Politics/Poetics of Re-Homing, IX

roof icicles

hold the first morning sun

present

becoming past

becoming future

Atlas Poetica, 15, July 2013

Note: you can read its preceding tanka or the whole sequence here

Butterfly Dream: Empty Pages Haiku by Ben Moeller-Gaa

English Original

sleepless night
the book's empty pages
emptying me

World Haiku Review, Summer 2013

Ben Moeller-Gaa


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

不眠夜
書的空白頁
將我清空

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

不眠夜
书的空白页
将我清空


Bio Sketch

Ben Moeller-Gaa is a haiku poet from St. Louis, MO whose poems have appeared on over 20 journals world wide including Modern Haiku, Kernals, Under the Basho, Shamrock, Four and Twenty, Chrysanthemum, A Hundred Gourds, The Heron's Nest, Frogpond, and World Haiku Review as well as several anthologies including Haiku 21, the Red Moon Press's Best Of English Language Haiku 2011 and 2012 and the Haiku Foundation's mobil Haiku App.

One Man's Maple Moon: Tanka of Faces by S.M. Abeles

English Original

her face blurs
into a dozen others ...
I tighten my grip
around all that remains
of what was

A Hundred Gourds, 2:2, March 2013

S.M. Abeles


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

她的臉模糊成為
十幾位其他人的臉..
我緊抓住
往事
的殘餘

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

她的脸模糊成为
十几位其他人的脸...
我紧抓住
往事
的残馀


Bio Sketch

S.M. Abeles lives and writes in Washington, D.C.  He composes poems on dog walks and train rides, and elsewhere when the moment strikes.  His work appears frequently in the usual haiku and tanka journals, and he posts at least one new poem daily on his website, The Empty Sky

Hot News: New Milestone, Haiku/Tanka Reprinted in 80 E-Papers, and Chen-ou Liu’s Signature Poems

My Dear Readers/Poets:

Launched on the first day of 2013, NeverEnding Story reached another milestone today:  it had more than 50,000 pageviews, and its haiku/tanka have been regularly reprinted in 80 e-papers, four of which are Japanese. The newest members are The * Daily edited by ***, The starlight-poets Daily edited by Dannie Susan, The Random Daily edited by Katherine Walker, rebs letters edited by Sara Hale, The Grapevine Daily edited by Roberta Gogos, Joe Gonnella Daily edited by Joe Gonnella, The PoetryTree SUNDAY edited by Renee Sigel, The Dreamer’s Daily edited by BlindSpotProductions, and The Entdecke Kanada Daily edited by Entdecke Kanada. For more information, see Hot News: Haiku/Tanka Reprinted in 70 E-Papers and its comment section.

Below are my signature poems that will appear on the United Haiku and Tanka Society’s website and its print anthology

a deceased friend

taps me on the shoulder --

plum blossoms falling

Grand Prize: Poem of the Year, The Heron’s Nest, Vol. 13, 2011

(For detailed comments on my poem, see Poetic Musings: Plum Blossoms Haiku by Chen-ou Liu)

nine autumns past

first trip to my homeland…

now in Taipei

drinking alone in moonlight

I still long for Taipei

Certificate of Merit by the Tankagendai Corp, the 7th International Tanka Festival Competition

(Judge's /Aya Yuhki's comment:The author living in a distant place from [his] native country, now returned to [his] native country. But [he] couldn’t help feeling some kind of awkwardness. This tanka concisely expresses [his] complicated emotions. The repetition of “Taipei” is very effective for the rhythm of this tanka, and moreover, it emphasizes the expression of [his] loneliness.

Note: In my tanka, I made a dual allusion to Li Po's poem, titled “Drinking Alone under the Moon,” and Basho's haiku below

even in Kyoto--
hearing the cuckoo's cry
I long for Kyoto)

Under the Sun

New Year’s drink

our yellow streams cross

each other's

“Son, now you’re a man,” Father says coldly. Something strange…something I can’t articulate in his eyes. A gaze I will carry with me always.

the moon floats

from one glass

to another…

Haibun Winner, 2012 Great Big Little Poems Contest

Reprinted in Contemporary Haibun Online, 8:3, October 2012

bullfrog chorus...

I practice saying

I love you

Third Prize, 2011 Senryu Contest

Many thanks to all of you who have helped NeverEnding Story grow in any way.

Chen-ou


Updated, Oct. 30:

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Updated, Oct. 31

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Butterfly Dream: I-Haiku by Lorin Ford

English Original

I and I and I ripples on the river 

Under the Basho, 1:1,  Autumn 2013

Lorin Ford


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

我和我和我河上漣漪

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

我和我和我河上涟漪


Bio Sketch

Lorin Ford grew up between two homes, one by the beach and one in the bush. She has written ‘long’ poems but these days she focuses on haiku , both as a writer and as an editor. Her book, a wattle seedpod,(PostPressed 2008) is currently out of print but short collections of her work can be accessed at the Snapshot Press website and via her bio on the editors’ page at www.ahundredgourds.com

Dark Wings of the Night: Jack Kerouac's "Blues and Haikus" and His View of Haiku Composition

A real haiku’s gotta be as simple as porridge and yet make you see the real thing

-- Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums, p.59

In the spring of 1958, Jack Kerouac was invited by Bob Thiele to make a poetry album for the Beat Generation. Accompanied by his friends, tenor saxmen Al Cohn and Zoot Sims, Kerouac made Blues and Haikus, a mixture of jazz and poetry. According to Bruce Eder, it was a “stunning duet between speaker and saxmen, working spontaneously in this peculiar mix of jazz and voice, in which the saxmen [did] get their solo spots around Kerouac's work”.

The opening number is a 10-minute piece called “American Haikus.” It features Kerouac’s “expressive recitation of a series of poems punctuated by the improvisational saxophone playing of Cohn and Sims.”

The most amazing thing about Jack Kerouac is his magic voice, which sounds exactly like his works. It is capable of the most astounding and disconcerting changes in no time flat. It dictates everything.

-- Ted Berrigan, poet and staff writer at the Paris Review

Now, Listen to Jack kerouac reading "American Haikus"

Below are some of his haiku I like:

In my medicine cabinet
the winter fly
has died of old age

Evening coming --

the office girl

unloosing her scarf

The summer chair

rocking by itself

In the blizzard

Missing a kick

at the icebox door

It closed anyway.

Useless, useless,

the heavy rain

Driving into the sea.

The windmills of

Oklahoma look

in every direction

Straining at the padlock

the garage doors

At noon

And the following haiku is my favorite:

Empty baseball field --
A robin,
Hops along the bench

L1 sets the context, seasonal, thematic and emotive, while allusive Ls 2 &3 make a shift in theme and imagery, thus establishing a contrasting relationship with their preceding line through Kerouac’s skillful use of the zoom-in technique. This contrasting relationship fully embodies the “principle of internal comparison,” which is well articulated by Harold G. Henderson in his study of Japanese haiku (p. 18); therefore, it  gains added poignancy. On the contrary, without establishing any sort of comparisons/contrasts, Shiki’s haiku below is a merely factual description of a scene.

The sparrow hops

Along the verandah,

With wet feet

Kerouac’s two-axis, cinematic haiku is beautifully crafted and serves well as a starting point for many thoughts and emotions (for more information about Shiki's haiku and Kerouac’s view of it, see my "To the lighthouse" post, titled "The Model for All Haiku!?").

