Circus and Haiku

On my Orange Orb blog at Word Press, I wrote a post about a dream I had involving the world of the weird (which is what the Orange Orb blog is about) and haiku. Who knew such things could be connected? In my subconscious, they often are. Circus and Haiku: A Positive Omen for Creativity?

Jack Kerouac Blues and Haiku

Love Kerouac's haiku. Here he is reading his work, accompanied by wailing sax and such: Kerouac Blues and Haiku on YouTube.

I Feel Like Saying A Beatnik Poem 1950's B Movie Style

Sokka's Haiku Battle

"Poetry" by Regan Lee at No Shame Theater, Eugene

My first time at the No Shame Theater in Eugene, Oregon, reading my stuff. I was very nervous; hadn't read in public for literally decades (when I used to read at Water in L.A. and other places.) Once I got going however it was great. I'll be back in August. Wonderful people too!

Haibun and Modern Haiku Publication

Years ago, I subscribed to Modern Haiku. I recently re-subscribed, and the issue arrived the other day. Beautiful.

While I've been writing a lot of haiku again the past couple of years, I hadn't pursued various publications, other haiku poets, or my own submission/publication goals. But I'm back to it!

Along with my rediscovered exploration, I've been writing Haibun. Haibun is a short (anywhere from 20 to 300 words) (more or less) poem, essay, narrative, memory, recollection, prose piece, autobiography, micro-story, poem, and ending with a haiku. The Haibun can have a title.

Several things about this form I love. There is 'Zen zone' between the end of the haibun and the haiku. The haiku is not a linear conclusion. It stands alone, as does the haibun. But they also go together.

The haibun needs to be descriptive, sensory, detailed, succinct, non-repetitive.

I have a Haibun work-in-progress. It's not finished; this is the second draft. It started out as a poem, but I've been re-working it to fit into the Haibun form.

Bronson Caves, Hollywood California 1969

My father -- Big D we called him -- was an amateur photographer. He'd develop his photographs in our living room; trays of smelly solutions transforming paper into black and white images. Big D would develop horrible cracks, peeling skin, on his hands from the chemicals. He gave me his Olympus camera. I felt important, proud, and loved taking photos of the L.A. art museum on Wilshire, billboards, cemeteries. But then he took it back. My dad was also an actor and ex-child performer in the Tom Mix circus. He was killed in an episode of Gunsmoke, the naive and well-meaning young cowboy shot dead by the villain. He rehearsed a role from the Ice Man Cometh in our living room, scaring the shit out of me with his emotional coldness. He directs me telling me to scrams as I run through caves at Bronson Park. "Again!" he yells. My screaming is not sincere enough. I try again, running, shrieking . . . "Stop!" commands Big D. "Do it once more ... really act like you're frightened." Jesus Dad, I'm scared every goddamn day. What the fuck? But I do it again. And again. Still, it doesn't take. 

a narrow cave

ochre walls

dim light

________________

So that's the work in progress. Another version of the haiku at the end:

a narrowing cave

ochre walls crumble

at the end -- a glow

I've written three Haibun so far. The first two I'm very happy with, but can't post them here since I'll be submitting them to Haibun.com and Modern Haiku.

The one I've published here; I get happier with it as I work with it, but it's not quite there yet. As far as the haiku goes, they give off different feelings. The first one, closer to what I was feeling and the overall emotion of the Haibun. The second, is a little more hopeful. I think I'll stick with the first one.

NaHaWriMo: Stop with the 5-7-5 Haiku!

“The term syllable is an inaccurate way of describing the actual metrical units of Japanese poetry.”

        —Haruo Shirane, in his introduction to Kōji Kawamoto’s The Poetics of Japanese Verse (Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 2000)

“I don’t think counting 5,7,5 syllables is necessary or desirable. To reflect the natural world, and the season, is to reflect what is.” 

        —Gary Snyder

Indeed, the point of the “no 5-7-5” NaHaiWriMo logo is to emphasize that it’s a widespread misunderstanding to think of haiku merely as anything written in 5-7-5 syllables. Remember, 5-7-5 does not a haiku make. (NaHaiWriMo.com)

Oh I love this article! As I love the website. NaHaiWriMo --- haiku that does not follow the entrenched idea among westerners that haiku must be 5-7-5. Three lines that must have 5 syllables in the first line, 7 in the second, and 5 in the third.

I am an educator. I cringe and freak every time a well meaning teacher teaches their class about haiku. Students happily write haiku, following the mandate they're taught from the beginning: haiku has to have three lines of 5-7-5.

It's frustrating to have students, excited by the idea of haiku, become stuck in the 'right way' to create a haiku. After all, their teachers taught them that. Trying to gently teach them otherwise -- students and adults -- is difficult. That's when I pull rank; I'm a published haiku poet, etc. Still, I get suspicious looks, as if I'm not really correct and am somehow misinformed about all this.

