birthday haiku

on my birthday
rain and more rain--
your voice over the wires

Dandelion in Winter

Christmas dandelion
poking through leaves--
no snowman this year!



This Taos photo shows my favorite kind of Christmas lights, luminarios in New Mexico, candles set in decorative paper bags. New Mexicans place these on driveways, on rooftops, and on the adobe walls surrounding their houses. It's incredibly peaceful to see their gentle glow against the dark desert December night.

Cloud Shrouded

blue clouds hide sun--
writing Christmas cards
your crossed-out name

Here is a quote I came across in an interview with Rita Gray, a NY City haikuist and play therapist. Ce Rosenow interviewed her in the October 2011 edition of "Ripples: Haiku Society of America Newsletter." Here's what Rita said about the appeal of haiku, "I am drawn to haiku because it is the poetry of the senses, rooted in nature and the seasons. In these aspects it is very concrete, and common to all people. I also like that the form is so compact, which gives nuance to every word. Haiku are also spacious. They provide the writer, and the reader, with room for big human experiences..."

Today started out grey and dark, but by mid-afternoon when I was half buried in old envelopes and three different address books--one tiny, one old, one never updated--the sun had come out but was playing hide and seek with a covey of startling dark blue clouds. There was that one moment when turning a page, I spotted in my neat handwriting (for once) my college roommate's address. Two weeks ago I heard that she had died. I sent a card to her husband; it was the hardest one I wrote, knowing the great sadness he must be feeling.

To Haymarket, to Haymarket on a New Winter's Day

at solstice
hay truck rumbles past
scent of summer


I love grand seasonal events such as the solstice. And yes, especially, the winter solstice, though our winters are growing noticeably shorter. And I really fear what that means.

But though I love winter, I hate the early darkness. So when solstice arrives, it reminds me that the days will very soon be growing longer even if for a week or so they hover around the same length.

Astronomical events --solstices, equinoxes--connect us to people through all the millenias, people much like ourselves hurrying to complete their daytime activities before darkness strikes.

And though I saw this hay truck yesterday rather than today, I liked how it fit into the solstice theme even though hay in December seems thoroughly out of season. As I drove down Morningside to turn onto Third a big old truck rattled past filled with hay. And though the day was grey and rainy, those yellow piles of hay radiated a blond cheerful light, and reminded me of summer and summer's earthy smells.

Squirrel Tauntings

squirrel perched
high on a waving tree limb
mocking terrestrial me


True story: I came outside one day this past week. It was grey and blustery with high winds. Hearing a strange jeering, I looked up and noticed a squirrel high on an attenuated limb near the top of our sixty-year old maple. He was riding the limb back and forth and seemed to be taunting me stuck so low to the ground.

It reminded me of the John Muir story about what he did in Yosemite during summer storms. He loved to climb the highest tree around (on a mountainside no less!) and ride that pine as if it were a wild bronco. I love what that story says about his love for nature and his love for risk.

Too often these days of Weather Channel and constant media warnings about bad weather we're encouraged to stay hunkered inside, to treat the weather as other, as frightening, as deadly. Not that it can't be any of those things, but it can also be energizing, recharging, and a wonderful world to explore apart from the ordinary.

I love days like that when the wind pummels in from the west and nearly lifts you up, hurrying you on your way. And I love days like today: calm, brisk, sunny, and filled with the light of the winter world. Time to take a hike in a nearby forest. Let the others shop. I will stride through the quiet under bare-limbed yellowwood and oak.

Seeing Anew

Dedicated to Lu/ALA Luci for her Continuous Birthday!


circling the loop
each time we face east again
your joy in Venus



One of the few things I know experientially about haiku is that it is about seeing, or rather seeing anew. Everyday we scan faces, objects, elements of the natural world, but how many of them do we really take in to the point of consciously reflecting upon them?

I've been very lucky in having had two year-long experiences in vastly different cultures and regions. The first occurred in my twenties when we spent a school year in the Inupiat village of Kivalina, Alaska. Kivalina lies on the edge of a narrow sandspit between the Chukchi Sea and a lagoon. Tundra and rolling hills lie across the lagoon, and in the far distance the DeLong Mountains rose. In Nov. the lagoon and sea ice froze. Eventually great ice hummocks formed and I could walk upon the sea, but it looked nothing like an ocean, but instead an immense snowy landscape indistinguishable from land. At times, I felt as though I was wandering through a kind of giant sculpture garden of gorgons and ice statues and frozen knobs. The culture was 20th century American mixed with hunter/gathering. Everyday I learned new things, saw new things, experienced new foods, crafts, and language.

Just after I turned forty, I experienced my second "wonder year." We moved to Yogyakarta, Indonesia where my husband worked on a rice project. In some ways this was even more intense than the Alaskan year: we lived in a city of two million on the most crowded island on earth, Java. Navigating--especially crossing the avenues-- took courage plus a jumbo helping of sheer foolhardiness because the intense roar of traffic never stopped and you had to dodge honking cars and trucks, rattling motorcycles and bikes with entire families on board, water buffalo, bejaks, etc. etc. When we first moved to Yogka, I'd wake up at dawn to the call of the muezzin, and take a morning walk. After about ten minutes, I'd get the most intense headache from all the unfamiliar sights, smells, sounds, along with the crowds jostling in the tropical air.

When you first move to a new country or very different region, you become overwhelmed by all this new seeing. Your filters don't block as much of this sensual world as they do when it becomes familiar to you.

