haiku links

[Senna Jawa]

We had some, on this board, earlier.

Now, let me start again with one:

    The Heron's Nest

It is a haiku journal. I just have received an annoucement of Volume IV, Number 12: December, 2002. My good Internet friends are among those who run this magazine: Ferris Gilli and Paul Mena. Both are very strong poets. Paul specializes in the city scene. Ferris in Nature-Nature. The magazine looks very good graphically.

On the other hand, I was quite unhappy, after clicking on the link above, seeing the haiku which got the most recent award. It's a worthless junk. It reads like one writen by a clueless beginner. Oh, well, it may be still an excellent haiku journal

Regards,

 

[Angeline]

Winter Haiku

Your thread got me thinking and this is the result:

Cars woosh past the trees
Navigating bumps
Leaves spin in whirlwind

Denuded trees wait
Their brown leaves scattered
To season of loss

The sky is empty
It cannot offer comfort
Snow is just itself.

The years fly away
I age walking this road
You frozen in time

Sit by the fire
There are faces in the flames
A mouse near the hearth

 

[Zhuk]

Guru Ji,

Thanks for the link. I will surely go and read this magazine. Thanks once again, and some more links will be highly appreciated.

We had some, on this board, earlier.

Now, let me start again with one:

    The Heron's Nest

It is a haiku journal. I just have received an annoucement of Volume IV, Number 12: December, 2002. My good Internet friends are among those who run this magazine: Ferris Gilli and Paul Mena. Both are very strong poets. Paul specializes in the city scene. Ferris in Nature-Nature. The magazine looks very good graphically.

On the other hand, I was quite unhappy, after clicking on the link above, seeing the haiku which got the most recent award. It's a worthless junk. It reads like one writen by a clueless beginner. Oh, well, it may be still an excellent haiku journal

Regards,

 

[OT]

blemish and beauty
arbitrarily covered
overnight snowstorm

 

[Senna Jawa]

Re: Re: haiku links

Guru Ji,

Thanks for the link. I will surely go and read this magazine. Thanks once again, and some more links will be highly appreciated.

You're most welcome, Zhuk. I'll try to provide more. In the meantime you can make a Literotica search for "Keiko" and for "Imaoka". This will lead you to several interesting links.

Best regards,

 

[Senna Jawa]

Re: Winter Haiku

Your thread got me thinking and this is the result:


        Cars woosh past the trees
        Navigating bumps
        Leaves spin in whirlwind

First Wicked Eve and now you, Angeline, got knack for haiku. The one above is excellent! Each line is objective. It is all Nature (including human made Nature like cars). And it is highly suggestive. For instance one can see historical events which happen around us, and while we have nothing to do with the "bumps" and the efforts of going around them we are affected by all this all the same, we spin in the wirlwind. all this we get without a single word from the author, which would tell us such things. Also observe the efficiency. of this piece. each line gives us something essentially new, new information, not to be infered from the previous or expected. Superb.

Denuded trees wait
Their brown leaves scattered
To season of loss

This and the rest of the presented haiku are not in the same leauge, far from it. here the conclusion is an abstraction. Pound said something like: poet, live in the fear of abstraction. the first two lines are too interdependent, they almost imply one another. Also, "denuded" is too vague, doesn't carry image in a specific way. It is better to present the result of being denuded (sharp, leafless shoots, etc).

I have to stop now (the real life interfering, how dare it I'll check for typos later ).

Oh, don't be preoccupied with 5-7-5, concentrate on the real issues. And yes, in the case of haiku try to make your poem minimal. When you have a longer haiku-like poem, you may try to pare it down to haiku--it is a good exercise, tells us a lot about poetry.

Your first haiku, Angeline, was delightful.

Best regards,

 

[Senna Jawa]

        blemish and beauty
        arbitrarily covered
        overnight snowstorm

Arbitrarily? What? That's your opinion. There is nothing more boring and less poetic than your (i.e. author's) opinion.

Blemish and beauty? What's that? These are abstractions, generalities, void of poetic meaning. Either you are just writing "poetically" , then forget it, it is not worth of anybody's moment of attention, including your own, or you are for real--then simply write what you see. May be "dog shit" for blemish (it's up to you) and something concrete for "beauty" that gets covered by snow. Do you have anything specific in mind?

