

— Scott Metz, ant ant ant ant ant’s blog

.

he thinks again of turning leaves her hands

— Angie Werren, Tinywords

.

autumn days     straying from the text to marginalia

— Mark Holloway, Beachcombing for the Landlocked

.

人ひとに溺れることも水澄めり　　　　保坂リエ

hito hito ni oboreru kotomo mizu sumeri

.

a human wallows in
another human…
clear autumn water

— Rie Hosaka, translated by Fay Aoyagi, Blue Willow Haiku World

.

swollen rosehips
if you found God
in your body you’d die

— Anonymous (“Jack Dander”), Masks 2

.

on 60 televisions the scissors hesitate

— Anonymous (“Bridghost”), Masks 2

.

haiga and other art

.

dog star
the origin
of poetry

— Aubrie Cox, Yay Words!

.

.

two red butterflies
play strange attractor
in the garden

— Kris Lindbeck, haiku etc.

.

— Rick Daddario, 19 Planets

.

tanka

.

if we had known
this would be
our last winter
when we professed
our love for the bomb

snow swirls
into light at the end
of the tunnel
echoes of the conductor’s
last call

postscript
for the apocalypse
countless years
from now — a cherry tree’s
first blossoms

— Aubrie Cox, Yay Words!

.

hand in hand
a teenaged boy and girl pass
a cigarette
back and forth on their way
to being twenty

— David Caruso, DavidHaiku

.

.

haibun

Revisit

I thought I had been sucked into the past. That sort of thing happens from time to time. I sat on the train on the way to the big city – well, as big as they come in Denmark – when a hippie-looking guy boarded with his monstrous Big Dane dog. My thoughts went in two directions. I thought: now, there’s a weirdo, knowing very well that in this part of the country many “off-siders” have found a cheap place to live as it’s rather poor. And I thought: great!!! Nice to see a flash of the past, and my nose replayed all kinds of smells associated with the early -70’s. Patchouli, sandalwood, fenugreek, hashish and wet and dirty “Afghan” fur coats, which was a bit of a turn-off, that last part. After having put his corn-pipe away he sat himself down in a very upright position: straight back, both feet on the floor and looking us, the other travellers, straight in the eyes. I nodded. He nodded. Dog said nowt. Then he padded the seat at his left side (he’d taken the window seat) and the dog, big as half a horse, jumped up and sat perfectly cool beside him, straight as a statue. The dog had a colourful tie as leash. We bumped on while I was listening to Incredible String Band.

straightened stream
a mirrored swan
asks twice

— Johannes S.H. Bjerg, 3ournals and frags

.

.

___________________________________________________________________________

Dead Tree News

.

Some gems from the most recent edition of the always stunning Acorn (No. 27):

.

enough said…
the moon rises
out of the sea

— Francine Banwarth

.

isolated showers —
the genes that matter
the genes that don’t

— Michele L. Harvey

.

never touching
his own face
tyrannosaurus

— John Stevenson

.

all night love
the candle
reshapes itself

— Jayne Miller

.

dad’s shed
a ladder folded
in the shadows

— frances angela

.

full moon
from each shell
a different ocean

— Mary Ahearn

.

autumn quarry
the feel of a dozer
going deep

— Ron Moss

.

starfish…
to feel so much
of what we touch

— Peter Newton

.

spring melancholy
I cut my tofu
smaller and smaller

— Fay Aoyagi

.

_______________________________________________________________________

.

Hey, seriously, I meant that about staying in touch. Drop me a line. Send me a poem. Tell me how your day went and where your life is going. I’m interested.

.

away from the window
hearing the rain
trickle down the window

.

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:

http://www.petapixel.com/2011/08/11/spontaneous-and-creative-short-film-of-a-dying-dragonfly-shot-with-a-canon-7d/

• 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.

Female vocalists

Male vocalists

Instrumental

With upbeat dance backing track added

.

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

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

Across the Haikuverse, No. 22: Not Dead Yet Edition

I’ve been sick with a few different things over the last few weeks. Spent a lot of time lollygagging around in bed. Seem to be getting better now. Still don’t feel much like writing.

Somebody want to comment and let me know what you’re writing these days? It might make me feel better to know that someone in the world is not experiencing a creative slump.

