I'd Rather Be High: Issa's Sunday Service, #169

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"Just remember, duckies, everybody gets got"

David Bowie's new album, The Next Day, defines one very courageous way to head off into the sunset: with guns blazing. This is his most vibrant writing in many a year and nothing he turns his lens on is spared the fixed glare of intense, informed scrutiny. 

Today's song, "I'd Rather Be High," touches a lot of bases and, if it doesn't make it all around, it most certainly comports itself well.  The lit allusion comes in the first line with the introduction of Vladimir Nabokov (not his first appearance on the Sunday Service) - a number of his novels reference Gruenwald (The Gift and King, Queen, Knave, to name two). Here is an interesting paragraph from an article entitled "Nabokov's Berlin:"

It so happened that four bestselling German novels set in Berlin were written in the late 1920s, at the same time as Nabokov’s King, Queen, Knave the German translation of which was not a bestseller. They were Menschen im Hotel by Vicky Baum, Berlin Alexanderplatz by Alfred Döblin, Fabian by Erich Kästner and Bruder und Schwester by Leonhard Frank. There is much more of Berlin to be seen in King, Queen, Knave than in any of them. Döblin’s extraordinary novel has more of the city only insofar as it has its idiom and its way of thinking; in this sense it is a close-up while Nabokov’s fiction stays at a neutral distance. But Döblin’s city itself is reduced to a few blocks between Alexanderplatz and Rosenthaler Platz. Döblin lived not far away, and I believe Nabokov never ventured into those proletarian quarters. Nabokov's Berlin by contrast is the "Russian Berlin" of Wilmersdorf, Charlottenburg and Schöneberg, the city center and the city's parks and forests, notably the Grunewald.

Of course, I'm more intrigued by the sun-licked Nabokov himself - what, oh what, can you mean, Mr. Bowie? 

Oh, you mean that.

Beyond the lit allusion, there is a lot more to chew on here, as in many of the songs on this solid new album. The persona, and Bowie always has so many, is of interest, and what he is after, via that persona, is interesting, indeed. The lyrics are worth contemplation.  


I'd Rather Be High

Nabokov is sun-licked now
Upon the beach at Gruenwald
Brilliant and naked just
The way that authors looks

Clare and Lady Manners drink
Until the other cows go home
Gossip till their lips are bleeding
Politics and all

I'd rather be high
I'd rather be flying
I'd rather be dead
Or out of my head
Than training these guns 
on those men in the sand
I'd rather be high

The Thames was black, the tower dark
I flew to Cairo, find my regiment
City's full of generals
And generals full of shit

I stumble to the graveyard and I
Lay down by my parents, whisper
Just remember duckies
Everybody gets got

I'd rather be high
I'd rather be flying
I'd rather be dead
Or out of my head
Than training these guns 
on those men in the sand
I'd rather be high

I'm seventeen and my looks can prove it
I'm so afraid that I will lose it
I'd rather smoke and phone my ex
Be pleading for some teenage sex
Yeah

I'd rather be high
I'd rather be flying
I'd rather be dead
Or out of my head
Than training these guns 
on the men in the sand
I'd rather be high


Finally, Mr. Nabokov himself should have his say and here he is, in all his opinionated, loathing glory. This is the BBC documentary Life and 'Lolita." Enjoy. 

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

Ominaeshi by Koizumi

graveyard--
all alone a maiden flower
twisting

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,

Don   

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Waka of the Meiji Era - Empress Dowager Shoken: Lyric for a Sunday Afternoon

 Emperor & Empress in Western Style Dress by Yoshu Chikanobu

Recently, I ran across an older volume of tanka entitled Imperial Japanese Poems of the Meiji Era. Published in 1914 in English and translated by Frank Alanson Lombard, the volume contains the work of Emperor Meiji and the Empress Dowager Shoken. The Emperor was said to have written over 100,000 waka and the Empress over 30,000.

I opened the volume to the following poem, pg. 83, and was greatly taken:

     Easily we brush  
The fallen dust from garments
    Gleaming white and fair;
But from the mind beclouded
How hard to sweep the shadows!

   Empress Dowager Shoken

I continued to look through the collection and yet nothing came close to this initial randomly selected piece, by either the Emperor or the Empress Dowager. Perhaps it is the translations by Lombard; the poems found here by both are fairly interesting. I'll continue to page through the 1914 volume and read the work of both poets, but, well, sometimes serendipity is all.