I can't say that even then such a piece would be moving, it feels too cliched, sewn with thick thread (because of the arbitrary, unnatural, partial choice of the items covered by snow) but at least it would be something.

        haiku covered by
        an asscii storm of opinions

                Senna Jawa

   


Regards,

 

[OT]

SJ,

Funny you should mention dog shit. That was almost my inspiration.

I have a neighbor who takes immaculate care of her lawn, while I tend to view my lawn with a survival of "the fittest" mentality (I try not to interfere too much with whatever happens to grow (or die) there.)

So anyway, yesterday, even as the snow was starting to fall, I noticed her outside raking and preening.

This morning while shoveling my drive, both our lawns were equally pristine.

Thus, the raw material for my haiku was:

My ugly lawn and my neighbor's perfect lawn
were both made equally pretty
by the overnight snow

If I had to change anything in the original, I'd replace "arbitrarily " with "indiscriminately"

blemish and beauty
indiscriminately covered
overnight snowstorm

With "Blemish" and "covered" I was sort of going for a cover-girl make up analogy.

Overall, I give it a C-.

Oh, and I think authors' opinions and generalities are not necessarily evil.

Thanks for your comments. really!

 

[Lauren Hynde]

ad-libbed

ok, let me give this a try...



by the hand
she sips
liquid sun


*
sudden peace
                  full mind


red waves glide
over lithe bodies
dazzled by death



*I had something else here, but by the time I finished the next haiku realized it was superfluous.

 

[OT]

Angeline,
as an oft time gazer into the ethers (or simply the ceiling) without getting an answer, I liked:

The sky is empty
It cannot offer comfort
Snow is just itself.


and Lauren, since I'm sipping a bourbon, I can relate to

by the hand
she sips
liquid sun

 

[Angeline]

Trying Again

Senna, thank you for the encouragement. Your points are well taken: it is at the very least a good exercise to get all the description of "what it's like" out of the haikus in favor of language that says "what it is." To do that and still be poetic is a hard balance to come by, but the effect is stunning when it works. And yes it is good discipline for writing any kind of poetry.

I spent some time on the Web looking at Basho's work and that of a few others. I also read some explanation of the form, and one of the points that really struck me and focused what you were saying is the notion that it is similar to describing a photograph.

Here is a revision. What do you think?

Cars woosh past the trees
Branches bend in windy shrugs
The rustling leaves

Tall brown grass curved
Lifted by the wind
Air framed in circles

Squat clouds layered
Shifting grey to white
Impressionist sky

Snowflakes drift sideways
Landing on the fence
Puddle against wood

Inside fire leaps
Orange to yellow
Straining up to sky
____________________________

Still thinking on this....

 

[Senna Jawa]

[...] the raw material for my haiku was:

My ugly lawn and my neighbor's perfect lawn
were both made equally pretty
by the overnight snow

                        dog shit on my lawn?
                        neighbor's evenly cut grass?
                        -- snow and mailbox


        OT (drastically(!) modified)

If I had to change anything in the original, I'd replace "arbitrarily " with "indiscriminately"

Sure. Too bad that Angeline is getting into poetry for real. Otherwise the two of you instead of messing with verses could simply have an email exchange of opinions:

A: The season of loss
OT: A wonderful opinion. Let me give you mine: arbitrarily covered.
A: That's highly intelectual. How did you manage to come UP with such DEPTH? Now look at this philosophy: snow is just itself
OT. Oh, A., you deserve a profesorship, you have dwarfed Spinoza. But I can do better than before. I made a tremendous progress, how did you call it, o, yes, a tremendous intelectual progress: indiscriminately covered.
A: Wow! Impressive indeed. Especially for these political times. I myself came up with: The years fly away.
OT: ...when you have fun! That was sooo good. A., did I hear something like this in the past? Naeh, that's impossible, you are too original for that. Now, how about "blemish and beauty" (I am sort of going for a cover-girl make up analogy).
A. That's deep, OT, and so relevant. You are not above word games, while your phrases are so infinitely GENERAL.
--etc.

I have summarized your exchange so far but I am sure that you can come up with abundant material for more, no sweat.

blemish and beauty
indiscriminately covered
overnight snowstorm

With "Blemish" and "covered" I was sort of going for a cover-girl make up analogy.

Overall, I give it a C-.

OT, you are much too modest. You should award yourself a Nobel Prize, even three, one for "indiscriminately", and two for "blemish and beauty".

