The Renku Sessions: New Calendar 15
Welcome to The Haiku Foundation’s Fifth Renku Session: New Calendar. I am John Stevenson, leading my second Kasen (36 verse) renku on this site. We will be trying something a little different this time. Instead of making all of the selections myself, new verses will be selected by the poet who wrote the preceding verse. This will be on a voluntary basis and I remain ready to preform this task for anyone who prefers to pass up the opportunity.
Since Sally Biggar was traveling this week and spent most of that time without access to a computer, she has asked me to make the selection. Once again, you have given me a hard choice and there were several tempting verses. Though I prefer to include new poets as much as possible I have selected this verse, by Lorin Ford:
a neutrino
passes through the chestnut
and the worm, too
–Lorin Ford
I just love this. Some might have qualms about, it based upon the prominence of reflected light in the leap-over verse. Even so, I am simply unwilling to pass up this wide-eyed and quite unprecedented take on an autumn kigo!
Lorin Ford will be offered the opportunity to select the next verse. Lorin, please contact me, either in a reply below or by e-mail (ithacan@earthlink.net) to let me know whether you accept this offer. If you do, I will ask you to choose the next verse in accordance with the requirements listed below and to write a paragraph or two about your selection and send it to me on Wednesday morning (April 19) so that I can incorporate it in the next posting, which appears on the following day. If you would rather not make the selection, I will do so, but I would prefer to know that I’ll be doing that as early as possible
Verse sixteen will be non-seasonal, in two lines. It will be followed by our first blossom verse. Presuming that Lorin accepts the offer to choose the next verse, she may make some suggestions about non-seasonal topics for our sixteenth verse.
Verse sixteen must link to the fifteenth verse (and only the fifteenth verse) but it also must clearly shift away from it in terms of scene, subject, and tone. Throughout our renku, we will also be looking for shifts of time of day, urban and rural settings, human activities and non-human images, first, second, and third person phrasing, and as many other sorts of variety as we can manage. A renku is like a miniature sample book of the universe.
You will have until Tuesday night to make your offers. The Haiku Foundation site has been busy lately and the link to our renku session has not always been obvious on the home page. There is a permanent “Renku Sessions” button a little further down the home page and you can always reach the current session via this route. We will continue to check for new verse offers through each Tuesday.
With best wishes to all,
John
New Calendar to Date
new calendar
a year of
“Natural Wonders”
- –John Stevenson
a clownfish offers
the first greeting
- –Peter Newton
taking a fistful
of freshly tilled earth
to my cheek
- –Shrikaanth Krishnamurthy
café aromas
on the warm breeze
- –Maureen Virchau
sound of a flute
slowly rising
with a hazy moon
- –Dru Philippou
flickering light of a bike
from the side road
- –Marina Bellini
under the bed-sheet
tales of bold highwaymen
and horse-drawn coaches—Lorin Ford
has the lord executed
his droit du seigneur—Polona Oblak
Jimmy Carter
and Rosalynn
on the kiss cam—Judt Shrode
after the picnic
some spirited croquet—Michael Henry Lee
the old quarry
so deep and cold
and daring—Mary Kendall
her scars stay hidden
though the neckline plunges–Debbie Feller
each time I wake
the moon lights
something different—Gabrielle Higgins
the whir of dragonfly wings
in the remaining heat—Sally Biggar
a neutrino
passes through the chestnut
and the worm, too—Lorin Ford
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Congratulations Lorin! Your fantastic verse has sparked our imaginations!
——–
dust motes fall
heavy as rain
Lorin,
Thanks. I figured it still wouldn’t work as a proper noun, but nice to know for sure. It was just such a surprise to stumble on the name of that experiment I wanted to share it. Your wonderful verse has inspired me to do a little research.
__
Jeanne
Yes, ALICE is certainly a serendipitous name for the project. 🙂 Those physicists do have a sense of humour. I remember a long time ago when they found a new particle that seemed to hold other particles together and named it the ‘gluon’!
—
– Lorin.
the fracture pattern
of the windshield bullet hole
❤️
war’s catch-22
for no way out
~ Betty
untethered shadows
of Hiroshima
~ Betty
Paradise Lost
in the midst of things
~ Betty
his stray dog sketch
in invisible ink
all is not as it should be
in ‘The Garden of Earthly Delights’
pray that ouroboros
still holds its charm
~ Betty
pray that ouroboros
still hold its charm!
~ Betty
Mulder and Scully find the lair
of the Monster of the Week
they avoid another black hole
by engaging the warp drive
another black hole avoided
by engaging the warp drive
‘The Son of Man’
obscured by an apple
alt-right to alt-left
to ad nauseum click bait
~ Betty
should be:
…
alt-right to alt-left
to ad nauseum clickbait
~ Betty
a shape-shifting alien escapes
via the cell food hatch
carved on the bark
an alien signature
villagers don’t know
where the sorceress is coming from
a magic wand
has sorted their divergent opinions
Maybe Scott Mason had in mind the Alice experiment at CERN!