Reading Japanese haiku through the lens of R. H. Blyth, Jack Kerouac familiarized himself with the form, but in "Explanatory Note to Some Western Haikus," he also proposed a way to write haiku in Western languages:

The "Haiku" was invented and developed over hundreds of years in Japan to be a complete poem in seventeen syllables and to pack in a whole vision of life in three short lines. A "Western Haiku" need not concern itself with the seventeen syllables since Western languages cannot adapt themselves to the fluid syllabic Japanese. I propose that "Western Haiku" simply say a lot in three short lines in any Western language.... Above all, a Haiku must be very simple and free of all poetic trickery and make a little picture and yet be as airy and graceful as a Vivaldi Pastorella.

Below is a relevant excerpt from Jack Kerouac’s Paris Review Interview about his view of haiku composition:

INTERVIEWER (Ted Berrigan)

You have said that haiku is not written spontaneously but is reworked and revised. Is this true of all your poetry? Why must the method for writing poetry differ from that of prose?

KEROUAC

No, first; haiku is best reworked and revised. I know, I tried. It has to be completely economical, no foliage and flowers and language rhythm, it has to be a simple little picture in three little lines. At least that's the way the old masters did it, spending months on three little lines and coming up, say, with:

In the abandoned boat,

The hail

Bounces about.

That's Shiki. But as for my regular English verse, I knocked it off fast like the prose, using, get this, the size of the notebook page for the form and length of the poem, just as a musician has to get out, a jazz musician, his statement within a certain number of bars, within one chorus, which spills over into the next, but he has to stop where the chorus page stops. And finally, too, in poetry you can be completely free to say anything you want, you don't have to tell a story, you can use secret puns, that's why I always say, when writing prose, “No time for poetry now, get your plain tale.”

INTERVIEWER

How do you write haiku?

KEROUAC

Haiku? You want to hear haiku? You see you got to compress into three short lines a great big story. First you start with a haiku situation—so you see a leaf, as I told her the other night, falling on the back of a sparrow during a great big October wind storm. A big leaf falls on the back of a little sparrow. How you going to compress that into three lines? Now in Japanese you got to compress it into seventeen syllables. We don't have to do that in American—or English—because we don't have the same syllabic bullshit that your Japanese language has. So you say: “Little sparrow”—you don't have to say little—everybody knows a sparrow is little because they fall so you say”

Sparrow

with big leaf on its back—

windstorm

No good, don't work, I reject it.

A little sparrow

when an autumn leaf suddenly sticks to its back

from the wind.

Hah, that does it. No, it's a little bit too long. See? It's already a little bit too long, Berrigan, you know what I mean?

INTERVIEWER

Seems like there's an extra word or something, like when. How about leaving out when? Say:

A sparrow

an autumn leaf suddenly sticks to its back --

from the wind!

KEROUAC

Hey, that's all right. I think when was the extra word. You got the right idea there, O'Hara! “A sparrow, an autumn leaf suddenly”—we don't have to say suddenly do we?

A sparrow

an autumn leaf sticks to its back --

from the wind!

[Kerouac writes final version into a spiral notebook.]

INTERVIEWER

Suddenly is absolutely the kind of word we don't need there. When you publish that will you give me a footnote saying you asked me a couple of questions?

KEROUAC

[writes] Berrigan noticed. Right?

INTERVIEWER

Do you write poetry very much? Do you write other poetry besides haiku?

KEROUAC

It's hard to write haiku. I write long silly Indian poems. You want to hear my long silly Indian poem?

INTERVIEWER

How has Zen influenced your work?

KEROUAC

What's really influenced my work is the Mahayana Buddhism, the original Buddhism of Gautama ´Sàkyamuni, the Buddha himself, of the India of old . . . Zen is what's left of his Buddhism, or Bodhi, after its passing into China and then into Japan. The part of Zen that's influenced my writing is the Zen contained in the haiku, like I said, the three-line, seventeen-syllable poems written hundreds of years ago by guys like Basho[WITH FLAT LINE ON TOP PLEASE!!], Issa, Shiki, and there've been recent masters. A sentence that's short and sweet with a sudden jump of thought in it is a kind of haiku, and there's a lot of freedom and fun in surprising yourself with that, let the mind willy-nilly jump from the branch to the bird. But my serious Buddhism, that of ancient India, has influenced that part in my writing that you might call religious, or fervent, or pious, almost as much as Catholicism has. Original Buddhism referred to continual conscious compassion, brotherhood, the dana paramita (meaning the perfection of charity), don't step on the bug, all that, humility, mendicancy, the sweet sorrowful face of the Buddha (who was of Aryan origin by the way, I mean of Persian warrior caste, and not Oriental as pictured) . . . in original Buddhism no young kid coming to a monastery was warned that “Here we bury them alive.” He was simply given soft encouragement to meditate and be kind. The beginning of Zen was when Buddha, however, assembled all the monks together to announce a sermon and choose the first patriarch of the Mahayana church: instead of speaking, he simply held up a flower. Everybody was flabbergasted except Ka´syapiya [FLAT THINGIES OVER FIRST A AND I], who smiled. Kásyapiya [DITTO!!] was appointed the first patriarch. This idea appealed to the Chinese, like the sixth patriarch Hui-Neng who said, “From the beginning nothing ever was,” and wanted to tear up the records of Buddha's sayings as kept in the sutras; sutras are “threads of discourse.” In a way, then, Zen is a gentle but goofy form of heresy, though there must be some real kindly old monks somewhere and we've heard about the nutty ones. I haven't been to Japan. Your Maha Roshi Yoshi is simply a disciple of all this and not the founder of anything new at all, of course. On The Johnny Carson Show he didn't even mention Buddha's name. Maybe his Buddha is Mia.

One Man's Maple Moon: New Pain Tanka by Johannes S. H. Bjerg

English Original

a new pain
in an old place
there is
no “I”
behind the mirror

Johannes S. H. Bjerg


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

新疼痛
在老的部位
鏡子後面
沒有
“我”

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

新疼痛
在老的部位
镜子後面
没有
“我”


Bio Sketch

Born in 1957, Johannes S. H. Bjerg is a Dane writing in Danish & English simultaneously. Writing mainly (hai)ku. Main blog: 2 tongues / 2 tunger. Instigator and co-editor of Bones - a journal for contemporary haiku. Included in New Resonanse 8, Red Moon Press, 2013.Books: Penguins / Pingviner - 122 bilingual haiku (English and Danish) in 2011 through Cyberwit, India. Parallels, English language short verse, Yet To Be Named Free Press, England, 2013. Threads / Tråde bilingual haiku, Createspace 2013, Notes 10 11 -12 / Noter 10 11 -12, bilingual (solo) linked verse, Yet To Be Named Free Press, England, 2013. Paper Bell Lessons / Papirklokkebelæringerne, bilingual haiku, Createspace, 2013.

Butterfly Dream: Widow Haiku by Anne Curran

English Original

weight loss...
a widow speaks of
her deceased

A Hundred Gourds, 1.4, September 2012

Anne Curran


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

做減肥 ...
一個寡婦提起
她的亡夫

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

做减肥 ...
一个寡妇提起
她的亡夫


Bio Sketch

Anne Curran lives in Hamilton, New Zealand. She have been writing haiku and tanka over a period of three years or so. Anne has been fortunate to enjoy some wonderful mentoring and collaboration from writers and editors which has made her work an enjoyable experience and assisted her to publication. She considers herself a beginner writer and looks forward to further practice and honing of her skills in months and years to come.

