Lynne Rees & Daryl Nielsen: Wednesday Haiku, #186

Photo by sunchild57 via foter

country churchyard
the grass no greener
on the other side
of the wall

Lynne Rees

 

Photo by Priyambada Nath via foter

dawn comes again
in the ten thousand byways
spring rain

Daryl Nielsen

Photo by Alden Jewell via foter

at dawn
deep in the rain
a lark is singing

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

PS  Click to learn how to contribute to Wednesday Haiku

Picture for a Sunday Afternoon: Ginsberg, McCartney, Glass

Photo by Adam Jones
 

A little reminder, from friend Rita Cummings, that the faces change, but the message is the same ... 

~~~~~~~~~~~

Photo by Jason A. Samfield

to enlightened eyes
Buddha's bones?
dewdrops in the grass

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,

Don

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Jeffrey Woodward: Evening in the Plaza - Small Press Friday

Haibun and I have had a rocky relationship over the years. I expect a certain something from the form and, it would seem, I'm very particular about that certain something. 

Let's go right to the heart of the matter: if the haiku doesn't work on its own, I'm out of there. 

Is this fair? Am I upholding my end of the relationship, am I demanding too much of a form that isn't simply haiku but haibun, the alchemical amalgam of prose and verse?

I suppose I'm not being fair but I've set a standard and I'm sticking with it. 

I'm happy to report that so is the poet Jeffrey Woodward, in his fine new collection, Evening in the Plaza: Haibun & Haiku, published by Tournesol Books of Detroit, MI. 

Evening is comprised of 40 titled haibun an 48 haiku, the later divided into 4 separate sections. Some of the haibun are outstanding, most notably "A Small Funeral," "Questions for the Flowers," "Family Album," "The Sweet Wild Grass," "Imago," and "Finis Terrae." There are many more that grabbed me, but these are the ones that had that special mix of great execution and personal (to me) appeal.

I'm sure there are others that will grab other readers.

A Small Funeral

Enough:   a    condolence   that  affords no
comfort, a eulogy too feeble to enliven the
perfect composure of its subject, a sermon
that  promises peace where peace will  not
serve ...

Against fair hopes  and  expectations,  to settle
now, as one must, for the recognized rites and
to commit this being,  so precious, to a lasting
rest, the homily and liturgy an obligation:

a book of wisdom
is set before the world
and autumn deepens

The  23rd  Psalm  recited  as,  also,  the  "Our
Father," the congregation files out and forms
a corridor as  if  to wait  not  upon this  final 
parting  but upon  the  arrival  of  a  dignitary.

a tiny coffin
ventures out like a whisper
into the bright day

 

Not far behind, there on the steps before the
great door of the church:

late autumn-
about the parish priest
the wind is black

The emotion, the power of this piece is almost beyond words. Where there is "a condolence / that affords not comfort" and a promised "peace where peace will not / serve ...," what might be said?

And then the poet says it.

Here, in words that follow the lamentation of neither comfort nor peace, comes just what is missing: a true eulogy, a sermon on loss, on pain and on sorrow. As the poem unfolds, "this being, so precious" begins to realize a final rest; the book of wisdom open, but it is autumn that keens, it is autumn that deepens. 

Now the being, the lost one, is a dignitary in the emotion of the attendees, played out in a ritual service after the formal one. The 23rd Psalm and Our Father echo, but it is the coffin itself that actually speaks, whispering out into the bright day the true message.

All ends with a perfect haiku - the wind, normally invisible, is manifest, and it is, yes, black.

What might be thought of as a companion haibun follows:

 ~~~~~

The Sweet Wild Grass

    That's    where    we   stood,     that's    where
    beforehand we  knew we'd end  up, a  gang of
    boys, on a hot midsummer day, loitering about
    a low retainer wall that marked an entrance to
    a   village   cemetery—someone    scuffling   his
    tennis  shoes in the  gravel, someone   chewing
    on a blade  of sweet  wild grass  plucked  from 
    the  broad  field  across   the  road,   someone
    retelling  an  exaggerated  tale that   an   uncle 
    had told