Perhaps. However, Alice is still a proper name, Jeanne.
– Lorin
no charge
for the boys who sneak in
I wanted to say:
no charge
for the boys on the boxcar
but I assume I’m not allowed a train since we have had a bike and a coach.
Anything is allowed, but some things might make a verse less likely to be the one selected. 🙂 And it will depend on who is doing the selecting, too …their varying understandings of where the poem has been,
– Lorin
while Fearless Girl touches
on gender diversity
~ Betty
still Fearless Girl channels
our undaunted spirit!
~ Betty
every string puppet
with its own puppeteer
laurel and a black ram
for the Oracle of Delphi
Barbara A. Taylor has been unable to get this site to accept her comments / offers for several verses. Pending a solution to that problem, she has asked me to enter the following for her:
frowning, the child laments,
Only three flavours!
— Barbara A. Taylor
Thanks, John…got it. 🙂 Another good link!
– Lorin
with bits of code attached
to open backdoors
~ Betty
never click on
a koobface popup
snickering
at a magician’s sneeze
the sculptor reveals
what was hidden in stone
a speck of dust in her eye
changes her point of view
after the storm
windfall apples
.
or
.
a sudden storm leaves
us windfall apples
a robin listens
to the cold hard earth
small wisps of nothing
become everything
Having (also) had to look up ‘neutrino,’ I found a source that said neutrinos were often called “ghost particles.” That caught my imagination so I hope these read ok.
.
without fail the ghost
appears at 4:30 am
.
.
what strange ghostly movement
in the attic each night
.
.
memories of a past life
intrude upon today
sorry….
the lane frog
cannot jump
a lame frog
cannot jump
astronauts in the March for Science
bound by gravity
steady drip, drip, drip of shine
from the copper coil
a neutrino
passes through the chestnut
and the worm, too
.
—Lorin Ford
.
the tension of the needle
piercing the linen
I really like this one!
Congrats to you, Lorin! Yours is a very impressive verse. It’s wonderful to bring such a fascinating subject into the renku. Love the reference to Basho. Thanks for sharing the links and for your advice along the way.
*
A perfect choice, John.
*
And congrats to you, Sally, on your previous verse. Love your dragonfly. I think every renku should contain one. I imagine yours to be a red dragonfly.
Thanks, Maureen.
—
– Lorin
“Presuming that Lorin accepts the offer to choose the next verse, she may make some suggestions about non-seasonal topics for our sixteenth verse.” – John
—
ok, I’m biting the bullet 🙂 Below are some possible topics, by no means an exhaustive list, that might inspire. Mostly taken from here:
http://www.2hweb.net/haikai/renku/Link_Shift.html
—
Scroll down until you find the two “CHECKLIST OF TOPICS AND MATERIALS”.
—
Some topics
–
Art (eg.painting, sculpture)
–
God/s, Buddha
–
Instruments (not musical instruments: we already have a flute; not surgical instruments: re verse 12)
–
Mechanical things
–
Military/ weapons
–
Mythology
–
Famous Places
—
Religion
–
Science & tools
–
Science Fiction (cinema, tv)
—
(Keep in mind both link & shift)
—
– Lorin
More possible topics:
—
stage magic, sleight of hand, sorcery, ancient arts of prediction . . .
—
– Lorin
Alas, it was Sally’s dragonfly, not mine, Lorin.
marion
A chrysalis shell
In old school books
Hi Margherita,
Try some more verse offers. We need to avoid any insect references because of Marion’s ‘last but one’ verse. That goes for an empty chrysalis shell that the moth or butterfly has departed from as well.
—
– Lorin
laughing at his old jokes
the least I can do
the stray dog sketch
by a quiet freshman
Great to see you posting here , Kyle , but, um, I’m scratching my head as far as finding any link to the ‘neutrino’ verse in your verse. Certainly ‘art’ (as in your ‘sketch’ ) could be a topic , since we haven’t had an ‘art’ verse (along with many other possible topics) but there has to be a link of some kind.
Try some more verses?
—
– Lorin
I’m imagining the neutrino as a physics/science topic, and the new freshman student is not interested in the current lesson, and is sketching instead of paying attention.
regretting her cake binge
Alice glumly eyes the door
Hi Scott,
There’s a great link or two in this verse of yours but ‘Alice’, being a proper name for a person (fictional or otherwise), makes for a ‘distant reincarnation’ of v. 9 … Judt’s “Jimmy Carter and Rosalynn”. This form of repetition, I’ve been advised, is best avoided.
