The Haiku Foundation Forums

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?

 

QuoteNew Directions in English-language Haiku: An Overview and Assessment
http://iafor.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Article-3-iafor-librasia-journal-volume2-issue2-2-3.pdf

Thanks Alan, for the link.

QuoteThat is a great idea to include an editor's or editors' thought on the more unusual or experimental haiku.

I hope it materialises.  Rome did not happen immediately...I hope I got that right. But the visual is clear I guess...

QuoteI love this quote from you:
Quote
Haiku is form poetry...the composition is deviant
lifted from:
Quote from: Anna on Today at 09:22:44 AM
Haiku is form poetry. The craft skills are to be appreciated. Even, if the composition is deviant art.

You framed it. But I guess it is, considering that the normative haiku do not celebrate metaphor and is yet such a metaphorical statement ...
and yes contemporary haiku is deviant given: "and are
seen to involve the freer use of metaphor and opaque language than is found in
normative haiku."  From the abstract - New Directions in English-language Haiku: An Overview and Assessment by Philip Rowland

Do excuse my humor,  the essays and papers are serious enough, and this is a discussion.


Hello Meg, thanks for an interesting thread. I do wish more haijin would join the discussion.  Happy Weekend.

Alan brought up Noon Journal. Here is something you should read Meg: http://www.modernhaiku.org/essays/RowlandFromHaikuToShortPoem.html


and when it comes to the strange little ones... I think it is a matter of acceptance, excuse the pun.
Would it not be wonderful if some of the prominent haiku magazines would encourage the strange little ones bu adding just a page, maybe two or three of them in the magazines with a comment by an editor or assistant editor. Editors have fairly attuned haiku minds, even when it comes to the strange critters...

I may be an year old in the haiku world, but I have been reading poetry for long. Haiku is form poetry. The craft skills are to be appreciated. Even, if the composition is deviant art.

So which of the magazines you have mentioned can and will come up with the leap of ...faith in Basho and the present day haijin world? I don't know, but I do hope that the frogs are all happy to land in the...big tub.

That said, now that the monsoon is gone, where the hell do I find a frog? I guess I will ask Basho's ghost.
And I mean no offence to anyone and everyone.

Croak
ann

I missed it and just saw it today. The photo-prompts are fun, I think I will be trying them. Thanks Lynette

Oh,  I just read this...I have never known Jane except through her work on haiku, I read all of her articles on AHA, a long long while ago and refer back ever so often.
I think she is living on... and how I wish I had met her...

Quote from: Alan Summers on December 28, 2011, 07:06:31 AM
I find that Jack Galmitiz prompts a useful reply from paul m. aka Paul Miller which I have to concur with, as we are observers, and therefore a participant via poetry.

From Jack Galmitz's fascinating interview with paul m.
http://www.roadrunnerjournal.net/pages113/Discard_the_Dividing_Line.pdf

JG:
While it's not unprecedented in haiku, your inclusion of the darker side of nature-the struggle to survive, mortality-gives rise to the virtue of compassion in your work. Here are a few examples:

returning geese
her ashes still
in the plain tin


spring morning
flies return
to a crab carcass


pm:
I don't know that you can honestly interact with the world and not gain more compassion—either through the practice of poetry, the observation of animals, or simply shopping in a store.

I mentioned that the universe was a violent place on its own. I do see some poetry, haiku included, that seems to want to veer from that seeing, to only present the beautiful and uplifting, which I find false and a bit cowardly. The world is a complicated and messy place. If we are going to value honesty in poetry we need to represent all that we see.

Any thoughts from anyone?

Alan

QuoteAny thoughts from anyone?

Alan

ah yes,  I think I agree with paul m. 

Maya,  hi

can any one liner also be made into a three liner?  Does it work the other way round too?


Here is a one liner,  I have been reading for a few months now:



as an and you and you and you alone in the sea

                                                                  Dr. Richard Gilbert

a wonderful haiku Alan. Thanks for sharing

Can monoku also be called cyclic ku?  Is being cyclic a specific attribute of  the monostitch?

I will get it Jan,  thanks.

Alan, thanks for the correction,  copy-paste is not easy   :P:-\

another link of contextual relevance people: 

https://fayaoyagi.wordpress.com/essay/

I do not know much about haiku and am still learning, but

but,  what attracts me to haiku or other oriental forms of poetry is that emotion is not the kind that chokes the reader,  I have not read many that are really outlandish in display of emotion though haiku is more involved with the way the mind works at a deeper level... there is an understated elegance. 
Haiku is more of detached observation, more of introspection when the observation turns inwards.

Two haiku come to mind as I write this:

becoming a child
on New Year's day ...
I wish

~Issa
the link is worth a read: http://www.modernhaiku.org/issue46-3/Lanoue-IssaChildMind-MH46-3.pd

and

grief and anger -
I spit out black, black
watermelon seeds

~Takeshita Shizunojo  from Far beyond the Field by Makato Ueda

The above is a poem that comes to mind each time I see watermelons,  and it is one haiku that is very very
emotionally charged,  though it made me smile when I read it for the first time.

But then again, these are translations of Japanese poets, 


this small ache and all the rain too robinsong
~Alan Summers   from http://area17.blogspot.in/2014/06/a-selection-of-haiku-poems-by-alan.html

where the lines end and the absence begins an architecture or so

~Chris Gordon, 2002; H21 74; HIE 191 from one of my favourite reads of all times: Under the Basho

which also leads me to reader participation and the above haiku was taken from an article in Under the Basho where reader participation is brought up

http://www.underthebasho.com/2014-issue/pondering-haiku/pondering-haiku-2.html

Hope that helps, and welcome

Goodness, I did not look into this thread for a long time. So much of info. Thanks people. 

People,

are there any preferred translations of The tale of Genji? 

There are so many versions, and one version is available on Kindle.

However, there seems to be a preference to read the David Washburn version which also happens to be the newest one. 


Halp. >:( :-X

Alan,

am going thru the amazon links of the books you mentioned. The sad part is that none are available as e-books ...

I will have to wait, since, even though the books are listed on Amazon.in, they have to be imported by Amazon.in itself, before they reach me... it takes anywhere between 3-8 weeks, I will only know after I make the purchase. So it will be a slow read, but until then, there is the Tales of Genji.

Thank you.