The Renku Sessions: Triparshva—call for verse 5
Welcome to the third Renku Session. I’m Linda Papanicolaou, and I’ll be leading this journey in collaborative poetry. Triparshva is a 22-verse form developed by Norman Darlington in 2005. It’s a good form for composing online because it moves more quickly than the 36-verse kasen, while also following the jo-ha-kyu (beginning-development-rapid closure) pattern of traditional renku. So whether you’re new to renku, or simply want to keep your skills honed, you’re especially encouraged to join us.
Our Renku So Far:
Once again I enjoyed reading everyone’s ideas. If you’ve used a topic checklist (two from Japanese renku clubs are published in Kondô & Higginson’s “Link and Shift” article), you’ll see that the offerings range through many of the categories. A few are ineligible for various reasons. In a couple of offers, summer sneaked in, though season wasn’t intrusive this time. There were other problems, though. In some of the offers (notably those with sound imagery) there was a whiff of linking to the maeku in a way that reverts to or recalls the uchikoshi. This is called kannonbiraki, one of my favorite renku words. It refers to a shrine with double doors that open symmetrically outwards. In a few other verses, echoes of imagery in the hokku also crept in here and there. No matter—even when we’re vigilant these things happen.
More seriously, a number of offers have been travel verses, proper nouns, and a very interesting literary reference to a poem about infant death. Creative energy is being spent on verses that we can’t use this early in the renku, so I’ll say a bit more about jo-ha-kyu. It might be useful to know why I place the verses I do while passing over others that seem worthy in and of themselves.
In the call for hokku, I advised that the jo as like the early stages of a party when we’re all still greeting each other and conversation is polite. That was a simplification so as not to burden everyone with rules and proscriptions while we were just starting off. Actually, there’s a defined role for each side of the renku. For the jo this involves avoiding topics such as death, war, religion, illness, lamentation, love (meaning sex), and proper nouns. Though travel and proper nouns might seem arbitrary, Carley explains that travel was a grueling enterprise in the Edo period, while the specificity of names and places can disrupt the flow of the poem. The idea is that jo be a place where participants “establish their presence” and “the reader is likewise eased in” (JEC, “A Dynamic Pattern: pacing with jo-ha-kyu,” Renku Reckoner pp. 89-91).
Another factor in the choice of verses is wider context within the poem. You may know Ferris Gilli’s paper “English Grammar: Variety in Renku,” delivered at a seminar which Paul organized for the World Haiku Club in 2000 (online at WHR Archives). If so, you know the importance of variety in renku. Variety goes beyond grammar and syntax, though. I assume you also know or participated the discussion on point of view that took place during the previous renku, which Sandra has copied to the Forums. Certain types of scent linking deal with this, too, but we’ll get into linking techniques later.
With three verses placed, our renku has developed a trajectory. Hokku, wakiku and daisan are nicely varied in syntax; all three are shasei that segue from one to the next through descriptive imagery and clear linking. While other sabakis may lead differently, my own sense after reading all your ideas is that verse 4 is the optimal time to pull things together not with another shasei but a first-person verse that leads us deeper into mood through personal response. Of the two or three intriguing offers that went in this direction. I’ve selected Barbara Taylor’s. I hope you like it as much as I do. Its mood of gentle nostalgia brings in fresh energy that’s just right for the slot. See how it colors the maeku with a layer of memory, ties the progression together, and prepares us nicely for the moon verse that comes next!
a bowl of cherries
sitting on each white plate
someone’s name
~Lynne Rees
under a canvas tent
the snap of a breeze
~Barbara Kaufmann
passersby stop
to applaud a subway
saxophone player
– Karen Cesar
sweet reminiscences
of our bygone days
~Barbara A. Taylor
Onward to verse 5—the moon
The moon appears twice in triparshva, in an autumn run on the second side, and here in the jo, where our schema says it may be either winter or spring, It’s important to understand that moon is a kigo and your verse will be autumn by default unless you clearly show we’re in a different season. You may find these resources helpful for inspiration:
- “Moon and related links”, World Kigo Database
- “Full moon names and their meanings,” Farmer’s Almanac (cold moon, long night’s moon, wolf moon, snow moon. . . )
- “Moon”, from Fay Aoyagi, “Dissection of the Haiku Tradition: Ten Short Essays on Japanese Kigo,” (originally published in Frogpond, archived online at NZPS and THF).
