triveni spotlight
A FEATURE EVERY ALTERNATE DAY!
hosts: Teji Sethi and Kala Ramesh
guest editor: Billie Dee
Theme: Close Observation
sparrows pour
through a blue hole
into our gray world
William Hart
Montrose, California, USA
Hart, William. cloud eats mountain. Winchester, VA: Red Moon Press, 2013.
I am pleased to submit the following selected poems from my personal "favorite haiku" list, one I've developed over the last 30 years or so. All have been approved by the authors; all include publication credits (except one from Patricia Machmiller which is unpublished); all are from the U.S. Pacific coastal rim (my region). I have chosen "close observation" as my theme, a guiding principle in my own writing, and a core element IMO for developing a Haiku Mind.
Peace,
Billie Dee
p.s. Under-lined book titles have embedded links where a reader can go to purchase the book.
sparrows pour
through a blue hole
into our gray world
William Hart
kigo=sparrow (in Southern California they nest late spring-summer)
How does this poem fit into the close observation theme, you might ask. On the surface, it seems a bit speculative, a thought-experiment. But knowing Hart lives in the Los Angeles area, it also seems to reflect his direct observations on air quality.
Think about Mumbai, or any other metropolitan area choked with smog, and this becomes a closely considered riff on pollution. White-crowned sparrows (Zonotrichia leucophrys), one of the most commonly seen birds in Southern California, "pour" through a cloud rift (the "hole") from the blue sky above into the gray urban landscape below---enriching the environment with their che…
A few notes on issues brought up in this thread:
Here are two classic examples of Japanese single-sentence (ichibitsu jitate) haiku:
from time to time the clouds give rest to the moon-beholders
— Matsuo Basho (1644-1694)
over the wintry
forest, winds howl in rage
with no leaves to blow.
— Natsume Soseki (1867-1916)
Alan Ginsberg and the American Sentence:
"One sentence, 17 syllables, end of story. Minimum words for maximum effect. It makes for a rush of a poem, and if you're trying your own hand at these and decide to include the season and an aha! moment as Japanese haiku do—a divided poem with a hinge or pause separating the originator from the kapow!—well, more power to …
Ah, my strategy worked. I included Bill Hart's single-sentence haiku precisely to start this conversation. And isn't his poem beautifully mysterious, yet easy to grasp at the same time?!
So. Must a haiku have an internal kireji? No. In fact, there is an established Japanese-language haiku form where the cutting word comes at the end of the poem. It's called ichibitsu jitate (物仕立て).
There are few cutting words in English (like: Hey! Yeah! Amen. So.) Instead, we typically use punctuation marks and inflection to indicate pause or emphasis.
Please read Michael Dylan Welsh's informative article on this matter, One Part Haiku, and browse around his vast website Graceguts. He is one of the most important haikai scholars around toda…
Loved the third line!!
I like the image very much but it reads like a sentence to me. I would be grateful if you would explain to me how it is a ku. Thanks