reading into it as much as I can… my life…
Reading at Mann Library 4-21-09 Tom Clausen and Frank Robinson
I will start by reading some haiku and being that these often have a seasonal reference I’ll begin with winter and move through the seasons and then read some haiku that are seasonless but hopefully in haiku spirit.
Btw: despite reading and trying to write haiku for a long time I must admit that it is still difficult to know exactly what is a haiku! To those editors and very engaged readers and writers of haiku this subject of what is and is not a haiku is much discussed and debated… Personally I prefer to leave that debate and issue for others… I enjoy just writing little poems and if some fit others idea of what is a haiku, great and if not that is fine too… I will assume/hope some of what I am about to read fit close to a haiku quality … I simply enjoy the fun of being a daily reporter of natural nuances and the underreported phenomena we all witness in our day to day lives. Haiku happen anywhere, anytime and the only equipment necessary for a haiku practice is a small pocket notebook and a pen and pencil… and of course your open and aware mind and senses taking a bit of time to jot notes as they move you to note them.
So here goes with a few of my winter haiku:
winter sky-
an empty nest
left behind
cold wind-
a stranger looks at me
like a friend
snow flurrying…
the deer, one by one, look back
before they vanish
bitter cold morning-
some of the sunrise compressed
with the trash
out to get the paper…
just enough snow
for footprints
the spread of stars
wind moves the snow
from where it fell
soft spoken-
on her windowsill
more snow
picture window
in all that white
a cardinal
near zero-
just rabbits
and crows
up late…
in the square of office light
snow falling
snowfall
my daughter asks where
we are going…
heavy wet snow…
the cars creep by
in clumps
in love
bicycling
into the snowstorm
undefended:
in the cold rain
their snow fort
SPRING
The river
Full of ice
Broken free
Spring rain-
The cat in the window
Washes its face
A child standing guard
Over a last little bit
Of snow
Spring sun
Good enough
Right where I am
Downpour-
A duck waddles away
From the pond
Dried into the shape
Of an ampersand
The earthworm
Spring wind-
the kid in the neighborhood
Has a new whistle
Wasting not
A moment
Spring peepers
Forsythia-
In the yard again
Moving stones
Spring morning-
So many birds
Telling it
Heavy rain-
Lilac blooms smush
Against the window
Spring
Removing the neighbors
From view
The place emptied
A cool breeze
Blows through
Brilliant spring
The ambulance passes
Quietly
Here I am again
Hepaticas
too
Spring in the air
So many false starts
In my heart
Exam week
She lies face up
In the rain
Spring sun-
Making a list
Of what makes me happy
SUMMER
Day break-
The spider centered
In its web
My arm snagged-
A good look at
The wild rose
Taking me back…
Water laps gently
At the shore
High clouds
One horse leans its head
Against another
The day lilies
Some have crossed
The road
Left and right
He follows the way
Of his kicked stone
A little tree-
Not enough shade
To sit in
Letting her
Walk all over me
Ladybug
Drought-
Ants disappearing
Into cracked earth
Late day sun-
Deep on the forest floor
A seedling
Train receding
Its wake in the grasses
Still waving
Walking alone-
A submerged log
Comes to light
Empty classroom
Windows open
To summer
Crickets…
My eyes closed
To the day
Still summer night
Shining a flashlight
Around the garden
Perseids-
The space between clouds
For one
Cold front-
The forgotten dulcimer
Pings
Hunting four leaf clovers
Students discuss
Their childhoods
Sidewalk sale-
Wind twists a lifetime
Guarantee tag
Rundown docks-
Minnows schooling
Around the trawler
Offset from its stain
A rusted washer
On the boats deck
Extended goodbye-
Their paved driveway
Buckled by roots
One tree
One bird, one song
The dusk
Class in the forest
They all look up
To the trees
AUTUMN
Empty parking lot
Some wind collects and swirls
Leaves into a shape
Autumn moonlight
Folded in
The clothes on the floor
Cold autumn wind
In all the cracks
Eyes of barn cats
Fall colors
In the lake-
One thought after another
Deep overcast
Chickory blue
Out of concrete rubble
Abandoned farmhouse
Twilight darkest
In the empty windows
Lying in the leaves
The sun shares the shape
Of her corduroys
Potluck luncheon-
A yellow jacket cleans
Its antennae
Our turn
To stand here
Falls overlook
On the way home
More geese
On the way home
As we talk…
Wind blowing leaves
Out of the trees
Autumn nightfall
Dropping my son off
For something else
Day break-
From the bread truck’s roof
Frost swirls
NON-SEASONAL
mountain top
giving back
each breath
calling
for the lost cat
windchimes
in the waiting room
checking the plant
for reality
after our visit
in quiet, the things
I forgot to say
long wait alone
in the parking lot
a dog in the next car
passing through
the battlefield
now a rest area
twilight-
the only car ahead
turns off
the way
the light bulb rests
in the rest of the trash
all the voices
songs, waiting
in the broken radio
a few floors down
in another building
someone else looks out
standing here
at this window, remembering mother
standing here
last ray of sun
in the feeder
a sparrow
the cats eyes
so wide…
for a gnat!