Specifications for the verse are
- Three lines, uncut
- Either winter or spring (your choice)
- After two person verses, it’s time to go back to non-person.
- Let this one be purely nature in its imagery.
- Again, here are your maeku and uchikoshi:
passersby stop
to applaud a subway
saxophone player
sweet reminiscences
of our bygone days
Link to the maeku; shift from the uchikoshi. I think that if you just inhale the mood of the maeku and envision either winter or spring, linking will happen naturally.
How to Submit:
All verse positions in this renku will be degachi. Please post your offers in the Comments section below. Let’s have an upper limit of 3 per participant. Calls for submissions will remain open for one week, at the end of which I’ll collect everyone’s ideas, consider each and choose the one that best serves the renku.
The call for verse 4 will remain open until Monday, July 27, 2015 at midnight (EDT).
Useful links:
- If you’re just joining us, please take a moment to review my introductory post.
- For the archive of previous calls and submissions, click here.
- This renku will follow a schema by Norman Darlington. The layout for a Summer Triparshva may be found by reading down the second column from the right.
Other resources:
- Some online saijikis (season word list):
- Kenkichi Yamamoto, “The Five Hundred Essential Japanese Season Words,” tr. Kris Kondo and William J. Higginson, online at Renku Home (2000, updated 2005).
- ” The Yuki Teikei Season Word List”, online at Yuki Teikei Haiku Society, 1997.
- World Kigo Database, ed. Gabi Greve, also includes links to a number of regional kigo lists and saijiki.
- Online resources on linking and shifting include
- Tadashi Shôkan Kondô and William J. Higginson, “Link and Shift: A Practical Guide to Renku Composition” at Renku Home (2005)
- “Introduction to Renku by John Carley,” 2009, rpt. New Zealand Poetry Society (scroll down to the section “Link, Shift & Separation”).
***New and highly recommended***
- John E. Carley, Renku Reckoner, ed. Norman Darlington and Moira Richards (2013, print ed. Lulu 2015), sample pages are online through Google Books.
This Post Has 109 Comments
Comments are closed.
sweet reminiscences
of our bygone days
— Barbara A. Taylor
***
the frozen river
with a night moon
sliding alongside
***
frozen river
and a moon’s light
sliding side by side
.
.
in moonlit shadow
the stealth of the neighbor’s cat
in last night’s snowfall
.
.
and thanks to Maureen, too.
Thanks Linda for accepting my verse. Also, thanks to Betty and Lorin.
For fun:
sweet reminiscences
of our bygone days
*
taken aback
by two smoking Santas
in the full moon
*
sweet reminiscences
of our bygone days
*
in the moonlit paddock
high-jumping lambs
with wagging tails
It hope this is ok: I’m changing a word in my 2nd offer —
—
far too early
for wisteria to bud,
yet the horned moon
—
(that ‘but’ was annoying me)
—
– Lorin
sweet reminiscences
of our bygone days
~ Barbara A. Taylor
~ ° ~
just a hint of moon
and still the groundhog
sees his shadow
passersby stop
to applaud a subway
saxophone player
– Karen Cesar
—
sweet reminiscences
of our bygone days
~Barbara A. Taylor
—
the cat in the hat
comes back
with the misty moon
—
– Lorin
Nice link, Lorin.
Thanks very much, Lynne. (I like it best of my 3 offers, too 🙂 )
—
After the formality of Latin-derived terms in the two preceding verses (‘applaud’, ‘reminiscences’) setting the ‘high’ tone of those verses, and the clear, neutral tone of the hokku & wakiku before that, I felt that a change in register and of beat might be helpful in subtly advancing the flow, as we only have verses 5 & 6 to go in the jo.
