Walter Mehring & Chen-ou Liu: Wednesday Haiku, #196

Photo by Anya Quinn

old garden gloves
poised for action
half dirt already

Walter Mehring

Photo by Pavel P

 

shadow on the wall...
as if writing keeps myself
away from myself

Chen-ou Liu

Photo by Photosteve

looking younger than me
the scarecrow casts
his shadow                   

                    Issa
                    translated by David G. Lanoue

 
best,
Don

PS  Click to learn how to contribute to Wednesday Haiku

Charlie Mehrhoff: Monday Twitter Poem

Going nowhere.

Always packed and ready.

   Charlie Mehrhoff  in Lilliput Review #171

nowhere, nowhere
can a young scarecrow
be found

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,

Don

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Sharkey's Night: Issa's Sunday Service, #54

Laurie Anderson & Husband

Saturday June 5th was the birthday of avant-garde performance artist Laurie Anderson. There is a lot by Anderson that might find its way onto Issa's Sunday Service, but I've always been particularly fond of this little number, which was one of Mr. Burroughs's, Mr. William Burroughs that is, first forays into "mass media."

Paging Mr. Sharkey, white courtesy telephone please ...

And here is a special little treat:

As good as that performance is, it just is missing something without the big guy's voice. See here is another little oddity by Big Bill, called "Ah Pook."

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


This week's poem comes from the broadside spectacles of poverty, by scarecrow (Charlie Mehrhoff), published as Lilliput Review, #80, in June 1996. Additional poems from this broadside may be found in this earlier post.

words
each word a letter,
a mirror
held up to the soul.

or better: writing is the scratching
of ancient dust from mirrors.

(even the words of others
(sometimes
(part of your face.

scarecrow

Mister Monkey too
wears a funny face...
plum blossoms

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

Ryokan, translated by Dennis Maloney

Bob and Susan Arnold of Longhouse Publishers have been issuing a delightful series of accordion-style fold out mini-booklets for quite sometime now, some of which I've taken a look at here at The Hut. Dennis Maloney, of White Pine Press fame, is a longtime Lilliput contributor, whose 4th chapbook in the Modest Proposal Chapbook series, a volume of Yosano Akiko translations, will be coming out sometime in June (along with 4 delayed issues of Lilliput Review). Previous chapbooks were Dusk Lingers: Haiku of Issa, The Unending Night: Japanese Love Poems, and The Turning Year: Japanese Nature Poems, the later two of which come from the famed 100 Poems by 100 Poets classic volume of Japanese poetry.

So it is with some delight that Dennis's volume of Ryōkan poems has arrived from Longhouse. And who was Ryōkan you might ask? According to the "New World Encyclopedia" site:

Ryōkan (良寛) (1758-1831) was a Zen Buddhist monk of the Edo period (Tokugawa shogunate 1603-1864), who lived in Niigata, Japan. He was renowned as a poet and calligrapher. He soon left the monastery, where the practice of Buddhism was frequently lax, and lived as a hermit until he was very old and had to move into the house of one of his supporters. His poetry is often very simple and inspired by nature. He was a lover of children, and sometimes forgot to go on his alms rounds to get food because he was playing with the children of the nearby village. Ryōkan was extremely humble and refused to accept any official position as a priest or even as a "poet." In the tradition of Zen, his quotes and poems show that he had a good sense of humor and didn't take himself too seriously. His poetry gives illuminating insights into the practice of Zen. He is one of the most popular Zen Buddhists today.

Over at Wikipedia, there is a bit of a dust up over the Buddhist monk part, but no doubt it isn't anything the poet himself would be much concerned about. There are, after all, poems to write, sake to drink, and life to be lived.

The Longhouse booklet, consisting of 2 minutely folded sheets contains an astounding 47 tankas, is divided into the four seasons. Ryōkan's simple message shines through poem after poem in translations with a direct clarity that mirror that basic philosophy. Here is a couple of samples to tempt you over to the Longhouse site for this tasty little booklet and lots more besides:

In the garden – just us
a plum tree
in full blossom
and this old man
long in years.

I'm sure there is more but what I think of first is how the old man's years seem so very like the plum tree's blossoms.

What shall remain
as my legacy?
The spring flowers,
the cuckoo in summer
the autumn leaves.

At once in this beautiful tanka, there is the Buddhist sense of oneness and perhaps a touch of the fact that we are all reincarnated a bit in what's is all about us. At least that's what I'm hoping when some of my ashes end up in the garden, some more in the river, and most of the last bit in the bay back home.

Ryōkan too
will fade like
the morning glories.
But his heart
will remain behind.

See previous comment ...

Deep snow outside
bundled up
in my solitary hut
I even feel my soul
slip away as dusk gathers.

The quiet beauty of these verses pervades one's spirit as the experiencing nature does. Not much exegesis, though perhaps there could be some, but let it rest: let me take in the rose rather than pluck its petals.