---------- 

Greed by Scabeater

our shameful shadows!
in the long night walking
in vain

Issa 

translated by David G. Lanoue

   

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Chen-ou Liu & Rehn Kovacic: Wednesday Haiku, #123

Photo by Mr. Wood

blinds flapping
out of the spring sky
a raven's caw

Chen-ou Liu

 Photo by Lady Dragonfly CC

 
 


Conversation
  on a hot summer evening—
         cicada.

Rehn Kovacic

Photo by Jason A. Samfield

in a dewdrop world
singing of dewdrops...
summer cicada

Issa 

translated by David G. Lanoue

   

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Louise Gluck: Gratitude

I've been spending some time recently with the work of Louise Glück. I've always been a great admirer of her work, particularly the early poems, and this one speaks for itself distinct fully and, so, here you are.


Gratitude

Do not think I am not grateful for your small
kindness to me.
I like small kindnesses.
In fact I actually prefer them to the more
substantial kindness, that is always eying you
like a large animal on a rug,
until your whole life reduces
to nothing but waking up morning after morning
cramped, and the bright sun shining on its tusks.

                                               Louise Glück


Here is a little glimpse of process, and result ...  

------------------ 

Photo by ToniVC

brazenly squatting
on the tatami mat...
a frog

Issa 

translated by David G. Lanoue

   

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Forthcoming Issues and Joanne Kyger

Click image to enlarge

I'm currently working on, among other things, the new issues of Lilliput Review, #'s 169 and 170. Above is a sneak preview of the covers, by regulars Guy Beining, on the left, and Wayne Hogan, on the right. In a one person operation, the process can be quite drawn out. I hope to begin to get the contributor copies out first, in about two weeks or so, followed by the regular subscriber issues, coming out in waves beginning around the first of July. These days it takes me about 6 or so weeks to get the full run in the mail.

Why, you may ask? I often ask myself the same question.

The reason is I generally am replying to correspondence, poems and letters and all, and I always try to communicate in some normal, human way, as opposed to speaking editorese. I'm not always successful, in these as in many things in life, but I keep on trying. Simultaneously, I'm replying to the poetry batches I received, otherwise my 90 day turnaround would balloon to unconscionable lengths. And then there is that pesky full-time job.

Just so ya know.

My proofer remarked how this time round there was lots that grabbed her attention, going beyond her normal dispassionate demeanor (and the usual by-the-way-there's-about-a-thousand-typos-this-time, bonehead ... I added the bonehead, she's too discrete for that, but it is how I feel). So, hopefully, there's lots of good stuff to look forward to.

Ed Baker, always on the prowl for new, interesting items, passed along a link to new, free online poetry publications from ungovernable press: specifically, to Joanne Kyger's new poem, Permission by the Horns (this is a .pdf file). For those of you unfamiliar with Kyger, her work has been associated with the Beats and the general San Francisco poetry revival, strongly reflecting her Buddhist predelictions. Here is a photo of Kyger with Gary Snyder and Peter Orlovsky from a pilgrimage to India in the early 60's (photograph by Allen Ginsberg).


In addition to Permission by the Horns, which shows her unique balance, both literally and stylistically, of the personal, the political, and the natural, you may also read 10 (More) Lovely New Poems by Kyger at Michael Mcclure and Ray Manzarek's website (yes, that, Michael McClure and that Ray Manzarek).

This week's featured back issue of Lilliput Review is #26, from November 1991. It was a themed issue in that it had no theme; titled Poems Without Segues 1, it was a larger than usual issue (8.5 x 4", 8 pages total, jam packed with 45 poems), in a somewhat desperate attempt to deal with a back log. The "without segues" part was me throwing my hands in the air and just fitting everything in I could with a crowbar. Here's some samples, beginning with what may be may favorite Lilliput poem of the 1st 20 years, followed by one of Steve Richmond's demon haunted "gagaku" poems:

in a fold
of Balzac's coat
spider eggs

William Hart

-----------------------gagaku

-------accused of
---------------self indulgent narcissism
--------------------I
------------------admit it

demons clap
they like me honest

Steve Richmond

fall from grace

long way
to the bottom
I'll hold
your hand

Michael R. Battram

after the demons
have all gone...
bright moon

Issa
translated by David Lanoue

best,
Don

Monday Twitter Poem

   LIQUOR 

the I and the U 

   flickering

            Shawn Bowman

            from Lilliput Review, #169                         

"Sake for sale"
a sign on a wall...
spring rain

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,

Don

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Subscribe to Lilliput Review

