The Haiku Foundation Forums

You may have seen the rich variety of responses that panelists and others have posted in response to the first edition of Field Notes: Where Do Your Haiku Begin? If you haven't, do yourself a favor and please check them out. Make your own contribution if you wish.

Here are some excerpts. There will be more to follow in the next few days.



I believe that the origin of my haiku, and all of my poems, is a waking equivalent to the origins of my dreams.

John Stevenson


I often simply latch onto some observed phenomenon that strikes me as having haiku potential, then look around for other images to support it . . .

I work it over in my "mind's ear" until I settle on a precise form of words that appear to have some creative kick . . .

Martin Lucas


. . . my haiku still begin [here]: in that young love affair that has begun to mature over the years of study and experience.

Billie Wilson


"The point at which the poem should really begin is often where, in some other intellection, it might have ended." --Paul Muldoon

I want to say my haiku begin in love.

note to self: resist the view that haiku conveys mysteries that other genres do not. How does it convey, how does it suit my voice?

Mark Harris


my shadow and I
we are inseparable
as long as the sun shines


Max Verhart

[My haiku] begin with some sort of stimulus-- a glimpse, a scent, a memory . . . it's the spark that ignited the curiosity. The second image . . . will be the discovery . . . .

. . .and so the pen kept moving, and I discovered . . .

David G. Lanoue


The process requires sensitivity and selection.  . . . sensitivity to my emotions.    . . .with patience I'll see what I need out of the corner of my eye (visually or intellectually), and the poem will snap into place.

It's not the recency of experience that matters but the vibrancy.

Michael Dylan Welch


I begin in/with the Fertile Void

. . . with an increasing awareness of how everything I think is a reflection of change, of passing.

. . . the appearance of something as it passes on its way is "tzu-jan" or an "outbreak" from the fertile void.

The ethos of modernity. . . is not hospitable to such a notion . . .

Tom D'Evelyn


I see/hear/smell/touch only a small fragment of the entire view. It's this tease of the infinite that holds my brief attention.

. . . haiku uses words to express wordlessness; discrete moments in time to reveal timelessness.

Cherie Hunter Day

. . . those core moments [are] my interactions with the world. They [are] discoveries or bits of wonder. They [are] life, breath. But also imaginings-- which is also an interaction with the world.

Paul Miller


. . . my wife flossing. . . the word "zamboni" . . . a doorbell that sticks . . . smokestacks on the horizon . . . a pitcher set before the pitch. . .  the tracks  on my neck  . . . the neck of a bottle . . . a swab of saliva . . . saliva to drive a screw into wood . . . would that I knew where haiku came from.

Lee Gurga


They begin around me and then within me.

I think haiku like other good poems or any work of art are examples of new wholes.

Gary Hotham


My haiku begin with . . . my relation to the universe and its visible and nonvisible nature. [It] is both a record of a moment and a realization coming forth in that moment.

Bruce Ross


As I know them, haiku begin with a motivating experience, a notable occurrence . . .

. . .  even if the finest things appear in an unlooked-for flash of inspiration-- a flash, it's worth noting, that took only a universe and a life to prepare.

Allan Burns

Images may remain, since they combine subject and object, while thoughts mostly won't.

I learned to trust in my perceptions, rather than in thoughts.

Dietmar Tauchner


I suppose it's a matter of me staying "in tune" . . . .  I find it a fantastic challenge to translate what I witness/experienced into a haiku.

Don Baird

Martin--

I am fairly certain that your suggested exploration will be taken up in one form or another in coming months. The question of the relationship between traditional and modern haiku (in its various forms) is a significant one, and it would indeed be good to hear what panelists and others have to say about it.

Thanks for your post. 

Henri Cartier-Bresson, who did not coin the expression "the decisive moment" but who wrote about it as a way of helping us understand his work, took photographs with uncanny compositional qualities, juxtapositions of elements that if he had managed it not hundreds of times but only once or twice, one might say were merely serendipitous.

One could argue that his photographs are visual haiku, or as I like to say "they have haiku", a quality of fleetingness with a sense of the whole universe coming together at just that place at just that time, and the attendant sense that everything will be different in a moment.

Even so, the cucumber will go on cucumbering, but in a different light, and another light, and with a woodchuck thinking of taking a bite. Or me.

I will try to find some of what H C-B said about the decisive moment-- I wonder if it intersects with Garry Gay's "perceived moment".

