Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Wednesday Haiku, #23: Cherie Hunter Day





Wednesday Haiku, Week #23




late winter
again in my dreams
the playground bully
Cherie Hunter Day










it's the horseflies'
playground...
chrysanthemum
Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue





 
Yatsushi kikujidō by Suzuki Harunobu










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 107 songs

 

Sunday, June 26, 2011

Me and Jerome: Issa's Sunday Service, #107

Jerry



For this week's Sunday Service selection there is a little imaginative ditty by Sarah Slean about a sort of intimate meet and greet with an infamous reclusive celebrity, now deceased.  His last published story, "Hapworth 16, 1924," has never appeared in book form and, it would seem, the New Yorker is utilizing its notoriety to solicit subscriptions, since its only publication was in its pages back in June of 1965.

Of course, it may be found on the net with a minimum effort, if a more than minimum amount of illegality.  So it goes, as some other famous dead guy said.

So who is this Sarah Slean?  Well, a major independent Canadian artist with more than a little Tori Amos influence.  This particular tune was recorded for her debut EP Universe at the extremely young age of 19.

To reach into even more, for me, unfamiliar territory, the following is a YouTube video entitled "J. D. Salinger," scored to a song entitled "Mad World," a cover of a Tears for Fears song here performed by Gary Jules.    There are lots of things in this world that I don't understand and that's a good thing.  There is something very moving, almost tender, about the juxtaposition of song and image here. Check it out:



And, because I would never dream of disappointing 80s aficionados, here is the original "Mad World:"






Finally, of course, someone has done the Hitler Finds Out Salinger is Dead "Downfall" meme thingamabob. You have to turn on the cc captions in the lower right corner for the English "translation" and they do go by a bit fast.  The Salinger haiku does get a nod and so, sacrilegious, offensive, or just plain juvenile, it's in for a penny, in for a pound.

I'm in.


The little girl on the plane
Who turned her doll’s head around
To look at me.
J. D. Salinger



----------


This week's feature poem shows how a brief work can perfectly capture a moment - when I use the word sensual to describe it, it is no exaggeration.  Originally it appeared in #85 of Lilliput Review back in 1997.  As far as I can ascertain, it's the first poem from that issue I've featured and I thought I'd covered each issue at least once.



Cutting
   My father leans close
   to my ear, a root beer
   barrel rattling over
   back teeth, he fumbles
   against the rust clasp
   on a blue plastic case,
   scissors and black combs
   within clear pockets
Mark Forrester










giving her dolls
a good talking-to...
the child

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 107 songs

Friday, June 24, 2011

Gerald Stern Reading

 Jack Gilbert & Gerald Stern 

For this Friday, here is a full-length reading by Gerald Stern at Fishouse. It takes a bit to get started with a long intro and Stern taking some time to get to the mike (with many a nearly off-mike comment on the way), but it's worth the wait.




I also found part 1 of the Drexel Interview with Stern (which has been viewed by 3 people and I think I was 2 of them), with part 2 seemingly lost in the ether or just never posted, either at YouTube or on the Drexel page.  Though it is only the first half, it is a solid, satisfying first half (about 15 minutes), which I highly recommend.







I've just begun reading the new Kabir translations by Arvind Krishna Mehrotra.  Here is one of the poems from that collection which originally appeared in the New York Review of Books, who is also the publisher. I hope to report back on this collection sometime soon.


Except That It Robs You of Who You Are

   Except that it robs you of who you are,
   What can you say about speech?
   Inconceivable to live without
   And impossible to live with,
   Speech diminishes you.
   Speak with a wise man, there’ll be
   Much to learn; speak with a fool,
   All you get is prattle.
   Strike a half-empty pot, and it’ll make
   A loud sound; strike one that is full,
   Says Kabir, and hear the silence.
Kabir, translated from the Hindi                               
by Arvind Krishna Mehrotra







"moon" and "blossoms"
empty babble
of a floating world
Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue



--------------------------------------------


Finally, some early returns from around the web on Past All Traps which I thought might be of interest:



the outlaw poetry network
Poems as Gifts: The Improvised Life
Pittsburgh City Paper
Razored Zen





