The Haiku Foundation Forums

In honour of Jane Reichhold, who passed away yesterday, go out on a walk and compose a simple haiku.

Also, post a favourite haiku that Jane wrote.

Here is one I revisited, and has Jane's commentary:


flies explore

the newly painted sign

fish market

      —Jane Reichhold, editor of Lynx

Reichhold begins:
"Haiku is a genre of form poetry meaning that the form has a definite form. Though we non-Japanese do not count syllables, I do strongly believe that we should maintain the shape of haiku with short, long, short lines. Take:

fish market

the flies explore

the newly painted sign

and notice what happens by simply rearranging the lines:

flies explore

the newly painted sign

fish market

First of all, we eliminate an article (the)—always a plus when trying to be succinct. Secondly, all haiku writers search for interesting first lines that grab the reader's interest. 'Flies explore' opens up an activity—stronger than if on a place—'fish market'. Thirdly, since this haiku uses the riddle technique, the author should set up the riddle with the first two lines, then give the 'answer' in the third. As the haiku is originally expressed, the 'answer' is given away in the first line.

I created this poem for this demonstration, but often the original version is the way the author experienced the poem: being in a fish market, then noticing more flies are crawling on the sign than on the fish. In the revision the poem is expressing a situation: "flies are crawling on a sign—why?" The answer comes in the end "because this is a fish market!" —the AHA moment of the poem."

That "aha" moment one hears so much about in haiku circles basically has to do with allowing the reader to make the connection for him- or herself. Haiku demands an active reader.

https://winningwriters.com/resources/understanding-modern-english-language-haiku

Jane Reichhold
http://www.ahapoetry.com/JRBIO.HTM
http://www.ahapoetry.com/index.html

It is with deep sadness that I hear of Jane Reichhold's passing away.

More news will come in the next few days.

Jane was one of those generous people we come across at a good time in our lives.

Here is Jane talking about appreciation, haiku, and Basho:
http://itmodelbook.com/whitepapers-haiku-of-master-basho-jane-reichhold.aspx

Jane enters at 2 minutes 3 seconds.

warm regards,

Alan

Yellow can be an uplifting color and one of my favourite colors, but sometimes...

Currently prisoners are clothed in a standard issue prison uniform, except for dangerous criminals, who wear yellow and green boiler suits.  Prison uniforms in the United States often consist of a distinctive orange or yellow jumpsuit or two piece surgical scrub set to make escape more difficult, as it is difficult for an escaped inmate to avoid recognition and recapture in such a distinctive attire.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prison_uniform

Blue is an almost universally liked color (whereas yellow and brown, for example, are much less popular). That's true everywhere, except in the few places where blue is most strongly associated with death and mourning (e.g., parts of East Asia).
http://munsell.com/color-blog/drunk-tank-pink-adam-alter/

Yellow tends to cause more eye fatigue than any other color. It increases metabolism and upsets babies. People also tend to lose their temper more often in yellow rooms. Yellow often makes many people feel cheerful, energetic, and happy.
http://www.demesne.info/Improve-Your-Home/Choosing-Interior-Color.htm

Yellow makes babies cry:
http://www.medicaldaily.com/color-psychology-10-ways-colors-trick-you-every-day-295460

The Yellow Wallpaper
https://msu.edu/~fellow17/wra210/final/Research%20Paper%20-%20Charlotte%20Perkins%20Gilman.pdf

Yes, blood appears red due to oxidisation when exposed to air, but is blue.

Quote from: justlikeyou on July 12, 2016, 11:33:56 AM
Love the way you wrote this:

but there's a nine year old boy who limps,
as he catches a train,
      in a man's body.

Yellow is an interesting choice to illustrate the dark side. To me, after white, it represents a higher goodness. But we each bring our own color scheme to life and it's all good.

I used red because that is the actual color. If it was a deer, moose or bear it can sometimes be quite a large stain crossing several travel lanes.

Yes, there's a lot of roadkill out there, and sometimes it's human.   One of my step-relatives narrowly avoided being killed on the road just a week ago.