A Room of My Own: Our Dreams

for my father and his generation who gave up their dreams to pursue the National Dream for the Chinese people

Six decades ago, there was a civil war in China. The ruling Chinese Nationalist Party, the Kuomintang, was defeated by the Chinese Communists. Chairman Chiang Kai-shek retreated with his troops to Taiwan, where he hoped to regroup quickly and retake mainland China. My father was a first lieutenant in Chiang's military troops, and, like the majority of mainland Chinese in Taiwan, shared with him this same illusion.

When I started grade four, my father decided I was old enough to learn the good soldier's essential lesson: obey orders and don't ask questions. But I didn't want to be a soldier. They looked dumb to me.

One day, my father tried several times to teach me how to salute, but I couldn't get my hand straight enough. He ordered me to stand in front of the portrait of our ancestors. He shouted at me, "Stand straight and still until our ancestors are satisfied and smile; or else you must apologize to them for failing to follow through on my words: to salute properly. Then you can go."

I stood for hours, but they wouldn't smile at or for me. Finally, I couldn't bear it any longer and fainted. Later, when I woke up, I saw my father's eyes brimming with tears.

into the Taiwan Strait

Father rides on my shoulders

midsummer dream

Published in Contemporary Haibun Online, 7:3, October 2011

Note: 42 years ago today, the United Nations General Assembly voted to admit mainland China and expel Taiwan (officially the Republic of China, ROC, which was established in China in 1912, a charter member of the United Nations and one of five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council). This socio-politically charged event started the first wave of Taiwanese immigrants to North America, especially to the USA, and the teaching of and writing about the Modern History/histories of China have become the battlefield of the meanings of being Chinese/Taiwanese.

Below is my reflection about this on-going, heated debate in Taiwan:

We Are Haunted by Names

Living on Ilha Formosa,

we are haunted by a war of names,

fighting for the Republic of China/Taiwan.

We Chinese, we Taiwanese,

will never end our civil war,

a bloody bloodless civil bore.

No Kamikazes crashing,

no Dr. Luther King murdered.

To Uncle Sam and Brother Momotaro,

We are the good soldiers.

Lacking the ghosts of history,

we are haunted.

Published in Rust+Moth, Winter 2010

When emigrating to Canada in 2002,  I suffered one of the political consequences of this decades-old event:

Following the Moon to the Maple Land

Welcome to Canada.

Name: Chen-ou Liu (phonic);

Country of Birth: R.O.C.;

(Cross out R.O.C. and fill in Taiwan)

Place of Birth; Date of Birth; Sex;

simply more technocratic questions

the Immigration Officer needs to pin down my borders.

He is always looking for shortcuts,

more interested in the roadside signposts

than in the landscapes that have made me.

The line he wants me confined to

is an analytically recognizable category:

landed immigrant. My history is meticulously stamped.

Now, you're legally a landed immigrant.

Take a copy of A Newcomer’s Introduction to Canada.

Broken/Breaking English: Selected Short Poems, 2012

(Note: A Newcomer’s Introduction to Canada was written and issued by Citizenship and Immigration Canada to give new immigrants helpful information for planning ahead, but it is not a detailed guide. For more information, they will be given another book called Welcome to Canada: What You Should Know. It contains specific information on all the practical aspects of living in Canada)

One Man's Maple Moon: Creation Tanka by George Swede

English Original

Were there cries
of passion during
my creation?
In gray morning light
veins stand out.   

Gusts, 17, Spring/Summer 2013

George Swede


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

創作過程
有激情
的呼喊嗎？
在灰色晨光中
我的靜脈顯露

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

创作过程
有激情
的呼喊吗？
在灰色晨光中
我的静脉显露


Bio Sketch

George Swede has published two collections of tanka: First Light, First Shadows (Liverpool: Snapshot Press, 2006) and White Thoughts, Blue Mind (Edmonton: Inkling Press, 2010). His tanka have also appeared in a number of anthologies, including The Tanka Anthology (Red Moon Press, 2003) and a number of journals, including Ribbons and Gusts.

Butterfly Dream: Falling Snow Haiku by Kajiwara Hashin

English Original

no sky,
no land -- just
snow falling

Selected Haiku, Haiku International Association
 
Kajiwara Hashin (1864-?)
co-translated by S. Kazuo, P. Donegan, and K. Tadashi


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

不見天，
不見地 -- 只是
雪花飄落

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

不见天，
不见地 -- 只是
雪花飘落


Bio Sketch

Kajiwara Hashin was born in 1864, a disciple of Kyoshi and a druggist; much of his life is unknown. Although not included in any of the Japanese saijiki (books of season words), the haiku above is well-known outside Japan, and has been translated into several languages, such as, English, Flemish , Dutch, ..etc.

Hot News: WMT's Seamus Heaney Tribute for the Arts Council of Northern Ireland

I was invited by Aislinn Clarke, Artistic Director of Wireless Mystery Theatre (Northern Ireland’s only audio theatre company), to take part in WMT's Seamus Heaney Tribute for the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, for Nov. 8th.

Below are my submitted poems, which were published on NeverEnding Story:

inner émigré

rolling off my tongue...

the professor's

right eye flickers

in a long shadow

(for more information about Seamus Heaney's concept of inner émigré, see my "Politics/Poetics of Re-Homing, V")

 

Father recited

Li Po's Quiet Night Thought...

I listen

to Heaney's river

in the trees

 

Toronto snowstorm...

writing haiku to escape

the fear of silence

(for Seamus Heaney, Poet Of "the Silent Things")


For more information about Seamus Heaney's view of haiku, see my  "Dark Wings of Night: Seamus Heaney and His View of Haiku"

Butterfly Dream: Butterfly Haiku by Rita Odeh

English Original

a butterfly
becomes the tree's
handkerchief

Simply Haiku, 10:1, Summer 2012 

Rita Odeh


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

一隻蝴蝶
成為樹的
手帕

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

一只蝴蝶
成为树的
手帕


Bio Sketch

Rita Odeh is from Nazareth, Israel. She comes from a christian Palestinian  family. She has B.A. in English and Comparative Literature from Haifa University. She has published 6 books of poetry,one book of short stories, three electronic novels, one e-book of Haiku. Her poetry has been published in several international publications. Rita is Co-Editor of International Haiku. Her haiku and haiga artwork are featured in her "Catching The Moment" blog.

One Man's Maple Moon: Moon Phases Tanka by Susan Constable

English Original

watching the moon
wax, wane, wax full again
I wait for you
to choose between loving her
and coming home to me

Atlas Poetica, 8, 2011

Susan Constable


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

注視著
月滿,月殘,再次月滿
我等你
在愛她或回到我身邊
之間做出選擇

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

注视著
月满,月残,再次月满
我等你
在爱她或回到我身边
之间做出选择


Bio Sketch

Susan Constable’s tanka appear in numerous journals and anthologies, including Take Five. She placed third in the 2010 Tanka Society of America Contest and her tanka collection, The Eternity of Waves, is one of the winning entries in the eChapbook Awards for 2012. She is currently the tanka editor for the international on-line journal, A Hundred Gourds. Susan lives with her husband on Canada’s beautiful west coast.