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 106 songs

Thursday, June 23, 2011

Japan Nuclear Disaster Update: the Michio Kaku CNN Interview

Followup from our friend, Scott Watson, from Sendai, Japan, on the ongoing nuclear disaster in Japan, in the form of a link to a CNN interview with famed nuclear physicist, Michio Kaku.  Not much more needs to be said if you truly absorb the facts as laid out here.







timing his death
extremely well...
the Buddha
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 106 songs

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Wednesday Haiku, Week 22: Gary Hotham





 Wednesday Haiku, Week #22


days after reaching 60
           ---
  no volume control
      on the wind
     Gary Hotham










is the wind
on summer vacation?
grassy field
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 106 songs

Sunday, June 19, 2011

I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor: Issa's Sunday Service, #106





This is a day for rocking out, if delayed by a week.  Here's the 2nd appearance of the pop/rock band with as many hooks per album as your average fly fisherwoman has in her tackle box: the Arctic Monkeys.  At first listening, it would seem there is an allusion to Orwell's "1984" but, upon closer inspection, this seems spurious - I'm not remembering too many robots in that lit classic, especially dancing to electro-pop.  However, as I was about to abandon all hope, up popped the line "Oh, there ain't no love, no Montagues or Capulets" ... and, though this may seem a bit like "Newsflash: Generalissimo Francisco Franco, Still Dead," it'll do.

So, what about these robots and electro-pop and dance floors?  Well, maybe it's not a  lit allusion in the Arctic Monkey's song,  but perhaps pop citing pop:




---------------------------------


This week's poems come from Lilliput Review, #87, April 1997.  They came back to back on pages 5 and 6 of this issue and have an interesting kinship.  Enjoy.





On Padre Island
   Alone on the beach
   watching the waves dissolve your name
   remembering

   Single gull dives
   impressing on the sand grains
   a fleeting shadow
   Barbara Tieken






Dad
   He's the one told me
   "Never write your name
   in the sand; the sea
   will come and take it away
   and what would we call you
   after that
   B. Kim Meyer







my dead mother--
every time I see the ocean
every time..
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 107 songs

Saturday, June 18, 2011

Finding The Way of Not The Way

Click on image to see search.



This is a found poem, sent along by a colleague after doing a catalog search for a book on chess.  During the search, by dropping off the "w" in "winning" and searching "inning" along with the rest of the title, this is the lovely, lyrical result:



INNING is not in any titles.
Therefore "INNING" is discarded.
CHESS is not in any titles.
Therefore "CHESS" is discarded.
THE is not in any titles.
Therefore "THE" is discarded.
EASY is not in any titles.
Therefore "EASY" is discarded.
WAY is not in any titles.
Therefore "WAY" is discarded.




With Lao Tzu, one is tempted to title this "The Way" (that is not the Way) ...

Thanks to Amy, who also provided this wonderful poetic epigraph for Past All Traps:





jesus christ, wentworth,
your lame goddam poetry
annoys me like fuck.
 Amy









the lake is slowly
lost in mist...
evening falls
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 106 songs

Friday, June 17, 2011

The BBC and Richard Brautigan's All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace


There is a new promising BBC series that takes its name from Richard Brautigan's famous poem: "All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace."   As the tagline for the series goes, it is a "series of films about how humans have been colonised by the machines they have built. Although we don't realise it, the way we see everything in the world today is through the eyes of the computers."  Here is the amazing Brautigan poem, first published in 1967, followed by an interesting trailer for the new series.

All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace

   I'd like to think (and
   the sooner the better!)
   of a cybernetic meadow
   where mammals and computers
   live together in mutually
   programming harmony
   like pure water
   touching clear sky.

   I like to think
   (right now, please!)
   of a cybernetic forest
   filled with pines and electronics
   where deer stroll peacefully
   past computers
   as if they were flowers
   with spinning blossoms.

   I like to think
   (it has to be!)
   of a cybernetic ecology
   where we are free of our labors
   and joined back to nature,
   returned to our mammal brothers and sisters,
   and all watched over
   by machines of loving grace.
                    Richard Brautigan








-----------------------

I'm still busy recovering literally and psychologically from last week's reading and book launch for Past All Traps.  While I catch up, here are two haiku by Allen Ginsberg from "Four Haiku," which originally appeared in his Journals: Early Fifties Early Sixties:



I didn't know the names
of the flowers—now
my garden is gone.









