Henie, or, to put it another way, THE GRAIL IS ALREADY THERE, as you so perceptively pointed out. One of the haiku ideals is suggestion rather than overt statement. If the grail is already there, what is to be gained by pointing it out explicitly?

In any event, thanks for bringing this up!

Lee

David, you did make yourself clear--i am the one that didn't. from what you said, it was clear that you were going to reexamine form when you revised. my remarks are aimed at the person who is not willing to reexamine commitment to any arbitrary form. i hope i have made my self clearer this time around!

Lee

brown oak leaf
falls on the lake
then light rain

Thanks, Lee! This one was custom written for the turd festival http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/ubbhtml/biggrin.gif

Haven't had a chance to read all the new posts closely, but did manage to write another one while out driving. Please crit - thanks!


Osage oranges
on the ground
no Osage in sight

Thanks for 'Four in the Morning', Lee! Yes - that's just what I was trying to net - that feeling of 4am. Not late night, not quite dawn. I know the Larkin, but honestly had forgotten it was 4 in the morning.

I put the 4am in the third line, as that was the order of perception. I woke. It was dark. I made a cup of tea, poured it, and watched steam rising from the cup, then walked to the computer, clicked the mouse and read the time in the corner of the screen - 04.00AM. And the insubstantialness of that time made a leap to the steam coming from the cup.

The aspect of haiku that has been intriguing me for the last 24 hours is line order. I know you have mentioned it several times, and referred to the 'context' line, and how it is best early in the poem, not as a surprise ending. I like this way you articulated how you see the tying of the three elements.

universal < particular > human

And I wonder - can these three elements correspond to the 3 lines? can the 'context' be any of these three elements? can you rearrange the order of these three elements? or is it always more successful to stick with the order of perception?

I am feeling a little uncertain about the 'context' line - and I am reading lots of haiku to teach myself to understand, and sometimes the context line is clear to me, sometimes not.

If you can figure out what I am trying to say here, I'd love some further explication from you. Equally, feel free not to add anything, as I know you have said it here, and in your illuminating essays that Steve posted here. I just hoped some other little illustration might occur to you! I must tell you that all your little comments on each post are really growing in me.

But as I say, I am happy to be the blind moth, butting against the window!

Cally

Lee,

As the young folks say, "it's all good." For the record, I thought you were crystal clear, I just wanted make sure I was. I often post here under extreme time pressure, and I am never sure how well I have said a thing.

Anyway, I am thoroughly enjoying this master class, and perhaps for the first time beginning to feel some things about haiku that I might have known all along. I have certain intuitions, for example, about substituting feet in an iambic line or carrying an enjambment from a female ending to a headless iamb, etc. But I am only beginning (after years!) to develop the same sort of feel for haiku lines, and I feel like this thread is helping me get at some things.

So...onward.

David R.



[This message has been edited by David Rosenthal (edited October 25, 2008).]

Hi Lee, would you consider some of these? Thanks again for your comments and helpful hints. Before this, I hadn't written even one haiku--now, with the help from your links and your knowledge, I feel I understand it (at least partially). It's been a fun couple of a days.

december field
bare trees
framing moon

past the garden gate
into the wheat
the wind with a horse

june lake rising
hook taking with it
some fish constellations


an ox-drawn plow
face marmelade jars
in the flowerbed

august moon
rabbits in the open
mink storm

autumn storm
coat scalloping
with wind

far stars
plum trees the giraff's
neck stretches


twilight's edging
tire swing overflows
with jar flies and ladybugs


Mary,

I rather like your second haiku. The tenderness makes it for me. If I'm interpretting it right, the kiss for you is both a kiss on the lips, and the kiss of eyes *on* air. And, the darkness that comes mirror the darkness when lips meet lips. This one strikes me as more than what it seems on first sight. http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/ubbhtml/smile.gif

close your eyes
this is my kiss
for you




[This message has been edited by Chiago Mapocho (edited October 20, 2008).]

Thank you Lee.

I see what you mean, and on reflection I'm not interested in reading fanciful haiku either. What I like about Basho is the quality of reality, like "drinking cold snow-water from a tin cup".