SENRYU
…. Senryu are a humorous cousin to haiku… usually written in the same brief three line format, these are little poems touching on the foibles of humanity… often they are ironic, witty, joke- like commentary on the human condition, poking fun or making biting remark on what a predicament it is to be human…and if you recognize yourself or others in any of these then they have achieved their intention!
The easiest and best person for me to make fun of is… yes, you guessed it: ME
myself
monopolizes
me
*
where I sit
on my usual bench
remains of a nut
*
in the car singing
until I’m passed
and seen…
*
lingering in bed
the ceiling
has no answers
*
my mistakes
no matter how many
coats of paint
*
sneaking M & M’s…
the crunching
in my ears
*
wanting my old life
when I wanted
my present life
*
just as we’re
introduced
he yawns
*
after the party
undressing
myself
*
on the bench
a young couple carries on
as if I’m not there
*
as the music goes
into overdrive
I check the speedometer
*
my cat comes up close
then shies away
alcohol on my breath
*
older and older
the strangers saying hello
to me
*
down the trail
the horsefly follows
my bald spot
*
arriving at work, soaked
just as the rain
lets up
*
so many years
to remember…
I sit up straight
*
what a great smile
and greeting to someone
just behind me
*
asleep
in my lap the new kitten
I didn’t want
*
just oatmeal
the waitress says:
“enjoy”
*
before sleep
laughing to myself
at myself
*
in the middle
of my life
an ulcer
*
Hospital form
asks for religious preference
I put “haiku”
*
New Year’s…
recycling last year’s
resolutions
*
in the shower
an economy-size bar of soap
lands on my toe
*
lunch alone
without a book
I read my mind
*
my wife tells me
I’m going to make it-
common cold
*
my wife asks
if she should feel sorry for me:
“I’ve got it covered”
*
walking the tracks
my thoughts
go nowhere
*
rushing
to the zendo
to sit still
*
the sudoku
I’m stuck on
light and easy
*
trying to figure
how to spend it…
a little free time
*
most of the rain
not falling
on me
*
outside
in the dark
I let my imagination go
*
looking busy
as my wife
pulls in
*
from computer
to computer
my life
*
just in case-
weighing myself again
after the shower
*
almost out of money
at my parents
stone
*
behind the officer
writing out a ticket
I write this
*
quickly
after the artery scan
a Danish
*
reading into it
as much as I can
my life
*
the universe
of my thoughts
contracting
*
FAMILY SENRYU
*
instead of an air conditioner
I return
with popsicles
*
my children
don’t want to stop
historical marker
*
she wanders away…
her snail disembarks
the matchbox truck
*
yelling
at my daughter to stop
yelling
*
thunder and lightning…
my wife gets up
to lock the door
*
before the auction-
my wife trying to catch
a chicken
*
last day of school-
she tells me there was nothing
more to learn
*
in the garden
right by St. Francis
the woodchuck hole
*
to start the day
her slipper sounds
too fast
*
on the wall
Jesus on the cross
above her side of the bed
*
in her sleep
she steals back
her hand
*
my wife catches me
picking from our trash
again
*
mixed blessing
my best critic
at home
*
our child
who will not go to sleep-
sheep on her pajamas
*
my wife admits
she is not perfect,
but is glad I am
*
now that I’m over
my bad mood,
she’s in one
*
to the goldfish
she speaks
more softly
*
rivals:
my wife has named our computer
Charlotte
*
she turns down
my favorite music…
plays recorder for me
*
relatives set to visit
so many cobwebs
to remove
*
first night away-
we discuss
our pets
*
GENERAL SENRYU
*
on hold…
branches in the window
wave wildly
*
pawn shop
guitars and guns
lined up
*
side by side
his and her
computers
*
up in the dark
the toilet
overflows
*
done-
the repairman tells me
any fool can do it
*
in the kiddie pool
a couple of ducks
go at it
*
ninety years
each of her cocker spaniels
named “Honey”
*
summer-
seeing more
of her
*
muffler shop
a man managing
his cough
*
busy bar
another case of
mistaken identity
*
having brushed off
several small ants
an extra large one…
*
mixed in
with the instructions
her perfume
*
Urologist’s office-
a framed photograph
of the falls
*
first Christmas card
of the year:
L.L. Bean
*
how liveable
our house
once we move out
*
breeding pairs
at the zoo
with strollers
*
Boardwalk-
we go to one end
then the other
*
going the same way…
exchanging looks with the driver
of the hearse
*
quiet part…
out loud a little one asks
“when will it end?”