Butterfly Dream: Fading Light Haiku by Bob Lucky

English Original

fading light
dad tells the only story
he remembers  

                                             

Modern Haiku, 41.2, Summer 2010

Bob Lucky 


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

天色漸晚
爸爸訴說唯一
記得的故事

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

天色渐晚
爸爸诉说唯一
记得的故事


Bio Sketch

Bob Lucky teaches at the International Community School of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. His work has appeared in numerous journals, including Rattle, The Prose-Poem Project, Emerald Bolts, Modern Haiku, Presence, Ribbons, Eucalypt, and Atlas Poetica. He is co-author of the chapbook my favorite thing. 

A Room of My Own: A Bittersweet Year of Travel

Calgary Stampede
her harsh words pile up
along my spine

Antwerp fortress
a raven's caw darkens
the autumn sky

its shadow
overlaps with mine
Minerva Statue

Newstead Abbey
under the starless sky
echoes of an old tale

listening to the sunshine
through the windows
Sagrada Familia

Manneken Pis
between tree-lined streets
winter drizzle

Bruges in Spring
a chair and I, a tourist
in the empty room

insects trilling
Musical Instrument Museum
in spring sunlight

summer in Brussels
Famous Beer Inspector
on their T-shirts

CN Tower
penetrating the moon
under and alone

Butterfly Dream: Inland Haiku by Barry George

English Original

gull's cry! --
my thoughts
far inland too

    

Frogpond, 20.2, 1997

 

Barry George
 

 

Chinese Translation (Traditional)

 

海鷗的哀鳴! --
我的思念
也遠在內陸

 

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

 

海鸥的哀鸣! --
我的思念
也远在内陆

 

 

Bio Sketch

 

Barry George’s haiku have been widely published in haiku journals, and in anthologies such as A New Resonance 2: Emerging Voices in English-Language Haiku, The New Haiku, and Haiku 21. His poems have appeared in Japanese, German, Romanian, Croatian, and French translations. He has won international Japanese short-form competitions including First Prize in the Gerald R. Brady Senryu Contest.  Poems from his book, Wrecking Ball and Other Urban Haiku, were nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

A Poet's Roving Thoughts: On Beverly Acuff Momoi's Lifting the Towhee’s Song

Dual-Perspective (structure & titling) Analysis of an Award-Winning eChapbook of Haibu (with two updates; see below)

Lifting the Towhee’s Song by Beverly Acuff Momoi. Snapshot Press, 2012. eChapbook, 26 pp. Free and available online at http://goo.gl/3Ijy7

The thing that is truly superior and extremely rare in poetry is not the fine line, or even the percentage of fine lines which people think they can point to in a work and deliberately single out from the whole; it is, in my opinion, the composition of that whole, by which I do not at all mean the logical sequence and abstract hierarchy of ideas, but the composition which ordains the succession of forms, images, tones, rhythms, and sonorities, and which alone makes of the poem a unity that is indivisible . . .  -- Paul Valéry

Beverly Acuff Momoi’s Lifting the Towhee’s Song, a 2011 Snapshot Press eChapbook Award winner, is a collection of 19 haibun “written in the weeks after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan . . . . The chapbook began two weeks after the initial disaster, moving between California and Fukushima, what [she] heard on the news and what [she] learned from [her] family.”1 

The thematic threads that run though much of the chapbook are the 2011 earthquake and tsunami and their after-effects, emotional, familial, communal, environmental, and socioeconomic, such as “Mornings I sit. Buddhism teaches non-attachment, but I am terrified. I close my eyes, and with each breath, waves slam against the harbor . . . . Since the earthquake, 10,418 people are dead. The number of victims is expected to grow. The meteorological agency has issued warnings for a severe drop in temperature . . . . Sometimes he waits eight hours for a quarter-tank of gas but he does not dare let it drop to empty. He does not know where, or if, another station will be open . . . . she became hysterical, throwing herself against her mother and crying, ‘I can’t stand this! I can’t! I can’t!’ She recalls my grandmother looking straight into her eyes and saying, “Yes, you can. You can stand it. You will . . . . Every night now I fall asleep with the television on. Sometimes it seems my husband does not sleep at all . . . . Four weeks after the quake, and there is no running water in the shelter . . . .The man shakes his head. He was in Kobe in ’95. Helped in the recovery after the Great Sichuan Earthquake in 2008. ‘I’ve never seen anything like this’ . . . . Does grieving ever end? For weeks, people in northeast Japan wander among the wreckage of their lives, looking for family and friends, praying to find their bodies . . . .” Thematically speaking, each haibun in the chapbook not only works on its own, but also can be read as a juxtaposed haibun to the 19-haibun sequence through the “content link.”2

However, these 19 haibun vary little in structure, corresponding relationships of prose to haiku, and style. All the haiku, except the two in the title haibun, are solitary and used as the closing verses. Eight haibun consist of one paragraph and one haiku, and another eight two paragraphs (usually one long and one very short) and one haiku. Structurally speaking, most of the haibun in the chapbook function like the basic unit of standard haibun as described in Jeffrey Woodward's “Form in Haibun: An Outline”: the prefatory prose, “a vignette that focuses upon detail carefully chosen for its significance to the motif and a closing haiku’s sensory perceptions compared with or contrasted to the imagery of the preceding paragraph.”3 

The prefatory prose is written mainly in the two styles, emotionally evocative and journalistic, which are exemplified in the first two haibun:

March 26, 2011

Mornings I sit. Buddhism teaches non-attachment, but I am terrified. I close my eyes, and with each breath, waves slam against the harbor. In . . . and out. Homes, now kindling. Family cars in Tonka toy pile-ups. In. And out. And with this breath. People scrambling, leaving all but life itself. Again. In. Out. How do I let them go? A woman sitting, palms joined. No words. Just the ocean. And this moment. In. Out.

Earth Hour --

it’s lights out, just the stars

what’s left of the moon

Snow Country

The interpreter’s voice is tight. Her words stumble, start over sharp intakes of breath. The water in reactor number 2 is extremely high—ten million times higher—in radioactive substances. The source of the leakage has not been determined. About the workers who stood in irradiated water in reactor number 3, the degree of injury may not be known for several weeks. The government has criticized the utility for improper management.

Since the earthquake, 10,418 people are dead. The number of victims is expected to grow. The meteorological agency has issued warnings for a severe drop in temperature. High winds, rough seas are also likely. People are advised to take care.

not a cherry blossom in sight

spring arrives late

in snow country

The obvious weakness in these two haibun is that the closing haiku are not strong enough to cap the prose and function as the culminating point of the composition. It’s because in the first haiku, “it’s lights out” is implied in its preceding line (“Earth Hour”) while in the second one, lines 2 and 3 are explanatory. Like the first two haiku in the chapbook, most of the rest cannot properly fulfill their functional role mainly due to the overuse of figurative language and the weak cutting effects created by the juxtaposed images in the haiku,4 such as the following:

full moon maple

struggling to bloom

March flurries

(in "Waiting for Gas")

shadow of spring --

how hungry the waves are

reclaiming the land

(in "Asleep")

this precarious spring

see how the bamboo bends

bows

(in "How the Bamboo Bends")

against this

wide and sorrowful sky we are

all ashes and smoke

(in "All Ashes")

earthquake light

how does the tree survive

this spring

(in "Earthquake Light")

This weakness reminds me of Woodward's insightful advice in his above-mentioned article: “This form, while well-adapted for the abbreviated anecdote or descriptive sketch, may find its efficacy called into question with the introduction of greater expository or narrative complications. One concluding haiku will rarely balance well with a story that employs multiple characters and requires hundreds of words for the telling.”5

However, the poet pays little attention to the functional roles played by a poem’s title. The titles of these 19 haibun, except that of the opener, are taken directly from their prose or haiku. All of them are not fully utilized. For example, in the following three short haibun, I don’t see any thing beneficial by using titles that are the lines taken from their poem texts.