The NaHaiWriMo site has an excellent article on why 5-7-5 is not the goal of writing haiku. It is not the 'rule.' 

Racter poetry

Racter poetry click there for more.

Found a copy of The Policeman’s Beard is Half Constructed: Computer Prose and Poetry by Racter a few weeks ago at the Eugene Library's annual book sale. Wonderful. 

Inspired me to get into this groove and play around with my dream imagery as poem -- a sort of found poem meets dream stuff.

‘Describe Yourself Like a Male Author Would’ Is the Most Savage Twitter Thread in Ages

A male writer describes us wimmin. Play the game.

‘Describe Yourself Like a Male Author Would’ Is the Most Savage Twitter Thread in Ages: The whole thread is worth a read, but it got even better once writer/podcaster/cat tweeter Whit Reynolds proposed a Twitter game: Describe yourself the way a male author would.

My Mom Went For

My mother went for Japanese surgeons
Greek doctors
tall Jews
maitre d’s from Guadalajara
all - American beatniks

dances, food, music, jeweled sandals
laughter, sarcastic comments
always holding her own
a bit aloof and if that didn’t work
anger, cut to the quick, cut out
shunned.
in other words, the Silent Treatment
before rage, or,
sometimes after.

the freeze could last for an hour or years
but later, friends to the end, laughing again
in the jeweled sandals, red toenails glittering
as she danced.



regan lee
(12.2017)

Wind blowing

wind blowing through trees
sounds like the ocean
i miss




regan lee/july 2017

Basho's haiku

Basho's haiku
written on the slab of wood
in the new garden




regan lee/july 2017

Next to the fountain

next to the fountain
patina on the Buddha
moss covering stone




regan lee
july 2017/eugene

Patina on the Buddha

next to the fountain

patina on the Buddha

moss covering stone

regan lee

july 2017/eugene

Beat Haiku: Kerouac on Haiku

I can dig this:

Jack Foley. Beat Haiku - Terebess Asia Online (TAO): As many of you know, Jack Kerouac’s Book of Haikus, edited and with an introduction by Regina Weinreich, has recently been issued from Penguin. Ms. Weinreich did an excellent job with both her editing and her introduction. I’ll be quoting from some of the points she makes and from some of the Kerouac passages which she herself quotes. Her introduction begins with a wonderful little poem of Kerouac’s, “Reading Notes 1965”: Then I’ll invent The American Haiku type: The simple rhyming triolet:-- Seventeen syllables? No, as I say, American Pops:-- Simple 3-line poems Kerouac even went so far as to offer a definition. This is from Some of the Dharma: POP--American (non-Japanese) Haikus, short 3-line poems or “pomes” rhyming or non-rhyming dilineating “little Samadhis” if possible, usually of a Buddhist connotation, aiming towards enlightment. BOOK OF POPS. 1/

Haiku: Crying Crow

an hour later
the cawing crow still standing
by its dead mate

Two Haiku

watching the water
vibrate in the singing bowl
a sudden breeze

cutting lavender

purple flowers shimmering

in summer twilight

regan lee/june 2017

A Cliche Moment While Fucking

Laughing, groping under my ass for the source of my irritation
a sliver-gold earring, held up in the blue light
the gaudy hoop dangling from your fingers, as you ask
"Is this yours?"



regan lee
long time ago

Meat Counter

Here’s another one for the Professor:
Found myself at the meat counter. Dusty, dim, green-yellow puke linoleum, 
empty shelves.
I asked the woman standing next to me -- she was heavily sunglassed and wore a terry-cloth turban -- if they had any Operatic Peacock Parfait with Blueberry sauce.

Always the optimist.

regan lee

reworked june 2017

Seminar

Seminar

So the Professor assigns a dream poem.
 “Exactly as it happened” he instructs. 
An exercise in the surreal even while maintaining academic constructs within a decontructionist model of ironic post-modernistic symbolism within personal narratives.

I read my dream. Exactly as it happened. 
The dream had the following: floating zebras, talking mallards, velvet capes, a white-haired woman, nude beneath the moon, and oh,
the giraffe.

I was chided. Told my dream was “too much.” I said:
“Well, I was just folliowing directions. I reported back, truthfully. Tried to be accurate.” 
I was asked, “Well, what does it mean? What were you trying to say?”

“Oh,” I said. “I thought we were to just write down a dream we had. And I did. See?” --
   ...  floating zebras, talking mallards, velvet capes, white haired women (nude, beneath moon) and, the giraffe. I don’t know what it means.”

“Well,” said the Professor. “While it’s true exploring the archetypes and motifs within the conceit of the dream landscape wasn’t a part of the assignment, ... still ... it’s ...
too much.”

“Try again.”

regan lee

june 2017