Oh, and I think authors' opinions and generalities are not necessarily evil.

Of course not. Placebo is not evil, it just kills poetry.

Thanks for your comments. really!

You sure?

Best regards,

 

[Senna Jawa]

The Magazine of The World Haiku Club

    The Heron's Nest

    The Magazine of The World Haiku Club

Regards,

 

[Angeline]

Senna?

Your post is one of the funniest I have ever read. I am getting close to 1,000 posts and I now have a title to put above my picture: "I dwarf Spinoza."

You are the Don Rickles of this thread. I think you are one of the coolest guys around.

Are you going to comment on my revisions or should I just tear them up and bury them in the backyard?

Your Dwarf,
Angeline

 

[HomerPindar]

hey ang...

...you just quack me up.

HomerPindar

 

[OT]

wow

SJ,

I'm mostly speechless, but I've a burning question.

What do you call a composition of words that, when read, provide a sense of pleasure to the reader ?

Whatever that composition is called, that is all I claim to write, and what I come here to read.

Some compositions provide more pleasure than others.

I think it would be exhausting if everything I read/wrote/liked was profound.

And in answer to your last question. I'm sure.

Forum posts are compositions, too.

 

[Senna Jawa]

Re: Trying Again

[...]To do that and still be poetic is a hard balance to come by

That's the only way to be poetic (simplistically speaking. But it's better to take it to the extreme than to give yourself dispensations again and again).

what you were saying is the notion that it is similar to describing a photograph.

In a poem you create a photo (which describes Nature). It is an artistic photo, with a lot of filtering (and with no hand made ornaments). If a full picture would have a milion = 1000x1000 pixels (points, picture elements), prose would provide a reader with 20 thousand to two hundred thousands, while a poem provides from 5 pixels (just five) to two thousands (two tenth of a percent of the picture, not more!).

Here is a revision. What do you think?


        Cars woosh past the trees
        Branches bend in windy shrugs
        The rustling leaves

The earlier version


        Cars woosh past the trees
        Navigating bumps
        Leaves spin in whirlwind


was excellent, while, you are right, that it was not perfect. I will explain. In this version you didn't go along the strenfth of the original, and you ended up with something very nice but less interesting. I will explain again. Also, forgive me that to make it easier to write about these things I will provide a variant:


                fast cars navigate bumps
                leaves spin in whirlwind

1. Cars wooshing by trees and leaves spinning would be already nice. But what made your haiku special was the juxtaposition of cars navigating bumps (they did so for their own reasons) and hapless leaves spinning for no reason, they are just forced to by the having their reason cars. (And navigation gives a better zooming effect than wooshing; and it's marine effect is also very nice!).

Observe that your haiku was pure, it had no antropomorphization, the interpretation happens only(!) in the reader's mind.

2.Having both the trees and the leaves in your poem is redundant. Unless there are strictly poetic reasons, redundancy should be avoided. It is especially evident in the case of haiku, which should be a minimal poem.

Poet's ethical cod: every element in the poem should carry poetry, tells you that the part about trees, as nice as it was, was unnecessary, it didn't participate in the poetry carried by your poem. Hence the reduced version.

And about your new version. The 2nd line is somewhat superficial. I guess that you were striving at 7 syllables hard. "Wind bends branches" would be way better. The best would be to remove 2nd line alltogether. Indeed, the point of your haiku (in this version) is the connection between woshing cars and rustling leaves.

Tall brown grass curved
Lifted by the wind
Air framed in circles

Nice!

Is "curved" clear? I am not sure. Would "bended" be better?

One could play on "curved ball"(?) from baseball. It would be a new poem.

Squat clouds layered
Shifting grey to white
Impressionist sky

Mmmm... maybe nice but it is not haiku, not poetry. first you describe sonmething, then you rush, just in case, to tell your reader what you have described. I see it happening often (and Zhuk is no exception ).

Also, it is better to avoid even an allusion of abstraction, like "grey" and "white". I understand that you refer to clouds, I understand that you perhaps feel (like so many before you) that this is an innovative and more attractive way to put it. You can't get profound poetry by such meaningless tricks. It's there or it's not, and no make up will make a poem pretty. Let reader gets this abstract feelings of white and grey. To spell them is not poetic. To say explicitly about grey and white clouds would get a more juicy text, less paperish.

What I have addressed are just symptoms. Your real problem was that you had only half of a poem but you have decided to write a full poem anyway. Poetry is difficult, and no cheating will help.

