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

Roberta Beary: Pittsburgh Reading, April 24th

http://lilliputreview.tumblr.com/post/116477064195/for-those-in-the-pittsburgh-area-one-week-from

Cid Corman: Yet

I have fond memories of my correspondence with Cid Corman over the years: a generous man, a resonant poet, and an insightful master of life's great mystery.

If you don't know what that great mystery is, pick up a collection of Cid's work and you'll soon find out. You'll find no obfuscating there.

My friends at the local used and rare bookshop, Caliban Books, know something of my tastes and so, one day a year or two back when I stepped in, they handed me the little volume, pictured above, that they had put aside for me when it came in.

And I've been meaning to write about it ever since. 

A tiny little volume that fits nicely in the palm of your hand, yet was published in an edition of 500 copies by Elizabeth Press in New Rochelle, NY, in March 1974, finely stitched as you can see above. It contains 18 poems, if you count the dedication and coda pieces, which I do. And they are little gems, these 18 poems. As an example:



Cicadas
cling 
to what

there is
to 
cling to too



There's that mystery, right out of the gate. The final "too" breaks through to where the poem was destined to go, in the process carrying the full weight of its meaning. I thought immediately of Master Bashō's poem about a cricket:


How solitary it is!
Hanging on a nail -
a cricket


And another from Cid:


Shaken
is the bell of silence

Transparent
body
transparent

emptiness
listening
unquenched



Each word, precisely chosen, precisely placed.  Precise.

Here is a little something a bit unusual for Cid, and beautiful:


Beautiflies
and bizzies
making their

curious
approaches
to what stands

up to them
as part of
their pursuit


No, those aren't typos in the 1st and 2nd lines. No typos at all.


From bamboo
flask into
bamboo cup

emptiness
the source of
drunkenness


Though this has little to do with haiku and syllable count, if you look (and listen) closely you will see that Cid's precision is not by any means limited to meaning and particular word selection.

I believe you've got it now. My friends at Caliban are special. A tip o' the hat their way. 

