My Ten Haiku, October 2008
World Haiku Review, Volume 6, Issue 4, October 2008
My Ten Haiku
INTRODUCTION
The World Haiku Club has endeavoured to celebrate and demonstrate haiku poems of quality, newness and originality.
In this series we ask poets to select by themselves, say, 20 haiku from among the numerous haiku poems which they have written all through their haiku life and which, without false modesty or show-off, they feel confident, happy and genuinely proud in the sense that they represent what they want to say in haiku and reflect what they believe to be the essence of haiku. We will narrow these 20 to 10.
It is hoped that these stringently selected ten will represent something by which the authors can be judged critically and emulated.
Poets are selected not according to the length of their haiku life, 'position' or fame in the world haiku community or even the number of their publications, but purely and simply according to the quality and merits of their poems. They are presented in alphabetical order. In this issue, the featured poets are an'ya and Sasa Vazic.
My Ten Haiku by an'ya
june breeze
a hole in the cloud
mends itself
heavy with child
the dog-day cicadas
loudest at noon
bitter cold
a juniper berry parts
the jay's beak
moonset
a sudden vastness
between stars
home—
cricket sounds
in every nook
fierce wind
the falcon grasps
a new foothold
sunlit penny
the whole ocean becomes
my wishing well
elephant cloud
today it brings me
part of africa
ice moon
an elk touches its tongue
to the salt lick
night sky—
the flavour of its colour
my blueberry wine
[Editorial Note: Credit for each poem has been removed for editorial purposes. Guidelines in writing haiku and biography have not been provided by the author.
My Ten Haiku by Sasa Vazic
Down the stairs
frightened by my own shadow –
winter night.
This house
visited by no one any more –
long winter days.
Market morning –
the seller's frozen hands
choose fish.
War night.
All the lights turned off.
A starry sky.
Parliament on fire.
Shadows of fleeing birds
across the city roofs.
Darkening room.
Shadow of a peony spreading
up to my sick-bed.
Home at last…
not so much as the buzz
of a mosquito
greets me.
A long journey's end.
Drying my winter shoes
in the summer sun.
Guests gone.
Silence meets me
in every room.
I hide under the doorway
mistaking thunder for
a roaring rocket.
1) About the poet in focus:
Saťa VaŞić, Serbian, Serbia.
v.sasa@ptt.yu
Haiku Reality: http://www.geocities.com/anavazic/indexeng.htm
Haiku stvarnost: http://www.geocities.com/anavazic/
2) Personal background:
Saťa VaŞić is a freelance journalist, astrologer, translator, writer of prose and poetry, essays and book reviews. Author of over 1000 articles on various topics which appeared in newspapers and journals; member of the editorial board of Haiku Novine in Niť and of the World Haiku Club.
Her haiku have been included in a dozen national and international haiku anthologies and in a number of national and international haiku magazines and newspaper haiku columns (Ko, The Heron's Nest, Roadrunner, Simply Haiku, Modern Haiku, Wisteria...). They have been translated into English, Japanese, Chinese, Macedonian, Slovenian, Croatian, German, Czech, Bulgarian, Russian, Polish, Dutch and Norwegian. She is the recipient of a dozen awards and commendations in contests held in her country, in Japan (Water, Lake and Sea; Suruga Baika; Basho Festival; Ito en), Germany, Croatia and Bulgaria.
Largely, through her translation efforts she has brought English language haiku poetry, articles and books to Balkan readers and vice versa. VaŞić is the editor of the bilingual Haiku Reality ( http://www.geocities.com/ana_
vazic/indexeng.htm). She is the author of an e-book of haiku poetry entitled muddy shoes candy heart, edited by Anita Virgil and published by Peaks Press, USA (peakspress@lcscentral.net).
She also creates haiga, some of which have been published at the World Haiku Association's website and at Kuniharu Shimizu's website See Haiga Here, as well as in the Contemporary Haibun published by the Red Moon Press, USA.
Recently she has translated David G Lanoue's novel Haiku Guy into Serbian.
3) The poet's views about haiku:
I've been studying haiku for about ten years, and still I can't (and probably will never be able to) say my final words about it. What is it in essence? Can we in the West feel precisely what old Japanese found part of themselves and their daily routine? Must it change to adapt to new ways of life of contemporary man or should we stick to our "ancient soul" and try to draw it up from within?
Apparently, nature is all that is, and everywhere...up and down, "here" and "there"... So much so that however much I may try to read and write, it often appears to me that there is nothing more to be turned into these letters in a better way in which it bears a new meaning and a new revelation than haiku. Nature is a revelation in its own right. It "speaks" of itself. Ultimately it would be best if we can just keep our poetry silent.
4) Haiku poets to be admired or emulated:
There are many poems by various authors I find good or excellent. This applies both to old Japanese haiku masters and to contemporary ones. If I were to choose among those with whom I'd like to change my place, they would be Chiyo-ni, Kioran, Hisajo, Shuson, Basho, Buson, Issa, Shiki, Santoka and many, many others.
5) Haiku poems the poet in focus likes best by old masters and/or contemporary haijin (up to six):
Oh, Matcushima
Oh, Matcushima
Matcushima...
- Basho
full moon...
going out
going back in
- Issa
keeps re-echoing --
little mountain cuckoo likes
having its own way
- Sugita Hisajo
the fog's clearing -
so now we can see only
what our eyes can see
- Kato Shuson
the full harvest moon -
the only things not wet with dew
are the dews themselves
- Buson
cigarette went out -
throw away
the loneliness
- Hosai