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Hi Alan,

John Bird did such a lot, pulling in everyone he could find who was writing haiku at the time. Of course he was smart enough to ask Jan Bostok to co-edit the 'First Australian Haiku Anthology'. His great hope was to inspire " a sense of collegiate" among Australian haiku writers. He also realised that Australian haiku needed an internet presence before anyone else did.

(Of course, I wasn't around at the time. I only began with haiku very late in 2004, and was first published, as far as haiku goes, in 2005)

I'm a dreamer, like John. My hope is to follow in his footsteps, in whatever small ways I can.

- Lorin

Sorry to have duplicated your reference to Presence, Alan. To be quite honest, I didn't get beyond reading your "As a foundation member of the Australian Haiku Society...etc. etc."

I know that you were, of course, and I also know precisely how the AHS/HaikuOz came about as John Bird's second step after the First Australian Haiku Anthology (which I succeeded in getting a link to up on HaikuOz, where it should always have been, in an accessible place last year) You'll find it, if you haven't already, under 'Haiku- History in Australia'.

- Lorin

Quote from: Mark Harris on February 03, 2011, 07:55:49 PM

Tantalus?

Not sure if there are any Greeks in his family tree or not, Mark.  :) Ya never know, though.

- Lorin

... t'wouldn't be fair if I told, would it?  :-X

- Lorin

Quote from: Mark Harris on January 25, 2011, 08:55:00 PM
One of these poems is translated and one not. Despite David's efforts, I worry my ignorance of Spanish might handicap Senegal in this match-up, and that makes comparison difficult for me.

Senegal's is almost motionless, a meditation and foretelling. Has a loved one died? The implication is there, I think, for the reasons Lorin gave.

Someone will be coming on here, when the registration process is finished, with an interesting and important detail which might answer your question, here, Mark.  8)

- Lorin

Hi Mary,
          Whilst I don't personally know the answer to your question about Spanish-language haiku, I'll lay odds on that Charles Trumball, editor of Modern Haiku does.  :) There is quite a community of Spanish-language  haiku writers in Brazil, for example, and part III of his essay, One Hundred Bridges, One Hundred Traditions in Haiku is 'The Haiku Bridge to Brazil'. It's published in the current issue of Modern Haiku.

Why not write to Charles and ask him about Spanish-language associations or societies?

You might also write to Anatoly Kudryavitsky, the editor of Shamrock Haiku Journal, as he has contact with many European groups and haiku writers. English versions of Spanish haiku are featured in Issue #13, as well as a short essay about haiku in Spain by Susan Benet in which she mentions "Asociación Valenciana de Haiku" and the "Asociación de la Gente del Haiku en Albacete" (AGHA).

http://shamrockhaiku.webs.com/shamrockno13.htm

To your first question, it isn't clear to me that you're asking about Spanish-language journals, though in context of your second, you might be. You mention Frogpond, Modern Haiku, Heron's Nest, Acorn, Dim Sum, which are all quality journals indeed, and all USA journals with editors who are USA citizens.

The British print journal I'd recommend is Presence (editor, Martin Lucas)

http://haiku-presence.50webs.com/

The international English-language on-line journal I'd recommend is Notes From the Gean (haiku editor, Lorin Ford)

http://www.geantree.com/indexcover.html

Read through the current issue and the archived issues and judge for yourself. The 8th issue will go online on March 1st (it has never been late, over the course of 7 issues to date) and submissions are open currently and until the deadline of March 30th for the June issue.

cheers,
-Lorin

ninety-three degrees—
a tree by the riverbank
in diving position

Hi Josie,
             To answer your question about which to use in writing, words or numerals: you do have a choice. But more important, whichever way you choose, is that you make it clear what sort of degrees you mean: what are the degrees a measurement of? A circle has 360 degrees. Turning ninety-three degrees would be turning a little over a quarter of a circle.  Now I gather that you mean that the temperature is ninety-three degrees, not that you or the tree turned ninety-three degrees.

To indicate this in numerals the usual thing is to write 93° followed by the letter for the system of temperature measurement used .

I'm guessing that you live in the USA, one of the few countries that didn't adopt the Celsius table for temperatures, since if it were 93°C the tree would probably be on fire. So if you chose numerals you'd have it: 93°F. If you choose to use words it'd be 'ninety-three degrees Fahrenheit'. Now, that's looking a bit long for the first line of a haiku, isn't it?