Of course, there are all those people I quote down below. They seem to be doing just fine. Terrific, in fact. There are some spectacular images here. Some precise and lovely language. Some mind-altering revelations.

All of these poems are ones that made me step back when I saw them and go, “Whoa.” And then just breathe for a while, and read the poem again a few times, and feel really thankful I’d seen it.

In case you were wondering what my criteria were for choosing poems for this feature…that’s pretty much it. If a poem seems to me to be saying something that no one else in the world ever had or could say better…it’s going in.

It’s interesting to me, now that I’ve been reading haiku for a while, and have become familiar with the work of so many poets, how even in a form as short and relatively prescribed in form and content as the haiku (or tanka), there is such a wild and woolly assortment of styles possible and extant.

Reading the poems of people whose work you know and love is a little bit like looking at the faces of people you know and love: so familiar, and utterly unique, and the uniqueness makes you love them even more. You smile when you see them and say, “Oh, yes, that couldn’t possibly be anyone but [for instance] John Martone.”

Yes, I’m feeling much better now. Thanks.

______________________________________________________________

Poetry To Which Attention Must Be Paid

.

.

yes, this one,
gently close the humidor
– the smell of cedar
both dogs whining in the hall
eager to join me outside

—Steve Mitchell, Heed Not Steve

.

.

sun between clouds
the flies on a dead bird
flash blue

— Mark Holloway, Beachcombing for the Landlocked

.

.

grandma’s well
the water tasted like iron
and cold—
that darkness
from which I’m made

— Charles Easter, Tinywords

.

.

物容るゝ壜も物言ふ壜も夏　　　中村安伸
mono iruru bin mo mono iu bin mo natsu

.
a jar to keep things
and a jar which speaks
summer

— Yasunobu Nakamura, translated by Fay Aoyagi, Blue Willow Haiku World

.

.

wishing on the first star for the last time … mockingbird’s song

— Terri L. French, The Mulling Muse (Please go check out Terri’s wonderful haiga associated with this poem)

.

.

white sky –
the absent wind
with a girl’s name

.

hvid himmel –
den fraværende vind
med et pigenavn

— Johannes S.H. Bjerg, 2 tongues/2 tunger

.

.

feeling it
not feeling it
the grasshopper
between my hands

— Sandra Simpson, DailyHaiku

.

.

wind
thru

pines
thru

sleep 

— John Martone, originally published in Lilliput Review and quoted on Don Wentworth’s Issa’s Untidy Hut

.

.

everything I see
I am…
autumn moon

— Paul Smith, winner of the 2011 Haiku Pen Contest sponsored by Lyrical Passion E-Zine

.

____________________________________________________________________

Delicious Bloggy Goodness

Since I am giving this talk next week about blogging I’ve been thinking a lot about what makes a good blog and which blogs I am devoutly grateful for (there are a lot of them). I mentioned a few in the last Haikuverse and here are a few more.

1. Kuniharu Shimizu, whose haiga on see haiku here are a marvel of nature most of the time anyway, has been posting some mind-blowing “linked haiga” lately. They’re like haiku sequences, except…they’re haiga sequences, and they are linked not only thematically but graphically. I’m just gonna stop trying to describe them now and order you to go look at them. My favorites are:

Haiku by A.C. Missias, Joann Klontz, and paul m.

Haiku by Cor van den Heuvel and Taneda Santoka

Haiku by Michael McClintock and Taneda Santoka

2. The fascinating people over at Icebox recently took a poll about which characteristics participants considered essential to haiku. Of a long list of possibilities, you were allowed to choose three. Now they have revealed and analyzed the results of some 104 responses, and it’s a fascinating read, especially if like me you find numbers a welcome break at times from all those words we’re always bandying about.

Full disclosure: I participated in this poll, and I am (I guess?) relieved to find out that my top three choices are identical to the top three vote-getters in the poll. Either I have a vague idea what I’m doing, or I just like to be exactly like everyone else. I haven’t decided yet.