This "seeing anew," the kind that comes with being a person in a strange new place can really help you write haiku. Through it you can discover the extraordinary in the daily, those "aha" moments that you must not let pass by. When my Dad had dementia, we'd take walks at dusk around a loop in his neighborhood. Since it was short, a quarter mile or so, we'd circle the route over and over for exercise. Each time we turned toward the lavender twilight glow with Venus burning brightly above it, Dad would view it as though it were brand new. "Would ya take a look at that big, bright star?" he'd say. "Ain't it gorgeous?" And then again, "Would ya take a look at that big, bright star?"

Animal Callings

in grey December
the barred owl’s call
colors the sky


Thom Gillespie: photo

As we hurtle toward the winter solstice, these last two days I've experienced two wonderful "animal hearings." Last night at this very spot, I heard through the closed window the unmistakable rhythm of a barred owl's call, repeated every few minutes. I went out on the back deck to investigate. As clouds scuttled across the moon, I heard very clearly and from very nearby, perhaps in my neighbor's pear tree, an owl calling plaintively for a mate.

Tonight, just an hour ago, as Tom and I walked Mr. Darcy through the neighbor, I kept hearing a high-pitched noise as if children were calling or yelling to each other. It got louder and louder, so I stopped and looked up. After a few minutes in the light of the full moon, I saw a large skein of all white geese heading south--I assume they were snow geese. Quite dramatic as they flew past using the moon to navigate.

Moon Secrets

third night of rain
clouds hide waxing moon--
keeping his secret

Have you seen the almost full moon tonight? It looks immense in the winter sky. The moon was and is a very common topic for Japanese haiku. Many Japanese poets write about moon viewing, an activity that the Japanese with their great love of nature, probably embrace more fully than any other culture in the world.

One of my favorite Arctic memories was hiking along Kivalina's sand spit directly toward the full moon. At that latitude the moon seemed much bigger than here and it reflecting so brightly onto the snow that it didn't seem as if it were really night at all, but some other state between day and night. I had to force myself to turn around and go back, but that dang moon was incredibly magnetic.

The Farmers' Almanac nicknames December's moon as "Full Long Nights Moon" or "Full Cold Moon." Take advantage of these long nights to do some moon viewing of your own.

Turkey and Letters

Thanksgiving Day
reading our mother's letters--
steam swirls from the cup



Outside of Providence, Rhode Island three of my sisters and I and our families met for the holiday. My oldest sister Rosemary, who lives in Canada, brought down a trove of old letters from the 80s. For a while as the turkey baked, we four sisters sat around the dining room table taking turns reading them. Often we'd read sentences about ourselves--what we were doing, whether we would be coming home for Christmas.

They were both funny and sad. Funny, because my mother always wrote in non sequiturs. And you never knew what piece of news she'd place next to something totally unrelated such as "We had spaghetti for dinner. Susie is having a baby in September. Last Saturday, Dad and I looked for a new living room couch." Sad because this whole time my mother had cancer, and many of the letters documented her visits to the doctors, etc.

Reading them over twenty years later, we could see she was the glue in the family, the communicator in this pre-email, pre-social media days.

The last letter was particularly poignant. She told Rosemary that she was feeling weak, so Kathy was recording her words.

And how beautiful each of those sounded in my sister's voice.

Haiku Reading

One benefit of the Internet revolution is that I have been discovery many articles about haiku online during this year of haiku education. Today, I’ve been reading one with the lovely title “Haiku as Poetic Spell” written by New Zealander, Martin Lucas.

Lucas takes a rather critical look at contemporary haiku calling it too conformist and too strict with pattern. He's not really complaining about the overused 5-7-5 syllabic formula but railing against the constant use of seasonal words and the fact that many modern haiku use juxtaposition to contrast different images in a much too predictable way. Lucas finds that these techniques used too often create a body of haiku that although individually well-written, can become bland and yes, boring.

One way to correct this, he suggests, is with the placement of “pauses and stresses,” making them vary “considerably from poem to poem." The ingredients for a great haiku, Lucas believes are, “Words that chime; words that beat; words that flow. And once you've truly heard it (this kind of haiku), you won't forget it, because the words have power. They are not dead and scribbled on a page, they are spoken like a charm; and they aren't read, they're heard.”

I love his summary of what he desires from haiku: "something primitive; something rare; something essential…They begin and end each reader's unique reflection.”

Now that’s haiku to strive for.

More Silence

I write this as the Bloomington sanitation guys vacuum the leaves of summer that stood sodden and crusty in yesterday's snow. Not only that but roofers are pounding and scraping my neighbor's roof: bang, bang, scrip, scrape.

Maybe that's why haiku is such a difficult 21st century art to engage in for it's truly hard to slow down and really experience what you are thinking and feeling in our noisy, brash, far too-busy world. This short poetic form, I believe, requires both emotion and thought.

In researching the aspect of silence in relation to haiku, I discovered Canadian doctor and haikuist Eric Amman who wrote an essay in 1978 called "The Wordless Poem." Amman brought both his medical practice and training and his belief in Zen Buddhism into his poems and said in this essay that "The haiku is a point of intersection between man and nature."

In her analysis of Amman's work, critic Kathrin Walsch said that "Haiku poetry, like Zen, transcends words." Of course for someone whose bread and butter--take that back--soul food are words that's a hard concept to master, but she goes on the say, "Haiku focuses not on what the words mean in an abstract sense but rather the image the words are able to create... Zen practices hold that words are limiting and can be a distraction from which one should detach oneself."

