Nov 2
◠‿◠
crossroader: "I understand your ire. Going back many years, you were expressing ideas that the 'haiku community' laughed at, sometimes smugly and derisively. And yet, many of your contributions are now 'claimed' as the the original insights of others!"
jp: "Yes, it can be challenging on point duty. Still, "Kilroy was here" (nose over distant horizon) is not to be sniffed at."
G O L D E N O L D I E L U D E
review 15
/
we watched the blast
from a picnic area on the edge
of town
15
the young hawk
strays over a leafless wood
into Crow Airspace. . .
fields empty
skies darken
16
leaves drop,
to make mandalas
on clouds?
oh, if I were a gypsy
and puddles were cups
Leonids 18
just my luck,
one Leonid meteor
at the tail end-
even Orion's little dog
declines to make a woof
B E A T N I K H E R O D O E S H A I K U
18
L I T T L E G E M L U D E
ebb tide
the crab is suspicious
of the footprint
Rofu's most famous lyric. . .
The sky was suddenly aglow, a red dragonfly is flying,
When on my back I look at the red of evening.
Will such a life ever return, is it already illusion?
That I picked a basket of mulberries on the slope?
The girl got married, at the age of 15,
And at the end she didn't write to me from the village.
Look, the sky is glowing red; a red dragonfly is flying.
Look, on the tip of a post it stops red in the evening.
(Trans: Liland)
PERFORMANCE
MORE
(Red Dragonfly) Lyric by Rofu Miki (not performed) / Music by Kosaku Yamada Arranged by Soichiro Genda & Reona.
18
ah so,
the lion coughs up. . .
a shooting star
19
"Looking by thinking is not seeing to think." - jp
/
hang sharp
in dawn's shadow,
Frost Moon
G O B S M A C K I N G N A T U R E F A C T L U D E
20
thank God. . .
at cow's mud end
a leafy puddle!
too bad those travellers
their reverse bootprints
20
"Like our ing, koto [not the harp] has no practical use by itself. If you have to have a translation, "'the thing of' is probably the closest you can get." - Tim Sensei
/
inside her hair dryer
there is a little dragon
practising. . .
autumn's freckled girl,
from wind and rain
\
'The thing of' a hairdryer is that it blows warm air to evaporate moisture (useful for damp gumboots, hair and whatnot). Here we have an example of 'becom-ing' (koto). The reason I mention this is that there is no place for stasis when we ku. Ku are more than crucified butterflies, no matter how pretty and thought provoking (Imagist poems cover that; alongside Symbolist spins, I guess). So, when you see this aesthetic term 'koto' bantered about in the dovecotes of haikai, well...now you know-ing!
jp
21
"Oh my word I think I pretty much read it all now that's just sent me to the edge and back.... Sorry I'll get my coat." - starbuck , frakkin galactica
/
updated
last autumn's puddle
atlas~
might add clouds
if time allows
22
"We have a Jack Russell. They're so territorial, jealous and insecure. Ours is even jealous of the car when she's in it and I'm driving..." - richardwil , Cambridge
/
a big dog
in a small dog's body
worries a leaf
whilst treading
ice
24
Well, I had a run in with some wasps once upon a time and ever since then every wasp I meet 'knows me'. How so? It's like those underground dancers in prehistoric France who painted cave walls with animals.
/
on puddle TV,
the wind and a tree
do leaves-
floating down
falling up
24
METONYMY "In metaphor, this substitution is based on some specific similarity, whereas, in metonymy, the substitution is based on some understood association." - Wikipedia
/
soon Jack Frost
but, not quite yet-
cats and dogs!
\
Here we have "soon Jack Frost" (metonymy) implying that winter is fast approaching. The season must be late autumn with its inclement weather. In fact the cacophony and clamour of heavy rain is indicated with an English folk saying: "[it's raining] cats and dogs" (metaphor). The idea of the sonic chaos of heavy rain is not mentioned, sadly, here.
jp
25
JACK FROST
"Jack Frost is the personification of frost and cold weather. A variant of Old Man Winter held responsible for frosty weather, for nipping the nose and
toes in such weather, coloring the foliage in autumn, and leaving fernlike patterns on cold windows in winter." - Wikipedia
GIRLFRIEND FOR JACK?
