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Hello All,
It's Haiku Month here on the Distinguished Guest. Lee Gurga, one of the masters of the modern English haiku, has kindly agreed to join us once more to share his insights into this fascinating but often misunderstood form. Those of you who were around for Lee's previous visits to the Distinguished Guest in 2004 and 2005 know just what a treat we're in for. Not only is Lee an excellent poet, he is a sharp-eyed editor and a patient and generous teacher. We can look forward to a lively and instructive workshop together. Lee will be joining us on or around the fifteenth of this month. In anticipation, I hope everyone will be getting some haiku ready to share with him. In a few days, we'll open a "peer review" thread here on DG for those people who want to try out their poems on fellow Sphereans before bringing them to Lee next week. Needless to say, though, that step is optional: we're not having "auditions," just a chance for some extra feedback. It may, however, prove useful to iron out some of the simpler problems in our work so that Lee can concentrate on higher-order concerns. In the meantime, this thread will be devoted to Haiku Resources. The World Wide Web is full of fascinating and useful material on all aspects of haiku culture: publications, archived collections, essays on craft and theory, and samples of haiga, haibun, renku, senryu, tanka and other kindred arts. I'm going to post something new here every day or so, bringing links to the most interesting sites I can find on various haiku-related topics. I trust that people won't be shy in letting me know what I've missed, and of course, discussion is most welcome. So by all means, pile on after me. At the end of the process, we should have a nice little library of resources developed. This morning, for starters, let me recommend to you . . . Three Essential Essays by Lee Gurga • Writing and Revising Haiku • (an excerpt from Lee's book Haiku: A Poet's Guide ) • Toward an Aesthetic for English-Language Haiku • (an overview of the "aesthetic problem" in English haiku, reprinted from Modern Haiku, Fall 2000) And the next one comes with a real recommendation . . . Quote:
• Haiku: Formal Elements • (an introduction to the formal properties of haiku, as written in English; an essay first shared with us here on Eratosphere in May 2004) Required reading folks! And don't miss these other threads from Lee's previous visits to the Sphere as Distinguished Guest. The two "Open Mic" threads in particular are worth looking at: they contain all sorts of interesting discussion, and some pretty nifty poetry too. Previous Distinguished Guest Threads • Welcome to Lee (April 2004) • Contemporary Haiku and Tanka (April 2004) • Open Mic (May 2004) • Haiku Open Mic, 2005 (July 2005) Important note: Please don't post new poems to the Open Mic threads listed here. We'll be having a new forum soon enough! Of course, there's no reason we can't bump the old threads, but it might get confusing if we do; your posting may get lost in the shuffle as we open new threads for this year's event. Best to keep 'em separate. [This message has been edited by Stephen Collington (edited October 21, 2008).] |
Please re-read Lee's essays from a few years back. For the ambitious, senryu are also welcome! Lee's appearances at Distinguished Guest have been among our most popular. I am delighted that he is returning, and just as delighted that Stephen, a real expert in Japanese verse, agreed to take over as host.
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Okay, so you want to know what haiku are all about, but you don't know where to start. The best thing to do, of course, is to go ahead and read some. But the World Wide Web is such a huge place--where to look? Well, this is just a taster--and I do hope people will pepper me with links to their own favourites--but here are five wonderful sites full of English-language haiku. I don't necessarily endorse every single poem, or style, but I'm confident that there's enough here to dispel any lingering doubts about the vitality and richness of international haiku today. Enjoy! • The Green Leaf's Haiga Pages • A magnificent resource. Start with the Japanese Masters page, especially the "Great Four": Basho, Buson, Kobayashi Issa, and Shiki. But don't miss out on the other archives, including the fine collection of Japanese Women poets and Contemporary Poets. All beautifully illustrated. • Terebess Asia Online • A vast archive of haiku (scroll down!), including translations from the Japanese, a rich selection of English haiku (including three by Auden!) and many more in other European languages. A superb resource for anyone looking to get a sense of haiku in the world today. • HSA Online Haiku Collections • An archive of various contest winners throughout the years from the Haiku Society of America. A good place to check out the state of the art in North America today. • Temps Libres/Free Times Key Word Haiku Database • Fascinating site with a huge archive of contemporary haiku, in English and French, arranged by keyword. A great way to get a sense of the variety and scope of what haiku can encompass. (For those who don't know French: don't be put off by the strange words in the Key Word list. Pretty much every category has entries in both English and French--most poems, in fact, appear in both--so if you click on, say "arbre," you'll still get lots of stuff about "trees.") • Brooks Books Online Haiku Collections • Free online collections from Brooks Books, with attractive photography and artwork. Number four on the page is Long Walk Alone by our Distinguished Guest, Lee Gurga. Return to Top [This message has been edited by Stephen Collington (edited October 21, 2008).] |
I dunno about the rest of you, but I am impressed with this virtual library Stephen is linking us to, and I suspect Lee will be too.
