Lots doing as the next two weeks will be somewhat chaotic at my job, so I'll just be skimming the surface here with a couple of highlights, a new feature, a reminder and some old fashioned getting-down. I'm so steeped in Basho that haiku seem to be falling from me like leaves from the plane tree across the way. This morning, in a pre-waking hypnagogic state, a perfect haiku came full blown from nowhere, I'm still stunned. I believe I'll continue steeping as long as I'm able. I'm making progress in both volumes (the Reichhold and Landis Barnhill translations), having read over 500 haiku in each. In the Reichhold volume that is only halfway, well past three-quarters in the Landis Barnhill. I hope to be highlighting selected haiku from both in a future post.
Which segues to a reminder that there is one week left to the deadline for the Basho Haiku Challenge, so if you've been thinking about sending some along, now's the time to pull the trigger. There are well over a hundred haiku already and more would be just the ticket.
While touching on ongoing projects, the Near Perfect Books of Poetry list is approaching the milestone number of 150 (been stuck on 148 for a couple of weeks). So if you have any suggestions, the original offer of the current 2 issues of Lillie free (or two issues added to your subscription) stands.
Since the Near Perfect list has been reader generated, I thought it might be a good idea to feature work from the books on the list when possible. First on the list is Anna Akhmatova's Selected Poems. Here is a typically powerful poem, in a translation by D. M. Thomas:
Why is our century worse than any other?If you have a chance, don't miss the most recent post over at trout fishing in minnesota. Jim has much to say about the qualities of wood, traveling guts, and the voices of a wide variety of trees. Jim's ruinations segued synchronistically with the first bit of fiction I've read in nearly two months (its been strictly poetry with all the program preparation I've been doing). Here is the opening paragraph to Thomas Hardy's Under the Greenwood Tree, which I read about a week ago like a parched traveller at a fresh spring:
Is it that in the stupor of fear and grief
It has plunged its fingers into the blackest ulcer
Yet cannot bring relief?
Westward the sun is dropping,
And the roofs of towns are shining in its light.
Already death is chalking doors with crosses
And calling the ravens and the ravens are in flight.
To dwellers in a wood almost every species of tree has its voice as well as its feature. At the passing of the breeze the fir-trees sob and moan no less distinctly than they rock; the holly whistles as it battles with itself; the ash hisses amid its quiverings; the beech rustles while its flat boughs rise and fall. And winter, which modifies the note of such trees as shed their leaves, does not destroy their individuality.
This weeks featured back issue of Lilliput Review is #76, from January 1996.
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The Marriage Vow
Here and now, we will compose
our own fairy tales,
beginning each fable
with an empty room, an open window.
Hilary Lyon
Wish I Weren't Here
the roots of the nerves of my pain are cut
i am alone on a riverbank
northeast of death and southwest of remorse
i cannot sing. there are no tears.
Shelley Stoker
Empathy
String your feet to mine
I want to walk you through
this century like you were
an easy weight on my back,
or a thousand rose petals
or a building full of wind.
Ali Kress
Within Bounds
Dog-eared history,
reams of yellow second-sheets,
folks gathering round, the waters, parted,
try to understand, you debtors,
try to understand.
Errol Miller
membrane
the false world falls away
where have you been --we ask
Lisa Helgesen--------------------------------------------------------------------
Since the original Ed Coletti suggested video of Ray Charles, Fats Domino, and Jerry Lee Lewis has disappeared into the cosmic ether, here is a reasonable substitute: enjoy.
best,
Don
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