The End of the Haiku Road

On New Year's day your Bloguero posted his 600th Facebook haiku. For now, it is his last. He felt it was enough. He stopped (for now). The repeated "for now" seems to have something to do with obsession.

He still has the odd habit of having a thought, thinking of a line and counting its syllables on his fingers, but that will pass soon enough. He hopes. That has something to do with obsession also.

In the meanwhile, he notices his present disinterest in "social media." This reveals itself in fewer and fewer blog postings (here and elsewhere), the end of the haiku project, few FB posts, an absence of tweets, a dirth of Instagram photos. Maybe it means that the next thing is about to arrive. Who knows what that will be? It might also mean that the "next thing" has already arrived, your Bloguero has missed it, and it has irretrievably passed him (and maybe you) by. This is a problem only if you or your Bloguero remains at all concerned about keeping current about the latest things. Or at least knowing what they are before the New York Times discovers them.

The Haiku Road

I know how it began. In high school someone showed me haikus by Basho. They were unbelievably profound. So some classmates and I tried writing them.  Eventually, the novelty wore off. We stopped.  Fast forward to the New York Times Haiku contest in 2014. I forgot to enter it.  But in April, fed up with pictures of cats, brunch and boobs, I decided that Facebook was best used for photos of the sky and haikus.  I don’t know exactly how this idea arose. Maybe Twitter was better because then the little poems would disappear in an ocean of words, never to be seen again. Oh well.  After a while, I lost count of how many I had posted, so I put a number on each one, like a upc on an organic tomato.

I continue. Today I posted number 471.

Why do I continue? A great question that deserves a legitimate answer. Unfortunately, I don’t have one.  Maybe it’s a sign of my obsession.  Maybe it’s because there is no logical stopping point. Maybe I’m deriving some special benefit from these.  Maybe it’s simple. I enjoy it. And I was right, Facebook is a great place for collecting Haiku. And it’s contagious: some of the comments have themselves been haiku.  That’s wonderful.

Is there some benefit from this? I hope so. I was stuck on the manuscript for a novella. I haven’t worked on it for a few months.  But I notice that all of the haiku are gently loosening up whatever obstructions there are in the manuscript. We’ll see whether I go back to it, or whether it becomes one of those projects that just gets abandoned.

Dearly Beloveds

Your Bloguero notes that it's been 3 long months since he tickled the ivories at The Dream Antilles.

That calls for an update. Here it is now.

Your Bloguero is busy writing haikus. He is posting them regularly on Facebook. He has posted more than 400 of them. You can see what he's writing if you click the link.

Why haiku? As John Lennon wrote, funny you should arsk. Haiku because most of what your Bloguero sees on the Internet is so dehumanizing. And ironic. Cat videos, photos of brunch, selfies, political screeds, verbal barking. Ooof. All this when Social Media are so perfect for evanescent poetry. Like Haiku. Of which there is not a ton. Your Bloguero cannot imagine an Internet inundated with poetry.

Your Bloguero laments that he is no Basho. He regrets that he will never write a haiku as perfect as this:

Blossoms on the pear

a woman in the moonlight

reads a letter there.

It is perfect, isn't it.

But he will try again and again to write a good one. If practice truly makes perfect, a proposition about which your Bloguero nurtures significant doubt, your Bloguero is practicing. And trying.

Two Sunday Haiku

1.

Just beyond my grasp
is a powerful message.
Please deliver it.

5/16/12


2.

Spiritual guidance:
I sharpen all of the knives.
Does it change something?

6/24/12

Solstice Haiku

Solstice fireflies:
a shimmering milky way
for insomniacs.







6/20/12, 3:06 am

Sunshine Haiku

1.

Sitting with eyes closed,
brutal cough shakes chest and throat.
Come, dreams and stories.


2.

The Wizard School phones.
"What are you doing today?"
Hah. Sitting, eyes closed.

May 6, 2012, Spencertown

NYC Haiku

Washington Square Park,
once the center of the world,
What have you become?

4/11/12

Haiku

Sing, peeper choir!
Sing with brio all night long!
Awaken the Spring!



3/18/12

Belmar Haiku

In Belmar N.J.
I swam to the last barrel
with my grandmother.

She was old and dark.
It was 1953.
She was proud of me.




3/5/12

Haiku

The Full Snow Moon’s passed,
But there is no snow this year.
Dog snores near the fire.


2/8/12

Full Moon Haiku

This moon's provoking
all those howling coyotes.
They won't get tired.

Raven Haiku

When there is no moon,
ravens huddle together.
I must be dreaming.



1/26/12

Winter Haikus

1.

Last winter's haikus
were hiding in my notebook.
That was not much fun.