3. Over at Morden Haiku, Matt Morden’s long haibun about his cycling tour of Scotland with his 18-year-old daughter (it was a school-leaving present) had me captivated every step of the way, which surprised me because I normally have very little interest in travelogue haibun. But Matt is so good at painting images in both prose and poetry. And he managed to capture the nature of the bond between him and his daughter without any overt description of it or any sentimentality.

at the end of a day
when I could not ask for more
wild orchids

— Matt Morden, Morden Haiku

4. At La Calebasse, Vincent Hoarau has written a moving and perceptive essay about the work of Svetlana Marisova, an excellent haiku poet from New Zealand. Unfortunately for many of you, it’s in French; fortunately for those same people, he quotes Svetlana’s haiku in English (as well as in his own French translation), so at least you can read those, and Svetlana’s haiku are must-reads.

I can’t really translate French so I wouldn’t inflict my garbled version of Vincent’s essay on you, but I will briefly quote one of his descriptions of Svetlana’s characteristic style, which “depends on the juxtaposition of images, on allusion, suggestion, and concision.” This might be a description of all or most good haiku, but it is true that there is more of a sense of mystery and a deeper resonance to Svetlana’s haiku than to most.

This makes it all the more painful to have to report that Svetlana has an aggressive form of brain cancer, for which she is currently being treated in Russia. I think it’s safe to say that everyone who knows Svetlana and her work is keeping her in their thoughts these days.

wintry sky …
these dark tumours
draining light

.
ciel hivernal … / ces tumeurs noires / drainant la lumière

— Svetlana Marisova, French translation by Vincent Hoarau

________________________________________________________________

Essaying: Words, Words, Words

The last few weeks I kept stumbling across, or getting pointed toward, thought-provoking essays about haiku, many of which I kept constantly open as tabs in my browser so I could reread them or bits of them at stray moments when, say, Facebook was failing to completely capture my attention. After a while (sometimes I’m slow) I started to notice a common theme between several of these essays: Words.

No, I don’t mean that they all contain words. I mean that they all deal in one way or another with the inadequacy of mere words to convey the meaning of haiku, with the fact that in haiku it is just as often what is not said that is important. That space, wordlessness, ma … there are so many ways people have tried to explain this notion of the open-endedness of haiku, the sense of possibility it offers the reader. But these three essays have a lot to contribute to this conversation.

Ian Marshall and Megan Simpson, in an often dense discussion of the literary theory of deconstructionism as it pertains (or doesn’t pertain) to haiku, spend a lot of time trying to decide whether the words in haiku can be trusted: whether they are revealing some kind of absolute truth or faithful depiction of the world, or whether they are saying more about the mind of their author than about any objective reality.

“What I’m getting at, what I’ve been getting at, is that the supposed ideal of ‘wordlessness’ of haiku, meaning that its language can represent the natural world in such a way that it becomes fully present in language, in seventeen syllables or less, is a fiction. But the best haiku are aware of the fiction and of the difficulty or impossibility of using words to achieve no-mind, or selflessness, or wordlessness. Bringing deconstruction to bear on haiku reveals that even haiku to some extent concern themselves with the problematics of representation, and recognizing this enriches our readings of haiku.”

— Ian Marshall and Megan Simpson, “Deconstructing Haiku: A Dialogue“

Randy Brooks, in a long and rich interview with Robert Wilson in the most recent issue of the journal Simply Haiku, elaborates on his vision of haiku poetics, which considers the reader to be “co-creator” with the writer of the meaning of the haiku.

“Haiku is not a closed form of verse with three lines of five-seven-five syllables, self-contained and finished by the author. Haiku is an open form of poetry in which the silences before, within and after the haiku resonate with surplus meaning. Basho called this surplus of meaning ‘yojô.’ These unfinished silences are deliberately left open to the reader, so that the reader can enter into the imagined space of the haiku as a co-creator with the author to discover the feelings, thoughts, insights, and overall significance of the haiku. This surplus meaning is shared by the writer and reader, with a playful variety of unpredictable responses. In my opinion, this is the primary joy of haiku—the writer has crafted a haiku as a creative response to nature, reality, dreams, art, imagination, or to other haiku, and the reader gets to enter into that playful haiku with his or her own creative response and imagination.”

— Randy Brooks, interviewed by Robert Wilson in Simply Haiku

And Fay Aoyagi, in a fascinating essay about the history of the moon in haiku, talks about the necessity for subtlety and ambiguity in haiku, the need to leave things out. (The first paragraph of her essay is not specifically about this idea, but it was too wonderful not to quote here.)