Regards,
B.

a black hole?? lord I would never have thought that way,

Hmm! Is that why there are set images for the seasons and other things in the old masters writings? But what if we don't know the allusion,

you say bowl
I see grail
You say hub of the universe—meaning empty space

And I see the black hole— and laugh at the way my mind went

That’s why I like this thread. it is taking us all on mind trips, and is how sites like this should work. Poets sparking off each other.,. --loveit ~~ Henie

Brian - really?? Did Basho really write that??

You won't believe this, but I swear it's true. I am looking down at a page where, over the last week, I have been writing down all the sense-experiences I have had that really matter to me, in my heart. And here are my words staring at me -

drinking billy tea from a tin mug


Have I discovered my inner-Basho??!!


Cally

Whoops! sorry, I didn't mean to attribute the quotation to Basho. It's a line from a Gary Snider poem (Mid-August at Sourdough Mountain Lookout), which IMO describes the flavour of Basho's writing.

Mary, not sure where you are from, but can you tell me what an "Osage" is?

Lee

Cally, i have no doubt about your order of perception, but you also have to put yourself in the reader's shoes. when you got up, you knew it was the middle of the night. the reader, however, not having been there, doesn't have a clue about when and where you are.

i would have to say that in general, the context--whether explicitly stated or not--is what you know at the beginning of the poem. whether or not the reader knows it is up to you. what i am advising against in general is the all too common attempt by the poet--and i am not blaming you specifically here--of trying to "save up" a surprise for the reader by withholding some important aspect of the experience and putting it in the third line. please, as often as you can, let the experience speak for itself. if it has meaning, the reader will find it. if it doesn't, any amount of arrangement for surprise won't save it. i hope this makes some sense--i have had a couple glasses of wine.

Whether the universal < particular > human correspond to the three lines is an important question. My experience tells me that, as much as it would simplify things for me, it is generally not so, that they overlap and often one finds parts of each in each image of the poem. take this poem for example:

midday heat:
the staccato staccato
of a nail gun

one could say that the midday heat is the universal and the sound is the particular and the nail gun is the human. but this seems a superficial view to me. how does one separate them in this poem? the heat and the sound combine to produce a feeling, and the feeling--not the nail gun--is the real human element here. if one can make a generalization, it would be that the human element is often not even present in the poem itself, but in the poet's response to the particular phenomena depicted in the poem.

Hope this helps!
Lee

David, please believe me when i say with all sincerity that we are all students here. i have been doing this for a long time and i am continually amazed at how stupid i am and how inept many of the haiku i write still are.

Lee

If you will forgive me, Chiago, i will just make a general comment here. Your haiku seem to gravitate in two directions at the same time. on the one hand are pure description, but seemingly without any clear significance. (I would put "december trees" in this category.) on the other are rather hermetic poems that may contain considerable significance, but if they do it is difficult for the reader to tease the significance out of them. (for me, "august moon" is in this category.) To repeat something that was said to me many years ago: pity the reader!

Lee

Brian, yes, your teeth will tell you!

Lee

Henie, I remember the one you wrote about the screen and plum jam. Are you still working on that one?

Lee, I'm from New Jersey-New York, but I live in the Ozarks - not too far from you, I think - where the Osage Indians used to live. As for the cold bed - I meant for there to be a pause at the end of the second line - so that the reader assumes L3 will be "body" or something, but it's just a blanket. I think the bed and kiss ones I wrote this morning drifted perhaps a bit too far away from the true form. Speaking of which, I've caught up on all the posts. My feeling about form is to learn it and follow it as closely as possible, because I believe there is so much to learn from each form. I think even Shakespeare's sonnets do not vary much from strict iambic pentameter. On the other hand, I felt the haiku opened up for me as soon as I let go of the syllable count. I read somewhere that the haiku has many rules, and who can follow all the rules? So letting go of one rule seems fine to me. In case I wasn't clear enough earlier, ahem, the brown leaf is a turd, ok, but damned if I'm inviting the world into my bathroom!

Anyhow, Lee, thanks again for your crits. I have a question for you or Steve C. What about those two line haiku? Or I've seen a few of yours with about 8 lines, maybe - skinny, with a longer line the middle. What's with that?

