HaikuNow! Awards for 2010

First Prize

war memorial
the shine on a bronze soldier
from so many hands
     —Cherie Hunter Day

Runners Up

the rare kimono
our eyes roll over its hills
flowers and mountains
     —John Tiong Chung Hoo

vernal equinox:
sharing a branch an orange
and orange blossom
     —Victor Ortiz

the leaf blower man—
when he turns and walks away
the leaves follow him
     —Madeleine Findlay

The morning is here—
Orange Juice in a Flintstones glass.
What should I do next?
     —Cory Ryant

Judge’s
Comments

I found so many of the haiku entries not only nicely poised but arresting. I chose the one about the war memorial because it allowed a small observation (the shiny bronze) to ripple out to a very heavy subject indeed, the kind of ponderous subject that haiku is usually too small to contain. The one featuring the surprising appearance of a Flintstones glass showed the American side of haiku; plus the clueless speaker appears to be in a perfectly empty-headed haiku state of mind. The kimono poem made me slightly dizzy in the way it rolled over the landscape which was both real and fabricated, in this case, made of fabric. The leaf blower man made me laugh out loud, which is the preferred reaction to a haiku that is really not trying to be “funny;” I love its odd mix of absurdity and empathy. It was the sheer “obviousness” of the orange haiku that got me: imagine an orange and an orange blossom on the same tree, a true haiku eye-opener!

—Billy Collins

First Prize

distant thunder
the future
in my bones
     —Lorin Ford

Runners Up

night swimming
losing ourselves
in the darkness
     —Vanessa Proctor

the Big Dipper—
rows of corn connect
farm to farm
     —Chad Lee Robinson

her pain wakes me
a cockroach escapes
from the light
     —Rosie Roumeliotis

milky way
what I don’t know
I don’t know
     —Nora Wood

Judge’s
Comments

I had a lot of difficulty choosing one poem over several others in this category. I felt the work was all of a piece, all high quality, and I had to sleep on this several days before one emerged from the pack. I love the immersion of “night swimming,” how its darkness is both enveloping and at the same time welcoming. “her pain wakes me” is a novella in a few words, and captures a scene vividly and tellingly. The amorphous quality of the “milky way” perfectly mirrors the aperçu of the poet, making something fresh of one of the most common images in poetry. And the way we create and recognize pattern, amongst the stars, say, or between our own earthly designs, attracted me strongly to “the Big Dipper.” It was,in fact, this same sense of connectedness that convinced me that “distant thunder” was my first choice. Many of us have had this same experience, knowing in our joints what will be. This poem captures it for us perfectly.

—Jim Kacian

First Prize

what we say          what we do
pear blossom        in winter
     —Olga Dugan

Runners Up

salt wind ripples on an inner lake
     —Cherie Hunter Day

a rake in hand . . . the duck’s mind
     —Tom Clausen

flipped boxcars God doesn’t play dice . . .
     —Scott Mason

dawn bumps the Jesus fish
     —H. Gene Murtha

Judge’s
Comments

Being innovative on command is not a skill I possess. Being innovative in a genre with established strictures daunts me even more. So it is not very surprising if most of the poems in this category were only mildly innovative, and then generally in one area, content. As life presents us with ever-new and -changing aspects, finding something to write that’s never been done before is a real possibility, and most of the poets here did exactly that, or else found novel ways to posit their images on the mind’s retina. “flipped boxcars” for instance puns on a famous quotation and misleads the reader, for a moment, into seeing something other than what is intended. “a rake in hand” puts me in mind of the famous essay “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” by the philosopher Thomas Nagel—he concludes that even a moment of such knowing would make us insane. “salt wind” is not allusive in such overt ways, but conjures its own possible impossibilities which are delectable to ponder. And “dawn” is fun and boppy, and sees the scene in an original way. “what we say,” however, does what I find so hard to do: it actually suggests a new way to organize material within a haiku. Its multiple reading possibilities are the very essence of innovation, and I expect serious poets will study this poem, and we’ll see more like it in the near future. But Olga Dugan got here first.

—Jim Kacian