Issa's Untidy Hut: old pajamas

Showing posts with label old pajamas. Show all posts

Wednesday, May 27, 2015

alter-world: old pajamas

What is it we ask of the modern short-form poet, the modern haiku poet? What do we want, what is necessary in a short poem?

What do we need?

To get close to an answer to any, or all, of these questions perhaps we should be asking most importantly: what do we ask of ourselves when it comes to poetry as readers and, for some, as poets?

Old Pajamas (aka Alan Segal) is an excellent poet working in short forms for whom form itself is mercurial, form is protean, form is content's shadow. Like contemporary masters Cid Corman, John Martone, and Charlie Mehrhoff, he knows where the lines are and chooses to dance over and amongst them.

For my two cents, Old Pajamas would be a candidate for inclusion in a second edition of Haiku in English, as would Ed Baker, another fine purveyor of 'shorties' as he is wont to call them on any given day, work don't fit any strict definition but is all heart and spirit and soul.

Is the pen name 'Old Pajamas' off-putting? Just think about the various pen-names of so many Japanese poets. Even the masters - Bashō's name means banana leaf or tree, Issa's cup-of-tea, Buson's midnight studio, and Shiki's cuckoo.

As far as English goes, Old Pajamas sounds just fine to me.

The new collection he sent along is a limited hardcover edition, 1 of 25 printed.The book is entitled alter-world and here are four of my favorites from it:

Photo by Hadi Fooladi

ah
the butterfly
not an actor

Photo by Amour Perdu

that you're in black
flower and scaly
while I'm paleness
blinking in the dark
is enough enough for us

Photo by flugflugfunmangel

in one cricket
the sound is weary

Photo by Seth Anderson

BLOWER MOTOR #4

mad with rust / / camellias in bloom

Regular readers of this blog will recognize this last poem (and photo) as having appeared previously on Wednesday Haiku.

Looking at these four pieces superficially they seem to be all over the place, form-wise. Yet, there is a unifying element among them, one of the major components of traditional haiku.

All four are firmly ground in nature.

Now, arguments could certainly be had, one way or the other, as to which, if any, are haiku, and which are not. I have my opinions and I'll keep them (mostly) to myself.

One thing I will say is that they are all haiku-like or, even more generally, fine brief poems.

alter-world is not available to purchase, so there is no pitch here. However, you can find more of Alan's work, from alter-world and and other places, at old pajamas: from the dirt hut. It is definitely worth your while. There is also a more extensive review of an earlier collection, Drenched Through at Old Age, here.

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Photo by Mo

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

Issa
trans. by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

PS Click to learn how to contribute to Wednesday Haiku

Wednesday, March 11, 2015

old pajamas & Kala Ramesh: Wednesday Haiku, #203

Photo by Seth Anderson

BLOWER MOTOR #4

mad with rust // camellias in bloom!

~ old pajamas

Photo by Jans Canon

joggers park
the wind circling leaves
circling the wind

~ Kala Ramesh

Photo by Andrew

winter wind --
wrapping sardines
in oak leaves

Issa
trans. by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

PS Click to learn how to contribute to Wednesday Haiku

Friday, September 13, 2013

Old Pajamas: Biting The Buddha - Small Press Friday

Having previously reviewed Drenched Through at Old Age, by old pajamas, I've gone back to the well again to an earlier collection by him, entitled Biting the Buddha. Published by Blue Cottage press in 2000 ...

There is a noticeable difference in approach and style in this older volume; the newer book has no punctuation and an assured use of the monostich (there are none of the later in Biting the Buddha). Still, let's not get our knickers in a twist, eh - it is the message and the talent that should be in the forefront and so it will be in this overview.

From my lips rises the full moon
To stare at her white belly.

The mystery: origin, essence, and epicenter: the lips, the moon, the belly.

Enveloped so
Inside me
The sudden rain
Does not cool him.

Again, a mystery, this time one of identity, ego, and presence.

In the air
A junkie's drawing...starved limbs
Petals falling.

A lyrical little dirge, capturing at once the sadness and beauty of a life 'squandered,' and the rhyming echo.

Autumn gust,
Still leaves
Scatter again.

This poem turns on the first word of line two: 'Still.' To me, this feels like two contiguous moments, passing quickly.

How sweet the grass!
How calm a place
To lay skin and bone!

This resonates with philosophical beauty, dealing as it does with life and death and more, and a literalness that says it all, says it all ...

Dust rises
Restless in a dried field,
Shifting
Foot to foot.

Ashes to ashes - there is a biblical quality, a mythic quality, a folklorish quality to what, in essence, is a simple observation, couple with a human echo that has its own chilling quality. A sister poem to "How sweet the grass," certainly.

Crushed by the wheel
The fox looks back.

There is more to this little two-line 'short-story' than meets the eye, eh, Mr. Fox?

The tide gone out,
I am left behind.

Oh, maggie and milly and molly and may ... the ocean dwarfs us all with dimension and perpective and loneness. So much cosmic detritus, so little time.

Across the marsh
All life flies on the wind
Of a New Year.

There is a big picture perspective here; strangely enough my first free associative thought is of the first picture of the earth from space.

Oh, there it is!

