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morning walk –
an elderly woman picks up
certain leaves
Frogpond v. XXIV no.3 2001
certain leaves
17 Friday Jun 2022
Posted in Frogpond, haiku, leaves, nature, Published Poems
why haiku
17 Friday Jun 2022
Posted in haiku, Haiku Way of Life
Some thoughts on Why We Write Haiku ( this list contains a lot of overlapping and was intended just as a consideration of what might be some reasons…)
to express gratitude
to report something real with honesty
to share something directly and concretely
to share and create meaning
to say something meaningful in as few words possible
to communicate
to find a voice
to give a voice to nature and discovery
to celebrate our connection to nature, to all that is non-human
to sharpen and develop our awareness as a witness
to express observable truth
to give praise
to celebrate existence
grounding and centering
transcendence
to express admiration
to identify those primordial forces we love or relate to
to feel a sense of purpose
to express our longing and belonging
love for our being here now
to express joy and happiness in a moment
to show what is lost and found
as a means of catharsis
to show the aha moment and suggest the wonder of existence
the desire to turn words into greater awareness and understanding
in the eternal search for meaning and identity
to maintain a healthy focus and awareness
to attain some levity or lightness to our being
prayer like reverence and respect for what is before us
to achieve some clarity
to reduce confusion
to express insight
to improve and gain relationships and understanding our place in the world
in hope of finding a peace of mind and heart
to have an epiphany
to reaffirm what we know but had forgotten…nostalgia for our child mind
for the practice and routine of forgetting ourselves
an alternative focus and refreshing point of view
alter-identity
as a release from what bothers us or distracts us from the poetic in our lives
as an antidote to anger
to exercise a spiritual communion with our place/world
to commune with the muse
to attain credibility
to fulfill the searching aspect of our being here now
to recognize what is mortal and immortal in us and our world
as a form of satori and connection
because we love poetry and sharing something
because we feel inspiration in moments freely found anyplace, anytime, anywhere
because we are in tune with a universal reality
to get some satisfaction
as a path out of depression
to find ‘the way’
to see and feel light
to report natural ‘news’
to commune with nature
nurture of a spiritual relation
to join a community of people sharing a poetic point of view
to be in the now
because we believe in nature and the poetic relationships small, large and wonderful
as a means of disciplined expression
in recognition of natural nuance
to exercise our senses
to praise the life in the inanimate
to write concisely
to write what is in the heart
to find our-self outside our-self
to respond to a calling
Laughing To Myself
16 Thursday Jun 2022
Laughing To Myself
A collection of haiku and senryu by Tom Clausen, a favorite poet of many readers of haiku. Tom has been writing haiku for over twenty years and has enchanted readers with his very personal outlook on family, nature and living in this modern world. Tom opens his heart so that those who read his poems not only feel like they know him, but because his poems touch a universal chord readers also feel like they know themselves a bit better too.
before sleep
laughing to myself
at myself
Since 1989, when Tom Clausen first came onto the haiku scene, he has been in the forefront of English language haiku, senryu, haibun and tanka. Tom was a pioneer in the haiku movement that let haiku not only roam through the natural world, but let it into our cities, homes, and all other aspects of our modern world. No other haiku poet has so openly let the reader into his life and into his heart. Tom, while retaining his individual voice, manages to convey the aspiration and angst of all of us who live in this modern world and does so with a wry and whimsical smile. This collection which spans the entire 24 years of Tom’s insightful, honest and often humorous poetry will give those who know Tom’s work a chance to revisit old favorites and find gems they might haves missed and give those less familiar with Tom’s work a chance to see why he is one of the most influential haiku and senryu poets of his generation.
bitter wind-
we circle our candles
for peace
Review by Alan Summers
A Work of Love
16 Thursday Jun 2022
Posted in A Work of Love, Book reviews, Published Poems, tanka
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A Work of Love by Tom Clausen, Tiny Poems Press Chapbook Winner 1997.The booklets of the winners of the chapbook contest are 5.5 x 4.25 inches, staple bound, and available for $3.00 ppd each, or $10 for the set of four postpaid. Hint: go for the whole series. They are truly worth every cent. Order from Tiny Poems Press, 170 Elm Street, Enfield, CT 06082.Here, an existing language has been chosen by Tom Clausen to enlarge and explain certain spiritual spaces in which a privileged reader can participate. There is, like always, a price for such an experience – the reader somehow has to give up conventional linear thinking and instead has to give into physical and psychic areas where Clausen is not only at home but through several years of hard work also developed his own way of composing 5-liners.Tom Clausen has the advantage to work as a librarian, which means, he enjoys having constant access to world-literature. With this far reaching education he paved his way into the haiku/tanka/haibun-scene. Now, with Lynx also on-line, his work occurs in circles spreading into another body of resonance. With this latest composition of forty tanka, A Work of Love, Clausen offers new ways to refer to daily life at a level where the poetical language meets and surpasses the demanding situations we all often would like to stay away from. Well, with his booklet in a small pocket you may sit in a rowboat at dawn. You are on a trip while already having in mind to go diving; the element you’ll chose is the fluid one. Preparing yourself, there is some spare time ahead of you to be filled with something important, right? What’s available to be read? Perhaps Clausen’s tanka? Here are only three of the works of love:
the envelope to me
sealed carefully with tape
on every seam
when opened, reveals
absolutely nothing
for over a decade
we’ve talked –
still you want our talk
as much as I want
the silences between
tolerably melancholy
to sit here while the kids play
and be lost in myself –
on a path nearby
she walks in the sun
Books Review Copyright © Jane Reichhold 1997.