—
A long shot, though, perhaps … I’m aware that Linda has written, “Let this one be purely nature in its imagery.” And I can’t claim that ‘the cat in a hat’ is “purely nature” 🙂
—
– Lorin
the spill of moonlight
over snow-laced pebbles
along the river
no one left
to pull up
the full moon’s sock
-Patrick
passersby stop
to applaud a subway
saxophone player
*
sweet reminiscences
of our bygone days
*
restless
in the moonlight
pregnant ewes
*
– Sandra Simpson
Nice, could be either winter or spring . . . but I hope those ewes are all polled ewes . . . 🙂
– Lorin
😀
passersby stop
to applaud a subway
saxophone player
*
sweet reminiscences
of our bygone days
*
holding the moon,
for a moment or two,
a bare-branched oak
– Sandra Simpson
in this night
even the new moon
smell of spring
***
under the cold moon
two birdies chirp together
to worm themselves
***
under the ice moon
Mount Fuji is shining
more and more
passersby stop
to applaud a subway
saxophone player
– Karen Cesar
*
sweet reminiscences
of our bygone days
~Barbara A. Taylor
—
this rock pool
big enough for a starfish
and the hazy moon
passersby stop
to applaud a subway
saxophone player
– Karen Cesar
*
sweet reminiscences
of our bygone days
~Barbara A. Taylor
—
bathed in moonlight
the part of the lake
where wild ducks rest
passersby stop
to applaud a subway
saxophone player
– Karen Cesar
*
sweet reminiscences
of our bygone days
~Barbara A. Taylor
——
moonlight
streams across the hoofprints
in a withered field
moonlight on
the water reveals
tadpoles morphing
*
or
*
moonlight on
the water reveals
morphing tadpolrs
sweet reminiscences
of our bygone days
~ Barbara A. Taylor
~ ° ~
cold crow stares
from a branch bent low
to the new moon
~ Betty Shropshire
sweet reminiscences
of our bygone days
~ Barbara A. Taylor
~ ° ~
cold crow
shares his branch
with moon rabbit
~ Betty Shropshire
Or should I have said, “its branch”? POV troubles me somewhat.
Revising to:
~•~
cold crow
shares a branch
with moon rabbit
You’ve already fixed the verse, but from the “nature” aspect of it, crows are not sexually dimorphic. No way for the poet observer to know it is a male. This is true of lots of birds, but not for others such as bluebirds, turkeys, mallard ducks, etc.
I do like the pairing of crow and moon rabbit. My only thought would be that it’s so brief as to be tontoism with an article only on line 2. You could relax it out a bit so the language flows naturally.
.
a cold crow
shares its branch
with the moon rabbit
Hmmm…I see your point. Not a fan of beginning L1 with an ‘a’ so will use instead:
•••
one cold crow
shares its branch
with the moon rabbit
~ ~
Thanks for your insights, Linda! 🙂
Hi Paul! Thanks for your help…I guess with crows, it’s a matter of size since females are slightly smaller.
🙂
only silence
of the Pink Moon
in melting icicles
Todd, you have a double kigo here: “pink moon” and “melting icicles”. Double kigo isn’t necessarily bad but it tends to produce an overstuffed feeling in which neither kigo is free to ring true. What if you use either one or the other, or break it into two different versions?
Thanks, Linda. Since we were given the choice of either winter or spring, I deliberately choose two kigo to express the feeling of transition from one season to the next. I’ll let the haiku stand as is.
Todd
🙂
I had no idea that ‘Pink Moon’ was a kigo! It comes across to me like something one might see peeking out from a lingerie catalogue. 🙂 Well, I learn something new every day:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/4-facts-about-the-pink-full-moon-1.1313175
Not about colour, but those clove-scented, little carnation-like flowers!
http://home.howstuffworks.com/define-dianthus-carnation-pinks.htm
—
– Lorin
It’s not really a kigo, I guess, though it does remind one of blossom, doesn’t it? “Pink moon” (April which coincides with the warming up phases of spring up here in the northern hemisphere) comes from a calendar cycle of Native American moon names. There are a couple of websites that give them. Fun to use though I wouldn’t vouch for the reliability of the information.. I put a url to Farmer’s Almanac up top, and here’s another I’ve used:
http://home.hiwaay.net/~krcool/Astro/moon/moonnames.htm
Whatever the name for the flower was in any Native American language, the derivation of the English term is interesting:
“The old-fashioned carnation name ‘pinks’ comes from the serrated flower edges, which look as if cut with pinking shears. And the name of the color pink is said to come from these perennials, which have been popular in gardens for hundreds of years.”
I don’t think pinking shears were part of any pre-invasion Native American tool kit. 🙂 But it’s very interesting to find out that the name of the colour, pink, is said to have its origin in these flowers.
– Lorin
Very interesting derivation! I never knew it — but I do remember my mother’s sewing box had pinking shears. I’ve also heard the flowers referred to as “pinks.” Since that was mostly their actual color I’ve never known the other meaning.
