Welcome to Notes from the Gean the journal of haiku, tanka, haiga, haibun, linked forms & more.

Brought to you by Gean Tree Press.

Mission Statement:

We seek to encourage excellence, experimentation and education within haiku and its related genres. We believe this is best accomplished by example and not imitation. Our aim is for authenticity above all else. We therefore solicit your finest examples of haiku, tanka, haiga, haibun and renga/renku so that we may "hear" your voices speak.

The Editors

For details on how to submit to Notes from the Gean please check our SUBMISSIONS page.

cover artwork Colin Stewart Jones

Overall content copyright © 2012 Gean Tree Press. All Rights Reserved.

Notes from the Gean 3:4 Page 2

contents

linked forms Tsunami p.4, Patent Leather Shoe p.10-12, Man Standing in Rain p.21, Sepia Blues p.29, Fairground Animals p.38, Moonlight Settles p.60, Stars that know no sadness p.67, The power of light p.68, "rain on the tracks" p.88, In The Rain p.96-98, “the short goodbye” p.106-108, Tea at the Tate & Around the Gherkin p.116-117, A maggot & Scattered moon p.122 haiku haiku 1 p.5 haiku2 p.6, haiku 3 p.13, haiku 4 p.24, haiku 5 p.25, haiku 6 p.36, haiku 7 p.37, haiku 8 p.42, haiku 9 p.43, haiku 10 p.58, haiku 11 p.59, haiku 12 p.70, haiku 13 p.71, haiku 14 p.86, haiku 15 p.87, haiku 16 p.99, haiku 17 p.109, haiku 18 p.115, haiku 19 p.126, haiku 20 p.127, haiku 21 p.128 tanka tanka 1 p.7, tanka 2 p.19, tanka 3 p.27 tanka 4 p.40, tanka 5 p.41, tanka 6 p.57, tanka 7 p.72, tanka 8 p.73, tanka 9 p.90, tanka 10 p.91, tanka 11 p.95, tanka 12 p.112, tanka 13 p.113, tanka 14 p.119, tanka 15 p.124, tanka 16 p.125 haibun In Another Town p.8, How an acceptance happens – Into the Sky p.14-18, a trace of warmth p.26, Searching the Size p.39, House and Bird p.56, Guilty Pleasures p.65, After Arrival p.66, ‘The Point p.76, “The midnight” p.77, A little from the tip p.89, shadows p.93, THE SEASIDE p.103, Return p.104, The Narrow Gate p.105, Mountain in Late Afternoon p.114, One Nation Under Jazz p. 120-121, The Summing Ups and Downs p.123 haiga coming home p.9, log fire p.20, day by day p.28 river weir p.35, time p.55, early spring p.64, a break p.69, Sunday drizzle p.74, falling leaves p.75, barnacles p.85 wild geese p.92, knotholes p.94 chilly autumn breeze p.110, rose cuttings p.111, woodpile p.118, waiting p.129 The Dreaming Room heatwave p.22, wildflowers p.23, on a bare branch p.61-62, snow melting p.63, smell of bile and winter hive p.100-101, two months gone p.102 essays/haiku matters Humour in Haiku p.30-34 special feature NaWriHaiMo p.44-53, Old Pond Comics p.54. interviews Jack Galmitz p. 78-84. reviews small hours p.130-132, Leptir nad pučinom p.133 back page dog days p.134

Notes from the Gean 3:4 Page 3

Tsunami

seized from the mud one lottery ticket

a shaking of heads as the earth shakes

one mother cradling a piece of rock

someone else’s mother finding a missing shoe

a minute’s silence just the rumbling of sea children’s voices

the old man shrugs remembering Hiroshima

out of the rubble a new road bending into sunlight

Peter Butler U.K.

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Wires run through the sky. All platforms flooded by march.

Volker Friebel - Germany

Land of snow— the crows wings shimmer when turning.

Volker Friebel - Germany

Waning March light. Sheep on the river, their mouths washed by water.

Volker Friebel - Germany

swan wrapped in sleep— drifting moon

John McDonald - Scotland

full moon— winter’s stillness in a soap bubble

Ramesh Anand - Malaysia

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nearing dusk a girl dumps bait worms back into the earth

Ferris Gilli - USA

the mimosa tree has closed its leaves . . . vesper bell

Ferris Gilli - USA

morning star the glimmer of gilt from the spire

Köy Deli - Turkey

pulling up an oak seedling— the clinging acorn

Ruth Holzer - USA

this blue and white world— even if the plane falls at home in it

Ruth Holzer - USA

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the abbess prays to the icon of her groom: "my womb is a chasm deep as the morning star"

Köy Deli - USA

dusk takes its time to linger on the soft blues of March snow

Christina Nguyen - USA

the establishing shot of an old film set in New York . . . there they both stand with the world yet to change

Jon Baldwin - USA

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In Another Town

As you dream in another town, I stroll to the lake at dawn for a swim. At a curve in the path, a lily has bloomed as blue as the sky at dusk. I kneel.

I want to bring it to you. Instead, I can only let you know it was there.

endless sky – sun shines on the spires of pines

Hortensia Anderson – USA

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Cherie Hunter Day - USA

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Patent Leather Shoe

A Kasen Renku

more light to ponder what might grow Michele from here

turning the earth with garden tools John

sticky silk threads of a chrysalis Michele soon to shed its skin

knitted doilies in the linen closet John

the moon has drawn us Michele to a distant shore

his confidence about edible mushrooms John

-

alone like a ghost Michele on a windy corner

diligent rehearsal of the kissing scene John

I undress after dark Michele before a flame

the rent is being raised again John

observance of a day no one wants Michele to remember

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patent leather shoe in the refrigerator John

return to the store for more cold beer Michele led by the summer moon

dusk deepened by swarming bats John

chemical injections leave her with Michele a childlike look

“Little deuce coupe You don’t know what I’ve got” John

the daffodils would be pretty in a color Michele other than yellow

soft edges of a cross made of ashes John

-

roof leaks in the same places John as last year

inaccurate translations are causing lots of problems Michele

the spell check feature questions names John like Auschwitz

not too old to pull an all-nighter Michele

the doorman at the end of John a Christmas list

my neighbor throws crumbs on snow for hungry birds Michele

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they say a cactus can have all the water John you need to survive

when we’re together nothing else matters Michele

contractions coming quickly John in the car

annoyed by an empty wallet Michele

moonlight silvers the last window pane John left unbroken

collapsing onto a new pile of leaves Michele

-

I close the door and padlock John the boathouse

passing time in a smoker’s cafe Michele

freshly shaved showered John and shampooed

a horseback ride along mountain trails Michele

this very cool spring in which the blossoms John are snowy white

our upturned hands tap into the pulse of a spring shower Michele

John Stevenson - USA Michele Harvey - USA

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warm front the romance novel opens itself

John Hawk - USA

something more in the air tonight golden moon

John Hawk - USA

lost summer the berries the birds left behind

John Hawk - USA

thriller my cat shreds the last page

Pris Campbell - USA

grey morning dream painted on the lake is the sun.

Tatjana Debeljacki - Serbia

Notes from the Gean 3:4 Page 13

How an acceptance happens – Richard Krawiec

I thought it might be interesting for some to read the process Penny Harter and I went through that led to minor changes in her poem which is published in this issue. This is an example of my process as an editor, her process as a writer, and the process we both engaged in together. I have cut some of the familiar chit-chat out of these exchanges and left in the focus on the poem.

1. Submission by Penny Harter

Into the Sea

A night light? I don't blow out my candles before sleep.

What dreams? A gray ghost whispered, "Mirrors always lie." Not that kind of lie.

Where do you sleep? In an abandoned steeple.

Do you get it now? Sure, like a kid wading into the sea.

stone Buddha— in his lap, the glint of mica

2. First response by Richard Krawiec

Penny, Do you see the italicized parts as another voice, or in her mind? Love the haiku.

I do think "Sure, like a kid wading into the sea." lacks the poetry of the rest of your haibun. Are you sure you even need that line and it's question?

Do you ever play around with your line order? Visually if you began with 'Where do you sleep" then followed with 'A night light?' and 'What dreams?' you'd have a nice lengthening flow that could represent both stairs and the sea. And I think the progression of questions makes narrative sense that way too.

Notes from the Gean 3:4 Page 14

3. Penny’s response

Hi Richard,

I've run the line order by a few folks, and when I suggested changing it, one well-respected haiku poet said it was better, more natural, the way it was. That it worked better being that random— more mysterious. I'd wanted to change it the way you suggested, for the narrative progression.

I understand your saying "like a child wading into the sea" lacks the same level of poetry (prose poetry) as the rest. But the haiku is, in a way, an answer to wading into the sea—in that we never "get it" all—and are just treading water. Of course the Buddha would say that there is nothing to get. Perhaps I can rephrase that question and answer more elegantly.

The questions could come from anywhere. I think it's best to leave them vague—could be from another speaker, or in the speaker's head. Or from the void :). They are both random and narrative, but strange questions, thoughts, not unlike those one has sometimes in that state between sleeping and waking. They just came to me that way.

Let's see:

If I were to get rid of the "Do you get it now? " question and answer line, I'd want the "abandoned steeple" line to stay where it is—leading to the Buddha. . . the steeple representing the use of organized religion. . . Of course I wasn't consciously thinking about much, if any, of this while writing it.

Let me think on this a while and get back to you. I welcome any responses you have to my thoughts above.

4. Richard’s reply

Penny, I don't think I'd want you to identify where the questions are coming from, I was just curious what you thought.

I am trying to look at haibun more from a broader poetry perspective not just a haiku poet's perspective.

But as Jane Hirshfield says, I can give you my honest advice but you need to retain the right to reject it all because it's your poem, and you need to do what you want with it.

I am not always right, and people who I have published in gean can tell you that I listen as well as suggest. But I am a good editor and I think I’m right about the line order.

Again, that does not mean I'm right. But I believe I am in this case.

continued overleaf

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5. Penny replies

Hi Richard,

You are convincing me to go with my first impulse---and your suggestion---move that line about "where do you sleep" to the first line.

Let me think a little more about the "into the sea" line—to keep or change or omit—and I'll get back to you soon.

6. Penny again

Hi Richard,

I want to change that last line totally. The question completes the circle that begins with "Where do you sleep?" I pared the answer down to just "The sky", though I was thinking things like "I raise my face into the sky," or "I give myself to the sky." It works for me because sea and sky are mirror images of each other.

And as I decided on "The sky" for my answer, I was remembering a haiku I wrote in the late eighties when Bill and I were staying in a pilgrim's dormitory on Mount Haguro, Japan. Here is an excerpt from my essay "Seeing and Connecting" from The Unswept Path (White Pine Press, 2005) about that experience and the haiku:

______

During the summer of 1987 my husband and I were fortunate enough to spend the night in a pilgrims' dormitory on Mount Haguro in Yamagata Prefecture, Japan. When I entered the room, its entire far end open to the sky, I quickly crossed the space to the edge of the tatami-matted floor and opened my arms: fingertip to fingertip and still more sky--- Mount Haguro."

______

So, how about the following---and I'm wondering whether the spaces should be maintained between questions/answer lines, or not. I think I like the spaces. And maybe "whispered" should be in present tense: "whispers". What do you think?

Notes from the Gean 3:4 Page 16

Into the Sea

Where do you sleep? In an abandoned steeple.

A night light? I don't blow out my candles before sleep.

What dreams? A gray ghost whispered, "Mirrors always lie." Not that kind of lie.

And when you wake? The sky.

stone Buddha— in his lap, the glint of mica

7. Richard replies

I love this. 'The sky' is perfect. You're right, we should keep the spaces between questions and answers. And I would change whispered to 'whispers'.

8. Penny responds

So we'll go with the corrected version, below. Only thing, is maybe we ought to change the title, since the "sea" no longer is in the poem. If so, it could be "Into the Sky." OR, we could call it "Night Thoughts". What do you think?

9. Richard responds

I like 'Into the Sky' because the glint of mica pierces the sky, too.

I have really enjoyed working with you. I think editors and writers should work together. I don't see my job as trying to tell you how to write - but to recognize what it is you're aiming for. I learn a lot from hearing what you have to say, and that helps me be a better editor on other pieces.

So this is the final.

Please turn the page for the final piece

Notes from the Gean 3:4 Page 17

Into the Sky

Where do you sleep? In an abandoned steeple.

A night light? I don't blow out my candles before sleep.

What dreams? A gray ghost whispers, "Mirrors always lie." Not that kind of lie.

And when you wake? The sky.

stone Buddha— in his lap, the glint of mica

Penny Harter – USA

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how did it begin neither of us made the first move— you empty your mind I empty the bins

Jon Baldwin - USA

when our eyes first touched my heart beat like church bells on Sunday

Jon Baldwin - USA

the kettle begins its cool moodswings . . . I blame my father and he blames his

Jon Baldwin - USA

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Maire Morrissey-Cummins - Ireland

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Man Standing in the Rain

willow leaves turn away— first drops of rain

rain coat one size too big— river down my back

walking in the rain— missing one puddle but not the next

listening to rain under my umbrella— thousands of haiku

after the rain playing a game of pick-up sticks

horizontal rain— what wind looks like

Jerry Dreesen - USA

Notes from the Gean 3:4 Page 21

The Dreaming Room

heatwave by Carole MacRury: a commentary by Michael Dylan Welch

A Favourite Haiku

heat wave— the horse blinks away a gnat’s life

—Carole MacRury

One supposed rule of haiku is to use concrete objective imagery, yet here is a poem that successfully employs abstraction—referring to the concept of the gnat’s “life.” Yet it works because everything else in the poem is concrete. We can accept the fact that there’s a heat wave, and enter into what that means—lethargy, sweat, and a longing for cool shadows. We can easily see a horse blinking, too, and can marvel in the poet’s close observation in seeing a gnat at a horse’s eye. But imagine if the poem’s last line were just “a gnat.” That could work, too, and perhaps we could leap to the same realization of the contrast in size between these large and small animals. Yet saying simply “a gnat” would lack not just the realization that the gnat’s short life has ended, but the larger interplay between the objects of the poem and the subjective realization of the poet. This is best done as lightly as possible, however, for too much subjectivity or abstraction drowns a haiku. By inserting just this touch of abstraction, the poet reveals her engagement with the objects described, and we as readers see that as well as seeing the objectively described images. Whether this was achieved consciously or accidentally is of little consequence. What matters is that haiku can be larger than a purely objective description, if carefully handled. The key detail is to find the necessary balance, as this poem does, between the primarily objective depictions and that touch of subjectivity or abstraction.

Carole MacRury’s “heat wave” is from Haiku Friends Vol. 2., Masaharu Hirata, ed., Osaka, Japan: Umeda Printing Factory, 2007, page 68.

Michael Dylan Welch -USA

Notes from the Gean 3:4 Page 22

wildflowers by George Swede: a commentary by Lynne Rees

wildflowers I cannot name most of me

George Swede

The opening line, composed of a single word, slows me down with its first two long syllables. And that pace is perfect for the contemplation woven through this economical haiku.

The pivot line is structurally satisfying – it rocks me in (wildflowers/I cannot name) and out (I cannot name/most of me) of the haiku – as is the balance of 3/4/3 syllables. But these formal characteristic serve the ideas behind the haiku too.

The first two lines, taken as a couplet, describe a concrete experience that’s probably common to all of us: a lack of knowledge or names forgotten as we walk through the countryside. The haiku instantly involves me, invites me to share the moment.

