The Renku Sessions: Pilgrims' Stride 22

Welcome to The Renku Sessions. Renku is a participatory literary game, following a set of rules that are implemented by the leader of the session. If you would like to learn more about renku go here. And if you would like to see a sample of a complete renku go here.

I’m John Stevenson, and I will serve as your guide for this session, a thirty-six verse (kasen) renku. I have supplied the opening verse (hokku) and each week I will select an additional verse from among those submitted prior to the Tuesday deadline.

Our totals this time are twenty poets and fifty-six verse offerings. As I suspected, my access to the internet was intermittent at best while I was in Maine last week. The isolation was certainly helpful in our renku writing there, if not my following activity here. We completed two renku in two days and still had time for kayaking, some light hiking, and more good food than I normally see in a month.

My tentative plan, once we have completed our Kasen renku, is to write one more post as an overview contrasting the experience of creating a renku in this setting with live sessions. I’m guessing that this will produce some discussion and then, I hope, the sessions will resume with a new renku and a new guide.

Loved Scott Mason’s discretely disposed of party favors. Christopher Patchel’s knocked out / in the first round is a good idea for a topic we haven’t touched upon and I hope others will offer us a verse with a sports image sometime within the next few verses.

I made a choice between two “family” verses this time; from carol harrison and batsword. Either would work very well in this position. I suppose my reasons for choosing between them, to the degree that they amount to anything beyond instinct, have to do with saving pronouns for later use and a choice between the qualities of “lust” and “grudge,” either of which add something tangible. Pronouns and lust remain available for us in the next set of love verses.

Our twenty-second verse comes from batsword. I am imagining a couple of scenarios suggested by this verse, in conjunction with its predecessor. One deals with feuds between families/clans. The other involves internal strife that may divide a single family for year after year and be carried forward through generations beyond that of the originally offended parties. Such resentments can come to permeate the foods served at the family dinner table.

Here is the verse you must link to:

the family’s grudge
celebrates a century

–batsword

The next verse, the twenty-third, is the first of two consecutive winter verses. Here are the formal requirements for verse twenty-three:

• Winter seasonal image (should include a winter word or phrase from our season word list)
• Written in three lines, without a cut
• Linking with the twenty-second verse, and only the twenty-second verse
• Shifting widely to a new topic and setting

Add your suggested three-line link below, in the Comments box. You have until midnight EST, Tuesday, August 5, 2014. You may submit as many verses as you like, but please use a new comment box for each one. I will announce my selection for the next link on Thursday, August 7 here on the blog, and provide information and instructions for submitting the next link.

What We’ll Be Looking For — Throughout the Session

There are many schematic outlines for a kasen renku. We will be using one set out by Professor Fukuda in his book Introduction to World-linking Renku. It will not be necessary for you to have a copy of this book since instructions will be offered before each verse is solicited.

It is a good idea for those participating in the composition of a renku to make use of the same list of season words. There are a number of these lists available and I intend no judgment of their relative value. For purposes of this session I am suggesting the use of The Five Hundred Essential Japanese Season Words.

Pilgrims’ Stride to Date

comparing maps
to the mountain pass–
pilgrims’ stride

–John Stevenson

a sun-warmed stone bridge
over snowmelt

–Billie Wilson

dampened soil
of seed trays
in the glasshouse

–Margaret Beverland

grandmother’s silverware
polished every monday

–Polona Oblak

a sonata
on the concert Steinway
played to the moon

–Lorin Ford

dragonflies hover
by the swaying reeds

–Karen Cesar

slight hum
of a drone
in fog

–Alice Frampton

the atmosphere
thick with teenage pheromones

–Norman Darlington

I stumble
trying to reply
“I plight thee my troth.”

–Paul MacNeil

thinking of a red wig
during chemo

–Asni Amin

the woodland
of silent stories
and shadow

–Alan Summers

he makes a wish
to become real

–Marion Clarke

each mirror reflects
only the cool moon
rising

–kris moon

freshly-caught fish
sizzles in the pan

–Aalix Roake

a wealthy prince
exiled in Nigeria
soliciting my help

–Christopher Patchel

sugar plum fairy came
and hit the streets…

–Jennifer Sutherland

a milky nimbus
at dusk
beneath the cherry tree

–Scott Mason

pulling in spring clouds
with a telephoto lens

–Dru Philippou

plain truth
of a skylark’s
song

–Stella Pierides

our yoga instructor
tells us to breathe

–Priscilla Van Valkenburgh

smoldering dung cakes
burning in the blackened pit
flavors the curry

–Betty Shropshire

the family’s grudge
celebrates a century

–batsword