Oddly I haven't used the color red for any of my 'hadaka' haiku but yellow I associate with the dark raw side of life:

Monday's magician of yellow colour of murder

[monostich]

Alan Summers
Publication Credits: Does Fish-God Know (YTBN Press 2012)


girl in an owl

a human gun for yellow

Alan Summers
c.2.2. Anthology of short-verse ed. Brendan Slater & Alan Summers
(Yet To Be Named Free Press 2013)

Haibun:

Windsor & Newton receive a small parcel

   of gamboge from their South-East Asian suppliers:
they usually grind it up carefully and sell in tubes,
   one of their more expensive watercolours.

      This one contains exploded bullets.
      There's five of them displayed in their office now.

   It might have been the Vietnam War,
   or the horrors of the Pol Pot regime,
   a soldier, or a group of soldiers, entered a garcinia grove
   and sprayed bullets around the area with machine guns. 

Some of them lodged safely in the bamboo,
to be found months, years later, by paint-makers
in Harrow.

There are landmines in that grove now
where the trees bleed in slow sunshine.

      Whatever happened to the other bullets
                  can only be imagined,

but there's a nine year old boy who limps,
as he catches a train,
      in a man's body.


   this reluctant bird
   another bright eye day
   for the both of us



n.b. (for readers) Gamboge is a deep tone of saffron for painting, and other uses such as Buddhist robes.

pub. Blithe Spirit Vol. 25 issue 2 (2015)
anthology: Journeys 2015, World Haibun Anthology ed. Angelee Deodhar

Quote from: justlikeyou on July 12, 2016, 09:02:47 AM
I just found this thread. I really should get out more.

In reading through the thread something immediately came to mind. An all too common scene 'round these parts.


red dawn
the highway stained
with a life    drained    out

.
Associazione Italiana Haiku
International Matsuo Bashō Award 2016 Results!

The results are in! Great judging with Luca Cenisi, myself and Gabriel Rosenstock for the English language haiku section:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7unISB9De6TSjFQSmRwZnZiT28/view




.

The course is now sold out!

I cannot wait to meet everyone next month, it'll be an incredible journey over two months.  :)

warm regards,

Alan

I run an online internet course at the Poetry Barn, but if you ever wondered what the physical Poetry Barn looks like, enjoy reading this webpage: http://www.watershedpost.com/2016/poetry-workshops-come-west-hurley-new-poetry-barn

warm regards,

Alan

Quote from: Alan Summers on May 30, 2016, 11:19:52 AM
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One space left!

So far we have eleven participants in what I feel will be an incredible dialog between many sorts of writers, many approaches to writing, poetry, and haikai literature and tanka:
http://www.poetrybarn.co/events/2016/1/9/haiku-tanka-amazement-and-intensity



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One space left!

So far we have eleven participants in what I feel will be an incredible dialog between many sorts of writers, many approaches to writing, poetry, and haikai literature and tanka:
http://www.poetrybarn.co/events/2016/1/9/haiku-tanka-amazement-and-intensity



.

It's a nice group number of twelve, another great writer just signed up, so think there might be only two spaces left?

Re one or two of the course books, that will be revealed by The Poetry Barn organisation.   If you are on the course, no names have been released yet, you probably have it, or enough haikai anthologies not to worry.

There will be a number of PDFs etc...

warm regards,

Alan

Only four places left with one of those probably going by the end of the day, and another regular tanka writer enquiring.

So potentially only two spaces left!

re Suraja Roychowdhury's haiku, she actually won both my Conference Theme of Justice section, where others baulked at that theme, and was also the GRAND PRIZE WINNER, which was an interesting and gratifying result: http://iaforhaikuaward.org/full-list-of-winners-the-iafor-vladimir-devide-haiku-award-2016/

I looked her up when the results were announced and she works in the medical area where she meets hundreds of women having mammograms, so that's where the authencity came through:

sunny afternoon
a shadow
on the mammogram

As a judge I look at every entry many many times and even early favourites are given a hard time, a tough time, and no quick route to the short list.   

This haiku stayed in my long list each time, and in the short list that was still considerably long, until the final short list, where it not only stayed but gained a momentum, so it went through stronger tests as there were other contenders, but it just kept coming back and nudging ahead.

I would say its strongest feature, one of them, I'll say more in the book, is the use and power of juxtaposition, and literal use of light and shade.