The 2nd and 3rd lines present a different kind of couplet: a personal reflection that is both concrete and abstract. How many of us could recite the litany of parts that make up our own complex organism? And how many of us are convinced that we truly know and understand ourselves: the different identities we adopt, the strange imagery that comes to us in dreams, or spontaneous and surprising emotion in response to unexpected events?

Yet all of those things are offered to us in this haiku of seven words.

Haiku are such light expressions it is easy to overload them with philosophy. The movement from the natural world in line 1 to the economy of expression in lines 2 and 3 avoids that through understatement and simple declarative phrase. It manages to be both witty and thoughtful.

It is perhaps no accident that this haiku is the final one in George Swede’s collection. Rather than close down the book, it opens it up for me, encourages me to reflect on what I cannot name, what I do not know, about myself and the wider world. It sets me on a road of discovery, should I choose to take it.

George Swede, Joy in Me Still, inkling press, Edmonton, AB T6G 2T5, Canada, p.79

Eat, Live, Write with Lynne Rees at the hungry writer Author of Real Port Talbot due from Seren Books in 2013

Lynne Rees – UK

Notes from the Gean 3:4 Page 23

the longest night . . . every mistake I ever made

Bill Kenney - USA

hunter's moon the old dog sighs into sleep

Bill Kenney - USA

traveller my sister returns with two heartbeats

isadora vibes - UK

picking my way among the broken lives low tide

Jo McInerney - Australia

café lights through the slanting rain a slow love song

Jo McInerney - Australia

Notes from the Gean 3:4 Page 24

an old argument untangling the christmas lights

Ben Moeller-Gaa - USA

late afternoon sun walking through the shadows of strangers

Ben Moeller-Gaa - USA

sunrise a champagne cork bubbles down the river

Tiggy Johnson - Australia

late December rains — the water dragon's first wingflash

Beverly Acuff Momoi - USA

waning moon a lizard's tail dangling from the cat's mouth

Beverly Acuff Momoi - USA

Notes from the Gean 3:4 Page 25

a trace of warmth insomnia all the shadows of things when the day opens awkwardly I leave the house and walk through the orchard to the row of leylandii and look at the depressions in the dusty ground where I'm sure the wild pheasants nestle during the day, even though I only know them from claw marks left in the earth; my hand never finds a trace of warmth in the shallow bowls, not even a feather some days I catch a glimpse of them – the males barred bright gold and brown, their red wattles, the mottled females – skittering between the rows of apple trees, always keeping a distance how can they trust us after all this time?

I startled them once, in the farmyard when I opened the back door, a dozen or more of them taking flight at the sound then sight of me: the whirr of wings loud enough to make me step back suddenly, alarm mixed with delight, flashes of green and purple returning to me at moments for the rest of that day, like a charge to the heart

Lynne Rees - UK

Notes from the Gean 3:4 Page 26

a crystal dewdrop rests on an oak leaf . . . immersed in the breeze I want to see my future

Marion Clarke - USA

my father sinking behind a cloud . . . I draw him gently with a pencil

Ken Slaughter - USA

one more sip of my Starbucks latte... through the window Chairman Mao's stern face above the Tiananmen Gate

Chen-ou Liu – Canada

Notes from the Gean 3:4 Page 27

Irene Szewczyk -Poland

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Sepia Blues a "renray"

abandoned row houses— behind them in the field a scarecrow grins

dust on his toes mud on his heels

opened bindle— a hobo puffs his corncob pipe

lucky stars a possum for the burgoo

first snowfall crowns the highest peaks

migrations— she hums while sorting seed from pod

a waft of pumpkin spice in the cold crisp air

quilt to my neck father reads of Ichabod Crane

Penny Harter, Susan Myers Nelson, Curtis Dunlap and Terri L. French – USA (verses in that order)

Notes from the Gean 3:4 Page 29

haiku matters

Humour in Haiku: Colin Stewart Jones

What may be funny to one person may not be funny to the next. It would be foolish to try to narrowly define such a broad subject area with one simple definition, but here goes anyway: it’s funny if it makes you laugh! The masthead of Haijinx boldly declares that it is ‘putting the hai back in haiku’—hai, meaning humorous or joke—but what is humour in haiku, and has it ever been there?

The pun is perhaps the simplest form of wordplay and yet also the most disdained. Generally speaking, people seem to fall into two categories when it comes to wordplay and either totally embrace it or reject it in all of its forms because of the negativity that has come to be associated with punning. Yet, as we will see wordplay is a device that has often been adopted in haiku. For an example of brilliant use of wordplay let us firstly look at Bashō’s most famous poem:

At the ancient pond a frog plunges into the sound of water 1

Bashō turns everything we think we know on its head with this poem. We know it is the action of the frog that disperses the water to make the sound and that an object cannot enter into a sound; yet something immediately registers with the reader and they instinctively understand the poem, even though Bashō is saying the opposite of what is true. Basho’s quirky take on the natural order has made the situation surreal and, therefore, funny. There is a deeper philosophical significance here also whereby Bashō cleverly makes the laws of cause and effect, seem absurd.

Basho’s use of humour is equally effective in the following haiku:

Summer grasses: all that remains of great soldiers’ imperial dreams 2

On first reading one feels the poet’s sadness and there is no denying the pathos. The poem is a rather damning indictment on the futility of war. On second reading, one is struck by the inclusion of the word ‘great’. Surely, not all soldiers are great in stature or deed. One may ask; how would Bashō know if they were ‘great’ now that the grass is covering them? He didn’t. By showing us that something as simple as the grass has covered the mighty, Bashō is mocking them and, by extension, their noble ideals. Bashō was, of course, not always so subtle and he resorted to plain sarcasm when he described his imitators as melons.

Buson uses similar language to Bashō’s ‘summer grasses’ in the following haiku:

1 Trans; Sam Hamill,The Sound of Water: Haiku by Bashō, Buson, Issa and Other Poets, (Shambala, Boston 2000) p.6 One may argue over the precision of some translations but I have chosen the versions that I believe best highlight humour of haiku...and I don’t have many books. 2 ibid, p.34

Notes from the Gean 3:4 Page 30

Nobly, the great priest deposits his daily stool in bleak winter fields. 3

While Bashō seems to be use a mocking tone, Buson is so deadpan in his rendering of the scene that even the translator, Sam Hamill, notes that Buson is ‘reminding his audience that nobility has nothing whatever to do with palaces and embroidered robes, but true nobility is obtainable in every human endeavour.’ 4 This may perhaps seem the case to Hamill. The word nobly, however, in conjunction with human toilet actions should immediately alert the reader that there is more going on here than simple description of a scene. Nobly, sets this poem up so perfectly and allows one to instantly see the irony and impossibility of the situation: try as he might, the great priest cannot be noble while being observed doing something as common as his toilet. One can almost hear Buson’s irreverent laughter. The fact that it is a bleak winter day just makes the priest’s attempts at being noble all the more ridiculous, but completes the poem. No amount of pomp can disguise the fact that even the high and mighty are just the same as common people because they must also move their bowels each day.

Plum blossoms in bloom, in a Kitano teahouse, the master of sumo 5

In this poem by Buson we see the delicateness of plum blossoms in bloom, symbolising the freshness of youth, juxtaposed with the strength of the old wrestler. The master of a sumo wrestling stable was a retired wrestler who would have been a good wrestler in his prime. The image of a presumably large man sipping his tea in a teahouse, which was usually very small, is a funny one. The job of the master is, of course, to bring blossoming talent into fruition. Though the fruit is never mentioned, the reader’s mind is also projected ahead of time to envisage the plum fruit, and by extension the full, purple face of the master wrestler.

If there is one word that best describes Issa, it is probably whimsical. my noontime nap disrupted by voices singing rice-planting songs 6

The humour in Issa’s haiku is more obvious than either Bashō or Buson. Issa is seemingly more concerned with his rest and how dare they, who sing through the necessity of planting, wake him. However, one also sees a tongue firmly planted in Issa’s cheek. Part of Issa’s charm is that he seems not to care what other people think of him as he wanders along observing or talking to creatures:

Under the evening moon The snail Is stripped to the waist. 7

3 ibid, p.55 4 ibid, translators introduction, p.xii 5 ibid, p.66 6 ibid p.91 7 Peter Washington, ed, Haiku, (Everyman, New York, 2003) p.69

Notes from the Gean 3:4 Page 31

In this haiku, Issa cleverly shows us juxtaposition without ever directly mentioning it. We still see the shell juxtaposed with the moon as the snail extends outwards. The image of someone stripped to the waist usually implies work or action...maybe love. The humour of this haiku is contained in the absurd idea of a snail being stripped to the waist and ready for action...but the ‘action’ is at a snail’s pace.

The poem below by Kerouac is an excellent example of how several layers of humour can be employed in the one haiku:

In my medicine cabinet, The winter fly Has died of old age. 8

Due to an accidental incarceration in Kerouac’s medicine cabinet, a fly has managed to survive into the Winter. Flies do not normally survive into the Winter and even though surrounded by medicine the fly does eventually die we realise that Kerouac has been in good health because he did not need to visit his medicine cabinet through the Winter. Kerouac’s health also ensures a lengthy extension to the fly’s life and yet paradoxically also simultaneously causing its death. In the final irony, the dead fly is only discovered when Kerouac needs to take some medicine; if only he had been unwell sooner the fly may have survived.

The following haiku, by Nobel Laureate, Seamus Heaney, breaks what may some consider to be “rules”: firstly it has a title; and secondly it follows a 575 metre. It is worth mentioning here that there are many who still advocate a strict metre; the Scottish poet, Norman McCaig, used to say of poems that did not follow the syllabic count “they are not haiku—they’re just wee poems”.

1.1.87

Dangerous pavements. But I face the ice this year With my father’s stick. 9

To many readers this haiku may not seem funny at all but, in fact, quite the opposite. On first reading we notice Heaney now has to face his old age with his father’s stick. One presumes his father has died and the stick has been passed on to him. There is a wonderfully slow sense of progression in the poem as we go from generation to generation linked through the continuity of the stick being handed down.

One must be very careful with 575 haiku to avoid padding: notice the “but” at the beginning of line two, some may perhaps ask if it is really needed to convey the message of the poem. Forget about the metre for a moment and consider the haiku without the “but”:

Dangerous pavements. I face the ice this year With my father’s stick.

8 ibid p.237 9 Seamus Heaney, Seeing Things, (Faber and Faber London, 1991) p.20

Notes from the Gean 3:4 Page 32

Is it not just simply a haiku about cycles of death and ageing now, as I have outlined above—with the pathos being clearly evident. Heaney, however, is cleverly playing with the casual reader and while he is happy if you think this he certainly wants people to look further. Look again at the complete poem and ask why then did Heaney include the “but”? Do you hear the unvoiced laugh and the devil-may- care tone of Heaney before he has even ventured outside?

Ha-ha! Dangerous pavements. But I face the ice this year With my Father’s stick.

We could add more lines:

He got through it And so will I.

Though modern writers of haiku seem to mainly look for juxtaposition of concrete images, it could be argued that, they should also be trying to be more creative with their word choice and usage to highlight any humour in a scene. Whether one likes the idea or not the basis of all poetry is wordplay; and a joke also depends on wordplay to deliver its message. Of those who write humorous haiku today many seem to take Issa’s questions to creatures as their reference point. I have done this myself: empty bottle— was it you you little worm? 10

What else can one do when drunk and confronted with the dreaded empty bottle but blame someone else. The Mescal worm was promptly eaten and, therefore, lost the argument; but did add much needed protein to my diet.

In the following example Alan D. Taylor also uses the questioning technique to humorous effect: wasp in a jar— is there a point to your anger? 11

While this is essentially a pun, it is a very good one, and seems like a valid question to ask.

Likewise Jeff Winke points out the pointless and has keen sense for the absurd with his haiku: her training bra with nothing to train: bra in training 12

10 Colin Stewart Jones, A Seal Snorts out the Moon, (Cauliay, Aberdeen, 2007) p. 56 subsequently published in: New Resonance 7, Red Moon Press, (Winchester, USA, 2011) 11 Alan D Taylor, first published in: Clouds Peak #1, July 2006, online (now defunct)

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Is it the bra that is in training for when it will be needed to be a training bra? By using clever wordplay and repetition of the same imagery, Winke, poses this unstated question which also ultimately asks; “what’s the point?”

Sometimes the joke is much funnier if it takes a while for you to understand its subtleties. outside the pub the sailor faces the wind 13

There is the obvious and mildly amusing allusion to being drunk and “three sheets to the wind” in Chuck Brickley’s haiku. However, the poem also hints at other funny possibilities. Sailors seldom face the wind because it is difficult to make headway. One assumes he is listing badly. There is also a very real possibility his bladder is full and he needs to pee; any sober sailor would know of the danger of facing the wind in that situation.

An objective writer would never disregard any device at his disposal which is capable of rendering a scene with the most precision to achieve the desired effect. Poets are not meant to be reporters who simply ‘tell it like it is’ but, rather by careful observation and inventiveness with words, poets should be capable of spotting life’s ironies and elevating the seemingly ordinary into something special. It takes great wit to play with words, and laughter is also a special gift which should be cultivated. From the sublime to the ridiculous, humour in its many forms has always been, and still is, present in haiku. If the moment requires humour, then as writers, should we not keep on putting the hai with the ku.

