The Haiku Foundation Forums

Hi Jan,


Do we write in the 21st century with all its timeless issues, as well as new problems, or just introverterize ourselves?

Quote from: Jan in Texas on October 17, 2016, 07:38:26 PM
Alan:
You lost me at the very last sentence. Is that meant as a comparative of two ideas?
1. Timeless issues and/or new problems
2. "Introverterize" ??? (Navel gazing???)

Or is your point that you and JSH Bjerg have different ideas/meanings to Gendai as an expression of haiku?

Jan Benson

Now and then I see mention of gendai haiku as if it's a bad thing, when it's just an established mode of expression within the Japanese pantheon of haiku which is as relevant to non-Japanese haiku.  If we are in the 21st Century, shouldn't we acknowledge our own times in haiku just as earlier haikai writers took note of their times?

This century has the same problems that plagued last century, and the same things, so far, that convey the seasons, though that is changing.  So not two different things so much as absorbing timeless haikai themes but acknowledging we live in a new time as well.

Yes, navel gazing, being complacent about writing about an idyllic time that never existed.

I've long been a fan of Johannes Bjerg work before he was more widely known, and I wouldn't narrow his work down to being labelled one kind of haiku or another.

I am just puzzled when gendai is mentioned as if it's a bad thing being in the 21st Century.

Alan

Quote from: Alan Summers on October 17, 2016, 01:32:39 PM
As a criticism about gendai haiku in the West was mentioned in passing, and I see this from time to time, I thought it timely to reopen and re-examine the topic.

Is gendai good?   Well any approach to any writing genre regardless if it is a success in its own right or not, brings forth interesting experiments that feed into and energise anything that may start to become repetitive and/or formulaic aka 'formula'.

I don't write gendai haiku any more, as far as I am aware, and perhaps no one else does, it's an important staging post.   Do we write in the 21st century with all its timeless issues, as well as new problems, or just introverterize ourselves?

Alan

Quote from: Johannes S. H. Bjerg on November 26, 2014, 08:06:52 AM
To ask if gendai is "good" really makes no sense. Taking that "gendai" means new, contemporary, fresh the question really means: "is new haiku good?" ...

One aspect of haiku we have to embrace, or at least acknowledge, is its vast diversity. Haiku is very much more than adapting Western minds to Japanese tradition (and why would we do that?). Haiku is poetry written by humans. Humans have a very different experiences with being alive, humans are different. People write for all sorts of reasons and in all sorts of ways and we should be applauding this fact. The days were emulating a Japanese mind-set seemed to be "the thing" are gone ... for most parts. Of course there are still those that do so and that's fine, but this isn't The Way in haiku; there isn't one way of writing haiku, there isn't One Haiku except for that abstract Big Haiku that is all the various types of haiku that is written these days.

I could revert the question: "Is traditional haiku good?" Haven't we moved on past replicating what we never can become as Westerners?

As a criticism about gendai haiku in the West was mentioned in passing, and I see this from time to time, I thought it timely to reopen and re-examine the topic.

Is gendai good?   Well any approach to any writing genre regardless if it is a success in its own right or not, brings forth interesting experiments that feed into and energise anything that may start to become repetitive and/or formulaic aka 'formula'.

I don't write gendai haiku any more, as far as I am aware, and perhaps no one else does, it's an important staging post.   Do we write in the 21st century with all its timeless issues, as well as new problems, or just introverterize ourselves?

Alan

Quote from: Johannes S. H. Bjerg on November 26, 2014, 08:06:52 AM
To ask if gendai is "good" really makes no sense. Taking that "gendai" means new, contemporary, fresh the question really means: "is new haiku good?" ...

One aspect of haiku we have to embrace, or at least acknowledge, is its vast diversity. Haiku is very much more than adapting Western minds to Japanese tradition (and why would we do that?). Haiku is poetry written by humans. Humans have a very different experiences with being alive, humans are different. People write for all sorts of reasons and in all sorts of ways and we should be applauding this fact. The days were emulating a Japanese mind-set seemed to be "the thing" are gone ... for most parts. Of course there are still those that do so and that's fine, but this isn't The Way in haiku; there isn't one way of writing haiku, there isn't One Haiku except for that abstract Big Haiku that is all the various types of haiku that is written these days.