Yes, it could go into the hadaka classification because people go through these checks and balances everyday, the ones that are not glamourous, and make incredibly tough and painful choices in our lifestyles away from the mainstream existences, and right now we all know one or more people who are going through them.

Quote from: Jan in Texas on May 18, 2016, 05:51:05 PM
Just bought c.2.2. New on Amazon.
Shipper is in the US.

--------------
And, it hit me that the 2016 Winner of IAFOR, was also a hadaka contender. .. you were judge of that round.
So, now making notes on that batch of ku searching for hadaka examples... which I will keep to myself.

sunny afternoon
a shadow
on the mammogram

Suraja Roychowdhury,
United States

Hi Jan,

The examples you gave were strong ones for haiku, but as you will see in the examples in the article I quote from Peter Brady, and many subsequent examples, it's a parallel stream of existence that is touched on, the less poetic side of life.

Another good example of this kind of work can be found in Brendan Slater's personal collections In Bed with Kerouac and Rum, Sodomy and the Wash: http://www.yettobenamedfreepress.org/p/flip-books.html

And:
c.2.2. Anthology of Short Verse
Editors: Brendan Slater & Alan Summers
Introduction: Sonam Chhoki
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1479304565

The latter is both haiku and other short verse: "tackling themes such as loss of identity, poverty, racism, homelessness, unsentimental love, crime, punishment, in short, real life. Each poet is identified by a pen-name, there are no frills, lavender or lace in these pages, just honest, gritty and experimental verse that will hopefully make the reader sit up and take notice, get inspired and rethink the role of short-verse in not only the poetry world but also in society which is after all both subject and audience."

All anonymous names, and even Brendan does not know the identity of one author whom I know, and still cannot reveal to this day.

re Eduard Tara:
http://www.thehaikufoundation.org/2014/03/18/haikunow-2013-eduard-tara/

re his favourite haiku, I can say that although David Cobb's haiku alludes to Buson's famous comb/dead wife fictive piece, his piece is very much true, and Karen and myself knew David Cobb's wife and still very  much miss.  She died so suddenly, she was always full of light at British Haiku Society haiku events.
http://www.poetrysociety.org.nz/tarafavourites

Also he is a champion of non-English language haiku, which we need to know more about, as Brazil, he states has been writing haiku longer than in America and other English-writing/speaking countries:
http://simplyhaiku.theartofhaiku.com/autumn2010/eduardtarainterview.htm

Alan

THE IAFOR VLADIMIR DEVIDÉ HAIKU AWARD 2016 WINNERS ANNOUNCED BY DR. A ROBERT LEE
http://iaforhaikuaward.org/the-iafor-vladimir-devide-haiku-award-winners-announced/

Just popping in briefly. :)

I'd say it's the underbelly that some like to avoid in their poetry, as per examples previously.   Examples you have given do have a clarity of language, with no ambivalence perhaps? 

re:

Eduard Tara
Commended

rustling pages--
in the library the echo
of the past forests

He's certainly a haiku poet to read, and uses sound in the first line to make the second part much more than a statement.  We have torn down original forests and ancient woodlands, perhaps Britain is the worst modern example, and the Roman Empire may have been mostly responsible for huge swathes of Africa being denuded of forest.   At one time the planet was one big forest alongside bodies of water, now cities are replacing much of that original mono-forest. 

It's a wonderful haiku and perhaps the strongest of the batch you presented?

re:

summer night ...
a worm bites through the silence
in a fallen acorn

Milan Dragovic

This is from/alluding to Basho's famous Autumn/Fall chestnut haikai verse:


夜ル竊ニ虫は月下の栗を穿ツ

Basho

Romanised Japanese:

yoru hisoka ni mushi wa gekka no kuri o ugatsu



night . . . silently
in the moonlight, a worm
digs into a chestnut

Trans. Ueda, Makoto


autumn moonlight —
a worm digs silently
into the chestnut

Trans. Robert Hass

kind regards,

Alan

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A few of Karen Hoy's haiku, and a couple of mine featured on Charlotte Digregorio's Writer's Blog:

Daily Haiku: May 9 through the 15th
https://charlottedigregorio.wordpress.com/2016/05/09/daily-haiku-may-9-through-the-15th/




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