Hot News: Haiku/Tanka Reprinted in 15 E-Papers

                                                                                      drunk on reading
                                                                                      The Neverending Story
                                                                                      shapes of this spring night         

I just finished reading  A Companion to Poetic Genre (first edition, 2012), "a collection of essays that examines genres and forms with longer traditions in English (p. 281)." In the book, there is a chapter (pp. 277-92), entitled "In a Sea of Indeterminacy: Fourteen Ways of Looking at Haiku," on the haiku aesthetics. The following is an excerpt from Peter Harris's essay (note: His analysis of Scott Metz's one-line haiku is done in a professionally excellent way, and it will be analyzed in my forthcoming "Poetic Musings" post, which deals with one-line haiku)

... the over-elastic term haiku, a word that in mid 2011 garners over 50 million hits in an instant search.

The undifferentiated deluge of haiku has caused some literary journals to refuse to consider haiku for publication. Most haiku are published in specialist journals -- Modern Haiku and Frogpond -- to take two prominent examples -- that serves a population almost hermetically sealed off from mainstream poetry. Arguably, the specialist publish the most accomplished haiku. This paradox of haiku's ubiquity and marginalization provides an interesting window on the ideology of poetic fashion.

Below is my answer, an excerpt from my Lynx interview with Jane Reichhold:

L: What do you feel we as haiku or tanka writers need to do to get these forms more accepted by the mainstream poetry world?

CL: In terms of defining what poetry is, there is an asymmetric power relationship between the mainstream poetry world and the haiku/tanka community. It’s difficult to change their perception of haiku/tanka in a top-down manner. In my view, the most effective way of reversing this unbalanced relationship is to adopt a bottom-up approach; that is to consolidate and expand our readership base through online publishing and social networking sites. If there are more people who love reading/writing haiku and tanka, the mainstream poetry world will eventually open their main gate to haiku and tanka poets. This approach to reversing the asymmetric power relationship has been demonstrated in the case of the power transfer from traditional media, such as news papers, TV, and books, to online and social media....Most importantly, living in a hectic society, most people now only have a short attention span. If they are interested in reading something meaningful, I think short verse forms, such as haiku and tanka, will become more and more popular.

Today, Easter Monday, is a good day to announce good news:

NeverEnding Story has 152 pageviews/per day, and most importantly, there are 15 e-papers that regularly reprint the haiku and tanka published on NeverEnding Story. The newest members are as follows:

13 #Haiku Today, edited by Wendy o_O

14 The SPOT #poetry Paper, edited by Xhabir M. Deralla

15 The Poet Daily, edited by Bradley Howington

For more information, see Hot News: NeverEnding Story Reached A Milestone Today

Updated, April 1

Now, the newest member is Shiv’s Poetry Journal, edited by Shiv.

Updated, April 4

The newest members are  Haiku Review (edited by David Rheins) and the Weekly World Haiku News (edited by Haiku Crew)

Updated, April 6

Poems & Ponderings (edited by Nickers and Ink) and Poetry Lifetimes (edited by Sara Russell) now are the newest members.

Updated, April 9

The Wounded Warrior Poetry Daily, edited by Jan "Beyond Survivor," is the newest member.

Note: The Neverending Story (German: Die unendliche Geschichte) is a German fantasy novel by Michael Ende, first published in 1979. The standard English translation, by Ralph Manheim, was first published in 1983. The novel was later adapted into several films. --an excerpt from the Wikipedia entry, "The Neverending Story."