12/7/11

2.

4 am awake.
Darkest night, winter's silence.
Dreams tip toe away.

1/5/12

3.

Three squabbling crows fly.
What's the argument about?
No one remembers.

1/8/12

Winter's Nests

First, Emily Dickinson's Poem 143:

For every Bird a Nest --
Wherefore in timid quest
Some little Wren goes seeking round --

Wherefore when boughs are free --
Households in every tree --
Pilgrim be found?

Perhaps a home too high --
Ah Aristocracy!
The little Wren desires --

Perhaps of twig so fine --
Of twine e'en superfine,
Her pride aspires --

The Lark is not ashamed
To build upon the ground
Her modest house --

Yet who of all the throng
Dancing around the sun
Does so rejoice?

Then Robert Frost's poem "The Exposed Nest":

You were forever finding some new play.
So when I saw you down on hands and knees
I the meadow, busy with the new-cut hay,
Trying, I thought, to set it up on end,
I went to show you how to make it stay,
If that was your idea, against the breeze,
And, if you asked me, even help pretend
To make it root again and grow afresh.
But 'twas no make-believe with you today,
Nor was the grass itself your real concern,
Though I found your hand full of wilted fern,
Steel-bright June-grass, and blackening heads of clovers.
'Twas a nest full of young birds on the ground
The cutter-bar had just gone champing over
(Miraculously without tasking flesh)
And left defenseless to the heat and light.
You wanted to restore them to their right
Of something interposed between their sight
And too much world at once--could means be found.
The way the nest-full every time we stirred
Stood up to us as to a mother-bird
Whose coming home has been too long deferred,
Made me ask would the mother-bird return
And care for them in such a change of scene
And might out meddling make her more afraid.
That was a thing we could not wait to learn.
We saw the risk we took in doing good,
But dared not spare to do the best we could
Though harm should come of it; so built the screen
You had begun, and gave them back their shade.
All this to prove we cared. Why is there then
No more to tell? We turned to other things.
I haven't any memory--have you?--
Of ever coming to the place again
To see if the birds lived the first night through,
And so at last to learn to use their wings.

Then today's wintry haiku:

This nest is perfect.
How can it be so naked?
Now it's so exposed.


1/2/12

Haiku

The ten million stars
just poets and madmen see,
I want to see them.

Haiku

1.
The haiku famine
of sad twenty eleven:
No big words are left.

2.
Cobble together
many undernourished words.
They are still hungry.


8/11/11

Haiku

New moon means no moon
to glisten on Soliman.
The waves do not care.

A Haiku Pas De Deux

Octavio Paz (1914-1998)


What a collaboration. What a great pas de deux. First, we have a poem, actually a series of Haiku, by Nobel Laureate Octavio Paz, fashioned after the 17th Century master, Basho. Paz’s poem:

Basho An

El mundo cabe
en diecisiete silabas:
tu en esta choza.

Troncos y paja:
por las rendijas entran
Budas e insectos.

Hecho de aire
entre pinos y rocas
brota el poema.

Entretejidas
vocales, consonantes:
casa del mundo.

Huesos de siglos,
penas ya penas montes:
aqui no pesan.

Esto que digo
son apenas tres lineas:
choza de silabas.

What a wonderful poem, and one that is girded with the 17-syllable rule. Making Haiku in English is a challenge, but in Spanish it’s harder because words have so many more syllables than in English, because of endings. But that’s not all. Here’s the collaborative part, a translation of the poem into English that faithfully retains both the 17-syllable structure and the meaning. Translation by Eliot Weinberger:

Basho An

The whole world fits in-
to seventeen syllables,
and you in this hut.

Straw thatch and tree trunks:
they come in through the crannies:
Buddhas and insects.

Made out of thin air,
between the pines and the rocks
the poem sprouts up.

An interweaving
of vowels and consonants:
the house of the world.

Centuries of bones,
mountains: sorrow turned into stone:
here they are weightless.

What I am saying
barely fills up the three lines:
hut of syllables.

When I find something this stunning, I feel compelled to post it. Please enjoy it thoroughly.

Haiku

1.

Talking to the clouds,
be humble, always whisper,
never ask for sun.

2.

Raven's ill-fitting,
torn, ragged overcoat.
I wish I had one.



4/11/11

Haiku

1.

To talk to the clouds
Climb the hill or tallest tree.
Open wide both your hands.


2.

A cloud has no feet,
just a face and two plump hands.
And wind for a voice.


3.

What stories clouds tell!
I cannot write them down here.
They are too fragile.





3/24/11
After Eduardo Galeano's Memories of Fire (Genesis), "Juana At Four"