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

This week's feature Lilliput Review broadside is #80, from June 1996, entitled spectacles of poverty by scarecrow.

what is meant to be seen and heard
will be seen and heard
the blue of the sky
through a fly's wing
walking on my window
into a cloud.
in the shape of constant sorrow

how much the poem cannot carry
when you're the only one
there
to witness the pine cone falling.

the camera composed of metal taken from the ore
taken from the stone
beneath the grass
in the meadow
where the lion once slept
in the picture.

scarecrow

now begins
the Future Buddha's reign...
spring pines

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

PS Ed Baker has tipped us to an interview with Dennis Maloney which is a delight so I'll append it after the fact. All thanks to the bard of Takoma Park.

Shakespeare's Sister: Issa's Sunday Service, #49

For the return of the Issa's Sunday Service, it's the first appearance of a band with as many literary pretensions as one can have: the fabulous The Smiths. This tune's only litrock element is the allusion to the Bard in the title; otherwise, the lyrics are pure unrequited Smith's kinda love.

Enjoy.

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

This week's feature poem is from Lilliput Review #73, November 1995.

¶ever catch a glimpse of a stone breathing?
-almost a burden.

Scarecrow

humidity--
from beneath a stone
wildflowers

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

Sweet Jane: Issa's Sunday Service, #44

Patti Smith & Lou Reed

It's time for a shout-out to all the poets (who "studied rules of verse") out there and, for the Sunday Service, I can't think of better way than Lou Reed and Sweet Jane.

This live acoustic version from Spanish TV is worth a look-see, especially for the chord thieves amongst us:





Lou is a god in NY, but, aside from this little number and "Walk on the Wild Side," a future LitRock selection, I'm not sure this is the case everywhere else (well, of course, there is always France and, it would seem, Spain). I'm a huge Lou and Velvet Underground fan, so there is no objectivity here. This Sunday Service is all about the worship.


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


This week's feature poem is from issue #68 of Lilliput Review, April 1995. In a previous post, 6 poems were highlighted from this issue. scarecrow's poem is about the ultimate transcendence, which all attain, no matter religion, race, or sex.

¶dreamed that my face was large
-composed of sifted red clay dirt,
-yucca,
-snakeweed,
-mesquite,

-hoofprints abounding.

scarecrow

in cuffs dragging
through the dirt...
plum blossoms

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don


PS To listen to all 44 selections so far (or to pick and choose individually), see the Issa's LitRock Jukebox on the sidebar. Or visit the spin off page here. Background info on all the songs and links back to the original posts can be found here.

As always, I'm offering the two current issues of Lilliput Review free (or have 2 copies added to your current subscription) for any litrock selections that I use in a future post. Just email me at: lilliput review at gmail dot com.

"Better a live Sparrow than a stuffed Eagle": The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám

In life, death informs all things. Think of it as the booby prize of cognizance. This is as true for those who choose to repress it, perhaps even more so. It's the primary reason Freud got to have what has euphemistically come to be known as a consulting room (check out Ernst Becker's groundbreaking The Denial of Death to let all this sink in, long and hard).

For those who might like their answer in a more timely, lyrical fashion, there is the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám as translated by Edward FitzGerald. I was recently reminded of the Rubáiyát by an article in the Times Literary Supplement (January 9, 2009) entitled "The Angry Omar," though it might more appropriately been titled "The Wine-Soaked Omar." It is a fine article written by Daniel Karlin, fine enough to prompt me back to the Rubáiyat, which I've haven't visited in many a year.

Two points Karlin makes are of particular editorial importance. The first:

In the Persian text the rubáiyat are independent poems, grouped according to custom by end-rhyme. FitzGerald saw how some of these separate poems might be linked to form a narrative and argumentative sequence, by analogy with the classiccal Greek or Latin "ecolgue."

The second:

(FitzGerald's) attitude to translation is summed up in a phrase that has become the rallying cry of "free" translators against their literalist opponents: "Better a live Sparrow than a stuffed Eagle."

There were five different editions of the Rubáiyat in FitzGerald's lifetime and, since they are all relatively brief, being composed of anywhere from 73 quatrains to just over 100, frequently all 5 are published in the same volume. The verses I've chosen to highlight all come from the final 5th edition. Enjoy.

7.

Come, fill the Cup, and in the Fire of Spring
The Winter Garment of Repentence fling:
---The Bird of Time has but a little way
To fly—and Lo! the Bird is on the Wing.

8.

And look—a thousand Blossoms with the Day
Woke—and a thousand scatter'd into Clay:
---And this first Summer Month that brings the Rose
Shall take Jamshýd and Kaikobád away. ----

15.

And those that husbanded the Golden Grain,
And those who flung it to the Winds like Rain,
---Alike to no such aureate Earth are turn'd
As buried once, Men want dug up again.

16.

Think in this batter'd Carnavanserai
Whose doorways are alternate Night and Day,
---How Sultán after Sultán with his pomp
Abode his hour or two and went his way.

19.

