One Great Poem a Day
I started this blog because I was alerted to the fact that people are unaware that I'm actually a poet(and not just another blogger) - so my plan is to post a great poem every day(not mine, obviously) and to summarize the key elements that make the poem hit the target....i.e. the kernel of what resonates, rather than how it's achieved - the assumption being that it is achieved via craft, beauty, music, imagery, metaphor, whatever....Does that sound like a (kinda ambitious) plan? Alright. Holden Caulfield lives...let's go with numero cuatro..."His Holiness The Abbot", by the great Haiku master Buson....
His Holiness The Abbot
His Holiness the Abbot
is shitting
in the withered fields.
Summarization
Reverence and irreverence,
humanity, the needs of the body,
The Seasons, time, The Earth,
Sustenance, precision, concision.
Adios, y hasta manana, mis compadres en poesia...
El Capitane...
About Alex
Alex Grant's Chains & Mirrors won the 2007 Oscar Arnold Young Award(Best North Carolina poetry collection) and the 2006 Randall Jarrell Poetry Prize. Fear of Moving Water, his 2009 collection, was runner-up for both the Oscar Arnold Young and the...
Connections
Causes Alex Grant Supports
Southern Poverty Law Center
Amnesty International
Moveon.org
Alex’s Favorite Books
Catcher in the Rye, Journey to Ixtlan, Voyage to Arcturus, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, The White Hotel, The Four Quartets, The World Doesn't End...
Daily your readership should grow as more find this series.
Alex,
The Japanese syllable count 5-7-5 obviously doesn't translate. But when you're writing Haiku in English do you try to follow any syllable count?
By the way, if I'd come across this "Poem a Day" blog series of yours sooner, Ericka Lutz would be busy at this moment scrubbing grease off her hands after having cut your brake line. (Just kiddng, Ericka.)
Haiku conventions
Dennis -
I adhere strictly to the 5-7-5 count when writing in English(my first - and really only!) - language. Example solo Renga below - a linked series of Haiku, usually collaborative, but not in this case. Each Haiku should stand on its own, but should also link to the verse following:
IN THE OCEAN, BONES FLASH LIKE WHITE STARS IN WINTER
- Solo renga, after Basho
White pelicans swoop
Over black breaking wave-caps -
Yellow moon rising.
No stars in the sky
you can see - they're there, of course,
Behind yellow clouds,
Small pinholes of hope,
Catechisms of permanence
In the shifting void.
The wise man knows that
The sea, the gull, the salmon
All contain the world.
The ocean tells us
The future is a black wave
Twelve stories high - how
The dog-dreams of home
Sustain the spirit in its
Winter battlefield!
A man has five thoughts -
Boiled-down bones, childhood, dreams, blood.
Continuation.
Thanks for visiting and commenting..
Alex.
Thanx
Thanks for sharing this profound array of Haiku!