*
behind the wheel-
yet another of his
personalities
*
blowing her nose
just like me
the pharmacist
*
defensive drivers
each waving
the other through
*
by the ocean
again filled
with emptiness
*
another full moon
my checkbook
still unbalanced
*
outside the prison wall
a woodchuck stands
for a view
*
a couple
holding hands
testing the ice
*
cold season
who gave who what
at the office
*
waiting to see
the odometers big change…
missed it!
*
farm country back road :
just like them I lift one finger
from the steering wheel
*
gourmet pizza place
Dominos delivers
next door
*
TANKA
Tanka… sometimes called a 5 line spill by Sanford Goldstein, the tanka is a 5 line poem with a 1200 year history in Japan. As my favorite tanka poet, Takuboku states: Poetry must be an exact report, an honest diary, of the changes in a man’s writers emotional life.
Takuboku had a very difficult life due to poor health and died at the young age of 26. He wrote tanka as a tool of cathartic expression to help him cope with poverty, illness and unhappiness in matters of love and relationships with others. His tanka are exceptionally spare, confessional and many might find his writing sad and depressing. When I discovered his collection of tanka, Poems to Eat, I was instantly captivated and found his honesty transcendently uplifting no matter how dark his subject. The honesty of Takuboku to confront his problems and transform the worst of his experiences into 5 little lines really captivated me and gave me inspiration and hope that maybe some of my attempts might give a reader a sense of knowing and sharing in a truthfulness of circumstance.
Much like some of the films of Ingmar Bergman I felt Takuboku offered his readers a chance to see his unique troubles in a universal light. We all have troubles and go through difficult times. The confession of one offers a sense of solace and liberation just to know that others are sharing the same problems that we experience. My own attempts with tanka have often taken on the themes of love, loneliness, loss, change in fortunes and perspective, aging, the cycles and seasons in ones life and the fleetingness of experience.
Many writers of these brief poetic forms will collect those that fit a similar theme and sequence them to essentially create a longer poem… where the individual brief poems work to enhance each other. I have made sequences of tanka on love, aging, landscapes, urban life and remembering childhood for example.
Today I’ll read from a variety of the themes I’ve enjoyed writing about including those I just mentioned… Here is a sampling of my tanka:
During the time I watch The hawk just circles… There is always more Than meets the eye the farther away it gets the more magical it becomes, those times at night in the back seat, my parents taking us someplace.... it was a hot day when I dropped a penny in the soft tar... almost a year now I've paid visits to it
a storm coming up
and as I take the laundry
off the line
it occurs to me
this is a moment to savor
those two birds flying
so close together
swiftly across the twilight sky―
a certain happy sad witness
I provide for them . . .
