Haiku! in major media!

Just happened to catch this story which was part of this morning's Morning Edition -- perhaps the recent phenomenon of NYTimes "haiku" spurred it, or maybe just the annual ritual of appreciating the cherry blossoms in DC. Still, they actually involved members of the Haiku Society of America, so there was more substance than mere syllable-counting to the final selection -- progress!

cherry blossom rain
sound of a love song passes
with the traffic

— Dawn Apanius

(Maybe next time they could invite the HSA membership to contribute as well as judge, but perhaps that is too much to hope.)

Poem for the day

THEME FOR ENGLISH B

The instructor said,

Go home and write
a page tonight.
And let that page come out of you---
Then, it will be true.

I wonder if it's that simple?
I am twenty-two, colored, born in Winston-Salem.
I went to school there, then Durham, then here
to this college on the hill above Harlem.
I am the only colored student in my class.
The steps from the hill lead down into Harlem
through a park, then I cross St. Nicholas,
Eighth Avenue, Seventh, and I come to the Y,
the Harlem Branch Y, where I take the elevator
up to my room, sit down, and write this page:

It's not easy to know what is true for you or me
at twenty-two, my age. But I guess I'm what
I feel and see and hear, Harlem, I hear you:
hear you, hear me---we two---you, me, talk on this page.
(I hear New York too.) Me---who?
Well, I like to eat, sleep, drink, and be in love.
I like to work, read, learn, and understand life.
I like a pipe for a Christmas present,
or records---Bessie, bop, or Bach.
I guess being colored doesn't make me NOT like
the same things other folks like who are other races.
So will my page be colored that I write?
Being me, it will not be white.
But it will be
a part of you, instructor.
You are white---
yet a part of me, as I am a part of you.
That's American.
Sometimes perhaps you don't want to be a part of me.
Nor do I often want to be a part of you.
But we are, that's true!
As I learn from you,
I guess you learn from me---
although you're older---and white---
and somewhat more free.

This is my page for English B.

By Langston Hughes
1951

(via Hoarded Ordinaries)

Poem of the day

If snakes were blue

If snakes were blue, it was the kind of day
That would uncoil in a luxurious ease
As each mica-bright scale exposed a flange of gold
And slowly, slowly, the golden eyes blinked.

It was the kind of day that takes forever --
As though minutes, minutes, could never be counted -- to slide
Among the clouds like pink lily-pads floating
In a crystal liquid pure enough to drink.

And there was no distinction now between
Light and shadow except the mystic and faint
Sense of adaptation of the iris,
As light diminished and the first star shone,

And the last veery, hidden in a thicket of alder,
Thought it would break its heart perhaps -- or yours.
Let it be yours, then. For such gentle breaking
In that ambiguous moment could not be

Less than a blessing, or the kind of promise
We give ourselves in childhood when first dawn
Makes curtains go gold, and all night's dreams flood back.
They had guaranteed our happiness forever.

And in a way such promises may come true
In spite of all our evil days and ways.
True, few fulfillments -- but look! In the distance lift peaks
Of glittering white above the wrath-torn land.

- Robert Penn Warren

Belated stones of July

Ok, so I think this proves either that I'm incapable of a sustained project in the summer or that this particular summer got the upper hand over me. I basically managed almost no small stones for July, but here are the few that have been rattling around in my bookbag...

pebble 1

winds rising --
in the middle of the sidewalk
a single shoe

pebble 2

mossy shingles --
a sparrow calls from the sycamore

pebble 3

the high bounce of my eraser
as if trying to come back to the desk,
to have another chance...

Poem of the day

Questions Before Dark

Day ends, and before sleep
when the sky dies down, consider
your altered state: has this day
changed you? Are the corners
sharper or rounded off? Did you
live with death? Make decisions
that quieted? Find one clear word
that fit? At the sun's midpoint
did you notice a pitch of absence,
bewilderment that invites
the possible? What did you learn
from things you dropped and picked up
and dropped again? Did you set a straw
parallel to the river, let the flow
carry you downstream?