Bibliography

Books:

A Seal Snorts out the Moon, Colin Stewart Jones (Cauliay, Aberdeen, 2007)

Haiku, Peter Washington, ed., (Everyman, New York, 2003)

Seeing Things, Seamus Heaney, (Faber and Faber London, 1991)

The Haiku Anthology, 3rd Edition, Cor Van Den Heuval Ed (WW Norton & Co, London, 1999)

The Sound of Water: Haiku by Bashō, Buson, Issa and Other Poets, Trans; Sam Hamill (Shambala, Boston 2000)

Journals: clouds peak #1, online journal 2006 (now defunct)

Frogpond, XXII:i, HSA Publications (USA, 1999)

12 Jeff Winke, Frogpond 1999, XXII:i, HSA publications, p.47 13 Chuck Brickley, The Haiku Anthology, 3rd Edition, Cor Van Den Heuval Ed (WW Norton & Co, London, 1999)

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John Byrne - Eire

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a tiny snail on the long march across the pavement; overnight rain Timothy Collinson - UK

paper kites above the mall's flat roof, strengthening wind

Timothy Collinson - UK

low winter sun warming up a row of chimney pots

Marion Clarke - Ireland

morning mirror caught staring into my own eyes

Scott Owens - USA

lost in a blaze of maples the yellow fire hydrant

Angela Terry - USA

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not long enough the bed the night

Graham Nunn - Australia

redwood forest a blue jay disappears into sky

Graham Nunn - Australia

gathering storm crows squabble over the wheat field

Liz Rule - Australia

weeping willow it’s not the wind it’s the leaving

Lucas Stensland - USA

choosing at random birds, wherever they land

Lucas Stensland - USA

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Fairground Animals - Jūnichō

in a dark corner the glow of an apple

system failure the quant grits his teeth

under an orange sun young protesters put up tents

an armed crew storms the farm gates

unaware of their fate nearby cows moo loudly

baby’s burp the smell of curdled milk

flowing concrete a big footprint takes shape

yeti sightings up again this year

new planet the soothsayer predicts disaster

white cloud puffs blur the spring moon

hanging curtains a blue-headed moth drops from the folds

fairground animals spin into each turn

Participating poets and verse allocation: Annie Bachini - England, 1, 3, 5, 8, 10, 12 Steve Mason – England, 2, 4, 6, 7, 9, 11

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Searching the Size

It is the evening hour of cloudy summer in Doon Valley, Dehradun. The children are busy collecting pebbles from the river bank. The rock pebbles record the long journey to reach the moon-like shape. Out of joy, I also start picking a few and return home. My tiny daughter, Rupa, posts an eager look and smiles. cut out of moon the child reconfirms looking up

P K Padhy - India

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thick, congealed blood on the moonlit floor… ten years later slowly a face takes shape in my mind

Chen-ou Liu - Canada

meerkats in the zoo, tapping bewildered at glass walls, sniffing a blue-painted ceiling

Amelia Fielden - Australia

I walk alone beside Lake Ontario -- an eagle circles above me on this windless day

Chen-ou Liu - Canada

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Lake Ontario cupped in my hands a Taiwan moon . . . her words linger in my heart there's no there there

Chen-ou Liu- Canada

the white heron lifts up, flies away from the lake with its reflection and my melancholy

Amelia Fielden - Australia

clear water cascading down my spine I shake myself out of the blue of a kingfisher

Claire Everett - UK

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old friend— embracing him our bones collide

John McDonald - Scotland

lobster fishermen arguing— a bag of claws

John McDonald - Scotland

sleepless— his pillow full of voices

John McDonald - Scotland

—a carcass sibling crows gather to pick the bones

Anne Curran - New Zealand

old gate curlicues of iron and creeper

Nick Sherwood - UK

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he asks if it’s the end of the line winter moon

Cara Holman - USA

plum blossom rain— matching my step to his

Cara Holman - USA

frost footprints my memory of her fading

Cara Holman - USA

end of a love . . . honey hardens in the jar

Polona Oblak - Slovenia

autumn berry the tell-tale sign of her lipstick

Tracy Davidson - UK

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Special Feature

NaHaiWriMo

NaWriHaiMo (National Haiku Writing Month) is an initiative that provides daily prompts on a Facebook community page to stimulate its members to compose a haiku. It has just completed its second year and goes from strength to strength. http://www.facebook.com/pages/NaHaiWriMo/108107262587697?sk=wall https://sites.google.com/site/nahaiwrimo/home

To celebrate its success, Michael Dylan Welch, the organiser of this February event which actually continues throughout the year on Facebook, has announced that a book will be published featuring selected haiku from NaWriHaiMo 2012.

Notes from the Gean believes that Michael’s initiative is an important one which fully lines up with our mission to promote education, excellence and experimentation within haiku and are, therefore, pleased to run a special feature on NaHaiWriMo.

Notes from the Gean surveyed members of the group with five brief questions and is pleased publish select answers to each question: a kind of community interview if you will.

No 5-7-5 logo and Simpsons graphic by Michael Dylan welch

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Q1. Colin Stewart Jones How did you first get to hear of NaHaiWriMo and would you actively promote the group to other writers of haiku?

Tawnya Smith I heard about it last year from someone in my writing group. Several of them were participating in NaNoWriMo. I told them novels were beyond me at the moment, and one suggested NaHaiWriMo. I'd also seen it mentioned on a few blogs I read.

Anna Yin I found it through Google and thought it very interesting and wanted to challenge myself since I seldom wrote with prompts...and it would last a whole month! I kept write one or three every day and had so much fun to read others and my own. It just kept popping...with inspiration and joy...(even sometimes we wrote haiku implying sad mood) when the last day, the prompt was leap year… see, time flies so I wrote: leap year, your rare birthday, the painter add dragon’s eye…. in Chinese legend, as soon as the dragon was added eyes, it would fly away…But gladly, we still stay here and keep writing.

Cameron Mount I recently joined a group of haijin in south Jersey, a new charter of the HSA which had its first meeting in early February. In the email list that went around, one of the other poets (Penny Harter, actually) mentioned the Facebook group. I jumped right on it. For the last few National Poetry Months I've written a haiku a day anyway, and I've been a fan of Basho and Issa for quite a while, but never really had a community to share my own with.

Jayashree Maniyil Answer to Q1 - I learnt about NaHaiWriMo through the poetry blog dVerse Poets Pub. There was a post about haiku and its form (from memory) and everybody was encouraged to write one and link it to the post. I think, as part of the discussion through the comments section, one of the comments to the post had a link to NaHaiWriMo blog. That is how I landed here. Normally I don't trust my memory that much but I am most certain that this is how I came to know of NaHaiWriMo. I would certainly recommend this site to anybody who is keen on learning haiku. Lot of fantastic writers sharing the same page with beginners like me, encouraging and providing constructive feedback, having fun together and learning from each other. And of course we have useful tips shared by members and most importantly Michael - lots of reading material on Graceguts. Every post that I make is one tiny step closer to understanding it....and of course with every step forward, I slip back a few steps again!!! :-). Its all fun and good. I enjoy being here.

Hannah Gosselin I noticed a writing friend of mine doing a haiku a day challenge on a facebook page (I missed half the month looking for it, as I didn't have the right name), but I've really been enjoying it now that I'm here and I've posted a link to a friend to help her get back into the poetry practice, too…

Cara Holman I heard about NaHaiWriMo last year when I noticed several Facebook friends of mine clicking "Like" on the page. I am always open to new poem-a-day challenges, so I decided to give it a try. Over a year later, I am still writing (though not always posting) haiku daily. I would definitely recommend NaHaiWriMo to anyone who wants to improve their haiku, develop a daily writing habit, or just connect with the online haiku community.

Tore Sverredal I found it when I made a Facebook search for haiku groups and sites last autumn. I would definitely recommend it to anyone interested in haiku!

Terry O'Connor First heard about it when I eavesdropped a whispered conversation at a Haiku Anonymous meeting last year...tried everything to quit, but when I noticed that even cold turkey was a season word, I resigned myself to my fate, and I've been here ever since.

I don't tell people...don't have to, it's an epidemic

Carlos Colón Susan Delphine Delaney gave be the scoop. I have spread the word to the NW La. Haiku Society, but have not seen any of the members posting yet.

Alee Imperial Albano A Wikipedia entry! That's very likely and soon from you, Michael! And in answer to your question, Colin: I learned about it vaguely at first from Vicki McCullough during one of our meetings, the Vancouver Haiku Group. But it was Jessica Tremblay, then a new member, who explained to us what NaHaiWriMo is. I believe I also read it on Red Dragonfly, Melissa Allen's blog…

Pris Campbell I heard about it in one of the FB groups on haiku back before the 2011 Feb challenge and was hooked right away. I always recommend it to anyone writing haiku or interested in learning more about it. Writing to the same prompt is fun and the links are educational.

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Jann Wirtz I gave up at Laundry.. after Jam and Kitchen the domesticity got to me!

Michele Harvey I'm not sure if I first saw NaHaiWriMo on Facebook,The Haiku Foundation News or one of the many blogs I subscribe to, but all at once it was everywhere! I jumped in late last February, found it addicting and decided to stay for the ride. Haiku (as many have said) is a way of life, a way of experiencing the world. NaHaiWriMo has been like catching a bullet train instead of a donkey cart. The interesting aspect of Kukai, is that the smaller the focus, (as if 17 syllables isn't small enough) the more creativity is called upon. My only quibble is that more of the larger haiku community doesn't join in. There are many admired poets I'd love to see tackle some of these kukai. That would be quite a thrill. Yes. I'd definitely recommend this to any haijin, beginner or otherwise. It's great to get the juices flowing and limber up one's skills

Otsenre Ogaitnas I first heard of NaHaiWriMo last year while having lunch with some haiku poets @ Haiku Society of America National Quarterly Meeting/Bend Haiku Weekend 3-5 June, 2011 in Bend, Oregon where I was a haiku presenter and an invited guest by award winning Oregon poet an'ya and PeterB. And @ the meet, one day, if I remember well I think I saw MDW wearing his signature t-shirt with a no 575 logo. But only last month I committed myself to NaHaiWriMo for its February event to support my fellow HSA friends / haiku writers, and of course to challenge myself if I can haiku for a whole month. Oh, do I still need to recommend it? NaHaiWriMo is a recommendable thing, and I can recommend it anytime, but honestly I don’t have to because haiku writers and haiku enthusiasts as well will come to...

Barb Westerman McGrory I first heard about this group when I was using a page I had under another persona (a writer page I kept separate from my family page). I networked with a lot of other writing enthusiasts and it was through some friends participating in NaNoWriMo (oddly enough) in 2010 that I found this page and briefly participated last year. This year I decided to really work on the craft and now I seem to be obsessed. I think this exercise is helping me a lot with my creative non-fiction writing, though where I used to write long, complicated, word-happy poetry, since January I've been able to write nothing but haiku & I'm starting to think I have a more compulsive personality than I'd already suspected. lol... I appreciate it when I get feedback, I enjoy reading the compositions of others, and I appreciate the challenge of trying to fit the incessant dialogue running through my head into as few words as possible.I lean toward offbeat, but I like coming here in an attempt to broaden my scope. Thanks! :)

Susan Shand I first heard about NaHaiWriMo in a message from MDW prior to the launch. Yes I would and do promote it to new haiku writers. It is an excellent site and a very welcoming place for people who are learning where they can post their early haiku. It is also very interesting to see what other people do with the daily prompts, so it is stimulating for seasoned writers too.

Kathabela Wilson I first heard about NaHaiWrimo by someone mumbling weird sounds under their breath. When I asked them to speak up they said the same thing again whatever it was... I asked... what does this mean? Their eyes lit up and then they explained it... alright I said so I went and looked and liked the Facebook page. I knew MDW had started it, so I thought. Okay... it has to be good. This was about a year ago when I was young and innocent. Then it happened. It took over my life... well for a while then I thought... no no I can't let it happen. It's a trap, that's what it is, with magic incantations too. "Nahaiwrimo..." say it over and over and see what happens to you. Well I dipped in over the last year and tasted it again a little thinking I was a free person. But then it happened again... I no longer had any control. You notice they say "Nahaiwrimo" mean National Haiku Writing Month" (I still tell people who hear ME mumble it and they look at me sideways...!) Well the month never ends... it's an endless feast. You have to think before you recommend it... but I do... your life will be full of poems, your head will be full of haiku night and day, you will dream of haiku, wake up with haiku in your mind, your husband will be afraid to get out of bed because you will read him fifteen new haiku before coffee. You will suddenly know the deep thoughts of hundreds of new friends... and one of them may even decide to turn into a nine headed earthworm (really this happened in his haiku) and you after thinking about that for 3 days will decide you love it) so... be careful. it's too much fun, and how will you get anything else done??? Well the good energy and humor gives a great dynamic to your day... and um... you may lose weight -- I haven't even made breakfast yet.

Annette Makino I learned of NaHaiWriMo via Twitter on the 4th day of last month. Starting then I posted every day thru February and also posted my haiku, with links back to the NaHaiWriMo page, on Twitter…

Jenny Angyal I first learned about NaHaiWriMo from a post on Troutswirl, the Haiku foundation's blog. I would recommend it to anyone interested in haiku. Writing to the prompts is very stimulating and results in haiku I never would have written otherwise…

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Q2. Colin Stewart Jones Does the sense of community work better than a closed forum which can sometimes intimidate?

Hansha Teki It has quite a different dynamic, Col. Sometimes the sense of community challenges one to hone one's skills more but just as easily the cosiness can make one lazy and settle for lukewarm poems knowing that they will be appreciated anyway.

Violette Rose-Jones I think its much better here and we dont seem to b attracting the troll element which can b disheartening.

James Rodriguez the way it works here is nice, everyone who participates is here to learn and share and there isn't the, crusty few i guess, ones with their own personal agendas or axes to grind that are so common elsewhere. mdw does a great job keeping things running smooth and providing links to help all of us grow and expand in the craft.

Rosemary Nissen-Wade I have not been in any closed haiku forums. I like the friendliness and supportiveness of people here, and feel the beginnings of that warm sense of community which I have experienced so abundantly in other open haiku groups on fb and elsewhere. I think the standard here is in general quite high and that my own haiku have improved due to my participation this year.

Jayashree Maniyil Q2: I have not been in any closed forums either. This is my first time in something of this kind and that too on facebook. I was quiet first but soon realised that everybody here is serioius and keen to learn. Serious meaning not that we don't have fun. We do. But all in good spirit.

Annie Juhl It was with a pounding heart I wrote my first haiku here a year ago. I was an absolute novice, (still am) and my English was very limited. I soon found out that this community was a “safe” place. It’s friendly, including, supportive, instructive and fun.

Susan Shand …They are different. There tends to be much less of the personality challenging stuff in NHWM which makes it more relaxed and less confrontational than some other groups. There isn't much critique either, which makes for a fairly non-judgemental comfort zone. Everyone needs a comfort zone :).

Mark E. Brager I think NaHaiWriMo provides a great sense of community but different from other fora which I have experienced which are more for workshopping. I would actually appreciate more feedback on my poems on NaiHaiWriMo.

Rosemary Nissen-Wade As a reader, I like the Like option. It saves me from having to try and find intelligent criticisms every time, when all I might really want to say is, 'I like this one'.

NaHaiWriMo I'm hearing several people say they'd like more commentary on their haiku, such as ways to improve it, and hopefully explanations of what makes a poem work. If anyone prefers just to click Like, that's always fine, but something to consider is that if think through the reasons why you like a poem, and try to articulate them in a short note, that act itself can help you improve your own haiku.

Kathy Bowman I appreciate the questions but find this one to be leading - future questions might be better phrased more neutrally - who doesn't want community? who wouldn't prefer not being intimidated? But it could equally be phrased - does a closed forum provide a sense of safety compared to an open one where anyone can make intimidating comments? This doesn't mean I'm right but it seems like the questions are set up to lead the answers. Hey, that may be what is wanted. It may partly be a function of the yes/no question format, which is certainly easier to tabulate than a more open ended question such as - "what kind of forum builds community and safety?" Open? Private? Closed? Other - and if so, what?

Has I beated it to death yet? Asking is always good.

Colin Stewart Jones just a simple Q from experience kathy. closed forums with lots of experienced writers can seem intimidating and i just wondered if folks prefer the open community group to such forums.

Patsy Turner …love the anonimity and internationality of this medium...have done lots of writing with people i know so has been great to give and receive feedback unconditionally ,,

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Angie Werren yes :) I actually left one 'closed' community because I felt the 'moderater' imposed his own viewpoint much too much. this page is much more welcoming, to poets of all experience levels

Sheila Windsor great question: from me a resounding: YES

Sandi Pray Absolutely love the diversity and openness! Yes :))

Michele Harvey Col & Michael, ie: a closed forum VS. an open (FB) community; both offer very different benefits. I have been on both and have been intimidated on some closed forums. But with that intimidation one is also forced to submit to elders who have practiced the form longer and have a greater understanding. With this acquiescence, one learns at top speed. The key to any successful forum is focus on the art (of haiku) not on the individual. I owe a great debt to some of those that bashed me the most. I think the choice depends on what your goal is. To learn how to write haiku, a closed forum will offer focus and critique. A Facebook forum is a gentler entry which offers overall encouragement, but won't offer the focused teaching a good closed forum can. Both can create a real feeling of community.

Terri Hale French I think it depends where you are at in your "haiku voyage." I also belong to a closed forum and we do a lot more critiquing, but we have all been published for awhile and have plenty of rejections under our belts so I skin is pretty thick! I think NaHaiWriMo is more about sharing with just little nudges of critique. Many things I share here I then take to my closed forum for critique, so both places serve a purpose. I liken it to exercise, here I warm up and there I get down to muscle defining. One of the nice things about NaHaiWriMo is someone is always here; my closed forum is much smaller and sometimes when I visit nobody is home. : )

Terri Hale French our skin I meant!