“If somebody asked me to choose between the sun and the moon as a place to live, I would choose the moon. In my mind, there are highways with 10 lanes on the sun, but the moon has alleys and narrow streets I can explore on foot. For me, the sun is a destination, but the moon is a gateway and a peep-hole to an unknown world. …
“One of my Japanese friends told me that she did not understand how people write haiku in English. According to her, Japanese culture, including haiku, is very subtle. She said Japanese is a more ambiguous language than English; it is a more suitable language to express feelings. Writing in Japanese, a poet can avoid too much explicitness. I am not sure I totally agree. I think English haiku can be very suggestive, as well. … Haiku is a poetry form which requires reading between the lines. I strongly believe that we can achieve subtlety in English.”

— Fay Aoyagi, “Moon in the Haiku Tradition“

___________________________________________________________

Well. I think in this edition I’ve had more of a sense than most of actually going somewhere, of making some kind of journey.

I can’t help thinking back to when I first started this blog, with a light-hearted, innocent notion that I would be spending a few minutes every day composing these charming little poems. And then…the deluge.

After just a few days of surfing erratically around the Interwebs, I began to realize that the well I had fallen into was deeper and had far more at the bottom of it than I had dreamed.

I was stunned by the richness of so much of the haiku I had found, by how different it was than the haiku I had previously seen or imagined.

I was amazed by the amount and variety of writing about haiku that I discovered, and by the amount of disagreement that existed about what exactly haiku was anyway, and by the quality and profundity of thought that so many poets and scholars poured into these tiny poems.

I had a sense of having found another country. And I knew almost immediately that it was one I wanted to emigrate to permanently, and spend a lifetime exploring.

Well, why not? The scenery is astounding, the population is warm and welcoming, the cultural traditions … well, I need say no more. But sometimes I just kind of look around and think, Wow. I am so lucky to be here.

Thank you for being here too.

(ninth snow)

Notes from the Gean 3:1, June 2011

 

If you follow the link above to the page where this haiga appears in Notes from the Gean, it will say that the tanka is by me and the photo is by Aubrie Cox, but this is not really accurate. The credits at the bottom right of the tanka here are accurate and much more interesting.

Back in January after I’d been obsessively writing haiku about snow for a month or two and had lost all perspective on whether any of it was any good, I sent a bunch of snow haiku to Aubrie for her editing expertise (which is considerable). She gave me some good feedback on a lot of the haiku, several of which have been published now. Then she commented that the haiku that began “ninth snow” might work as a tanka…and added the two lines above to it. And then she went and took a great picture and made a haiga out of it.

Yeah. I know. It’s a lot better now.

And it’s getting to be really hot around here now…so it’s nice to have snow poetry back around to cool me off.

Across the Haikuverse, No. 21: Mad Libs Edition

Dear _______,

In this edition of the ________ you will find many ________ and __________. My favorite is probably the ________ by __________. I hope you ________ this post. It took me a long time to ______ it and now I’m really ______.

This week I have been ______ing and _______ing. _________ are blooming in my yard. I saw ________ the other day for the first time in a while and got very _______. I spent about _______ hours watching them hoping I would be able to write a good _______ about them, but no luck so far.

Hope you’re having a good _______. I’ve been kind of ________ myself.

Always nice to ________ with you,

Melissa

_________________________________________________________

Haiku (Etc.) For You

It’s fascinating to me how in every edition of the Haikuverse the haiku seem to clump themselves into themes, with very few haiku left off by themselves. I don’t know if this is because haiku do tend to be written about a fairly narrow set of subjects, or because human beings are really good at seeing patterns where there aren’t necessarily any, or both, or what. But this time I’m starting off with four haiku about various insects and ending with three haiku about debris, gravel, and pebbles. With rain and toys and lilacs holding down the fort in the middle, staunchly independent.

.

larva and silkworm-
once upon a time
there was a girl

— Stella Pierides, Stella Pierides

.

身のなかのまつ暗がりの蛍狩り　　　河原枇杷男
mi no naka no makkuragari no hotaru-gari

.
pitch darkness
inside of me
my firefly hunt

— Biwao Kawahara, translated by Fay Aoyagi, Blue Willow Haiku World
.