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Thanks Tim! Im hoping that it will be useful. And now, for todays installment . . . Haiku Form I: How Many Syllables? Okay, so you've always read that haiku are short poems of seventeen syllables, written in lines of five, seven and five syllables each. But many of the English haiku you see don't seem to follow this rule: they're often much shorter, and sometimes they're written as a single line, or in two lines instead of three. Or perhaps you've heard that Japanese "syllables" aren't really syllables at all, and that it's actually wrong to write haiku in English with seventeen syllables . . . What's up? What is the "correct" form for a haiku? Perhaps the simplest answer comes from the Haiku Society of America, who state as part of their definition of Haiku: "Most haiku in English consist of three unrhymed lines of seventeen or fewer syllables, with the middle line longest, though today's poets use a variety of line lengths and arrangements." In other words, free verse! (Note: I think they mean that the total should be "seventeen or fewer syllables," not that each line should be that long!) Nothing wrong with such a definition, of course--the bottom line should always be what works as poetry. But as the many formalist poets who gather here at Eratosphere know, form itself has significant virtues, whether as a spur to creativity or as an aesthetic element in its own right. Haiku most certainly are a fixed, "metrical" form in Japanese. So what would be the equivalent form in English? Complete consensus on anything to do with poetry no doubt will forever elude us. But perhaps the majority of haiku poets writing in English today work towards an ideal first articulated by R. H. Blyth more than forty years ago in his landmark study A History of Haiku: Quote:
The "Traditional Form" for Haiku in English A "Traditional Form" for Haiku in English An excerpt from William Higginson's book The Haiku Handbook which outlines the basic structure of haiku as a formal poem in English. (Note to Netscape users: Google Books may crash your browser; best opened using Internet Explorer.) William Higginson "Haiku by the Numbers" A longer, theoretical essay which outlines the rationale behind the "Traditional Form" in detail, using examples of what works and what doesn't in various translations of Matsuo Basho's famous "old pond" haiku. Forms in English Haiku by Keiko Imaoka An interesting article discussing the structural differences between Japanese and English that affect the question of line length and form in the two languages. Haiku Definition Full text of the Haiku Society of America's definition of "Haiku," quoted from above. And for an alternate view: From One-Line Poems to One-Line Haiku A history of experiments with one-line haiku in English, by William Higginson. Return to Top [This message has been edited by Stephen Collington (edited October 21, 2008).] |
Steve C., I've read the haiku guy's thread at least five times, and I do believe I have a haiku sequence. I'd like to post it. When, man, where? I like to jump in first, then read all the resources.