- Jeanne Lohmann
The Light of Invisible Bodies
beyond the fields we know

(via whiskey river)

A river of summer stones

Making a go of July at the second iteration of this project. Will see how well I can remember to stay attuned, and how my glimpses are different in summer than in winter.

Day 2

a pleasantly cool morning
soft breeze in the trees and against the skin
from the rooftops, sparrows shout back and forth
as if energized to get things underway

Day 3

reading aloud;
she scoots closer
for the scary part

Day 4

patio grilling ---
the shared relief
as the A/C compressor goes off

Poem of the day

You, as you are, you're just right.
Your parents, your children, your daughter-in-law, your grandchildren,
they are, all for you, just right.

Happiness, unhappiness, joy and even sorrow,
for you, they are just right.

The life that you tread is neither good nor bad.
For you, it is just right.
Whether you go to hell or to the Pure Land,
wherever you go is just right.

Nothing to boast about, nothing to feel bad about,
nothing above, nothing below.

Even the day and month that you die,
even they are just right.

- fragment of a Shin Buddhist poem in Taitetsu Unno's book,
River of Fire, River of Water

(via whiskey river)

Poem of the day

Advice to Myself

Leave the dishes.
Let the celery rot in the bottom drawer of the refrigerator
and an earthen scum harden on the kitchen floor.
Leave the black crumbs in the bottom of the toaster.
Throw the cracked bowl out and don't patch the cup.
Don't patch anything. Don't mend. Buy safety pins.
Don't even sew on a button.
Let the wind have its way, then the earth
that invades as dust and then the dead
foaming up in gray rolls underneath the couch.
Talk to them. Tell them they are welcome.
Don't keep all the pieces of the puzzles
or the doll's tiny shoes in pairs, don't worry
who uses whose toothbrush or if anything
matches, at all.
Except one word to another. Or a thought.
Pursue the authentic - decide first
what is authentic,
then go after it with all your heart.
Your heart, that place
you don't even think of cleaning out.
That closet stuffed with savage mementos.
Don't sort the paper clips from screws from saved baby teeth
or worry if we're all eating cereal for dinner
again. Don't answer the telephone, ever,
or weep over anything at all that breaks.
Pink molds will grow within those sealed cartons
in the refrigerator. Accept new forms of life
and talk to the dead
who drift in though the screened windows, who collect
patiently on the tops of food jars and books.
Recycle the mail, don't read it, don't read anything
except what destroys
the insulation between yourself and your experience
or what pulls down or what strikes at or what shatters
this ruse you call necessity.

- Louise Erdrich
Original Fire: Selected and New Poems

(via whiskey river)

Quote/poem of the day

To This May

They know so much more now about
the heart we are told but the world
still seems to come one at a time
one day one year one season and here
it is spring once more with its birds
nesting in the holes in the walls
its morning finding the first time
its light pretending not to move
always beginning as it goes

- W. S. Merwin

(via whiskey river)

Thought of the day

But won't you be ashamed
To count the passing year
At its mere cost, your debt
Inevitably paid?
For every year is costly,
As you know well. Nothing
Is given that is not
Taken, and nothing taken
That was not first a gift.

- Wendell Berry
lines from Sabbaths 1998, VI

(via whiskey river)

Poem of the day

The Infirmament

An end is always punishment for a beginning.
If you're Catholic, sadness is punishment
for happiness, you become the bug you squash
if you're Hindu, a flinty space opens
in your head after a long night of laughter
and wine. For waking there are dreams,
for French poetry, English poetry,
for light, fire although sometimeskoan
fire must be punished by light
which is why psychotherapy had to be invented.
A father may say nothing to a son for years.
A wife may keep something small folded deep
in her underwear drawer. Clouds come in
resembling the terrible things we believe
about ourselves, a rock comes loose
from a ledge, the baby cries
and cries. Doll in a chair,
windshield wipers, staring off
into the city lights. For years
you may be unable to hear the word monkey
without a stab in the heart because
she called you that the summer she thought
she loved you and you thought you loved
someone else and everyone loved
your salad dressing. And the daffodils
come up in the spring and the snow covers
the road in winter and the water covers
the deep trenches in the sea where all the time
the inner stuff of this earth surges up
which is how the continents are made
and broken.