I want to take a moment to talk about Field Notes. In a sense, it is comprised of two parts. The first I think of as a symposium which my online dictionary characterizes as: a collection of essays or papers on a particular subject by a number of contributors.

These contributors were told in advance what the current Field Notes topic would be, and in the course of two weeks or so wrote what you now have available to you. Like you, they are seeing each others' responses for the first time.

The second part is discussion. If this were an actual conference, it would be the time when the audience is invited to ask questions, offer comments, or express their own views on the topic under consideration. One difference is, the "panelists" of this online conference may or may not be available for discussion. Online discussion, the kind some of us might wish for, requires a commitment of time and focus that not all of us (perhaps few of us) have at our disposal.

Even so . . . .  A few people have written to me saying: okay, there's a lot of good and varied stuff here-- now how do we get the discussion started?

I am hoping that you will help answer that question.

There are a number of entry points. The first one is to simply take your place on the panel and offer your response to the topic. As was true for the panelists, you may do so however you wish. Interpret the question in whatever way makes sense for you.

Another is to say how a given response affected you. If you are logged onto the forum, you can use the "quote" function available with every post. This places the text you wish to quote in a reply window. You may now edit this to select only the parts you wish to comment on, and then proceed to your comments.

Another is to ask for clarification or expansion on something someone said. You never know, you might get it. (And here, too, the "quote" function is useful).

All this may be pretty obvious, but I just want encourage you to jump in.

By way of offering one more entry point, let me ask a variation on the question Where do your haiku begin?

Was there a haiku in your life, or a haiku poet, all those years or months ago, that got you started-- hooked, perhaps--  as a writer, reader, scholar or aficionado of haiku. With which haiku (or poet) did your love of haiku begin? And what can you say about that?

Oh, and one last thing: is there a topic of great interest to you which you would like to see addressed on Field Notes? Let us know.

Garry Gay

Where do my haiku begin? I would have to say at the beginning.
As I live my daily life I trip over haiku, one step at a time.
All haiku are ah ha moments and that is the true beginning for me.
Often it is something I see everyday and suddenly I realize I am seeing it in a new light like never before. That spark of realization is the beginning of the haiku, the found moment. I know it's more than just a casual relationship, but the awareness of my surroundings seen with a new keen eye.
Sometimes in photography it is said that a photo taken at the peak of the action is the "decisive moment." In haiku I think it is the perceived moment. You say to yourself ah ha!

Chris Gordon:

FIRST RESPONSE

My haiku begin about 3,000 years ago in a wasp's nest in Iberian Gaul. My haiku begin about 2,000 years ago in the writing desk of Martial, known for his epigrams and fits of melancholy. My haiku begin about 100 years ago in the phlegm-soaked handkerchief of a dying poet who loves persimmons. I hate persimmons.

My haiku begin where my ability to explain things fails. My haiku begin in discarded trash left on the pavement in the rain. My haiku begin where thoughts and emotions hide in common everyday objects. My haiku begin when I pick up a pen and defile the perfect emptiness of a page.

My haiku begin when I fall down a flight of stairs and spend three years in bed. My haiku begin when someone else says "yes." My haiku begin when my father dies and I realize he was never there.

My haiku begin when I notice I'm in love with insects. My haiku begin when I notice I'm in love with the moon. My haiku begin in the place where you discard your panties.

My haiku begin when I have nothing left to say. My haiku begin with an article because this is how I talk. My haiku begin in lowercase because it's not a sentence it's a poem.

My haiku begin to imitate themselves, so my haiku begin to change. My haiku never begin and so they never end. My haiku begin to bore me, so I write other kinds of poems. My haiku begin to get noticed, so I let them go their own way.

My haiku begin with objects. My haiku begin with fragments. My haiku begin with sensations and ideas. My haiku begin with no expected outcomes. My haiku begin with you.


SECOND RESPONSE

"The Haiku Moment" or "Is it Representation or is it Art?"

Sometimes I think our haiku are so focused on exactitude, verisimilitude, that we lose the opportunity for storytelling, for open meanings. We get stuck in the process of representation and miss the subtle opportunities for innuendo, for hinting at the narrative fragments our haiku may possess if we change our lenses and allow for uncertainty. Here it's difficult to resist the language of film. Are we tourists taking snapshots? Are we artists composing still lifes? Are we storytellers suggesting complicated meanings?

On the other hand, like the contents of our diaries or dreams, the snapshot or home-movie can become openly aesthetic once it is separated from its intended audience. Prior to that it is banal and pedestrian. Once it is unencumbered by those pretensions it becomes more than merely documentary. It becomes meaningful as an artifact. Artifacts cannot resist our curiosity. They make us tell stories.