     Then the funeral party came, everybody in 
    black, everybody wrinkled and dry like pale 
    dust,   everybody  shuffling  along  in  dead
    silence  except  for the muffled sobbing  of 
    somebody somewhere 

    A rote recitation
    of the 23rd Psalm 
    and cicadas 

    Then a man in black suit and tie, a lean man
    with  a shock of white  hair, approached us 
    from that party, approached with a slow but
    deliberate gait, and  he drew  near and drew 
    with him the hush of his black flock 

    But  before he  reached  that  wall, before he
    might come  so close as  to  brush us with his
    breath or tell us whatever it was he would tell, 
    our gang  jumped  up  and   scurried  over  the 
    road,  each  boy   then  looking  back  over  a
    shoulder
 

    going quietly
    into the deep
    grass of summer

 ~~~~~

 
This poem at once seems almost a companion piece to the earlier poem, yet, really, there is no telling the chronology and even if they are related. Still, I had a Rashomon feeling while reading it, as if I was seeing the same event from a different perspective. 

If possible, this piece is even more powerful than the previous. Here there is a lost innocence, not simply of the deceased, if something like this might ever be described as simple, but of the young observers.

Perhaps this was their companion - after the first death, as Dylan Thomas wrote - in any case, the power of the event is palpable. In its specificity, the poem almost crosses over into the domain of short story.

But the same might be said of many a haiku, which is the beauty of condensation. 

Speaking of haiku, there are a number of very fine one's here:

with every blackbird,
the sun, too, settles deeper
into the cold trees

There are many superior qualities to this poem, not the least of which is its literalness: the settling of the sun, in the form of the birds (or reflected on those forms), into the trees as it sets on the horizon.

In addition to literalness, there is the poem's allusiveness - one can't help but think of Basho's famed poem of autumn, tree, and crow: 

 

on a bare branch
a crow has settled
autumn dusk

Woodward's poem is no mere pastiche or homage: it inhabits the same universe, the same world, both again literally and also figuratively. 

a nest -
nothing more,
nothing less

Here is an object for contemplation, akin in some ways to the famed half a glass of water. The reader at first seems to have little to work with, but this is not so.

Not at all. 

the cobblestone
of the city's old quarter
and red leaves

This is a poem of layer upon layer upon layer. It is a poem of civilization, a poem of nature and, for man, above all, a poem of time. 

Ultimately, for me, it is a poem of stunning beauty, stumbled upon in an ancient square, in a forgotten city ... in an exciting new book.

A book I recommend for lovers of haibun, haiku, and poetry itself. 

~~~~~ 

Photo by Denis Collette

onlookers
at a funeral...
the autumn wind

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,

Don

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Cricket Songs: Japanese Haiku

Harry Behn, along with Peter Beilenson, published a series of Haiku Harvest books for Peter Pauper Press which served as an introduction to haiku for many people back in the 60s and 70s. 
The book at hand, Cricket Songs, however, was solely translated by Behn and published by the larger firm of Harcourt, Brace, and World. The volume exhibits an admirable lyrical quality, at least admirable for this reader, and, when it errs, errs on the side of image. It is delightfully, profusely illustrated with art "Sesshu and other Japanese masters."  Here are two pages, with a couple of poems:

Click pic to expand (& read poems)

The poems, in the style of the times, are predominately translated into a 5-7-5 format, and Behn shows how this can be done to advantage:

        A cloud shimmering
on the still pool ... deep below
        shadows, a fish stirs.

 Shurin

Though the line break between 2 and 3 might today be 'unfashionable,' it serves its own prosodic purpose.  The enjambment feels less imposed by form then intended by Behn. In either case, it works for me:

       Butterfly, these words
from my brush are not flowers,
       only their shadows.

 Soseki

At once a stunning image with an almost postmodern feel, Soseki's poem has a gorgeous resonance that may be seen in some of the finest haiku.

        My horse clip-clopping
over a field ... oh ho! I'm
        part of the picture!

Bashō

Speaking of postmodernisn, there you have it - or do you? Here is another by Bashō:

        The seed of all song
is the farmer's busy hum
        as he plants his rice.

