Haiku Afficianadoes

The Second Annual Basho Haiku Challenge Chapbook

Within a link to five marvelous haiku.  The form is alive and well, it is good to say.  Much different than the original, as it should be if a form is to remain relevant--retaining all of the externals of compression and intense imagery, but varying the syllable count and other items as befits transition to another language and to another time. 

What is most interesting to me about haiku is the way they are like potato chips or m&ms.  That is, they invite gulping down by the handfuls, but they truly reward a meditative and lingering consideration.  It's amazing the way so few syllables can unpack.

Comments

  1. FredOctober 25, 2010 at 11:28 AM

    When I get a new collection of haiku, I usually race through it, looking for those that grab me immediately. Then I go back and do one a day at most.

    ReplyDelete
  2. StevenOctober 25, 2010 at 11:33 AM

    Dear Fred,

    This sounds like an excellent approach. I somehow doubt I could manage it. Although with greater reading discipline, I suppose it could be possible. Thank you for suggesting it (even though it wasn't really a suggestion--just a note as to your own practice.)

    shalom,

    Steven

    ReplyDelete
  3. FredOctober 25, 2010 at 8:03 PM

    Steven,

    Chuckle...

    Well, it sounds a lot more disciplined than it really is. I do read the collection through rather quickly when I first get it and then place it on the table by my reading chair. At odd moments then, I slowly work my way through it.

    I have the complete collection of Basho's haiku now. I raced through it within a week and now I'm slowly working my way through it at a more leisurely place.

    I also grab my other collections with Basho's haiku and do a stare and compare. I have my favorite translations, of course, but it's fascinating to see the differences--due to a great extent, I suspect, to differences in the translators.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Angel Time--Anne Rice

Review copy received 11/04/09 From the time of its announcement, I had been looking forward to this new book by Anne Rice.  As I say in every review, I am not a die-hard Anne Rice fan.  I found Interview with a Vampire interesting and intriguing, but in hindsight, must lay much of the responsibility of the current vampire as victim and love-object obsession at its feet.  After that, I had no patience with her writing until Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt. In that book I observed a kind of control and authorial voice that I had not seen in any of the books I had sampled since Interview .  So too with Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana. Perhaps because of the subject matter, perhaps for other reasons, these two books seemed to witness a level of control of language and story that the other books did not.  Gone were messy florid passages that lavished two, three, four paragraphs on the description of the lace and flounce of a jabot.  These new books were sp...
Read more

Another Queen of Night

I post this because whenever I recommend to anyone the Queen of Night, I always recommend it in the Lucia Popp rendition.  It's a matter of personal taste, but what I love about this is that it is somewhat slower than the other versions and as a result, it would seem to me somewhat more difficult to perform and sustain--those high notes in which the Queen's voice becomes the Magic Flute itself are rounded, full, and deep while remaining light and airy. I have read some rather severe criticism of this ritardando; and while it may or may not reflect Mozart's intent, it is certainly within the options for staging.  It creates a real vocal showpiece from what is already a magnificent example of same. It really is an amazing example of a virtuoso composition sung by a virtuoso voice.  All of which should not be taken to mean that I do not truly appreciate the version posted earlier by Diana Damrau, it's just nice to see what a difference tempo can make. I think we can take...
Read more