And this discussion leads me to night, especially these long late-autumn nights when one is more likely to experience quiet and to reconnect with both nature and oneself:

night sky
the flaming silence
of stars

Haiku Silence

abandoned parking lot
perched on the barbed wire
one sparrow


OK, to be honest, I don't understand the role of silence in a haiku. I know it should be an integral element, but how to incorporate silence within a haiku is a difficult art to learn. Does it occur in the pauses between lines, in the interstices between words?

Or does silence resonate from the time before the poem existed to the time after? Is it the hidden stitching behind the haiku?

Seeing in the Land of Leaning Trees

leafless woods

wearing dark green again

rifle shots boom

We've been traveling this past week--back to the East Coast to visit family for Thanksgiving--and as we drive the clogged highways, discover new towns, I think often of seeing. Not only about imprinting Pennsylvania mountain shapes on memory and watching the wide Ohio and Monongahela rivers float past but about noticing and really experiencing this lovely world. It's really hard to do--to see deeply, taking it all in--not in our casual everyday way where sense impressions zoom by often without us noticing them.

Yesterday, I walked down to the bay here in Rhode Island and watched swans float regally past. The sun glinted on the water, the swans circled in wide loops, the trail to the fishing jetty was covered in deep black mud. The dried grasses were bent and broken by walkers. A lone fisherman spent Thanksgiving morning giving thanks in the best way for him enjoying solitude and the thrill of tugs on his line.

Here's a few quotes about seeing. As the new year rapidly approaches, my goal is to really notice the world around me.

Painter Paul Klee said, "Art does not reproduce what we see; rather it makes us see."

Teilhard De Chardin wrote, "The whole of life lies in the verb seeing."

Finally, I love this quote by sculptor Isamu Noguchi. It really shows the effect of this deep seeing on the body, "We are a landscape of all that we've seen."

Perched in the Land of Trees

tree leaning into tree--
an old couple negotiate
the rainy sidewalk

In Speculation #241, American haikuist Robert Spiess said that one of the 'lesser reasons' haiku are so brief is that in them inheres the truth that if words are good, words nevertheless are a rupture of silence which is better still."

Of course, all writing--drama, novels, songs--involves the breaking and returning to silence, but in poems as short as haiku, the silences weigh so much more than in longer pieces.

I love the vivid word rupture; it originally meant to break but from a bursting inside. And it's related to the words abrupt, corrupt and interrupt. However, interrupting the silence does not convey the abrupt change from silence to sound that rupture gives.

Leaf Sink

dachshund
sinking under the leaves—
squirrel titters

Brown on brown on a grey sky/grey cloud day, a day of fierce winds that warns and warns winter's on it's way.



wailing 24-hour wind
how small we are
against the sky

Fetch

dog leaps
toward the falling stick—
drops color the sand


Admit it, none of us can live in the moment like our dog, Mr. Darcy is doing in this combined photo. Leaping, stretching, cannoning toward some crummy bark-peeling stick in the great Ohio River. What you can't see in the picture is a lone tugboat pulling six empty barges upriver toward Louisville, or perhaps even Pittsburgh, PA. These last few days, the solitary tugboat captain has plowed hundreds of miles up the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers, pulling over to the bank at night and sleeping to the lapping of the gentle river waves. It's a peaceful scene, dusk coming on, the moon veiling and unveiling herself with clouds, and the far bank--low-lying farmland--empty and quiet. Behind us large Cave-in-Rock pours out darkness and gathers its secrets. A few hundred yards west, past the bend in the river, a car ferry has just set off for Kentucky.

But Mr. Darcy lives forever in the moment, the way we should be in haiku, experiencing to the hilt this one precious moment which is really all that we have.

Here and Now

As we hurtle into deep fall with Thanksgiving rapidly approaching and a mix of crystalline blue-sky days and long days of rain, I’ve compiled a seasonal word list for fall in Indiana. I’m sure I’ve left many good words or phrases out. Perhaps you have a few favorites of your own.

Fall has always been one of my favorite seasons. The return of cool weather always energizes me; the temporality of autumn’s beauty: its dazzling leaves, intense blue sky, luminous sunlight, and geese v-ing south always remind me how fleeting the best things in life are, barely grasped, barely noticed, barely meditated upon, when suddenly puff -- like a pile of atomized leaves— they’re gone!

Here’s my quick, jotted list.

Indiana Fall Season Words

pumpkin / persimmon/ squash / apples / nuts / Halloween / leaf crunch / piles of leaves/ wind / rain / first frost / first freeze/ harvest moon / coats / gloves / hats / bushy tailed squirrels/ acorns/ maple leaves / red leaves /gold / aurora / mums / chrysanthemums / cranberries / Thanksgiving / time change / early darkness / dark mornings / smoke / bonfires / Orion / bright stars / aurora borealis / grey days / clouds /overcast / morning chill / blustery / trails / woods/bales / hay / rake / football /plowed-over fields /geese flying / crows

Finally, here’s a quote from Tom Clausen’s article “A Haiku Way of Life,” “Haiku for me is the perfect record of my simply existing here and now. Each haiku, in a way, can be thought of as a farewell poem - an acceptance of the transitory nature of everything.”

A Cornucopia of Pumpkins

pumpkins capture
late afternoon sun—
the shortness of days

The news reported that we were short of pumpkins this year--an erratic weather year ruined a lot of crops, but in B-town the round and ovoid squashes appear quite numerous. Besides their striking color, they are so individual in size and shape and texture. I love wandering past them, finding joy in their bright shapes and their endless variety.

