Intersection of Temporalities

To the writing belongs one time series.

In Wabi Sabi, a book by Mark Reibstein with art by Ed Young, there "are Japanese haiku that appear decoratively throughout the book." They are also gathered at the end with transliterations and translations. This one by by Shiki caught my eye because of its phenomenological inflections.

for me leaving
for you staying
two autumns

To the reading belongs another time series.

And so for day 2153
04.11.2012

Purrfect Pun

In the age of cat videos, one comes across an apt little bit of verse from John S. Crosbie in Crosbie's Book of Punned Haiku. (New York: Workman Publishing, 1979).

There is nothing worse
Than poems about cute cats
It is all perverse.

If you think this is bad, I've seen worse — from Crosby himself — a haiku that ends limerick-like with "caramel knowledge."

And so for day 1962
27.04.2012

After Yates

Our version, not quite accepting the syllable count …

Porcupine dying
Tobacco accepting
Quill decorating

She prefaces a number of poems

To a non-native that cosmic precedent, haikai, offers a medium through which to imagine and attempt to express the poetic evocations of native voices not presumptively, not as appropriation or traspassing [sic], but as validly as an harmonic echo reverberating for all times, reaching all places.

which leads to

dying porcupine
accepts tobacco for quills__
bridal moccasins!

Evelyn Catharine Yates. Karumi Moon: Probing Ancient and Modern Haiku

We pick up the gerund and make it present the steps as out of time in a type of synchrony: dying, accepting, decorating.

And so for day 1924
20.03.2012

Found Haiku

Lifted from its sequence, punctuation adjusted [dropping a comma after "melons"]

heat fattened
melons
guard
a standing hoe

George C. Miller. Ladders to high places (Toronto: Cló Chluain Tairbh, 1962)

And so for day 1682
22.07.2011

Blossoms Scattered, Eyes Scratched

The 2005 Griffin Poetry Prize Anthology has a selection from nominated poet Fanny Howe. Her On the Ground which I continuously misquote as Open Ground by some concatenation with Opened Ground: Selected Poems, 1966-1996 of Seamus Heaney. In any event I was caught by these lines

Maybe the end of the world happened long ago
A whirl as quick as Judas breaking his neck
and every sound is an echo

There is of course the end rhyme (ago - echo) and the internal rhyme (quick - break - neck). And the subtle shift in tense.

I dwell on this suggestion of what might have happened if events had not led to Judas hanging himself. The "maybe" here is picked up by a later question : can I?

Can I toss them aside
like an armful of sticks and set out as a feeling
to find Hana and Issa across the night

Never mind the referent of "them" for the moment. Let us concentrate on objects of a search: Issa could be the Japanese haiku poet but there is no poet in the tradition that readily responds to the name Hana. (We could be dealing here with pets — household felines.) We can find hana in the poetry of Issa. It is not a proper name but the word for "blossom". We are here deforming on a search of our own not quite tossing aside brain and skeleton which are the immediate referents to the notoriously slippery "them".

Why I like the blossom-connection regardless of authorial intention:

hana saku ya me wo nuwaretaru tori no naku

cherry blossoms--
chickens with eyes stitched shut
are clucking

David Lanoue highlights this poem and its translation and provides commentary in his Master Bashô, Master Buson ... and Then There’s Issa appearing in Simply Haiku Autumn 2005, vol 3 no 3.

Jean Cholley notes that in the poultry market in the Muromachi district of Edo (today's Tokyo), the eyes of the doomed birds were sewn shut to keep them immobile while being fattened in their cages (237). Issa sketches this not-pretty scene with blunt honesty. And though he utters no emotional words, one feels his heart going out to the birds who cannot see, and never again will see, the cherry blossoms.

Reference: Cholley, Jean. En village de miséreux: Choix de poèmes de Kobayashi Issa. Paris: Gallimard, 1996.

Can I now return to where the echo began to reverberate? But I have lost a world. Gone like a "single bubble in steeping tea" the meaning according to Robert Hass of Issa's name. But accessible again to more complicated readings when one considers that Judas is Greek for Judah which in Hebrew means "thanksgiving, praise". Worth pursuing? Feeling one's way across the night? Finding scattered on the ground? Inventing like a way to read with eyes stitched shut and mind wide open?

And so for day 1281
16.06.2010