Renku Sessions

The Renku Sessions: Triparshva—side 1 finished, on to side 2

renku_300

Welcome to the third Renku Session. I’m Linda Papanicolaou, and I’ll be leading this journey in collaborative poetry. Triparshva is a 22-verse form developed by Norman Darlington in 2005. It’s a good form for composing online because it moves more quickly than the 36-verse kasen, while also following the jo-ha-kyu (beginning-development-rapid closure) pattern of traditional renku. So whether you’re new to renku, or simply want to keep your skills honed, you’re especially encouraged to join us.

 

Our Renku to Date:

I hope this isn’t going to sow confusion, but I’m going to select and place two verses this week. With this post, we’ll be moving from placing verse 6, through placing a verse 7, to a call for verse 8.

 

I.  Placing Verse 6:

Thank you everyone who contributed to discussion on the thread. Linking to Paul’s loggerhead turtle was a little tricky because turtle nesting occurs widely throughout the world but it’s not a specific kigo in the saijiki where it may easily be looked up.  We’ve learned that turtle nesting occurs at different dates depending on latitude, but generally correlates with the warming temperatures of late spring in temperate zones. That meant that that eligible verses would have to signify “late spring”, or generically “all spring”.

The verse I’ll place in this 6th slot is Maria Tomczak’s:

with the twittering
morning mist clears away

“Twitter” and “mist” are each in the saijiki, but I follow what Bill Higginson has written in Haiku World, that “double kigo” isn’t a flaw if the two references don’t contradict each other, aren’t redundant, and one is stronger so it controls the verse (reprinted online at WKD).  That’s the case here.  Both are all-spring and they come together as a beautiful image of birds chattering as the morning warms up. The language is simple, the linking subtle.  The “twittering” of birds is a nesting behavior; thus it links to the turtle via a different animal topic. I also see the clearing mist as an echo of the moon verse—hazy moon (oborotsuki) being a classic spring moon kigo. Decisive in its all-spring imagery, I think this is just what we need in the slot.  Plus, it’s a clearing mist. It brings a nice closure to the jo and “clears away”  in preparation for the next side.

Eiko Yachimoto has said that a renku should be “a world we can enter into.”  I’m pleased to say, I think we’ve done that with our newly completed jo:

Side 1: Jo

a bowl of cherries
sitting on each white plate
someone’s name
~Lynne Rees /su

under a canvas tent
the snap of a breeze
~Barbara Kaufmann /su

passersby stop
to applaud a subway
saxophone player
~Karen Cesar / ns

sweet reminiscences
of our bygone days
~Barbara A. Taylor / ns

yet again
the moon lights the loggerhead
as she digs
~Paul MacNeil / sp mn

with the twittering
morning mist clears away
~Maria Tomczak / sp

 

II. Commencing the ha side, placing verse 7:

The ha side will consist of a run of non-season verses, a run of love verses,  two seasons, winter and autumn, and our second moon verse. I’ve put the full schema, with verses to date, on my Introduction to Triparshva post.  Recalling to that comparison of jo-ha-kyu to a party, the ha is where things warm up, and all kinds of topics that weren’t appropriate for the jo now come into play:  politics, current events, war, death, illness, religion, philosophy, literary allusion, foreign travel, word play, proper nouns as names and place names. . .

As many of you have participated in the kasen and junicho here at THF, you’ll know that kasen have two ha sides of 12 verses each (“development” and “intensification”), while junicho is single-sided but  with middle verses in ha mode.  Our three-sided triparshva falls in between.  We have one ha side of 10 verses.  It may not allow us to develop as fully as a kasen, but we can make it roughly equivalent to the second ha of a kasen (intensification). As Norman Darlington envisioned the triparshva form, the ha should be a side of “forceful writing”.

Verse 7 links from verse 6 while also articulating that we’ve entered a new and different phase in the renku. I have not issued a call for verse 7 because we already have in hand a verse that is perfect for the slot and I’m going to go ahead and place it: Carmen Sterba’s Puyallup natives verse, which was originally offered for the daisan.  Here is how it sits with maeku and uchikoshi:

yet again
the moon lights the loggerhead
as she digs
~Paul

with the twittering
morning mist clears away
~Maria

from the mountain top
Puyallup natives trace
their lands below
~Carmen

It is a 3-line, non-seasonal person verse, which is what we need for the slot. The proper noun also signals ha.  And it links beautifully.  From the uchikoshi to the maeku, the clearing mist turns from a coastal fog to a valey fog and we’re looking down on it from the mountaintop.  A noble image of native Americans?   Look deeper and you’ll see both darkness and irony: Googling the Puyallup, I learned something of their history, including that these lands are an urbanized area around Tacoma, Washington, and the tribe’s main source of income is gaming.

Does this give everyone ideas for links?