Here's a quote from an article called "Feathering the Moment" by New Zealand poet Christopher Herold: "One thing haiku teaches us is that we don't have to go somewhere other than where we are to discover value in things. And we don't have to wait for something worthy to come to us either... Living the 'haiku life' necessitates an ongoing process of waking up to where we are now, accepting that we are where we are, and feeling grateful for this."

Rocky Friends

in the quiet
under the huge rock
so many bedfellows

Aurora Borealis sighting

dipping far south
the bright pink Aurora--
leaf sounds in wind

One of the advantages of working at night is that you occasionally see celestial events that you would probably just miss--an almond-colored crescent moon, the bright green tail of a meteorite breaking apart, the full moon winking one eye, Jupiter's bright steady stare, etc. Last Monday night, as I cycled up the hill home, one whole side of the sky shone a bright pink with quivering sky flames. My first thought was that it was the Northern Lights but since I had never seen any that colorful or dramatic here, I listened for fire engines, thinking perhaps it was a great fire. But the evening was silent. I stopped cycling and just watched the incredible sky show.

When I reached home, I told my husband to hurry outside, but by the time he put on his shoes, and stepped out to the lawn the color had disappeared. There were still a few white aurora flares but he was unimpressed. We had lived for a year in the Arctic where we saw the most dramatic and beautiful aurora displays on nights too numerous to count. But Indiana's pink aurora sky surprised me, bringing its gift of unexpected beauty as though a greeting from the north country I so love.

Opportunistic Birds

hiking alone—
above one turkey vulture soars
five others zoom in

We're learning more and more of the fragility of nature, its vulnerability especially under massive resource depletion and CO2 emissions, but one thing that fascinates me about nature, is how perfectly tuned so many of its systems are: rain to field to creek to river to sea to cloud to rain again. Also, the way vultures sense our and other animal's vulnerability. How often have you driven down a country road to discover crows already feasting on a freshly-killed squirrel? They fly off as you past, then swoop down again.

Once in Florida my sister and I canoed the Rainbow River. At dusk, we headed back to the Marion County Park. As we paddled near, hundreds--if not thousands--of vultures were returning from hunting. They landed on every tree, every fence, even the concrete steps down to the lake. The park closed at sunset and we were the only people around. It was eerie seeing their large bodies float down over us, hearing their cries and the sinister thrashings of their wings. But it was also reassuring to discover them all gathered there, leaning into each other, seeking rest and comfort from the night.

Aware, Observant, Open

braided, cascading
roots in a forest--
the coolness of shade

In a 2006 interview conducted by Robert D. Wilson in Simply Haiku, Scott Metz described how taking up the art of haiku had changed him, "Since finding haiku and its path, I'm more aware, observant, peripheral, open, watchful, both of the nature outside of me and the nature inside of me..." I love the way Metz used the word "peripheral" here. It's not a word that focuses on the straight arrow, the goal directed, the unveering route. Rather it's more like the erratic path of a Brood X cicada, cumbersomely flying off to your left, then by some amazing feat of heat-seeking, executes a quick strike to your shoulder or chest.

When interviewer Robert D. Wilson asked Metz what appeals to him about haiku, he said that he felt, that haiku "awakens the child inside of me. Haiku can give us back the child that was once in all of us."

"Aware, observant, open" these are really important characteristics to work toward in writing haiku. And in fact, to live life fully and in communion with the world around us.

Yesterday, in Equality, Illinois, I sat on a bench outside a bank, enjoying the first warm sunshine of an autumn morning. Two older woman walked past in turn and shared their thoughts of the day. All three of us felt lucky to bask in the October warmth knowing how quickly it would fade. There was a moment of receiving nature's grace, two moments of sharing, followed by the sound of a cane tapping down the sidewalk.

A Long Winding Hiking Path

D. T. Suzuki, a Zen Buddhist writer, once said that a “haiku does not express ideas but puts forward images reflecting intuitions.” But how do you hone that intuitive ear or sensor? Yesterday I went hiking, and though I was surrounded by amazing images: crimson maple leaves, chiseled grey rocks, yellow bushes set against a backdrop of a forest burn, cerulean sky, a passel of yellow butterflies, I had only images. No haiku.

Perhaps, my restless hiking made the deep seeing necessary to creating good haiku hard--if not impossible--to accomplish. True Basho walked that narrow road to the interior, but he did stop for moon viewing, cherry blossom pilgrimages, and frog tête-à-têtes. So for now all I have is this brilliant fall vista to contemplate and sore ankles and knees along with a refreshed spirit.

Autumn Moon

moon, stars, darkness, wind
even the mountains forget
their names


Modern American haikuist Clark Strand wrote, “My Japanese Zen teacher used to say, ‘No dress rehearsal!’ He meant, ‘This is it! Now! This moment of life is unrepeatable.’” For me this evokes the contradictory emotions of being both scared and relieved at the same time. Kind of like that moment when the roller coaster clatters up to the station and you and the other thrill seekers all jump into the little metal seats at the same time. Hurry, hurry the moment is leaving...

October Indiana--Such a Grand, Glorious Canvas

in my pocket
yesterday's leaves--
sough of wind


We offered our haiku workshop yesterday at the library; it was co-sponsored by the Writers' Guild at Bloomington. Nancy Long organized and led an interesting outdoor exercise. She sent us to record five or more images that we noticed near the library and then advised us also to search for things that looked totally out of place or were unexpected. Funny when you turned on your radar to scout for them, it was amazing how many unusual things showed up.