                                                                                                 

Mary Frederick Ahern & Ramesh Anand: Wednesday Haiku, #122

Photo by Judy and Ed

requiem
the heavy heads
of peonies

Mary Frederick Ahearn

 Photo by Zenera

autumn sky
patches of twilight
in the falling leaf

Ramesh Anand

 Photo by Wang Qian

the peony falls
spilling out yesterday's
rain

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,

Don   

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John Samuel Tieman: Monday Twitter Poem

quiet after pain
has its own kind of silence
red leaves off a tree

John Samuel Tieman
   from Lilliput Review #169

into the sunken hearth
they're swept...
red leaves

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,

Don

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2nd Annual Bashô Haiku Challenge Winner

After weeks of working through nearly 500 haiku from 99 poets, I've made a final selection of 56 poems to be published in the 2010 2nd Annual Bashô Haiku Challenge chapbook. Though I received 3 times as many entries as last year, the task seemed a thousand times more daunting. I set no particular limit or had no particular length in mind for the chapbook, so the final selection represents only the highest quality of work I received. Last year's chapbook contained 25 haiku, making this year's over double the size. I would have been happy to publish another chap of the same size, but the quality of entries demanded a weightier book and I am even happier to oblige with that.


The winning poem comes from William Appel of Japan:

Leaf
falling off
the mountain

William Appel

I will let William's poem speak for itself, only saying that to evoke the entire macrocosm via one of its smallest components, in just 5 words, is a daunting accomplishment and the stuff of great haiku, indeed.

The five runner-up poems, each of which will receive a book from Jim Kacian's red moon press (page down a bit at this link for the titles), plus a 6 issue subscription to Lilliput Review and two copies of the chapbook upon publication, are as follows:




waiting for you --
the window changes
into a mirror

Jacek Margolak

Up the river –
a boat splits
the Milky Way

Eduard Tara

in and out
of the ambulance's wail
birdsong

Terry Ann Carter

standing among the aspens just one of the grove

Peter Newton

a cloudy night
only croaking of the tree frog
gives shape to the bush

Dubravko Korbus

Choosing these 6 poems among the 56 selected overall proved to be quite a challenge, so the title, Bashô Haiku Challenge, swings both ways, for the editor as well as the poets. I'd like to thank everyone who participated this year and say sincerely that, though the task was massive, it was well worth the effort. The work brought great joy, sadness, and the myriad gamut of emotions that move between.

Part 2 of the "daunting task" begins with the shipping out of the 6 prizes and 6 issue subscriptions to all 50 plus poets whose work will be included in the forthcoming chapbook. I anticipate publication of the 2nd Annual chap to be sometime mid-year 2010. I sincerely hope to get all of the new subscriptions out in the mail over the next 4 weeks. Since this happens to dovetail with the new issues going out to current subscribers, I'm not quite sure how I'm going to pull it all off. Bear with me, folks - all good things are worth the wait, as the cliché goes.

One last note for the moment about the contest; I'd like to particularly thank the online haiku community for embracing and promoting the challenge. The amount of international submissions I received (and accepted for the chapbook) was truly amazing. Thanks particularly to haiku societies in Australia, Canada, Croatia, and Great Britain and, I'm sure, others I wasn't even aware of that sent out notices about the challenge. Thanks, too, of course to all who submitted and the stateside folks, such as Jim Kacian at red moon press, that really gave the whole idea a nice lift. I'm sure I've forgotten someone but you get the idea: I am grateful, indeed.



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


The new issues, #'s 171 and 172, begin going out this week, contributors having just received their copies. With an additional 50+ copies to be printed, collated, folded, and stapled (see above), it will be awhile before they all get in the mail. I'm hoping to post the majority of them over the next 4 weeks, but chances are it may take a bit longer.

Ah, the price of success of a one-person operation.

This week's featured issue is #169, from July 2009. With next week's feature, almost all of the anthology issues from the last 20 years will have made been highlighted on the blog over the years. I've been thinking about what direction to go in future posts. More about that soon. Meanwhile, enjoy these highlights in their attempt to counter the darkness of the coming season:

A good poem
Should smell of tea,
earth or newly split wood.
A few words piled together
To make something of a hut.

