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PAGE 12                                     

Three Japanese Haiku Masters and One American

i. Basho (1644-1694)
         

          Matsuo Basho is considered the grandfather of haiku. His born name was Matsuo Kinsaku, but took on the name Basho when disciples built a hut for him with a basho (banana) plant in the yard. He actually made a living of poetry as he traveled around and taught others. Wherever he stayed, other poets came to study with him, and they, in turn, passed on his teaching to others. In his day, Basho was a master of a linked poem known as haiku-no-renga and specialized in its first verse, hokku, which at the turn of the 20th century we began to call haiku. He also popularized haibun, the combination of haiku with prose, often in the form of a travel diary.        
 When my wife, Elaine, and I went on our 30th wedding anniversary Highway 1 North road trip from our home in Pacific Grove, California, to Bandon, Oregon, I brought a book by Basho Elaine bought for me, Narrow Road to the Interior. Reading it each evening inspired me to think about the dual meaning of  what it means "to make it home."

wherever we are
we promise to make it home
Basho in hand

ii. Buson (1716-1783)
          Yosa Buson, who studied both painting and poetry, was greatly influenced by Basho, but added what we could call a "painterly" quality to his verse. Thus, he has been dubbed "Poet of the Eye." Among his accomplishments was mastering haiga, a combination of haiku with a visual image ("ga" means painting). Today many haiga aspirants begin first with a picture or photograph and then write a haiku to go along with it. But, to truly follow in Buson's footsteps would be to write haiku and then find or create the image.
          Inspired by his example, Elaine and I walked through the Pacific Grove Farmers Market and I jotted down sights, sounds, smells in my little haiku notebook. I picked up and touched fruit and vegetables; I took in the experience and invited myself to have an emotional experience of the autumn season. When we got home, I wrote a haiku and then Elaine composed a still life photograph of what we had bought at the market. Our experiment was published as a Workshop Feature in the Winter 2009 Haigaonline [www.haigaonline.com].
          Now, here is a haiku I wrote last winter during a break in a period of extreme weather.

   a lull in the drenching
   the ivy greener than green…
    lush-Buson-ish

iii. Issa (1763-1828)
          Our third Japanese master, Kobayashi Nobuyuki, took on the pen name, Issa, which means "Cup of tea." He experienced many tragedies in his upbringing and family life, which could have lead to bitterness. His mother died when he was two. Four of his own daughters and one son all died before the age of one. Instead, he used his inner eye to look with empathy for all living creatures, including the mosquito and even those ever-popular fleas and flies. His haiku does not sentimentalize the "low," but instead offers a shared encouragement. Issa is "one" with common people and finds dignity in all walks of life.
          When I read Issa, I think of the Roman slave, Terence, who was freed by his owner and became a successful playwright. Today he is best known for one line of dialogue: "I am human being, so nothing human is alien to me." Here I try to look through the eyes of Issa:

young man and his dog
both sleeping in the city park
 loose change

iv. Gary Snyder (1930 - )
          Early 20th century poets were inspired by translations of  Japanese poetry as they aimed to write concise poetry that favored precision of imagery over sentiment. But, even as I read and admire what has become known as Imagist poetry, I turn to Beat Poetry to find the first true connection to the "aha" Zen-like experiential verse that is the essence of haiku. Gary Snyder was one of the first American poets to climb that mountain – literally – as he describes in Mountains and Rivers Without End, a compilation of 39 prose/poetry pieces he wrote between 1956 and 1996.  Snyder began climbing the high snow peaks of the Pacific Northwest when he was thirteen years old. During visits he made to Japan in the 1950s, he wrote that he had never lost his sense of belonging to North America: "I kept nourishing the images and practices that kept me connected to a sense of the ancient (Japanese) landscape."
          In 2004, Snyder was awarded the Masoka Shiki International Haiku Grand Prize. In a 2007 interview with John Festiner, author of Can Poetry Save the Earth? (2009), Snyder said, "More than any other literary tradition on earth, haiku has been the language of the natural world… it's an exercise in mind-focus that everyone shares."
          Jack Kerouac, in his Beat Generation novel, Dharma Bums (1958) uses mountain climbing as an opportunity for philosophy and poetry. Here he portrays Gary Snyder in the character, Japhy Ryder: "Look over there," sang Japhy, "yellow aspens. Just put me the mind of haiku… Walking in the country you could just understand the perfect gems of haiku the Oriental poets had written…" In 1998, Elaine and I built a cabin in the Wasatch Mountains of Utah, opposite the Honeycomb Cliffs –– our perch a perfect place for exploration.