And this delightful Herb whose tender Green
Fledges the River's Lip on which we lean—
---Ah, lean upon it lightly, for who knows
From what once lovely Lip it springs unseen. ---------

(Think Isaiah: all Flesh is Grass)

20.

Ah, my Belovéd, fill the Cup that clears
To-day of past regrets and future Fears—
---To-morrow? Why, To-morrow I may be
Myself with Yesterdays Sev'n Thousand Years.

21.

Lo, some we loved, the loveliest and best
That Time and Fate of all their Vintage prest,
---Have drunk their Cup a Round or two before
And one by one crept silently to Rest.

22.

And we that make make merry in the Room
They left, and Summer dresses in new Bloom,
---Ourselves must we beneath the Couch of Earth
Descend ourselves to make a Couch—for whom?

Well there is a little taste, of both sweet and bitter wine. I'll try to delve into more verses in a future post.

Speaking of second parts, in last week's archival posting of Lilliput Review poems, I promised a second dip into the double size issue, #53, from February 1994. Here it is.

Cherry blossoms swirling
--------------in the wind:
---------------------one thousand little poets

--------Jamie Sweeney

a hilltop puddle
choked
with clouds

Bill Hart

¶trees turned to fence
sky to window,
ocean to the drowning ground

Scarecrow

Snow Chimes The End Of The Human War

Snowgrains strike
the rust-iron train trestle
above the frozen creek.
They clang loud as bell towers
in the world inside the dove's eye.
In our world,
they barely make any sound at all.

christien gholson

Sigmund Freud On Coming To Terms
-------------With His Father
--------(Based on Freud's Revolutionary Dream)

"I stood on the railway platform
waving good-bye to a blind man."

D. B. McCoy

/ modern /

everyone's a masochist.
who hasn't shaved, bled?
those who grow hair free i'm sure
have refused butter on their toast?
turned off tv and yawned through a book?
altered their chemical makeup
just to stint the truth?

the candle that burns twice as bright
burns half as long i guess we burn
twice as long, we sad dim fuckers.

tolek

6:57 P.M.

wearing your
purple
sunglasses

I just can't
care

anymore

C. Ra McGuirt

Well, those were different times, indeed. Here's a little something that sums up change nicely.

the sky colors
of dawn have changed
to summer clothes

Issa
translated by David Lanoue

best,
Don

R. H. Blyth's Haiku

Last night I wandered from my previously stated purpose of mining R. H. Blyth for more Shiki translations and sat down with the 1st volume of R. H. Blyth's 4 volume Haiku, opening it up to the preface and beginning to read. I was positively knocked out; it is, simply, transcendent. I've plumbed these 4 volumes over the years for many of the hundreds and hundreds of poems by acknowledged Japanese masters of the haiku, by poet and by season (the later being the general schema of the volumes). Let me let Blyth speak for himself:

-----

The history of mankind, as a history of the human spirit, may be thought of as consisting of two elements: an escape from this world to another; and a return to it. Chronologically speaking, these two movements, the rise and fall, represent the whole of human history; and the two take place microcosmically many times in peoples and nations. But they may be thought of as taking place simultaneously or rather, beyond time, and then they form an ontological description of human nature.

-----There seems to me no necessity, however, to make a Spenglerian attempt to show from historical examples how there has been a movement towards ideas, ideas, abstractions; and a corresponding revulsion from them. In our own individual lives, and in the larger movements of the human spirit these two contradictory tendencies are more or less visible always, everywhere. There is a quite noticeable flow towards religion in the early world, and in the early life of almost every person,-and a later ebb from it, using the word "religion" here in the sense of a means of escape from this life.

-----The Japanese, by an accident of geography, and because of something in their national character, took part in the developments of this "return to nature," which in the Far East began (to give them a local habitation and a name) with Enô, the 6th Chinese Patriarch of Zen, 637-713 A. D. The Chinese, again because of their geography perhaps, have always had a strong tendency in poetry and philosophy towards the vast and vague, the general and sententious. It was left, therefore, to the Japanese to undertake this "return to things" in haiku, but it must be clearly understood that what we return to is never the same as what we once left, for we have ourselves changed in the meantime. So we go back to the old savage animism, and superstition, and common life of man and spirits and trees and stones,-and yet there is a difference. Things have taken on something of the tenuous nature of the abstractions they turned into. Again, spring and autumn, for example, non-existant, arbitrary distinctions, have attained a body and palpability they never before had. We also, we are the things,-and yet we are ourselves, in a perpetual limbo of heaven and hell.

-----It was necessary for us to prostrate ourselves before the Buddha, to spend nine long years wall-gazing, to be born in the Western Paradise. But now, no more. Now we have to come back from Nirvana to this world, the only one. We have to live, not with Christ in glory, but with Jesus and his mother and father and brothers and sisters. We return to the friends of our childhood, the rain on the window-pane; the long silent roads of night, the waves of the shore that never cease to fall; the moon, so near and yet so far; all the sensations of texture, timbre, weight and shape, those precious treasures and inexhaustible riches of every-day life.