The interconnectedness of all things is perfectly connected in this poem - a modern translation would probably drop the 'is' and 'his', not worrying about syllable count. But the meaning is clear and resonant either way. There is some complexity in this little poem - think about time as you read it, the moment and future time.

      Lightly a new moon
brushes a silver haiku
      on the tips of waves.

Kyoshi

This is a perfect meshing of the 5-7-5 form, imagery, and content. Is it classic haiku, or even haiku at all? Who knows? It is, however, wonder full.

       One man and one fly
buzzing along together
       in a sunny room . . .

Issa 

The translation of this classic Issa haiku has some problematic elements, which perhaps work in its favor. The enjambment of lines one and two, where the fly in line one is buzzing in line 2 causes the reader think of the man, too, as buzzing, and that causes some mischievous delight for me. Not intended, perhaps, but there you have it.

               Since my house burned down,
        I now own a better view
              of the rising moon

        Masahide

'Nuff said.

           Broken and broken
    again on the sea, the moon
          so easily mends

    Chosu

I love this little poem - there is something beyond pure image here that tolls a major chord. 

A delightful collection, all in all, though the selection above is but a dip in a very deep well. 


Harry Behn himself lived an eclectic life. Wikipedia gives a fair idea: he was a poet, a translator, a photographer, a screenwriter (collaborating with King Vidor and Howard Hughes) and, by virtue of a chance encounter that led him to live with the tribe, a member of the Blackfoot Indian community. His papers are collected at the University of Minnesota. His works, including his haiku translations, were thought of as being primarily for children. 

Yet, in a portrait of Behn by Peter Roop for Language Arts magazine back in 1985 (which is the very first link in this post, above), one word struck home that he read which Behn used to describe his own work: primitive.  Behn described his "business" of composing poetry and stories for children as primitive.

Roop goes to the heart of the matter in his portrait when he asks why this word:

The word primitive as Behn employed it does not mean a backward or unsophisticated approach to something. He used primitive to represent that special sense possessed by those who maintain a certain direct bond to the natural world.                 

   Language Arts, Vol. 62, No. 1, January 1985, pg. 93 

Roop goes on to illustrate this through Behn's own poetry and prose, never alluding to haiku. But one can see in this definition the essence of what the translator was after in his work with haiku: that direct bond to the natural world. Roop notes that, in addition to his becoming a member of the Blackfoot tribe, Behn also had 'extensive contact' Yavapais people of his home state of Arizona.

As a relatively early pioneer in the translation work of Japanese haiku into English, Harry Behn appears to have been uniquely qualified as the work above illustrates. The book itself, Cricket Songs, may be had for as little as two bits on amazon (of course there is the pesky $3.99 shipping charge), but you can find a nice hardcover copy at abebooks for under 5 bucks, so why not deal directly with an independent used bookseller? 

The book is well worth double that and more.

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

 Photo by galaxies and hurricanes

when will it become
a cricket's nest?
my white hair

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,

Don   

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Russell Libby: Rest in Peace

Portrait of Russell Libby by Robert Shetterly, from his Americans Who Tell The Truth collection.

This morning, it comes: a dull, heavy blow that Russell Libby has died. I'm having a hard time expressing the admiration I had for this man and poet, so I'll let his words stand in stead.

Just as the Inuit have many words for snow,
in some forgotten language
there is a word for the sound of the south wind
as it pushes across the tops of the ashes
and catches in the pine trees just beyond.

The poem comes from his wonderful chapbook, Moments. More from the book and on Russell may be found here.


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

mountain temple--
deep under snow
a bell

 Issa

 translated by David G. Lanoue 

best,
Don 

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Jack Gilbert: R.I.P.