Even though it's been very dry for days I noticed a large, almost water-like stain coating the sidewalk. Also, spilled and solidified around a light pole, I saw what looked like dried chocolate ice cream. Also, a bit out of place, were two vultures soaring right over downtown. The leaves were all crimson or sported that flamboyant last-blast yellow. I couldn't help wandering how the leaves looked to the raptors flying above.

The workshop participants came back and wrote about what they saw. I was impressed with the "deep seeing" that everyone did. And how people wrote about the same image with such an individual touch.

In preparation, I read haiku books and articles for days--saturated now but in a nice way. Haiku snippets from across the centuries reel through my head as I stroll through a world riotously autumn.

An Early Female Haiku Writer

on the ebb tide beach
everything we pick up
is alive

--Chiyo ni

I mentioned earlier that there were four great Japanese haiku masters: Bashō, Buson, Issa, and Shiki. Well, I've recently discovered a fifth, Chiyo-ni, the only woman. The long chain group poems, hakai no renga, from which haiku developed had been written only be men. Japanese women--the few during this medieval time period that learned to read and write--wrote in another form, tanka.

Chiyo-ni was a contemporary of Buson; she lived between 1703-1775. According to critic Jane Reichhold, her real name was Kaga-no Chiyo and she was born in Matsuto. She taught herself haiku when she was only fifteen--she had no choice, because she was a woman no haiku master would instruct her. Later in life she met and worked with other haiku writers but by this time she had fully established herself as a great haikuist. In later life she became a Buddhist nun. She was also an accomplished painter, something you might infer from her choice of evocative images.

Here are a few more of her haiku:

the coolness ---
on the bottom of her kimono
in the bamboo grove

waterweed
floating away, despite
the butterfly’s weight on it

again the women
come to the fields
with unkempt hair

leaves like bird shadows
desolate---
the winter moon

the lake knows
where she is going--
why don't I?


I love the play of light upon water, and how even a man-made lake such as Monroe can give a feeling of wildness, of possible journeys.

"Weather-Beaten Bones"

No inspiration for a haiku despite this brilliant fall morning, but I've been reading Basho's Travelogue of Weather-Beaten Bones (translated by Sam Hamill.) Love the title and sense of hope, and yes, even adventure, that it implies. Yep, in spite of aches and decidedly unlimber bones, I'm going to set out on a long arduous journey.

Here's how it begins, "I left my rundown hut beside the river during the eighth month of 1684, placing my trust in my walking stick and in the words of the Chinese sage who said, 'I pack no provisions for my long journey--entering emptiness under the midnight moon. The voice of the wind was oddly cold.'"

"Entering emptiness under the midnight moon" -- lovely phrase. Isn't that how all journeys start?--maybe not with the moon, but with not knowing what is ahead, what the journey will bring. What changes the journey will cause? And how memories will soon fill the journey/journal pages.

Here's a few travel quotes I came across recently.

“One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.” – Henry Miller

″A traveler without observation is a bird without wings.” – Moslih Eddin Saadi

“To awaken quite alone in a strange town is one of the pleasantest sensations in the world.” – Freya Stark

I find Miller's particularly apt because the best journeys always evoke changes in your world-view.

Basho sounds so old and frail here so out of curiosity I had to do the life-math. He was born in 1644, so when he wrote these words he was an old man of 40!! (emphasis indeed added.)

Here's one haiku from this journey that I particularly like:

along the roadside,
blossoming wild roses
in my horse's mouth

The Crows Know

six crows
silent in a field—
noon whistle




Photo attribution: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/deed.en
"Black crow, black crow, tell me where you really go" by monkeyc.net

Olympic Peninsula Beach

minus tide beach
seal pups barking so loud
that ravens hide





This beach was a three mile hike from the road mostly on a boardwalk through a deep forest. When I finally saw an opening in the trees with light pouring through, I began to hear this intense racket: gulls calling, a few ravens cawing, and what sounded like thousands of seal pups barking in the water near the island. Not a quiet beach at all, but breathtakingly beautiful. I wanted to stay and watch the sunset--ribbons of clouds forming in the west promised that it would be spectacular--but I didn't dare attempt to walk back in the near-darkness. The cedars and spruce were so thick that the forest was fairly dark even in full daylight. Ah, I will have to go back.

A snake with the dreaded three colors--red, black and yellow--slithered across the boards, hurrying home too.

Beyond Description

My default choice for a haiku’s format is one of three lines. And yes, as I mentioned earlier, I really like the one-line format. Remember traditional Japanese haiku was always written in a single vertical line. How it became nearly codified in English as a three line form makes an interesting history but one that I’ll have to research more.

Recently, I came across some really helpful advice by Canadian haiku writer, Betty Drevniok in her book Aware—a Haiku Primer.

Here are Betty’s suggestions on how to create good haiku, “Write in three short lines using the principle of comparison, contrast, or association." Betty believed that each of these techniques would become “the pivot on which the reader’s thought turns and expands.” And change rather than stasis gives haiku energy and relevance.

Reading her words, I thought that yes, too often, I have written haiku that simply describe and nothing more. There is no turn, no change, no leap into that exciting space where things collide, mingle, combust, give off sparks.

Here’s where I started with yesterday’s haiku:

at sunset
sunflowers beam
under the yellowing leaves

Yep, it’s certainly fall (at least in the poem), but yellowing has a “sick” connotation. And this gives nothing more than a quick verbal snapshot of the scene.