-----Haiku may well seem at first sight a poor substitute for the glowing visions of Heaven and Paradise seen of pale-lipped asceties. As Arnold says:

----------Long fed on boundless hopes, O race of man,
----------How angrily thou spurn'st all simpler fare!

Haiku have a simplicity that is deceptive both with regard to their depth of content and to their origins, and it is the aim of this and succeeding volumes to show that haiku require our purest and most profound spiritual appreciation, for they represent a whole world, the Eastern World, of religious and poetic experience. Haiku is the final flower of all Eastern culture; it is also a way of living.

There are some deep, even ticklish and, occasionally, seemingly nonsensical waters to navigate here. Be that as it may, my thought is sit at the feet of a master and learn. If there is anyway for someone from the West to understand what haiku actually means in Japanese culture, this is it. No matter whether you agree or disagree with Blyth; there is just too much here not to revel in. Admittedly, this is the beginning of a potentially long, four volume journey but I'm hoping to see it through in '09. I have a feeling I'm going to need a good deal more of pluck than lucky, but I'll just have to see. And I'll report back.

Here's a couple of poems I came across this week worth a gander:

Mary Oliver's Morning Poem

Jane Kenyon's Taking Down the Tree

The Oliver poem is an outgrowth of all the reading I've been doing for the 3 Poems discussion group; it is a good one, really representative of all her work. If ever there was a poet constantly working and reworking the same territory, it is Mary Oliver and, despite what many critics have to say, this is just why she should be cherished. She points to nature in its myriad manifestations and takes from it a solid, spiritual, all-encompassing world view.

Not too shabby.

For more on Oliver, check out my post on Eleventh Stack dealing with her best collection, the audiobook entitled At Blackwater Pond: Mary Oliver Reads Mary Oliver.

The Kenyon poem nails what many of us will be doing over the coming days and weeks, taking down the tree. In this piece, Kenyon harkens back to the pre-Christian tradition of the solistice tree and its original purpose, something we all know and feel on an instinctual level but rarely articulate. Darkness, be damned.

Right now, I'm reading poetry volumes by Richard Brautigan, Robert Bly, and James Wright in preparation for featuring work that has been selected for the Near Perfect Books of Poetry list (183 and counting - will we make to 200?). Three poems from the Wright volume, The Branch Will Not Break, have already posted. In addition, I'm reading From the Other World: Poems in Memory of James Wright from Lost Hills Books for a future print and possibly blog review. Like so much tree tinsel, the Blyth volume has distracted me from Matsuo Basho: The Master Haiku Poet by Makoto Ueda, which I will be getting back to I hope.

If I'm not careful, I'm gonna run out of bookmarks.

This week's dip into the Lilliput archive comes from October 1994, with a nifty, if slightly faded cover by the irrepressible Wayne Hogan. Hope something grabs you here.

Cover art by Wayne Hogan

As This Morning

we have forgotten so much:
how afternoon light
will warm us. the
way our bodies are.
how fingers will move
into a shadow so
slight, there is
hardly room for
the world.

Mike James

After Sex

I watch her getting dressed.
She dips her head slowly,
her hair flops away
from the crown
in a swirling semaphore
of golden petals.
Clothes float up from the floor
like butterflies.

John Grey

Monoepic

Wonder.

Richard Kostelanetz

and O
------how he loved is tenderness
-------------when he touched her

John Elsberg

November Sunday Madonna

curls into herself,
the last leaf
on the maple
wind blown
and twitching
still holding on

Lyn Lifshin

¶writing is motionless
-when I am done.
-my shadow
-on the path of the path.

Scarecrow

best,
Don

James Wright , Jack Kerouac, Charlie Smith, and Chuang Tzu: Full House

Cover by Bobo

In Monday's post, I mentioned James Wright's groundbreaking collection, The Branch Will Not Break. Intrepid correspondent Ed Baker remembered the ending of another powerful poem from that collection. Here it is in its entirety:

Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm
in Pine Island, Minnesota

Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly,
Asleep on the black trunk,
Blowing like a leaf in green shadow.
Down the ravine behind the empty house,
The cowbells follow one another
Into the distances of the afternoon.
To my right,
In a field of sunlight between two pines,
The droppings of last year's horses
Blaze up into golden stones.
I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on.
A chicken hawk floats over, looking for a home.
I have wasted my life.

James Wright

As evidenced in Ed's memory of this last line, the power of the poem is hard to underestimate. Perhaps that power has been slightly diminished via much imitation; still, I am bowled over every time I read it. The precision in execution, the attention to detail, and, perhaps, the allusion in the first line to Chuang Tzu's (Zhuangzi) famous

"I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly dreaming I am a man. "

Whether the allusion is there or no (just a dream of mine, perhaps), the general flavor of Eastern work permeates The Branch Will Not Break. I've been revisiting this volume on and off all year and reading the Selected Poems sent me back again. No matter how many times I return, the well continues to be plenteous.

