nu ku for January

Higginson on the one-line haiku

From One-line Poems to One-line Haiku

A seminal essay from the late William J. Higginson on the 1-liner was published in SimplyHaiku, Fall 2004. He defines four basic types, the latter being more a failure than a class of the genre:

1. One-Stroke Haiku. Those that seem to drive the reader instantly from one end to the other, without a pause for reflection or even noticing the grammar involved.
   
2. Classical-Style One-Line Haiku. Those that have a classic haiku rhythm, dividing easily into three phrases, often with the middle one longer, as do traditional Japanese and three-line haiku in other languages, but which may benefit from being read all at once—as the authors apparently intend. I consider these borderline cases between one-stroke haiku and the following group, but notice that the classical style allows for more play with the internal rhythms of a haiku than may usually be found in a three-line poem.
   
3. Multiple-Meaning One-Line Haiku. Those that may have a classic haiku rhythm, but which also offer the reader a number of syntactic elements, allowing for different interpretations of the poem according to how the reader decides to follow the poem's movement.
   
4. Multi-Line Haiku Written on One Line. Those that include a marked stop or pause, and which therefore are not true one-line haiku in my sense of the term. They usually include extra space between two or more sections, or punctuation marking a grammatical shift, or some other substitute for a line-break.
   

6 One-Line Haiku

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through me the reedy night harmonica
.................................  Roadrunner, VIII:3, Aug 2008

within the stone the sandstorm
.................................  Roadrunner, VIII:3, Aug 2008

purple milking the space between sea urchin spines

......  ...........................Roadrunner, IX:1, Feb 2009

mockingbird an octave shy of the moon
..................................Roadrunner, IX:2, May 2009

stardust the whole desert wanting
..................................Roadrunner, IX:2, May 2009

maybe it’s just me but with a sky this blue...
...................................Roadrunner, IX:2, May 2009

2008 Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival

I've won the Sakura Prize in the 2008 Vancouver
Cherry Blossom Festival Haiku Invitational.

cherry blossom . . .
trembling with the weight
of its bee

2008 Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival

I've won the Sakura Award with this haiku:

cherry blossom . . .
trembling with the weight
of its bee

summer tattoo

summer vacation
shopping for my first tattoo
I choose Kandinsky

haiku published in 2007 Yuki Teikei Anthology

Young Leaves is the Yuki Teikei website

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I plan to get my first tattoo on my 80th birthday. This one:

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Wassily Kandinsky, Composition VIII, 1923

Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival Haiku Invitational 2007

Yipee! I've won an honorable mention, my first haiku prize.


hide and seek--
cherry petals frosting
their shoulders

haiku

sitting
under the cherry tree
I swear off ambition

new kigo

sunset
the freshly whitewashed fence
bathed in pink

I think fence painting could be a summer kigo: no snow, rain, wind; plenty of heat to dry the paint -- a Saturday afternoon's work... Tom Sawyer, etc.

more--war--again

everything
returns to dust
Fallujah

I know traditional ku/waka avoid the political, so maybe this is just a cranky 3-line poem. Whatever.~ Billie

haiku bibliography

Books Helpful To The Haiku Poet ~ from The Nisqually Delta Review: A bi-annual poetry magazine of distinction

Basho: On Love And Barley: Haiku Of Basho translated by Lucien Stryk, Copyright 1985, Penguin Books, Middlesex, England.

Classic Haiku: A Master's Selection edited by Yuzuru Miura, Copyright 1991, Charles E. Tuttle Company, Rutland, Vermont.

Haiku:A Poet's Guide by Lee Gurga, Copyright 2003, Modern Haiku Press, Lincoln, Illinois.

How To Haiku: A Writer's Guide To Haiku And Related Forms by Bruce Ross, Copyright 2002, Tuttle Publishing Co, Boston, Mass.

Narrow Road To The Interior And Other Writings by Matsuo Basho, translated by Sam Hamill, Copyright 1998, Shambala Publications, Inc.

The Essential Haiku:Versions Of Basho, Buson, And Issa edited by Robert Hass, Copyright 1994, Harper Collins

The Genius Of Haiku: Readings From R.H. Blyth With an introduction by James Kirkup, Copyright 1995, The Hokuseido Press, Tokyo.

The Japanese Haiku: Its Essential Nature, History, Etc by Kenneth Yasuda, Copyright 1957, Charles Charles E. Tuttle Co, Tokyo.

The Haiku Anthology edited by Cor Van Den Heuvel, Copyright 1999, W.W. Norton and Company, New York.