Next, I wrote:

at sunset
sunflowers beam gold
under the brass-colored beech

I like all the forceful b-sounds here but this also mainly describes and feels a bit forced besides. Plus the beaming gold is clichéd as well.

I decided I was concentrating too much on the color yellow. Not enough contrast here. Suddenly, I remembered the butterfly, I had seen earlier on my walk. The thought struck me, is this the last butterfly of the season? Finally I changed the haiku to:

how long
till the next butterfly--
sunflower light

There are arguments--pro and con--about revising haiku. Some in the mystical-catch-it-right- immediate school argue that a haiku should come fully-formed to you out of the cosmos; others--you can tell what camp I'm in--believe that like any other writing, there are the lucky and exceedingly rare "miracles." For the most part, revision, seeing the work anew, is an important and necessary part of the process.

Sunflower Season

how long

till the next butterfly--

sunflower light

Pine/Flowers

so many petunias
and only one pine—
porch light flicks on


This photo reminds me of the elderly widow we met one recent night. As we walked by with our dogs, we stopped to praise her petunias. Her name is Mary and she told us that she was in her 90s but still loved to garden. She was very proud of these petunias that she said grew from only six plants.

It also recalls Bashō's famous quote,“Learn of the pine from the pine; learn of the bamboo from the bamboo.” At some level I understand what the great haiku artist was saying, go to nature and truly experience it, then you can write about it. But it's still a very hard task in this modern world that is so full of noise and distractions. And we (or at least I) are so much less willing to give ourselves the time it takes to really be in nature: to learn about the pine from the pine, the stars from the stars, and the sunflower from the sunflower bending so gracefully down toward the earth after fighting for months to rise above it.

Changing Seasons

maple leaves turning—
only one firefly
all evening


I wrote earlier about how many Americans mistakenly think that the most important element in haiku is the syllabic count, the 5-7-5 arrangement that most of us learned in childhood or whenever we first became familiar with haiku. In fact, in the latest Frogpond ( the journal of The Haiku Society of America) Helen Ruggieri of Olean, New York writes about her visit to a third-grade class room where she led a workshop. Afterwards the teacher said disapprovingly, "You didn't make them count syllables."

According to many practitioners, a much more important element of these poems is the season word. In Haiku: a Poet's Guide, Lee Gurga insists that season "is a crucial aspect." He continues, "Haiku do not simply mention the season--the season must actively contribute in the poem. A seasonal element is not merely tacked on to an image or thought to make a haiku. On the other hand, neither is the season the subject of the poem. The season and the moment must interpenetrate to create a nexus of poetic power."

Interpenetrate? Although I can certainly recognize when these two elements are interwoven in a really good haiku, it's one of those writing techniques that for me, at least, can't be summoned upon command. That's another reason why writing in this short form is so difficult, especially to do well. Like the leaves on the changing maple, there are many, many throw-aways before you find that one whole and unfrayed crimson leaf.

Dog Days No More

Now that cold, wet weather has arrived, it's hard to believe the temperature hit almost 100 degrees not even a week ago. Here's my old patrician dachshund enjoying a sunbath in the late afternoon.

end of summer
dog sinks into
lawn’s last heat

Haiku Conference--More Sharing

OK, it’s been a month and I’ve barely written about Haiku North America. August got away from me with travel, work, hosting guests and the sheer lassitude brought on by the heat. Looking back at the conference, the sessions that stood out for me were the readings that people shared of their own haiku and the interesting keynote by Richard Gilbert in which he tied haiku’s development to modernism. But he also said that haiku’s modernist trajectory in the West has largely stalled. He urged North American writers to think outside the box and to push themselves in new directions.

Other compelling sessions were the two about the history of haiku: one focused on North American haiku, the second on Canadian (I already wrote about that.) I also enjoyed Richard Tice’s “Location, Location! Place in Haiku,” and David Lanoue’s talk that focused on Issa’s frog haiku. This Japanese haiku master wrote over two hundred haiku on this little amphibian himself. (Look out, cicadas, here I come!)

Marjorie Buettner put together a lovely memorial for haiku poets who had died in the past two years. It included photos, bios, quotes and haiku written by people that many people in the audience knew well. Music, including Marjorie’s own singing, made the tribute even more moving. Though I had never meant any of the talented poets being honored, I felt that I knew them after this memorial.

In terms of my own writing, the session that inspired me most was Jim Kacian’s “Monophilia: the History and Practice of One-Line Haiku in English." Ignore the academic-sounding title; this was a show and tell of compelling poetry that goes horizontal rather than vertical. I really like the one line form of haiku both for its speed and simplicity. Another lecture on “Stretching Western Haiku” provided many examples of haiku that uses new elements such as metaphors and similes (traditionally not considered OK to use in haiku) and fantastic elements.

A nice change from the focus on writing were two very visual programs: a session on haiga—the art of combining brush painting with haiku--and a session on concrete poetry. Carlos Colon’s images showed how concrete poetry relies just as much, if not more so, on the shape and design of words on the page as on the words themselves. More experimental but also interesting was Eve Luckring’s film that combined renku with moving images and sound.