Many thanks to the Poet Hound for her take on issue #165 of Lilliput Review. Sidle on over: she features poems by Greg Watson, David Chorlton, and John Martone.

Curtis, over at Blogging Along Tobacco Road, has mounted a YouTube video of Kerouac reading some of his haikus. In case you haven't seen it (or I should say heard, since it's a YouTube vid with a single picture fronting the audio - close your eyes and think "YouSpeaker"), here it is:





In addition, Curtis has been featuring videos he is making of poets reading haiku, as with the one by Roberta Beary posted here recently. This calls for some more sidling to see his vid of Charlie Smith and other goodies. With Curtis's permission, I'm also posting it here:




Charlie Smith


Ron Silliman has pointed to an interview by Doug Holder of the prolific poet, critic, reviewer, and small press legend, Hugh Fox that might be of interest to folks. Hugh has published the occasional poem here and is author of the Lilliput broadside, "Slides," which was issue #112. Here's a link to the old Lilliput blog (beware, pop-up zone), "Beneath Cherry Blossoms," with some sample poems from that broadside.

This week's featured back issue of Lilliput Review is #63, from December 1994. Be sure to check the Back Issue Archive, where you can find sample poems from 75 back issues. Enjoy.




A Basic Understanding

Cause links one
Reason to another,
And at the end
Of the chain
Sits a stark
And elemental is.

Ed Anderson

Sentence (from a sequence)

Too painfully large for word
or phrase, our small talents
despair of meaning, and we are
on buses tapping seat rails
unsure of the stop for today,
pausing as fingers glide
along reflective chrome
streaked by syllables
of familiar streets.

Tim Scannell

Gifts

Behold
this snow: light
fallen to show us through darkness
toward spring. Please
lift this sighting forward
on worthy words. I
don't know how.
But I believe in you.

Patricia Ranzoni

Snowflakes
Turds falling from 5 billion human rumps,
------5 billion snowflakes falling
----------from a single cloud.

Antler

The constant wavesound,
the chant,
slow-grinding thought and bone
to sand

christien gholson

The Knobadoor Diamond

Four boys
found a glass doorknob on the beach.
They called it The Knobadoor Diamond
and it made them rich.

Cal Sag

¶ someone's gotta fall
--babe
--make sure the bottom's still there.

scarecrow

best,
Don

Masaoka Shiki and the World When You Were Looking the Other Way

This past week at the library, I picked up and read Selected Poems by Masaoka Shiki. Shiki is one of the 4 cornerstone's of classic haiku (aka one of the 4 master poets), the others being Basho, Issa, and Buson. In the past, I've enjoyed Shiki's work in anthologies but had not run across a collection I was enticed by until this one, so I thought I'd give it a try. This collection is translated by the always fine purveyor of Eastern literature Burton Watson.

Shiki is the most recent of the big four haikuists, born in 1867 and dying in 1902. In his succinct introduction, Watson sketches out the life, the work, and its historical importance without ever deviating into the academic. As some folks may know, haiku (or hokku) was originally the first verse of the longer renga form. According to Watson, what Shiki did

"... first of all was to establish the haiku as completely separate from the renga, a poetic form fully capable of standing on its own. To emphasize this step he rejected the older term hokku, as well as haikai, another term by which the form was known in earlier times, and replaced them with the designation haiku.

It was thought that 17 syllables was to0 brief a form to be considered seriously, but Shiki maintained and went on to prove that its very brevity was its strength. Though haiku up to this time was generally thought to be the first verse of the linked renga form, of course Basho, Buson, and Issa had used it independently and helped establish its individual predominance. Shiki helped to codify its importance and almost single-handedly revived haiku, which has since become one of the world's most predominant forms. We have Shiki to thank for this reformation and the resultant burgeoning of haiku.

One of the things I found most appealing about Shiki's own work is that he, for the most part, rejected literary allusions, puns, and wordplay, as Watson points out. Some of the cultural difficulty that I experienced in the work of Basho falls away as a result and, so, in my view, the work overall connects more easily for modern, non-Japanese readers. This is not to say I like Shiki better than Basho per se, just that his work is on the whole more accessible.

Watson translates Shiki's work in three forms: haiku, tanka, and kanshi. Watson translates 144 of the over 20,000 haiku he wrote. I marked 16 down of special interest and found enough that grabbed me that I will seek out other collections (there must be others worth reading of the 19,800 plus that Watson didn't translate). 2 of the 33 tanka he translated were enjoyable and I didn't connect with any of the 4 kanshi, though they all had things to recommend them. Here's a brief selection from the 16 haiku.


*****************************************************


A carp leaps up,
crinkling
the autumn moonlight

Poppies open,
and the same day
shatter in the wind

To ears
muddied with sermons,
a cuckoo

After I squashed
the spider -
lonely night chill

For me, who go,
for you, who stay behind -
two autumns

Year-end housecleaning -
gods and buddhas
sitting out on the grass

Working All Day and into the Night to Clear Out My Haiku Box

I checked
three thousand haiku
on two persimmons

Crickets -
in the corner of the garden
where we buried the dog

They've cut down the willow -
the kingfishers
don't come anymore

*****************************************************


Also this week, there are lots of tidbits of interest, gathered from here and there. Here's a poem from Albert Huffstickler, from somewhere that no doubt would have bemused him.