Chiago, thanks for your tender response. I like this one of yours:

autumn storm
coat scalloping
with wind

Cally, that's a good idea about the list of sensory experiences. I've been thinking along those lines, too, though I haven't written anything down. I just feel more aware of everything, thanks to studying haiku.

cold bed
I need another
blanket

close your eyes
this is my kiss
for you

brown oak leaf
falls on the lake
then light rain

Osage oranges
on the ground
no Osage in sight

PS: Cally, yeah, magic and love, for sure. Both, lol.



[This message has been edited by Mary Meriam (edited October 20, 2008).]

Lee,

Your thoughts make deep sense and help powerfully. I have my head on by-pass and am taking them in through the heart. I can feel the truth of what you say.

The 'nail gun' is a tremendous example. A wonderful example of synesthesia. I feel that nail of heat with each staccato. That is such a true experience. Wow. You are communicating the feel of haiku so well, and I am so grateful. A haiku snaps and floats.

I raise my wine glass to yours, Lee!

I wrote these this morning as a thank you and farewell gift to you.


honeyeaters
nip and dart
spring morning


autumn evening
burnt paper
lifts against the wind


Cally


edit back to say - So do I, Mary! I was going to say earlier that I feel exquisitely alive right now, and an extraordinary sense of reverence. It's like magic, or love.

Or both

[This message has been edited by Cally Conan-Davies (edited October 20, 2008).]

Mary I cant even remember it off hand as images and poems come to me I scribble them down
I often look at them much later ; scratch my head and wonder who wrote it.
but it is good to get a heads up early on what nearly works – Now I will need to go looking for it --??
It’s my way of improving/learning to overload my system until I get one right,

and sad to say I have had very little time to read all the links and lessons just now-- the older I get the more work I am finding to do.

have I missed a post. has lee left? oh poo, I was truly enjoying his posts as well.

ah well, if he pops back in

a big thank you Lee; it has all been a real pleasure- glad you took the time to come share--

maybe we can kidnap Stephen.. his auction is still in the works. come on Mary offer him an inducement - apple pie he might bite on that. even so we can still play in this thread can't we?

Hi Joan, Cally, Everyone,

Joan: Yes, I think Lee has "retired" for the night . . . but he has said that he'll be back tomorrow for a grand finale (no pressure, Lee!), so don't despair. Apple pie? I much prefer pumpkin.

Anyway, as for the question of playing in the thread here, or starting a new forum, I can't see any reason why we shouldn't continue this thread after Lee has escaped our clutches--at least, not until the next Distinguished Guest event begins next month. However, I don't think it would be appropriate to keep bumping this thread up once a new discussion starts getting underway.

More generally, your idea of a dedicated forum is interesting. If you mean a whole new board, like Met, TDE, Non-Met, etc.--that would involve a change to the site's (Eratoshpere's) overall plan, and that's a decision for Alex and Maryann to make. But if I understand you correctly, you're not looking for a "Post & Crit" arrangement like the other poetry boards anyway, right? After all, we've always had a place for haiku on the Non-Met board; it's just that the workshop model there is different, with one poet and many critters, and none of the freer sort of back-and-forth that we've had here. And frankly, I think that we shouldn't disturb that model; it's part of what makes this place work. People should have a place to go for really searching critique and comment--the sort of stuff that can only happen when poems are given intensive, individual attention. Besides, it would probably be rather annoying after a while to have a thread like this popping up and hogging the top of the Non-Met board all the time.

So here's an idea: "Drills and Amusements." Sure, I know it sounds like we're trivializing a subtle and vibrant art like haiku to relegate it to D&A. But what's in a name? There's nothing to stop a committed group of haikuists from keeping up a sophisticated, instructive discussion on D&A, where poets can share ideas and new work, critting freely as the mood takes them, but without feeling constrained by the post&crit workshop model of the other boards. Anyone can open a thread there (unlike DG . . . I had to get special clearance, and I turn back into a pumpkin at the end of the month!), and there are no "unwritten rules" about quoting or showboating or whatnot.

And lest that model be so open-ended as to degenerate into mere random thread-sprawl, there's a good precedent in Japanese practice for keeping things interesting. In Japanese haiku clubs, there typically is a monthly get-together in which poets bring work to share and discuss, all writing on one or more season topics agreed upon in advance. The benefit of such an arrangement is that it avoids the problem of too much "apples and oranges"; people can see how others have approached the same problem, and compare. The process doesn't need to be competitive, and not all poems need be restricted to the agreed-upon topic, but by imposing a little order on the chaos, the "set drill" makes for a real spur to creativity and learning. In other words, our Japanese cousins do Drills & Amusements too; nothing undignified about it.