Looking over my shoulder
my behind is covered
with cherry blossoms.




-----------------------------------



This week's feature poem comes from Lilliput Review #160, November 2007.  I myself walk through a city landscape every day, see exactly what is described in this poem everyday, and I didn't write this poem.

I'm so very glad Shawn Bowman did.




two wings per pigeon
and this is where they gather
on a wire
in the city
Ah, what do I know
Shawn Bowman









at my gate
the artless pigeon too
sings "It's spring!"
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 106 songs

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Wednesday Haiku # 21: Alan Summers

Photo by Michael Ely




Wednesday Haiku, Week #21






down the sidewalk
an old vagrant
daisies in his mouth

Alan Summers
reprinted from Hobo (June 1999)









cold winter sky--
where will this wandering beggar
grow old?
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 105 songs

Sunday, June 12, 2011

A Pause and a Poem


The run up to last night's Book Launch and Reading for the publication of Past All Traps has sucked all the time and energy out of the room, so I'm going to take a week off from the "Sunday Service," which will  resume a week from today.

In the meantime, in the spirit of a new book and good times, a poem from Past All Traps:




plenty of room
left in the thimble
full of knowing








thrashing fish
knowing they're in a bucket
and not knowing
Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue








Past All Traps is now available through the Paypal button at the top right of this page ($8, postpaid) or via amazon for $10, plus $3.99 postage. 

And, now, I'm officially done with the shilling.




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 105 songs

Friday, June 10, 2011

Experience Chan: Experience Zen - Master Hsu Yun (Xu Yun)


One of my favorite spots on the net to drop by is Don Stabler's "Bamboo and Plum Blossom" blog.  Don recently posted three excellent stanzas of a poem by Master Hsu Yun one might call "Experience Chan."   Chan being referred to is the Chinese word for the discipline that is known in Japanese, and now the West, as Zen.

The three posted stanzas so intrigued me, that I went off in search info on Hsu Yun (Xu Yun), only to discover there were another 9 more stanzas


1. Experience Chan! It’s not mysterious.
As I see it, it boils down to cause and effect.
Outside the mind there is no Dharma
So how can anybody speak of a heaven beyond?

2. Experience Chan! It’s not a field of learning.
Learning adds things that can be researched and discussed.
The feel of impressions can’t be communicated.
Enlightenment is the only medium of transmission.

3. Experience Chan! It’s not a lot of questions.
Too many questions is the Chan disease.
The best way is just to observe the noise of the world.
The answer to your questions?  Ask your own heart.

4. Experience Chan! It’s not the teachings of disciples.
Such speakers are guests from outside the gate.
The Chan which you are hankering to speak about
Only talks about turtles turning into fish.

5. Experience Chan! It can’t be described.
When you describe it you miss the point.
When you discover that your proofs are without substance
You’ll realize that words are nothing but dust.

6. Experience Chan! It’s experiencing your own nature!
Going with the flow everywhere and always.
When you don’t fake it and waste time trying to rub and polish it,
Your Original Self will always shine through brighter than bright.

7. Experience Chan! It’s like harvesting treasures.
But donate them to others.You won’t need them.
Suddenly everything will appear before you,
Altogether complete and altogether done.

8. Experience Chan! Become a follower who when accepted
Learns how to give up his life and his death.
Grasping this carefully he comes to see clearly.
And then he laughs till he topples the Cold Mountain ascetics.

9. Experience Chan! It’ll require great skepticism;
But great skepticism blocks those detours on the road.
Jump off the lofty peaks of mystery.
Turn your heaven and earth inside out.

10. Experience Chan! Ignore that superstitious nonsense
That makes some claim that they’ve attained Chan.
Foolish beliefs are those of the not-yet-awakened.
And they’re the ones who most need the experience of Chan!

11. Experience Chan! There’s neither distance nor intimacy.
Observation is like a family treasure.
Whether with eyes, ears, body, nose, or tongue -
It’s hard to say which is the most amazing to use.

