Cool Announcement: Haiku, The Poetry of Focus

Dear Friends:

Here is the link to Scott Mason's lecture, Haiku:The Poetry of Focus, that introduces you to the "pleasures and the uniquely life-affirming character of English-language haiku poetry."

Opening Quotes:

Let us not take it for granted that life exists more fully in what is commonly thought big than what is commonly thought small. -- Virginia Woolf

I omit the unusual — the hurricanes and earthquakes — and describe the common. This has the greatest charm and is the true theme of poetry. -- Henry David Thoreau 

(These two opening quotes remind me of the following remark about haiku:

Haiku is still a poetry of small things and of everyday experience that preserves the sparkles of the particular in its universal appeal. -- Walker Haberstroh) 


Selected Haiku:

late afternoon

a rabbit

sniffs the sun

Scott Mason

smoketown dawn

a rogue rooster's

corrugated cry

Kristen Renée Miller

Remembrance Day --

the thin sound of a bugle

wavers in the rain

John Crook

night of stars

all along the precipice

goat bells ring

an’ya

raging blizzard

The gritted teeth

of jumper cables

Jeff Stillman

the slow turn

of a barber's pole --

afternoon heat

John W. Wisdom

sultry evening

the pizza receipt clings

to a beer bottle

Bob Lucky

midsummer stream

a grackle dips its beak

in shimmer

Robert Gilliland

shanty town --

the jagged edges

of moonlight

Sanjukta Asopa

a curtain billows

before the rain

scent of roses

Ferris Gilli

alone tonight --

the calla lily curves

into shadow

Hortensia Anderson

life alone

licking

the ladle

Owen Bullock

nine-month belly --

she slowly unwraps

the heirloom crèche

D. Claire Gallagher

creak of the swing ...

my feet still reach

the sky

Connie Donleycott