Andrew McBride I like this open community forum and have found it validating to have fellow Haikuists "Like" my poems and make comments and suggestions. It's very supportive and enjoyable. I also belong to a closed forum with very little participation and an in-person critiquing group with lots of participation.

Alee Imperial Albano I plunged into NaHaiWriMo last year not really knowing what to expect. I guess I was more curious than serious. But I knew Michael from the fluke of a haiku, which won for me my one and only award in haiku writing so far where he was a judge. I’ve read a lot about him and his essays on haiku and had met him. And I wanted to belong to one more of his brainchild. I had also thought it would be great to tug along Melissa Allen, Margaret Dornaus (both of whom I’ve befriended through our blogs) and Jessica Tremblay I’d later meet. And so I approached NaHaiWriMo with the spunk of a newbie, which I think worked for me because it felt informal. Of course, I later realized it was more than a community, in some aka group site, one to which I once belonged, where one inertly displays one’s daily ware like say I do in my blog and hope some flies would catch a waft of my offering. It was soon turning into a dynamic site where one’s haiku (ware) gets a current of eyes that either pass it on or assess and even buy it, ‘like it’ to be more precise and even confirm this with a prized comment.

At first, sheepishly doing, imitating perhaps, what apparently should be done to others’ haiku, I found myself becoming more confident with my own appraisals, even enhancing these with comments. I soon realized that when I did this, I was really doing it to my own work. Gradually, our daily haiku started to have definite voices, personalities even and NaHai is turning out into an actual community shaped by the varied elements of a world we constructed daily with our posts. It isn’t at all surprising that the ‘wall’ we completed everyday is a mosaic of differing skills—of course, this showed. But there was no stopping us because as in a community, relationships began with some even getting firmed up, even established. Along the way too, the more skilled among us started taking the hand of those who were limping, fragile. I was one of them; and so, some of us were turning out better ‘details’ for the wall. The holding of hands, the fun and the sharing of cross-cultural universes, as well as the baring of one’s self with inevitable true-to-life snatches straying into our haiku, the spontaneous caring that we expressed for someone’s pain and bliss turned us NWHMo-ers into a real community.

In a closed forum, one of which I’ve also ‘dared’ to sign up, this spirit of being together, working on the same wall closely with each other can’t be possible because a lapse of time often happens where response is delayed. But dpending o the members, it can also be a caring community. Yet because the exchange isn’t daily, the energy is not sustained. Intimidating? It could be if a participant is self conscious of the players’ degree of craft (multi-awarded, multi-published, editor, reviewer, competition judge, etc.) versus a virtual newbie, or a learner who strayed into a rarefied field. Critiquing can also be intimidating because serious even scholarly critiques is the ken of the really accomplished, and learning through them can be truly helpful, though a simple, sincere and honest expression of why a haiku works for a novice could be taken as refreshing but then, it could also be ignored. Yes, I’d prefer a community though now that I have as choice, I’d like to stay with the closed forum as well, echoing Terri’s voice on both.

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Kathabela Wilson This community is nourishing and inspiring and we touch new hearts in approach to the heart of haiku! I tend to prefer openness. But the quiet dynamic of concentrated dialogue in a smaller (not necessarily closed) group can be good too. I would not choose one over the other, I would choose both. Plus add one more, personal focused conversation and one on one collaboration with those we connect with through this open community, This happens, expands and adds more richness and meaning to our open group!

Q3. Colin Stewart Jones Is it possible to write authentically when writing in response to prompt?

Alison Williams Yes, just as it's possible to write inauthentically without prompts.

Freddy Ben-Arroyo The prompt is just a triger. The answer is YES! I always write authentically. And it comes to me easy. After all, we all have some assosiations with a given word, and we have the present as well! It's simple - just look around and VOILA!

Aubrie Cox I think, like Freddy said, the prompt is/can be a trigger. Something about it resonates within us from the prompt (sometimes)... however, I do think it's more difficult to be auhentic if one sticks strictly to the prompt.

Judith Gorgone A prompt, is just another source of ideas. Why does it matter where the inspiration comes from? It's what you do with it.

Bret Mars Define "authentic." If the prompt is of a nature you have no connection with, an item you are unfamiliar with, you have to research it. Read about it, look at it, then construct a response based wholly on your new found knowledge. You have no choice

Eric Fischman It is not possible to write inauthentically. Just because the language you use doesn't resonate with me, doesn't mean that it didn't resonate with you. Just because my ear has been trained and boot-camped, doesn't mean the active expression of an untrained mind is somehow false! What could be more honest, more actual, more authentic, than being a beginner? What does the amateur have to teach the expert? It is still your mind, your mind your mind your mind, and whatever comes out of you is true true true.

Marty Smith ...... yes, is "authentic." in the moment or in memory... how ever often i just make up a scene for the prompt, also i am inspired by other poets' post and i write my response.

Hi-Young Kim Heart will strip naked. The language is a prompt to the real prompt. Not a question about authenticity, just about being trigger-happy. Go ahead. Make My Day.

Christopher Provost Yes, but sometimes I think prompts make my writing forced. I've written some good haiku in response to prompts, but I've also written some crap.

Edgar W. Hopper Yes, of course. For those of us urban dwellers who don't always have a nature or otherwise natural experience that acts as a trigger the prompt can serve as a stimulus that allows for authenticity. I don't pretend to know what is meant by authenticity in haiku, I just feel that, for me, crafting an acceptable haiku is difficult no matter the source of inspiration.

Sheila Windsor i agree with hi-young: a prompt to the real prompt.

B Fay Wiese Something always "prompts" one's writing, whether it is a word that we go to a site to retrieve, or a walk outside, or a rainstorm we watch, or a friend or loved one dying, or a massive disaster, or any other experience. The quality of our thought determines the authenticity of our writing, not where the idea for the writing came from.

Cameron Mount I find a way to make the prompts dredge up an organic thought or observation. The authenticity of the moment may be in question (as in, did I really see that sunset?) but the image itself can be authentic. As in most poetic forms (or indeed in literature in general) fictional details do not necessarily negate authenticity, nor does being faithful to life observation make an event ring of truth.

It is less about authentic being real and more about authentic driving a reaction in the audience.

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Angie Werren yes. I try to let the unfamiliar prompt take me to a new way of interpreting what I see/observe. if I can't bring my own experience to it somehow, I usually skip it.

Terry O'Connor Q: Is it possible to write authentically when writing in response to prompts?

Answer + 2 cents:

Of course, with varying degrees of success, absolutely.

In much the same way as I can feel a completely real/authentic emotion in response to an actor's portrayal of a character or a singer's song of joy/pain etc. I don't require Adele to be dumped by her boyfriend before every concert, nor does Disney have to really shoot Bambi's mom ;) for me to "really" feel that emotion of loss.

I think some (left-brained haiku supremacists who only watch documentaries, hate popular culture and anyone born after the Edo period !?!) have a hard time with subjectivity, while others have a better ability, and are more willing, to put themselves into the moment and see/believe(suspend disbelief) what(ever) they are shown, told... A balance between the two would be ideal, but you can't, and surely shouldn't please all the people all the time...hence sub-genres and all the wonderful diversity.

Otsenre Ogaitnas Basically, yes, it is possible to write authentically when writing in response to prompts, because they (the prompts) would, to my understanding, represent authentic writing only when you yourself as a writer would like to see your masterpiece written or done, and in it there’s an authentic feeling, felt by the reader, whether it is with reference to a personal life experience or not. Sometimes for me the only way to get my aging brain to work productively is through the given prompts, just like here @ NaHaiWriMo, but of course I never forced myself, nor let my fingers bleed writing to prompts, because I already know the outcome- poor quality and often formulaic. Prompted or non-prompted, I think, to get a quality result depends on ones' writing approach. Well, hope you enjoy my haiku below, wink! my haiku not spectacular — just this red sunset

Pat Geyer yup...the same way you respond to the prompts life scripts for you each day...ya do what ya gotta' do...

Terri Hale French Sure, one can be authentic or inauthentic with or without a prompt.

Alessandra Gallo 'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.'

NaHaiWriMo Something I'll say about "authenticity" is that it's a matter of process and product. Good process can help make good product, so writing out of genuine personal experience rather than pure imagination is often reliable, although that doesn't mean that imagination can't also come across to the reader authentically. As novelists will tell you, fiction is often truer than fact. Also, the point that something "really happened" does not mean the poem is authentic -- one can still write inauthetically about authentic experience. What really matters, ultimately, is the product -- does the *poem* itself come across to the reader as being believable, regardless of how it came to be inspired? If you write about a new moon rising in the sky, that's simply not possible, so such a poem would be inauthentic (in this case, factually false). But if you've never seen or experienced the rock formation known as talus (one of our prompts last month), it is entirely possible to research and project yourself empathetically into such an experience and write a poem that could indeed come across as authentic to readers. Remember that Buson's wife was *alive* when he wrote about stepping on his dead wife's comb.

Tawnya Smith There are many yet connected ideas of authentic arising here. There is authentic viewed from the point of inspiration, from the process of creation, from the judgement of quality, and from approval by a reader. I don't see them as the same, but I do see them as connected. Rather like the poem itself is parts gathered and woven into a whole. I suppose each of these could be measured for authenticity. There is also a factor of time. Given some amount of time, there will be a reader, experienced or not, who will appreciate a piece of writing, authentic or not. Quite the hornet's nest, this question. ;)

Rosemary Nissen-Wade Yes. The subconscious is infinitely obliging, and throws up just the right memories, or directs the consciousness to the perfect item in the present environment

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Violette Rose-Jones Yes. Good haiku are not always about having a haiku moment but are always about nailing a truth or a true moment. Our memory contains a wealth of such moments, we just have to make connections.

Paul David Mena The best haiku are authentic responses to external stimuli. That the prompts are not of the poet's choosing is - in my opinion, anyway - irrelevant.

Q4. Colin Stewart Jones How do you feel that by participating in NaHaiWriMo your writing skills have improved?

Mark E. Brager oh yes...the daily practice plus the exposure to such a group of talented haiku writers has sharpened my meager skills immeasurably. Seeing how others interpret a prompt and react to others' poems is a rich source of feedback...

Susan Murata I KNOW I would not write without the prompts, one. Two, you MUST write in order for there to be an interaction with community members re: (your own) haiku content. Three, the interaction with other haijin on this fb site sooooooo encourages your very best output. You quickly see whose haiku hit the mark - whose haiku reverberate - and the impetus is there to try harder. It works!!

Cara Holman Participating in NaHaiWriMo has really made a difference in my comfort level with writing and sharing haiku. It made it okay to just write, without worrying about what an editor would think. And the almost instantaneous feedback, in the form of comments or "Likes", helps me refine my haiku. Not to mention the benefits of reading others' takes on the same prompts.

Terri Hale French you can't improve if you are not writing, so the discipline of writing every day has helped my writing. Plus reading other people's work always greases my wheels!

Susan Shand I enjoy the challenge of writing every day, even days when I'm busy, or not in the mood for writing. It is good practice. Because it is a non-judgmental space to post, I have felt able to experiment with my haiku. I have used different forms, or pushed at the edges of 'haikuness'. I have sometimes been surprised when people have 'liked' a haiku that I didn't think was very good. So it has broadened my writing and given me confidence to show work which otherwise I might not have done.

Raul Sanchez May 1st will one year since I joined the page and have learned a lot from everyone else on the page. What I like is the early morning challenge of the prompt. Sometimes it hits me right away, other times not. But letting the prompt "incubate" in my head, the haiku or senryu comes out like a spring chicken making a lot of noise. I also enjoy all the cyberfriends out there. Good work y'all!

Lorin Krogh I stay much more in my present moment and I'm more aware of surroundings... besides being a better and more joyful writer/ observer

Bret Mars The random freshness of unexpected subjects moved me beyond my typical bag of tricks. Seeing how others approached a subject was instructive too.

Hannah Gosselin I feel that my haiku writing skill has improved in that I've taken time to read the links provided specifically on how to write haiku and that by reading the offerings here I've learned what works and doesn't work for people and for myself also. :)

Cameron Mount I think the participation has increased my ability, as noted by others, because it forces "butt-in- chair" kind of devotion. I don't know why I respond better to deadlines than internal motivation. I suspect I'm not alone in that. But I do know that I do respond better to external stimuli, so just having a dedicated goal that isn't self-determined makes it more likely that I will put my butt in the chair and start working on my poetry.

Jayashree Maniyil The more I write, the better it gets.....this is exactly what I am holding on to dearly and trying to build slowly. I think my haiku has changed from the time I began even in a short duration. Has it improved? I certainly hope so. At the moment all that I am doing is responding to a prompt as best as I can. It is good to have something to work towards. And this daily practise sessions helps in building a routine - dedicating some time just to do one thing. I love going through the variety of interpretations from everybody. The constant encouragement from everyone only pushes me to strive a bit more harder the next time.

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Lisa Hills I think it probably does. But it depends on many elements. If my brain is thinking of poignant words and thoughts. or is still half asleep.

Belinda Broughton daily writing always helps me. it has improved my haiga especially and increased output. my reading has improved too!

Kat Creighton As others have stated the daily prompts, the likes or lack of likes and comments on my haiku have all helped me to write better. On many occasion those with much more experience than I have given me in- depth critiques that have helped me dig a little deeper. On the NaHaiWriMo page I read haiku that I love and some that I don't love so much...reading may be the best teacher.

Hansha Teki NaHaiWriMo has been a great motivator in writing haiku as a matter of discipline. Every new haiku is a new beginning; whether that necessarily indicates an improvement in haiku writing skills is not something that I am objectively able to judge in regard to my own pieces. The warm and supportive atmosphere of NaHaiWriMo is clearly a great encouragement to each of us to write haiku but more than this is necessary if we wish to write poems that may be remembered weeks, months, years, decades or even centuries from now.

Johnny Baranski To me it's simply a matter of practice makes perfect.

Ida Freilinger Writing under pressure was good for me. Reading haiku I liked was also fun. I think I understand haiku better. By gauging likes I found ways to write haiku others liked better. When I heard the word Kukai, I groaned inwardly and tried to escape. It took too long to write one or two. Now, I think I'll enjoy Kukai more and have better results.

Alee Imperial Albano Definitely improved as has been noted by friends who I consider masters of the genre. My other gauge would be increased acceptance in my submissions. I find it easier to 'nail' a haiku for here since, as well. I've mentioned what in NaHaiWriMo has helped in my long response to Q1 like the discipline of writing daily, the interaction with other members, the likes and no likes, comments that uplift or suggest, but especially reading what Daphne says 'tons and tons' of haiku and also Michael's random reference notes, definitely pulled me up. Still, there's still so much to learn.

Annie Juhl Being a part of nahaiwrimo, has improved my haiku skils in so many ways. I would probably not have experimented with one line haiku, haiga, haiku primer, and all the other challenges we were given here, on my own. Wading out on deep water with very skilled people by my side, is a very good way for me to learn. And first of all, I feel free here, to experiment, play, be vulnerable, have fun, ask questions and learn. I’m only at the very beginning of my haiku path, and I’m very grateful for all the encouragement and help I was given here, both on haiku and language.

Paul David Mena Daily prompts fight complacency by providing a gentle nudge to write - with or without the poet's perception of "inspiration."

