“”Sky” samples—and takes its title from—Grateful Dead’s “Unbroken Chain” (incidentally, the first-ever cleared GD sample). Considering the Dead are probably personae non gratae with a good chunk of the Animal Collective demographic, the sample comes as a nice band-fan challenge (personally, I’ve never been a big Grateful Dead fan, but my objections are musical, not social). In the original song, the lyric is “Willow sky/ Whoa, I walk and wonder why.” In Animal Collective’s version, the lyric is flipped: The end of the line becomes the beginning, and “Whoa, I walk” is deliberately misheard as “What would I want?” I mention it because it’s what this band has always done for me: take a sound and turn it inside out to make something new, but something recognizable, even familiar.”

this is the song:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAMPw7zKrgc

(liver version):

http://www.youtube.com/watchv=g99bOcyJVVs&NR=1

my edge, i think (?), goes, often, beyond this though. then again, perhaps my edge is 5-7-5.

as the quote above though indicates, i find myself inspired by media and art, far more often than the haiku i read or revisit. sometimes film. quite often music. lyrics misheard. or reconstructed in the mind:

from the dirty projectors’ “no intention”

“The restless corpse is
collapsed wind
The breath is daffodil”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAqmjOER-PU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXjtDwJGeDI

concepts of cut and paste, sampling, and remixing to create something new or unexpected. i find these take me to the edge i seek and desire to play along when (re)constructing language/pulling it out/molding it/catching it. how far can it be taken? i feel i sometimes seek to be able to write haiku the way Ferran Adrià creates food. where is that?

in the midst of all this trying, and experimenting, and searching, i long though, like Seymour Glass, to be appreciated and understood by Miss Overman. is “the poet’s function not to write what he must write but, rather, to write what he would write if his life depended on his taking responsibility for writing what he must in a style designed to shut out as few of his old librarians as humanly possible” (J.D. Salinger, *Seymour—An Introduction*, p25-6).

here’s a pregnant question mark: (?)

— —;
– — —
— –.

marlene mountain
Tweed 6:1 1977 *

-/ — /
/- / /- /-
-/ –/

Robert Spiess
Modern Haiku (8:1)– page 33

a “found” haiku? see marlene’s essay:

http://www.marlenemountain.org/essays/essay_dadakuhobby.html

When I think of edge, I think of marlene mountain.
I’ve always admired her fearless experimentation.

her website is an invaluable piece of history, not only as an archive of her pioneering poetry, but as a record of the context into which her work entered

For myself, when I consider writers who challenge and delight me in this way, I usually come first to Burnell Lippy. Many of his poems, particularly those found in *late geese up a dry fork*, have a deep and deeply felt connection to season that goes beyond mere weather report— his seasonal references do more than locate us in space and time: they are images in their own right, in communication with whatever else he presents. For example:

squash vines
long and hollow
the last late evenings

In my own work I do not feel a strong need to connect to the season, but with Lippy’s work I feel how valuable, how rewarding, an exploration of seasonality may be.

Connected to this is his ability to make connections in subtle ways that at first glance may appear so tenuous as to dissolve into the page, but which generally do not. An example:

summer dawn
coolness
of the egg’s taper

He brings into this a sense rare in haiku, I believe—I’m not even sure what to call it. “Taper” is both shape and movement—it captures remarkably well the dynamic of an egg, as something contained and in repose, and yet in motion, and full of potential. It is a cosmos one may cradle and feel in one’s hand, as the summer dawn is a hand which cradles us.

There are other poets whose work I could offer as examples, in some instances knowing even less about what it is they do which appeals to me, but I leave it to you to offer some of your own.

heat shimmers . . .
now dry and now wet
above a stone

/ above the stones / above stones / above the stone (which one?)

The first line also reminds us of

Kagero Nikki 『蜻蛉日記』 『陽炎日記』（かげろうにっき)
The Gossamer Years
a classical piece of Japanese literature from the Heian period

we also have

かげろう【蜉蝣】 KAGEROO
a mayfly; a day-fly; an ephemera (kageroo)

and the last line (ishi no ue) reminds of

ishi no ue san nen 石の上三年
Meditating on a stone for three years

Gabi
(click on my name for further LINKS to these words)

Sorry to be so far off the theme of this sailing.

My “edge” for this year ?
To find my center !

Gabi
.