—
Consider a rewrite without the proper name? Or a different take in the same general idea of linking?
—
For those of us old enough to remember, an Alice reincarnation in the ’60s:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WANNqr-vcx0
—
– Lorin
a neutrino
passes through the chestnut
and the worm, too
.
—Lorin Ford
.
around the world physicists
competing for a nobel prize
Wow! What an amazing verse! Lorin, I loved reading the story behind this. Congratulations!!! You never fail to surprise and delight.
.
John, a brilliant selection. I really love this renku and how it moves forward.
Thanks, Mary. Looking forward to some verse offers from you!
—
– Lori
some alien matter
floating in the soup
infinitely self absorbed
in a hall of mirrors
amethyst geodes
at the mineral fair
!!! Well this is great surprise! Most unexpected. Thank you John, 🙂 I’m especially honored and happy because of the haiku that inspired this verse.
—
I’m currently reading a penguin reprint of ‘The Fabric of the Cosmos’ by Brian Greene, a history of physics, in plain, ordinary English…wonderful for people like me. As someone who didn’t get to go to high school, I’ve been long fascinated with the subject.
—
“. . . qualms about, it based upon the prominence of reflected light in the leap-over verse.” – John
—
There are no flies on John. 🙂 While I’d argue there isn’t any suggestion of light in this, what John has picked up is “moonlight” in the great haiku this verse is (rather cheekily) refers to, one I came across very early on in my haiku reading :
—
in the moonlight a worm
silently digs
into the chestnut
—
-Matsuo Basho
(translator unknown to me)
or
Autumn moonlight–
a worm digs silently
into the chestnut.
—
Translated by Robert Hass
—
That’d be the ‘worm’ of a codling moth, or similar. Basho couldn’t have seen it & he didn’t hear it (fruit worms “crying” in autumn, as was the prior cultural convention) any more than we can see neutrinos. But he knew about it, as we now know about neutrinos. Somewhere, there is sure to be a codling moth worm digging into a chestnut, and another digging into a quince. I see this haiku of Basho as a partner to his more famous “old pond” ku.
—
So my verse here isn’t really unprecedented, it’s standing on Basho’s shoulders. 🙂
—
I’ll be happy and honored to select the next verse, John.
—
As for: “. . . she may make some suggestions about non-seasonal topics for our sixteenth verse.”
Yikes!
The obvious: in your offered verses 1, make sure there’s no indication of a season. 2. make sure there’s nothing with wings or the like & no whirrings or related sounds & definitely no insects… nothing that might take the reader back to Marion’s lovely ‘dragonfly’ verse & skew the ‘forever forward’ motion of the renku 3. read through the whole renku to date & avoid repeating prior topics. 4. Link, in some way to the ‘chestnut/ worm/ neutrino’ verse.
—
Topics? I have no preconceptions, no suggestions.
—
– Lorin
ps
If anyone wants to know about neutrinos, there’s always Wikipedia, but this paper from the UCI is, imo, easier reading . . . it’s well written for those of us who aren’t physicists. There are several pages, via the ‘next’ link at the bottom of the pages. (Physics is all about the physical world/ universe we live in. . . nature! )
—
http://www.ps.uci.edu/~superk/neutrino.html
—
– Lorin
fundemental particles,
least understood!
Neutrinos.
Thank you for your great poem and the information about physics and the link you provided
Thanks, Mojde.
Would you like to try some more verse offers for this position? While some kind of link to my verse is needed, keep in mind that you can’t repeat ‘neutrinos’, or have anything which might take the reader backwards … the forward motion of the renku engine is the priority: verse by verse we progress through some of the “1000 things”. 🙂
—
– Lorin
stalactites’ growth
measured in decades
scrap that, calendar in the hokku :/
i loved this verse as soon as i read it, so am glad you selected it, John.
Thanks, Polona! 🙂
—
– Lorin
Polona,
Glad I had it to select!
John
the tap dancer examines
a new hole in his shoe
Wow – Lorin, what a verse! (I had to look up the term ”neutrino”)
Well done.
marion
Thanks, Marion! 🙂
—
– Lorin
Hello John —
Is this the place to jump into your marvelous renku? I’ll offer this verse — risking the “as” simile to give a little natural speed to the poem. Thanks!
the stars effervescent
as an Alka-Seltzer
Jose,
Any time is a good time to join in. Welcome!
John
Jose, I like the freshness of your verse but I’m iffy about ‘stars’ here. Traditionally in renku , stars are associated with early autumn, so there’s a suggestion of season and also we have a ‘heavens’ topic not very far away in Gabrielle’s moon verse.
Rework it or try some more verses?
—
– Lorin