Haiku North America began with nearly every one in the room reading haiku from the conference anthology Standing Still edited by Michael Dylan Welch and Ruth Yarrow. It was wonderful to hear haiku in the actual voice of the poet. Here’s my poem from the anthology:

full moon
scuttling past clouds--
silent swoop of bat

Haiku Walk

monarch butterfly
poised on the bicycle path--
sudden flutter of wings

The challenge in writing haiku, in writing anything really, is to master the art, or more realistically, to get better at it by writing more often, and in the case of haiku, by teaching yourself to observe the world more closely. Try to become more connected with the outside world whether that’s a forest nearby, a city park, or weeds or birds by brick row houses or skyscrapers.

Good haiku artists report that you cannot instantly write a good haiku. One technique to develop your haiku (which is also great for your health) is the haiku walk. In his excellent book Seeds from a Birch Tree: The Way of Haiku, Clark Strand suggests that practitioners take a thirty-minute walk as part of the haiku writing process. Here’s what he suggests:

1. For the first ten minutes, simply walk, give in to your thoughts, but notice the plants and animals. ‘Loosen and relax,” he suggests.

2. During the second third of your walk concentrate on the nature around you. Stop and observe things that strike you or that you find beautiful.

3. For the final part of your walk really connect with those items. Take out your notebook and try to record what you see in a haiku. Or as Strand phrased it, “Having relaxed into nature and momentarily set your other thoughts aside, you will know for yourself the proper moment to write a haiku.”

One note: Strand writes almost always about being and writing in nature. Since most of the world’s population now lives in cities and towns, don’t despair--haiku can definitely be written with city subjects and sensibilities. It’s called “urban haiku.”
A style I need to tackle more often.

Another Monoku and Some Kigo

not so close, small skunk, running in the road


If you'd like to check out English language haiku currently being published in Japan, here's a link to a site that publishes one a day: Mainichi Daily News.
Scroll down the page, and after Features is their Daily Haiku Selection. Their guidelines state that they take haiku of any style, but that it "should have a seasonal element."

Years ago, when we lived in Indonesia, I volunteered at a college library and the two main sources of materials for Gadjah Mada University Library were gifts from Japan and the U.S. I came across this publication there and sent a few haiku via very snail mail (ship). A few months later I received a folded copy of this paper with my haiku.

I'd forgotten about this publication until the tragic earthquake and tsunami this year in March. Afterwards, I began searching for "firsthand" news of Fukushima and came upon this newspaper again.

In Japanese, a seasonal word is called a kigo. An emphasis on the seasons has always been important to Japanese poetry. As far back as the mid-8th century, the earliest Japanese poetry anthology was published. This collection called the Manyoshu included several sections that were organized by season. Some kigo (they can be phrases too, such as cherry blossoms) seem obviously connected to a particular season, for example, pumpkin. But for Japanese haiku writers, the moon evokes autumn because much longer nights allow people to follow the moon's phases more closely.

Just tonight I discovered a new Japanese term that's related to haiku--saijiki. It's a "collection of season words (kigo), references, and inspirations for haiku poets and so much more." This definition precedes the Alaska Haiku Society Saijiki which was started and is updated by Billie Wilson. Another cool link is: World Kigo Database Choose a county you have visited or long to and then treat yourself to some specific words that mark their seasons.

Because I also spent a few years in Alaska, I couldn't resist their list of kigo. One seasonal phrase for an Alaskan spring that is included is "first skunk cabbage." Because the world if full of connections, I just spotted a few of these plants in the Olympics in Washington State. However in summer, they are missing their bright yellow spathes in the center of each plant. Another spring Alaskan kigo (though not on this list) should be fiddlehead ferns which grow abundantly in the mountains above Alaska's capitol city in early spring. Steamed and coated with butter, they were a local favorite and made a good excuse for trumping around in the rain on top of old snow.

To close with another monoku:

how curled the fiddlehead fern in the awakening forest

Very Old Cedars

trying to decipher
the hieroglyphics of its bark --
300-year-old cedar














The red cedars in the Hoh Rain Forest, part of Olympic National Park in northwest Washington, are magnificent. Hike in four miles on the Hoh River Trail and you'll come to a stand of them, some linked together, and stretching toward the sky. Quite the arboreal cathedral.

Hunger

no hunger
like the hunger of a seagull
at the crab shack


Spent the morning reading Sam Hamill's The Essential Bashō (Shambhala Press, 1999). One particular haiku stood out because of its utter simplicity. Here it is in Japanese first.

Matsushima ya
ah Matsushima ya
Matsushima ya

Notice all the repetition. Here's it in English:

Pine Islands, ah!
Oh, Pine Islands, ah!
Pine Islands, ah!

Bashō once said he spent years trying to "learn how to listen as things speak for themselves." Hamill remarked that a poet could only get away with a poem like this once. But Bashō was so overwhelmed by the beauty of these two hundred plus islands, that words could not express what he saw when he first arrived. This haiku is his attempt to describe his wonder and awe at seeing this plenitude of islands, each with wind-bent pine trees pointing in different directions.

This haiku serves as a good lesson about the limits of vocabulary in recording our thoughts and feelings. It also teaches us how repetition can be more powerful than added description. And it provides a great lesson on taking risks.

Night Haiku

deep summer
only coolness is the grass
and distant stars


Walking back from the strange French flick at the Ryder on campus, I kept thinking of the conference program on the history of Canadian haiku. I had nearly skipped it because it was the last night, and I had developed a kind of hotel insomnia, but I decided to listen to the beginning before going back to the hotel to rest. However, Terry Ann Carter from Ottawa led such a wonderful program that I was sucked in.

Canadian haiku had its roots in World War II, in particular in the Japanese internment camps that we also had here in the states. Such an awful place for haiku to blossom, but blossom it did. But perhaps that's not strange--just as the people's lives were constricted, their words also were constrained and at the same time empowered by this tight small form.