Savage Spring

In California, the poppies are brilliant this year. I have been so lost in grief, then suddenly this wild swath of life. I see them as if for the first time, golden faces turned to the heavens.

savage spring

a single mud-stained photograph

of her three-year-old

How the Bamboo Bends

April 11, 2011. 02:46 p.m. Throughout Japan, sirens. Then silence. How to endure this endless grief.

this precarious spring

see how the bamboo bends

bows

Golden Week

It’s the start of Golden Week in Japan, and all the trains are crowded. My husband waits in line for over an hour to get a ticket on the Shinkansen. Everyone is going home.

last day of April

returning to Fukushima

for the funeral

In the poems above, every line could have been fully utilized to increase the impact of a poem. Below are two fine examples by Charles Simic and Joseph Stroud respectively that can help make my point:

Slaughterhouse Flies

Evenings, they ran their bloody feet

Over the pages of my schoolbooks.

With eyes closed, I can still hear

The trees on our street

Saying a moody farewell to summer,

And someone, under our window, recalling

The silly old cows hesitating,

Growing suddenly suspicious

Just as the blade drops down on them.

Without the first word in the title, this image-dense poem could be easily misunderstood as a flight of poetic fantasy. Simic’s title helps the reader to figure out the context and setting, making the opening image visually and psychologically more appealing.

And I raised my hand in return

Every morning for two weeks on my walk into the village

I would see the young goat on the grassy slope above the stream.

It belonged to the Gypsies who lived in the plaza below the castle.

One day on my walk back to the mill house I saw the little goat

hanging from a tree by its hind legs, and a Gypsy was pulling

the skin off with a pair of pliers which he waved to me in greeting.

Stroud's skillful use of the title as the speaker's response to the events portrayed in the poem is emotionally effective, and his title can be read as the conclusion of the poem, and is therefore part of the poem itself.

In this collection of 19 haibun there are five titles repeating the words or phrases in the opening sentence, such as "Waiting for Gas," from "I sit in a queue two-cars deep, waiting for gas"; "Shudders’" from "My mother shudders at the first whisper of wind"; "Shigata Ga Nai," from "Shigata ga nai"; "Asleep’" from "Every night now I fall asleep with the television on"; "Golden Week," from "It’s the start of Golden Week in Japan, and all the trains are crowded." This shows that the poet doesn’t recognize the corresponding relationship of the title to its haibun. Take “Shigata Ga Nai,” for example. The use of a run-on title can increase the thematic and emotive impact of this repeated phase at the end of the prose.

Most importantly, paying little attention to the functional roles that can be played by a poem’s title is not an individual, but a communal problem. It’s not uncommon in prominent haiku/tanka-related journals to read a haiku/tanka sequence (of nine to 25 lines) or a short haibun whose title is taken directly from a line of its poem text. Now, I think it is time for the haiku/tanka community to think about the creative use6 of the title in a poem in order to increase its thematic and emotive impact.
 

Finally, there are a few words I would like to say about Beverly Acuff Momoi’s Lifting the Towhee’s Song. It is a material-rich, theme-heavy, artistically-unbalanced collection of haibun with least-utilized titles. If Momoi can take more time enhancing her haiku, rethinking about the corresponding relationships of prose to haiku, and effectively utilizing the titles in the book, I think Lifting the Towhee’s Song will be a good book to read and reflect upon.

Notes  

1. Momoi, Beverly Acuff, Lifting the Towhee's Song, Haibun eChapbook, accessed at http://goo.gl/gIkxf

2. In a “content link,” the added verse is joined to the previous verse by cause and effect, narrative development, scenic extension, temporal progression, or any other logic connection based on “content” (kokoro). See Shirane, Haruo, Traces of Dreams: Landscape, Cultural Memory, and the Poetry of Basho (Stanford University Press, 1998), p. 87. 

3. Haibun Today, 4:4, December 2010, accessed at http://goo.gl/yzBZM  

4. For further discussion on the issue related to cutting effects, see my “To the Lighthouse” posts, “Cutting through Time and Space” and “Re-examining the Concept and Practice of Cutting,” which can be accessed at http://goo.gl/gh2sM and http://goo.gl/yikEE respectively. 

5. Woodward, ibid. 

6. One of the most skillfully utilized titles I've known of is Ginsberg's "Written in My Dream by W. C. Williams." The form of this brilliantly-crafted poem, line breaks, and sentiments are his response to and elaboration of Williams's "The Locust Tree in Flower." In his allusive title, Ginsberg acknowledges dual authorship and presents his poem as a tribute to his friend and mentor, W. C. Williams (Herbert Kohl, A Grain of Poetry, pp. 54-7). For further discussion on this neglected issue and more examples, please see my “To the Lighthouse” post, entitled “The Title of a Poem Should Never Be Ignored,” which can be accessed at http://goo.gl/8Vuhx

First published in Haibun Today, 7:2, June 2013


Updated:

1 I published another "To the Lighthouse" post on titling, in which I further explained what I meant by "effectively utilizing  the title of a poem" through insightful excerpts from scholarly references and the judge's (Roberta Beary's) comments on the 2012 Haiku Society of America Haibun Awards and two "so-called rule-breaking" poems (included in the comment section). This post has been well-received and constantly reprinted in e-papers, which will be included in the forthcoming "Hot News" post. For more information, see my "To the Lighthouse" post, titled "The Art of Titling."

Below is excerpted from my comments on the art of titling:

Titology 101:By taking a line from the poem text to use as a title, the poet runs the risk of weakening the power of the line.

One exception: Effective use of repetition. For more information, see "To the Lighthouse: Repetition, Repetition, Repetition "

Two examples:

The Tide Rises, the Tide Falls by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The tide rises, the tide falls,
The twilight darkens, the curlew calls;
Along the sea-sands damp and brown
The traveller hastens toward the town,
And the tide rises, the tide falls.

Darkness settles on roofs and walls,
But the sea, the sea in the darkness calls;
The little waves, with their soft, white hands,
Efface the footprints in the sands,
And the tide rises, the tide falls.

The morning breaks; the steeds in their stalls
Stamp and neigh, as the hostler calls;
The day returns, but nevermore
Returns the traveller to the shore,
And the tide rises, the tide falls.

"The Tide Rises, the Tide Falls" is repeated four times in the poem. The repeating ebb-and-flow action of the title gives a strong visual feel to the poem, guiding the rhythmic pace.

Nothing in That Drawer by Ron Padgett

Nothing in that drawer.
Nothing in that drawer.
Nothing in that drawer.
Nothing in that drawer.
Nothing in that drawer.
Nothing in that drawer.
Nothing in that drawer.
Nothing in that drawer.
Nothing in that drawer.
Nothing in that drawer.
Nothing in that drawer.
Nothing in that drawer.
Nothing in that drawer.
Nothing in that drawer.

In his “postmodernist sonnet,” Ron Padgett tinkers with form “irreverently.”