        Snowflakes drift sideways
        Landing on the fence
        Puddle against wood

Oh, you are saying that the fence was wooden. The usage of "against" here is not so clear to me, possibly I am wrong. Would the following do?

        snowflakes drift sideways
        into the wooden fence
        -- a puddle underneath

Nice image but as it is I don't feel that it leads anywhere, that it is suggestive. Once again, I might be wrong. It certainly has a potential after certain modifications. For instance:

        snowflakes drift
        into the wall
        -- a pudle underneath

Now it induces a reflection about hopelessnes of bumping your head against the wall (while with MY head I can easily break any wooden fence ). I can feel the fate (the snowflakes ending down in the puddle because they bumped into the wall).

another possibility has occured to me due to the mirror surface of the puddle. But then we do not need any fence or wall (that would be too much):


        snowflakes doubling
        and ending
        in the puddle


If I wanted a poem, not just a haiku, I would allow myself a bit of luxury:

        snowflake orbits doubling
        and ending
        in the puddle


BTW, "verb + verbing" construction, when done to gain efficiency, hardly ever works in poetry. Use it only when it is very natural to do so.

Inside fire leaps
Orange to yellow
Straining up to sky

"Fire leaps" is a nice image, it doesn't feel like antropomorphization. "Fire straining" definitely does, it is an antropomorphization. It makes the whole thing heavy.

BTW, the first two lines are not too clear, meaning wise. I can make sense out of it but as a reader I should strain myself over real challenges, not because you strain at poeticity in your mind. A reader should not encounter difficulties because the author does not write clearly. I decided that you wanted to say that orange flames leap to or rather get transformed into yellow flames, and they go up and down and up toward the sky. Or is it the whole fire that 'strains" toward the sky? But at first the poem reads: inside_fire leaps from being orange to being yellow, and somehow, despite being inside (not outdoors), it strains up to sky. One would think that it should fiorst strain to the chimney. For this reasons I went back, to decode the text again.

Continue, Angela, along the haiku way, it's really the poetry way.

Let me repeat, I had said it in the past a few times already: haiku is both an excellent poetry kindergarten and a profound, mature, artistic form.

Best regards,

        senna Jawa

PS. The edit->preview->edit->preview... cycle is somehow hard, slow. I should have red more times and correct or change my text. It takes loooong time. Thus I decided to stop for now. Possibly I will add or subtract in additional postings. I will not edit this one anymore except for trivial typos and orthography .

 

[Senna Jawa]

Re: wow

SJ,

I'm mostly speechless

No, no way!

but I've a burning question.

What do you call a composition of words that, when read, provide a sense of pleasure to the reader ?

What compositions of words bring pleasure to readers? To which readers?

Whatever that composition is called, that is all I claim to write, and what I come here to read.

You are writing for a different audience. I derive nothing but aesthetic displeasure when I read all those general, abstract phrases.

Some compositions provide more pleasure than others.

I think it would be exhausting if everything I read/wrote/liked was profound.

It's a question of an inborn or rather acquired taste. Then profoundness becomes your second nature, a reflex. Anything else makes you cringe. Profound doesn't necessarily equate with heavy weight. The two should not be confused. (The dependence goes in one direction only).

And in answer to your last question. I'm sure.

Forum posts are compositions, too.

They tend to be sloppy, partly due to the primitive tools. In theory I could write everything off line (as my very wise friend would always do), but in my case I am too temperamental (impatient) for that.

Best regards,

 

[OT]

is liking bad poetry an oxymoron ?

Then profoundness becomes your second nature, a reflex. Anything else makes you cringe.

Is there really no middle ground?

And even if you cringe, can you still like a poem because maybe it stirred a memory or an emotion, exhibited a bit of cleverness, or presented a new and interesting perspective on a familiar subject ?

 

[Senna Jawa]

Re: is liking bad poetry an oxymoron ?

Is there really no middle ground?

And even if you cringe, can you still like a poem because maybe it stirred a memory or an emotion, exhibited a bit of cleverness, or presented a new and interesting perspective on a familiar subject ?

                        yin & yang


Best regards,

 

[Mythos50]

Senna, comments on haiku please:

tree shadow
cloud in sky
grass supine grey

 

[JUDO]

A tear rolls over
The bluish bruise on her cheek
And she cries no more.

- Judo