The Haiku Foundation Forums

The thought came to me today, in talking to a friend...  I was telling him about this "fly" a little black fly... and we realized that I had "haiku'ed"... it had come from the coming together of time and space in a way that taught us both something ... both the moment was necessary, but also the space... the object... my friend called it a priori.   

Peter, It seems to me that your comment about Henri Cartier-Bresson comes to the point of what makes art art.  I often feel that I paint/draw in order to see.  As I enter the painting everything is new and creates new things I didn't know I wasn't seeing and in seeing anew, I see deeper.  I'm in the middle of a watercolor where I needed to find a palette  for flesh.  My oil palette no longer applies and as I'm rendering the hands with washes of color upon color to sculpt the forms... I notice my friends hands more deeply.  I notice how the color is formed with shadows, reflections, with the way the blood colors the skin in some people more than others and on and on.  By the time I finish those hands I may never look at hands in quite the same way.   
     Other artists go in the direction of making those discoveries evident to others which has led to myriad forms of art.   
      And I would suspect that dancers, and musicians also come to that moment.  That's why it's so vital to have the "haiku moment" in haiku... That's all there is.   

Since I'm not a word person... I seem to have impressed images in the place words should have been forming as a child... I mostly have my "haiku" awareness' in image form... but every once in awhile, as I come across the way a line forms or the light strikes something etc. words come to mind and startle me.  This sometimes happen from exploring deep psychological paradoxes but most of the time it happens in the outdoors, or while I'm walking.   It usually happens on a very pragmatic mission, such as walking to the store for groceries.  The intrusion into my ho-hum day with something as unremarkable as the milkweed I pass, at the point of turning to seed.... or the time a bluebird landed on a milkweed as the seeds shed their silk.  That last image turned into a haiga that was published in REEDS: Contemporary Haiga some years ago.   It spoke to me of taking new paths... and so I did.   
    A very strange things happens often.  I end up living my haiku.  There is something of a premonition about them for me.   

I love that haiku of Leonard's alluding to Peggy's voice... So much to think about on such good posts here.   Thanks.   

Here's a simple haiku from"paper moon" haiku "Writing for Self Discovery" Grades 9 and 10 put out by School of the Arts Rochester, New York.  It's such a simple haiku:   

early spring
the Sunday paper
freckled with snow   
     Brittany Robinson   

This holds the essence of that early spring day... with the added humor of "freckled" like the little girl dashing for the paper in the light snow.   
                                                           

This concept comes to mind in a problem I was having with a bush...pretty plain language there.  But this bush was so hard to describe and I was at a loss for a word to describe it's many passages created by the tangle of branches and the many hiding places for the birds all winter.  (See how many words it takes to try to explain what that bush was!)  One day on the way home it came to me: 
bushmaze.   Now there is no such word.  But in one word it holds all the elements three lines of description took to explain.   
     I don't look for fancy words...I love the pot and rake and trowel... but I do love a word that holds the truth or the essence of something.   

Peter, This is great!  I'm so glad you've come to stretch us out of our comfort zone into the twilight zone...paths where no one has gone before!    ;)

I find the haiku truly reflects the poets feeling of the chill that had come over his world...it was not just a condum but a knotted up condum... I feel is it even more than a parody...but a condemnation in that he brings to mind the passion that had been there once... now hidebound and frozen.     

Haiku North America in Seattle, August 3 to 7 ....great new BLOG:   

http://haikunorthamerica.wordpress.com

Save the date!  Haiku North America 2011 will be held August 3 to 7, 2011 (new dates)   
Members of the Haiku Norhtwest group have generously offered to host the 2011 conference and they have many exciting plans already in the works, including a harbor cruise.  The confeence itself will be held at the Seattle Centre, at the foot of the Space Needle, providing easy access to haiku writing and walking opportunities such as Pike Place Market (via the monorail), the Olympic Sculpture Park, the Experience Music Projet rock-and-roll museum and Science Fiction Museum, and countless other attractions -- including fleet week and the Seafair festival, with the Blue Angels performing overhead.
    In addition:
The conference theme will be "Fifty Years of Haiku" celebrating the past, present, and future of Haiku in North America.  The deadline for proposals has been extended to February 28, 2011
(http://www.haikunorthamerica.com/pages/2011.html), but sooner is better.  Proposals do not have to fit the theme.  If you've already submitted a proposal, please confirm with Michael Dylan Welch at Welch.M@aol.com that you  can come to Seattle on the new dates.  Speakers already include Cor van den Heuval, Richard Gilbert, David Lanoue, Carlos Colon, Fay Aoyagi, Jim Kacian, Emiko Miyashita, George Swede, and many others.  Info at:  www.haikunorthamerica.com and HNA blog at http://haikunorthamerica.wordpress.com/.

Regretfully, Rochester, New York WILL NOT be able to host HAIKU NORTH AMERICA in 2011.  Since the conference is such an important part of the haiku tradition in North America, and because so many poets, scholars, and editors look forward to the biennial event, work is underway to quickly find a suitable replacement location.  They plan to have more new shortly.  CONTACT:  Michael Dylan Welch,
Garry Gay, Paul Miller...HNA   

Thanks, Billie, Glad I stopped by...

Carmen, You said so many things I could never find words for... If you read several translations of the Bible...especially the Old Testament... you find that the words mean a great deal more and encompass more than what is generally thought of in today's terms.   So much of any religion can be destroyed by poor teachers and misunderstandings.   These things are multiplied substancially across cultural boundaries and practices.
    So for the most part I have taken to expressing these things in natural terms...on what I see around me.   

my old porch
once again the star is hung
on a beam   

The old porch is me.... the star can either be the star I hang on a beam of the porch or the star that is hung on the beam of its light over my old porch.  The star is the light which guides my life... eternal light...as long lasting as the stars over head

These discussions of internal and external mysteries are interesting to me.  It's one of the reasons I tend to navigate to haiku that's nature based...it allows a certain view point that seems to me to allow things to be shared and explored without knowing the answers.   

If there was a way to post the photo...that would be best...ipse dixit...