"Yuki-onna appears on snowy nights as a tall, beautiful woman with long black hair and blue lips.
Her inhumanly pale or even transparent skin makes her blend into the snowy landscape."
25
hid under leaves,
that twelve-string guitar
time's boy found—
sold for a song years ago
to the white elephant man
Through Nature's Eye - Haiku with John Potts
26
eerily,
the shifting leaves
as if...
a Sibyl darned of moonlit wind
in camouflage lightly tramples
DO YOU BELIEVE IN MAGIC?
The Cumaean Sibyl, 1876 by Elihu Vedder
The Cumaean Sibyl prophesied by “singing the fates” and writing on oak leaves. These would be arranged inside the entrance of her cave but, if the wind blew and scattered them, she would not help to reassemble the leaves to form the original prophecy again. - Wikipedia
Virgil tells us in his Aeneid:
Arriv'd at Cumae, when you view the flood
Of black Avernus, and the sounding wood,
The mad prophetic Sibyl you shall find,
Dark in a cave, and on a rock reclin'd.
She sings the fates, and, in her frantic fits,
The notes and names, inscrib'd, to leafs commits.
What she commits to leafs, in order laid,
Before the cavern's entrance are display'd:
Unmov'd they lie; but, if a blast of wind
Without, or vapors issue from behind,
The leafs are borne aloft in liquid air,
And she resumes no more her museful care,
Nor gathers from the rocks her scatter'd verse,
Nor sets in order what the winds disperse.
Thus, many not succeeding, most upbraid
The madness of the visionary maid,
And with loud curses leave the mystic shade.
27
"The lowercase is for smooth transmission of haiku 'television signals' into the reader's dream machine." - jp
/
dear autumn moles,
after days and days of rain. . .
keep your chins up
28
"The Moving Finger writes: and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it." - Omar Khayyam
/
out of nibbles
on The Frost Moon trail. . .
crunching leaves
29
"Blur your vision and enter global awareness. Do not be tempted to enter the transcendental - let that percolate over every horizon like the sky." - jp
/
rapid of eyelids. . .
see autumn's silly-billy
do the Chaplin
\
crossroader: Charlie or Military? The prose is a cryptic clue *V*
jp: Context is always the clue. Personal and cultural associations are usually there also when we ku, and this is part of the puzzle too. Kigo, amongst other elements of ku nuts and bolts, is specifically made of these allusive interconnections (more so than simply a seasonal reference, per se), as you know. The primary and secondary possibilities are the ones you mention. The obviously connoted concrete image being at the front; the literary option of the double-talking vicar being a level or so in, so to say. Deeper still...some may discover a simple and amusing method of breaking the thrall of habitual cognition and refreshing the perceptive metabolism when that jaded feeling comes. Well spotted.
◠‿◠
/
It's all about asking the question: "What's happening here?"
That question addresses surfaces first and then that deepens quite naturally. This deepening moves from the senses to reactions in our psyche.
So, in this example, the first contrast is that between peripheral vision (blurred) and foveal vision (focused). The former being the prose aspect of this 'quoteku' (technically, a haibun); whilst the latter features in the ku itself.
Hung on this primary constructive contrast our ku transmits its story. In the reading of this story we move from the concrete to the subtle as our intuition kicks in. As our intuition kicks in we start to dream the ku. . .
30
I remember having a lot of practice and fun by doing exercises with all sorts of unusual subjects. The back of a cereal packet, a fairy tale. The idea being to set up all the elements as it were a theatrical production. Having done this one may wander about the story at will.
/
a moonlit owl
shifts its twinkling place
in Christmasland
30
"It was a common custom for farm workers and labourers to go "St. Andra'ing". They would catch rabbits and hares and later on in the day would feast and drink."
/
huntin' th' wild-eyed ku,
on sic' an icy winter's nicht. . .
och aye th' noo!
—
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