Though a limited edition, as mentioned above, there are 9 copies available through abebooks, most of them in fine condition, ranging with shipping from 13 to 40 dollars, all waiting like a beautifly to settle perfectly in the palm of your hand. There's a couple available via amazon, too, but not in as good a condition, so I'll let you find them yourself.

~~~~~

Butterfly and wisteria by Anonymous

on the flower pot
does the butterfly, too

hear Buddha's promise?

Issa
trans. by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

PS  Click to learn how to contribute to Wednesday Haiku  

Braided Creek: A Conversation in Poetry

As with most things in life, anonymity might be a strength or a weakness, an act of courage or an act of cowardice.

Yet, away from the (real) world of social interaction, we are all anonymous, no? What, after all, is this grand seeking of self if not an anonymous light revealing, however briefly, if we are lucky, the all, the Oversoul.

Yes, you're right, this is a strange way to begin a meditation on a simple book of brief poems but there you are. Perhaps it will be something of a brief light itself.

Braided Creek: A Conversation in Poetry is an anonymous act of formidable courage, a shining of a dual light on one shared thing.

The book's genesis grew out of a long-time correspondence between two friends, two fellow poets. When a life event of some magnitude intruded on their lives, a spark was lit between these two friends which resulted in a lyrical exchange of brief resonant poems.

The poems in Braided Creek are printed without attribution: who wrote what is unknown.

So, friend, we might ask why should we care if the poets themselves didn't bother to sign their individual pieces?  The answer, of course, is precisely for that reason: in their anonymity we, the readers, are brought close, so very close to the source of things in the precision of the words themselves. As the poets efface ego, obliterate personality, with a wink and a nod, before us we can see the work become the Thing itself.

Turtle has just one plan
at a time, and every cell
buys into it.

 

No, this isn't haiku but its essence is pure, the essence of pure haiku, purer than the vast majority of what passes for that form today. 

Not necessarily better, but purer.

The brown stumps
of my old teeth
don't send up shoots
in spring.

Indeed, they don't, but they send up something else, do they not? Why, it takes seed right there, right there in your mind, in the very moment.

So much to live for.
Each rope rings
a different bell.

This reminds me of a lesson Joseph Campbell used to use to illustrate a fundamental concept of Buddhism and Hinduism, or the Oversoul or the Atman or whatever we are calling it this week.

In the classroom, Campbell would point to the light fixtures. We are each all as individual bulbs, our own little lights shining. And here on the wall is the switch.

And what, friend, is electricity, the energy? 

The crumpled candy wrapper
is just another flower
to the rain. 

The reader can sense how very close we are to the thing itself. Ask Cid Corman: is this is a haiku or not, if a thought like that matters at all.

I can hear him now ...

In the electric chair's harness,
one man hauls all the darkness.

I don't know what this means, per se, but I sense, I feel what it is saying, all the way to the tiny hairs on the neck of my soul.

Nothing to do.
Nowhere to go.
The moth has just drowned
in the whiskey glass.
This is heaven.

Oh, my, yes it is. Deny it at your own peril. 

I could go on and on, example after unsigned example - there are 4 poems per page in Braided Creek and there are 86 pages. These are brief, swift arrows aimed at the heart of things.

This is a perfect book to tuck in your bag, carry to the park, read at the bus stop - a bit of mobile revelation, you bring the electricity. What, you need to sit 20 minutes a day for the rest of your lives, you say, for a bit of the promised satori? Take a couple of these at the park or the bus stop, sitting in the dentist's office, or just upon rising in the morning or reclining in the evening. 

Why not? After everything, what else might you have to lose?

Today a pink rose in a vase
on the table.
Tomorrow, petals.

best,
Don

PS Get Braided Creek from an independent bookseller. Or a boxless mega-giant. One thing I can say - it was the best book I read in 2014 and I read a parcel of good books.

just touching
the cherry blossom petals
brings tears

                    Issa
                    translated by David G. Lanoue

Photo by Macao

 PPS  Click to learn how to contribute to Wednesday Haiku
 

John Martone: Bheid - Small Press Sunday

At once a book of ideas and a book of practicalities, bheid, by John Martone, illustrates how one of the finest writers in the short form continues to push boundaries.

There is a narrative of sorts about building: building a boat, a house, a tree, a body, a dream. These are poems of correspondences, parallels between 'the real' and the contemplative. 

If you could build an abstraction with a two by four, John Martone would be your man. Not that this is what John Martone is about - he decidedly is not.

But he could be if he wanted to.

In some ways, I feel frankly out of my depth here and so simply will let the work wash over me (again and again and again) and take in what I might. bheid, the word, John notes as proto-Indo-European, meaning to split open (as a tree), and being a root word for the English boat.

There is much to do among titles and the bodies of the poems, some standing away, some at one with the work. The poems are challenging in their very openness, and herein is the boundary pushing. 

This is 50 plus pages of brief poetry well-worth connecting to. Here are 4 pieces I keep returning to:

one sheet 
paper

one sheet
plywood

taking 
yr time

even
a tree's
dead 

cells
conduct
water 

bubble-level 

    we're all adrift

not
from here

how 
nothing 
is



You can purchase Bheid for $7 at this site. If you'd like to sample it first, you can read it in its entirety here, because John is so incredibly generous.

Speaking of generosity and sharing, you can get another kind of glimpse at John and what moves him via this incredible youtube video, which he shared via email recently, about a woman living on her own in the Siberian wild. It is entitled Surviving in the Wilderness, and here it is in its entirety, 36 minutes in all. 



It says all there is to say about human beings living on the planet, giving a greater context for what it is we do everyday. Don't miss it.

And thanks, John.  For everything.

(For those wishing to know more about the lives of Agafia and her incredible family, there is a full length out-of-print book (and out of reach in the rare books market, price-wise) readily available through our national library interloan system.

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

Photo by Lisa Olonynko

nothing at all
but a calm heart
and cool air

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   

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Go to the LitRock web site for a list of all 169 songs