I could revert the question: "Is traditional haiku good?" Haven't we moved on past replicating what we never can become as Westerners?

Jan,

Thanks re The Reader as Second Verse.

Regarding Black Dogs and afternoon rain
It is different from the original multiple author review and focuses on British poet David Jacobs incorporating what I said about his work in Blithe Spirit (Journal of the British Haiku Society)

which was reprinted courtesy of Sasa Vasic and Haiku Reality: http://haikureality.theartofhaiku.com/bookrew69.htm

and in The Haiku Foundation's reVirals feature:  http://www.thehaikufoundation.org/2016/09/23/revirals-54/ which is an extra haiku not covered in my book review in Blithe Spirit.

Chad Lee Robinson is also covered twice because reVirals chose a haiku of his that appears in his collection I reviewed here: http://haikureality.theartofhaiku.com/bookrew69.htm

reVirals:  http://www.thehaikufoundation.org/2016/09/16/revirals-53/

I hope to make future articles out of the reviews I did on Robinson's book, and also Kate Hall's collection.

Theme is such an essential part of a collection (or anthology) where invisibly covered or otherwise.

Your comments are very much appreciated, thank you. :)

warm regards,

Alan

Quote from: Jan in Texas on October 11, 2016, 01:12:52 PM
Alan:
"The Reader as Second Verse" is approachable, and chuck full of supportive quotes.

I have a new appreciation of symbiosis.
-------------
Black Dogs and afternoon rain. An extended excerpt of your sumptuous previous release "Themocracy", but featuring only one of the four poets.

This extended introduction to the works of David Jacobs showcases his deft hand at haiku. Your explications make clearer the collection as a thread on relationships, as well as depression.

Thanks

Jan

Quote from: Alan Summers on October 10, 2016, 05:36:05 PM
The new website is now up and features two of my essays, or brand new and shiny:


The Reader as Second Verse
by Alan Summers

Black dogs and afternoon rain
by Alan Summers

http://britishhaikusociety.org.uk/essays/

David Cobb uses a great editorial method so worth getting the anthology for that reason alone.

So Inpress Books is the international seller:
http://inpressbooks.co.uk/products/the-humours-of-haiku

When you go to the cart you can put in USA and applicable State.

The current price is £7.00 GBP.

Quote from: Jan in Texas on October 11, 2016, 01:02:42 PM
Alan:
Saw this on your Area 17 Blogspot.
Snooping the Internet, found this reference.

I'm strongly considering purchasing this book.
From Iron Press, It appears to now cost 8.00 British Pound

Jan Benson

The new website is now up and features two of my essays, or brand new and shiny:


The Reader as Second Verse
by Alan Summers

Black dogs and afternoon rain
by Alan Summers

http://britishhaikusociety.org.uk/essays/

re one line haiku:

I have not been writing as many monostich haiku as usual, but here are a few:


juniper the tether end of larksong


Lake District, Cumbria, England, U.K. September 2015

Alan Summers
Publication Credit: Poetry & Place anthology issue 1
ed. Ashley Capes and Brooke (Close-Up Books, April 2016)
http://www.amazon.com/Poetry-Place-Anthology-Ashley-Capes/dp/0994528922



the mountain ash birdsong lichens

Lake District, Cumbria, England, U.K.