Yet in this renku to say “pink” is to say it — and the hokku already has color, possibly two. An example I think of is that the renku already has its quota of furred, 4-footed animals (usually only one per renku poem) and I wish to describe the wildflower “wolfsbane” it butts up against the actual animal — no matter the intention of the writer.
Do we have a four-footed furry yet, Paul? Thank you for spotting the kukazu (avoidance) problem with “pink” re the hokku and color. It looks like we’re entering the phase of the renku where the early verses worm into our brains through cryptomnesia, so the more eyes spotting these things the better.
Re the flower pink, in Renaissance painting it was a symbol of marriage.
yeah, Paul…I get what you mean. If we had a wolf in one verse, it might be a tad much to have the herb, wolfsbane, in another. It’s not just the name in itself, it’s that the herb was once believed to repel wolves. So that would certainly return readers to a previous verse with a wolf in it..
But how come we can have only one four-footed, furry animal per renku, when we can have numerous verses relating to two-footed derivatives of the ape family? ” I think I could go & live with the animals”- Walt Whitman. Quite often, I’m with Walt. And a cat is not a camel.
Much is strange, including ‘whales’ as a kigo for winter. As an Australian, I’m only too aware that the so-called ‘scientific’ whaling in the Southern Ocean by the Japanese happens in summer…every summer, (Which is far more important to me than whether a fox gets an American H-1 visa or not…yes, I received my copy of Frogpond yesterday.
the code words
for nationalism –
cicada shells
– Lorin
– Lorin
– Lorin
Lovely verse, Barbara!
~°~
sweet reminiscences
of our bygone days
~ Barbara A. Taylor
~°~
just old growth
pines cradle
the long night moon
~ Betty Shropshire
passersby stop
to applaud a subway
saxophone player
– Karen Cesar
–
–
sweet reminiscences
of our bygone days
~Barbara A. Taylor
–
–
the silence
when the sky
is full of moon
–
or
–
light rain
and the silence of moonlight
in the long grass
Beautiful, both of them, but the first one feels like an autumn moon and the second, modified with long grass, feels late summer. What were your thoughts?
Is it the ‘silence’ making it feel autumny? Or is the suggestion of it being a full moon making it autumn? I suppose, for me, the silence suggests ‘bareness’ which for me would be winter. And the sky ‘full of moon’ doesn’t have to be a full moon.
.
And yes, ‘long grass’ does make it summer more than spring, though I hadn’t thought that when I wrote it. Could it be:
.
light rain
and the silence of moonlight
in the new grass
.
?
(I’m not getting notifications of any ‘replies’… so I’ll have to make sure I check back for yours. Thanks, Linda.)
🙂
moon-shimmer
on the iced river curling
around a bend
passersby stop
to applaud a subway
saxophone player
– Karen Cesar
—
sweet reminiscences
of our bygone days
~Barbara A. Taylor
—
far too early
for wisteria to bud,
but the horned moon
—
– Lorin
Very evocative–it moves nicely forward from the maeku, but how do you feel about the pun of “horned” with a saxophone in the uchikoshi?
Hi Linda,
Candidly, I think that reading a pun into ‘horned’ here is far-fetched, the very sort of forensic overkill that drove John Carley crazy (not literally crazy! He was perhaps the most sane person I came across in the poetry world) There’s certainly no pun intended, no intended reference to a ‘horn’ as a musical instrument.
—
But since you bring it up, I imagine that horns-as-musical-instruments etc. are called such because it’s likely that the first ones were actually made from the horns of some some animal… long ago. It’d be a long stretch, though, to read eg. ‘hornless goat’ as meaning a goat without a hunting horn or the like.
—
If ‘horned moon’ is a pun on ‘saxophone’ & that rules the verse out, and we apply the same logic to hypothetical cases, that would mean there could never be sheep, goats, cows, gazelles, deer etc. , a devil, (any horned animal) followed, two verses later, by any instrument from a brass band, a car (cars gave horns!) or a ship (they, too have horns!)
—
I recall John giving the most ludicrous example he could think of: supposedly, someone (unnamed) claimed ‘mansion’ wasn’t acceptable because ‘pigeon’ was in the uchikoshi, and of course, both have wings!
—-
The reason why ‘kannonbiraki’ is to be avoided is that the flow of renku must ever go forward, it shouldn’t stagnate & it shouldn’t look backward, so no verse should draw attention back to the uchikoshi .