THIRD RESPONSE

I never know how people are going to feel about my poems. I've been embarrassed later by some of the work of mine that editors have chosen to publish. I also have personal favorites that no one else has ever noticed. There is one haiku I love to death that others have appreciated as well:

a loveletter to the butterfly gods with strategic misspellings

It came fully formed into my mind without any warning. It just sounded so beautiful and mysterious and profound. Who sent it to me? That's up to you. I will say that it arrived in the midst of a fit of writing. I didn't just sit down with my pen and pull it out of thin air.

Much of my best writing, in my mind, occurs because of the process of writing itself. Hence my belief in the muse. While I have chanced upon compelling images and written a haiku on the spot, these poems later often have a flatness to them that prevents me from taking them any further. Often it is my intention that gets in the way of a satisfying piece of art.

As my writing practice has developed over the years this has been an enduring phenomenon, and there was a time when I discarded the bulk of my work because it seemed to lack purpose or focus. These qualities are necessary with certain types of writing, but seem to get in the way of the process of discovery that occurs with the creation of compelling art.

Where do my haiku begin? Everywhere and nowhere.

Peter Yovu:

Where Do My Haiku Begin?

A bird. And where a bird begins.
A wing and where.
I wear an atmosphere a bird breathes with me.

A well. And where a well begins.
A pebble and a sow. No, keep going . . .
a pebble and a sound. A sound
sown in. I own
a needle and an atmosphere.
I stitch in time.

The night and where by light
I am undone and done again.

A word. And where a word begins.

A wind and where.
The wind begins.

A shoreline and a line of fire.
A howl and where a whale begins
to find a sound.

The unfathomable

fall of lip on lip.
A bird, a pebble and a sea.
The benediction of a cloud.
A cloud and where.
Where rain begins
to wear stone down.

Surrender. A tender
twenty dollar bill forgotten in
last winter's coat and found
where all my words begin

to fail.

I'm falling through the sound
of snow about to fall
and where the sea begins
not gray not blue unseen
a bird among the shaken reeds
a wind around the field within
the notes that take me

Here.

Michael McClintock:

Personal Notes on Where Haiku Begin
 
 
I remember how the world was at age six --- a bloom of red geraniums.  I lived and slept for twenty-five years in a crummy room; now my fortunes have changed and everything surprises me.
 
My haiku begin in memory. An experience an hour ago --- or days, weeks, months, years ago. As a little bump of something felt, with maybe a word or two stuck or adhering to it. A memory with a tactile presence to it: raw material, pre-lingual. I think it's probably something my subconscious has already done a lot of work on.
 
The haiku begins when I begin dredging it up. Meditation is my dredging tool. I sniff for words I can adhere to the memory . . . and then I start writing the words, just pencil on paper, keeping some, crossing out others, again and again, all kept in notebooks. Layering one memory on  another happens, too. This process can take a minute or it can take much, much more time --- hours or days. I have returned to unfinished haiku after many years.
 
Of course, in another sense, haiku have no beginning, they have no ending. They are sliced out of our experience of material things in space-time, our stream-of-conscious.
 
But, still, a haiku is an artifact of that stream-of-consciousness, isn't it? A deliberate act of the will to isolate, cut-out, and give that little bump of experience a linguistic texture --- a kind of translation of it that can be read and shared.  As an artifact, once read and experienced, it goes into our memory. And there it exists as a kind of portal back to that other experience, where it originated. The ink on the paper isn't the real poem, it is the poem's physical tracing, its representation in language. When we read a haiku our mind peels it off the paper and transforms it into another kind of energy; it's that energy that goes into our memory as "the poem."  That is how a haiku becomes a metaphysical reality. Finally, it comes down to finding out what words can do, full of holes as they are. I used to think that haiku began in the external phenomenal world but, no, that no longer is my thinking.
 
I wrote this poem a few years ago, trying to get at the subject in a more direct way:
 
I've this memory ---
riding my father's shoulders
into the ocean,
the poetry of things
before I could speak

Eve Luckring:

Honestly, I don't know if I know.

If I try to trace it, from something/somewhere beyond me that tingles and quivers something/somewhere inside my body, hangs on a few words, and then slips away again.

In the Between.

Where language becomes physical.
Where memory meets the present.
Where the body meets the world.
Where the world becomes spirit.
Where the heart is mind and the mind is heart.
Where knowing becomes forgetting.