Cold rain
In another town
The streets empty-
From one house
A gift of woodsmoke
standing here just watching
the spring sun sparkle
on the water…
what is it they say
about living life to the fullest
early summer breeze
plays the sun
across the forest ferns-
everything so nice
I hardly know what to do
The river must make
So many curves
To pass through the lowlands
The way nature always
Says something to us
Pushed by the wind
At the far end of the sky
A few clouds…
I can see that what I want
Keeps changing too
Without fanfare at dusk
I drag the dead branch
To the brush pile-
Another day risen
And fallen from my life
Could be I’m tired
Or lost, but to close my eyes
And nod off
While the world goes on
Gives me a certain peace
Full of rain
The river races along
Past everything here-
I can’t shake this sense
I’m living on borrowed time
My youth spent
Gathering strength and solace
Of friends near and far-
These short years later
Losing them one by one
Wanting my old life
When I wanted
My present life
Stirring the soup she made
As a cold rain falls outside
We work briskly
Into the momentum of the day
A long list of what to do,
Once all there was
Was to fall in love
Wind outside the mall
And as I wait
With my eyes closed
A killdeer calls
From another life
As I sit here
Taking in the river view
I see my feelings for this life
Quite like the trees
Leaning slightly downstream
In a reverie
At the long traffic light
It occurs to me
Why would I want
To do more, faster
How ironic
Coming to love
This life and world
And at the same time
Letting it all go…
While planting bulbs
My wife unearths
A childhood cap gun of mine
I hold it
Trying to grasp back then
What attracted me most
To the poem
Had not so much to do
With the poem
But that she liked it…
Scribbling,
That’s it,
What I do and tell
The inquisitive stranger
Who asks
I smile broadly
At one, then another
And another…
This fascination with faces
Smiling back
About to be worked on
I wait in the dentist chair
A little dance of thoughts
And nothingness
To go with the muzak
All these years
In one house, one job
One town and in me-
Too many changes to fathom
As I sweep away autumn leaves
The wind in the trees
Reminds me
That what once was
So important
Just passes by
Each day a cycle
Home to work, work to home
A quiet faith in things,
As real as unreal this way
Of being here all these seasons
Watching
The smooth flow of water
Over stones…
How few of my thoughts
Are new
At the old parking lot
The sparrows bathe
In a big puddle
Sometimes I’m so happy
Just to be here as witness
Blowing across
The plowed field
A sheet of newspaper
With who knows what
Kind of news
Asked to arrange
The flowers in a vase
I put them in any which way-
So glad there are some things
Which can’t go wrong
I ask him about his day
What he did,
If he got enough sleep
And in response
A soulful look and purring
high clouds…
one horse leans in
against another-
before our children
my wife and I were like that
so many things
to have opinions on
yet as I drive along
I don’t arrive
at any of them
every few bounces
the robin pauses on the lawn
to look and listen
as if that were all
there was to do
the tentative start-up
of talk…
to a new friend?
begins the old doubt
of just who I am, again
in my daughter’s room
which used to be my room
her shelf
full of model horses
all looking at me
with thunder very close
our little dog
gets in under my legs,
if only I could feel
so safe with myself
before the new puppy
my wife got ten chickens,
before them two parakeets, two cats,
our two children and long ago
just me…
my wife needs a room
of her own,
a place to close the door,
a place I never saw
in the sunnier days before
I’ve never been homeless
but think of it
seeing that shed
with a broken window
dawn light streaming in
for all that
which I will not get to
do in this life
the fountain carries on
in the rain
ten years later…
both married with one child
we all pass on a path
and smile politely
without a word
showing my daughter
my childhood ‘fish’ jackknife
she promptly says:
“i’ll put that in your grave
when you die”
beneath the open
library window
she wakes slightly to stretch,
and beautifully
change position
creating a space
in himself
that can’t be filled
– his lengthy ritual
seaside walks
in line
at the post office
I watch her
pen point search
for the last thing to say
in the wind
I rake and gather
leaves
with thoughts of people
I’ve known before
Another ball game
And she wonders why
I’m so taken by the win and lose
As if our lives were
Nothing like that
On the trail to the top
My family hikes best
During the time
They combine
To make light of me
A few leaves left
On the tree
And here I am at loss
With or without
The love I so desperately sought
Wondering if this is what
My parents felt,
In their own time
Seeing a better past slip
Ever further behind
How many people
Can you connect to
And lose in a life,
Without feeling
Quite lost
Ambivalence
I believe is what
I’ve come to, sitting here
Watching wave after wave
Land itself
My beer gone flat
But out of duty
I finish it-
Living all these
Middle-aged days
Revealed so long
This grain of wood
On our floor-
The distance yet
We have to go
Once again I review
The big mistakes in my life
And try to let them go…
How long it is from autumn
Till next spring
Just when I was feeling
There is always
Too much to do,
Cassiopeia so sharp
In the autumn night sky
What is Tanka?