Anna Yin Not sure. I hope to have more serious discussion with experienced haijin. Most of my haiku I save somewhere and I plan to come back to revise. Meantime, I read some discussions here and some good essays as well which help me understand better. So in this sense, I'd like to say I have improved.

Kathabela Wilson Absolutely. NaHaiWriMo has given me a deeper appreciation, and a deeper penetration into the possibilities of haiku. In asking myself for this continuous flow of concentrated expression it has caused me to examine the elements and powers of the form and thus... improved my writing, I am sure of it.

Michele Harvey NaHaWriMo has forced me to give a keener look at subjects that may otherwise go unexplored. Nachos for instance...who would consciously set about writing a haiku about nachos? LOL

Elissa Malcohn Writing a daily haiku has given me a deeper experience of the form, both through practice and through reading other posts. It's not unusual for me to think I have something ready to post and then discover ways to improve on it.

Sanjuktaa Asopa Oh yes,the exposure is more, the output is more,without the prompts i'd not have been writing at all; improved? i thought so, till 10 mnts ago when i was informed that i've been rejected by Acorn :=( That broke my heart, really it did!

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Q5. Colin Stewart Jones Is there anything else that you wish to say about NaHaiWriMo?

Lorin Krogh I appreciate the daily prompts as they have shown me the joy of discipline

Annie Juhl I think I’ve said it all. But I can add, that I really enjoy the "rule" of one post per day.

Freddy Ben-Arroyo You must be doing something right! Keep going! Thank you so much!

Sheila Windsor thank you

Sanjuktaa Asopa Everything is perfect; great site to be in and thanks much for everything. But since i am among friends here, i wish if my poem is rubbish, somebody would tell me so frankly. i promise i'd try to take it in my stride :-)

Daphne Purpus May it continue forever! It is wonderful!

Alee Imperial Albano I wonder if Michael expected what NaHaiWriMo has turned into. Perhaps like its precursor, NaNoWriMo, he thought it would end in a month or be a one-month event only, as its name says so. I think it's a 'stroke of genius' to use the tools of a networking site and make them work to create a learning laboratory. Not sure if I'm using the right terms here but I hope I'm giving a sense of what I mean more or less. The synergy among the participants that followed after February 2011 has been amazing--it held us up. That most seem to have been committed to keep on adds to the wonder because it's so free in every sense; in regular workshops one stays because of a fee and in some, a certificate awaits in the end. (Well, there never was a promise of the book!) I stayed because I felt I was gaining much more than I was putting in. But beyond my personal gains, I think a better understanding of haiku as well as a debunking of a lot misconceptions about it has been achieved in a way by NaHaiWriMo. It should continue to convert a lot more because for me, haiku is such a sublime art.

Cara Holman What I like best about NaHaiWriMo is that it is inclusive-- anyone is welcome to write and post, regardless of their experience level. As such, it is a great way to dip one's toes into the practice of writing haiku. I feel like I've written a "good" haiku, when it becomes the catalyst for an lively discussion.

Kathabela Wilson I just realized there IS one more thing I have not said about NaHaiWriMo! Every day I learn more about things I might not know or think about! Even when a prompt is something familiar, I look carefully at what allusions, references, unexpected meanings a word or idea has. Online dictionaries and googling make this easy. I realize multiple meanings, add layers to my understanding about things, including words, origins, phrases, history, mythology, astronomy... no end to this! I like the unexpected provocation to experience and learn and apply. Even when writing about a very familiar event, word, natural object, I am amazed at the richness and beauty of language and associations. I love that I have learned so much as a result of NaHaiWriMo, and not just about haiku!

Alee Imperial Albano I'd like to add to Kathabela's thoughts on how much learning seemed to happen everyday from the prompts. For me, more than what google had to say, it's the personal notes some of us wrote which added deeper layers to book knowledge. This filter of memory or more precisely, of the heart has given some haiku a kind of diamond facet hard to find anywhere. I feel so privileged 'traveling' to places without a ticket, having a glimpse of wondrous places I may never get to. Or reading a historical angle that google may never wind of. It's been awesome. Thanks to you all!

Colin Stewart Jones hi guys thanks for all of your input I am busy putting the feature together It'll take a couple of days but will be worth it thanks again col

My thanks to Michael Dylan Welch and all of the NaWriHaiMo group who gave generously of their time to answer my questions. The group is an excellent place to learn and develop as a haiku poet. If you are on Facebook and want to learn more about haiku I’d thoroughly recommend joining NaWriHaiMo.

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Alegria Imperial – Canada & Eleanor Angeles - USA

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House and Bird

As the Earth turns - and I'm told it does - a feeble light crawls over the roof of the inn. Still haven't slept a wink and it's getting tiresome, I hope. I notice a magpie on the inn's roof and decide that it's from there the building came. Why not? Like some sort of egg that'll hatch Christmas and Bingo parties, lame C&W parties with pale quaint Danes doing line dance. Not quite satisfied with the order of things ”in the World” (said in grimacing way with that expression 54-year-old adolescents present when they forget they're … 54), I decide that the bird came before the house.

November mist the chair is as solid as usual

Johannes S. Bjerg - Denmark

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sand-flats splashed with china blue turning over the spoils of the tide this curlew mind

Claire Everett - UK

if I were to give up my dreams— a halo of debris around earth

Luminita Suse - USA

crowded café my iced tea inches away from your hot dark coffee

Luminita Suse – USA

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the leaves that never fell deep winter

Ann Schwader - USA

thin snow drifts into afternoon tea steam

Ann Schwader - USA

the curve of my hand windfall peaches

Ann Schwader - USA

to lie or not to lie? snow on snow

Chen-ou Liu - Canada

Christmas gift— smile of first snowman

Gennady Nov - Russia

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a dead gull on a bed of kelp sea fragrant

Neal Whitman - USA

a single lamp ample for story telling winter night

Neal Whitman - USA

hospital room two lives separated by a curtain

Alan Bridges - USA

misty light of a waning moon . . . water dragon

Hansha Teki - New Zealand

an old dress grows musty mother's perfume

Todd Grant - Canada

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Moonlight Settles - Jūnichō

table for five flags billow under the changing sky

starlings come to roost on an avenue of lime trees

jazz night at the pub dancers spilling out

feral gangs clash blades at the ready

out of the shadows unseen at first a fox’s tail

baring teeth caught in headlights

front page picture refugees leave the town

the river trail winds to a latticed bridge

a dropped coin ripples tranquil waters

clickety clack doors flung open

cranes hang starkly over the city - moonlight settles

the nightshift sweeping leaves

Participating UK poets and verse allocation:

joint composition, 1; Steve Mason, 2, 7, 12: Annie Bachini, 3, 8: Mary Dawon, 4, 9: Deborah Anderson, 5, 10: Lorna Liffen, 6, 11

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The Dreaming Room

on a bare branch by Bashō: a commentary by Alegria Imperial

Transformation by haiku on a bare branch a crow settled down autumn evening

Basho (trans. by Jane Reichhold)

“How true!” was all I could say of these lines, the first of Basho’s that I have read—my introduction to haiku. The spare lines also stunned me yet they opened up spaces akin to meditation. Perhaps, I had thought, I should read it slowly as in praying and I did. The passing scenes I’ve seen in drives had suddenly turned into an immediate moment and I, in it. I recognized the feeling; it also happens when a painting or performance draws me in. Of course, I was reading a poem and I understood it or so I had thought.

I can’t recall from what collection I read ‘on a bare branch’ among the few books I found at the Enoch Pratt Library eight years ago in Baltimore, where I was then staying. I had just stumbled on haiku, surfing the web for poetry and clicking on the page of Baltimore haiku poet Denis Garrison. Browsing through the posted works, I thought how easy to do it and so, with the spunk of an ignoramus, I wrote one, responding to his submission call. He sent it back with kind words. It had possibilities, he said, and he even rewrote a line. How encouraging!

I had just ended a long career in media and journalism and on the daring of a friend, had taken up fiction writing in New York and later, poetry—dreams that long hovered in my hard working years. I thought haiku would come as easily as both, which I tackled the way I had wielded words in thick gray slabs. I had studied American, English and continental literature in the Philippines, a country closer to Japan, but had not been aware of haiku until then. And so, I wrote a few more of what I thought was haiku, imitating how Dennis demonstrated it and sent these again; I received an outright rejection that miffed me. Yet his advice (or was it a command?) for me to read up on haiku goaded me up the marble steps of the Baltimore library.

The haiku shelf nestled in an alcove of special collections on a mezzanine. The small table felt almost intimate. The few haiku small books felt ancient in my hands, the pages fragile. I could not take them home. I had to take scrap paper from the librarian’s desk to write on. Only Basho’s ‘bare branch’ remains among bales of my notes and haiku drafts. I’ve read more of Basho and volumes of other haiku poets since. I’ve learned that the simplicity and immediacy of the ‘bare branch’ that entranced me had also deceived me. Haiku, after all, is a centuries-old art. I realized I might never get to an iota of what makes it what it is. But haiku has transformed me since.

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Nature and I have turned into lovers, for one, as if I’m seeing clouds, the sun and the moon for the first time, or flowers and birds. Yet, as a child, I prowled bamboo groves and shaded streams to catch dragonflies and wait for the kingfisher’s shadow. As an adult, I walked on streams of blossoms shredded by the wind, relishing fragrances and dreams. I used to throw open our windows for the full moon for me to bathe in. I thought I had shed them off when I left home for North America where I finally live the four seasons with blossoms like daffodils and cherry blossoms or trees that inflame in the fall like the maple that I used to know only as words in poems and songs in a borrowed language from an implanted culture I memorized as a child. But haiku has lent me ways to see things simultaneously through the past into the present, as well as from a pinhole as in a bee wading in pollen to the vastness of a punctured moonless summer sky. I leap from image to thought and feeling simply and exactly losing myself in what a moment presents like how I felt reading ‘bare branch’ the first time.

Some writings on Basho especially in his later haiku identify such a moment as Zen. As a Southeast Asian, I know Zen. It’s part of my heritage. But how come I’m ignorant of haiku? It must have been our destined Western colonization that encrusted our Eastern beginnings with layers of European and American culture, hence, blocking it. In an unfortunate historical accident when Japan occupied the Philippines during World War II, my parents could have learned haiku and passed it on to me. Instead, those years inflicted so much pain that I grew up with my mother’s family trying to survive a pall of sorrow from my grandfather’s execution by the Japanese Imperial Army. Japan, for me, represented the horror of cruelty. Then came haiku. I hadn’t thought of that sadness I inherited when I first started reading on it, delighting even at Basho’s Oku-no-hosomichi (Back Roads to Far Towns) leading me by inroads to Japan. When the Fukushima tragedy struck last year, I plunged into it, writing a haibun about families being rescued and some haiku, finding myself in tears. I realized a healing has crept deep in me, of which my grandfather must have had a hand.

From my first imitations of Basho, I kept writing haiku that I later found out from rejections were but fragments. Yet two flukes won for me awards in 2007, one from a growing volume of fragments that I kept tweaking as a single entry to the Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival, the other, another failed haiku I expanded as free verse for the Passager Annual Poetry Award (Baltimore, MD). These fired me to keep on. I haunted more sites on the web, picking beds for my haiku. Peggy Willis Lyles, my first editor, sent back my submission to The Heron’s Nest, the first journal I dared to submit with kind sweet comments yet I pushed more; until she died none of my haiku made it (one later did with Fay Aoyagi who took over Peggy’s contributor’s list). Werner Reichhold of LYNX, on the other hand, loved my first submission. Still, more rejections from other journals pounded on me to give up.

But my prose and free verse had started to crackle with a ‘textured richness’ as one editor described it— obviously influenced by my practice of writing haiku—and made it to literary journals. I’m writing less of both these days, finding in haiku the closer bridge to pure image and thought—more of my haiku, a few tanka, haibun and haiga have been published in other journals since. I’m also reading less of descriptive texts, dropping the first sentence if lacking the synthesis in a line like haiku. I can’t hope to fully know all I must or even write a perfect haiku but I step into its waters every day and steep myself in its calmness, its virtue that first drew me in.

Alegria Imperial - Canada

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snow melting by Issa: a commentary by Michael Dylan Welch

Issa’s Joy

雪とけて村一ぱいの子ども哉 yuki tokete mura ippai no kodomo kana

snow melting the village floods . . . with children!

—Issa

If I had to pick just one Japanese haiku as my favourite above all others, it would have to be this one. After a long winter, all the snow finally melts in spring. The poem starts with a simple image to indicate an optimistic moment of seasonal change, but then adds tension—water from melting snow is threatening a flood. But then we have a twist—the village is not flooding with water, but with children. All is right with the world after all. And more than being right, it is joyous—it is ecstatic!

I do not know to what extent the poem’s wordplay exists in the Japanese, but in English it works very well, giving this haiku a surprise ending. With this surprise, Issa emphasizes the joy of childhood. Now it is warm enough to play outside, and what fun to splash in the puddles—when the world, as Cummings said, is mud-luscious and puddle-wonderful. And it’s not just one or two children, but all the children of the village, thus celebrating a communal joy.

Issa shares this joy, too, but what makes the poem even more remarkable is its context, amid all his hardships. His mother died when he was three, his stepmother despised him and made him work in the fields instead of going to school, and he was forced to leave home at fourteen. That sounds like a recipe for an unhappy childhood, yet Issa recalls a happy childhood moment. His glass was always half full, and you can see this buoyant spirit in most of Issa’s haiku. He lived a life of much poverty, and though he later married and found some literary success as a haiku poet, his children died very young, as did one of his wives. And that was not all of his troubles. Yet still he was able to find joy in his life.

For me, this haiku captures not only the joy of childhood, but also the joy of haiku, because haiku poets delight in such moments just as much as children who take delight in spring puddles after a long winter. Here’s to Issa’s joy!

Michael Dylan Welch - USA

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Kat Creighton - USA

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Guilty Pleasures

I.

Never one for affection. A woman of few words. And yet there was something in the way she rolled up her sleeves to knead the dough, or how a wisp of silver hair would slip loose from the severe bun to catch on the damp blush of her cheek. Now and then, we’d watch her through a gap in the scullery door as she stood, elbow-deep in hot soap suds, humming along to some old-fashioned melody. When she sensed our presence, she’d wipe her rough, red hands on her apron and bark at us to, “mind the floor”. Like her Battenburg cake, she would partake of life’s pleasures, in slivers. creaking pond ice… Grandmother’s best poker face

II.

We all knew where she kept The Box. Right at the back of the sideboard in the musty front room that was only aired on special occasions, like wakes, or baptisms. Through the cellophane, the faint, bittersweet smell of rumour and speculation. A gift from whom? How long ago? Would each mouthful be unblemished, or would it bear the bloom of age? We’d turn the questions over in our minds, give The Box a little shake and, in turn, hold it to our ears, as if the contents would this time offer up their secrets. Would they go with her, to the grave? We imagined her in her own dark box, with this one cradled in her lap, embalmed in eternal silence. And the worms would turn, unable to penetrate the film.

Sometimes I wonder what happened to The Box, but there’s no one left to ask. chocolate violets… Grandma’s forbidden love still under wraps

Claire Everett - UK

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After Arrival

travelers opening doors to rooms not their own

You do not know the names of the people who have slept in this bed, or much about them, except that they too must have woken to the traffic and voices in the street below, made the trek from the cramped bathroom to the bed, hung their clothes on these hangers, opened the door with the same knob, noted the small economies: dim light bulbs, plastic glasses, small bars of soap, shampoo sachets, an old television that gets few channels, thin towels.