As noted recently by Ron Silliman, The Outlaw Book of American Poetry is on google books almost in its entirety. In my capacity as a standard mucky-muck at my place of employment, I have to note that a ton of google book previews seem to contain nearly the entire book, with a few pages blocked here and there. Amazing, scary, and exhilaritating all at once. One way to kick that Robitussin jones, I guess.

At The Ultra-Mundane, a gentlemen by the name of R. Alan is reading In Watermelon Sugar by Richard Brautigan, chapter by chapter. I haven't gotten used to his voice, but here it is if you'd like to give it a try.

Here's an extended take on Thomas Hardy's early novel Under the Greenwood Tree that I put together for a post at my day job for those so inclined. Regular readers of The Hut will remember I briefly mentioned when I was reading this in a previous post.

Courtesy of Poetry and Poets in Rags here is a timely posting of "Let America Be America Again" by Langston Hughes at World Changing. Powerful as well as timely.

Mary Karr's Poet's Choice column this week has a very resonant poem on dying sparrows by Brenda Hillman entitled "Partita for Sparrows." I haven't connected as often with Karr as with her predecessors at the Poet's Choice column, but I'm warming to her and think she's found a diamond (or, at least, a shiny, tinsely thing to start a nest with) in the post-modern poetry rough with this one.

This week's sampling of poems from Lilliput Review comes from #68 (replete with the nifty title "Geomorphology for Poets" - what was I thinking, you may ask), from April 1995. Enjoy.

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


Cabin

Sleet,
winter's intricate crystal calculus

Earl Grey tea. Good fire in the stove

Out-of-season fly
lights on poster of the Milky Way.

Mark Blaeuer

Tel Aviv

They are sitting next to each other
at the bus stop.
The old woman who in Germany
was 897876421
and the young girl with a blue butterfly
on her bare shoulder.

We are witnesses, my daughter and I.

Karen Alkalay-Gut

At the Hoh River

The river slides by like a column of bells.
Our marriage is now a week old.
You smile and ask me to guess
in which hand you hide the moon!

Scott King

from the mountaintop

if a monday evening
drive home from work
in traffic is no
place for a sudden
illumination
then,
fuck you,
neither is this place.

Andrew Urbanus

Senryu

----even -if all the others
are running, if you walk to heaven
----you'll still be there in time.

Harland Ristau

¶ and the homeless, the truly homeless
-are we
-who separate ourselves
-from the rest of it
-w/ walls

scarecrow

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


The new issues, #'s 165 and 166, should begin shipping in about a week. Also, a new Modest Proposal Chapbook, #19, entitled The Turning Year: Japanese Nature Poems, translated by Dennis Maloney and Hide Oshiro from 100 Poems by 100 Poets, and a companion volume to Unending Night, will be forthcoming very soon.

best,
Don

Basho: The Complete Haiku

The unofficial two month Basho push came to end this week when I finished Basho: The Complete Haiku, translated with intro, bio and notes by Jane Reichhold. All this began some time back when I was contacted by Tomoe Sumi of Kodansha America in response to postings I'd been doing about various editions of Basho I'd been reading (in preparation for a future Modest Proposal Chapbook). At the time, she offered me a reading copy of Basho: The Complete Haiku. Because I already had it, I declined but Tomoe suggested she could send a copy along in any case and I could give it away to a reader.

And the Basho Haiku Challenge was born. The to-be-published anthology from challenge submissions would never have happened without her generosity and I want to thank her again.

I'm happy to say that Basho: The Complete Haiku is everything one would anticipate and more. For the dedicated reader and fan of Basho, it's all here: 1011 haiku, the complete output of a relatively taciturn haiku master (in comparison, Issa wrote over 20,000 haiku), all with accompanying notes, from a few words to paragraph length explications. The presentation method is chronological, as it should be, and divided up into 7 phases (as opposed to the standard 5 phases: see Makoto Ueda's Matsuo Basho) and each section is preceded by biographical info important to the given period. I found this method extremely helpful. To have presented the entire biography in the forward matter would have removed an immediacy that deepens understanding and necessitated much flipping back and forth. The appendices and back matter are a real bonus, including sections on haiku techniques, a chronology of Basho's life, a glossary of literary terms and a selected, succinct bibliography. For biographical detail, Reichhold seems to lean heavily on Makoto Ueda's seminal biography (which I'm reading now - ok, so the push isn't entirely over) but that's to be expected.