To do the symbol ◦ in Word, just go to insert  , then to symbol in the drop-down menu, find it and click on it. Then you can size it as you like. How to do it on here, I haven't got a clue! Cut & paste from a wikipedia thingo on temperatures is what I've done so far in this post

I actually have a poem (not a haiku) published, in a reputable print journal, with the title: Lamentation at 45 °C . .. written just like that.

Hope this is helpful.

- Lorin              

Quote from: John Carley on February 02, 2011, 06:26:54 AM

QuoteThe whole issue is a caution against cultural insularity - Lorin

Yeah, or cultural misappropriation. The risk of parody here is pressing; I'm not sure how anyone who is not fluent in Bogush can claim intimate familiarity with Bogushetti iconography. Put another way: why is Borat funny?

But treading on eggshells aside, I'm not sure how hon'i squares with fuga no makoto.

Best wishes, John

Yep, both cultural insularity and cultural misappropriation.

There seem to be so many takes on what fuga no makoto means, though. as I look around the web. It seems to be made to fit with hon'i by some, and seems to contradict it in the view of others. Very slippery! My head spins.

- Lorin

Quote from: Alan Summers on February 02, 2011, 05:18:16 PM

Quote

- Lorin

- Lorin

Is this like New York, New York, it's so fine they named it twice? <grin>

Alan

...just me & my shadow  :)

Quote from: Mark Harris on February 02, 2011, 03:45:41 PM
I'll be in the basement mixing up the medicine...

;D  8)

- L

Quote from: Alan Summers on February 02, 2011, 08:42:17 AM

Quote from: Lorin on February 01, 2011, 08:50:47 PM

Quote from: Alan Summers on February 01, 2011, 06:46:43 PM
Reading all the comments I'm pleased that Fay's haiku not only compares favourably with Umberto Senegal's poem, but shows us the power, depth, and uniqueness of Japanese kigo, and why it's such a useful tool.

I don't say "useful tool" lightly, as I know it's been called the soul of haiku, but to emphasise that although the haiku may be difficult to read along the vertical axis, it's a rewarding and purposeful process.

As much as I admire Umberto Senegal's haiku, my vote in a head to head such as this, is to Fay's haiku.

Alan

Kigo is certainly the 'group soul' of Japanese haiku (or arguably so, anyway) but am I reading you right, Alan, that you mean that kigo and the associated hon'i (the part of kigo I suspected was there but have only very recently confirmed and begun to understand) is a "useful tool" for EL haiku? If so, could you please explain this view in more detail?

Or do you simply mean that knowing kigo and the associated hon'i is essential for anyone who wants to read Japanese haiku? I'd tend to agree with you there, since this haiku seems to fall into place quite easily as a perfectly traditional Japanese haiku once one understands the hon'i.

Yet, as Peter mentions, it was written in English (one assumes) as an EL haiku for EL haiku audience. Or maybe it wasn't.


- Lorin

Yes, Fay would have written it in English first, unlike Dhugal who always writes in Japanese first. ;-)

re my statement, I was directing it towards kigo first and foremost in a generic manner. 

We in the West cannot duplicate kigo, but we can come up with respectful alternatives, as we do have a rich cultural history.  It might not go back as many thousands of years as Chinese culture, which the Japanese can utilise, but we have barely scraped the surface of what we can do in the West.

I would imagine that writers born in the Indian sub-continent probably have a better chance of creating near-kigo than we do because their culture goes further back than the West.

Alan

Hi Alan,
I'm not sure that the term kigo can be used "in a generic manner". If we use kigo to mean both kigo (Japanese, by definition) and the developing references to seasons and nature in EL haiku, we rather obscure the very real differences. I don't believe that an authentic EL 'kigo culture' can be "created", certainly not by us and not by anyone in the near future. If it is to be, it will develop, through the literature, over many generations.

" Since our concern was speech, and speech impelled us
To purify the dialect of the tribe
And urge the mind to afterthought and forethought . . ."

- T.S. Eliot, 'Little Gidding', Four Quartets

- Lorin

- Lorin

Quote from: Mark Harris on February 02, 2011, 12:02:28 PM

QuoteIs it time now to gather all the participants of this discussion and call for a group cyber-hug? --Peter

QuoteA cyber-hug is always a good idea. ;-) --Alan

maybe Fay could play kumbaya for us...

isn't that a classic summer kigo from old Japan; hon-i --summer-camp love/togetherness?