- Dean Young

(via whiskey river)

Quote of the day

The Thing Is
to love life, to love it even
when you have no stomach for it
and everything you've held dear
crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,
your throat filled with the silt of it.
When grief sits with you, its tropical heat
thickening the air, heavy as water
more fit for gills than lungs;
when grief weights you like your own flesh
only more of it, an obesity of grief,
you think, how can a body withstand this?
Then you hold life like a face
between your palms, a plain face,
no charming smile, no violet eyes,
and you say, yes, I will take you
I will love you, again.

- Ellen Bass
psychobabble

(via whiskey river)

Late pebbles

Snow and exhaustion continue to dog the start of my year, make the weeks hard to imagine and the time fly jumpily. Intermittant blogging and even more intermittant observation, I fear.

Day 27

from around the manhole cover
steam rises in pulses
as though beneath the sidewalk
a dragon sleeps...

Day 28

the street untouched
in inch-deep snow --
almost loath
to leave my doorstep
and mark my passing

Day 29

The bushes are flattened as though a giant had sat on them --
some bounce back once freed from their heavy loads of snow,
but others still hang low, limbs broken or bent for good.
So winter leaves its mark on us all.

Icy pebbles

Day 22

amid the romping dogs
motionless forms of their huddled owners

Day 23

Catching the wind for an instant
the leaf jerks forward
like a nervous iguana
across the snow

Day 24

In the subway station, the man on the stairs behind me sings, "I'll catch the next one" in the sing-song usually reserved for mocking (naah naah...), but softly. Is he defying the Fates?

Loose pebbles

Have gotten a little away from this project, but here are some efforts from the last week...

Day 12

the short path of snowflakes
under a streetlight ---
evening hush

Day 15

the open expanse of an empty desk: inviting or bleak, depending on one's mood...

Day 17

the birch and dogwood
fused by ice
where their branch tips touch

Day 18

my boots make a shush-crunch with every step
in the newly fallen slush

More pebbles

Day 9

the bed so warm
when I crawl back in

Day 10

rushing back out with bread --
the sparrows already gone

Day 11

Morning light softens the city -- a haze of horizon pink reflects on edges of silver-blue skyscrapers, harmonizes the smudges of brick, calls to our forgiving natures...

Latest pebbles

Day 6

The old man moves his hands
in an energetic conversation
only he can hear.

Day 7

in a dim room
unsure of what woke me
until she cries again

Day 8

through my windows
snowflakes growing larger
silently

More pebbles

Day 4

pink glow of morning over the rooftops --
black branches sharp against the blue

Day 5

a wordless smile
from the next person in line
at the library return box

Something new: A river of stones

Am going to try joining this project, which encourages the observation and recording of one sharply observed moment (small stone) per day for the month of January. Don't know if I'll manage either to record or blog them every day, but will do my best -- a good start to the year and maybe a way of finding my way back to my haiku self too.

Day 1

How gently she covers each snowball with a blanket of loose snow. Whiteness against green and brown.

Day 2

Smaller somehow
the newly bare Christmas tree

Day 3

The cat arches into my hand,
then steps away

Poem of the day

You Learn

After a while you learn the subtle difference
between holding a hand and chaining a soul,
and you learn that love doesn't mean leaning
and company doesn't mean security.
And you begin to learn that kisses aren't contracts
and presents aren't promises,
and you begin to accept your defeats
with your head up and your eyes open
with the grace of a woman, not the grief of a child,
and you learn to build all your roads on today
because tomorrow's ground is too uncertain for plans
and futures have a way of falling down in mid-flight.
After a while you learn
that even sunshine burns if you get too much.
So you plant your garden and decorate your own soul,
instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers.
And you learn that you really can endure.
That you really are strong.
And you really do have worth.
And you learn. And learn.
With every good-bye you learn.

- Jorge Luis Borges Veronica Shoffstall

(via whiskey river)