Down to the crux, however: the poems themselves. These translations veer away from the often disasterous academic all-inclusive approach. The translations are unique, lyrical, and eminently readable without dumbing down for the English reader. In general, there is a stripped down, less is more approach, somewhat reminiscent of the translation work of Lucien Styrk and Robert Hass. One thing this collection solidified for me, the non-academic reader as opposed to Japanese literary scholar, is how much I don't know and never really will about the original intent of what I feel to be a majority of these poems (and by extension, any translations from any of the haiku masters, including beloved Issa). The notes of both this Reichhold edition and of the Landis Barnhill edition I reviewed previously are what really brought this important point home and made me think long and hard about myself as reader.

The conclusion I've drawn from all this "thunking" is simply that the poems that connect, the ones that get through to a novice like myself, are those that have a universal appeal that transcends translation, technique, and cultural idiosyncrasies. I'm talking the spirit of haiku here and perhaps the universal impetus to write haiku in the first place. A speaking to the human condition, who we are, and what we do (oh, Gauguin, bless you for your question mark). But wait, aren't haiku supposed to be objective not subjective, speaking to nature and leaving out the personal? Well, yes, this transcendent spirit I'm speaking of includes that and more. This concentration on nature is the where of the who and what we do: our place in the world, who we are being defined by what we are.

Ah, but enough of my personal revelation. On to the poems or, to paraphrase the incandescently beautiful Joe Strummer, how about some music now, eh?

Of the 1000 plus haiku, I marked 45 or so that grabbed me, held me down, and said, ok, what (or, more precisely, how) do you think now? Previously, I'd selected 35 for further review from the 700 plus Barnhill Landis edition, so the proportion is consistent, realizing that he was being selective (i.e. picking the best). The Reichhold edition confirms for me that the later work was the finest, Basho getting better and better with time. Here are a few of those 45. When possible, I've tried to select haiku not highlighted in previous postings from other editions in order to give a fuller portrait of the poet.



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


autumn night
dashed into bits
in conversation

pine and cedar
to admire the wind
smell the sound

pine wind
needles falling on the water's
cool sound

already bent
the bamboo waits for snow
what a sight

glistening dew
not spilling from bush clover
still it sways

a morning glory
this also is not
my friend

a traveler's heart
it also should look like
chinquapin flowers

leave aside
literary talents
tree peony

year after year
the cherry tree nourished by
fallen blossoms

path of the sun
the hollyhock leans into
early summer rain

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


A couple of other things of note this week, via the always informative, encyclopedic Ron Silliman blog: first, Bill Knott's take on a lesser known Wordsworth sonnet (a distinctly un-haiku like experience, actually very different for Wordsworth, who sometimes has a very Eastern flavor and remains my favorite of Romantic poets) and, second, the fact that a huge chunk of the Outlaw Bible of American Poetry is available via google books (don't tell anybody, pass it on). If you wish your wherewithal tested or your game raised to another level (without the pain of academia), I highly recommend Bill Knott's not poetry blog. Bill also offers almost all of his poetry for free pdf download, an amazingly generous and prescient idea.

Cover by Peter Magliocco

Today's Lilliput issue from the back archives is #69 from June, 1995. The further back we go in time, the, er, odder the experience for me. Perhaps more on this later. For now, enjoy.



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


After rum and cola

While walking inconspicuously
through this shabby cliché,
I am brushed back
by a long
black
metaphor
that splashed mud
onto my haptic shoes
and chases me back to Technicolor.

Thomas Brand

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

Now, at break of day,
A cliché coldly peers out
From behind mountains.

Travis Gray

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




Midnight Footnote to Lovemaking

The snail's path across
our bedroom windowpane wakes
us with its shrieking.

Michael Newell

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

Sleep

Sleep happens outside
this window where
white groping fingers
of a dream grasp
and are as still as
frozen beaks of birds
pinned to earth,
tugging at words
beneath the worms

Alan Catlin

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




in the mortar
of the city's
walls,
flute & whips
sing their song

Norman Schiffman

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

Crucifixion Revision

Father, forgive them
even though they know exactly
what they damn well do.

David Denny

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




¶no matter how many prayer flags
-they go out and hang upon the face of it
-it still be the beast.

Scarecrow

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

¶a friend hands me a book
-more shit to carry when we go into exile.

Scarecrow

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

Finally, contributor copies of the new issues, #'s 165 and 166, went out the beginning of this week. Subscriber copies will begin to go out in two weeks and will take about 6 weeks all in all to get to everyone. There is a new Modest Proposal Chapbook to talk about also, so, no fear, I have yet to run out of things to blab about.



till next time,
Don

E. E. Cummings vs. e. e. cummings vs. the universe (The Universe)

Cover by Harland Ristau

Michael Dylan Welch, a fine haiku poet and contributing editor to Spring, the journal of the E. E. Cummings Society, has appended a comment to a recent post on E. E. Cummings' birthday that seemed both interesting and important enough to pass along.