A shadow reaches from your backpack to the still open door

Maura High - Wales/United States

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Stars that know no sadness

- A winter shisan

winter night - the stars that know no sadness are everywhere

gentle crackling with every step on the way home

a cockroach in the hardware store how about that?

all the King's men are in disarray

at dawn they fall they fall in silence cherry petals

over the mountain range the shining wind

he's from the North she's from the South two Korean lovers

black fishnet stockings wrapped around the towel rail

after the shower waters of the brook are clear again

dead or alive? uprooted tree across the street

p.s. and apples in this foreign land are priced like gold

missing moon-viewing he makes his first step on the Moon

Vladislav Vassiliev - UK and Valeria Simonova-Cecon - Italy

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The power of light : Jûnichô-Winter

winter moon deep in dream the storm calms down /HS

at the french willows the brook breathes frost /RL

eastern steppe training an eagle for hawking /HS

-

forced marriage: Escaping under a fake name /HS

the hall porter's gaze sweaty the hands /RL

soft May rain ... The song of a distant flute* /HS

-

cattle drive - the old farmer courting again /RL

the radiant power of light Segantini's last works /HS

“Cardinal de Richelieu” infested by the moss gall /RL

-

she thumbs through her dossier /RL

wandering fogs close to the sky cripples the wood /HS

between Castor and Pollux floating the koan's solution /RL

*The song of a distant flute: Li-Tai-P, The Mysterious Flute Helga Stania & Ramona Linke - Germany

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Alegria Imperial - Canada

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rainstorm gone the dripping stillness of green air

Jan Dobb - Australia

there on the tree a flawless spider-web Christmas morning

Jan Dobb - Australia

burnt-out house inside the safety fence a blaze of marigolds

Jan Dobb - Australia

poem removed due to previous publication in another journal

a foretaste of what's to come— the weight of a quince

Beth McFarland - Germany

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bedside vigil . . . her firm grip softens

Al Fogel - USA

alluring web: the fly and me hovering

Al Fogel - USA

After the wedding: red ants carrying rice.

H Edgar Hix - USA

shorter days the pastor's sermon longer

Deborah P Kolodji - USA

smoke bush even my dreams muted mauve

Deborah P Kolodji - USA

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the snowman at my front door asks when will he get an umbrella for rainy days

Luminita Suse - USA

the moonlight across my sick-bed reminds me how much of my life I live in shadow

hortensia anderson - USA

this solitude is all that I have ever wished for— a full moon silvering the dew on the roses

hortensia anderson - USA

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her brush sweeps across the white canvas with black ink... a rustle of breeze blowing through bamboo

hortensia anderson - USA

the small of her back again in my dreams the world rotated since I slid away

Lucas Stensland - USA

kneeling drunk women posed as owls the texted photo arrives with the morning that finds me ragged and ruffled

Lucas Stensland - USA

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Lavana Kray, Christine-Monica Moldoveanu Romania

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Kat Creighton - USA

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'The Point

I'm trying to make' (I shout to my old friend over the hubbub in the bar) 'is that I admired him for always being determined to get up and get himself to work, which he did (had to do) until the end.'

We both check our watches.

In the morning mirror, I think of him again...

quelling the shakes in his straight razor hand... splash of whiskey

Garry Eaton - Canada

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"The midnight"

End of December was looming. A few matters needed to be sorted out, so they wouldn't bar the passage into the new year. So many useless emotions had accumulated during those twelve month. Tonight was especially long and frosty. say no more listen: snow is falling

Dorota Pyra - Poland

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The Coincidence of Stars, Jack Galmitz A Review/Interview by Alan Summers

Inside Rear Cover photo by Alan Summers

On their home page ant ant ant ant ant state they have been a publisher of contemporary haiku since 1994. Beginning with issue 9 ant ant ant ant ant has featured haiku by one individual poet. ant ant ant ant ant is a limited-edition hand-made journal with an emphasis on design that strives to present the finest in traditional and experimental haiku. This is a part review, and part Q&A regarding The Coincidence of Stars. Before I ask Jack Galmitz a few questions, here is a brief take on his collection.

Galmitz has his unique style, as it should be, from the perceived mainstream formulæ. He isn’t constrained by what is a perceived ‘form’ within the genre of haiku writing.

Walking down the stairs her bodies stir the sun To be aware

This middle verse, one of three that opens the collection, appears to be a normal stanza at first, when we read into the first line. Stairs are a normal almost daily occurrence, and process, in our lives: Be it our domestic set of stairs; or simply using stairs at metro stations, or in malls. The middle line appears to be a mistake: Should it be her body or her bodie’s? Surely no one has more than one body? This got me thinking. As many of us have different personas on display, though only one, presumably at any one time, at home; work; and leisure/entertainment activities, where we wear our different faces, alternative hats, then surely it carries through to our physical body, beyond the bounds of our mere outward appearance. I know from the different jobs I’ve held through my life we all hold different body positions depending on what we do, or are about to do. At one time I covered a varying number of types of security, from covert to overt situations i.e. surveillance; VIP protection; backstage (rear and front) to emergency situations, that we emanate and we transform. But stir the sun? We do interact with the sun, both this planet and everyone on it. This may have spiritual aspects too, but we also live on a knife edge of a symbiotic relationship with the sun. And this leads me to someone I feel has his own knife edge symbiotic relationship with haiku, where the reader benefits.

So without any further to do I would now like to hand us over to Galmitz, via a few questions I posed to him over a period of several weeks.

Alan: What do you see as haiku, and what or where do you see haiku doing or going, at least outside Japan? A big question, but a useful setting up question for all the others.

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Jack: Alan, that is a very difficult question to answer given the multiplicity of directions the haiku form has taken in the last decade. Many poets still write shasei, which though acceptable and sometimes quite successful, is really remote from modern language philosophies (and by modern, I mean for nearly a hundred years).

Shasei is based on a belief in the transparency of language, that is to say, that language refers "naturally" to the world, whereas modern theories of language suggest that language is self-contained, each word/sign referring to yet another word/sign in infinite play.

Saying this, let me give you a definition I wrote of haiku some time ago that, admittedly, is still limited to the idea of representation: Modern English language haiku, whose antecedents can be traced to the Japanese verse forms of hokku and its late 19th century revisionist form of haiku, is a brief verse, generally written in one, two, or three lines, that presents the earth - the sensuous reality of the non- human - and sets it into the world-the historical human context. In its function of naming, it allows the non-human, with its quality of strangeness, to be perceived in a way it cannot do of its own accord; the haiku process of naming brings beings to words and thereby to openness, to appearance and thus into the human world.

In this dual purpose of haiku, seasonal references (the original Japanese "kigo") are sometimes retained, as is juxtaposition of two phrases comprising the form (a facsimile of the original Japanese "kireji), a means of opening or knowing the unknown and imposing an order on and meaning to it. In modern English-language haiku, bringing beings to words and appearance makes them shine with resplendence and sometimes this process may be likened to "epiphany," although an epiphany of the mind, and not of a deity.

I would think, now, that the work of post-modernist haiku poets will become more prominent in the future of the form. I think that the hard-won gains of these poets to have innovative muki-haiku accepted marks a watershed in the movement of the form and there will be no turning back. I believe modern haiku will continue to test the limits of language itself, expression itself, meaning itself.

If I were writing a definition now of haiku, it would encompass more than the earth, at least the earth as the inarticulate, and it would de-emphasize kigo and replace it with something more akin to Ban'ya Natsuishi's idea of keywords (although I think the future haiku will not permit strictures on what is or isn't a "keyword."). I think the future haiku will resemble post-modernist verse in general, retaining brevity as its defining characteristic.

Alan: In fact, opening the book up right now I'm caught by this:

Those clouds War horses at their hour

I've always had a fascination with war horses through the ages right up to WWI, including the last ever cavalry charges. Obviously you are talking about clouds that look like horses, and on a horizontal axis of meaning, it's a straightforward reading. What I'd like to know more about is the (vertical axis) meanings, other than just gazing up at the sky. Words like "those" and "at their hour" are not as simplistic as they appear, and I wonder what the nature of your reverie was, if it was, indeed, reverie?

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Jack: The poem you mention

Those clouds war horses at their hour is a death poem or as close to one as I have ever written or even entertained writing.

Yes, there is sometimes something about gathering clouds about to meet that is as dramatic as a great battle, a great charge of opposing forces about to occur; that is in the poem the first visual clue; there is a term "war clouds" that signify signs of impending war, but the terms also suggest, at least to me, storm clouds, huge perhaps, cumulonimbus about to meet and break each other apart.

I relate these to the seething but static alignment of "war horses," cavalry held in check but bristling with that moment when the order "CHARGE" is given and all hell breaks loose.

So, "at their hour," is the moment of truth, when that entire assemblage of two great armies face to face across a distance, just prior to joining- which will entail massive loss and destruction- move into each other, distinctions blurred, death certainly for some.

That is the moment of my death as imagined, not beautiful, yet beautiful in its own way, poised yet with the purpose of power and destruction. Ominous! Yet, entrancing, too.

Alan: I found the following verse unutterably beautiful and very moving:

At the zoo I describe to the monkeys the sky's many blues

This is perhaps one of the more recognisable verses as a haiku to the general public, though in fact it's a 3/5/5 syllable construct. I'm being direct here, and apologies for that, but is this fictive, or faction? I do seem to have an unusual amount of empathy with animals, so I wouldn't be at all surprised if you do as a poet. But of course there is more to this than just the surface meaning, and perhaps more than just talking about freedoms? Could you expand on this verse?

Jack: It was written at the beginning of my experiments with content particularly in my haiku: as you can readily see, it lacks kigo and its pause/kire is subtle.

Of course, it could be taken as remembrance, but it was in fact fictive, or, perhaps to put it more precisely it uses the fictive to portray truth more truly than any factual report/poem can ever do.

We are closely related to monkeys and they have shown remarkable talents in intelligence, in the ability to communicate. as we've learned over the years through scientific research.

So, here we have these living descendants locked up in cages, or in environments that are simulacrums of their natural habitat, inhibiting their exposures to what is natural to them: their relationship to trees

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and the sky. I wanted to reach out imaginatively to express that we and monkeys could compare notes, that I could share with them what they were badly missing, their full-range of freedom.

I recall my Japanese friend, Keiji Minato, writing to me about the poem, saying it reminded him of a blues song.

You know, I've seen experiments that revealed that monkeys had a sense of justice, fairness, that was an inherent part of their makeup. There was so much pathos in this that I felt it an imperative to give them what they were missing out on, pent up as they were: the range of "blues," the range of things.

To add to what I was saying, I think what's central to this poem is the pathos, hence Keiji's comment to me.

The fact that a man, ordinarily considered less in tune with nature than other animals, has to be a surrogate, to expand the horizons of nature to animals that ordinarily would be more keenly aware of nature than man would be; this is the stunning fact of zoos; their misfortune.

Alan:

Along the shore a row of girls all in white clothes

Although almost in a sketching from nature shasei style, this poem strongly feels like an allegory or a metaphor. It has a mystical feel to it, almost a reverie. Could you expand?

Jack: Well, yes, there is a "strangeness" about the poem isn't there?

It is a reverie, the girls being adorned like the froth of the incoming sea, the girls themselves being the freshness of each newly formed wave.

I think the mystical feelings that the poem releases comes from the fact that while it is seemingly realistic, a sketch from life, it has no attributes that contribute to that association; in other words, the stasis, the line of girls greeting, at the edge between sand and sea, the waves, their presumed looking outwards towards something unnamed, the fact that parentage and purpose are missing, gives an almost ritualistic quality to the entire poem.

The poem is like a dream of life. Originally, I had the row of girls running along the shore, but for purposes of sound altered it to the way it "stands" now.

Further, Alan, there is nothing distinguishing one girl from another and this, I believe, is what gives the poem a spiritual or even eerie feeling to it.

It has some reference to the work of Rene Girard's book Violence and the Sacred, in which the position is taken that societies are based on distinction, hierarchy of some sort, and when there is a "doubling," that is to say a breakdown of distance and difference, we are faced with terror, the monstrous double, because there is the threat of the break-down of society.

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Alan: With the one line verse Male parts and female parts am I a flower I've learnt from transgender friends, and British documentaries, that we are indeed similar in the sexes to a certain extent. Would you expand on what you particularly mean in your poem?

Jack: Well, Alan, I believe that we are, like flowers (with their male and female parts) compound in our sexuality. Sexual identity is less a matter of opposition than degrees on a plane or on a continuum. This was the understanding of Freud and Jung. Indeed, Jung made assimilation of a man's feminine side-what he called the "anima"-the sine qua non of individuation, the making of a whole person. I don't think it is necessary to "name" what may or may not be considered "female" or "male" characteristics, as this would only complicate the matter, given that each person has their own interpretation of these qualities.

I will say this: in America you can see the one-sided version of manhood in the movies, in all the movies, in general in the action hero of pop culture. It is in my opinion a fatal flaw of my society to have such a narrow view of human beings. If I don't go too far, I think American Empire and militarism is the result of such portrayals or rather such portrayals signify the essential lop-sidedness of thought in America.

Although it is only partially related, one could say that the entire scandal of the Church regarding abuse of children, particularly homosexual abuse, is caused by what in psychoanalysis is called "the return of the repressed." In other words, if man denies his own feminine elements, desires, the rules guiding repression will call them forth in some form or other.

Alan: What would you say are the overall themes for your collection? The title of the book is The Coincidence of Stars taken from this one line verse:

We live in the dark the coincidence of stars

What do you personally mean by stating we live in the dark? I really liked the concluding part of this verse: the coincidence of stars, it's magical and mystical to me, and for others over thousands of years. What do you take from this part of the poem, what do you mean?

Jack: Let me put off answering the first question for a moment, Alan, because I'm not sure the book had an intention of an overall theme.

Certainly, the poem from which the book takes its title, deserves some special attention.

Let me say that the poem works because of its openness, its refusal to submit to a single interpretation.

However a reader finds the pauses or breaks in the poem will be decisive: if you pause after "we live," then you have something of a materialist view of the universe, right? That is to say, "in the dark" there is "the coincidence of stars." There is no plan, no creator, except the poet him/her self.

If the reader finds the pause more strongly at the mid-point, that is, "we live in the dark," the second half of the poem becomes something of a mirroring or "explanation" of what it means to live in the dark. Again, this could be the coincidence of being and the magnificent and meaningless universe.

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Or, it could be read to suggest that we live and see "through a glass darkly," not understanding our place in the universe, not really understanding even what "we," the pronoun, means or how each is a "we" in some way and the privileged "I" is a delusion, really built on a consensus. We do not know all the multiplicity of ideas, forces, inclinations, constructs, purposes that we contain: we think we know, but that is a dangerous illusion.

We may just be the accident of an accident; the "coincidence" of stars (the sun in particular), or, if you will, if we favor our existence and sense of being as special, then the universe itself may just be coincidental, haphazard, random and not related to us at all, even though we exist in "space," at least as a category of the mind.

When I write, I am usually not certain of the impulse or image or whatever is driving the poem. This is one of the general themes of the poems in the book. On the other hand, and this is also an unconscious impulse, since words are not "positive," in the sense of having their own identity, but rely on "difference," each of the poems has its own origins (which I do not suppose to know) and its own trajectory, so the overall theme in that sense is that there is no overall theme at all.

If I had to give a more definitive answer to what the overall theme of the book was I would say it is a call to experiment with writing, to be against closure of any kind, to not imagine that once the "key" to any given poem was found the words would fall off and there would stand TRUTH in its glory. No, that is not what I believe. The truth is in the thinking process, in the words as a working of thought, on the page.