Alan Summers
Publication Credit: Blithe Spirit 26.1 (March 2016)
n.b. the latest Lake District haiku to appear in the next Blithe Spirit will be a three line one though. :)



colour book the cat becomes marmalade


Alan Summers
Publication Credit: Right Hand Pointing issue 95 (h a i k u edition, February 2016)
http://www.righthandpointing.net/#!95-alan-summers-ii/cj4i




moonlighting crows in other colors

Alan Summers
Publication Credit: Frogpond (39:1) Winter Issue 2016
Anthology Credit: 2016 HSA Member Anthology

n.b. fascinating comments by a student of mine too. They will find their way into my book. :-)



the rain in our fingers return journey

Alan Summers
Publication Credit: Blithe Spirit 26.2 (May 2016)



in God's pocket soldiers of the moon change


Alan Summers
Anthology Credit:
Heart Breaths: Book of Contemporary Haiku (Cyberwit March 5, 2016)
ed. Jean LeBlanc
http://www.amazon.com/Heart-Breaths-Book-Contemporary-Haiku/dp/9385945033/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1459424848&sr=8-1&keywords=Heart+Breaths+haiku



not yet light the wall and its black cat


Alan Summers
Publication Credit:
brass bell: a haiku journal: April issue: one-line haiku
http://brassbellhaiku.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/april-issue-one-line-haiku.html

n.b.
I am sorely tempted to revise this as walls and cats, often black ones, feel synonymous with each other during morning or evening dusk:

e.g.

not yet light the wall its black cat




sun off stubble a train in its landscape


Alan Summers
Publication Credit:
otata 4 (April, 2016) An e-zine of haiku and short poems, Otata ed. John Martone
https://otatablog.wordpress.com/2016/04/29/april-2016/



call of geese the heart I eat inside


Alan Summers
Publication Credit:
otata 4 (April, 2016) An e-zine of haiku and short poems, Otata ed. John Martone
https://otatablog.wordpress.com/2016/04/29/april-2016/



cusp month the housemartins field a meadow

Alan Summers
Publication Credit: Blithe Spirit 26.3 (2016)
From the haibun: Growing Pains Of The Fairy Tale Train
cusp month re May into June 2016



meadow borders the river clouds

Alan Summers
Presence #56 (October 2016 issn 1366-5367)



Please do post more one line haiku here. :)

warm regards,

Alan

Hi Rebecca,



Thanks for the terrific haiku!  :)

warm regards,

Alan



From Rebecca Drouilhet

Quote from: whitedove on May 07, 2015, 12:12:24 PM

Snip

I have another with an unusual first line that will be published in Frogpond in their summer 2015 issue.  Good luck with your project.  Rebecca Drouilhet

.

Hi C,

Ah, but that is only my interpretation. :)

I see mention of tangerine pyramids in Australian supermarket promotional material too, and we've all witnessed stacked food from tins to chocolate bars, to fruit or household materials.   We've perhaps wondered what would happen if... :)


Behemoth the cat swipes tangerines from a pyramid display, and we have all wondered what would happen if we took an article from such stacked displays.

See also:
The Final Adventure of Koroviev and Behemoth
(The Master and Margarita
by Mikhail Bulgakov)
https://www.amazon.com/Master-Margarita-Mikhail-Bulgakov/dp/0679760806

I think now that fruit is in such abundance, since the late 1960s, that they are just displayed in rack displays, but the idea of something perfectly displayed that could be tumbled, perhaps by an mischievous version of Andersen's child a la The Emperor's Clothes? :)

Quote from: cactus on October 07, 2016, 09:16:05 PM
Well ... I must say I feel a bit embarrassed about my extended flight-of-fantasy interpretation now that you've explained that to me! *blush*

I guess this speaks to the difficulty of interpreting even the most mundane of details in short enigmatic poems across even very similar cultures. I assume that Tangerine Pyramids are a North American thing? But Spandau Ballet are a U.K. group ... at any rate Tangerine Pyramids are completely unknown here in Melbourne Australia. And even if I'd googled "Tangerine Pyramids" and come up with images like justlikeyou has posted I don't think I would have guess that was what Fay was referencing.

Thanks for your patient explainations. I'll step carefully in future ...

Hi C,

Ah, yes, tangerine pyramids, a familiar sight for those either working in a goods store or old enough to remember them.

