Miriam’s Well Announces Its First Book Publication–Migrant Moon by Barbara Robidoux

This spring, Miriam’s Well is very pleased to announce the publication of its first print book! We hope to do more such projects in the future.

And here is some selected text–haiku and haibun:

moonwashed
a dry river bed
remembers water

MIGRATION

Three bottle nose dolphins circle the harbor off Nantucket Island. It is a cold December day and they should be out to sea on winter migration south. No one knows why they have come into the harbor. An old woman stands alone on the shore. she watches and listens.

“they have come for me”
she tells
no one.

For ordering information, click here.

5 Haiku and a Tanka by Basia Miller

Basia Miller

sand in my slippers
in the folds of your letters
it lies three years’ deep

summer dust
footprints lead to rill
and disappear

ear cocked for bird-song
refrigerator drone
is all I hear

Sprint girl
crosses spring campus
invisible green

flat tarred roof
rain drops fall to kitchen
through hidden chutes

neglected ivy
all her leaves facing the light
back-opening gown–
humbled by hospital rules
patient looks good to others

Haiku Rejection by Meg Tuite

Why no haiku?
Most poetry magazines
Won’t accept haiku

Does it leave the editor
Too much empty space to fill?

Jose Angel Araguz on Haiku and Tanka Master Shiki

We’ve been working on haiku and tanka in the poetry class, and thinking about the four masters of the forms–Basho, Buson, Issa, and Shiki. So it was with great interest that I discovered this piece on Shiki from Albuqurque based blogger Jose Angel Araguz.

***

* 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.

Translating Basho

Translating Basho

The other night, there was a beautiful conjunction of the crescent moon, Venus, and lowest down, Jupiter, in our western sky. My daughter Isabel was spending the evening. I was enjoying Robert Aiken’s book on Basho–still evocative after many years.

Basho writes:

kono michi ya
yuku hito nashi ni
aki no kure

I asked Isabel to look at it–she can read Japanese.

We got:

ah, this way
without travelers
autumn’s evening

and a variation–

nobody walks
this way but me–
autumn evening

But I like this last one best–mostly Isabel’s:

this path, moving
without anyone
in the autumn evening

Tsunami Memorial by Julia Deisler

What I Saw Today

old hobo
panhandling on the
median strip
talking
on a cell phone

buds in winter fur
spring wind
snow in the hills

Haiku by Pamela A. Babusci

lonely tonight i drink all the moonbeams

in her winter garden
a few chrysanthemums
catch pale moonlight

hard rain …
the weightlessness
of petals

first yellow crocus …
i release
my winter heart

Love Poem Texting Contest!

Dearest Friends,

I’m new to txting, and am endlessly fascinated when I get these brief messages. Within this simplified message, where is human emotion, where is love?

I am announcing a contest called “Luv 4ever.”
Who can write the best love letter using an abundance of txting language.

the criteria:
-use of txting language, the more the better
-compelling, human, funny, serious, anything real.
(hey, a rant against the commodification of love is just as well)

The prize:
This is a collaboration. I will be letterpress printing an edition of 50 of this letter as a kind of contemporary proclamation. (the typeface Futura comes to mind, for this futuristic language.) You will receive a percentage of these broadsides (poster) that you can do what you like with. The winner and runners-up will have their letters posted on my new website which I will launch in mid-march.

Please have fun with this and forward this to anyone (especially teenagers) who might be interested.

Deadline: march 1, 2012

Yours truly,
Edie Tsong

!

http://www.edietsong.artaxis.org

http://www.edietsong.blogspot.com

http://www.cloudexchange.etsy.com

New Year’s Haiku

This was my first blog post ever. In honor of two years of blogging, I’m re-posting it. Enjoy!

New Year brings to mind my friend the haiku poet, Elizabeth Searle Lamb. She loved the holiday, and often treated it in her haiku:

again, New Year’s Eve–
wondering how far I’ll get
with this new journal

After she died, I helped clear out her study. She had haiku drafts on slips of paper all over the place! Although they were informal and undated, they gave a sense of her process. Like the classic Japanese poets, she sometimes wrote versions of haiku, putting lines next to each other to see how they worked. For example, there is the new year’s haiku:

at midnight
eating the first grape
…not alone

This is from 1974, but wasn’t collected into her book ACROSS THE WINDHARP. I found a variant:

at midnight
eating the first grape
alone

Of course these haiku are opposite. I suspect “alone” comes first as “not alone” is a somewhat unusual construction. Then there is the following pair:

dreaming the dream
that is not a dream moonlight
in the dreamcatcher

dreaming the dream
that is not a dream–
moonstones

These seem to be equally evocative, but of somewhat different states.
And one more of her haiku to wish you a happy start to 2011:

bells and firecrackers!
a drop of champagne has stained
the New Calendar