Just a quick note to suggest that E. E. Cummings' name be treated with the normal capitals. The lowercasing of his name was just something that his book designers did -- not Cummings himself. The policy and practice of the E. E. Cummings Society (I'm a longtime contributing editor to its journal Spring), Liveright (Cummings' publisher), and George Firmage (Cummings' literary executor, although recently deceased himself) is to treat the poet's name with initial capitals. Despite popular practice and perception, lowercasing his name is simply incorrect. For more information, please visit the definitive articles on the subject at http://www.gvsu.edu/english/cummings/caps.htm and http://www.gvsu.edu/english/cummings/caps2.html.



The myth of lowercasing E. E. Cummings' name is not unlike the myth of 5-7-5 syllables for English-language haiku. Too many people, even well-meaning poets and textbooks, have borrowed the number without thinking about what the number is counting. Yet people cling to their beliefs in odd ways, and perhaps lowercasing Cummings' name is similar. Or in some cases, they simply have heard anything to counter their beliefs. Please give the two essays I linked to a good read and give them a chance to shift your world just a little bit.



Michael Dylan Welch

I'd like to thank Michael for sending this along. Cummings was one of the first poets that "spoke to me" as a teen, one of the first that motivated me to make a life of reading and writing (and editing) poetry. This is the first I've heard this, though that is not surprising since I'm hardly a scholar and have never read a full-length biography. The fact that this misnomer is so culturally all pervasive is truly amazing. I've followed and read Michael's links in their entirety and would urge others to do so if you need convincing.

It should be mentioned that probably what added to the confusion is that Cummings occasionally did use the lower case spelling but I think it is very clear that, overall, it was his desire that his name be capped in standard fashion.

The intrepid Ed Baker has followed Michael's comments with a link he sent along to a Wikipedia article, that has some interesting links of it's own, and links to the articles Michael cites above. Ed also posits the opinion that Cummings probably just went along with the publisher's whim when the lower case spelling was used and that's how the whole thing got legs.

This week I read a slim volume of poems from the Chinese Tang dynasty entitled In Love With the Way and ran across a poem that reminded me of what is becoming my favorite Basho haiku (after reading it in so many different translations over the last few months). First, the Tang poem:



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

Grasses of the Ancient Plain

Tender grasses across the plain

Every year wither and grow back.

The wildfires fail to put an end to them,

With the breath of spring, they are reborn.

With their fragrances, they perfume the ancient way,
Emerald sheaves in the ancient ruins.
Agitated and quivering with nostalgia,
they bid farewell to the departing lord.

Bo Juyi

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

Here's Lucien Stryk's take on the Basho poem that came to mind:



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

Summer grasses,
all that remains
of soldiers' dreams.

Basho

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


I've linked up to some more Bo Juyi (or Bai Juyi) poems above, but here's another I ran across in a Witter Bynner translation:

A Suggestion to My Friend Liu

There's a gleam of green in an old bottle,
There's a stir of red in the quiet stove,
There's a feeling of snow in the dusk outside -
What about a cup of wine inside?

I've been busy this past week getting over a nasty cold and contacting folks about the Basho Haiku Challenge. Because I lost some time to the former, I'm still busy with the later but hope to be getting to it over the next 10 or so days.

Here's a bit of interesting news from the Japanese paper The Mainichi Daily News for those with a fondness for ancient Japanese poetry, specifically the Manyoshu. Also a great notice from the New York Times on a new film by one my favorite counterculture heroes, Patti Smith. And finally, for fans of Albert Huffstickler, Nerve Cowboy has posted the poems Huff published there from 1996 to 2002.

Johnny Baranski's Pencil Flowers is one of the books from the Near Perfect Books of Poetry list and tiny words (if you click their link, you'll see a fine haiku by the Basho Challenge winner, Roberta Beary) has posted a couple of his haiku. Here's one:

New Year's morning--
old haiku linked together
with cobwebs

I hope to be regularly posting samples from books selected for the Near Perfect list in the regular Thursday postings when time and space allow (almost slipped into a Star Trek episode there), sometimes with samples from the Back Issue archive and sometimes alone.

This week's back issue is #71, from August 1995. Full of many flights of fancy, we are all brought down to earth from lyrically ethereal realms by the ever insightful (balloon: here, pin: here) Wayne Hogan. Enjoy.



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

your body

each piece a shining eye
examining
the rest of the explosion.

scarecrow

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



Air served at room temperature reverberates until we snow.

Sheila E. Murphy

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

late summer rain
one droplet among many
catches my eye, trickles down the glass
thoughts of you
so different from all the rest

Cathy Drinkwater Better

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



the dead spider's web
holds the morning catch --
opaque beads of dew

Dorothy McLaughlin

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

New And Collected Poems

-----------I.
Sun's branches leap
from the fingers across town
a one-way sign.

----------II.
Talk Walks on
the wild side, spokes spin
too fast to be.

----------III.
Silence squiggles and
creeps upstream, history
giggles.

Wayne Hogan

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



Perhaps, we should end it all with the man himself, EEC, having the last word in a poem ya just don't see everyday:


--

----Seeker of Truth

seeker of truth

follow no path
all paths lead where

truth is here

Till next time,

Don