From Abigail Child:

Artificial Memory
(Belladonna Press, 2001)
A two volume chapbook containing nine parts of a long poem: a portrait of Russia after the break-up of the USSR. "This phenomenon consisted of a hallucination. Try to break yourself against a sphere. I remember at the beginning of our acquaintance a passage feints. There is more than one direction.
At the beginning of our acquaintance a kind of delight which pluralizes meaning by gesture and without conjunction. Hero chandelier. What began as a heroic search for a historical shortcut is truncated. Nation made to walk on its hands. Nation feints. Two raisin cakes and tea set out, tea and crackers, tea and bread, tea and jam, real cigarettes. Resources of repetition, variation and control. We memorize your staying and send you our ideal."
—from Artificial Memory.
http://abigailchild.com/index.php?/about/

Abigail Child explores history, memory, and cultural experiences—the politics of place and identity, and so does Fay Aoyagi.  For whatever reason we don't fit in, race, culture, refugee, immigrant, the same color skin but we still look different - I can relate only too well to that last one.

We witness Cuba on
her side, isle in a TV
sitcom, grapefruit in snow, tangerine pyramids opposite Disney stickems. There's a certain
level of frustration blemished by glaring failure. Improvising rentals between legs of contradiction. Evidence of a 'real' pre-existence.
Artificial Memory by
Abigail Child
BELLADONNA BOOKS • FALL 2001

Or Martin Kemp, of Spandau Ballet pop fame, who at the age of 13, became an expert at building tangerine pyramids at a local grocery store.

With Fay this could be a companion piece to her hole in the sweater:

a hole in my sweater

I ask him one more time

what he meant

Fay Aoyagi
In Borrowed Shoes
Blue Willow Press, 2006

Read about the symbolism of holes:

Something with Wings:
Fay Aoyagi's Haiku of Inner Landscape
by David G. Lanoue
http://www.modernhaiku.org/essays/Lanoue-FayAoyagiHaiku.html

The man with the beeper, many of us had them at our trouser belts, either wearing them round our waist, or the trousers and beeper around our ankles.   Whichever combination, always on the job however inappropriate.

Quote from: cactus on October 07, 2016, 04:39:30 PM
The phrase in the subject of this thread "sometimes the clock strikes 13" puts me in mind of the kind of haiku where the first line is surreal or seeming nonsensical or impossible and then the rest of the haiku explains (or at least gives a clue to) how the seemingly impossible is actually a normal part of every day life. How about this example from Fay Aoyagi's book Chrysanthemum Love:

tangerine pyramids
his beeper vibrates
again

Taken by itself the phrase "tangerine pyramids" is striking (almost psychedelic) but it doesn't give us enough to construct a satisfying meaning ... the first line makes us want to read the rest of the haiku in the hope that it will provide some kind of explaination. Here are some of the ideas that suggest themselves to me after I've read the whole haiku:
- on a date with a man who has an important job, possibly a doctor
- the man with the important job is distracted, his heart isn't in the date
- we might be up to the dessert stage of the meal as the beeper is going "again"
- the "tangerine pyramids" might be what the dessert at this fancy restaurant looks like? (I could be drawing a long bow here)
- as the man with the important job attends to his beeper the author looks at the vividly coloured dessert and thinks of ancient tombs in the desert (the pyramids) being painted a vivid colour by the sunset in a far away country ... and this sets off another whole string of associations ...

So in actual fact tangerine pyramids are very much grounded imagery, whether a floor manager of a store, innocently pacing the sales floor with his beeper on full charge, or in the stockroom taking count...

Perhaps the beeper is a euphemism...

The clock striking thirteen may or may not be another reality, but is that other reality any less real?   Some of us live in a sideways world where lateral narrative always breathes.

Great post C!

warm regards,

Alan

Hi Anna,

I would love to see some examples whether published or ones by you in draft process.  I can't recall at the moment reading any haiku that are poems from a non-human perspective.  Issa, for instance, talks from his own viewpoint about insects and other animals.

I guess Aesop and HC Andersen might be starters to see how non-humans are represented?