Alan, to add to what I've said about the overall theme of my book, I would say the word "coincidence" is most controlling, most important.

Coincidence occurs when something happens under certain conditions, but without apparent relationship between this occurrence and other things existing simultaneously.

A coincidence does not prove a causal or any other modal relationship nor require any such.

So, contrary to the conventional form of haiku, where the author draws a relationship or hopes to achieve a likeness or oneness between apparently inapposite elements, I "intend" to reveal the disparity or more the accidental, without necessarily tethering things together.

Alan: Thanks Jack, I think that just about wraps things up.

Jack: I've thoroughly enjoyed this process.

Alan: Thank you Jack! ______The Coincidence of Stars Editor: Chris Gordon ant ant ant ant ant, Autumn 2011 http://antantantantant.wordpress.com/editors-note/

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Jack Galmitz is a poet and short-story writer.

In 2006, he was awarded the Ginyu Prize (chosen as the most accomplished books of haiku by the World Haiku Association) for his first two collections, A New Hand and Driftwood.

He has written four collections of haiku, the first two of which won the Ginyu Prize for 2006. He edits haiku of poets from around the world for the World Haiku Association’s annual collection and finds his greatest delight in occasionally coming upon a haiku that revises his world.

In 2010, he was awarded the Kusamakura Grand Prize in the foreign language category. Galmitz received a Runner-up award in the newly-inaugurated Vladimir Devidé Haiku Awards (2011). Two of his haiku received a Zatuei (Haiku of Merit) Award in the Vanguard category (World Haiku Review, December 2011). Galmitz has also recently been named “contributing editor” at Roadrunner Haiku Journal.

Books Published:

A New Hand (Wasteland Press, 2006);

Driftwood (Wasteland Press, 2007);

For a Sparrow: Haiku [Translations into Macedonian by Igor Isakovski] (Skopje, Macedonia: Blesok, 2007, in Macedonian and English];

Balanced is the Rose (Wasteland Press, 2008);

The Effects of Light (AHA Online Books, 2002);

Of All the Things (Ascent Aspirations Publishing);

Sky Theatre (Ink: Literary E-Zine);

A Simple Circle & Rockdove (Traveling Forms: Japanese/English Haiku); yards & lots (Middle Island Press, 2012).

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Cynthia Rowe - Australia

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In the yard an oil pool has a rainbow

Jack Galmitz - USA

The salvage yard: between crushed chrome and smashed glass slivers of sun

Jack Galmitz - USA

Through the door pass a hundred clowns or more each with a dagger

Jack Galmitz - USA

copper sky the odor of gasoline pervades the car

Virginie Colline - France

last train home —I just missed the mountain and the sea

Ernesto P. Santiago - Philippines

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kindling— she feels the brittle truth in her bones

Margaret Dornaus - USA

heartbreak— an ice moon illuminates the pock-marked fields

Margaret Dornaus - USA

rain-soaked newspaper no mention of our neighbor lost to the war

Elliot Nicely - USA

eye exam . . . morning mist envelopes the skyline

Nu Quang - USA

a shadow follows me around . . . our old cat

Nu Quang - USA

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"rain on the tracks"

leaving the house together raincoat

differing views seesaw

salsa dancing people twirl from people

names in sand under an orange sky the wind takes shape

rain on the tracks we slip away

itching his tattoo ex-wife

—

Lucas Stensland - USA

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A little from the tip

Wrapped within the barber's cape my eyes fall heavy beneath the soothing stroke of brush and fingers. I am immersed in the vibrations of the buzzing clippers, the swift snip and snap of scissors tapping against the teeth of comb. The puppetry of hand and head shapes me for the scrape of the razor, the intimate trimming of eyebrows, ears and nose. A flick of flame at my ear and smell of burning hair rouse me from my stupor. "Tamam?" he asks. "Çok iyi" I reply, "çok iyi". I'm fine. clipped peeks at the barber's bum in the mirror

"How do you say just a trim in Turkish?" I ask my friend when I join him for a drink at a local bar.

"Ucundan azıcık." "Ucundan azıcık?" "That's right, you pronounce it perfectly. It means a little from the tip." There are stifled giggles from the table next to us and I suspect my friend is having me on. I am interrupted from questioning him by a commotion of car horns, drums and flutes. An open-back truck with a young boy in a fancy costume and musicians leads a caravan of cars. "What's that all about?" I ask. My friend makes a snipping gesture with his fingers. "Ah," I say, with a sudden understanding of the giggles, "ucundan azıcık?" "That's right," my friend laughs, "A little from the tip."

Köy Deli - Turkey

Notes: Ucundan azıcık - At the barber's "just a trim'. lit. 'a little from the tip.'

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riding backwards on a well-lit train through a dark tunnel only my window reflection and the hum of the rails

Cara Holman - USA

mother's blind mother strokes my face, her aged fingers sight-reading the lines of shaped notes I might someday see myself

Margaret Dornaus USA

Venus and the moon . . . suspended in this long night side by side we walk without touching either star or crescent

Margaret Dornaus - USA

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as the moon rises I see clearly at last . . . in his absence I pack my bags

Tracy Davidson - USA

a street woman counts a handful of coins at dusk fingers of wind stealing the corners of her smile

Susan Constable - Canada

the first day in the year of the dragon dawns cool and gray . . . no wind to fan the flames or rain to extinguish them

Susan Constable - Canada

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Kat Creighton - USA

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shadows how much longer

As a child, I searched for shadows. Under trees at high noon when the crown of an acacia tree from across our balcony covered its root space like a clipped parasol, I’d creep to it and hug the ancient roots, basking in its shadow. By the stream where my grandmother scoured the soot off the iron rice pot and skillet, I’d haunt the silken strips of shadows under bamboo grooves. I waited on the engorged shadow of a kingfisher that never failed to fly by.

My grandmother had learned from snoops that I sauntered alone at high noon by the stream–even took dips. Upbraided, I stopped creeping under the shadowed stream for a while. Instead, I began haunting shadows in the wooded orchard of a grandaunt. One afternoon, a buzzing shadow chased me. Like a swarming cloud, the bees I had disturbed raced me to the chicken coop. I suffered a few stings, which my grandaunt soothed with dabs of burnt molasses syrup.

These days, I’m hunting for them under ruins and buildings that block the sun off. Why this disdain for the sun, a friend once asked. What answer could I give? half of who we are shadows

Alegria Imperial - Canada

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Cynthia Rowe - Australia

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a dream so real I stand at the window scanning the ocean for a carousel of sailboats . . . white horses in the wind

Susan Constable - Canada

i recall the place you promised to take me a circus i believe it left town many years ago and i still wait to hear from you

Steve Wilkinson - USA

send me a poem a personal one for me to keep on scented paper the type that lets me know that you are never coming back

Steve Wilkinson - USA

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In The Rain

In the rain: grey gray permeates the lights that can not penetrate it.

My feet are wet. My black umbrella's beginning to leak.

A pretty girl runs by, her hair clinging to her like a lusty lad.

This is how Autumn should be: a soft rain, softer lady.

A Peterbilt! And suddenly she's standing there, a ruined woman.

Once her dress was crisp cotton: pristine white, freshly starched. Once. . .

"Look at what I've learned to bake," she bubbles to her Mama. "Fresh mud pies!"

Mom wipes a tear from her eye and remembers other rains.

The daughter's out there, somewhere, on this rainy night. Then, a lightning bolt.

"Remember our first date?" Dad asks. "You're worried, too," Mom says.

The rain on the roof is little girl feet running away in the night.

She opens her eyes and tries to believe it's possible.

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The house is a grey castle guarded by roaring, silver car dragons.

In her dream her Galahad rides through the rain with dry hair.

Harvey shows up at the door like a drenched field mouse with a wet corsage.

The rain's coarse on her satin dress. Her hair's become a mop.

She'll cry all night, fists clenched, ignoring the soft rain taps on her window.

This is how nightmare must be: a gentle rain and hard hands.

Once, she believed in love. Rain hurts her bruises. She has no umbrella.

In her dream her Galahad rode through the rain with dry hair.

Through the mist: no steel shod hoof beat. No mail's clank. Just the odd drop of rain.

Mist needs no more than this: to be, and therefore to be all.

The weatherman's map's too large. I understand the view from my window.

A blackbird darts into the mist, quicker than a question.

Kanaka looks out the library window, thinking of a black-haired girl.

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Out of the mist: a black bird, species unknown. A phoenix?

"It's nasty out," he tells her. "Maybe we should just stay in, where it's warm."

She makes them hot chocolate with whipped cream in handmade clay cups.

The kids play Old Maid and dominoes while freezing rain glazes the streets.

In Central Oklahoma, winter rarely learns to snow.

Raining on Christmas! She shakes her red umbrella away from the gifts.

Even these black clouds can't dim the lights, bright as children's eyes.

H. Edgar Hix - USA

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a crow’s own color and, with less ink, the sketch of a pine

Jeffrey Woodward - USA

in my hands until the tide takes it back

Jeffrey Woodward - USA

an empty box returns a blank stare— spring cleaning

Jeffrey Woodward - USA

white bird in a leafy tree my mind wanders

Dan Brook - USA

winter night— a petal of chrysanthemum brightens the well

Janak Sapkota - Nepal

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The Dreaming Room

smell of bile by William J. Higginson and winter hive by Penny Harter commentaries by Susan Shand

I have chosen two related haiku which were published in the Sept 2011 edition of NFTG from the Interview with Penny Harter. Both were closing verses to haibun. I have extracted them in order to expose a little about revealing emotion in haiku.

The first is from William J Higginson.

Haibun - "Well-bucket Nightfall, or New Day?" NFTG Sept 2011 smell of bile . . . I waken to October after glow

The smell of bile always indicates illness, the word "bile" is a metaphor for bitterness. Bill hits us with that acrid smell and illness. True to his own teaching he doesn't tell us how he feels but that word "bile" carries with it a wealth of meaning. All the associations of the word emerge to highlight the emotions of anger, regret, resentment, even revulsion. In line 2 we learn that it is the first thing he smells on awakening; however, "I awaken" is also loaded with meanings of change and new awareness. October sets the season of late Autumn, a time in Japanese haiku characterized by sadness and the closing-down of the seasons and the year. Yet it is the "after glow" to which he awakens, the light as it passes and fades. Not the sudden darkness of the clichéd extinguished candle or the raging against the dying of the light. Not the pity or self-pity which pulls overtly and unsubtly at our hearts. Rather this is the after- glow of great lovemaking. That satisfied, fulfilled peace where there is nothing more important than to lie still and bask in its glow and its memory. So the bitterness of bile and the sadness of October resolve into the awakening to a peaceful acceptance and the joy of a life well lived and well loved. We too are left with that after glow, feeling the joyous lift and the settling into acceptance.

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The second is from Penny Harter,

Haibun - "One Bowl" NFTG Sept 2011

winter hive— the cluster of bees vibrating

On the surface this is an observational haiku. We look, in order to share alongside the poet her observed experience of how bees vibrate inside a closed winter hive. Without the accompanying haibun we may not look any deeper for meaning. However even when taken alone, out of the detail of known context, this is a remarkable haiku.

We are in the cold bleakness of winter with the enclosed hive containing its darkness. Within it "the cluster of bees" hum and churn ... can you hear that low hum and feel the pitch of the vibration as the wings beat, the restless churning of the bees constant movement? Within, there is a sensation of contained vibration which sets every nerve alive. The low hum resonates with a grumble of emotional complaint; which threatens to emerge in its rising, then falling into futility. By allowing the sound and sensation in this haiku to touch us, by living the experience rather than merely looking at it, we can stand alongside how she feels. The pitch of that vibration is harmonically and viscerally attuned to the poet's own contained emotions in the cold of her world. We can experience with her the empathic resonance of the physical sensation of her emotion.

Susan Shand - UK

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two months gone by Roberta Beary: a commentary by Michael Dylan welch

Misreading Haiku

two months gone her replacement’s shade the same ash blond

—Roberta Beary

On first reading this poem I confess I was a little puzzled, thinking it might be about a tree. Shade tree? Ash tree? Two months since a tree was cut down? That’s where I first went with this poem. And yet that interpretation didn’t make sense to me because it didn’t resolve with “her replacement.” Impatience would then have had me skip past the poem, feeling simply puzzled. However, patience with the poem gave me a different meaning, revealing a human topic: Two months after a spouse or girlfriend has died or left, a new relationship has bloomed, yet perhaps it is not new, since the new person’s shade of makeup or hair colour is the same ash blond as the previous person’s. Perhaps the new person is therefore a surrogate for the departed person, or demonstrates that similar tastes prevail. We cannot help but feel skepticism regarding the depth of this new relationship, or the skepticism of the observer (the poet) in noticing this unchanged similarity. In this case, the name of the poet, which I believe can act as a “fourth line” to many haiku, gave me pause to reread the poem. I know Roberta frequently writes about family relationships, so that knowledge prompted me to read the poem again more carefully, especially when my initial “tree” interpretation very quickly didn’t work. Even if one does not know the gender, biography, or geographical location of the poet, it is always worthwhile to read with careful attention. That this poem is about people rather than trees might have been obvious to you on first reading, but perhaps we all have blind spots—topics or perspectives or interpretations that we might miss on reading haiku too quickly. Or that we might apply incorrectly by jumping to pet conclusions. So reading patiently is always a useful step when encountering haiku. It certainly helped me in this case. And of course, another reason to read a haiku patiently is to find extra layers of meaning. What additional layers of meaning can you find in this poem?

Roberta Beary’s poem is from A Few Stars Away: Towpath Anthology 2010 (Winchester, Virginia: Red Moon Press, 2011, p. 22).

Michael Dylan Welch - USA

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THE SEASIDE

On the foreshore, sheltered by a breakwater from the cold east wind, a man sits huddled in the sun. He reads a book. Around him, the cries of gulls, surge of waves.

Grand Pier in her wheelchair's fastness a woman is writing.

Nick Sherwood - UK

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Return

This road I walk between stone walls has no markings just a grass track running through the middle, I am back on my Island where I was born it’s fifty three years since I walked down to the wee jetty and hired the ferry man to row across almost four miles to the mainland where I caught the train to London and my new life.

Visiting the ruin of my island home of two rooms one of which is now only a pile of stone, the memories all flood back of the good but hard times we had here on our island, this small speck of land off the coast of Galway which is now a home for gannets and puffins, I’m reminded of the three families now scattered to the wind that made a living here rearing their children on the potatoes and fish. Leaving from that same wee jetty I make a vow to return soon just as I did all those years ago.

above the island meadow the skylarks warning high summer

john byrne - Ireland

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The Narrow Gate

The Lonely Planet Guide to Israel rubs spines with the plain red coat of the Bible. In one, a skinny blonde girl with her dreadlocks recently shorn to the scalp fends off men simultaneously amorous and hostile. In the other, Jesus draws a map in the sand: Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction.