Naturally, season words may be problematic given E'sphere's multi-latitude community, but we could just as easily run things on a system of key words: food, memories, milestones, love, hate, you name it. Someone can start a thread with a couple of key words in the subject line, calling for haiku and discussion, people can join in, and then when the discussion seems to have played out, someone can start a new one. It seems worth a try.

Cally, you might be amused to know that my original idea for the Open Mic thread was to call it "The Sandbox." But I didn't want people to feel I was trivializing the process, or that I was being condescending in any way, so I changed it to "The Warm-Up." In retrospect, though, I probably shouldn't have worried, eh? The sandbox spirit is precisely what I was hoping would emerge here.

Anyway, reading your 4 am poem reminds me of another "cats in love" piece I wrote years ago.

cats in love . . .
and here at home, steam rising
from my Cup Noodle

I'm glad that you kept at Lee with your questions concerning context; his comments about the problem of "surprise" are really illuminating. If and when we open a new forum for haiku play around here, we might consider framing them and putting them over the door.

Hungry? Cup Noodle!

Steve C.






[This message has been edited by Stephen Collington (edited October 20, 2008).]

But wait a minute, I thought you were "The Haiku Guy."

But seriously, here are a few revisions:


morning chill,
long after morning:
lingering fog


the calving glacier
echoes like cannon fire;
a seal pup yawns


two steps beyond
the shadow of the redwoods:
the sun!


reveille --
flushing the toilet,
I drown out the trumpeter


all the beautiful trees --
a vacationing artist
sketches a cabin


millions of summers
in the making:
the sand between my toes


and one more new one from the redwoods:


alone
in the redwoods --
not alone


David R.

great, great great ideas—I’m all for all of it.
as for the sandbox. Ha! Toss a turd might have applied as well

edit in-- I was very taken with the link you provided
http://renku.home.att.net/kasen/MahjongTiles.html

the renku; it would be really marvellous if given time a group here can write one. Mary and Cally have picked this up so well, I have high hopes I will get to read a Sphere Renku one day .


Big GRINS


I hear your pain some
folk just cant keep them in at night.
Slurping up noodles

I have a stray who adopted us, I call it -- The Maggot


[This message has been edited by Henrietta kelly (edited October 21, 2008).]

David R - I hope you don't mind me saying that your revisions have made a dramatic difference! How exciting!

Steve - that's a terrific idea. Drills is perfect for what we need, and the organised form you describe is very wise. I keep hearing Lee say 'respect the reader', which could be the single commandment for all poetry, but writing and sharing haiku confronts the importance of respect full-on.

I have been so impressed by the playfulness intrinsic to haiku. I delight in the feeling of foolishness and vulnerability the form inspires. It keeps you close to something so valuable. A child's perception. A child's heart.

So - I'm all for the sandpit approach! It took me a while to join in the warm-up, although I attended quietly. But if you had called it 'Sand-box' I would have jumped right in, believe me!! So SNAP!

I so agree that Lee's comments on context and the elements are invaluable - so crucial to the success of a haiku. I feel privileged to have shared in the conversation. I have collected his scattered pearls from all the pages of the thread, and they read wonderfully now that I have strung them on a single string. And I have done the same with your judicious gems, too!

I can't be around tomorrow for Lee's final day, so here's to sandcastles and rising steam!

Cally

To Lee and Stephen with grateful thanks .

in breaking the ice
bulbs come instinctively
to test both my soles

and I truly believe haiku has done that.

Mary, a response coming soon! I am having trouble formatting it, so i sent it to Steve and he is going to help! SOS!

Lee

Cally, thank you for the kind words--entirely undeserved!

Your new haiku have a delightful bouyance! Wow! Well done!

