Concrete Haiku

http://haikuandy.com

Haiku Prompt

Young curator’s show at Santa Fe Community College Gallery.
Art by Annie Sanchez from Albuquerque Academy.

Thank you Jeanne Simonoff for a haiku:

Wind spells time
Hand me my babushka
How soon to summer?

Polish Haiku

ostatni dyktator -

liśćmi rządzi

jesienny wiatr



last dictator–

giving orders to the leaves

the fall wind

Lech Szeglowski

What is the Best Title for a Haiku Collection?

I am working on a little haiku book–60 for my 60th year. Here are options for the title:
1. Beautiful Failures
2. All My Beautiful Failures
3. all my
beautiful failures

Which is best?

Ursula Moeller’s Photographs and Haiku from Nicaragua

I feel I should sing
“De Colores” as I stroll
Nicaragua’s streets

smiling faces greet
around Granada’s corners
horses faces too

cathedral hush
votive candles flicker bright
cool stones underfoot

geckos behind glass
tropical decoration
better look quickly

Meetings with Remarkable Poets #1: Jose Angel Araguz on Haiku and Tanka Master Shiki

Jose Angel Araguz on Haiku and Tanka Master Shiki

* Masaoka Shiki & life sketches
by Jose Angel Araguz

along this darkling
country road
comes the lonely voice
of a coachman
every so often urging his
horse on
****
The above lyric poem is by Masaoka Shiki (1867-1902), one of the innovators of the modern tanka form *. Tanka is a Japanese poetic form that differs from haiku in that there is room for the poet. Haiku traditionally is an image, a moment, a flicker that triggers realization. With tanka, the poet can present an image as well as turn it a bit. Tanka means little song, so you could say the poet in a tanka is allowed to sing.
What moves me about the poem above is how it evokes a sense of loneliness and perseverance. I mean, there are nights where all I have in me to keep me going is the need to keep going. I read these lines and am taken not only to that country road but to all the roads I’ve been on in the dark.
Shiki had friends who were painters who introduced to him the idea of shasei, which means a sketch from life. Shiki took this idea and applied it to his tanka, producing ‘life sketches’ whose images embodied the poet’s inner life.
Here’s another, written while bedridden:
no visitors have come
and spring, it’s passing:
on the surface of the pond
these yellow yamabuki petals
fallen, gathered together
- You almost get the sense of a person watching each petal fall as he waits for visitors.
***
Since learning of Shiki I have myself tried my hand at life sketches. I find the form pushing me to really see the world around me and what it means. The idea has furthered my conversation with words and led me to a poetry more my own. When I sit down to write each day, I delight in taking in details, turning them over, letting them sit together.
Here is a small poem I wrote the day before reading about Shiki. I came back to these lines the day after and marveled at how in spirit they were with Shiki’s aims and ideals.
wanting nothing
but to start over
a friend points out
the clouds
over the mountains
(J, 021312)
****
Happy sketching!
J

* I learned about Shiki and his life sketches from an article by Barry George entitled “Shiki the Tanka Poet” in the February 2012 Writer’s Chronicle. The poems reproduced are, I believe, a Barry George translation.

One Line Haiku by Giselle Maya

beyond the self other planets plummeting

a ripple on the water basin chickadee twitter

dawn light trying to untangle my dreams

Giselle Maya
Saint Martin de Castillon
France

New England Eyes: Haiga

learning to see
again with New England eyes;
perched like a bird
on a bare branch, empty
milkweed seedpod

Snow Poems

Last night, Edie Tsong’s marvelous project was lit up all over town. I’m honored to have my poem at the Community Gallery at the Convention Center.

Pink Coat Haibun

You gave me this old pink coat for safekeeping before you went to China–you’ve been back for twenty years and today I wear it, still missing the button I lost:
slipping my hand
into the torn satin
pocket

***

Self Portrait in Buttons, Miriam Sagan, 2013