Biting the Buddha may be purchased directly from the author for $5, which covers the cost of the mailer, the postage and the book. Contact him at <blue cottage 2000 AT yahoo DOT com>, no spaces, and read AT for @ and DOT for . in order to avoid those pesky harvesting bots.

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US Postal Service Stamp Commemorating 100 Years of Cherry Blossoms

in cherry blossom shade
there are even those
who hate this world

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,

Don

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Friday, July 12, 2013

Old Pajamas - Drenched Through at Old Age: Small Press Friday

The small press is one of those ideas, one those concepts, that seems to have as many definitions as there are people involved with it.

And, in my estimation, that's a good thing. A very good thing.

The focus here at Small Press Friday is a narrow one, indeed: generally, it is poetry, frequently it is brief poetry (10 lines or less), and often if is specifically about Eastern forms, such as haiku, tanka, haibun, and haiga (or Eastern influenced forms).

Sometimes, the small press can be one person. One person on a mission. One person dedicated to a particular purpose.

Old Pajamas, this post's subject, is that kind of person.

Drenched Through At Old Age was printed by the author himself. There'll be no shilling books this time - 25 were printed, in a solid recessed hardcover binding, with a beautiful dust jacket, pictured above. They are all gone, there are none for sale.

There is just the work. And, of course, I think a lot about the work.

With every new book of poetry I come across, I expect disappointment. My hopes are high, but history is more telling - so often there are one or two, or at best 5 or 6 poems in a collection that I connect with. I want them all to be great, but that's just not how it is.

I've learned, however, to turn that logic upside down (Pee Wee) and realize, my god, this poet wrote four very good poems, indeed. Maybe there is the next Matthew Arnold in our midst.

But OP is different - there are almost 20 poems in this collection that grabbed me and held on tight. So what am I going to do - grouse about the ones that didn't?

No, indeed. So, let's begin:

in utero there are twenty-seven verbs for clinging

We've plunged right into the mystery, the deep end of the pool, so to speak. Even before we have words we have verbs, or clinging ...

Or life.

     afforded a choice of smooth or rough, fat or thin,
   I've taken the path that makes moonlight
   most difficult to collect, to bear, to believe in

You have to pause and think: no one else could have written this, or everyone else, it's that simple. It's your choice.

As I find myself often doing when I encounter work of this quality, I think, damn, I wish I'd written that.

Yes, mystery is at the heart of things. Here's two more that speak, or don't speak, to that:

    vagabond on fire   //   offering his hat for free

    what separated our lips   //   the dead butterfly we tear halfway

What, oh, whatever, can the poet mean? This first feels close to Rumi, whom I've been reading a lot of lately for a future project, the second David Lynch, or Nietzsche, or some lapsed agnostic.

The 30 Sorrows of False Spring Mountain
       lick each poem free from bone to bone //
            as you old man caught blind in sudden snow
                will feel tongues scraping this endless night

I may be wrong, but I don't believe it will be the endless night that feels those tongues scrapping. Han-Shan knows what this is about. How about you?

    from what cheerless thicket ruptures this agent of Love?

It would seem this monostitch turns on the word Love, but, no, that's just the subject. It turns, or, perhaps, re-turns on cheerless.

My, how very high that word 'cheerless' lifts my heart.

        my grief on the wings of geese returning

Speaking of returning, the poet here has turned the cliché on its ear. We are in the presence of a formidable poet here - do you feel it?

what blush there was when peonies wheeled the barrow with I abloom inside

If you were resisting before, your resolve must be melting now. Could this poet's heart be any larger? Might we ask, Mr. Whitman?

     so near the forest's end I'll stay until art decays me

And this:

how one poem wakes ten thousand skies!

Positively dizzying, the poems come at the reader with a rat-a-tat-tat that's undeniable - I had to put the volume down time after time to catch a breath, it is so packed with pure poetry.

father

death
impassive impressive
your face
a bronze bowl
catching petaled tears

Is it my father, or your father, Mr. Segal's father ... or is it wily old Allen Ginsberg's father, Father Death?

That's right, it's all fathers, whose petaled tears simply break our hearts.

whet the blade
in Basho's pond
sharp old water

!!!!!

There's no more to say - all that's left is the words of old pajamas, Alan Segal; take us out of here ....

planting the gaps
between this barren
poetry babble
dressing myself
for a betrothal of bloom

my age in crows

counting my age
in crows, at sixty-six
they slip away,
the black of them
near end of day

are you as aware of me plum blossoms

Am I

I Am surrendered
to the sea-claws;
I Am demoted
to being human;
I Am resigned
to be a clothed creature

wading in the tide rising
I Am drowning perfectly.

So, there you are - this barely breaches the surface of this fine, unobtainable book. It isn't so much as mentioned anywhere on the internets ... what to do, what to do?

Well, my best guess, what I'd say, is this. Somebody, some small press publisher, needs to come along and make old pajamas and offer he can't refuse. And I haven't even talked to him about it, so, who knows, maybe he'd say no. The book just came out in 2013 and, like morning dew, as it appeared, so it is gone.

But, really, shouldn't this be in print, somewhere, available to people who read this, amazed, and said, where can I get more?

Small press Friday, indeed.

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