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.

Mono-no-aware

on pale inner arm
I ferry into the house
one small black bug



In his introduction to Essential Bashō, Sam Hamill mentioned an aspect of haiku that I was unfamiliar with, mono-no-aware. Hamill described this as the insight "to perceive a natural poignancy in the beauty of temporal things." Originally, according to Hamill, it meant "emotion initiated by engagement of the senses," for instance, the way a single crow's caw makes you feel sad for someone dead, or the way a lawn full of flickering lightning bugs fills you with hope.

I like the fact that our English word aware is so much a part of this term because first comes the deep awareness then the writing and emotion.

no silence
like that of the old beech
in summer's heat

Thunder and Lightning

thunderheads
silhouetted by heat lightning--
pondless frog







A strike of lightning is something like the haiku image. It comes suddenly, at times unexpectedly, out of the cosmos. The good ones reverberate the way thunder does.

I'm reading a book called A Zen Harvest: Japanese Folk Zen Sayings (Haiku, Dodoitzu, and Waka) compiled and translated by Soiku Shigematsu. Here's two haiku that have no author attributions:

a flash of lightning--
our life is
gone in a blink.

lightning strikes
mixing up
the dark night

Both a reminder of the dramatic lightning storm we are now having in our thunderfull Midwest.

Firefly Haiku

An older haiku that fits this time of year exactly. On these "white nights" of midsummer, I often see critters while walking at dusk through Hoosier Acres.


just the deer and I
amid the gathering
fireflies


Here's something else I learned reading about haiku. Bashō, the early haiku master, said, “In writing do not let a hair’s breadth separate yourself from the subject. Speak from your mind directly; go to it without wandering thoughts.”

Ah, wandering thoughts. How do we achieve that in this century of distractions, electronic and otherwise? Not only did Bashō believe that one should perceive the object with one's full attention, but he also felt that this “seeing” and the expression of it into words should be one action and one action only. That way the reader can experience the “inner” object of the haiku in the same way that the writer did. I know that sounds impossible to accomplish but it's a goal to reach for.

Learn from the Pine Tree

Bashō, considered to be one of the masters of this form, was influenced by the Chinese poets of the T’ang Dynasty (7th to 9th centuries) especially Tu Fu, Li Po, and Po chü-i. He believed that haiku came from a deep observation of nature. What Bashō advised his followers to “Learn of the pine from the pine; learn of the bamboo from the bamboo.”

images by photoeverywhere.co.uk

only July
hedge leaves yellowing--
smell of skunk

little poem, little moon

photo credit: NASA, "Moon-from-Space"


cat meows
2,4,6 a.m.--
sliver of moon

Fourth of July

Mt. Rushmore photo in honor of the holiday



shouts and laughter
wheeze and boom of firecrackers—
still the dog must pee

Who the heck was Bashō?

trumpet vines
cover a railroad fence
silence of no train


In 17th century Japan, Matsuo Bashō was a teacher of renga who made his living by traveling around Japan teaching people this art. Renga is a linked poem that is composed by two or more people, usually three who alternately add each verse. It was highly competitive. Each new verse had to be related to the previous one as well as take the poem in an interesting new direction. Renga often consisted of 100 verses and could even be as long as a 1000.

Renga started out as a court art but by Bashō's time it had become popular with everyone, including the middle class. Bashō popularized the hokku or starting verse, a three line verse that introduced the renga. A famous poem by Bashō is

old pond--
frog leaps in
water's sound

As you can see from this, Bashō wrote about the natural world but with a sense of humor. He began a series of journeys during which he also introduced another literary form, the haibun, which is a mixture of haiku and prose. He wrote The Narrow Road to the Interior in this form about his travels. Travel in those days in Japan was extremely dangerous and the poet did not expect to survive his travels. Yet he went anyway. The pull of the road or the mountain path.

By the way, the poet was originally named Matsuo Kinsaku. After his followers planted a banana tree next to his simple hut, he renamed himself Bashō after this kind of tree.

Beginnings

Dawn in the Badlands, June 2011


If I were clever, I would do this in haiku, introduce myself I mean. But soon it would veer into 5-7-5 prose, short, syllabically correct but not alive with the real spirit of haiku. And what is the real spirit of haiku? That's precisely what this year is about--the process of discovering this centuries' old art. The how and why of haiku. I already know the when. At least intellectually. The when is now, this moment. This year's journey is learning how to meet and capture the moment. (This sounds so western, perhaps, better to learn to be in the moment, or to be this moment.)

Why you might ask does my haiku year begin on July 1? Because that's when the fiscal year begins. I applied for an Indiana Arts Commission grant to attend the biennial Haiku North America Conference that will be held in Seattle in August. And they awarded me an arts grants to study this short, simple-seeming poetic form. Its simplicity I already recognize to be pure fantasy. What could be more complex, harder than to capture than the world in less than 20 syllables?

In any case I am very grateful to the Indiana Arts Commission for this wonderful opportunity.

I can't remember when I wrote my first haiku, college, most likely, perhaps even high school though when I was growing up in the 60s, it wasn't a particularly popular form. It was considered exotic, something from foreign shores. Not popular the way it is now.

I do remember the first time I kept a haiku journal, in 1980, a rainy year in Juneau Alaska, just after my son was born. Mornings, I would look out my bedroom window at Mount Juneau almost always shrouded in grey mist. A view that looked very Japanese, a Fuji-like scene. That is if you could see Mt. Juneau at all through the rain. That year I think more than half of my haiku centered on rain or mist or snow.

So now I'm not in the Badlands despite the accompanying photograph. That was four weeks ago. That dawn moment is long past, like all moments, experiential, sensual, fleeting then gone. No. I'm in Bloomington, Indiana listening to the year's first firecrackers blasting off a few days shy of our nation's birthday.

first of july
whiz and boom of firecrackers--
silence of fireflies