My Dear Poet Friends:
In a war situation or where violence and injustice are prevalent, "poetry is called upon to be something more than a thing of beauty."
-- Seamus Heaney, Ireland's most renowned poet since Yeats, playwright and translator who received the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature
For example:
Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, LXXVII: "flares and blasts"
to the likes of Takahama Kyoshi (1874 --1959), a student of Masaoka Shiki and the editor of the most influential haiku magazine, Hototogisu, who claimed during WWII that "haiku was essentially the art of "singing about flowers and birds ..."
Gaza's sky lit
by the red glow of flares and blasts --
with night news on mute
eyes closed and ears covered
a poet writes, skylark's trilling
FYI: The concluding line alludes to the iconic spring image/scene of the traditional haiku, such as
in the midst of the plain
sings the skylark
free of all things
Haiku, Volume 2: Spring, 1950, translated by R. H. Blyth
Basho
For detailed comments, see Poetic Musings: Skylark Haiku by Basho
It hurts to open your eyes to REALITY, but someone has to do it and it has to be you.
Endure the pain.
Eventually, you'll heal.
-- Thessa T Torrillo
For example,
Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, XLIV, "hospitals destroyed"
written in response to the destruction of Gaza's biggest hospital, Al Shifa
between blood of birth
and blood of death
a new life
on the hospital floor ...
a Gazan mother's last look
Now, I would like to invite you to take up the challenge of writing something timely, sociopolitically conscious, and most importantly, relevant to "our life in this broken world."
"Biting NOT Barking" Submission Guidelines
Send your best published haiku/tanka (please provide publication credits) or new work and a bio sketch (50 words max.) with the subject heading "Biting NOT Barking, Your Name, Submitted Date" to Chen-ou Liu via email at ericcoliu(at)yahoo.ca And place your haiku/tanka directly in the body of the email. DO NOT SEND ATTACHMENTS.
No more than twenty haiku/tanka per submission and no simultaneous submissions. And please wait for at least three months for another new submission.
Please note that only those whose haiku/tanka are accepted will be notified within three weeks, and that no other notification will be sent out, so your works are automatically freed up after three weeks to submit elsewhere.
The accepted haiku/tanka will be translated into Chinese and posted on NeverEnding Story and X (You are welcome to follow me on NeverEnding Story or on X at @ericcoliu).
Look forward to reading your poetry that bites and bites hard
Chen-ou
Below is an excerpt from 'Forgive, But Do Not Forget,' which was published in "Simply Haiku," 8:3, Autumn/Winter 2011, http://simplyhaiku.theartofhaiku.com/past-issues/simply-haiku-2011/autumnwinter-2011/reprints/forgive-but-do-not-forget.html, 8:3
ReplyDeleteTakahama Kyoshi (1874-1959), who was considered to be mainly in charge. Kyoshi was chief editor of the haiku journal Hototogisu, the journal with the greatest public success in Japan, and the inventor of the "traditional" haiku (dentô haiku). He was one of the two main disciples of Masaoka Shiki (1867-1902). With his aesthetics of kachôfûei ("singing about flowers and birds") Kyoshi propagated a return to "tradition", against the innovative reform efforts of other haiku poets and groups.
....
Kyoshi reflects in this lecture about the development of his haiku style, of kachôfûei:
Especially, the hokku of haikai, today’s haiku, became a completely specialized literature of kachô. . . . We ourselves are those who do not serve the nation well, but succeeding to and following the tradition of our ancestors’ taste, we cherish ka-chô-fû-getsu. Thus, in order to gather together the power of you men of culture, at a time when the Japanese nation stands in the world with its glorious power rising, Japanese literature must also rise within world literature. Then, when the time comes that the Japanese nation gains a strong footing in the world as the greatest nation, all peoples of other nations will without doubt pay close attention to the unique character of the literature of Japan. At that time, from among the crowds of plays and novels, there can be seen the face of a haiku poet, and he will say, “Here: this is the literature of kachôfûei. That is, haiku.” I expect such a time to come.7