;D Mark!

Save me from kubaya, please, though. In the old people's home I end up in, we'll be doing group hugs or whatever to the classic Spring kigo, subterranean homesick blues; hon'i -- hon'i The Joy of Spring!

- Lorin

well, I'm probably missing a lot because I don't have access to that aspect of kigo, hon'i, so I probably don't really get the more intellectually based haiku which use hon'i, whether traditionally or as something to bounce off or rebel against. 

So I must admit that the Japanese traditions which "help me write haiku in English" are those which I've found embodied in EL haiku by my elders and betters, and what I've found moving in translations of Japanese haiku: awareness and engagement with the natural world (including humans) on the literal level, which, in relation with a seasonal reference (not kigo, since I don't share that culture), can open a non-literal world without losing the literal, can produce resonance. Basho's 'lightness', the Japanese aesthetics of yugen etc. , simplicity of diction, the fact that there is the requirement for the reader to infer quite a lot, the 'dreaming space'... maybe the Japanese aesthetic of makoto ('sincerity of the heart', as I understand it to mean) which doesn't seem to me to be an exclusively Japanese thing, but a human thing, evident in what I regard as the best EL poetry of all sorts.

Here is the haiku which sucked me into haiku in the first place:

picking up a jellyfish
my lifeline
clear and deep

- Dhugal Lindsay

I had no idea that he was a marine biologist at the time. That was later, and extra. I simply recalled in a flash the reality of holding washed-up moon jellyfish on my palm as a child (I tried it once with a small blue stinger, too, but learnt quickly not to), being fascinated how one could see all the lines on one's palm magnified through this once living, but totally transparent creature, and how that set me to wondering. I recalled my own everyday, childhood connection with the sea and the things of the sea. Here was a transparent poem! And it included me, asked me in!... when what I had been hearing were the long, passionate, dramatic, opinionated and confessional or political pieces of performance poets which totally excluded me or the persona-boosting puns and faux-naivety of performance 'haiku', and what I had been reading were the clever (but 'disjunctive') manipulations of language-based poetry which, though interesting, too often led me up the garden path and left me there. (with some exceptions) So this haiku was a breath of fresh, sea air to me. That was my beginning, and that haiku is still my 'totem haiku', being the first I connected with.

Since then, I've connected with many haiku, and am gradually appreciating the various different styles. The first two Japanese haiku (in translation) that I really connected with were:

the sea darkens:
the voices of wild ducks
are faintly white
(Basho)

Yes! I thought, I've noticed that with seagull's voices when a storm is immanent. (again, early on, the connection with intensely perceived personal experience was what touched me deeply... which included, btw, watching part of the making of the film, 'On the Beach', and seeing it with parents at a drive-in on its release here, and afterward being frightened when the sea turned dark and oily-looking, believing that any minute there would be dead seagulls washing in as evidence that the fall-out was coming, as it had to do, over the sea to my beach. I was often over at the beach by myself.)

and

Mother, I weep
for you as I watch the sea
each time I watch the sea

(Issa... I think the translator was Sam Hamill)

...which never fails to move me, for several reasons which are irrelevant here. It's that repetition, that 'each time', that shows me the veracity of this. It rolls in and breaks as inevitably and primarily as the waves do, and repeats in the rhythm of waves of the sea, unending. It's no mere sentiment expressed here.

More recently, the haiku which has stuck in my mind is:

spring thunder
young magicians
reappear

- Peggy Willis Lyles

I take the 'young magicians', first, on a literal level. Children 'being magicians', as they are wont to do, and 'disappearing' ("You can't see me, I'm invisible!") but reappearing pretty smartly at the sound of thunder, not really having control of the weather, but maybe half-believing that one of their spells has caused the thunder. The veracity of this, the humour of this, the gentleness with which we co-operate with and protect children's imaginative play. Then I think of how a particular atmosphere and sound can bring memories alive into the present, and that the children of long ago can return, reappear in all their vitality (even if one's 36 year old son and his mates are staring one in the face), and how this seems magical, too, and somehow confirms that nothing experienced is ever lost, and what logically seems gone is not, and (to use TS Eliot's words) "all is (really!) always now". And the surprising reality is, if one's grown children or grandchildren do happen to be present, the same thought/ perception, strikes them at the same time, without a word being spoken beforehand. Test it! These are shared experiences, and so good, because unpremeditated, simple human love is alive in them, is magically 'resurrected' in them.

