One of the great lyrical pleasures of the Internet is the unique Mann Library Daily Haiku site. Generally the site features the work of one particular haiku poet for an entire month, giving the reader an opportunity to settle in and get familiar with that poet's work. It is a great site to either visit daily or go to and, using the back button, take a good long dip into some high quality haiku. Here's a description from the site's "About" page:
For over ten years, Tom Clausen posted a daily haiku in the elevator of the old Mann building. He continues to post them online from the Mann Library home page. The poets featured are by invitation only and the poems are almost entirely previously published original works of an extended haiku community that includes many of his friends. This site is an effort to share these works with those of you visiting us on our Web site. Haiku and related brief poetic forms are often very accessible, portable in mind and spirit and at best a knowing touch of what is poetically intuitive in our lives. We hope that you enjoy these expressions as much as we do.
Note by Tom Clausen about haiku: “Haiku has consistently appealed to me as a means of centering, focusing, sharing, and responding to a life and world bent on excess. As the layers of my own life have accumulated, I’ve often felt overwhelmed by both personal changes and the mass of news, information, and survival requirements that come with being human today. Haiku are for me a way of honoring and celebrating simple yet profound relationships that awaken in us, with a gentle and silent inner touch, a spiritual relevance that adds meaning to our lives.”
I thought I'd note this site right now as, for the month of November, Lilliput friend Merrill Gonzales, a fine haiku poet, is being featured. Here are 3 poems from Merrill to tempt you over to the site to see her fine work and get familiar with a great haiku resource:
stone wall-
between two rocks
a bleeding heart
throbbing cicadas
the same rhythm
as my pulse
first heartbreak
picking pine needles
from woolen gloves
Merrill Gonzalez
----------------------------------------------------
evening cicada--
a last loud song
to autumn
Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue
best,
Don
Send a single haiku for the Wednesday Haiku feature. Here's how.
Go to the LitRock web site for a list of all 127 songs
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10 comments:
Thanks for pointing out the site. I'll check it out. Love that cicada pic at the top too.
The haiku of Merrill Gonzales is so highly original and lives in many layers, to any reader's delight. In almost every haiku of the many by her that I have read, there is a wholeness, a complete life, caught in the moment and refracted in several directions – philosophical, emotional, perceptual, intellectual, eco-logical – gestalt gems almost always centered from wonder. So happy to find this celebration of her here and featured at the Mann Library's Daily Haiku. Thank you!
Yes, Charles, the Mann Library site is something to visit again and again and the cicada pic mesmerizes me.
Donna, so very well said. Such a true all around pleasure to read Merrill's work.
I am simply astonished to find my words honored here... so much of my life and the lives I've tried to hold in those words that spring from some place ... some silence of not knowing. In gratitude, Merrill
"some silence of not knowing" ... a quotation, M., that might be used to build a definition of haiku.
Wonder full work .... Don.
I begin my day with the Mann Library site, gift after gift . . .
Merrill's work is wonderful!!
So very true, Pat ...
Love that Mann Library site, I had their mobile app on my phone for a while. Those are some nice poems, especially the "first heartbreak" one.
Yes, Greg, I especially like the fact that Mann Library allows the poet 30 days worth of poems to stretch out, giving the reader the opportunity to settle in and see what she is about.
Don
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