Tanka may be defined in several ways, but this often lyrical, chiefly five-line poem, derived from the Japanese tanka and its predecessor, waka, continues to attract poets around the world. The following are three definitions or comments about tanka that may prove useful to members of the Tanka Society of America as we continue our study and appreciation of this poetry.
By Pat Shelley, from Footsteps in the Fog, Foster City, California: Press Here, 1994:
“Tanka in English is a small lyrical poem that belongs to everyone. Still written in thirty-one or fewer syllables in five rhythmic lines, as it was over 1,200 years ago, it can embrace all of human experience in its brief space with emotions of love, pity, suffering, loneliness, or death, expressed in the simplest language. It may sometimes seem fragmentary or lacking in unity because it is more intuitive than analytical, using imagery rather than abstractions . . . . One of the more challenging (and charming) of its elements is the subtle turn at the center of the poem, something unexpected perhaps, usually occurring after the second or third line as two seemingly unrelated events, images, or ideas are brought together, something less than narrative, an elliptical space that adds pleasure to our listening. Tanka is about our everyday lives in the smallest happenings, a little song of celebration.”
Draft definition form the Haiku Society of America definitions committee led by William J. Higginson (published in the HSA Newsletter in early 1994):
“TANKA. The typical lyric poem of Japanese literature, composed of five unrhymed metrical units of 5,7,5,7,7 ‘sound symbols’; tanka in English have generally been in five lines with a total of thirty-one or fewer syllables, often observing a short, long, short, long, long pattern. Tanka usually need no titles, though in Japanese a ‘topic’ (dai) is often indicated where a title would normally stand in Western poetry. In Japan, the tanka is well over twelve hundred years old (haiku is about three hundred years old), and has gone through many periods of change in style and content. But it has always been a poem of feelings, often involving metaphor and other figurative language (not generally used in haiku). While tanka praising nature have been written, and seem to resemble “long haiku,” most tanka deal with human relationships or the author’s situation. In the words of Sanford Goldstein, “behind the scene is the autobiographical moment of the poet’ (‘Tanka Off the Back Burner,’ Frogpond, XV:2 Fall-Winter 1992). The best tanka harmonizes the writer’s emotional life with the elements of the outer world used to portray it.”
Some of the appealing aspects of haiku and other brief forms of poetry:
*An effective haiku never says TOO much… if you have a tendency for redundancy
Or run on writing then the haiku is a good antidote for that problem! Haiku guarantees no excess and helps the writer be concise and precise.
*Haiku is highly portable… can be worked on in your mind while walking, driving, waiting for an appointment and is a form of mental exercise trying to get the few chosen words into an order that is most effective. Trying to express something meaningful in as few words possible is a good challenge.
*Haiku as a practice enhances awareness and appreciation for the simple and subtle poetic cues that are constantly around us, there for our witness. Haiku in a sense keeps fresh the eternal childlike wonder and wide-eyed fascination with our life and world.
- As Henry D. Thoreau remarked: “All this is perfectly distinct to an observant eye, and yet could easily pass unnoticed by most.”
- The practice of haiku is free, no need for equipment or anything more than your observing and recording those moments, juxtapositions in nature that create a little extra-sensory pause and intuitive recognition of something worth noting & sharing what you see. It is a helpful centering tool in the perpetual practice of being here now.
*Haiku make a nice gift that is inexpensive and passes along the spirit of humility and
paying attention to the natural cues all around us, anywhere, anytime.
By Gerald St. Maur, from his 1999 Haiku Canada Newsletter article entitled “From Haiku to Tanka: Reversing Poetical History” (also published in the TSA Newsletter, II:1, Spring 2001)
“In going beyond the experience of the moment, the tanka takes us from delight to fulfillment, from insight to comprehension, and psycho-organism to love; in general, from the spontaneous to the measured. To achieve this requires a fundamental shift in emphasis: from glimpse to gaze, from first sight to exploration, and from juxtaposition to interplay, in short, from awareness to perspective . . . .It is thus evident that to compose a tanka is to articulate reflectively . . . . It is a shift which, in general, takes us from the simple to the complex. More pointedly, it moves us from the poetry of the noun to the poetry of the verb; in weaving terms, from the thread to the tapestry; in botanical terms, from seed to plant; in chemical terms, from element to compound; in painting terms, from sketch to picture; and in musical terms, from chord to melody.”
tom clausen 