The Haiku Handbook edited by William J. Higginson, Copyright 1985, Kodansha International, New York.

The Narrow Road To Oku translated by Donald Keeene and illustrated by Miyata Masayuki, Copyright 1996, Kodansha International, LTD, New York.

The Spring Of My Life And Selected Haiku, Kobayashi Issa translated by Sam Hamill, Copyright 1997 Shambhala, Boston, Mass.

Writing And Enjoying Haiku: A Hands-On Guide by Jane Reichhold, Copyright 2002, Kodansha International, LTD, New York.

Zen And Japanese Culture by Daisetz T. Suzuki, Copyright 1959, Bollingen Foundation Inc, New York.

Zen Poetry: Let The Spring Breeze Enter translated and edited by Lucien Stryk and Takashi Ikemoto, copyright 1991, Grove Press, New York.
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misc. haiku links

Aozora - Haiku from South-East Europe
http://aozora.tempslibres.org/

The Art of Haiku
http://www.geraldengland.co.uk/hk/

Asahi Haikuist Network (editor: David Mc Murray)
http://www.asahi.com/english/haiku/index.html

Association of Haiku Poets & Museum of Haiku Literature
http://www2.famille.ne.jp/~haiku/index-e.html

Bottle rockets: a collection of short verse
http://www.geocities.com/bottlerockets_99

Cascina Macondo (Italian haiku website; editor: Pietro Tartamella)
http://haiku.cascinamacondo.com/

The Electronic Poetry Network (editor: Carlos Colón)
http://www.shreve-lib.org/images/Poem.htm

Geert Verbeke - Haiku Websites
http://users.skynet.be/geert.verbeke.bowls
http://home.alc.co.jp/db/owa/ph_diary

Haiku NewZ (newsletter; haiku page editor:Sandra Simpson)
http://www.poetrysociety.org.nz/haikunews

Haiku Ireland (official site of the Haiku Ireland group)
http://www.haikuireland.org/

HIA - Haiku International Association
http://www.haiku-hia.com/index_en.html

The Haiku of Kobayashi Issa
http://webusers.xula.edu/dlanoue/issa/links3.html

Haiku Research Papers (Richard Gilbert)
http://research.iyume.com/

The Haiku Society of America
http://www.hsa-haiku.org/index.htm

Haiku Spirit (Gilles Fabre's bilingual site /English and French/)
http://www.haikuspirit.org/

The Heron's Nest (editor: Christopher Herold)
http://theheronsnest.com/haiku

Kuniharu Shimizu, Japanese haiga artist - «See haiku here»
http://www.mahoroba.ne.jp/~kuni_san/haiga_gallery/

Modern Haiku (editor: Lee Gurga)
http://www.modernhaiku.org/

Museum of Haiku Literature
http://www2.famille.ne.jp/~haiku/index-e.html

Roadrunner Haiku Journal (editor: Jason Sanford Brown)
http://www.roadrunnerjournal.net/

The Shiki Internet Haiku Saloon
http://www.cc.matsuyama-u.ac.jp/~shiki/

Simply Haiku (owner/managing editor: Robert Wilson)
http://www.simplyhaiku.com/

The World Haiku Association
http://www.worldhaiku.net/

The World Haiku Club
http://www.worldhaikuclub.org/

new haikublog

Haijin! here's a new haiku blog of real quality:


Dana-Maria Onica from Romania
Haiku Path

It's new, so there are only a few haiku / senryu there, but well worth your visit.


..........new boots -
..........the hopscotch suddenly
..........too small
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haiku of Hashimoto Takako

Noted in the World Haiku Review archives:

Toward the Starry Sky: the haiku of Hashimoto Takako (1899 - 1963) by Debra Woolard Bender with Eiko Yachimoto, from a series on women poets of Japan.

An excerpt:

hoshizora e mise yori ringo afure ori

From the grocer's, a heap of apples
overflows to the starry sky.

Apples
.....from the grocer's heap tumble
........................... ...into starry skies.

This successful and famous haiku has been highly praised and loved ever since Takako composed it in 1947. A heap of red apples placed at the storefront, sparkling under incandescent lights relate, on a symphonic scale, to a myriad stars. Even though apples were a popular symbol of hope in the post-war chaos and hunger, Takako's clarity is reminiscent of Miyazawa Kenji with his hard and lofty imagism. As in the firefly haiku, her deeply suppressed boyishness can be sensed here, too, and her inner child appears to have survived. In her mature womanhood, she would write many sensual, or even sexy haiku which some call "ecstasy haiku"

The article and companion translations are highly recommended.

~ Billie