Alan Summers:

My haiku began in two countries,  first back around 1991 in England, and then later in 1993 when Ross Clark's Local Seasoning: A Haiku Journal was launched.  Ross Clark, Australian Book Review Poetry Prize winner, had his haiku book announced by the Fellowship of Australian Writers, Queensland, of which I'm now a Life Member.

The first experience, when something called a haiku was read out, it left me cold, and for all I know it wasn't a haiku.  There was no explanation, it was just dropped into a reading by a local English writing/reading poetry group, and it was never raised again.

Thankfully I was heading out to Australia, and by chance discovered the Queensland Poetry Association (now defunct) and Fellowship of Australian Writers, Queensland, still going strong.  It was the FAWQ newsletter that announced Ross Clark's book and a forthcoming workshop.  I was able to buy the book, and I became hooked by its simplicity and accessibility.  The evening's event following the workshop further hooked me as Ross Clark performed his haiku differently than I had supposed with while reading his book.  That delighted me, seeing there was far more to haiku than appeared at face value, and I decided to know more, research more.  By chance the little local library in the Ipswich town outside Brisbane had two copies of The Haiku Handbook, plus other books on haiku.  The Haiku Handbook consolidated the growing realisation that the haiku approach would be a strong factor in my poetry life, and it has been ever since.

That's the background, in a very small nutshell, as to the first set of factors.  After I read The Haiku Handbook through twice, cover to cover in little over a week, I joined the Haiku Society of America, and subscribed to Modern Haiku.   Bill Higginson's Seasonings Column in the HSA newsletter was something I looked forward to every quarter, and both Frogpond and Modern Haiku magazines were devoured page by page and then back again before I started my own attempts at haiku.  I was published in Frogpond by Elizabeth Searle Lamb, and in Modern Haiku by Bob Spiess, as well as Francine Porad in Brussels Sprout, then Bill's call out for haiku for The Haiku Seasons Project culminated into my first major publication in an anthology, the classic English-language saijiki called The Haiku World.  I had already sent out submissions of haiku to every haiku magazine that was around during that time so I had nothing to send, but a stroke of magical luck was about to happen, and that was perhaps up to a million Flying Foxes were to fly over Ipswich (Queensland) through a blood-red sky,  very Hammer Horror/Dracula fashion.   Two of my Flying Foxes haiku were accepted by Bill Higginson which later he told me how much he'd enjoyed them, that it had made his day, that day.

I have to thank first of all Ross Clark of Queensland for his timing, and then Bill Higginson and The Haiku Handbook, then Francine Porad for publishing my first haiku, and Bob Spiess sending me so many notes and comments and believing in my work, followed by Elizabeth Searle Lamb, all great American names in haiku literature.  Then back to Bill for his Haiku Seasons Project, and The Haiku World.  Those people made me keep going with haiku, and still do, although sadly those Americans have all gone from our lives.

above the mountain
earth's shadow
blocks a moon

Note:  eclipse of the moon, Queensland, Australia, Friday 4th June 1993

Alan Summers
Publications credits: Frogpond (Summer 1994) ed. Elisabeth Searle Lamb; Fellowship of Australian Writers, Queensland, Scope magazine Focus feature on myself (paid feature)  (1994); Micropress Yates (1994); Haiku Friends ed. Masaharu Hirata  (Umeda, Osaka 2003)

That's where my haiku began as a writer, but where do my haiku begin?  They started in the farm country of Queensland, getting up at 4am everyday to feed the horses, then go cycling, and never missing a sunrise, accompanied by the neighbour's dog.  This would be followed by either several hours being quiet on my Queenslander veranda in total silence, except when I adopted two Murray Maggie fledgling birds who would sit on my shoulders as I filled my notebooks.  Or going into landcare duty on a big project reclaiming a couple of thousand acres, where I'd be the first there, and sit by a billabong (yes, really) for several hours around dawn to sun up, and before other volunteers came in.   Haiku and an incredible abundance of birds and other wildlife, and the flora as well as the fauna, kept me busy writing long and short poems off and on throughout the day.