          autumn dusk ––
  the wind in the aspens
  mistaken for rain

NEAL WHITMAN
PACIFIC GROVE, CA

 PAGE 13                           

Cross My Heart 


when my son was born, so small
I found the will to try for
a new life, to be a new thing,

bright. I threw out all the things
from my life past, the sharp pins
the old clothes, the words that spoke

of fear and hate and death. I
was to be as new to him
as he was to me. I fell

so in love with that sweet child
I knew I could do it all.

HOLLY DAY
MINNEAPOLIS, MN

PAGE 14                                    

Beneath the Rainbow                                                                              

Death’s children ride merrily beneath the rainbow
Three score and ten warily beneath the rainbow

Red dust catches the moon’s frosty refrain
Seven ravens dip carefully beneath the rainbow

Blood circles the crown of shattered gold
Mad moonlit maids dance daringly
 beneath the rainbow

Time’s ancient prairies are coated in dust of bone
Night winds scream breathlessly
 beneath the rainbow

The devil’s dark drones dance across the sky
Drop phosphorescent terror gleefully
 beneath the rainbow

Seven score and more cross night’s golden frontier
Dark stench of death rises prayerfully
 beneath the rainbow

Where there is no bread,
 only dancing skeletons eat
Their music dies garishly beneath the rainbow

Lost children play hopscotch across
 glass shattered streets
As mushroom clouds burst poetically
  beneath the rainbow

Mother’s solace burns brightly in the braided bark  
 of birch trees
Illumines the steady black rain falling gently
 beneath the rainbow

ELAINE SCHWARTZ
ALBUQUERQUE, NM

PAGE 15                                  

I Have the Money
 

I have the money so
I kidnapped them
flew out of Bangkok with the brother and sister
still dressed in the cheap slinky clothes of the  brothel
on a private chartered plane,
at 2 a.m.
Security raised but a sleepy eyelid.
 

They are safe
well fed, warmly housed
by people who will soon dearly love them
when their fright subsides
and their English improves.
School will follow
I have faked their birth certificates,
and papers of adoption,
I have the money
I can make appropriate arrangements.
 

Back at the brothel
Someone is beaten for allowing their escape.
He is thrown out in the street,
no longer to draw a salary
for whatever it is he pays for in his life—
rent, school fees, drugs?
 

And back in the village the payments stop,
parents merely informed that
the brother and sister have disappeared.
Younger siblings are too small
to work the city sex trade
Without the money from
the kidnapped two,
the smaller ones will not grow much more.
  


S. R. LEE
BRENTWOOD, TN

Win Hearts And Minds

      Bomb global warming
            And slaughter its wedding parties
Invade the ozone hole
      And gangbang its teenage daughter
      Overthrow the melting icecaps
            And put them on trial for war crimes
Occupy the rising sea levels
      And sodomize them at checkpoints
      Kidnap economic collapse
            And send it to Guantanamo Bay
Interrogate unemployment
      And dress it in girl’s panties
      Torture working class poverty
            And don’t let it go to the bathroom
Water board street corner homelessness
      And make it sleep with the lights on

JON TAYLOR
NASHVILLE, TN

 

“A way that is laid out, is not the way.”
Tao Te Ching


life is a journey
fraught with peril
the way is never clear
naïve faith
and sarcastic doubt
circle aimlessly
resolving nothing 
pay attention  
  your time is short
      the way long
there are people watching television
while the house is on fire

MICHAEL WHITE
BRUSH CREEK, TN

PAGE 16                                    


PHONE ART


JEFFREY  BARBOUR
Truth or Consequences, NM
      
www.barbourstudio.com

 

Border Book Festival
Randy Granger: Native American Flute
Las Cruces Burning Man folks
Grass Roots Press: Progressive Newspaper
Sante Fe Art: Gretchen Peters
New Mexico monuments

beatlickjoe@yahoo.com

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