Crossposted from my Substack.

Welcome back to the end of week eight to returning readers, and a 初めましてどうぞよろしく(pleased to meet you) to any new readers.

This week, there was a concerted effort to attempt to exploit the vertical axis (ie to tap into a wider cultural context). Some of that attempted intertexuality will be more apparent in some haiku than others. I also managed to listen to an episode on euphony in Haiku, over at the Poetry Pea. It’s nothing that I haven’t heard before or indeed practiced, but the act of listening brought euphony to front of mind. 

Structure and Stats

This week’s haiku, were characterised by the short-long-short form, the average syllable count was just under 13.5 and the range 5. The phrases were predominently noun phrases, although one featured a prepositional phrase which I haven’t produced in a while. Similar to last week there was a long-long-short line arrangement and a short-short-long.

The Poems

beyond my power

the installer reschedules

at days end

As I mentioned above, this week I was trying to tap into broader cultural context. Haiku has a strong connection with Zen and so I was looking at similar philosophical thoughts when I paraphrased Epictetus above. The Stoic concept that Epictetus teaches is, that are somethings within our power, up to us, that are our proper function(chiefly only our judgements, opinions, motivations and desires) and in this case the installer turning up when he said he would is not one of them. 

I think that the phrase works logically, students of stoicism will get it and I think your average Jo will too. The only thing that I feel works against the composition here is that there’s a slight mismatch with the diction in “beyond my power” and the rest of the piece. 

seeing, not seeing

the dented tailgate

the faded spark

Here I was working with a bit of parallel structure – the repetition of seeing in the first line and leading with two definite articles in lines 2 and 3. Although, I was not really attempting a conection to a wider context, there might be some reader identified intertexuality in the seeing, not seeing.  It has some echos of buddhist thought perhaps. It is a largely fictional haiku about seeing but not percieving. I’d walked past my truck for two days withought noticing the two foot long dent I’d put in the tailgate. I then was searching for some heavier emotional content and settled on breakdowns in human interraction. Not percieving when emotional connections have faded. Out of all of the haiku this week, this one feels the most contrived.

lone call,

still, on a low fence wire

a bird I can’t name

after Soft Rains May Come

Back to the cultral connection and one of my favourite Sara Teasdale poems.  On a low fence wire is one of her lines and the feeling generated in the quiet of the morning when I heard a clear bird call, had me in mind of her poem Soft Rains May Come (which I encourage you to read via the link). In terms of euphony, this Haiku has a nice L sound in call, still and low. I think the sound lulls the reader a bit. It’s a quiet, reflective poem, and the euphony supports/co-creates this intention.

the stray kitten

pausing to strike a pose

Maneki Neko

Another attempt at cultural connection. Maneki Neko or the beckoning cat, is amoung other things a symbol of good luck. The pun here of course is that the stray cat is beckoning offering good luck, when indeed it’s the stray who will be lucky when he gets fed for being so cute. The repeated plosive P’s combined with the repeated K sounds seem to slow this poem down for me. I think it works for the subject matter.

casualty

after the heatwave

I check my bonsai

Yet another summer Haiku. I don’t think I have mentioned heatwave in the nearly 60 haiku I have written this year. We did have our first extreme heatwave this week though. I was employing a bit of meaning misdirection here. Hoping that the reader is lead toward a more human catastrophy than this poem ends up being. Although, If I lose another tree I will be most put out.

morning haze

I clean my glasses

and it clears

This poem was in relation to a prompt by Mark S over at Naturalist Weekly, which is well worth a look. The obvious interpretation of this haiku is that the haze is in fact dirt on the glasses, but cleaning my glasses is a morning ritual – part of clearing the head haze if you will. In terms of its euphony I like the z sound of haze and clears. Theres also some repeated cl and gl sounds that work well together.

stormwater

cutting a new stream

in the sand

It rained, thank the gods, on Saturday. I was tailwalker at my local parkrun and the stormwater drains were releasing a good flow of clear water down onto the beach sand, cutting and carving. So this is a shasei, but it was also the day that I listened to the poetry pea podcast on euphony. So river became stream and winding became cutting. I think the s sounds in stormwater, stream, and sand, help tie this one together.

Reflections on the project

I have written my 57th haiku ready for Monday, and apart from midweek when I was extremely tired, I haven’t felt that put upon. I haven’t been questioning my sanity (not with haiku at least). I did have a run of good luck yesterday after parkrun where two haiku just seemed to pop out of nowhere. Sometimes I think I just need to give myself some space.

So 

That’s it for the week.

Til next time,

じゃあまた (See you later)