Heavily inspired, Mary |
Hi Mary,
Soon! I promise! Tonight! That said, you should know, it's just going to be a "Warm Up" Open Mic for now. Our Distinguished Guest may join us if he wants to (he's always welcome!), but officially he's going to start looking in on the fifteenth. So, we're going to open up a thread for everyone to strut their stuff and get some feedback from fellow 'Sphereans. Hopefully, that way we can get a body of really polished work together for Lee to discuss with us. Tell you what--I did say today, after all--I'll go do it right now. Hold onto your hat. I'll be right back. Steve C. |
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Okay, so you've written some haiku, and you want to submit them somewhere for publication. Or perhaps you just want to read what other poets are doing in the form today. What are the options? Haiku Magazines Modern Haiku Along with Frogpond below, one of the two "major" journals in North America. And folks, it pays! Formerly edited by our Distinguished Guest, Lee Gurga. Frogpond Journal of the Haiku Society of America. Thrice yearly. Submissions for Winter 2008 issue close November 15! Mayfly Published by the elegant Brooks Books, a kind of "14 by 14" for haiku. The Heron's Nest Hybrid print/online. Acorn: A Journal of Contemporary Haiku Twice yearly. No online archive. Bottle Rockets No online archive, but it sure has nifty covers! Simply Haiku Truth-in-advertising check: this site has way more than "simply haiku." Tanka, senryu, haibun, renku, you can find just about everything here. And it regularly publishes some very sophisticated criticism and theory too. Online only. A class act. * * * Well, that's probably plenty for now. Needless to say, though, there's bound to be lots more. So if you know of a good publication, don't keep it to yourself! Let us all know . . . that's what the thread's for. Return to Top [This message has been edited by Stephen Collington (edited October 21, 2008).] |
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Okay, the Internet is all very well, but you can't read it in the bathtub, and you can't take it to the beach. So here are some actual books you might like to check out: Introduction, Handbook, Guide, Anthology An Introduction to Haiku by Harold G. Henderson Still in print after half a century, an excellent introduction to haiku, concentrating on the four great "masters" of the Japanese tradition: Basho, Buson, Issa and Shiki. Not a how-to per se . . . but these are the classic poems that every haiku poet should know. The Haiku Handbook by William J. Higginson and Penny Harter A wide-ranging and always-helpful resource. Arguably the most comprehensive introduction in English, for both readers and poets. Haiku, A Poet's Guide by Lee Gurga Haiku from the practicing poet's point of view; a nuts-and-bolts guide to both the art and the craft. The Haiku Anthology by Cor van den Heuvel The "standard" anthology of English-language haiku for more than twenty years now, updated in 2000. Frankly (personal opinion) it reveals as much about the weaknesses of the form in English as its strengths. The happy part is that readers aren't likely ever to agree completely on which are which! At any rate, an indispensable resource for anyone who wants to know what's been done in the form. * * * Yes, of course, that's just the tip of the iceberg. And needless to say, the books of R. H. Blyth, for all their flaws, would head the list here if they were still in print and selling at reasonable prices. The four-volume Haiku, the two-volume History of Haiku . . . if you ever see a beat-up old copy at a garage sale or your local thrift shop, pounce! In the meantime, don't hesitate to let me know if you think there's something that simply has to be added to the list. Return to Top [This message has been edited by Stephen Collington (edited October 21, 2008).] |
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Haiku Form II: Season Words and Cutting In his essay Haiku: Formal Elements , Lee Gurga notes three distinct properties that define a traditional haiku: Quote:
The two elements--seasonal reference and cutting--are in fact closely related. To quote Lee's paper again, Quote:
But will any two images do? As Lee points out, at least one of the images usually "comes from nature or the seasons." Indeed, in traditional Japanese practice the images that can be used are quite carefully defined, and categorized according to season--sometimes right down to the day of the month! And thus emerge the so-called season words, or kigo, and the season-word almanacs (saijiki) that are part of every Japanese poet's library. Is this just a mania for classification . . . or do the "season words" really serve an important function in haiku that other words can't perform? And if they do matter, to what extent should non-Japanese poets worry about developing similar resources for haiku in English and other languages? And just why is that "cut" so important anyway? All vexed (though fascinating) questions, the subject of much debate in both Japanese and English. Opinions abound . . . and consensus is not likely any time soon. But whatever position one ultimately