The following is an excerpt from Clay Matthews' essay, "On Ron Padgett :"

Similarly, in “Nothing in That Drawer,” another of Padgett’s poems in form, and one of his most anthologized, we find a sublime revelry in the sonnet and by extension poetry at large. In this poem, each of the fourteen lines that make up the sonnet is the same: “Nothing in that drawer.” The repetition becomes comedic, as we visually imagine a speaker looking in one drawer after another, or perhaps the same drawer over and over. And yet the move to search in this poem is also reminiscent of the postmodern sublime, as it constantly points to the failure of language and form to achieve an absolute unity—with themselves and with the Idea. We have in this sonnet the constant search, constantly postponed or deferred. We’re never sure what the speaker is even searching for, or if the movement of the poem is simply language, or boredom, even. We’re left with a sort of constant opening and disappointment, which in many ways is what poetry as postmodern sublime is—an opening on a thought or structure accompanied by a delight in the failure of the opening. And in the case of “Nothing in That Drawer,” because we’re never sure of the action, or even the context, it seems the poem is less about a nostalgia for the unpresentable and more about the loss as bliss, the sublime itself.

Instead of lamenting the gap between form and content, word and concept, Padgett places them in conversation with one another, allowing the form to speak to the content and vice versa. The sonnet form in this poem is wrapped in a contemporary humor, much like the Gehry house Jameson discusses in Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. And like the Gehry house, which features an older, traditional home renovated by postmodern architecture, Padgett’s poem allows the inside and the outside to converge. Thus, the form of the sonnet, the sonnet as move from proposition to resolution, offers a narrative to the very language that also works to deny that narrative and/or resolution.


2  Below is excerpted from Ray Rasmussen's "Commentary: Jeffrey Woodward's "Time with the Heron" –Poetic Techniques in Haibun Composition," Contemporary Haibun Today, 9:3, October 2013:

I. The Use and Abuse of Repetition

Having myself been an editor for several haiku-genre journals, I have often encountered instances of what I call the 'lazy writer sin'. These are writers who repeat words and phrases out of habit and who may simply be unaware that unintended repetition can detract from the flow and beauty of a piece. And I've often seen members of writing forums criticize repetition with little consideration for whether the writer intended a deliberate use of a poetic device. The message conveyed is that writers should use a word or phrase but once in title, prose passage and poem. Although such criticism may be valid in a given instance, to suggest it as a hard and fast rule constitutes the parallel sin of 'lazy criticism'. If a reader has insight, suggestions may be helpful.

Of course, the generalization that repetition is something to avoid is nonsense. Repetition, fragmentation, compression and rhyme are well-established devices in poetry...

To prove his point, Ray gives a detailed analysis of  Jeffrey Woodward's  "Time with the Heron:"


Time with the Heron

The angler will do well to set his fly-rod aside and forget for a time the alluring ritual to-and-fro rhythm of a cast, to sit on the bank beneath an inviting willow, to watch the current slur over a sandy shallow or ruffle above a rift in the rock.

Time will allow one to study the blue heron not far from the willow's shadow, to learn the skill that is his by concentrated patience and poise. The heron stalks his prey—stepping lightly upon stilts now—with a deliberation given only to one for whom time has no meaning. Even so, the heron's painstaking stealth muddies the stream. Even so, the heron pauses, stares.

Time will allow one to repeat the lyrical names of hand-tied flies—Blue Quill, Royal Coachman, Pale Evening Dun, Yellow Sally, Gray Hackle—until the syllables become a meaningless babble, having only their own inherent musical properties, like the voice of the brook before the first man came.

Time will allow the angler, also, to study that maze of light everywhere at play with the water and to gaze, without ease of penetration, at the cloudy trail a heron makes.

when the water clears,
the mind, also, of
a great blue heron


In her article, titled "What Haibun Poets Can Learn From Non-haikai Western Poetry Practices: The Valentine's Day Skywriter Spells Out His Own Name, " of the same CHO issue,  J. Zimmerman gives readers a lot of quotes about titling and some statistics about the poets who take lines from their poems to use as titles, but she never makes any following distinctions:  between a short poem and a longer one; between the poems with effective use of repetition (like the ones discussed above) and the ones without. Most importantly, she  never analyzes one single poem mentioned in the article to prove her point. How do Rasmussen's article and hers rate as to enrich the reader's understanding the issue of titling in the context of  the use of repetition ? It's your judgement call.

One Man's Maple Moon: Wild Violets Tanka by Amelia Fielden

English Original

 

those wild violets
you'd nurtured for me
bloomed brilliantly
in the early spring
our friendship died

Excellent,7th International Tanka Festival Competition, 2012

 

Amelia Fielden

 

Chinese Translation (Traditional)

 

你為我培育
那些野生紫羅蘭
燦爛地開花
早春的時候
我們友誼已死

 

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

 

你为我培育
那些野生紫罗兰
灿烂地开花
早春的时候
我们友谊已死

 

 

Bio Sketch

 

Amelia Fielden is an Australian.She is a professional translator of Japanese Literature, and an enthusiastic writer of tanka in English.Amelia has had published 18 books of translations,and 7 of her own work,as well as 2 collections of responsive tanka with fellow Australian,Kathy Kituai,and 2 bilingual  collections with Saeko Ogi. In 2007 Amelia & co-translator Kozue Uzawa were awarded the Donald Keene Prize For Translation of Japanese Literature,by Columbia University,New York, for the anthology Ferris Wheel : 101 Modern & Contemporary Japanese Tanka.

Butterfly Dream: Night Storm Haiku by Nola Borrell

English Original

night storm
her waters
                        break

Commended,  NZPS International Haiku Contest 2008

Nola Borrell 


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

暴風夜

她的羊水
                       破了 

Chinese Translation (Simplified) 

暴风夜

她的羊水
                       破了 


Bio Sketch

Nola Borrell has had haiku published in New Zealand and overseas since the mid 1990s, and has won various awards. Her work has appeared in NZ journals and anthologies, Australia, US, UK, Croatia, Slovenia, Roumania, Japan and Algeria and online. Nola co-edited (with Karen P Butterworth) the taste of nashi - New Zealand Haiku (Windrift, 2008). Her chapbook this wide sky was published in 2012 (Puriri Press). Nola is a member of Zazen, an international haiku workshop.

Poetic Musings: Corpse of Loneliness Tanka by Chen-ou Liu

putting the corpse

of loneliness around my neck

I jump

into the darkness

of a spring day

Back Cover Tanka, Ribbons, 6:3,  Fall 2010

"In 1798, William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge co-published a ground breaking collection of poems they called Lyrical Ballads, and thereby ushered in the Romantic movement in English literature. Among the poems in their volume, the longest and most important that Coleridge contributed was "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner." In his a-b-c-b narrative masterpiece, Coleridge writes of a sailor who, for no apparent reason, shoots and kills the albatross that has been following his ship. His wanton act results in a curse upon the ship and its crew, plunging it into disaster and suffering. His crewmates tie the dead albatross around his neck as punishment and in the vain hope that it might somehow alleviate their agonies. After the entire crew dies, and only the guilty Mariner is left, he survives only to be condemned to wander the earth forever, seeking out others to whom he must tell his tale.

In a vivid flash of five lines, Liu’s poem brings the famous Coleridge work immediately to mind. In the tanka, the concrete is replaced with the abstract, but it is an abstraction given power and life by use of the corpse metaphor. Loneliness, is an abstraction given power and life by use of the corpse metaphor. Loneliness, especially intense loneliness, often does feel like a form of death in life, and Liu’s opening lines prepare the reader for the last two. Spring, typically associated with rebirth, sunlight, and joy, here takes on the opposite qualities with the simple alliterative combination of “darkness” and “spring day.” The persona doesn’t step into this ominous day, but jumps, as if jumping off a ledge into an unknown and dangerous abyss.