—
Linda, if you think (& by naming ‘horned moon’ as a pun, it’s clear that you do think so) that ‘horned moon’ might cause some readers to “return to the uchikoshi” , and thereby disturb the forward-moving flow, that’s fine. You’re the sabaki.
—
Perhaps you think of a saxophone player as a horned man? 🙂 Or as a horny man? Better stop! This could get Freudian! 🙂
—
I actually had Richard Wright’s lovely haiku in the back of my mind, as well as Sandra’s bellowing bull:
Coming from the woods,
A bull has a lilac sprig
Dangling from a horn.
Now, the bull in Wright’s haiku is a French bull. Does that mean, I wonder, that this bull has French Horns? 🙂
—
(ps, of course, even if Sandra rewrote her bull verse to exclude the bellowing, in the light of your ‘horned moon’/ ‘saxophone’ analogy, we couldn’t overlook the fact that bulls have horns in relation to the uchikoshi, could we?)
—-
cheers,
Lorin
Just asking. Yes, important to remember that aesthetics trumps pigeonholes. At first I simply read the moon image literally, as a crescent moon with point up. I see what you’re getting at.
Ohhh Lorin . . .
Groaning as I read your punning funsterism “French Horns.”
ps, here are some wisteria buds:
—
https://myhesperidesgarden.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/20110323_07991.jpg
—
I think they resemble little horns, like the horns of a calf just beginning to grow out.
—
Lorin
passersby stop
to applaud a subway
saxophone player
**
sweet reminiscences
of our bygone days
**
stirring the neighbour’s bull
to midnight bellows,
a petal-coloured moon
**
– Sandra Simpson
ah no, sorry, please disregard. Sound, sound.
LOL kannonbiraki can really get into you head like an ear worm, can’t it? The bull’s name is Ferdinand?
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/68/Ferdinand_the_Bull_film_poster.jpg
“The bull’s name is Ferdinand?” – Linda
Not likely. 🙂 A Kiwi bull is more likely to be named Angus MacKinnon, or something like that.
Pity about the ‘midnight bellows’, Sandra. I like the verse a lot. Our cow Daisy used to trample the fence down and walk 3 miles up the road to visit her bull of choice, and break into his paddock the same way. We’d get the phone call in the morning, with the owner (jokingly) threatening to charge the sire fee.
– Lorin
The bull on the neighbouring property to my brother’s farm always sounds off on a moonlit night, doesn’t have to be full. He settles down eventually. Makes a change to the cityscape night sounds of police sirens though!
Hi, Sandra
Would that sly dog, kannonbiraki, apply to ‘note(s)’ in the wolf verse offerings?
Betty
(I cannot abide ear worms…just yuck!) 😉
Oh, jeez, I meant to direct my question to Linda! Sorry for the confusion.
Good eye, Betty. I was so focused on the double kigo that I missed the kannonbiraki–yes, I think so–a wolf’s howl can sound a little like a saxophone, can’t it? Sandra withdrew her bull verse for the same reason–sound. Now let me figure how to put your comment and mine on the appropriate thread where Deborah can easily find it.
Thanks!
moonlight finds
the frosted leaves against
the garden wall
bare-tree shadows
from the same old moon
stretching
yet again
the moon lights the loggerhead
as she digs
Linda…OK! While I was out driving I realized what’s going on!! As a qualifier for the moon, I was using “wisp” as a noun: one that is thin, frail, or slight; a thin or faint fragment –“a wisp of moon”…trying to indicate the earliest visible crescent moon. So I think that didn’t come through clearly enough.
I’m afraid this has become something of a humpty-dumpty verse. 🙂
No it isn’t. It’s fine as is.
passersby stop
to applaud a subway
saxophone player
– Karen Cesar
—
sweet reminiscences
of our bygone days
~Barbara A. Taylor
—
may the road
always rise to meet us
and the misty moon
—
– Lorin
soap bubbles
moonlit diamonds
quickly vanish
Joel, it feels that there’s a haiku-like cut at the end of line 1. How might you deal with that?