Lee

Sorry, but you haven't gotten rid of me yet! http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/ubbhtml/smile.gif

Lee

morning chill,
long after morning:
lingering fog

nicely done!

the calving glacier
echoes like cannon fire;
a seal pup yawns

not really getting a lot out of this. maybe too 'obvious'?

two steps beyond
the shadow of the redwoods:
the sun!

nice

reveille --
flushing the toilet,
I drown out the trumpeter

well done

all the beautiful trees --
a vacationing artist
sketches a cabin

much better! but why not 'the' and 'the'?

millions of summers
in the making:
the sand between my toes

nice feeling

and one more new one from the redwoods:


alone
in the redwoods --
not alone

and one more from the corn belt (this should be centered, but i can't figure out how to format that):

driving
home
alone
no not alone
the
grass
hopper
re-
minds
me

if you have never taken a ride with a grasshopper in the car, i can recommend it for excitement!

Lee

And a deep bow to you, Henie!

Lee

Lee, I've revised a few yet again and have one new one. Any comment would be greatly appreciated. Thanks again for putting up with my repeated attempts. Your efforts in teaching and critting our work has been stellar! I've fallen in love with haiku!

Donna


thunderheads roil
prairie dust rises
to meet the rain

black curtain of clouds
the switchgrass twirls
then bows to the breeze

neighbors porch steps lined
with unmowed grass and dead leaves
flowers, cards and candles

Hi Mary, Thanks for the long and thoughtful response. It is my pleasure to respond to your poems. Interesting that you feel haiku opened up for you when you let go of the syllable count. everyone knows about the 17, so no matter what you write, there will be an at least unconscious comparison in the reader's mind between what you wrote and that 17. And any difference, of course, is an opportunity for the poet to develop tension and interest, as, for example, in something like this:

dancing to my tune (5)
cricket (not 7!)
in the urinal (at this point, who cares?)

I try not to think of the haiku rules as 'rules' but just guidelines. A poem can fail when following them all as well as it can in breaking them all. The poet's job, of course, is to figure out what to follow and what to break. As we are all finding out, it is not always an easy decision! And perhaps others of you have had this experience: sometimes I don¡¦t know what is wrong with a poem until I see it in print. Very humbling!

On your 'cold bed', i am afraid i didn't get the idea that a person would appear in the third line. Perhaps this is because of the presence of the word 'another' in the second line? If you are thinking persons, do you want the reader to conclude you are interested in a menage a trois?

Two-line haiku. As you may know, japanese haiku are traditionally written in one vertical line, not in the three that we have been led to believe. As a result, some poets think English-language haiku should also be written in one line, and i have written a fair number in this form. Since haiku normally present two images, some poets think two lines are an appropriate way to present these images. I guess the point is that the lineation is one of the issues the poet should consider when writing each and every poem. And why not?

As to what i am doing these days, i was hoping to avoid talking about it. But since you asked, i think it would be rude to fail to reply. The two issues involved in my answer will be form and taxonomy.

As far as form is concerned, there are several issues involved in my thinking. First, in haiku i feel there should be a break or turn at the end of each line. Otherwise, why choose to break the line there? As you have seen, the break between the two images is often indicated and qualified by the poet's use of punctuation.

The second issue has to do with what one is trying to do--the scope of the poem if you will. There are several ways of looking at this issue. One is stated by Haruo Shirane in his 'Traces of Dreams,' where he writes that a haiku should be written and interpreted at the intersection of two axes, 'a vertical axis, based on a perceived notion of cultural past, [and] a horizontal axis, based on contemporary life and social order (5).' So one thing i am thinking about in relation to my haiku (including form) is this intersection of ideational axes. Another has to do with the schema i introduced earlier"


This for me is a haiku ideal: to connect the realm of the senses with the realm of the spirit through experience of the physical world, including the world of the seasons. And it is often the seasons that provide the resonance necessary to connect these two worlds. With these ideas on mind, i have begun experimenting with my haiku in a form that turns with each line. For example, here is a haiku that appeared in MH recently:



In this haiku, the form nearly follows the schema above if you consider the first line reaching up into the sky for a sign and the third line reaching into the heart for a sigh. The second thing I need to bring up in response to you, Mary, is taxonomy. I have not been so concerned lately about whether or not what I am writing is haiku. I just write what I want and if people want to think about whether or not it is haiku I leave that to them. Here is a poem of the kind you seem to have been referring to that was published in Philip Rowland¡¦s fine magazine NOON,



As you can see from these two, I have been working on love poems lately. about a year and a half ago I went into a Border¡¦s and noticed that fully half the anthologies were on a single subject: love. So I thought I would try my hand at it.