.

what does the wasp
know about the blossoms —
windfall apples

— Polona Oblak, Crows & Daisies

.

monkey cage
a butterfly drifts
in and out

— Laura Garrison, DailyHaiku

(Actually, I had a hard time picking just one from Laura’s seven haiku on DailyHaiku last week. It was an outstanding selection of original, thought-provoking haiku. If you don’t believe me, you can look for yourself.)

.

toys my father
couldn’t fix . . .
summer rain

— Aubrie Cox, Yay words!

.

scent of lilac –
one final breath
after another

— Paul Smith, Paper Moon

(Last week Paul celebrated acquiring the 100th follower on his blog. Really, he should have a lot more. Paper Moon is a must-read. Did you hear me? Must. Read. Go. Now.)

.

Summer clouds,
how fast they build up
over fields of debris

— Kuniharu Shimizu, see haiku here

.

yard gravel –
I build a demanding religion
from popsicle sticks

.

havegrus –
jeg bygger en krævende religion
af ispinde

— Johannes S.H. Bjerg, 2 tongues . 2 tunger

.

beneath me
pebbles congregate
expectantly

— Philip Damian-Grint, a handful of stones

.__________________________________________________________

Cool Things You Can Do With Blogs: A List

.

1. You can write haiku and post it. Then you can add two lines to the haiku and turn it into a tanka and post that too. That’s what Angie Werren is doing this month on feathers. (And I thought she couldn’t top last month.) More people should do this. It makes me happy.

summer pond
her body slipping
through the fog
I bookmark pages
with birthday photos

—Angie Werren, feathers

.

2. You can take other people’s fantastic haiku and turn them into digital works of art and post them on your blog. Then you can ALSO post a link to a great essay about haiku that is connected in some way to the haiku you posted, as well as an excerpt from the essay that will tempt your readers to go read it right now. You can do this every day for a month and call this brilliant feature “Spliced In.” If you do this, you will be Gillena Cox and your blog will be Lunch Break and it will be July 2011. And you will be one of my favorite people.

.

inte ett ljud hörs —
den nytjärade ekan
slukas av natten

.

Without a sound
the fresh-tarred rowing-boat
slips into the dark

— Johan Bergstad, Sweden

(To get the full effect you must go see what Gillena has done with this.)

.

3. You can write a series of brief, thoughtful, perceptive commentaries about individual haiku in simple, clear prose. This will make everyone happy, because there are not enough of these. From what I’ve seen so far, Jim (Sully) Sullivan’s new blog, haiku and commentary and tales, will be an excellent and much-needed addition to the Haikuverse. I’ve included a brief excerpt from one of his most interesting commentaries below.

soldier unfolding the scent of a letter

— Chad Lee Robinson

“A quick read and you think a soldier is unfolding a scented letter from a girl friend. … But on another level the haiku could be read as two distinct images.

soldier unfolding
the scent of a letter

… The beauty of this haiku is in the many interpretations.   And the one line format (monostich) enhances this ambiguity; it leaves no clues to image breaks.”

— Jim Sullivan, “Soldier unfolding“

_____________________________________________________________________

Cool Things You Can Do With Websites: Another List

1. You can be Haiku Chronicles. I have written about them before but I should keep reminding you that there is a website devoted to podcasts about haiku. And if you have not listened to any of them, say while you’re chopping leeks a la Basho or staring at cobwebs deciding not to dust them a la Issa, then why are you wasting your time reading this when you could be doing that? Go. The latest installment is Anita Virgil (on whose haiku I have a massive crush) reading the fourth in her series of essays on the four great masters of haiku: Basho, Buson, Issa, and now … ladies and gentlemen … for your edification and entertainment … Shiki.
.

2. You can be Bob Lucky. Okay, okay, most of us can’t be Bob Lucky, but at least we can go read Bob Lucky and the 25 tanka prose by other people that Bob Lucky (who is one of the most talented and, um, fun writers of haiku and tanka and haibun and tanka prose out there) lovingly selected for a special feature over at the website of the tanka journal Atlas Poetica. Not only are the tanka prose themselves more than worth reading, but Bob’s introductory essay on the selection and editing process is one of the most frank, funny things I’ve ever read on the subject.

“I never wanted to be an editor. I wanted to be a lumberjack. Not really, but there were days when working on this project I would wander from room to room, occasionally picking up a ukulele and singing momma, don’t let your babies grow up to be editors, while my mind wrestled with choices I had to make.”