In those days I needed complete silence other than a Riflebird call, or the cicadas, now I'm in an urban setting, often plugged into contemporary dance music.  Either way, what I now know is a writer zoning in, was and still is occurring.  That space between silence and noise when something gets written, and later I do not recognise the poem as having been written by me, because I couldn't possibly try to write like that if I tried.   It's a strange sensation, akin to an iPhone game I play against the odds, not thinking I'll lose or win, it's a blinking out of normal space and time.   It does its thing so I don't overanalyse it, or break it down to repeat the whys and wherefores, because I'm not concerned with churning out haiku to a template.   Each one of those haiku I've written from the early failures to the successes, mostly, of today, are both extraordinary gifts, and there'll be a time when it will end, either due to death or dementia.  Time is short, so haiku on, to misquote the Wayne's World guys.

this small ache and all the rain too robinsong

Publications credits: Modern Haiku vol. 44.1 winter/spring 2013

George Swede:

I wrote down the following reasons as they arose on June 15, 2013, between 9:27 and 10:02 a.m. (with a few additions between 1:00 and 2:00 p.m.)

From a morning cup of coffee while sitting on a sofa with an inner city view thru seven windows.

From childhood years spent hiking with my dog thru orchards, evergreen forests and across grassy hills dotted with cow skulls.

From gazing into the windows of a locked farmhouse whose Japanese owners had been forced to leave immediately for internment camps during WW II.

From a Myers-Briggs assessment of my personality as suited for writing poetry.

From the Nazis shooting my father and dumping his body into a common grave.

From the Russians shipping my paternal grandparents from Riga to somewhere in Siberia where they died.

From the memory of being nursed by a young woman who cared for me when the Nazis imprisoned my mother for six months.

From a need to seize the moment.

From getting teased for wearing lederhosen on my first day of school in Oyama, British Columbia.

From learning English as a third language.

From studying Japanese and Chinese history for two years at the University of British Columbia. 

From taking LSD at Indiana University in 1965, when it was still legal.

From learning about the psychology of creativity and the psychology of art.

From a desire to be original.

From the inability to write a novel.

From the study of Makoto Ueda's Modern Japanese Haiku. (University of Toronto Press, 1976).

From being together with Anita Krumins for over four decades.

From writing down the comments of my two stepsons, Andris and Juris, when they were preschoolers, the age of linguistic genius.

From praise for my poetry.

From the reflections natural to old age.

From being told that poets have no status in society.

From watching a butterfly balance on a begonia.

Kristen Deming:

  Where does my haiku come from?  It comes from a love of the form, from reading a lot of haiku over the years, and from a long struggle to write haiku.  Sometimes I feel like the snail trying to climb Mt. Fuji!
   Writing haiku is taking up the challenge of expressing in words and images what is often inexpressible. It is a encounter with the world, a search for what feels true, beautiful, and what uplifts and inspires.
  My haiku come from a pleasurable anticipation of play and discovery. I always hope to find fresh inspiration and to capture something that pleases me and that will find a response in the reader.
  Journalist and poetry lover Bill Moyers once wrote "Poetry is news: news of the mind, news of the heart."  It begins with who we are and the sum total of our life experiences to date.

Richard Gilbert:


silence, what is



to be mentioned:

as far as how to speak where things concatenate

seems to be there is no me to be


I say "I prefer," the preference for a given word,


definition of rhetoric:


to persuade. silence


is what I see, the power of symbols to create reality. it serves no purpose


to belittle language, what is silence


for a languaged being.

options.

an argument against.

opting out.

co-opting in.

choosing "not."

choosing not to knot or unknot.

no having to cut silence in two.

before / after.

craving something.

just a minute or moment.

between space and fear.

not having to compose a list.

not having to beg a word for prayer.

mostly not.

not that anyone would care to listen.

not a performance.

not silence, not the choice not to utter.

not shutup not invisible not mine.

that's what i like; when i prefer not

to communicate.


you remember the shapes of silence

as time transmits space, time unburdens itself

time does not dream or have a past or a book

time fuck shit piss blue mine love mend leaf kiss must call

an instrumental four letters, analogous


silence because I want you to find out

silence because I want you to look

silence because I want you to take the time

not to speak, silence because the ear

is made more sensitive to pressure variation

surrendering to the plenum of acoustic space

alive with endless reflection; all what has

been said, to rest to rest to rest, at times

silence is like this repeating itself

a book with pages of folded knowledge


silence has levels of silence,

resting silence

thoroughly resting silence

completely thoroughly resting silence

silence which is neither thought nor unthought

silence which has no name

so with a will I need to be

so I must call to you

without sound.

