Montage

Montage #41

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Montage #41,
presented by Allan Burns,
is now up
on The Haiku Foundation website.

“Halcyon Days,” the latest Montage gallery, features haiku by three very active and well-known members of the English-language haiku “community”: Randy Brooks, David Cobb, and Michael Dylan Welch.

holding hands...
until we reach
the blackberries
— Randy Brooks


                                                                                the author in spring
                                                                                how his dots and commas
                                                                                fly all about
                                                                                — David Cobb


crackling beach fire—
we hum in place of words
we can't recall
— Michael Dylan Welch

This Post Has 6 Comments

  1. Thanks, Michael, It’s been an interesting discussion. I appreciate your comments…and the permission to use them here. Many thanks.

  2. The website in which my discussion with Merrill resides has difficulty allowing copy/paste, so I will present a more accurate version now:

    “I am often on the lookout for “pear” haiku, especially those that allow a reader to explore the word’s connotations. I am excited about this poem’s multiple layers, from the entirely literal and seasonal to the traditional mythic significance of the pear as the fruit of the Tree of Life, which also relates to first and second Advents (and all annual Advents, too, in metaphorical and spiritual continuum), to the allusive, allegorical significance of branches when taken together with these other meanings. Did David Cobb intend these meanings? Maybe, maybe not. He probably was linking his haiku to one or two classical Japanese haiku that occur to me at the moment. But a possible lack of intent doesn’t eliminate that cycle of resonance that Richard Gilbert wrote about and that I am experiencing here.”

  4. I have been discussing the haiku by David Cobb, “pear leaves fall:’ and find some of the comments intrigue me to explore some of the many levels of this poem:

    “I am often on the lookout for ‘pear’ haiku, especially those that allow a reader to explore the word’s connotations. I am excited aboutthis poem’s multiple layers, from the entirely literal and seasonal to the traditional mythic significance of the pear as the fruit of the Tree of Life, which also relates to both first and second Advents (and all annual Advents, too,in metaphorical and spiritual continuum) to the allisive, allegorical significance of branches when taken together with these other meanings. Did David Cobb intend these meanings? Maybe, maybe not. He probably was linking this haiku to one or two classical Japanese haiku that occur to me atthe moment. But a possible lack of intent doesn’t mean that cycle of resonance that Richard Gilbert wrote about and that I am experiencing here.”

  5. Halcyon Days… I read and reread these haiku, not because I didn’t understand them, but because I was drawn to them as an ant is drawn to sugar. I wanted to feast on them and fill my self with the calmness, the rightness, the familiarity of so many of the moments. Unlike many gendai haiku posted on the last Sailings I don’t come away with a feeling of confusion and puzzelment; I don’t need to study them as if they were part of a college course and they were my homework.

    Adelaide

  6. Halcyon Days have arrived…here at least. Right on schedule. The forecast is for no storms right through to the 20th…maybe a little rain in the morning…and a rather precipitous drop in temperature come Wednesday. And while I don’t recall any daffodils blooming at this time of year here, there seems to be many who are “wearing blue”… The blues certainly seem to get people this time of year with the encrouching darkness and the cold that gets into your bones. Makes one feel a bit old before one’s time. So I have to tell you, I’m drawn to Michael Dylan Welch’s “knocking a row of icicles/from the eave” sort of attitude. His capture of the original child like nature is like having the children around again, when they are small and full of wonder. Here we are entering winter in a few days, and his

    spring breeze –
    the pull of her hand
    as we near the pet store

    and the tiny hand of a four or five year old entering my mind’s eye gives this season its “spring breeze”….
    Halcyon Days indeed.

    And yet I go out my front door and I know I’m still entering winter… the here and now of this moment is before me.

    pear leaves fall:
    a landscape starts to form
    between the branches
    by David Cobb…..

    That’s a wonderful haiku. Whatever the state of being, “a landscape starts to form” and we enter in…even falling as the leaves – going the same route so to speak…”a landscape starts to form” and the path opens before us.
    For me, this is the season of Advent…and this is what we wait for…

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