adopts in one's own writing, an understanding of the underlying issues arguably is essential to any mature appreciation of what haiku are all about. Of course, in developing such an appreciation there's no substitute for reading lots of good haiku--whether translations from Japanese or original works in English. It never hurts, however, to have things pointed out sometimes, and that's where theory and criticism can help. Some resources. Season Words, Cutting and Saijiki Kigo Wikipedia to the rescue with an excellent introductory article, including explanations of kigo (as used in Japanese and English), saijiki and more. The Importance of Seasons by Charles Trumbull A defense of the use of "season words" in English by the current editor of Modern Haiku. Of particular interest are Trumbull's observations on the importance of season words as links to the greater tradition of haiku as a whole. Kigo and Seasonal Reference by Richard Gilbert An examination of "season words" (kigo, a specifically Japanese literary device) and "seasonal reference," and why the two are not equivalent. Gilbert argues that a fully developed "kigo culture" of the kind known in Japan may not prove possible in English, but defends the larger principle of "seasonal reference" as a valuable component of English haiku composition. A little diffuse in places, a little muddled in others, but valuable reading all the same. (Mirrored, in a slightly different revision HERE .) Plausible deniability: Nature as hypothesis in English-language haiku by Richard Gilbert A long, difficult, fascinating exploration of haiku mechanics, with specific focus on both nature/season and cutting. It verges in places on academic bafflegab, though in tackling the hard problem of how haiku really work their magic, a little abstraction may be necessary. A tough climb, but the view from the top is worth it. (Mirrored HERE .) Thoughts on Juxtaposition by Carmen Sterba A clear, nonacademic exploration of the importance of "juxtaposition" as the central technique of haiku poetry, with illustrative examples. Good read. The Disjunctive Dragonfly by Richard Gilbert A challenging (long!) but extremely valuable article on the technical question of "disjuncture" (or "cutting") in haiku. Worth making the effort to get through. Contains a useful capsule summary of Kawamoto Koji's theory of dynamic and base segments and "superposition." Online Bilingual Saijiki by the University of Virginia Library Japanese Text Initiative Perhaps the best online resource for seeing what a Japanese saijiki looks like and how it functions. Clicking on any of the underlined words on the start page will take you to a reference page which includes a list of related and equivalent season words, a description of the season topic and its traditional "mood," and a number of sample poems by famous poets which use the words in question. Depending on your browser settings, the Japanese characters may not display correctly, but don't worry: all Japanese words and texts are accompanied by an alphabetic transcription. The Five-Hundred Essential Japanese Season Words A bare-bones translation of one of Japan's most popular and respected saijiki. The site merely lists the season words in their traditional order, without explaining their use or giving examples, but it still will serve to give some idea of the scope of the concept of kigo in Japanese haiku practice. The original book, with definitions and examples, is more than 1000 pages of fine print. World Kigo Database A web-based interactive project, coordinated by Gabi Greve, to develop an international "Seasonal Almanac" for haiku writers around the world. The site is not set up to be easily self-explanatory, but if you scroll down on the main page, you will eventually arrive at a long list of season words (highlighted in green) which have been proposed for inclusion. Clicking on a word will then take you to a page with a definition, discussion, and samples of use by contributors. Everything from "Ramadan" to "Tagore Memorial Day" to "Snowdrops" . . . or make that "Schneeglφckchen"! There are also national almanacs in development for different countries (six seasons for India!), and pages discussing various aspects of "seasonal reference" and its importance to haiku. A fascinating site. Return to Top [This message has been edited by Stephen Collington (edited October 21, 2008).] |
Sad news from a thread on General Talk: William J. Higginson, author of The Haiku Handbook and one of the pioneers of the English-language haiku, has died. See the GT thread HERE . . and don't forget to click on the link that Duncan provides to read the obituary of this outstanding poet and teacher. (Thanks to Duncan MacLaurin for posting this.)
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Steve, I really like the haiku in this essay -
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Mary (certain now that I don't have a clue how to do haiku) [This message has been edited by Mary Meriam (edited October 13, 2008).] |
Mary --- I found great inspiration in her own words all four below came from reading her site. The first is a straight steal the others from a word or two.