                                               ***
         
         Haiku as groupings of trees


it was in the trees that the smell of the air came through her writing

never at night in the radiator sounds of home-baking and old bones

along the slice of water and sky where beneath the surface a poem

glides along. time stopped for the present. a moment or two. then

with new determination an ecology of selves shining and new

what was in the trees to begin with just before and just after love

when he had almost saved her. that she could write.


as a body born of words, inasmuch as clinginginto forms thoughts

as a body bones of words, in arrears as forms of whatstheuse of

words to which the world happens to be. how my furthering

unfurls against moving horizons as she writes preoccupations.

not everyone is safe, who can be saved, who can be safe and

these days our world tilts while I hold the sun without capture:

backlit skirted pantsuit in umbral fortitude descending the nautilus day.


taste the asian pear, gingko berry, the seed hidden within.

moon cradled you recall the voice of another I might be the distance

measured by drawing out string from here to there: do you remember

someone will remind you one day will say not I am here but I am there

that the thine that becomes the subject of one stroke of genius no as-if

about it, on the beach by the trees between two moments. that is me.


                         ***

Commentary on track

I don't know that I can write "where do your haiku begin" in a prosaic manner. I seem to psychologically strongly resist the thought -- so I'm glad you left the form and genre style open, as to comments. A lot of my writing is about some kind of contemplation of origins and poetic/consciousness process-experience (in my fantasy). Referring to the two poetic statements I sent to you, I feel they are sincere or honest in addressing the question, in that their answers have arisen as unintended consequences, coming to your question at a tangent. In both writings, I later published a line (of four-letter words from "silence"), and several lines from "trees" as haiku, with little or no alteration.

As praxis, the answer of "where do your haiku come from" is "they came from there" (in these instances). In the midst of composition of (such) a longer piece, when writing those (later-extracted) haiku lines, I was sometimes partially consciously possibly aware of perhaps composing something with the power and form of haiku then and there in it; like hey, that cuts well, says it; yeah, Daddy-O. Yet it was after the fact of writing, later (much), working from an editorial head – like almost everyone, I've come to realize – that I saw there was autonomy. Luckily Roadrunner Haiku Journal is open-minded regarding experiments—the fact of R'r's existence can't be overstated; I felt encouraged, knowing there was potentially a place for them, a collegial, even receptive audience—unlike the longer poems themselves, which were posted as notional letters to a few friends; kind of like nightstands with doilies.

This compositional method isn't typical; it's just something I thought to try. The pieces were written within a week of each other; and I was thinking about haibun; the idea of embedding haiku into longer poetic forms; loosening the genre-concept of poem versus prose; hardly new ideas. Yet if writing for the reader always ends in 'goodbye'; to give that goodbye gist is something like "mono no aware" -- that cutting moment of resolution, wholeness/emptiness in presence/absence -- where a world breathes, dissolves, and conjunctives such as 'and'; an abiding 'with' or an 'or,' or 'however' may exit the palette (so, an elemental palette?), along with similes like 'like being': A flowering world, lacking simile? Isn't language always "like" something? Isn't a poem, read, heard or sung a dynamic simulacrum? Simulacrum, yet paradoxically, the real thing. It's good to ask the question, though as a self as a national park as a managed trail as an air there I don't immediately find the ferry. Haiku take us here to there; wee ferries of the invisible or surely certain ineffable secret fantasies. Plus cargo. Like any good instrument that places the cosmos in your hands, it takes time to work the tools; the payoff is they can effect novel navigations to near and foreign shores. That's why I like reading excellent haiku, because haiku always begin there. And goodbye.

Aubrie Cox:

Philosophically, my haiku begin with the desire to create and share a moment, art, imagination, and good conversation. But as for the actual process and origin of individual poems, I would say, they often do begin within a "haiku moment"—I see something while walking, driving, looking out the window that does make me "ah!" and however fleeting the moment actually is, it lingers. Other times, though, it can happen more subtly as I come across a word or phrase (or sometimes just a sound) while reading or listening to music. Sometimes it's in a photograph or piece of art (sometimes my own, sometimes not). Regardless the source, as I feel something stir in me, the words start to come.

But even though I may start stringing words together at that moment, the haiku in its entirety or final form may not happen for some time (though it's a happy day when it all falls into place at once!). I may get half the poem at the moment and have to search for the other for days or weeks; sometimes they never get finished at all even though the moment remains in the back of my mind. For example, a week ago I saw what looked like the end of a rainbow touch down in an open field. A little spark went off inside me as I thought, "Haiku!" I've fiddled with a few lines here and there and haven't found anything satisfactory, but who knows, this poem may still find its shape.

