[Lee Gurga]

Originally posted by Cally Conan-Davies:
Hello Lee! Thank you for being here. I bring three absolute beginner haiku and many questions. First question stems from the inherent weakness in my attempts: are there any specific techniques for practising and effecting successful transference between images?

Cally

I think techinque is a secondary question. A more important question is: what do you have that you want to communicate to the reader? Unless an experience is inherently interesting to you, it is not likely to be interesting to the reader. So my basic advice to the beginning haiku poet is: find something interesting and then write about that.

dry leaves
skitter the concrete pond
skateboarders swoop


lap-swimming breaststroke
arms part pulling shadow-hearts
along tiled pool floor


orange nasturtiums
nudging through the paling fence ...
another way home

This one seems by far the most interesting of the three haiku. Perhaps because it so obviously something in it that is meaningful to YOU.

[Lee Gurga]

Originally posted by Chris Childers:
Hi Lee,

Do you know this one, by Richard Wilbur? I was wondering what you make of it as haiku.

Sleepless at Crown Point

All night, this headland
Lunges into the rumpling
Capework of the wind.

Put me on the spot, will you? I like and respect Richard and his work. Interesting language (as always), interesting picture, but not much more than an interesting picture in interesting language.

[Mary Meriam]

Lee, your helpful comments about communicating meaningful, direct experience made me think again about my experience with the turtle yesterday. I didn't like the ambuguity of "live" (short or long "i"?), so I focused on my memory of seeing the turtle. It was a jolt, and that's how I got L3. And the turtle was more than just alive, he was peering.

peering turtle
on the highway’s center strip
fucked

I copied these points from one of your essays, and I've been studying them:

HAIKU
It is a poem
It is a poem limited in length, in English that limit being somewhere between 15 and 20 syllables
It presents images rather than ideas
It is intuitive rather than intellective
It uses observation of nature and the seasons as a basis for that intuition
Its observations are specific rather than general.

[Cally Conan-Davies]

Thanks, Lee, for the excellent advice. It reminds me of Philip Sidney's "look in thy heart, and write" - only with haiku, looking in the world is the way to looking in the heart.

Mary - I love 'peering'. I can see the neck and head now!

Cally

[This message has been edited by Cally Conan-Davies (edited October 15, 2008).]

[Lee Gurga]

Originally posted by Roy Hamilton:
Hi Lee,

Thank you so much for reading these. I hope this can be much more than just making you work! lol

Old man content
His wife prepares his meal
Delicate salmon

"There is a little story here. The question is: why are we interested in the story? For me as a reader, it is not apparent why salmon brings content as opposed, say, shrimp or pizza. This poem, like most poems we read, "completes the circuit" for the reader. In my experience, the best haiku leave a gap and let the poem spark for the reader."

I struggled with this more than any. The salmon is meant to express the inevitability of growing old together happily. Drawn up the river to their destiny. It was:

Old man sits content
As his wife prepares a meal
Salmon are running

Perhaps I'm demanding too much or not conveying my intent clearly enough.

Ah! The salmon in the stream is something different altogether. It seems that as you went up one level of abstraction, you left something essential out of the poem. This is a common hazard in haiku: because if the brevity, we can sometimes leave out some essential aspect of what we are trying to convey. We have the whole picture in our minds, but unless we share enough of the picture with the reader, we can leave them puzzled, as I was when I read the first version. This is much better! Now I get it!

[Lee Gurga]

Originally posted by Stephen Collington:
Hi Lee,

Thanks for joining us! I hope you're having fun.