12. Experience Chan! There’s no class distinction.
The one who bows and the one who is bowed to are a Buddha unit.
The yoke and its lash are tied to each other.
Isn’t this our first principle… the one we should most observe?
Master Hsu Yun

If you head on over to "Bamboo and Plum Blossom" and discover you like Don's approach, don't hesitate to check out he's other fine blog "peace pulse path and prevail," an eclectic collection of brief incisive quotations.


-----------------------------


This week's feature poem comes from Lilliput Review, #159.  As always, John Martone nails it perfectly.  Enjoy.


  gold now
  jack
  in his

  pulpit's
  done
  preaching
John Martone







the preacher's
hand gestures too...
summer trees
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 105 songs

Thursday, June 9, 2011

Past All Traps: Pittsburgh City Paper and The Improvised Life

Photograph by Heather Mull


In anticipation of Saturday's Book Launch at ModernFormations Gallery for my poetry collection, Past All Traps, Justin Hopper has done a very generous profile (with 4 poems), which you can find here, in which he very much "got it."

In addition, two poems from the collection are featured on The Improvised Life: A Guide to the Daily Possible (poems as gifts: don wentworth’s ‘past all traps’).  Thanks very much to Sally Schneider, proprietor of The Improvised Life, and Maureen Rolla for passing the book along to her.

I'm looking forward to Saturday's reading, with Renée Alberts, Nikki Allen, Kris Collins, Jerome Crooks, and Angele Ellis, which should be a gas.  More info on the reading may be found on Facebook. Past All Traps may be purchased at the blog (top of the right hand sidebar via Paypal, otherwise known as the top right side of this very page, or from amazon). 



sitting straight   —   Crow knows.
                                from Past All Traps








the ants rush
to make a road...
Buddha's birthday flowers

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 105 songs

Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Wednesday Haiku, #20: Ed Markowski's "E-8"






Wednesday Haiku, Week #20






                            E-8
on the outfield's emerald surface
                    one dandelion
                      Ed Markowski


                 







the dandelion gives
a nod...
my new summer robe
Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue




 Photo by Fastily






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 105 songs

Sunday, June 5, 2011

Enivrez-vous (Be Drunk): Issa's Sunday Service, #105

Baudelaire by Charles Nadar

Turn up the volume ...


Back at the job that pays the rent, I've been working on Charles Baudelaire for a monthly discussion group, 3 Poems By.  I've learned a lesson this month, which I should have realized when we did Whitman a couple of months back: a love of the poet doesn't make it any easier to prepare a session on their work, especially when condensed into 3 or 4 "representative" poems.

The challenge, however, always brings new, if hard won, insights, and so I'm grateful that I can be learning big things while working.  Baudelaire has been the hardest  lesson of all, not the least of reasons being that his works are in translation.  The decision to choose among various versions has been agonizing.

But, enough with the whining! While working I stumbled upon something I hadn't run across before. A song by the group Stereolab entitled "Enivrez-vous."

The song is a straightforward, drone-ish version of Baudelaire's famed prose poem of the same same name, which simply translates "Get Drunk (or "Be Drunk"). Here's the original, along with translation:
Il faut tre toujours ivre. Tout est l : c'est l'unique question. Pour ne pas sentir l'horrible fardeau du Temps qui brise vos paules et vous penche vers la terre, il faut vous enivrer sans trve. Mais de quoi ? De vin, de posie ou de vertu, votre guise.
Mais enivrez-vous.
Et si quelquefois, sur les marches d'un palais, sur l'herbe verte d'un foss, dans la solitude morne de votre chambre, vous vous rveillez, l'ivresse dj diminue ou disparue, demandez au vent, la vague, l'toile, l'oiseau, l'horloge, tout ce qui fuit, tout ce qui gmit, tout ce qui roule, tout ce qui chante, tout ce qui parle, demandez quelle heure il est ; et le vent, la vague, l'toile, l'oiseau, l'horloge, vous rpondront: "Il est l'heure de s'enivrer ! Pour n'tre pas les esclaves martyriss du Temps, enivrez-vous; enivrez-vous sans cesse ! De vin, de posie ou de vertu, votre guise."
Translation:
One should always be drunk. That's all that matters: that's our one imperative need. So as not to feel Time's horrible burden that breaks your shoulders and bows you down, you must get drunk without ceasing. But what with? With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you choose.

