The Renku Sessions: Many Shapes – Week 5
Welcome to this renku session. I am Linda Papanicolaou and I’ll be your guide.
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- CHOICE OF VERSE 5
Again, it was a lot of fun reading everybody’s creative ways to explore the moon verse. This time, I’m going to keep the shortlist short because there were two submissions that I seriously considered placing in the poem and I’d like to talk about what each would have done and what the poem itself has been telling me it needed.
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counting on tonight’s glow
to guide my drunken brethren
. . . wobbly moon
Alan Harvey
Alan’s offer brings in the topic of alcoholic beverage. I love this image. In 1976 we stayed a few months in Paris in an apartment near the Stade Jean Bouin. One night the cheering rocked the entire neighborhood, and afterwards the streets were filled with loud, carousing fans. On another occasion we were in Trieste while the USS Enterprise was in port and its crew on shore leave. Up the street near our hotel came staggering four or five drunken sailors, happily lugging between them a very large, round-bottomed wine bottle cased in a wicker basket with side handles. This was early evening— too early for a moon to light the way— but I still read Alan’s offer through the memory. Technically, there’s a cut at the end of line 2 and I suppose this could be called a haiku rather than a renku verse, but no matter—sometimes rules are there to be broken. I especially like how “brethren” warms the verse with affection towards the revelers.
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only one stoplight
between here
and the moon
Michael Henry Lee
I can also relate to this offer of Michael’s. Near my house is an expressway that has periodic traffic lights. There’s one in particular that lines up with where the moon rises, and if I’m driving on that road at the right time, it does feel that the traffic light is the only thing between me and that big golden orb on autumn evenings. Following the detailed imagery of Urszula’s “famous actor” verse, Michael’s offer is minimalistic, with only the moon and the stoplight. When the side is completed, it will be the focal point.
——
Two strong yet very different verses, which to choose? One thing to consider is that renku verses are classified as person or non-person, “non-person” meaning imagery that is purely nature, or at the least has no human in the picture frame. Our shisan begins with a purely nature non-person waterfall in the hokku. Next we have a forge where the smith must have been present but is not actually mentioned, so non-person. Next comes a game of horseshoe-tossing with onlookers present by the synecdoche of their voices, so a person verse, and then a fully person verse with a famous actor appearing on stage. Alan’s person verse continues and builds on the famous actor while Michael’s non-person moon with its stoplight breaks the momentum that has built up, focusing us on the moon. Each does what it does very well, just takes the renku on a different path. Which one to choose, then? One factor in the decision ought to be the form of the renku itself. With 36-verses and three moon verses, kasen have more room to develop verse sequences and explore various ways of dealing with the moon. Were this a kasen, Alan’s offer would be splendid for the moon verse that occurs at verse 5 on the first side. However, we are writing a shisan, one third the length and with one moon. Other sabaki might have opted differently but after much consideration, I think the road we’ll take is with Michael’s moon orb beyond the stoplight.
Here’s our second side so far. Notice how Urszula’s second line “in our provincial town” smoothly joins with “only one stoplight” across the space between verses. This linking technique, called “recasting,” is briefly cited by Jane Reichhold in a Simply Haiku essay, Summer 2005 (https://simplyhaiku.thehaikufoundation.org/SHv3n2/renku/hyakuin_schema.htm).
the first performance of a famous actor
in our provincial town
Urszula Marciniak
only one stoplight
between here
and the moon
Michael Henry Lee
CALL FOR VERSE 6:
Next comes a two-line autumn verse. Link to the moon verse and shift away from the famous actor. This means that it should be a non-person verse, not necessarily pure nature but with no actual human in the picture frame.
Please use the submission box below to submit no more than two verses for the 6th versee. Submissions will close on Monday, August 31 at midnight, eastern US time. Selection for Verse 6 and instructions for submissions for verse 7 will appear here on Thursday, September 3.
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