The simple structure of this tanka, in which two pairs of disturbing lines are separated by the minimal noun/verb phrase, defies analysis. There is no complex assonance, no ornate symmetry or repetitive tones; the poem seems to draw its power from the barest presentation of image and action. However, once read, it is not easy to forget, so searing it.

Has Liu read the Coleridge poem? Perhaps, perhaps not. Art dips into the universal consciousness of the human mind. It is no surprise, then, if two poets separated by two centuries dip in and come back with remarkably similar images. "
 

-- Review written by Ribbons editor Dave Bacharach (p. 1)

 

Loneliness, is an abstraction given power and life by use of the corpse metaphor. Loneliness, especially intense loneliness, often does feel like a form of death in life, and Liu’s opening lines prepare the reader for the last two. Spring, typically associated with rebirth, sunlight, and joy, here takes on the opposite qualities with the simple alliterative combination of “darkness” and “spring day.”

In "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," Coleridge constantly uses  personification and repetition to create a sense of danger, the supernatural, or serenity, depending mainly on the mood in different parts of the poem. Like him, I use the same narrative technique, personification.

In Part III of the poem, the ship encounters a ghostly vessel. On board are Death (a skeleton) and the "Night-mare Life-in-Death" (a pale woman). They play dice for the souls of the crew, and the result is that Death wins the lives of the crew members and Life-in-Death the life of the Mariner. Her metaphoric name provides  a clue to the Mariner's fate: he will endure a fate worse than death as punishment for his killing of the black albatross. This is the main reason for my use of “the darkness/ of a spring day.”

Butterfly Dream: Ulster Hedgerow Haiku by Marion Clarke

English Original

Ulster hedgerow

the steady click
of golf balls

for Seamus Heaney

Marion Clarke

Chinese Translation (Traditional)

阿爾斯特綠籬

穩定地擊打
高爾夫球 

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

阿尔斯特绿篱

稳定地击打
高尔夫球

Bio Sketch

A member of the Irish Haiku Society, Marion Clarke is a writer and artist from Warrenpoint, Northern Ireland. Her work was highly commended in the IHS 2011 International Haiku Competition and, in summer 2012, she received a Sakura award in the Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival contest. A selection of her haiku featured in the first national collection of haiku from Ireland, Bamboo Dreams, edited by Anatoly Kudryavitsky. Marion’s poetry and artwork can be found at http://seaviewwarrenpoint.wordpress.com/

Butterfly Dream: Crossroad Haiku by Al Fogel

English Original

crossroad
as I reach for his hand
my son pulls away

So Little Time

Al Fogel


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

十字路口
當我的手伸向他的手
我的兒子將手摔開

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

十字路口
当我的手伸向他的手
我的儿子将手摔开


Bio Sketch

Al Fogel , 68, began his haiku journey about 3 years ago and has been writing haiku, senryu, tanka and haibun ever since. Some of his work has appeared in leading haijin journals around the globe. He has recently published two books: So Little Time and  Holding Hand-helds: Senryu for the Cyber

Politics/Poetics of Re-Homing, VIII

my English words
nothing's wrong, I'm fine
slip into
our phone conversation...
Mother's ocean-wide silence

Atlas Poetica, 15, July 2013

Note: you can read its preceding tanka or the whole sequence here

Dark Wings of the Night: James A. Emanuel, Creator of the Jazz Haiku

I just read William Yardley's New York Times article, and found out that American expatriate poet, critic and inventor of the jazz haiku, James A. Emanuel, died on Sept. 28 in Paris.

James A. Emanuel, a poet, educator and critic who published more than a dozen volumes of his poetry, much of it after his frustration with racism in the United States helped motivate him to move to France, died on Sept. 27 in Paris. He was 92. ...

In the 1960s he taught at City College in New York, where he started the first class on black poetry, wrote academic studies of Langston Hughes and other black writers, and mentored young scholars, including the critic Addison Gayle Jr. ...

Even as his reputation grew, he became increasingly frustrated with racism in America. When European universities began offering him teaching positions in the late ’60s, he accepted. By the early ’80s, after the death of his only child in Los Angeles, he had vowed never to return to the United States. He never did.

He wrote often of racism, including in an early work, “The Negro”:

Never saw him.

Never can.

Hypothetical,

Haunting man.

Eyes a-saucer,

Yessir bossir,

Dice a-clicking,

Razor flicking.

The-ness froze him

In a dance.

A-ness never

Had a chance.

Naomi Long Madgett, a poet and the founder of Lotus Press, which published many of his works, said Mr. Emanuel was masterfully precise, careful to leave room for readers to participate.

“Some poets don’t know when a poem should stop,” Ms. Madgett said. “It’s much harder to write a short poem than it is to write one that just rambles on and on. James Emanuel knew what to say and what to leave out.” ...

In his later years, Mr. Emanuel claimed to have invented a new form of literature: the jazz haiku, stanzas of 17 syllables he read to the accompaniment of jazz music. Like the music, they felt improvisational even as they respected structure:

Four-letter word JAZZ: 

naughty, sexy, cerebral, 

but solarplexy.

-- excerpted from “James A. Emanuel, Poet Who Wrote of Racism, Dies at 92,” by William Yardley, New York Times, October 11, 2013

James A. Emanuel is credited with creating the jazz haiku, which he had read to musical accompaniment throughout Europe and Africa. He successfully “[expanded] the imagery of the traditional haiku beyond its single impression by including narrative and rhyme” (Hakutani, p.195). For this creation he was awarded the Sidney Bechet Creative Award in 1996. Throughout his writing career, he published two collections of haiku: Reaching for Mumia: 16 Haiku in 1995, and Jazz from the Haiku King in 1999. For him, Jazz and haiku both “convey spontaneously created expressions that are free from any economic, social, or political impulses” (Hakutani, p.202),  and one of the most important motifs in his haiku is jazz: everything is jazz and can be expressed in a three-line poem:

EVERYTHING is jazz:

snails, jails, rails, tails, males, females,

snow-white cotton bales. 

The following is a group of haiku, entitled “‘I’m a Jazz Singer,’ She Replied,” that consists of an introductory haiku followed by four haiku, each beginning with “Jazz”:

He dug what she said:

bright jellies, smooth marmalade

spread on warm brown bread.

“Jazz” from drowsy lips

orchids lift to honeybees

floating on long sips.

“Jazz”: quick fingerpops

pancake on a griddle-top

of memories. Stop.

“Jazz”: mysterious

as nutmeg, missing fingers,

gold. Less serious.

“Jazz”: cool bannister.

Don’t need no stair. Ways to climb

when the sax is there.

To conclude this post, I would like to share with you one of my political haiku about jazz music written for James A. Emanuel

twilit Route Irish...

loud Jazz music

from the tanks       

Note: Rout Irish is the military main supply route, leading from Baghdad International Airport to the Green Zone, and it is one of the most dangerous stretches of highway in Iraq, if not the world.


Reference:

Yoshinobu Hakutani, Cross-Cultural Visions in African American Modernism: From the Spatial Narrative to Jazz Haiku, The Ohio State University Press, 2006.