Linda — I sensed that cut too but was hoping it was just me 🙂 Thanks for the affirmation! How about:
soap bubble as
moonlit diamonds
quickly vanish
left the ‘s’ off soap bubbles—
*
soap bubbles as
moonlit diamonds
quickly vanish
revising just slightly because it better captures the original feel 🙂
*
soap bubbles
as moonlit diamonds
quickly vanish
Third time’s the charm!
sweet reminiscences
of our bygone days
~Barbara A. Taylor
Congratulations, Barbara. I can hear your Irish voice speaking this one very nicely.
– Lorin
Hi Linda,
Is there a place where verse offers for previous verses are accessible?
I understand that travel to ‘foreign’ or far places is a no-no in the first movement (jo) :
“Though travel … might seem arbitrary, Carley explains that travel was a grueling enterprise in the Edo period,” – Linda
But would it be reasonable to count city to suburb commuting as ‘travel’?
“At a Station in the Metro”
The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
petals on a wet, black bough.
Ezra Pound
– Lorin
Excellent point. I don’t count city to suburb commuting as “travel”, and I saw both your Coltrane and your faces in the window as commuting. Both were on my short list for the slot but what gave me pause was that the Coltrane verse, being about play on names, pulled me back to the hokku a bit too much–I’d be game to do it in the ha but not this early in the renku. Also, subway to commuter train seemed a close link–if we were in a kasen or hyakuin no problem, Triparshva, however, is a relatively short form and while we’re not under the same pressure not to repeat topics as we would have been in junicho, 22 verses is still not a lot. This concern also affected other verses with train as well as bus, station, etc, and eventually I began to realize that even all the verses with coin, which were also pretty nice, were a little too close.
.
I am going to revise all those resource links at the bottom and insert one that will quickly give access to all the prior threads. I’ll also try to figure out how to cross-link when I get an ongoing copy of the renku together for the bottom of each thread.
.
Till I get to it [done!–check the reorganized “resources” section], here’s a link to the Renku archives, everything with the tag “triparshva”:
https://www.thehaikufoundation.org/tag/triparshva/
Thanks, Linda. 🙂
– Lorin
Creative thinking with season this morning, everyone. We have spring and winter, and moon in a variety of phases–full, crescent, gibbous, and represented indirectly through its moonlight. Including phases and indirect representation is good thinking because there’s the autumn moon coming up in the ha and we should make moon’s two appearances different. Phase or moonlight in this slot would allow the autumn moon to shine full and unencumbered when it comes. Or we could really challenge whomever will write that second verse by depicting a nice full moon in this first appearance. I’m open to all possibilities 😀 .
Even if you regularly use season in your haiku, the requirements that renku impose are more demanding–the minor moon verse especially so. Now that we’re five verses into the renku, I’m thinking that it’s time to start offering feedback before the closing date for submissions so that you can tweak if you wish. Taking a leaf from Sandra I’ve started to comment here on the thread if the season is off or unclear. No comment means the verse is good to go.
reflected
in the tranquil pond
a wisp of moon
Did you mean “tranquil pond” as spring, Judt? It’s not enough to defang the default of autumn.
Hi Linda…thanks for the feedback, but I’m still in the dark on this…saw in the Higginson list that “tranquil” is an all-spring kigo…?
Ah! Yes! So sorry--my mistake. I had checked the World Kigo Database and didn't find it. Gabi is usually very thorough but she says that the search feature on her blog is no longer working properly. "Tranquility" is there in the Yuki Teikei season word list too.
While "tranquil" doesn't hit you over the head with season, yes you're right it's spring. The wrinkle here is that you're not only seasoning a verse, you're overcoming an established season reference and changing it to another season.
There's reinforcement, though--"wispy": just to be sure I looked it up in a few online dictionaries and see that the analogies often given are smoke or clouds. So it's also redolent of "hazy moon", a classic spring kigo.
Finally, there's context: If we go with a spring moon for this slot, there will be another spring verse following it and the job of that verse then would be reinforce the season unambiguously. The winter moon option wouldn't have this luxury because it would be a singleton season verse in the slot.
A nicely subtle image, good to go--thanks for coming back to be on this one!
Thanks, Linda…I’m kinda dense here, but not clear on the autumn reference…is it “pond”? I tried to find that but couldn’t.
The autumn reference is the moon itself. Here are a couple of clarifications from the Wikipedia entry on Kigo:
.
“moon (tsuki) – all autumn (August–October), and moon-viewing (tsukimi) mid-autumn (September) – the word “moon” by itself is assumed to be a full moon in autumn. Moon-viewing and leaf-viewing in autumn are common group activities in Japan.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_kigo
.