— Bob Lucky, “TP or not TP, That is the Question“

.

___________________________________________________________________

Dead Tree News: Dead Tree Journals

What showed up in my mailbox the last couple of weeks and made me very happy. I may be a bit telegraphic here because it’s late and words are starting to fail me (or I’m starting to fail them). Just imagine I had something more profound and appreciative to say about both these publications, because I do, it’s just kind of trapped in a yawn at the moment.

Presence

Out of the U.K., glossy cover, haiku arranged thoughtfully by season (including a non-seasonal section). There are tanka and haibun too. And reviews. It’s good, you should get it.

.

all the bones
scattered in the cave
imagining God

— Bob Lucky
[See? I told you.]

hand-thrown
another bowl for fruit
I’ll never taste

— Thomas Powell

last night of September
a tear darkens
the facial mud pack

— Maeve O’Sullivan

winter closing in…
I visit the simplest words
in the dictionary

— Philip Rowland

holiday snapshots —
all the years
I was invisible

— Johannes Bjerg

.

red lights

A tanka journal, tall and thin and, naturally, red. Nice paper, nice print, pleasant to hold and look at and, oh, yes, read.

.

summertime
a boy leans over
a riverbank
with a foot raised
over the world

— David Caruso

some nights
someone screamed
for us all
in the dark
down the hall

— Susan Marie LaVallee

a stranger
to the sound of my voice
on a recording;
are there other parts of me
that people know and I don’t?

— Adelaide Shaw

________________________________________________________________

Okay, back to ________. I still have to ________ that _________ about the ________, prepare my ________ for _________, and ________. Hope you have a great ________!

(snowmelt)

snowmelt
and the black earth beneath:
I abandon
the idea of dying
on purpose
.

Notes from the Gean 3:1, June 2011

 

Across the Haikuverse, No. 20: Summer Solstice Edition

.

.

The first day of summer, and already I’m wondering where the summer went. It was a day that skittered between sunshine and rain, not fulfilling any promises. In the evening the sky turned green for a while and we kept an ear out for the tornado siren. Some lazy thunder rumbled by. I remembered later that I’d forgotten to eat for most of the day. It hadn’t seemed necessary, the way it never seems necessary in dreams. Around bedtime I finally got around to asking my husband where the rosebush that had suddenly appeared on our doorstep a couple days earlier had come from.

.

that shade of pink
I wonder if I’m
blushing too

.

____________________________________________________________

Haikai That Caught My Eye

Wow, people were writing haiku on a wide variety of subjects the last couple of weeks. Underwear and the universe and tomatoes and dinosaurs…maybe I am dreaming after all.

.

.

I am alone
for week-long Spring rains
singing loudly to
the computer screen just how much
you are my sunshine

— Donna Fleischer, word pond

.

.

housework
an old song in my head
over and over

— Catherine J.S. Lee, Mann Library Daily Haiku

.

.

森のごときをんなが眠る夏電車　　平井照敏
mori no gotoki on’na ga nemuru natsu-densha

.

a woman looking like
a forest sleeps
summer train

— Shobin Hirai, translated by Fay Aoyagi, Blue Willow Haiku World
.

.

universe
a collection of numbers
that rhyme

— Rick Daddario, 19 Planets (this is a great haiga, go take a look)

.

.

the waning moon-

  a hole

in my underwear

— Aditya Bahl, dipping butterflies
.

.

tomato—
sometimes even stars are not
enough

— Stella Pierides, Stella Pierides
.

.

temporary relief –
while the pears ripen
I’m stuck on Earth

midlertidig lettelse .
mens pærerne modnes
sidder jeg fast på Jorden

— Johannes S.H. Bjerg, 2 tongues/2 tunger
.

.

January thaw—
the garden exposed
to my dreaming

— Adelaide B. Shaw, DailyHaiku

.

.

what they tell us
about the war
ornamental poppies

— Mark Holloway, Beachcombing for the Landlocked

.

.

step back into the fragrance our histories mingling

— Susan Diridoni, Issa’s Untidy Hut, Wednesday Haiku
.

.

not awake enough
to turn the swifts’ chitterings
into a haiku

— Patti Niehoff, a night kitchen

.

.

incessant rain
falling on ferns and dinosaurs and
on my eyelids

— Taro Kunugi, quoted on Donna Fleischer’s word pond

.