Searching For Pittsburgh - Jack Gilbert

The fox pushes softly, blindly through me at night,
between the liver and the stomach. Comes to the heart
and hesitates. Considers and then goes around it.
Trying to escape the mildness of our violent world.
Goes deeper, searching for what remains of Pittsburgh
in me. The rusting mills sprawled gigantically
along three rivers. The authority of them.
The gritty alleys where we played every evening were
stained pink by the inferno always surging in the sky,
as though Christ and the Father were still fashioning the Earth.
Locomotives driving through the cold rain,
lordly and bestial in their strength. Massive water
flowing morning and night throughout a city
girded with ninety bridges. Sumptuous-shouldered,
sleek-thighed, obstinate and majestic, unquenchable.
All grip and flood, mighty sucking and deep-rooted grace.
A city of brick and tired wood. Ox and sovereign spirit.
Primitive Pittsburgh. Winter month after month telling
of death. The beauty forcing us as much as harshness.
Our spirits forged in that wilderness, our minds forged
by the heart. Making together a consequence of America.
The fox watched me build my Pittsburgh again and again.
In Paris afternoons on Buttes-Chaumont. On Greek islands
with their fields of stone. In beds with women, sometimes,
amid their gentleness. Now the fox will live in our ruined
house. My tomatoes grow ripe among weeds and the sound
of water. In this happy place my serious heart has made.



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

the master being dead
just ordinary...
cherry blossoms

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

 

 

best,
Don 

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On Death in Western Culture

The following is the current column from American Life in Poetry. I was moved enough by the poem to register in order to be allowed to reprint the column in its entirety. I thought it was something readers of this column would find meaningful.

I was struck while reading this that when Western writers confront death, their sensibility often shifts to an Eastern tone. Obviously, we all die. Somehow in the West, we compartmentalize life to such an extent that death goes over here. When reading the great Eastern writers and poets, death seems always to be present.

None of these reflections, though sparked by his poem, have anything to do with Stuart Kestenbaum per se. They are just the not-particularly-original, though hopefully somewhat pertinent, observations of someone who is currently steeped in Eastern poetry.


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


American Life in Poetry: Column 181

Stuart Kestenbaum, the author of this week's poem,

lost his brother Howard in the destruction of the twin towers of the

World Trade Center. We thought it appropriate to commemorate the

events of September 11, 2001, by sharing this poem. The poet is the

director of the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts on Deer Isle, Maine.

Prayer for the Dead

The light snow started late last night and continued

all night long while I slept and could hear it occasionally

enter my sleep, where I dreamed my brother

was alive again and possessing the beauty of youth, aware

that he would be leaving again shortly and that is the lesson

of the snow falling and of the seeds of death that are in everything

that is born: we are here for a moment

of a story that is longer than all of us and few of us

remember, the wind is blowing out of someplace

we don't know, and each moment contains rhythms

within rhythms, and if you discover some old piece

of your own writing, or an old photograph,

you may not remember that it was you and even if it was once you,

it's not you now, not this moment that the synapses fire

and your hands move to cover your face in a gesture

of grief and remembrance.

Stuart Kestenbaum

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation
(www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also
supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-
Lincoln. Poem copyright © 2007 by Stuart Kestenbaum. Reprinted
from "Prayers & Run-on Sentences," Deerbook Editions, 2007, by
permission of Stuart Kestenbaum. Introduction copyright © 2008
by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser,
served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the
Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited
manuscripts.


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

best,
Don

A Ferlinghetti of the Mind, Mr. Brautigan's Salmon Sonnet Extravaganza and Huff & Issa: The Road Movie

Cover by Wayne Hogan

This is the 50th anniversary of the publication of one of the books on the Near Perfect Books of Poetry list: A Coney Island of the Mind by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. This is one of the very first books of poetry I remember just pulling me in and, somehow, I just knew this was for me. Here, in celebration of the man and his body of work, both as poet and publisher, is a reading in the "Lunch Poems" series at the Morrison Library of the University of California, Berkeley, from 2005:





If you can hang in until the end, there is a very powerful anti-war poem, "The History of the Airplane." At 85, he hasn't lost a step.

Least we forget, there is always the City Lights Bookstore, the premiere independent bookshop in the US. Since lots of folks are beginning to realize the repercussions of the amazon.com phenomenon and the fall out from some of its recent strong arm tactics with publishers and merchants, both here and abroad, it might be a fine thing if we all make a special effort to continue to support our local independents and national treasures like City Lights. Yeah, you lose the deep discount, but that's all you lose.

That's all you lose.