One Canadian haiku writer Kaoru Ikeda kept a diary of the war years and formed a haiku group in the internment camp she lived in. Here's one she wrote about the view from her bunk:

wisteria flowers
but double-decker bed
is in my way

In the postwar years, one musician we are all familiar with also wrote haiku--Leonard Cohen. And Canada has a strong tradition of French language haiku as well.

Here's a nice one by one of Canada's most famous practitioners, George Swede. It describes both the closeness and the distance between our two countries:

passport check
my shadow waits
across the border

After the Haiku Conference, the Serenity of the Olympic Peninsula

mountain meadow
snow melt trickles past flowers-
frolic of fawns


I wrote this haiku on Olympic National Park's magnificent Hurricane Ridge where fawns were playing among the gorgeous flowers. Blooming were paintbrush, lupine, phlox, and several other varieties. You can drive almost all the way to this meadow, not that I am a fan of that. I prefer meadows you can hike too, and you can hike to this one also, but this year, the snowpack has extended into August and there are huge swathes of snow on the north slopes and in ravines. I attempted a five mile hike to a peak, but after a mile and half was stopped by a huge field of snow. Signs everywhere warned Leave No Trace, a philosophy I support. Since I had no poles, there was no way I could climb up the snow slopes though I could have slid down this one. However, I did not want to claw my way up off-trail.

The ranger said that the flowers were three weeks later than usual, but they were resplendent, so good timing for me. Also, I lucked upon an interesting animal altercation between a raven and a doe. They both wanted something on the snow--from where I stood, I could not see what it was--but guess who won the battle? Yep, the raven.

One event at the haiku conference (I will be sharing others in the next few weeks) was a memorial for haiku poets who died these last two years. (It's a biennial conference.) Marjorie Buettner from Wisconsin put together an excellent tribute to them featuring photos, images of their haiku and biographies of their lives. It was very moving. She also sang and played music. Because I am including a photo of lupine, here's a haiku by the late Mike Farley from Montana:

lupine
a darker blue
in the hoofprints




In a 2008 interview on the Tobacco Road Poet Blog, here's what Farley said about why he wrote haiku:

I write haiku for the sheer pleasure of it. I absolutely love reading good haiku and I've saved quite a long list of my favorites from other poets. Writing my own haiku, however, really good ones, is not easy for me. Juxtaposition and the images that can (and should) spring unspoken from between the lines is the key to the whole thing (for me anyway). It's so hard to do and so delightful when it happens.

Haiku North America conference--Seattletime

In Seattle for the biennial Haiku North America conference that ends today. Conferencing is intense and I seldom go to them, so that makes them even more so for me.

Plus I am one of those introvert- extroverts or extrovert-introverts. With periods of quiet and solitude, I can function in the world of men (and women), but without them I turn misanthropic or at least jittery as all heck.

The schedule was jam-packed. Add to that jet-lag and lack of sleep....

But attending was wonderful, I learned a lot and I will share this soon.

Here is an abbreviated tour of the conference:

-5-7-5 is an artificial construct not true to the spirit of haiku
-Japanese haiku is innovating and changing whereas North American is stuck in the same old patterns
-monoku is kool (one line haiku, examples soon)
-haiga is for those talented with brushwork who can write haiku (don't look at me)
-haiku poets like to argue

OK, the last is said in fun but certainly true. The conference had a big room full of books and other media on haiku, senryu, tanka, haibun--all the related literary arts. And quite wonderful readings of poets sharing their own work.

So here's my first monoku:

no hand can catch the wildness of the butterfly

Off to the wildness of the Olympic Peninsula. Be back late this week with some Pacific West haiku.

Wedding haiku

next to the cornfield
bride and groom exchange vows--
cicadas hum





Here's a couple of other "field" haiku that appeal to me. The first is by Seira; the second by Shiki.


lifting up their horns
the cattle look at people
on the summer moor -Seira

a hoe standing there
no-one to be seen,--
the heat! -Shiki


Shiki is one of my favorite haiku artists. He's considered one of Japan's four great classic haiku poets, and responsible for introducing the name of haiku for this form, and also in modernizing it. As you can see from this haiku, he has a real eye for the interplay of humans with nature, plus a humorous take on the world.
He was born in 1867 and had planned to become a politician. He studied at the Imperial University, but his love for literature pushed him toward writing. He chose Shiki for his pen name. At the age of 22, he developed TB and according to legend the "shiki" was a bird that coughed up blood when it sang. Shiki died fairly young in 1902, but he left behind many haiku and many essays about it.

Chicago town

among skyscrapers
I long for one swoop of bird
one arch of tree

Insect Medley

clouds sweep sky
silence of cicadas—
one sparrow cheeps







By Keith from Newark, DE, USA (Female House Sparrow 2 (Passer domesticus)) [CC-BY-2.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

In the Heat of July

late afternoon walk--
taste of ice cubes
against my lips


Kenneth Yasuda, a Japanese-American writer on haiku, believed that each one should answer these three questions: "what, when, and where." Generally, the image itself is the "what." And the "when" and "where" may be stated or more often implied.

Interesting haiku fact: Beat writer Jack Kerouac introduced many Americans to this concise form of poetry. In "The Dharma Bums" one of the characters, Japhy Ryder wrote haiku. In this book by Kerouac, which was published in 1958, he based Ryder on his friend, the poet Gary Snyder who spent many years in Japan.