So I hope this addresses adequately your questions about form and number of lines in relation to my own recent work. I am pretty sure that by now you are sorry you asked! ļ

Someone mentioned haibun, a form that unites haiku with prose or a prose poem. I have tried to avoid muddying the water here by posting too much of my own work, but as long as I am running off at the mouth, I thought perhaps I would share a haibun or two. the first is composed of a haiku and a prose poem:

[begin haibun]

.........................Alpha and Omega

..................................a parting kiss . . .
..................................mating monarchs tumble
..................................in mid-flight

.........................In the beginning
.........................you threw your leg over mine
.........................And the earth was without form, and void
.........................as I looked up into your eyes
.........................And God saw the light, that it was good
.........................as you bent down to kiss me
.........................And God said, Let us make man in our image
.........................as you touched my cheek
.........................And God said, Behold I have given you every herb and every tree
.........................as you moved your hand inside my shirt
.........................And the Lord God said, It is not good that man should be alone
.........................as you told me why you can never say ¡§I love you.¡¨

[end haibun]

The second, paragraph of prose and a poem that I will leave up to you whether it is a haiku:

[begin haibun]

The Dress

I am at a party, saying poems to the friend sitting next to me on the couch. Someone overhears the word ¡§dress¡¨ and the room is suddenly quiet¡Xeveryone wants to know what we are talking about. Perhaps they think we have some new tidbit about Monica¡¦s Blue Dress. I explain that I was sharing a poem that had just been accepted for publication. Before I read the poem, I tell them about Philip Rowland¡¦s magazine NOON, published in Tokyo, of its purity and selectivity, handmade in the Japanese style, each poem alone on a page, without the author¡¦s name. And of my ambition to get into it.

I tell them about a cold morning in November, just me and my father. Years before, I had been to Japan and bought some fabric for my mother. Silk, blue and white and pink, covered with thousands of miniature Mt. Fujis. I had completely forgotten about it. She made dress out of it¡XI remember it now. My father says it was her favorite dress, something she never told me. I tell them she is wearing it now. Then I read the poem:


[end haibun]

Enough for now? http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/ubbhtml/smile.gif

Lee

Delighted to have been of service! Below . . .

thunderheads roil
prairie dust rises
to meet the rain

much less static, wouldn't you say?

black curtain of clouds
the switchgrass twirls
then bows to the breeze

much nicer! full of energy!

neighbors porch steps lined
with unmowed grass and dead leaves
flowers, cards and candles

very nice!

Lee

How could a mind such a generous compliment? Thank you.

David R.

I centered it for you (you just put "center" in brackets before the text, and "/center" in brackets after it). How about a car full of eight-year-old girls and a wasp. That might be more of sonnet than a haiku.

Thanks, Lee, for your comments on my latest post, and all of your comments throughout the thread. If the rumors are true that this is your last day here, let me say again how grateful I am for your generosity and insight. It has been a great pleasure.

Best,

David R.

ATTENTION ALL!

please post the final versions of your turd haiku so i can send them to Modern Haiku editor Charles Trumbull for judging! Thanks!

Lee

Lee, I'm rushing at work so have to hurry - see you later today on the thread - here's my turd poem:

brown oak leaf
falls on the lake
flustered

Mary Meriam

revised last line!!! stole, er, inspired by Steve C's.



[This message has been edited by Mary Meriam (edited October 21, 2008).]

Lee, my poo-poo poem:

third flush in a row
a buoyant howdy-doodie
keeps popping back up

Donna

already flushed twice,
the cheerful little turdlet
pops back up again


David R.

David, thank you for your kind words. Yes, i am checking out today. It has been a great pleasure. And i will look forward to the sonnet!

Lee

Hi Lee, Charles,

Now here's one competition I don't want to miss out on!

flushed but unflustered
and cheerfully popping back
to stay . . . undeterred

Anyway, a note to Charles: we were thrilled to have Lee as our Distinguished Guest again this year . . . but we'd be delighted if you could join us too some time. Maybe you could come as a pair, you and Lee together. Sort of, you know, tag team. We could call it something like


Now that would draw a crowd!

Hope you enjoy judging our stinky creations!

Steve C.