Randy Brooks (part 2):


after all these years
she asks about her mother . . .
I put on another log

Mainichi Haiku Competition Award, Mainichi Daily News, Tokyo, 1997.

Where did this haiku begin?

This haiku that also begins with dissonance and suggests some hopeful movement towards consonance. We live with so many mysteries, so many things untold and unspoken because they may be painful. When a child grows old enough to start asking difficult questions, sometimes we have to pause and attempt answers. It will probably require a story or several stories of long ago. The exact story doesn't matter in this haiku, but the reflective pause of the father or grandfather or guardian is where this haiku comes from. Here the haiku pause, the cut, becomes a rush of memories and thoughts and feelings . . . hesitations . . . as the narrator stokes the fire with another log, buying a little more time to think. This will take awhile. The fire will need to last and not die down soon. The questioner has evidently been wondering and has come of age to imagine "about her mother." There is some implied distance or loss between the asker and the mother, and this is the moment of trying to find some connections and understanding of long-held unknowns. She is seeking some peace or resolution about what happened. The scene is a simple question while the narrator tends the fire. The underlying drama and emotion is one of love and tending of growth for a young person coming into adulthood. The haiku remains open to readers because it is about this moment of seeking answers and the caring, trusted mentor trying to answer difficult questions.


funeral procession . . .
snowflakes blowing
into the headlights

First Place, 1998 Harold G. Henderson Award, The Haiku Society of America (New York, NY) October, 1998. The New Pond: An English-language Haiku Anthology, edited and translated into Japanese by Emiko Miyashita, Hokumei-sha Press, (Tokyo, Japan), 2002.

Where did this haiku begin?

This haiku comes from a perceived sense of movement and suspended animation. Time seems to freeze and stand still, waiting by the side of the road for the funeral procession to pass, but nature continues to move on. I wanted to write this haiku in such a way that the reader could position themselves from a variety of perspectives. The reader can be anyone except for the dead person in the casket. You can imagine being in the hearse or a car in the procession, looking as the blowing snowflakes are visible in the headlights, or you can be on the sidelines watching the procession go by.

Most interesting for meis the "slow motion" feel of everything. Funeral processions don't hurry, and the snowflakes are coming down but not in a flurry. They are visible in the headlights and lively, but there is no rush to the cemetery. There is also the contrast of the black hearse and the white snowflakes . . . a time of death and the ritual of the procession goes against the flow of the snowflakes covering everything white. This will be a stark black and white funeral. Formal and quiet. A time to consider the ephemeral nature of life . . . in the blowing snowflakes.


razor wire
soldiers in the alley
tossing dice

Haiku in English: The First Hundred Years edited by Jim Kacian, Allan Burns and Philip Rowland. W.W. Norton & Company (New York, NY), 2013. White Lies: The Red Moon Anthology of English-Language Haiku 2008, Red Moon Press, (Winchester, VA), 2009. Dandelion Clocks: Haiku Society of America Anthology 2008. Edited by Robert Beary and Ellen Compton. New York, NY: Haiku Society of America, 2008.

Where did this haiku begin?

News stories, photographs, war stories, relatives home from Iraq and Afghanistan. This haiku comes from my attempt to portray the tension between ordinary playfulness and gambling with life-threatening risks. Soldiers are used to taking chances, of gambling with precious life. They are often in dangerous locations, with walls that must be protected, areas to be secured . . . against an ever-shifting enemy. Yet beneath the razor wire . . . they play, and, of course, the play in this case is gambling with dice. Sometimes you're lucky, sometimes you're not. Take your chances. Let the dice roll. Put your money down. Your money or your life. Razor wire is not friendly, not a fence to keep something in; it is intended to keep a dangerous enemy out. It often fails. You lose. In the darkness of an alley, another enemy lurks. Out of the public eye, away from the light of the street, the soldiers are tossing dice. Who wins? Who loses? Chances. What are the odds of survival, to odds of coming out ahead?


two lines in the water . . .
not a word between
father and son

Haiku in English: The First Hundred Years edited by Jim Kacian, Allan Burns and Philip Rowland. W.W. Norton & Company (New York, NY), 2013. Haiku: The Art of the Short Poem by Tazuo Yamaguchi. A full-length feature film and book published as a DVD/book by Brooks Books, (Decatur, IL), 2008. School's Out: Selected Haiku of Randy Brooks, Press Here, (Foster City, CA), 1999.

Where did this haiku begin?