Updated, Oct. 13:

I just found out Dan Schneider's thorough interview with James A. Emanuel. Below is a relevant excerpt about his view of haiku:

DS: You place great emphasis on craft in your work, and this is something that is lacking in contemporary published poetry. Are you a perfectionist? In later years you’ve turned to the haiku form. Have you simply run out of things to say in free verse or sonnets?
  
JAE: I am a perfectionist only in those situations which perfection is both possible and desirable in my opinion. Much published poetry is mediocre because the poets concerned cannot improve upon it or will not try to do so. Commercial publishers accelerate this downgrade. Some editors assist the decline because they either do not like poetry (like some teachers) or share the cash-and-carry mentality of those in front of the office assembly line.
       
Just as discipline is most needed when freedom is first won, my turn to free verse at the end of the 1960s entailed a conscious struggle to fuse widening subjects with what might be called “veteran” form. Like the boxer who knows when to shift from dancing jabs to a strong right hook, the veteran in free verse knows when an anapest or two cannot do the job of a well-chosen monosyllable.
           
What I want to say in poetry (what I want to present or picture, rather) has little to do with form, for I could use a sonnet to present the Harlem street jive, dig? Some time ago, the following line in iambic pentameter could have opened a sonnet: “Had only ink to drink for many brights.” As for the haiku form, its subjects are unlimited. I turned to it because of its unusual challenge to say much in little, to waste no word, to find and express the possibilities of beauty in all of creation.

Butterfly Dream: Cat's Mouth Haiku by Peter Newton

English Original

in the cat's mouth
a handful of feathers
and how many songs

What We Find

Peter Newton


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

 在貓的嘴中
一小撮羽毛
和多少首歌曲

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

在猫的嘴中
一小撮羽毛
和多少首歌曲


Bio Sketch

Born in Detroit, Michigan, Peter Newton is a poet, artist and editor. H is writings have appeared in a variety of print and online journals and anthologies, garnering several prizes and commendations in recent years. He is the author of What We Find, a book of haiku from Imaginary Press, 2011. A collection of his haibun entitled Joy Ride, is due out in 2013. He co-edits the online journal Tinywords. Read more of his work on Twitter @ThePeterNewton

One Man's Maple Moon: Finality Tanka by Sonam Chhoki

English Original

leaving without a word
you erased all tomorrows
such finality . . .
even in dreams
we meet without words

KernelsOnline, 2 Summer 2013

Sonam Chhoki


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

一言不發離開
你抹去所有的明天
這樣的結局 ...
即使在夢中
我們相聚無言

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

一言不发离开
你抹去所有的明天
这样的结局 ...
即使在梦中
我们相聚无言


Bio sketch

Born and raised in the eastern Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan, Sonam Chhoki has been writing Japanese short forms of haiku, tanka and haibun for about 5 years. These forms resonate with her Tibetan Buddhist upbringing and provide the perfect medium for the exploration of  her country's rich ritual, social and cultural heritage. She is inspired by her father, Sonam Gyamtsho, the architect of Bhutan's non-monastic modern education. Her haiku, tanka and haibun have been published in poetry journals and anthologies in Australia, Canada, Ireland, Japan, UK and US.

Cool Announcement: Nobel Prize Winner Alice Munro and Her "Experiential Haiku"

Canadian author Alice Munro has won the Nobel Prize for literature. The Swedish Academy announced the decision today, calling the 82-year-old author from Wingham, Ont., a "master of the contemporary short story."

Below is excerpted from Mark Levene's  "It Was About Vanishing: A Glimpse of Alice Munro's Stories," Alice Munro edited by Harold Bloom, Infobase Publishing, 2009, p. 96.

The apparent alternation between fantasy and fact is among the many brilliant elements of 'The Albanian Virgin.' Within this movement is the counterpoint between the insistent clues that connect the two romances -- the priest's moustache and crucifix, the same details connected with Gjurdhi, Charlotte, and Claire in the present -- and the narrative's unresolved, open-ended multiplicity. Whether the couples are actually the same is inconsequential, since, despite another severed head, the danger again is in our 'frayed ... almost lost' connections, where 'views and streets deny knowledge of us, the air grows thin' (127). In story, in fact, or in both connections can be made to seem endless. When Claire, providing a parallel story to that of Lottar, the Albanian virgin, invokes Munro's version of entropy, that 'it was about vanishing' (126), she immediately imagines ' a destiny,' a brief narrative of life with Nelson, her former lover, only, it seems, to discover him at her bookstore. 'For this really was Nelson, come to claim me. Or at least to accost me, and see what would happen' (127). What happens is recorded as a sort of experiential haiku, notes towards parallel lives -- 'We have been very happy. I have often felt completely alone' (128) -- which serve as ellipses to the lush, cinematographic details of Lottar's rescue by the Franciscan and the limitless extension of their story:' She called him and called him, and when the boat came into the harbor at Trieste he was waiting on the dock' (128)

We have been very happy.
I have often felt completely alone

Alice Munro,  "The Albanian Virgin," Open Secrets, p.128

I agree with Mark Levene's  comment. The "poem" above could be read as a "two-dimensional" haiku (coined by Ryusaku Tsunoda) where Munro "deliberately shifts the direction of an emotion into which the reader has been led" (Henderson, p.130).  Some of the most famous haiku by Issa were written in this style, such as the following ones (translated by Harold G. Henderson):

Snow melts,
and the village is overflowing --
with children

The first two lines lead the reader to a picture of disaster; however, this calamitous image is "suddenly -- and delightfully -- smashed by the last line"  (Ibid.).

Thanks to cherry bloom,
in its shadow utter strangers --
there are none!

In the first two lines, Issa gives the reader time to visualize the strangers, which is indicated by a cutting word ("wa,"  which is translated as "--" ), and the last line reveals that "there is  a pleasing unexpectedness about the ending"  (ibid.).

To conclude today's post, I would like to share with you  my haiku below, which is written in response to Alice Munro's short story, titled "The Albanian Virgin,"  and her vision:

cathedral music

in an autumn afternoon

the air grows thin


Updated, Oct., 11

A Conversation with Alice Munro, Nobel Prize Winner (45-minute interview with Paula Todd, the co-producer/host of the TVO program Person 2 Person, and I, the series producer)


References

Harold Bloom, ed., Alice Munro, Infobase Publishing, 2009.

Harold G. Henderson, An Introduction to Haiku: An Anthology of Poems and Poets from Basho and Shiki, Doubleday Anchor Books, 1958.

Butterfly Dream: Small Town Haiku by Adelaide B. Shaw

English Original

small town
swallowed by shadows
in the early dusk

Presence, autumn 2010

Adelaide B. Shaw


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

小城鎮
在黃昏初現時
被陰影吞噬

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

小城镇
在黄昏初现时
被阴影吞噬


Bio Sketch

Adelaide B. Shaw lives in Milbrook, NY with her husband. She has published short fiction, children’s poetry and stories, haiku, tanka, haibun and haiga. She has served as an editor and as a contest judge for Japanese style poetry. Her haiku blog is: www.adelaide-whitepetals.blogspot.com/ Her haiku collection, An Unknown Road, won a 2009 Merit Book Award sponsored by the Haiku Association of America.

A Room of My Own: Waiting For A Sign

an erection
I wake up with
Jesus on the wall

the youth pastor talks
of a geography of heart
the cross and shadows

Jesus Heals...
a fleck of sunlight
striking his face

a falling red leaf...
Jesus loves you
the weight of his words