"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.