I would like to say at this point, ” hold on, save it, don’t push yet, don’t push”, but that ain’t gonna happen is it?

Perhaps this is what Scott meant by his ‘progression’..? And in fact it isn’t seasonality but the poet’s engagement? Less external, more internal?

With Gabi’s addition of the notion of “geta” and the picture of such a bridge on her website, I get a strong feeling of the bridge as musical instrument. A marimba or xylophone played by the hard wooden clogs. Each plank a slightly different note, as struck directly by the poet, and as it echoes up from the bottom of the bridge via the water and the side walls. This haiku shares the silence with John Stevenson’s, but is punctuated by footfalls. It is the silent space _between_ that brings about the haiku qualities of loneliness.

I am reminded of another of John S’s haiku about silence — it later served as a book title for him (a must-own, by the way):

snowy night
sometimes you can’t be
quiet enough

John Stevenson
The Heron’s Nest Vol.V,#2,2003

I wrote about it in his Award commentary: “Sometimes the very presence of the haiku poet or another person changes what is being observed. The intrusion may be exquisitely painful. The kayak paddle makes a splash as it enters a lily-filled cove. A walk in autumn woods is interrupted by leaves so loud underfoot they seem to echo. The sound of a distant hammer, a jet ski, or an airplane makes a deer jump, a fish startle, or a dragonfly take off.

“I easily recognize the writer’s emotional discomfort as he disturbs the snowy scene; I am drawn in by it. The quiet, and the sheer beauty of this night, should not be disturbed. The scrunch of new snow compressed under a booted foot; the car door shutting; the beep as the car locks; the poet’s breathing-all of these things are just too loud.”

This haiku, too, may fall into the Category described by David Giacalone. It is well worth your time, as Peter has suggested, to click on David G’s name (in red) and read his well put-together treatise. I think David and I are not far apart if the parameters of “tell-ums” and “psy-ku” are stretched a bit… more flexible. It is a matter of focus. Is John’s “gorge” or his “snowy night” _about_ his conclusionary language, or about the very real basis in the actual, physical word? If all I see, just one observer of the haiku scene, makes me think of the mind of the poet, then I’m out of the sharing-of-experience mode and into thinking about thinking — distracted. As Allan shows us, the Old Masters, even through translation, often used a mix of philosophizing and the here and now of actual experience. Experience I can share as in “snowy night.” I can also share in the fact of insight. It is also in the here and now that John is suddenly aware of the silence of the gorge and his place in it. Beyond that, metaphor of haiku-as-a-whole can take over as it does for both types of haiku.

As he is often wont to do, John S. treads the edges. And as it has been said, he does it so well. Sometimes behind his glasses there is a twinkle of amusement . . . I happen to agree with David G. about “dust devils” but, as above, I have a wider threshold for other, more complete, works. I have been with John for many, many inner verses of renku. “Dust devils” seems such a verse of a renku poem… but it lacks the other 11, 19, or 35 stanzas!

After HNA, Ottawa, I expect John may comment (or not, as is his right). I’m not wild about deconstructing my own humble works in public. Others may, but what is written just is, and it doesn’t belong to me, or John, anymore. Readers/listeners get it or they don’t. I may be judged by _my_ effectiveness.

a last ramble about effectiveness … it is profitable to read again the Commentary for this Viral by Yu Chang. It is interesting to see the poem through Yu’s eyes, a friend of John’s, and a Master haiku poet, himself.

– Paul (MacNeil)

Christopher’s “foghorns” is a real favorite of mine. The double meaning of the final word (“sound”) is a brilliant stroke that pulls everything the poem presents–foghorn, water, kayak, “we”–into a larger whole.

I do hope to see our conception of haiku move increasingly away from a limiting notion of “rules” and more toward a flexible conception of “norms” and “practices” that reflect the reality of what has been written in this genre and do not artificially constrain what poets feel they need to say. As Peter says: “passionate exploration”. Rules are for games. Renku is usually approached in this spirit–and that’s probably appropriate for this communal enterprise. But haiku is an artform and should be able to express anything we need it to. There are textbook notions of haiku, and then there is the real thing, a good bit messier and more interesting.

Perhaps inevitably we will end up embracing the term Scott likes to use: “ku”. To some ears it might sound “cutesy” at first, but it is not just Western shorthand. It really is used by Japanese poets and provides a needed broader category that includes haiku, senryu, and zappai and everything that blurs the distinctions between them. The more I think about it, the more useful it seems.

“To burn always with this hard, gem-like flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life.”–Walter Pater