Stephen--My question is, did I steal or can I call the below works mine? since the distant past only three changes in nature best is transference reverberation one beating heart sings of love echoes hit the moon new way of seeing close both eyes and listen deep in the earth for seeds this and the ones that followed were inspired by the word flow . I will post all in the other thread. it has been a produtive morning if only one is fit to keep- small "burn" in overflow slipping bluebells crowd the banks ringing in delight a burn is a Scottish river de- light is not lol [This message has been edited by Henrietta kelly (edited October 13, 2008).] |
Hi Mary, Joan,
Mary, one of the things I hope to accomplish with this Haiku Resources page is to help its readers see that there's more to haiku than they may have previously imagined. Too often in the West, people have been convinced that haiku are exclusively Nature poems or Zen poems or "winter sunset, ahh . . . loneliness" poems, or whatnot. Of course, they can indeed be all that, but they can be much else besides. Ultimately, the only question that really matters is whether a given poem (to use Emily's famous test) takes the top of your head off or not. As for "explaining," I do think that the old show-don't-tell rule is every bit as important in haiku as elsewhere. Because of the need for compression in so short a form, a certain amount of generality, even cliche, is sometimes allowed--especially in the "season word" part of the poem. So you get "autumn evening" instead of "the sun glowering, low and red, through the leafless branches of the trees . . . " That's a whole haiku right there already--which is fine, if that's all you wanted to say. If you're just looking to set the scene, however, you're better off using a shorthand like "autumn evening." That said, the poem must not stay at that level. The important point is that you join that generic "autumn evening" with something really specific and striking that makes the moment come alive, and gets the craniums popping. In that sense, anyway, "love" is a perfectly acceptable base element in a haiku . . . as long as there's something in the rest of the poem to give it specificity. Like, say, sweet, bursting cherry tomatoes! The "generic" meets the "specific" and the juices fly. (In fairness, though, "after love" is not the same thing as plain old "love," is it? The writer is actually fairly "specific" here from the start. Ahem.) Joan, quotation is actually a venerable technique in haiku; the early masters of the Japanese tradition loved to riff on catch phrases and little snippets of language taken from all sorts of different sources. So yes, your riffing on quotations from Sterba's paper is entirely legitimate as an approach to haiku composition. One thing to look out for though is that your juxtapositions should be neither too obvious nor too obscure. For example, in "new way of seeing" close both eyes and listen deep in the earth for seeds "new way of seeing" winds up functioning almost like a title, or a headword in a dictionary, for which the rest of the poem is a definition. In other words, the connection is too close, and there's no real "reactive chemistry" between the two parts of the poem--no heads popping. The image of listening for seeds is wonderfully evocative; the challenge is to find something that will really click with it. Looking back at Sterba's paper, I can see one option: "focus on the music" close both eyes and listen deep in the earth for seeds But that's still just a small explosion. And it may still be too close for some readers. At any rate, the art is in coming up with just the right combination. You've got a real knack for finding striking images; I think with a little more practice in tuning your pieces, you may produce some very fine haiku indeed. Steve C. |
"Focus on the music"
Yes -- I think what happens is I see that explosion of images and I feel as if I need to grab them all before they become lost to me, and they do, I cant seem to hold them steady unless I get to scribble them down real fast. The good thing is when editing one can drop the fire brand that sparked the imagination. I also like your idea and with a small edit can change the whole outcome. Centre in melody close both eyes and listen deep for the earth has seeds I'm glad I asked, as I always felt a bit of a cheat if others words invoked me to write. ~~~ henie [This message has been edited by Henrietta kelly (edited October 14, 2008).] |
