Roadrunner 11.2 is now up

[Scott Metz]

http://www.roadrunnerjournal.net/

Submissions for 11.3 are most welcome.

Roadrunner will consider haiku of any school written in English (including senryu, zappai and short poetry inspired by haiku). Please send 5 to 25 ku at a time for consideration. No single poem submissions, please (they will be ignored). Also, please limit yourself to sending only two submissions per reading period. All poems must be unpublished and not under consideration elsewhere. Please read the journal before you submit work.

At this time there is no payment for accepted work.

The submission deadline for issue 11.3 is December 1st, 2011.

We try to respond to submissions within a month. Send an email if you're concerned.

[AlanSummers]

I cannot emphasize enough what a fine magazine this is, and its importance.

Alan

[John McManus]

I completely agree Alan and just out of curiosity which poem or poems stood out for you?

Here are my top three

picasso drawing
a great egg
hatching from it

William M. Ramsey

bastille day
I feed a night
to a lizard

Fay Aoyagi

she left one room whispering to another

Peter Yovu

warmest,
John

[Peter Yovu]

Alan, would you be willing to expand a bit on the importance of Roadrunner?

[AlanSummers]

Hi Peter,

It depends on what you mean, from what approach etc...

For me I come from it as a reader first, like Joe or Jo Public; then an informed reader (I hope so after close study of haikai literature for almost 20 years); as a fellow editor; and as an advocate of haikai as a literary form, and supporting a publication which acts as an ambassador for what haiku is, for what it can be, for furthering its direction, as no literary form can stand still.

Of course we have great examples of past history from Classic Japan, and 575 syllable haiku practitioners like O. Mabson Southard, and the list goes on.  But its strength, in my opinion, rightly or wrongly, lies in its future strengths, approaches, experimentation being constantly in development, whether successful or not, as long as it's a successful failure, or a well-throught out experiment.

I'm keen on reader development, not just within the haiku community in all its forms, but new audiences, and those who despair of longer poetry or default to simple rhymes or doggerel.

I truly believe haiku can be a standard bearer to those audiences ostracised either by themselves, by schools and other educational facilities, or by aloof poets, who may never visit or revisit the rewarding power that is poetry (in all its forms).

About Roadrunner (http://www.roadrunnerjournal.net/pages_all/aboutroadrunner.htm):
Roadrunner is a quarterly online journal seeking to publish the best and most diverse in English-language haiku (including senryu, zappai and short poetry inspired by haiku).

There is so much that is right in this incredibly simple statement (forgetting terms that might be unfamiliar to some potential readers).  Best and diverse, inclusive, widening the idea of what haiku is, and enabling readers, hopefully, and inspiring writers now, and future.

Roadrunner may have its fans and detractors, and I would never label myself eclectic as that term has been so much abused it feels like a cliché, but it showcases, and it pushes boundaries, yet does not exclude certain styles of haiku (I hope).

Just selecting some poems, otherwise this would be a very long post, and focusing on Roadrunner issue Issue 11.2:


there in the trees to begin with just before and just after love

Richard Gilbert


you watch those fingerprints tumble downriver

John Martone


an old word connects to a new one
the fame the dead
knew

Gary Hotham


celebrity
genitals
a preface

John Stevenson

amidst the black churning of stars my shudder

Jim Kacian


self-scrutiny
as deep
as the snorkel
allows

George Swede

a vast field
of clover
in defense of the realm

Patrick Sweeney

rhymes our small town
the to-fro pendulum of the Earth
winding

paul m.

testing my power real peaches in an imaginary winter

Jim Kacian



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

Richard Gilbert


In the incandescence let me let me read me to you

paul pfleuger jr


for all these storms and streams no north of the present

Philip Rowland


All these poems were deliberately picked without knowing who the author was, and I could have easily most of the poems, but that seemed silly as we have the magazine itself to read the rest.

These poems, and all the others cast a spell on me whether I understood them or not.  Is that a crime?  I think as a reader I have the right to like what I read, sometimes like what I know, and sometimes know what I like, irrespective of any peer pressure.

As a reader I found reading these yet again a truly rewarding experience that made me feel good, and stretched my understanding of what I think poetry is all about, or what haiku within poetry, is all about.

All my identities enjoyed reading these poems. ;-)

Alan

Alan, would you be willing to expand a bit on the importance of Roadrunner?

[Peter Yovu]

Thanks, Alan, for your generous response. For now, I will only say that a critique of Roadrunner is long overdue. But this is exactly like saying a critical exploration of "new directions in English language haiku" is long overdue. It is a tribute, I believe, to the journal that it is no longer quite accurate to say that Roadrunner is the only current venue for serious poets to explore the possibilities of haiku. Modern Haiku and Frogpond (the former more so and for a longer time) routinely include the kind of the poem that is sometimes referred to as "the kind of thing Roadrunner does".  

I feel nothing but respect and gratitude for what Scott Metz with Paul Pfleuger have done, not only in opening doors and minds, but in being ambassadors for the new haiku, bringing such people as Ron Silliman, Rae Armantrout, Robert Hass and others into the mix, if only briefly.

While I'm on it, a further note of thanks to Scott Metz for creating Troutswirl over on the original site.
I miss the mess and bustle of many of the exchanges that occurred over there; I miss the Virals.. . Troutswirl seemed to thrive at a crossroads, like a bazaar attracting goods (and not-so-goods) from all over.