Canadian Jessica Tremblay is the only one I can think of that explicitly uses frogs to convey messages and haiku:
http://oldpondcomics.com/student.html
http://oldpondcomics.com/fun.html



How to lend voice to the speaker in haiku?

Quote from: Anna on October 05, 2016, 11:02:15 PM

...so like,  when like, the haiku or any of its three-two-one-four line siblings is lending voice to like a chipmunk, how does the poet make it clear that the speaker is the bird or animal in the haiku that does the talking?

Like for instance, if a frog does some speaking and that happens to be the haiku, or the speaker in the haiku is a frog,  how does the poet show that?


:-\

Meg,

I just wanted to thank you so much for creating this discussion and being so patient.  I am hoping you get more responses, either here, or in other ways.

warm regards,

Alan

Quote from: meghalls on October 02, 2016, 08:27:42 AM
Maybe I should have said there is not much more to be wrung from me on this matter. In one of those links Peter Yovu said something about writing that takes the risk of "not being haiku". My opinion is that I
understand this (I think) and I like writing I find sometimes even in some of the haiku magazines mentioned before that seems to have taken this risk and maybe what the writers have come up with is or isn't haiku but it doesn't matter.

Paul Miller said  Monday bleeding down to money  probably isn't a haiku, but I say maybe it doesn't matter.

So looks like a thing or two still to be wrung from me.

Meg

There is a long history of painting food, and making still life something akin to its molecules vibrating.

Quote from: Anna on October 02, 2016, 06:17:32 AM

spilt milk
oil on canvas
still ...life?

Spilt milk:
oil on linen
http://www.davidcobley.com/still-lifes-c5jd?lightbox=i5669

David Cobley says:
"Still lifes

"I see another painting almost everywhere I turn. Things in the studio take on a significance they might not otherwise have, and become metaphors for something else. They remind me of conversations with friends, of things I have heard on the radio or read in books.

There is a beauty and a kind of visual poetry in simple objects placed one against the another. Each speaks to the other of an absent human presence in a silent language of its own."
http://www.davidcobley.com/still-lifes-c5jd

As molecules are entities with a sense of humour nothing really stands still or isn't life I guess.

Alan

Meg, Anna,

Or David Cobley's spilt milk?
http://www.davidcobley.com/still-lifes-c5jd?lightbox=i5669

Do we seek the ultra realism of the Sculpture of a baby by superrealist artist, Ron Mueck?

I think we seek beyond the snapshot or details in a report and perhaps dandelions are piggybacked by ants as astronauts:

dandelion antsronauts

After all we call sports grass 'astroturf'?   A term that changed it from chemturf to AstroTurf by John A. Wortmann when used at the Houston Astrodome stadium in 1966.   We have a fascination for the word and term 'astro'

Alan

Quote from: Anna on October 02, 2016, 03:05:21 AM
wonderful reading links in there, will last me a month and more ...

QuoteIs there anything more to be wrung out of this discussion, short of asking...

wow, some carpet dusting that... ;D

Quote...do you have to feel
personally satisfied that it meets your own criteria for what is a haiku, or are you willing to publish something which not only pushes boundaries, but goes beyond?

What is your own opinion on this, Meg?

My answer:
We all live our lives in our own little realities, and every kind of  answer to your question is justified.
It is like this:  After eating at a rated restaurant which was supposed to serve authentic Hyderabadi food, the chef defended his reason from deviating from the recipe to cater to the tastes of clientele. I had only this to say, if you never serve the original, who will remember it and how will anyone know whether your rendition is a success? 
In other words, what is the bench mark, what do I measure my work against? Not only as good or bad, but also as how further off is my push the boundary stuff? 

But then again without the help of Gauguin, how much further (could and/orwould)  Gogh have gone on?
Or from more recent lot: What makes Tjalf Sparnaay's fried eggs and burgers on canvas so massively successful given their commonplace themes?