Here's a poem with Ferlinghetti's signature gentle, insightful touch:

Allen Ginsberg Dying

Allen Ginsburg is dying
It's all in the papers
It's on the evening news
A great poet is dying
But his voice
    won't die
His voice is on the land
In Lower Manhattan
in his own bed
he is dying
There is nothing 
to do about it
He is dying the death that everyone dies
He is dying the death of a poet
He has a telephone in his hand
and he calls everyone
from his bed in Lower Manhattan
All around the world
late at night
the telephone is ringing
"This is Allen"
     The voice says
"Allen Ginsburg calling"
How many times have they heard it
over the long great years
He doesn't have to say Ginsburg
All around the world
in the world of poets
There is only one Allen
"I wanted to tell you" he says
He tells them what's happening
what's coming down
on him
Death the dark lover
going down on him
His voice goes by satellite
over the land
over the Sea of Japan
where he once stood naked
trident in hand
like a young Neptune
a young man  with black beard
standing on a stone beach
It is high tide and the seabirds cry
The waves break over him now
and the seabirds cry
on the San Francisco waterfront
There is a high wind
There are great white caps
lashing the Embarcadero
Allen is on the telephone
His voice is on the waves
I am reading Greek poetry
The sea is in it
Horses weep in it
The horses of Achilles
weep in it
here by the sea
in San Francisco
where the waves weep
they make a sibilant sound
a sibylline sound
Allen
      they whisper
     Allen
 
Lawrence Ferlinghetti, April 4, 1997

If you have a chance, check out Anne Stevenson's poem, "Living in America," which was featured this week on The Writer's Almanac. There also is a great little article on departing poet laureate, Charles Simic, one of my favorite contemporary poets.

If you can't make it up to Alaska this weekend, here's a little notice of something of interest that we might think about in passing during the day Sunday:

SUNDAY, AUGUST 3RD

1pm: 18TH ANNUAL RICHARD BRAUTIGAN & DICK WHITAKER MEMORIAL TROUT FISHING IN AMERICA POETRY SLAM & "SALMON SONNET" CONTEST at The New York Cafe, 207 Stedman St. Sponsored by Soho Coho Gallery, Parnassus Books, and The New York Cafe.

But why just think, let's feel too:

The Sidney Greenstreet Blues

I think something beautiful
and amusing is gained
by remembering Sydney Greentstreet,
but it is a fragile thing.

The hand picks up a glass.
The eye looks at the glass
and then hand, glass and eye
---fall away.

Richard Brautigan

Sometimes, the idea of the Net really pulls things together, other times it just seems like the big mystery that life is. For instance, what's up with blog alerts pinging items posted years ago? I certainly don't know but one thing I can say is that the random chaos of life, and so too the net, is sometimes very lyrical, indeed. I got beeped with this this past week and thought, ah, Huff's last poem. The tone, the feel, is of the old zen masters, composing their deathbed poems. Huff's manages summarizing the main concern of all his work: home, or the lack thereof:

Tired of being loved,
Tired of being left alone.
Tired of being loved,
Tired of being left alone.
Gonna find myself a place
Where all I feel is at home.

Albert Huffstickler

Issa's death poem, too, sums up his own personalized approach, full of humor and sadness

A bath when you're born,
A bath when you die,
how stupid.

Issa translated by Robert Hass

Continuing the project of providing sample poems from back issues and filling in the Back Issue Archive over at the Lilliput homepage, here's some work from issue #101, originally published back in January, 1999:

the circle so large
the curve imperceptible
we think we're moving
straight ahead

Julius Karl Schauer

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

knowledge
will protect us
from the darkness
but what will shield
us from the light?

Karl Koweski

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

The Letter M
The letter M
in green spray paint
on the gnarled bark
of a tall pine tree
its stately boughs
whispering quietly
in the afternoon breeze
is way too long for
a haiku but still
pretty fucking succinct.

Mark Terrill

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

another midnight
bare bulb illuminating
the back door of a slaughterhouse

M. Kettner

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

Later this week, I may have news about a contemporary poetry book I actually enjoyed.


Till next time,
Don

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Review free (or have your current subscription extended two issues),
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