But get drunk.

And if, at some time, on the steps of a palace, in the green grass of a ditch, in the bleak solitude of your room, you are waking up when drunkenness has already abated, ask the wind, the wave, a star, the clock, all that which flees, all that which groans, all that which rolls, all that which sings, all that which speaks, ask them what time it is; and the wind, the wave, the star, the bird, the clock will reply: "It is time to get drunk! So that you may not be the martyred slaves of Time, get drunk, get drunk, and never pause for rest! With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you choose!"

Baudelaire was one of the first innovators in the prose poem form and this, though it seems rather obvious, is a good example of that form.  It has always been a popular poem of Baudelaire's, hence the following recitation by Dustin Hoffman to Jack Nicholson, with tongue firmly planted in cheek.





---------------------


Last week, a typo slipped into the featured poem at a critical juncture, for which I apologize.  It's been corrected in the original post, but here it is again for those in an anti-click through mood:


For Cavafy

   The poems are sad and short:
   love half-remembered,
   history--beautiful, closed and Greek.
   But what I like best
   is the blank three-quarters page,
   white as a statue's marble eyes- -

   a space to write or cry.
   Bruce Williams




---------------------


This week's feature poem comes from Lilliput Review, #89, originally published in 1997.  A time or two I've performed this poem in Lilliput readings and it goes over well.  Sadly, nearly everywhere on this tiny little blue ball its message remains true.


Lost in the Translation
   I'm impotent today she
   said, closed the book,
   capped her pen. You can't
   be impotent or potent, they
   laughed.  You have no penis.
   She listened, and for a long
   time, she believed them.
   Celeste Bowman








to the old woman
doing laundry, the evening
willow bows
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 105 songs

Friday, June 3, 2011

The American Haibun by Donna Fleischer

Donna Fleischer

I've spent a lot of time avoiding haibun.  That's right, I have my reasons.  In order to counter this particular bias, I am going to reprint a short article on American haibun by Donna Fleischer, followed by an example of one of Donna's own.

Donna's opinions are, of course, her own, but they wouldn't be here if I didn't have the greatest respect for them.


--------------------------------


The American Haibun : Donna Fleischer (© 2008)

My ongoing work with haiku, begun in the nineties, led me to the
Japanese haibun, an unusual blend of prose and haiku, somewhat
autobiographical, and relatively new in the hands of American
writers.The first haibun are found in Matsuo Bashō’s (1644 –
1694) travel diaries in which he recorded his outer and inner
journeys on foot throughout 17th century Japan, of which, Oku
no Hosomichi, or Narrow Road to the Interior, is the best known.

To illustrate, I would like to borrow that famous frog from Bashō’s
haiku in a translation from the Japanese by R. H. Blyth:

The old pond:
A frog jumps in, —
The sound of the water.

Let’s say that hearing a frog jump into a pond evokes feeling, and
that the sound and feeling fold into one another as a gestalt, a
whole that is greater than the constituent feeling and sense that
came before it, and now to be experienced as revelatory — a
generalized state of heightened awareness, or bliss.

In a swerve to postmodernism, I invoke the French Surrealist
writer and artist, André Breton (1896 – 1966), who spoke of the
point sublime, a writing site where unlike things meet one another,
create instantaneous juxtapositions, which best of all engender
some sort of pleasure, only then to careen out of focus and logic.
The haibun form is just such a site.

A haibun typically could begin with one or several poetically
charged prose paragraphs that make palpable, once more, the
interplay of something perceived and something felt. This
description in turn deepens into yet a second form, the haiku,
that astonishes with a direct, vivid, and almost artless experience
of the natural and imaginative realms from which it arises. The
haiku is a synergistic leap from the poetic prose environment
which sets it up and to which it indirectly relates.