Quote from: meghalls on September 09, 2016, 12:55:57 PM
Hello,

Looking at today's re:viral, which is      dandelion antsronauts    by Tom Sacramona,
I'm curious how many current editors of haiku magazines would say that they have expanded what
they accept to include short poems which may not be haiku, but which are interesting anyway. I know there is ongoing debate about what is and is not a haiku, but it does seem that there are poems which would be hard to fit into any category except maybe haikuesque or something. I personally think this is a good thing, and besides, where else are these strange little poems going to go?

Meg

Hi Meg,

It would be a great idea to email various editors of haiku journals:
http://www.poetrysociety.org.nz/haikunews/haikupublications#Haiku



Toward an Aesthetic for English-Language Haiku by Lee Gurga
http://www.poetrysociety.org.nz/node/323
http://www.baymoon.com/~ariadne/form/haiku/haiku.aesthetics.gurga.htm

Do Something Different by Peter Yovu (March 2009)
http://www.poetrysociety.org.nz/node/400


TRUSTING THE COMPASS OF STRANGENESS: PETER YOVU'S SUNRISE
by Paul Pfleuger, Jr.
http://www.roadrunnerjournal.com/pages111/Sunrise_review.pdf


Sunrise by Peter Yovu; book review
http://www.poetrysociety.org.nz/node/553
http://www.modernhaiku.org/bookreviews/Yovu2010.html

The Haiku Foundation Readings: Peter Yovu - YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znJ05U0ngps

Disordering Haiku by Peter Yovu (October 2009)
http://www.poetrysociety.org.nz/node/426

Jack Galmitz is a great reviewer and commentator as well as a haiku poet who stretches boundaries further than most in haiku: http://www.gendaihaiku.com/research/galmitz/index.html
http://livinghaikuanthology.com/readings/haiku-readings/2737-jack-galmitz-reads-a-selection-of-his-haiku.html

And of course who can write haiku that are not haiku but they are, aren't they haiku than Marlene Mountain:  http://www.marlenemountain.org/intro.html

Poetry is language beyond conversations we hear in shops, pubs, bars, train and police stations, but then again perhaps some poets pull from the street and call it literature too. :)

If we push boundaries perhaps we are better at keeping within them later on, or never reach the boundary in the first place if we don't push for them?

I think a type of survey amongst editors would be great.  Perhaps use the THF contact message page to put forward a proposal:   http://www.thehaikufoundation.org/contact/

Here's a different way that was used to question these prominent editors:
UNDERSTANDING MODERN ENGLISH-LANGUAGE HAIKU
by Tracy Koretsky
http://www.poetrysociety.org.nz/node/505

Quote from: meghalls on October 01, 2016, 03:50:42 PM
Is there anything more to be wrung out of this discussion, short of asking editors of Modern Haiku, Frogpond, The Heron's Nest, Acorn, etc, questions like: in order to publish a poem, do you have to feel
personally satisfied that it meets your own criteria for what is a haiku, or are you willing to publish something which not only pushes boundaries, but goes beyond?

And what would be some examples? Is dandelion antsronauts an example of going beyond boundaries?

Meg

I'm an editor emeritus of Bones journal which went through one or descriptions so you would be better contacting the managing editor Johannes Bjerg:  http://bonesjournal.com/submission.html

It's more in line perhaps with the ongoing Japanese haiku experiments that allow things to be tested out and are a success even if they fail. :)

Alan

Quote from: meghalls on September 30, 2016, 12:01:31 PM
I suppose the "strange little poems" I'm thinking of are not attempting to "push the boundaries of
haiku", advance the cause, bring it into the 21st century or anything like that. They make no claims on haiku, but might be inspired by haiku, I guess. I bet a bunch of things like that have been written with no other place to go than to the haiku mags, because they're very short and maybe have a thing or two in common with haiku.

Anyway, good thing for writers like that that there's now Otata and Noon, which are the "other places" where good, very short poems might be published.

Alan, wouldn't you say that by calling Bones a "journal of contemporary haiku" that it is basically saying
that whatever is published there is  . . . haiku-- maybe experimental, maybe controversial, but haiku nevertheless?

Thanks,

Meg