haibun
16 Thursday Jun 2022
Posted in haibun, Tom Clausen biographical info
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about haibun :
“Whether we think of our life as special or not, in the flow of experience come special moments that punctuate our sensibility and memory. Haibun are records and renderings of our passage through life, and an attempt to distill the highlights of our very diverse experiences. The poem that typically concludes the haibun ought to reflect the heart of our inner understanding of outward experience.”
Tom Clausen was born in Ithaca, New York, in 1951 and continues to be a resident of this isolated finger lakes college town. Today, Tom shares the same house he grew up in with Berta and their two children, Casey and Emma. Tom has worked for more than twenty years at Cornell University in the Mann Library where he coordinates the staff and student assistants in the document services–circulation department. Tom graduated from Cornell in 1973 and after several years of bicycle trip adventures, he settled back where he started. His books include Autumn Wind in the Cracks, Unraked Leaves, and Standing Here (1994, 1995, 1998; all self-published) and A Work of Love (Tiny Poems Press, 1997).
in the woods
16 Thursday Jun 2022
Posted in American Haibun & Haiga, haibun, haiku, Published Poems, spring
In the Woods
In 1962 when I was eleven I fancied myself to be a Last of the Mohicans, Huckleberry Finn, outback wilderness child, and had chosen the name “Wonapsa” to inspire and fulfill the fantasies I played out in the woods and gorges behind our house. The woods contained the world I loved, both real and imaginary. I would spy on rabbits, chipmunks, and woodpeckers. Sometimes I would sit as still as I could to see what being a ghost was all about. I laid on the ground, smelling the dirt and embracing a patch of earth just my size. I would climb trees listening to the wind sigh in the boughs and learn the creak that comes from deep in trees. The woods were filled with secrets I wanted to know.
sun after rain–
the garter snake fresh
from its skin
In the spring it was momentous to find mayapples and hepaticas and know new life arises from the litter and wreckage of winters’ leaving. One day while scampering up and down steep slopes in random search for tiny skulls, feathers, fossils, or a special perch to sit awhile, I peeked over a ridge top to see a man and a woman lying out on a ledge a way below me. What they were doing I had roughly heard about but never seen. The trees between me and them were few but a bit of guilt kept me from a steady stare. I became aware of the unlikeliness of what I was witnessing and felt an exhilaration of discovery. To see their flesh while they kept some clothes on filled me with curiosity. I do not re- member a distinct conclusion, my memory choosing to focus on the unison of their movements.
That night my heart and mind recreated it all over and over. What images I had seen. How purely animal and natural they were. How unexpected and free a view I had.
Years go by and that ledge is still there. My walks in the woods these days sometimes pass that place. I always look a little and remember. I’ve never seen anyone else there.
barren woods–
a clump of wild onion
scents the air
American Haibun & Haiga Volume 1
pencils
16 Thursday Jun 2022
Posted in American Haibun & Haiga, haibun, Published Poems, senryu
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Pencils
To this day I keep many more pencils than I need or use. Beside the computer at home and at work, beside the bed I keep them as practical artifacts of a former self and simpler time. In elementary school I began a pencil collection and by middle school I had become known as the pencil kid. I studied the various brands enough to recognize the unique patterns in the little metal tops that hold the eraser. Friends would approach me and hold out a pencil with just the head visible for me to guess the brand name. Some of my favorites were Venus Medalists, Ticonderogas, Eberhard Faber Mongols, Herald Square Mallards and Mohicans by Empire. My collection grew with a certain idiosyncratic reputation. The days of Bic pens, fountain pens and then keyboards came yet I’ve never been able to view any pencil as anything but a link to those days then and that special meaning in my heart.
high school bully—
holding the pencil out at arms length
before snapping it
American Haibun & Haiga Volume 4
middle way
16 Thursday Jun 2022
Posted in American Haibun & Haiga, americana, haibun, Published Poems, senryu
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Middle Way
At times it’s hard to know whether to laugh or cry. The struggle to be, just to exist requires each of us to be true to too many things to make sense of which one is right.
a few graves apart:
neighbors who had nothing to say
to each other
American Haibun & Haiga Volume 4
the receipt
16 Thursday Jun 2022
Posted in Frogpond, haiku, Published Poems, senryu
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Frogpond, haiku, Memorial Day, poetry, Published Poems, senryu
Memorial Day-
overwintered in the sandbox
toy soldiers
delivering flowers
he manhandles
the receipt
Frogpond XXI no. 1 1998 p. 9 & 55
undefended
15 Wednesday Jun 2022
Posted in Frogpond, Published Poems
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undefended:
in the cold rain
their snow fort
evening star-
she sleeps with the lion’s tail
in her little hand
Frogpond XX: no.1 May 1997
tom clausen 