Most directly, this haiku came from a favorite folk song, "My Father's Only Son" by songwriter Carrie Newcomer. In this song, Carrie sings about her father having three daughters, so she became his only son, especially because she was the only one who would go fishing with him. The chorus is "You never talk much in a fishin' boat / 'Cause it just scares the fish away / You just give it time and watch your line". In the song, one of the key lines is that the daughter has some significant news, that "his only son was expecting a child." So they actually have lots to talk about! I wanted to imitate this admired song and write a haiku about not talking in a fishing boat.

I like this song because it is about the importance of just being together, just spending time together. No talking necessary. I wrote my haiku version starting with a somewhat abstract image of "two lines in the water" and did not want to hint at some sort of significant news. I wanted to focus on the "not talking" but leave the haiku more open-ended to the reader's imagined response. Some readers imagine this as not talking because there is some tension or problem between the father and son, so that if they talk it would destroy the fun of just being together. Other readers have told me they view this scene as being about not talking because everything is so perfect, no words are necessary. Words would just detract from the beauty and peace of sharing this time together. In other words, depending on the reader, this haiku draws readers into consonance or dissonance and I love that what the reader brings paints such a different resulting feeling. For me, I just like that status, that point of silent being where the relationship for this moment is presence, not words. The father and son are connected without saying anything. They are in sync. Their lines rest in tandem out into the water.


cookie crumbs . . .
she returns to the web page
where they met

Evolution: The Red Moon Anthology of English-Language Haiku 2010. Winchester, VA: Red Moon Press, 2011.

Where did this haiku begin?

The Internet leaves a trail of where you've been—contemporary cookie crumbs. A history or cache of places visited enable you to return. Perhaps, in this case, the electronic cookie crumbs are postings on Facebook or a forum resulting in emails exchanged. In this haiku I sought the idea of trying to look back on a relationship through this electronic record. Remembering the excitement of meeting, of getting to know each other. If we consider the Hansel and Gretel fairy tale, cookie crumbs were left intentionally so that they could find their way home after a daring adventure into the mysteries of the woods. So this haiku also links to that fairy tale. (Another form of intertextuality with a fairy tale loaded with dissonance.) Perhaps she is trying to get back to who she was before they met, back to some safe "old home" now lost. There is both a sense of nostalgia and loss in this haiku. She can return to the web page, but it is no longer active, no longer who she is. It is now just a memory of where she was . . . where they first met. She has moved on and the web page is a digital ghost, an electronic artifact of her past. It is an old web page that has either changed since she last visited or has become dated and no longer relevant, except as a memory.

I also like that this haiku because it has very little sensory presence. At best, we can imagine her sitting at a computer. Computer screens are visual and provide some aural elements, but they are ultimately flat and lacking full sensory presence. Somehow, the computer screen context makes this scene more artificial and detached from our human need to touch and connect. There is no wabi to an old web page, no human touch. It's just an old html file pretending to be something of lasting value.


October light
      I open my ribs
             to pray

Haiku 21: An Anthology of Contemporary English-language Haiku, edited by Lee Gurga and Scott Metz, Modern Haiku Press, (Lincoln, IL), 2011.

Where did this haiku begin?

I will end with a haiku which exemplifies the movement and tension between dissonance and consonance. This haiku comes out of a year of hardship and longing for things to get better. The October light is a thin light of a grey sky that is chilly. It is a forewarning of the coming cold of winter. This light doesn't warm us up. Yes, it is light, but seemingly colorless. It's hard to see through the gray sky to the sun. Everything seems muted and half-alive. That's the context, the opening of this haiku.

The second half comes from the importance of breathing, how our ribs expand and compress to breathe. For me, this connects to the sense of the spirit moving within us . . . how the spirit is held and released through our breathing, protected beneath our rib cage. The spirit is alive within us, but in this haiku it is constrained. When we are troubled, we feel like the weight of the world is bearing down on us making it difficult to breathe. We just can't take a satisfying breath. Our breaths are shallow and frequent but not fulfilling. The spirit is caged in the ribs and can't get out, can't connect to God. Like the muted sun in the October light, the narrator of this haiku can't breathe, can't pray.

At last the narrator sighs, takes a deep breath, and opens his lungs . . . to pray, again. It's going to be a long prayer, with so much held in for so many days. This haiku is a breaking out of the spirit from the cage of being constrained in our all too human shells.
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I look forward to questions, suggestions and responses to sharing these examples of "Where do my haiku begin?"

June 14, 2013