“. . . It may be less obvious why the moon (tsuki) is an autumn kigo, since it is visible year round. In autumn the days become shorter and the nights longer, yet they are still warm enough to stay outside, so one is more likely to notice the moon. Often the night sky will be free of clouds in autumn, with the moon visible. The full moon can help farmers work after the sun goes down to harvest their crops (a harvest moon).”
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kigo)
.
When it’s needed to move the moon to another season, we have to modify it to knock it out of default mode, as we’re doing.
.
As for “pond”, modified by the adjective “tranquil”, the pond is the image that makes your verse a spring moon.
bear cubs cuddle
from cold covered
with moonlight
Congratulations, Barbara. A perfect fit. 🙂
*
the frozen pond
glistening in the light
of a crescent moon
Hi Maureen…cross my heart 🙂 …tried to post my “pond” last night but couldn’t access verse 5 for some reason…it kept going to verse 4…?
That was my mistake, Judt. So sorry. The release was supposed to be this morning; you saw it last night when I hit a wrong key in WordPress as I finished editing. I’m embarrassed and promise hard not to confuse everyone again.
Hey, no problem! Gave me a chance to tweak 🙂
Hi Judt. No worries. So interesting that we chose similar subject matter! The crescent moon is my favorite. “Wisp” is a wonderful word. Take care. 🙂
the snow moon
rises within the notes
of a wolf’s howl
Deborah, it’s a lovely winter moon verse, though did you realize you have a double kigo–“snow” and “wolf”? That’s not necessarily “wrong”–just checking.
Thank you, Linda. If I kept wolf and lost snow, would the moon remain as a winter kigo because of the wolf or would it revert to autumn? Which would be better to modify?
Perhaps
the snow moon
climbs within the notes
of a distant howl
Obviously “perhaps” is not part of the offering.
*****
a snow moon
climbs within the notes
of her distant howl
*****
Yes, Deborah–snow is not necessary. With “wolf” there it’s still a nice winter verse.
On that Farmer’s Almanac site you’ll see a “wolf moon”, so if you want to keep playing around with different versions, you have lots of time.
passersby stop
to applaud a subway
saxophone player
– Karen Cesar
*
sweet reminiscences
of our bygone days
— Barbara A. Taylor
*
within the notes
of a distant howl
a wolf moon rises
— Deborah Barbour Lundy
Deborah, this exchange between Betty and me landed over on a sub-thread of Sandra’s. If you’re like me, it’s hard finding things in these threads so I’m copying what we said here so you’ll see it:
.
from Betty, 7/24/1:53 pm
“Would that sly dog, kannonbiraki, apply to ‘note(s)’ in the wolf verse offerings?”
.
reply by Linda, 7:12 pm
“Good eye, Betty. I was so focused on the double kigo that I missed the kannonbiraki–yes, I think so–a wolf’s howl can sound a little like a saxophone, can’t it? Sandra withdrew her bull verse for the same reason–sound. . . ”
.
Right. The howl won’t work given the subway saxophone in the uchikoshi. Can you think deeper into your wolf/moon imagery and expand it in a different way?
I wondered about that after reading some of the other comments. Thank you for teaching us along the way.
a wolf moon
creeps along the spine
of distant mountains
Nice revision–it sends a little shicer down the spine.
one snowdrift captures
the curve of the waning
gibbous moon
a koi rises
through the surface
of the rippling moon
sweet reminiscences
of our bygone days
~Barbara A. Taylor
*
the illumination
of a full buck moon
on fresh pasture
Carmen, Farmer’s Almanac gives “full buck moon” as July. So this would be a summer moon verse, wouldn’t it? If “fresh pasture” refers to transhumance, could the verse be tweaked so this carries the season?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpine_transhumance
the illumination
of a full buck moon
over Alpine pastures
*
this full buck moon
covers the movements
of summering livestock
sweet reminiscences
of our bygone days
~Barbara A. Taylor
the illumination
of a full buck moon
on fresh pasture
But “full buck moon” still points pretty strongly to July, as it’s the name of that moon.
in pale moonlight
scent of wisteria
leads the way
the snow moon
clings to the last full note
of the wolf’s howl
rabbit tracks
punch through moonlit snow crust
into night
rabbit tracks
—
punch through moonlit snow crust
—
into night