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A good haiku should always be able to stand on its own--without title, without footnotes, without any hemming and hawing of preliminary explanation. And yet, from the very beginnings of haiku--before it was even called "haiku"--poets have also been setting their poems within longer prose works. Some of this activity, of course, is no different from what we might find in any other literary context: poets adding poems to their letters, diaries and other writings. Indeed, some of the most well-known haiku in the Japanese tradition first saw light as part of longer works, particularly Matsuo Basho's famous travel diary, Narrow Road to the Deep North (Oku no hosomichi), and Kobayashi Issa's bittersweet journal The Spring of My Life (Ora ga haru). But beyond these more traditional prose forms, haiku poets also gradually developed a whole new genre of writing in which poems are no longer so much "set" in a prose context, as arranged as equal partners with prose in a dynamic interplay in which the whole is indeed greater than the sum of the parts. And so was born haibun, a hybrid art of poetry and prose. Haibun and Other Mixed Forms contemporary haibun online An online magazine specializing in haibun as a rigorous literary art. Along with the "haibun selections" for each issue, the site also presents a number of excellent resources explaining the nature of haibun, and how to write it. Scroll down for "Essays and Interviews by Editors" and "Editors' Thought Pieces." Simply Haiku Archives Archives of the online magazine Simply Haiku. Starting in 2004, haibun has been a regular feature in each issue; note also the many excellent critical articles in the "Features" section. Haibun Today An online haibun journal run in blog format, with regular postings of new works and critical material on a near-daily basis. Represents a substantial community of poets working in the form today. Matsuo Basho's Narrow Road to the Deep North An extraordinary website presenting five different, complete translations of Basho's classic journal (click on the various names in the "Translations" list in the left-hand column of each chapter page), lavishly illustrated with photographs, maps and artwork, and annotated with a full discussion of each short chapter. (Also includes the Japanese original, in a scanned text for universal browser-friendliness.) Arguably, the Narrow Road is not a fully developed haibun in the modern sense, but it is nonetheless "required reading" as the revered forerunner of the genre. And the site is a superb resource. Return to Top [This message has been edited by Stephen Collington (edited October 21, 2008).] |
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If a haiku should always be able to stand on its own, wouldn't it be cheating to add illustrations? And if a picture is worth a thousand words, wouldn't that drown out any haiku in the vicinity? Well, the great masters of the Japanese haiku never thought so, so why should we? From the time of Basho in the seventeenth century right on down to today, haiku poets have "illustrated" their poems in a variety of styles and media, in the process producing a whole new genre of art as poetry . . . and poetry as art. The haiku painting, or haiga. Haiga Resources Online Haigaonline An online magazine devoted to haiga of all kinds--everything from traditional ink-and-brush painting with calligraphy to cutting-edge digital imaging and PhotoShop mashups. A great site to explore. Floating Stone by Susumu Takiguchi Personal page of contemporary Japanese poet and artist Susumu Takiguchi. Good place to get a grounding in the aesthetics of the "traditional" haiga, as practiced by a modern master. "The Modern Haiga Creation Process" by Ray Rasmussen An excellent introduction to the techniques of modern haiga, from the wonderful archives of Simply Haiku. "HAIGA This Delicious Cocktail of Art, Poetry and Calligraphy" by Susumu Takiguchi An interesting article on the aesthetics of the haiga from a Japanese perspective. "Looking and Seeing" by Jim Kacian (PDF) A long, discursive essay on haiga, and on the marriage of image and word in general. Includes many beautiful examples of traditional haiga, with commentary. The essay is a PDF file for Adobe Reader; if you don't have Adobe Reader you can download it for free online. (Just Google "Adobe Reader.") Return to Top [This message has been edited by Stephen Collington (edited October 21, 2008).] |
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If you've ever read anything about the history of haiku, then you probably know that the form evolved from an earlier kind of poetry variously called renku, renga, haikai no renga . . . or in plain English, "linked verse." In fact, haiku wasn't even called "haiku" until the poet-critic Masaoka Shiki gave it the name at end of the nineteenth century. Prior to that, poems in the form were called hokku (literally, "first" or "starting verse"), the point being that they were intended, at least in theory, as the first installment of a longer work. Japanese linked verse (renga or renku, ren meaning linked and ga and ku meaning "poem" and "verse" respectively) has a long tradition, going