Anyway, are you thinking of Tsubouchi Toshinori perhaps? (Pronunciation note for everyone, Ts, like the end of "its," Tsoo-boh-oo-chee, four syllables; last name first in Japanese.) Natsuishi Ban'ya has a translation of one of his more famous pieces in an online essay:

sakura chiru / anata mo kaba ni / narinasai

Cherry blossoms are falling--
you also must become
a hippopotamus

Actually, I'm not sure about Ban'ya's "must become" here; the Japanese "narinasai" is a medium-level polite way of saying "please become" (or "please turn into"). It's the sort of expression a Japanese woman might use to her husband--especially with "anata" for "you." (The Japanese use different words for "you" depending on whom they're addressing.) So I'd almost prefer something like

cherry blossoms falling --
honey, you too, hurry up
and become a hippo

Fun, ideed! Yes, Tsubouchi is just who I am thinking about, but I am not at home, so I didn't have anyplace to check. Wonderful to hear your comments on the haiku, and what seems to me to be a vastly superior version of the poem. I think Ban'ya can be a steamroller at times. By the way, if anyone is going to be in Tokyo on Halloween, Ban'ya has organized a haiku festival for that weekend.

[Mary Meriam]

Thanks, Cally. Did you read Carmen Sterba's essay? There are some good haiku in there that make me think haiku are like little bundles of flavor, like a satsuma tangerine's sweet-sour soaking of your mouth (that's a line from an old poem).

full moon
mist from my whisper
on her silver earring

William Cullen, Jr, Frogpond, XXIX:1


Steve C. - animism - who knew! I was worried my turtle one needed a season. Now I see it's ok to have a keyword. I love these from the Ban'ya essay -

Cutting
the white leeks
like shafts of light

Momoko Kuroda (1938-)

Roy - I think your salmon running has reached haiku level. I like it. The old couple no longer coupling, but absorbing the energy of the coupling salmon for dinner.

[This message has been edited by Mary Meriam (edited October 15, 2008).]

[Cally Conan-Davies]

Yes, Mary. I love the examples in Sterba's essay, especially these two:

sunlit jar
the beekeeper's gift
on the doorstep

Carmen Sterba, The Heron's Nest, III:6

after love
the sweet burst
of cherry tomato

G. Claire Gallagher, How Fast the Ground Moves, 2001

One of life's great experiences is biting a cherry tomato - I've always felt the sun must taste like that! I do agree with you. From what I'm reading and realising and experiencing, my favourite haiku leave a taste in my mouth. Flavour, essence.

And Roy, I agree - the salmon is very tasty now!

Cally

editing in: Steve - thanks for the Ban'ya essay. Fine examples of the 'break' and 'leap'.


[This message has been edited by Cally Conan-Davies (edited October 15, 2008).]

[Henrietta kelly]

Good morning Lee. Mary and world.
A very productive night it seems.
Mary your summary of lee’s lesson is worth stealing for notes, I will do just that. ;D

Lee about the Haibum; If I understand you are saying the prose and the haiku are there to make allowances as breathing space on the page, a way of taking a rest in the experience, yet keeping the reader attention moving through the lines. A bit like reading two books at once.
And that content of both must be dissimilar. Hmm! So it can never be a single sitting in writing, the mind would lose the flow- but it would turn into an opportunity to combine works that need a spark.

Is my understanding in this correct?

I’ll not overwhelm you with my attempts, but here are three -- I want to bring Australiana to the forefront in mine so images might not come though-- ~~ henie



Odd kangaroo walk
looks into the summer side
of big red centre

Salmon Gums so pink
leaves reflecting noon light lifts
every dark mood passing

In the dawn time world
A new frog leaps to land flat
footed in mystery


[This message has been edited by Henrietta kelly (edited October 15, 2008).]

[Donna English]

Welcome back, Lee! I'd be thrilled for you to take a look at my attempts below. Thanks so much for the time and effort you're putting into this!

Donna


the goslings swim
pollen coats the farm pond
my baby kicks

A small mound of dirt
collar on a Lego cross
dandelion bouquet

moonless summer night
under the yellow porch light
a toad licks its lips

brown leaf hulas down
onto the snow covered steps
at Aloha Travel

Monarch butterflies
sip water from a boot print
on a southbound trail

frosted pasture
guernsey cows milking
the morning sun

scratchy laughter outside
starlings blacken the pine trees
the cat wants in-- now