.

cicada song
the cat stalks
fat robins

— Angie Werren, feathers

The epigram to this haiku: ““There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” (Shakespeare, Hamlet)

This is part of Angie’s unbelievably cool project this month to combine NaHaiWriMo prompts with random Shakespeare quotations…what? How does she think of these things?  Who cares — just go check it out, it will blow your mind.

.

________________________________________________________________

.

Journaled

.

A bunch of journals came out this week that I hadn’t seen before and was mightily impressed with, like for instance…

Lishanu: an interlingual haiku journal

Online journal, full of, oh joy, oh bliss, haiku in multiple languages, all translated into English. Or vice versa. You know what I mean.

.

ripe moon –
my pale hands
in the berry bushes

зрела месечина –
моите бледи дланки
во малините

— Elena Naskova, English/Macedonian

.

lumière d’aube –
rien d’autre
dans la toile d’araignée

.

dawn light –
nothing else
in the spider’s web

— Damien Gabriels, French/English

.

American Tanka

Another online journal. Very minimalist, but very high quality. Twenty tanka, one to a page, click on through and enjoy yourself.

.

years of buttons
in a glass Ball jar
the blue one on the top
so far from the blue one
on the bottom

—  Constance Brewer

.

.

Eucalypt

This also counts as Dead Tree News, because it’s a print journal only. And a really nicely done one — glossy covers and paper, and lovely ink illustrations. More journals should have illustrations. In my humble opinion. Someone get on that.

(Oh, it’s all tanka, did I mention? And Australian. But you probably could have guessed that from the name.)

.

when what might happen
happens
the earth is turned
as if the planting
might begin again

— Kath Abela Wilson

__________________________________________________________

.

The shortest night of the year has started. I’m tempted to see it through. Skip the dreams for once. Try making my own.

.

what dreams may come…
black ink dripping
from rain-soaked leaves

.

.

.

 

.

(songbirds)

.

.

.

.

.

songbirds
calling again for mates
all the years
I thought
I had forever

.

.

.

red lights, June 2011

.

.

.

Across the Haikuverse, No. 19: Summer 2011 College Tour Edition

.

Hi all,

Forgive me if this edition is a little light. I’m running around getting ready to drag my son on a week-long two-thousand-mile college tour, because apparently while I wasn’t looking he outgrew his footie pajamas and learned to drive and do calculus and now he’s ready to light out for the territories. But I didn’t want to leave you hanging without any news from the Haikuverse until I get back.

While I’m out and about I’m planning to briefly abandon my family and drop in on the annual Haiku Circle gathering in Northfield, Massachusetts. I’m really excited about this because I’ll get to meet a whole new set of haiku poets than the wonderful Midwestern set I already know. I love being able to put faces and voices and personalities to the names of the poets I read, and I love that the haiku community is so small that it is actually possible to meet and hang out with most of the poets whose poetry makes your heart skip several beats when you read it. Maybe I’ll drop you a line from the action on Saturday.

Okay, let’s get on with it. I still have maps to print out and stuff…although not sure why I bother, I’m gonna get lost anyway.

_______________________________________________________________________

Haikai of Note

What’s everyone been writing lately? Anything good? Is the coming of warmer weather inspiring to you or does it just make you want to go to the beach and read stupid novels and forget about subtle Japanese poetry for a while? Personally, I think I tend to write more in the winter, when it’s dark and cold and there’s nothing else to do. All this bright light is distracting.

There’s still plenty of good poetry appearing every day on the Interwebs, though, so apparently everyone isn’t affected in the same way I am. Here are some of my favorites that have showed up since the last edition.

.

.

Milky Way . . .
the way the cow path
rings a hill

— Michele Harvey, DailyHaiku

.

.

mare’s tail
yeah, sometimes
i still think of you

— Mark Holloway, Beachcombing for the Landlocked

.

.

.

水飲んで天上くらき夏あした　　酒井弘司
mizu nonde tenjyõ kuraki natsu ashita
.
drinking water
a dark ceiling
of a summer morning

—  Hiroshi Sakai, translated by Fay Aoyagi, Blue Willow Haiku World

.

.

.

shooting star –
between dreams
reality

— Stella Pierides, Stella Pierides

.

.