back over a thousand years. In its most basic form, it involves two poets putting together a 31-syllable (or "mora") tanka, one poet supplying the first part of 5-7-5 and another the concluding 7-7. From this beginning, poets gradually evolved longer forms, in which verses were added one after another like links in a chain: A 5-7-5 > B 7-7 > C 5-7-5 > D7-7 > E 5-7-5 . . . and so on, until the poem grew to 18 or 36 or 100 verses--or sometimes even more. Perhaps the most interesting feature of this form was its aesthetic principle of "link and shift," whereby each new verse added to the overall work had to make a self-contained poem with the verse immediately preceding it and unconnected with the verse before that. In other words, after the first verse (or hokku), each succeeding verse was part of three distinct poems: once with the verse before it, once with the verse after it, and of course once as a part of the overall sequence in its own right. Thus verses followed A, AB, BC, CD, DE . . . in a succession of constantly changing but interrelated poetic images. The result is a fascinating, complex form of communal poetic creation--spontaneous, playful and interactive. Because the starting verse was the one part of a linked poem that could be produced ahead of time, and because it set the tone for the whole piece, linked-verse poets always took great pains to produce the most striking, richly evocative hokku possible. Moreover, as practice, they produced them in great numbers--far more than they could ever use in actual linked-verse collaborations. And so was born the idea of the hokku as a stand-alone poem, the familiar form that we know as haiku today. (The word haiku itself is a portmanteau of haikai no renga no hokku, where haikai means "comic" or "playful"; haikai no renga = "comic linked poetry.") Behind the grand tradition of the hokku/haiku, however, there remains the fascinating world of linked verse which first gave it birth. In today's interconnected wiki-world, where collaboration and creative networking have never been easier, the form is undergoing a remarkable renaissance. Some links to explore . . . Renku or Japanese Linked Verse Link & Shift: An Overview A good introductory lesson to the "core driver" of linked-verse composition, by John Carley. Start here. The Click of Mahjong Tiles A sample 36-verse kasen renku. Enjoy the poem, then click on the link at the top of the page for the "Annotated Version." A superb introduction to renku aesthetics in practice. The details may seem bewildering at first, but there's a good reason for every rule. Rewards close study. Laughter Rising Another sample 36-verse kasen, this time from the archives of Simply Haiku. When you finish the poem, click on the link at the bottom of the page that says "Tomegaki" for commentary. Haiku, Haikai and Renga: Communal Poetry Practice by Sonja Arntzen A good introduction to the historical background of haikai poetry in general, with a special focus on "communal" creation, and suggestions for modern practice. Renku Home, by William J. Higginson John Carley's The Renku Reckoner Renku Resources from the World Haiku Club Renga Info by Jane Reichhold Four comprehensive resources, chock full of information on the reading, composition and appreciation of linked poetry. All worth exploring in detail. Between them, they should leave no doubts about the scope, complexity and fascination of this marvellous form. Well, that should be enough to start. But don't forget: as always, there's lots more in the superb archives of Simply Haiku. Return to Top [This message has been edited by Stephen Collington (edited October 21, 2008).] |
Steve,
What a great list of resources you have amassed here! I thought I'd mention one more if you don't mind. Here is a good online Haiku journal: Roadrunner Haiku Journal David R. |
Hi David,
No, I don't mind in the least--it's exactly what I was hoping people would do. And remember, DG threads are not "scrubbed"; they remain on the board permanently, so anyone can add to the Resources here at any time (though as I've said elsewhere, we should always repsect other DG events when they are underway, and avoid bumping then). The World Wide Web is a moving target, with new sites appearing and (alas) disappearing all the time. I hope that people will see this thread as a communal resource to be updated and added to at will. I have taken the lead here, but I have no illusions that I've even begun to scratch the surface of all the neat stuff out there waiting to be found. So I say, pile on after me. If you know of or find a neat website, by all means share it with us! Steve C. p.s. (Editing back.) Forgot to say thank you. David, thanks for the Roadrunner! Beep-beep! [This message has been edited by Stephen Collington (edited October 21, 2008).] |
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