In form and content the composition of a haiku is a practice in
restraint. One wants to notice the ordinary in life, and
accordingly, to minimize the use of literary devices such as
rhyme or metaphor for the sake of creating an implicit poetic
experience of mystery and transience. The more or less eleven
English syllables or seventeen Japanese onji — the duration of
a breath — allow for the silences, too. A season word or
suggestion involves the senses and so anchors one in the
concrete. Eventually images enlivened by feeling attain a depth
of experience and insight. A frog jumps into the water, a haiku
bubbles up.

further reading

Find scholarly work on the hokku, the forerunner of haiku, online at http://hokku.wordpress.com/ .

English translations of Japanese haibun include:
Narrow Road to the Interior, Matsuo Bashō (1689) — Each of the translations by Cid Corman and Sam Hamill, while quite different from one another, are excellent.

English language haibun:

   bottle rockets, a journal collection of short verse
   word pond at http://donnafleischer.wordpress.com/
   Frogpond, International Journal of the Haiku Society of America
   Journey to the Interior, Bruce Ross, editor
   Modern Haiku, An Independent Journal of Haiku and Haiku
        Studies
   Red Moon Press, annual contemporary haibun
        anthologies, Jim Kacian, general editor
   Contemporary Haibun Online, Jim Kacian, Bruce Ross, Ken
        Jones, editors
   endless small waves, haibun by Bruce Ross, (Ontario Canada:
        HMS Press, 2008)
   indra’s net, haibun by Donna Fleischer, (Wethersfield, CT: bottle
        rockets press, 2003)


--------------------------------


On Usedom

We find our way, Betty, and I, to her beloved friends’ doorstep in
Neeberg, a German village of 30 on the Baltic Sea island of
Usedom. Once the summer home to Russian czars, German
kaisers. Today Ruth and Werner, Tabea, ten, and four-year-old
rambunctious Joram greet us in English and soccer scores. My
first morning after sharing chocolate muesli I wander far afield
in poppies with the drowned poet Paul Celan, writing this in my
head. Time in waves; wild blackberry paths to the sea; East
Frisian black tea with brown rum and a sugar cube; fish at night,
netted each morning from the Baltic near our door by the village
fisherman (also the mayor, real estate agent, emergency medic,
and reporter), born, grown up, and still in his place

pulling the dark net
to his wee boat at dawn
September moon slips through


Treks on foot skirting deep, loamy furrows and rootstocks,
gleeful, me and Moritz (elegant, like his neuroscience theories),
from one end of town to another with far-ranging conversation
and pockets of silence. Getting to know an other — hey! there’s
Tom, the mayor’s sea-wizened black-and-white cat, looking to
us and out at sea. I recite Bob Arnold’s poem SURE to him. He
seems to relate


The cat hides away all
Day asleep and thinks nothing
Of coming out and wanting a kiss


Convergences for dinner, stories, laughter; new friends, Moritz,
of course, and Bettina, a psychoanalyst; more poetry, running out
of wine, fireplace ablaze, and politics of an unforgettable campaign
year, 2008, these Germans reassured in Barack Obama, in
America

Flying home. Over Germany, England, Ireland, the Atlantic. The
world and our lives with it so vast and collapsible.

---- Donna Fleischer


--------------------------------


This week's featured poem comes from Lilliput Review #157 (did I say #157?) by W. T. Ranney ( .   .   . ), a virtually unheralded small press poet from Ithaca who has been a long time favorite of mine.  Try this one on for size and see what you think:




Parked cars creak in the heat.  Old men drunks
astumble with paper bags.  O America you're on
strike!  Telephone poles go on for blocks.  AT&T
and the Associated Press and the FBI and me.
Nice trees flutter in the breeze.  It's a lazy
hazy day don't ya know.  Bugs zoom around and my
heart is a butterfly in love.  The sun moves
slowly across the sky concealed above the white
clouds.  Now the trees crowd round the
apartment!  The melancholy of the day reflects
on the white walls.  O lotus on the pond above
the water!  in the world yet not really of it!
                           W. T. Ranney







in my sake cup
down the hatch!
the Milky Way
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 104 songs

Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Wednesday Haiku, #19: Susan Diridoni

 Photo by Mary Vogt



Wednesday Haiku, Week #19







step back into the fragrance our histories mingling
                              Susan Diridoni









in the cloudburst
chin up, back straight...
chrysanthemum
Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue




from the David Murray collection, Library of Congress






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 104 songs