 

III. Call for Verse 8:

Thanks to both Maria and Carmen, and to everyone else who offered ideas.  Now, to the business at hand. Here are the maeku and uchikoshi for verse 8:

with the twittering
morning mist clears away

from the mountain top
Puyallup natives trace
their lands below

Specifications for verse 8 are as follows:

  • 2 lines
  • Non-seasonal
  • A person verse
  • Link to the maeku; shift from the uchikoshi.
  • It goes without saying at this point that we also avoid imagery from the hokku
  • No animals! We’ve just had two verses in that topic category and have reached our limit for the time being.
  • Do be bold in your linking and build your verses on topics or imagery that clearly signal ha.

 

How to Submit:

All verse positions in this renku will be degachi. Please post your offers in the Comments section below. Let’s have an upper limit of 3 per participant.

The call for verse 4 will remain open until Monday, August  10, 2015 at midnight (EDT).  At that time I’ll collect everyone’s ideas, consider each, choose the one that best serves the renku, and post a call for the next verse on Thursday.

 

Useful links and resources:  

  • If you’re just joining us, please take a moment to review my Introduction to Triparshva post.
  • NEW:  A full copy of the schema for the renku may be found at the bottom of the introductory page. I am filling in the verses as they are placed.
  • For the archive of previous calls and submissions, click here.

 

 

This Post Has 50 Comments

  1. with the twittering
    morning mist clears away
    ~Maria Tomczak / sp
    —
    from the mountain top
    Puyallup natives trace
    their lands below
    ~Carmen Sterba / ns
    —
    pop-up wallabies
    advertise the steakhouse
    —

    – Lorin

  3. sorry..last minute change (too many “the’s” in a row)

    please revise to:

    a Haida’s monopoly
    on argillite from Slatechuk Creek

  5. with the twittering
    morning mist clears away
    **

    from the mountain top
    Puyallup natives trace
    their lands below

    **
    the papyrus goddess
    portrayed with pubic hair

    – Sandra Simpson

  6. with the twittering
    morning mist clears away
    **

    from the mountain top
    Puyallup natives trace
    their lands below

    **

    riding the Tube
    from day into night
    **
    – Sandra Simpson

    Tube = London underground

  7. with the twittering
    morning mist clears away
    **

    from the mountain top
    Puyallup natives trace
    their lands below

    **

    unable to see the face
    beneath ta moko

    ta moko = Maori cultural tattoo

    – Sandra Simpson

  9. pew-pew says the boy
    with the toy gun
    **
    “Pew! Pew!” says the boy
    with the toy gun
    **
    **
    Wasn’t sure if all that punctuation would work so I offer two versions of this for my 2nd & 3rd submissions.

  12. A bit more that a friend sent me about the Puyallup:
    .
    “Urban culture and casinos are aspects of the Puyallup people’s current reality, not their history.The tribe originally spoke the Puyallup Nisqually tongue of the Salishan family of languages spoken among the Northwest Coast original peoples. Salmon was the main food and an important object of veneration in Puyallup ceremonies. The Western red cedar was used extensively for shelter, clothing, and basketry. The Puyallup people were fishers, gatherers, and hunters. They inhabited permanent dwellings along the banks of the Nisqually River.”
    .
    This and knowing that full-blooded Puyallup are a small minority of the people who live within the most urbanized reservation in the US, dependent on gaming for tribal income–well, for me, Carmen’s verse was a lamentation. I tried not to say too much because I didn’t want to control the responses, but I am glad/relieved that other people saw this dark quality in it too.

    1. Thank you for sharing this, Linda, and for pointing to the dark side…that being genocide.

      1. Colonialism, dispossession and loss of a way of life as well as yes, genocide.
        .
        Have you read any of Sherman Alexie’s writings?

        1. The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven…his hilarious movie Smoke Signals is based on that 🙂

  13. an inspired choice of verses!
    —
    with the twittering
    morning mist clears away
    .
    from the mountain top
    Puyallup natives trace
    their lands below
    ***
    lord Greystoke stands proud
    in his loincloth
    –
    who left the doors open
    to Valhalla?

  14. Congratulations, Maria & Carmen. Wonderful verses! 🙂
    *
    an ace of diamonds
    hidden in his pocket
    *
    Lone Ranger’s lasso
    to the highest bidder
    *
    belly up
    a mom and pop shop

  16. from the mountain top
    Puyallup natives trace
    their lands below
    *
    the ignorant man builds
    a higher longer wall

    *
    pressing too hard
    lead breaks on her pencil

    *
    with pointed gun the dentist
    finds his trophy

  17. Linda-san, yes, please enjoy The Glass Bead Game. The novels of Hermann Hesse have been a major influence in my life.