Dennis Maloney

there was a time
when thinking of sunflowers
sunflowers appeared

Constance Campbell

My childhood flowered :: with a color I can't finish

Grant Hackett

Oh

rose
that blew
apart

Stephanie Hiteshaw

And the master's final word:





in autumn frost
lushly blooming again
roses of Sharon

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

Haiku North America Conference, Seattle 2011: a Few Thoughts

Artwork by Ruth Yarrow

Above you will see a fine drawing (plus conference badge) by the wonderful Ruth Yarrow which exemplifies in my mind the generous spirit of the participants at the 2011 Haiku North America Conference in Seattle.  Thanks, Ruth, for a fine likeness.

Being in Seattle for a week is the reason I've been keeping a low profile on the blog and elsewhere; I had done a few posts ahead, but was nowhere as together as my fellow haiku blogging panelists Melissa Allen, Gene Myers, and Fay Ayogi, at least two of whom were posting live from the conference (while I and my 10 thumbs were wrestling with a small HP notebook).

Photo by Johnny Baranski

And a little closer view of the panel on haiku blogging:

Photo by Sarah Myers

In addition to the haiku blogging panel, I participated on a panel called "Developing Haiku Book Manuscripts" with some serious heavyweights in small press haiku publishing: Jim Kacian, Ce Rosenow, and Charlie Trumbull.

Photo by Johnny Baranski

The perspective I added to both panels was the POV of a micropress publisher.  As a one person operation, everything, including blogging and manuscript development, is seen through the other end of the telescope.  I'm not sure how helpful that was for the audiences at both sessions but I can say I learned from my fellow panelists.

There was a nice balance between the practical and what might be termed the academic.  Even on the later end of things, Richard Gilbert in the conference's most scholarly presentation ("Social Consciousness and the Poet's Stance in 21st Century" - the 1st William J. Higginson Memorial Lecture) was so well grounded in the history and tenets of haiku, as well as the sensibility of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa where he studied, that one never got lost in the morass of ephemera.   He was engaging, knowledgeable, and obviously an all round good guy.

There were so many excellent panels and presentations that there were the usual conference schedule conflicts (an embarrassment of goodness) and I wasn't able to attend some I would have liked to.  Highlights that I was able to catch included Jim Kacian on the history of the one-line haiku ("Monophilia"), Cor van den Heuvel's powerful reading from his new book, A Boy's Seasons: Haibun Memoirs,  Carlos "The King" Colon on concrete haiku and poetry, and Eve Luckring's phantasmagorical video renku (with a tip of the hat to Sergei Eisenstein and the avant garde).  Day 3 was packed with great presentations: the year's memorial reading for those who died by Marjorie Buettner was memorable, and Daivd Lanoue's "Frogs and Poets" on Issa was my favorite of the conference, balancing as it did whimsy and scholarship in just the right proportion. The final day also saw Paul Miller give a provocative talk on Gendai (modern) Haiku in the West and the delightful "Old Pond Haiku Comics" by Jessica Tremblay (whose weekly postings I will be following with great interest) was just the perfect way to cap things.

I was sorry to miss Charles Trumbull's "History of American Haiku" and Penny Harter's session on haibun, the later because of a conflict and the former because we had to be up at 3 am for the return flight.  Between the two panels I was on and the various sessions I attended, I also gave two brief readings (one open and one for poets with new haiku books) and helped judge a kukai contest among participants along with Carmen Sterba.

Lots to think about, lots to absorb, and lots to just plain enjoy.  In off time, I traipsed about Seattle with my mate and friends, hitting the bookstores, restaurants, museums and bars and having an overall great time.  I'd like to particularly thank Michael Dylan Welch, Tanya McDonald, and Tracy Koretsky for their kindness and organizational acumen, along with Susan Diridoni, Gene Myers, Melissa Allen and Cherie Hunter Day for variously pleasant conversations, lunch, and camaraderie.

Finally, for those of you who didn't get to delight in this particular piece of cheese (on Facebook), well, here you go:

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


This week's poem, from the Lilliput archive comes from#169, July 2009, is more than a little bit of wonder.  Enjoy.

     All of This, and Being Too

Flowering now of now, splayed flat
by winds of specificity,

what comes forth in this blossomed
gust is not regret, not sorrow.

What comes forth when the battered
leaves of nakedness curl downward,

flowering now of now, is you,
is your steady, petalled comingness.

        Diane O'Leary

with one gust
it becomes the perfect
willow

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

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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.


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

Photo by Aftab

pond snails sing
they're in the kettle
but don't know it

Issa 

translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don   

PS. Get 2 free issues. Get 2 more free issues

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