.

white and purple –
the scent of lilacs
is a ladder too

— Johannes S.H. Bjerg, scented dust

.

.

.

pear blossoms . . .
which one of these houses
was yours?

— Laura Garrison, DailyHaiku

.

.

.

interlocking tiles
two mockingbirds
share a worm

— Gillena Cox, Lunch Break (This is a wonderful haiga, check it out.)

.

.

.

strip-lit
in the headache
of a high-rise
I poke a gummed nib
into Keats’s Nightingale

— Liam Wilkinson, nearaway

.

.

___________________________________________________________
.

Journaled

Haibun Today just released a really great issue for June, and I swear I am not saying that just because I am in it. Some of my favorite from this issue: Colin Stewart Jones, “Should Rules Be Broken“; Steven Carter, “Montana“; Glenn G. Coats, “Expectations“; Katherine Cudney, “This World of Dew“; Bob Lucky, “Butter-Less in Ethiopia.”

 

Mu

There are so many haiku journals now that even people like me who actively seek them out and spend way too much time looking at haiku on the web anyway keep stumbling over journals that have existed, in some cases, for years, but that they (meaning me) never even heard of before. The terrifying thing is that most of these seemingly invisible journals are full of really good haiku, which makes you wonder if there is an alternate dimension that opens up periodically and releases clouds of haiku … or maybe there are just a lot of really good haiku poets in the world.

Anyway, my latest stunned discovery is the online journal Mu, which has its very first issue out, filled with great poetry like this:

 

fence line —
the flowers belong
to themselves

— Jennifer Gomoli Popolis

_______________________________________________________

Web Wide World

Um, so I only have one article to share with you this week, but I think it should count for, like, ten. It’s a more-or-less mind-blowing article by Charlie Trumbull (current editor of Modern Haiku), published in Simply Haiku in 2004, called “An Analysis of Haiku in 12-Dimensional Space.” If the title makes your head hurt you should probably skip the article, but if you think it sounds like the coolest thing ever you should probably read it, because it more or less is. Set aside a little time though. And a little space in your brain. You’ll need it.

Basically, it’s what amounts to a mathematical or scientific analysis of the vast array of definitions of haiku that have been given by various commentators, owing a heavy debt to the work of research-biologist-cum-haiku-poet A.C. Missias, and incorporating several diagrams labeled “Highly Technical Figures.” But don’t let that scare you away. It’s also moving and thoughtful and funny, and I promise you don’t need any advanced scientific degrees to enjoy it, especially if you skip to the end where Charlie describes the relevant “12 dimensions” of haiku. What is your “Haiku ID”? Read and find out.

_____________________________________________________________

Dead Tree News

Just a little word from R.H. Blyth again this week. (I am gonna get through all four volumes of Haiku this summer if it kills me.)

One thing I desperately love about Blyth is that, unlike most commentators on haiku, he is utterly unafraid to compare and contrast haiku with Western poetry or even Western prose. People generally tend to emphasize how different haiku is from most Western writing, and of course in many ways it is quite different, but after all, Basho and Wordsworth (to name two of Blyth’s favorite writers) are members of the same species — it’s not like they have nothing in common. I think it can be too easy to get caught up in the myth that the Mystic East is a whole different world that runs according to alternate laws of nature or something. Blyth (although, yes, he does romanticize haiku in some ways) doesn’t fall prey to this particular myth.

I love this commentary of Blyth’s on a haiku of Issa’s, for instance, which has us all looking at the same sky:

assari to haru wa ki ni keri asagi-zora

Spring has come
In all simplicity:
A light yellow sky.

— Issa, translated by R.H. Blyth

.

“We are constantly astounded at the simplicity and complexity of Nature. An infinite number of phenomena, and we call it by a single word, spring. Spring, in all its variety, is contained in a single phenomenon, the thinness of the colour of the yellow sky. This colour is commonly found in the evening sky; it is to be seen in a well-known colour-print by Hiroshige, small billowing clouds on the horizon. This ‘yellow’ is probably the ‘green’ of Coleridge’s verse:

The green light that lingers in the west.”

— R.H. Blyth, Haiku, vol. 2, p. 38

___________________________________________________________________________

.

Okay. The oil’s been changed in the car, we’ve got someone to feed the cats…what am I forgetting? Oh yeah! (Waves frantically) Bye everyone, see you next week!