So what are the Japanese traditions operating in Peggy's poem? I have forgotten, if I ever knew, apart from simplicity of language, the use of images, the gap, the space between 'spring thunder' and the rest which both invites the reader to infer and links the sense the power of a natural thing, thunder, with the vitality and imaginative power evident in children.

I could go on (mercifully, I won't  :D) Another I've discovered recently that appeals to me is Peter Yovu's:

mosquito she too
insisting insisting she
is is is is is

What does that owe to Japanese tradition? Conciseness and brevity, to be sure. The recognition that other things are alive and real and that we might invest them with a persona, maybe via Issa? The humourous reflection on ourselves and all the noise we make to show ourselves and each other that we're here, that we are? Are these things essentially Japanese? I don't think so, but expressing them with such brevity seems to be a superb thing that we've gained from Japanese tradition.

- Lorin

Quote from: Alan Summers on February 01, 2011, 06:46:43 PM
Reading all the comments I'm pleased that Fay's haiku not only compares favourably with Umberto Senegal's poem, but shows us the power, depth, and uniqueness of Japanese kigo, and why it's such a useful tool.

I don't say "useful tool" lightly, as I know it's been called the soul of haiku, but to emphasise that although the haiku may be difficult to read along the vertical axis, it's a rewarding and purposeful process.

As much as I admire Umberto Senegal's haiku, my vote in a head to head such as this, is to Fay's haiku.

Alan

Kigo is certainly the 'group soul' of Japanese haiku (or arguably so, anyway) but am I reading you right, Alan, that you mean that kigo and the associated hon'i (the part of kigo I suspected was there but have only very recently confirmed and begun to understand) is a "useful tool" for EL haiku? If so, could you please explain this view in more detail?

Or do you simply mean that knowing kigo and the associated hon'i is essential for anyone who wants to read Japanese haiku? I'd tend to agree with you there, since this haiku seems to fall into place quite easily as a perfectly traditional Japanese haiku once one understands the hon'i.

Yet, as Peter mentions, it was written in English (one assumes) as an EL haiku for EL haiku audience. Or maybe it wasn't.


- Lorin

" She has presented something rather challenging: a poem written in English for English speaking readers (most of whom, presumably, are not English speaking Japanese, as FA is) and yet which is founded in a cultural environment which I am outside of.  So how am I to respond?" - Peter

Indeed.

I now realise, but only in retrospect, that I had a similar interesting experience in my one and only renku with a Japanese sabaki, done on an Australian internet site and with three Australians, one Kiwi, one American, one French person and one Indian person involved (and an English person coming in, too, at the end).  Pieces of the puzzle begin to fit. I've gone back and checked and there is, among the threads, a brief and unexplained reference to "kigo as code word". Now that I've caught the smell of hon'i for the first time, I begin to understand a little better.

So 'ants out of a hole', for Japanese people, references not only 'mid-Spring', but also 'the Joy of Spring' in kigo culture.

My personal associations with 'ants out of a hole' (especially when I find 'red' in the same haiku) are ' Terror of the Sting, Summer' rather than 'the Joy of Spring', since watching out for and navigating around bullants on the foreshore track to the beach was part of my childhood, and the music I'd be accompanying that memory with would be something bloody and Wagnerian. ( high noon/ a bullant at ten paces/ from my toes. . . they leap, and cling on as well! The pain is unforgettable. ) So overlaying my own experience/ memory with a 'Joy of Spring' interpretation would be rather like doing a hypnosis job on myself, overlaying real memories with false ones, actual experiences with ...OMG, Orwell's 1984 comes to mind!

But knowing what someone else (or a whole culture) associates with 'ants out of a hole' certainly helps in reading such a short poem as a haiku.

"Nonetheless, I do feel played with. Am I a red piano?" - Peter

If you, or we, were, you are no longer.  :) Perhaps we're red-detectives now.

I feel a loss, too... but it's mainly the loss of my naivety (again)

The whole issue is a caution against cultural insularity, on the part of any of the players.

- Lorin