The territory is narrow in itself: bounded on one side by a river, on the other by the sea. The space it occupies, however, expands like a mushroom cloud, altering the atmosphere for leagues and eons in every direction. Even the name of water cannot be agreed upon. In the hills, a spring has been commandeered: the farmers who march to it repulsed by tear gas. Along a crooked street, the seller of sandals tries to entice the girl into the back room of his shop, grasping the pale stem of her wrist. She knocks over the display blundering out, the strings of sandals banging her in the head, shouts and curses wreath her like a tangled veil.

dripping water fibers twine with smoke

Jeannette Cabanis-brewin - USA

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“the short goodbye”

waking up at night – just a silhouette

someone I wish I didn’t owe or know street of no return

24-hour diner nameless alleycat

the blackness of the hole – placing a bet with rumor has it certain payoff

knocked unconscious a big enough sleep

the boxer’s bloody gloves broken deal

at dawn anxiety sweeping the streets ...I can’t pay the vig

bookie’s squinting eyes other options he explains

approaching her backstage – diamond-like sequins

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she smiles and says “forever and ever” I promise to fix it

making trouble the forever kind

the lamppost casts its own shadow hope I remember to forget

hiding the piece riverbed

getting pulled in – bitter cop coffee

the d.a. overstates my importance his cigar not lit by match

thinking of our future – I play Buster Keaton to the chief’s Edward G. Robinson

club act never changes – my motives do

cutting a deal beggars don’t choose right from wrong

the mirror can go to the red house pigeon on a stool

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explaining how we can soon buy that little house – she straightens my straight tie

sheets of rain pound a thin fedora betrayal

her promises don’t match her actions the remains of a world of mystery

money for information “a girl just getting by”

steam through the grating I hear a voice and see no one

new suit punctured by gunshots clutching my gut and fading to black

Lucas Stensland - USA

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fog silhouettes . . . the transparency of late leaves

Helga Stania - Switzerland

snow fields far beyond the sky blue stars

Helga Stania - Switzerland

Way of St. James . . . the play of mist and light Helga Stania - Switzerland

a quiet stream— my shadow floats with the fallen leaves

P K Padhy - India

hand in hand walking toward the moon a long shadow

Anna Yin - Canada

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Heike Gewi - Germany

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Maire Morrissey-Cummins - Ireland

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every third child asthmatic and autistic a trail of pills as we run through the woods with Hansel and Gretel

Christina Nguyen - USA

walking across the Washington Avenue bridge after the last class we throw our old shoes into the wish tree

Christina Nguyen - USA

A haiku at the end of the world is folded in my pocket

Bruce England – USA

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Checklist: -just enough gear -plenty of maps -a small pickup -a good road dog

Bruce England - USA

I am beyond the middle of my game and though the numbers have diminished as I played still—the possibilities!

Bruce England - USA

casting away first emotion then unclarity leaving the lean, muscular being of no waste

Leslie Ihde - USA

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Mountain in Late Afternoon

From the porch of the mountain house, I cannot see anyone though I hear laughter and the faint vibration of music, snatches of song. But here the smooth flagstones are silent, the only sound bee drone above wind fallen fruit.

Smoke-blue fog snags in the branches of the oak. Moving and palpable, soft. Air I can see. fireflies spark the field ignite the drumming of pony hooves

Jill Gerard - USA

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rose garden the homeless woman's red hair

Patricia Reid - Australia

canna lillies the red smell of bush fires

Patricia Reid - Australia

changing names the A road joins the motorway

Rachel Sutcliffe - UK

hard rain I try to soften my words

Ernest Wit - Poland

cemetery dustbin the smell of rotten flowers

Ernest Wit - Poland

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Two Shisan

“Tea at the Tate”

tea at the Tate we watch the river flow far below

our tea tower topped with strawberry tart

endless wonders of Poetry&Py forever hold their peace

—

Passepartout gestures on an outdoor stage

a medieval moon comes out shining over Chaucer's pilgrims

a yellow plane tree leaf between the cobblestones

—

the utter loneliness of a lost little coot in the yacht basin

a young couple in black wave their Union Jacks

frost fairs: "there you may print your name tho' cannot write"

—

scent of old London still in its wood--the Dickens Inn

I remember so well the sturdy wisteria that stood just there

beachcombing on the foreshore as the tide begins to turn

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“Around the Gherkin”

late summer rain a squall of pigeons around the Gherkin

could it really be turds in the turbine room?

everyone claps as the elephant puppet sings

—

warship, war talks, weary weary of war

sheer lunacy my cell phone blinking here to there

it's not always easy to turn leaves

—

church bells and the Ghost of Christmas Past in every peal

side by side, lost in an abstract painting

young lovers ask us to take their picture in front of the Bridge

—

all those shared hours lulled by the ebbing tide

Oh, to be in Bloomsbury again at blossom time

as many blue plaques as forget-me-nots

Sprite (Claire Chatelet), UK and Linda Papanicolaou, USA begun in parallel walk in Southwark, London, August 2011, completed online

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John Byrne - Eire

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she turns away as the veterinarian extinguishes a kitten clawing for life —an inconvenient miracle

Leslie Ihde - USA

unable to work again with abandoned animals she studies ancient paintings on the walls of caves —wild moving beasts

Leslie Ihde - USA

sky the same color as runway why don't I ever dream about flying

Melissa Allen - USA

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One Nation Under Jazz Four clear amber frogs dipped in ego dripped in black where the boysenberry pond watered Cherry blossom cluster bombs falling through the candy apple dead vibrance of Basho and Basho and Basho all over again triplicating in two a sextet of white orange yellow black blue And green polyester dentists with run a muck drills from the old enchanted land of candy Corn square dancing at The Healing Waters And Gobbledygook Baptist Church before Swimming in the cool blue persona of an authentic celluloid kewpie dolphin from what’s Right of left wing Virginia smoked hams hanging out in a meditation hall every monk is Exactly nothing in disguise including the firebrick red D cup beach bound Bleached Blonde Caribbean Treasure Chest Everyone hopes to find juggling nine obedient clowns on the back porch drowning in a Torrential drizzle of nine words and eight syllables circled by a buzzing halo of grey moths Snapped and crackling in the ten – thousand degree heat of her promiscuous king jangling Into view clanging and chained to the four muses of gossip disgust dishonesty and deceit The Han Blue Nun from none of the above Maryland has practiced quacking her way past Compassion Forgiveness Mercy Love Honor Question Mark And The Mysterians two cheese Burgers with a supersized side of heavy petting and Chiyo – Ni’s language Barking Through The Front Door Where two pedigreed house flies from Conundrum Connecticut touched down on a blue Toadstool melting inside the last Jazz Berry Bee Jack The Whack from Lowell dropped in Diamonds behind his missing Issa kissed before he introduced himself as the world’s only Mime with lemon meringue spangles dotting his cat eyes savoring the magic mint hooker’s Falsetto face posed proudly in front of a White Spot Diner In Denver on the contentious Corner of Syllable Street and Subject Matter Boulevard two blocks south of Definition Drive With a HI! My Name Is Sue Candy Dee – Dee Jasmine Cookie Carol Carla Jan Molly Taffy Beth Sally and Angel Food Layer Cake depending on the time of Day Weather Mood Night Filling The bottle crisp the hose kinked the throat dry and the overall ambience of the alley filled with A dead city that runs behind his eyes mumbling lies in the mouth of a toxic poet drowning in

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His mind behind a mask that’s cooler than any day in the month of Cucumber refrigerated or Not the nuts might be in the pantry hanging on to blind clarity he shed his skin slashing through The walls of two drooling billionaire hoodlums and their I Me Mine reflections of silver Blades and turquoise noise on an Amish farm churning butter in the fog churning fog Into glass churning our reflections into the blind salvation of them dog jammed Marxist Gods stoned stumbling and shouting to a wilted bouquet of hammers and sickles pinned To an abusive cop selling white black yellow red and white street corner roses who seduce Service and sanctify Suburban Sugar Daddys Fat Rapt In Egyptian Cotton we’ll sweep clean and keep it under the shag vanity rug covering his mind Rejoicing in the miracle of finding Annie Clinton in Hillary Oakley Cher Nixon in Pat Bono Aretha Kennedy in Jackie Franklin Lady Roosevelt in Eleanor Ga – Ga Miss Mahalia Truman in Bess Jackson Billie Bush in Barbara Holliday Britney Bush in Laura Spears Janis Obama in Michelle Joplin Grace Johnson in Lady Bird Slick Wyatt Truman in Harry Earp Jesus Holliday in Doc Christ Kareem Abdul Clinton in William Jefferson Jabbar Dwight Aaron In Hank Eisenhower Pee Wee Kennedy in John Fitzgerald Herman Bob Nixon in Richard Dylan Sponge Bob Bush Junior in George Square Pants Junior Rodney Obama in Barack Dangerfield Bonzo Reagan in Ronald The Chimp Charles Milles Johnson in Lyndon Baines Manson and Courtney Reagan in Nancy Love eating breakfast together in Winner, South Dakota two moons After His Buffalo Walked Off Both sides of a tarnished nickel they nailed on the midnight sky spilling light on the barren praire Behind every eye in Wounded Knee where the dead and the living dead are the lessons we must Learn beneath this indivisible ceiling of stars.

Divorced We Shatter a Mirror To Rescue Our Reflections

Ed Markowski - USA

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A maggot

bamboo grove shades veiled in allegories seven sages /hg

glass noodles and a maggot ... /wm the seeds shoot slowly this spring /hg

thunder rolls near in the baby stroller lots of fennel tea /wm

------*------

Scattered moon

at midnight grandma's kiln cracks ... the beams / wm

sniffing out the scattered moon / hg shadows in deep snow a wolf / wm

calm ... counting shards and saved quarters / hg

Renhai by wm Walter Mathois –Austria and hg Heike Gewi -Germany

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The Summing Ups and Downs

I open the review of a haibun anthology and see that my work is summarized as “amusing personal stories and confessions.”

Hmmmm. Shouldn’t I feel good about having my work included in the anthology and being one of the few mentioned in a positive tone. But, is that all my writing, this conceit that I might have something serious to offer, adds up to – amusing confessions? birthday party – my child's balloon d e f l a t e d

I want to write at least one haibun that the reviewer would describe – as he did with others – as “wild and woolly servings of word-soup;” as using “lyrical narrative language;” and although I don’t understand these terms, even as containing “paradoxical associations” and “surreal disjunctions.” bobbing amongst the flotsam a rusty beer can scurrying in the jetsam – a tiny crab, claws raised

Ray Rasmussen - Canada

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so I start thinking about the next thing I'll be . . . all day the scent of pine sap I can't scrub from my fingers

Melissa Allen - USA

underneath the ice of the poem an imaginary frog slows its heartbeat

Melissa Allen - USA

living with a never-departing shadow thoughts of the last few years darken my day

Kala Ramesh - India

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closely behind an ox, I was once the wheel . . . now a bird with wings to fly

Kala Ramesh - India

she buys red roses that wither and die just look at the moon's never-ending journey

Kala Ramesh - India

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the nuthatch shows its belly . . . winter dawn

Claire Everett - UK

razor shell . . . again, the raw edge of grief

Claire Everett - UK

the outline of a sunken tiller mussels

Bill Cooper - USA

2.5 lead pencils - this new box may last the rest of my life Bruce England - USA

On the beach I return along footprints I created

Bruce England - USA

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his old cane in the umbrella stand autumn rain

Mark E. Brager - USA

waning day the slow work of each breath

Mark E. Brager - USA

line by line the room drawn by winter light

Mark E. Brager - USA

a week of vertigo: one crooked nap slides into another

Julie Bloss Kelsey - USA

morning walk that pebble in my shoe finds just the right spot

Andy Burkhart - USA

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long drought . . . the slow precipitation of a tailpipe

Don Baird - USA

grandma's quilt— the maple's last few leaves

Don Baird – USA

New Year’s Eve gracefully joining our ping pong match a tiny black moth

Ryan Jessup - USA

through the paving crack forget-me-nots back again

Peter Butler - UK

bay mouth the strangeness of first meetings

Alegria Imperial - Canada

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Alegria Imperial - Canada

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small hours by Yu Yan Chen

A personal report by Alan Summers

As the author of this collection is a friend, as well as colleague, and someone I spent twelve months with on a Masters Degree in Creative Writing, this cannot be a review.

Yu Yan Chen is above all, an extraordinary human being, and one I hope you get to know a little if you decide to purchase her collection.

The New York Quarterly, where she worked as an Editorial Assistant says this:

Yu Yan Chen was born in a fishing village in China but grew up in New York City. Enchanted by the traveler's tales her grandfather told, she set sail to seek her own adventures. She is an interpreter and literary translator.

Her poems have been published in the US, UK and China. She lives in Brooklyn.

Yu Yan Chen is also an honorary citizen of the City of Bath (and Bristol), where she has lived for a number of years before going back to Brooklyn. She still visits us.

If you have never experienced being an immigrant this is a book for you.

Award-winning poet, and a leading critic, Tim Liardet covers a few facets about this intriguing human, and poet:

Among the four-hundred-and-fifty thousand Chinese New Yorkers Yu Yan Chen's is undeniably a unique and memorable voice. The voice is as profoundly American as it is Chinese. It has wit and charm and, above all else, subversion. —Tim Liardet

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I believe Yu Yan first became interested in haiku once I mentioned this genre post-Masters, and perhaps a little influence has crept in regards to two places in her collection: Tofu Zodiac; and The Hour Glass respectively

2.

75% liquid you wade mountains, valleys plains, volcanoes

12.

the way to Li Po of Dynasty Tang rice wine circles moonlight as it is

I turned a deaf ear to Van Gogh’s moaning flowers the song of bullfight

red-winged blackbird sipping moat beer Iowa River to the point of tears

On the other side of the Pacific Ocean, the cicada is asleep…

Because I turned my head five hundred times before this life sees you…

Carry my heart and the bullet-proof window down Marcus Garvey Blvd…

And the story of her friend who lost his life saving others during 911 inspired me to write this haiku is called Elegy [see below]: ground zero a new friend's story about her friend

Alan Summers (Due to come out in a haiku anthology on war and human rights later this year.)

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Elegy

for Zheng Zhe

All elevators suspended. Racing down flights of stairs you never looked back, headed south to the Twin Towers with the first aid kit you learned to use as a volunteer medic, into the smoke, debris and the howls of the emergency vehicles.

The last images of you were captured on Fox 5 News, tending to an injured woman on a stretcher, in a white shirt and rubber gloves.

Walking in Chinatown five years later, I stood in the street named after you, wondered whether you would still be strolling among the lunch crowd had you stayed in bed a little longer that morning.

In Columbus Park the old men gathered to play chess, while the fortune tellers sat on the stools outside its rim, ogling the passers-by.

______small hours Yu Yan Chen NYQ Books (2011) (Publishing quality books of poetry by poets who have appeared in The New York Quarterly Magazine.) www.nyqbooks.org/title/smallhours

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Leptir nad pučinom (Butterfly over the Open Sea) Tomislav Maretić

Reviewed by Alan Summers

Tomislav Maretić works in Zagreb as a physician at the Mihaljevic University Hospital for Infectious Diseases. He has been writing haiku for 30 years and in 1988, together with Vladimir Devidé and Zvonko Petrovic, he wrote the first renga in Croatian language and in 1995 the book Renge (Sipar, Zagreb) was published. This is his first solo haiku collection: It contains over 500 haiku and one nijuin renga. The book is divided into eight groups of haiku ranging from haiku as sublime as: melting snow, the first blackbird’s song is still brief mountain path- a wood grouse in love won’t let us pass frogs at twilight- biking with my daughter to hear them how many ways to become a butterfly- a mime on the stage village cat entering a barley field by secret paths

This book has many secret paths revealed by its author, and I can highly recommend it for those who like to travel these same paths. ______

Leptir nad pučinom (Butterfly over the Open Sea) – Tomislav Maretić Published by the Croatian Catholic Medical Society (2011)

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Colin Stewart Jones - Scotland

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