    -Patrick

  19. with the twittering
    morning mist clears away
    ~Maria
    —
    from the mountain top
    Puyallup natives trace
    their lands below
    ~Carmen
    —
    the castle of bureaucrats
    then his Czech-mate
    —
    Lorin

    1. revision:

      with the twittering
      morning mist clears away
      ~Maria
      —
      from the mountain top
      Puyallup natives trace
      their lands below
      ~Carmen
      —
      the castling of bureaucrats
      then his Czech-mate
      —
      Lorin

      1. This one is too ‘clever’, quite probably in either version, and also might be too obscure for many.

        But here are my intended allusions:
        —

        ‘The Castle’ by Franz Kafka
        —

        All the work of Milan Kundera (a Czech)

        —

        (who places himself in the line of modern novelists from Kafka) , including the important 2005 essays on the novel, ‘The Curtain’, as well as his own novels, I’m rereading the fifth & final translation of the first novel, ‘The Joke’, currently.
        —
        – Lorin

        1. Thanks. Good to have another literary reference in the offers.
          .
          Literary references do often seem to come with the need to annotate, don’t they?. In the 19th century here in the US, you could quote the King James Bible and everyone got it, top to bottom of society. Those days are gone.
          .
          My own rule of thumb is that if you plug the words into Google and get an explanation near the top of the first page of hits, it’s okay. Patrick’s iChing/Magister Ludis came back right at the top. “Castle” and “Czech” gave me a page of Prague and other famous castles in the Czech republic. Refining the search to ‘bureaucrats” and “castle” got me Kafka. Not sure how I’d modify the search terms to pull up Kundera: “Kafka” and “Czech mate” pulls up a reference to Kafka and Shakespeare 🙁 .
          .
          Another rule of thumb is to know your intended readership–if most people will get the reference, go for it, though I think it’s also a good idea to craft the verse so it will work even if the reference is missed. Even if one didn’t get any of the associations to the Hesse novel in Patrick’s verse, there are parallels between “tracing their lands” and “casting the hexagon”–both about reading patterns on a surface. Thinking now how I’d read yours without factoring the literary assocations–a city street grid to a chess board, maybe?
          .
          Of course in both cases it’s a superficial reading that misses deeper meaning. Hmm. You’ve raised some interesting issues.

          1. Hi Linda, I do think this one is too obscure. The linkage is weak on a visual level. But to your query:

            “Thinking now how I’d read yours without factoring the literary assocations–a city street grid to a chess board, maybe?” – Linda

            Yes, that’s a possibility on the visual level. Also, a castle and a mountain are ‘high places’.

            The link was intended is both literary and political. How do big nations take away small nations? It doesn’t matter if it’s colonial (as in the European takeover of what is now the USA, or Australia) or post-colonial (as in the successive Nazi and Soviet takeovers of smaller European nations in the 20th century)
            —
            But it lacks clarity, and I’m aware of that.

            I probably wrote it because I’m reading Kundera again at the moment ( a bit of relief and expansion after reading haiku & related) & someone mentioned Czechs … it was a spontaneous association, but elusive to explain without writing a thesis! 🙂
            —

            I could say that in the strategies of kings, governments war leaders etc. that native peoples have been displaced and dispossessed the world over. ‘Lament’ is only one side of it. Why am I, with an English name, born in Australia? Why are you, with a Greek name, in America? Carmen, with a Czech name …?etc. etc. etc.
            —
            The future seems to be post-nationalism altogether.
            —

            – Lorin

          2. Yes, exactly–except that my birth name was English and I married Greek, in America 🙂

            My own summer reading was finally getting around to The Grapes of Wrath, so dispossession has been on my mind, too.

  20. with the twittering
    morning mist clears away
    ~Maria
    —
    from the mountain top
    Puyallup natives trace
    their lands below
    ~Carmen
    —
    Wollemi Pine, before
    the idea of theirs and mine
    —

    Lorin

  21. Maria and Carmen, you are hard acts to follow!!! Well done!
    ☆
    with the twittering
    the morning clears away
    — Maria Tomczak
    ~~~
    from the mountain top
    Puyallup natives trace
    their lands below
    — Carmen Sterba
    ~~~
    a Donald trumps out
    the self-made man
    — Betty Shropshire

  22. cursing I stumble home
    with empty pockets
    —
    oppressors claiming they
    are victims of destiny
    —
    unanswered prayers hidden
    under his tattered mattress

  29. Linda, thank you for picking my verse, I’m honored.
    Carmen’s verse is lovely.

    1. Maria, your verse is full of sounds and atmosphere!
      It was so clever of Linda to put our two verses together
      so quicky.

      You have a Slavic name like I do. Where did your family
      originally come from? My Czech relatives made it to the
      U.S. in 1908.

      1. Thank you, Carmen.
        I was born and live in Poland close to Czech Republic border 🙂

  30. with the twittering
    morning mist clears away
    ~Maria
    *
    from the mountain top
    Puyallup natives trace
    their lands below
    ~Carmen
    *
    *
    selfie sticks now banned
    at the Colosseum
    *
    *
    the GOP gears up
    for a war of words
    *
    *
    politically incorrect to say
    ALL lives matter
    ~Katherine

    1. or for grammar’s sake, ought it be:
      *
      selfie sticks now banned
      from the Colosseum

      1. Don’t know why that appears in 3 lines. Perhaps just the small screen of my mobile device? In any event, the first line ends with *banned*.

        1. It’s the small screen–I was having to keep up with things on my iPhone this last week and found the same problem. But back on my computer, your lineation is fine.
          .

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