Returning After a Word from Our Sponser - Henry David Thoreau

Back after 5 days without Internet and phones. Spent some time reading Thoreau's Walden, which explains everything you need to know about the Internet.

Not sure if the regular post will make it up today. Perhaps tomorrow.

More soon.

not missing
the spring rain's blessing...
blades of grass

Issa
translated by David Lanoue

best,
Don

"I see young men, my townsmen, whose misfortune it is to have
inherited farms, houses, barns, cattle, and farming tools; for these
are more easily acquired than got rid of. Better if they had been
born in the open pasture and suckled by a wolf, that they might
have seen with clearer eyes what field they were called to labor
in. Who made them serfs of the soil? Why should they eat their
sixty acres, when man is condemned to eat only his peck of dirt?
Why should they begin digging their graves as soon as they are
born? They have got to live a man's life, pushing all these things
before them, and get on as well as they can. How many a poor
immortal soul have I met well-nigh crushed and smothered
under its load, creeping down the road of life, pushing before it
a barn seventy-five feet by forty, its Augean stables never
cleansed, and one hundred acres of land, tillage, mowing,
pasture, and woodlot! The portionless, who struggle with no
such unnecessary inherited encumbrances, find it labor enough
to subdue and cultivate a few cubic feet of flesh."

- Henry David Thoreau

Robert Hass Reads Issa, Thoreau Grinds Away & Damned Baseball Haiku

Cover by John Bennett

Ran across a number of interesting pieces this week, including a video of Robert Hass reading Issa haiku at the Geraldine Dodge Poetry Festival. This short reading (less than 2 minutes) of 9 poems perfectly captures the playfulness and humor that endears Issa to so many. In addition, it a a model of how to perform haiku, no easy task. It misses the immense sadness of Issa, the other dimension that contributes to his immortality, but that was not the point of this reading as may be readily seen. This reading is part of a larger series entitled Poetry Everywhere, which includes such poets as Charles Simic, Lucille Clifton, Sharon Olds, and Robert Frost.

Fine, fine stuff. I've made it a permanent link in the Issa section of the sidebar.

In Monday's post, I mentioned The Blog of Henry David Thoreau; here is another gem from that journal, entitled Grinding Away.

Mary Karr has recently taken over the Poet's Choice column in the Washington Post and it has taken me a little time to warm up to her style and tastes. A recent post in which she began by admitting she never liked Emily Dickinson did the trick; she mentioned the anecdote that has long been making the rounds that you can sing almost any Dickinson poem to the tune of "The Yellow Rose of Texas." Try it with Because I could not stop for Death.

Hmn.

Her latest column takes on something I just can 't abide: baseball haiku. It's not the fault of the haiku; I can't stand baseball fiction, baseball short stories etc. (n.b.: I am a big baseball fan). However, in her column covering the recent publication of Baseball Haiku: American and Japanese Haiku and Senryu on Baseball, she quotes the work of George Swede, among others. Congratulations to George, one of our finest purveyors of the haiku form. He ably proves why in the two poems quoted in the article:


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empty baseball field
a dandelion seed floats through
the strike zone

video ball game
through knotholes in the old fence
evening sunbeams

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Now, there are a couple of baseball haiku that even I like. The first is simply perfect and the use of the single word "evening" in the second has me on my back waiting for my tummy to be scratched (and you thought you could never really please an editor).

This week's selection of poems from a past issue of Lilliput Review takes us back to #89, July 1997. As the summer season begins, here are a couple of seasonal works from back then:


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Tentative Summation

A poem is ocean -
without shore.

Tim Scannell

in my hand--
the rock smoothed
by part of the Pacific Ocean

Gary Hotham

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And two by the late Joseph Semenovich:


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narcissi

i present
whoever i am
both subject and object

and just like narcissus
how unlucky can you get
the pond became

the verb
he drowned
himself in

my step-father's paintings

the black rocks
the green frothy water breaking over them
the sky pulled apart like the innards of a pillow
one screaming gull

outside
the heavy trucks/the grinding
gears/the chug-a-lug
the way the world

is

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best,
Don


Note: If you would like to receive the two current issues of Lilliput Review free (or have your current subscription extended two issues), just make a suggestion of a title or titles for the Near Perfect Books page.

Baudelaire (& Thoreau) for a Lazy Monday Afternoon

Here's a little something for a lazy Monday afternoon:

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The Sky
Where'er he be, on water or on land,
---Under pale suns or climes that flames enfold;
One of Christ's own, or of Cythera's band,
---Shadowy beggar or Croesus rich with gold;

Citizen, peasant, student, tramp; whate'er
---His little brain may be, alive or dead;
Man knows the fear of mystery everywhere,
---And peeps, with trembling glances, overhead.

The heaven above! A strangling cavern wall;
The lighted ceiling of a music hall
Where every actor treads a bloody soil ―

The hermit's hope; the terror of the sot;
The sky: the black lid of the mighty pot
---Where the vast human generations boil!

---------------------------------------translated by James Huneker

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In addition to Mr. B's usual take on all things mundane, check out Magnapoets Japanese Form: there is some real high quality short work being done there. I've put a permanent link along the sidebar under blogs.

If you always wanted to see nature through the eyes of Henry David Thoreau and just haven't found the time, check out the May 18th posting on The Blog of Henry David Thoreau; it perfectly captures what's happening just outside many of our windows right now.

And if you don't believe me, just get out there and look!

best,
Don