Life as Poetry : Haiku and Zen as an Experience of Things-As-They-Are

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Life as Poetry : Haiku and Zen as an Experience of Things-As-They-Are
Author: Isaac Blacksin

The realities (rather than concepts) of emptiness (sunyata), suchness or the thing itself (tathata), and the oneness of the phenomenal world are the essential enterprises of the haiku poem. In its expression of true reality, poetry of this and other kinds finds experience in Zen, as the direct awareness of things-as-they-are. In experiencing the world as it happens, rather than ideas about it, Zen espouses the impossibility of describing or hanging on to truth. Zen is truth, it is life. As D. T. Suzuki writes, "Zen, being life itself, contains everything that goes into the makeup of life: Zen is poetry." He continues, "Zen is not to be confined within conceptualization… Zen is what makes conceptualization possible." The nonconceptual nature of Zen, of reality itself, is built into the haiku expressive form, its breadth and structure, its refusal to initiate subjectivity or duality, its ability to capture and experience a moment in time. As a mediation of Zen religiosity, haiku often seeks those aims that Zen avows: the spontaneity of the satori experience, in which the self is transcended and a realization of emptiness, suchness, and oneness with the universe is momentarily glimpsed.

While other form of poetry, Eastern and Western, likewise carry the ability to touch this deep transparency, it is the haiku that builds this experience into its form. The syllabic restrictions of haiku (seventeen in total) can be examined as an avoidance of barriers in the pursuit of essential reality. Adding words means commentary, conceptualization, a finger pointing to the moon (as the old paradigm goes) rather than the moon itself. To the degree that words and description are not reality, "it reduced words to a minimum… [because] they stand in the way of reality. Zen believes in saying by not-saying." Haiku mediates this belief. As with the inherent barrier of words, the subjective nature of self likewise intervenes in the attainment of oneness, in touching things-as-they-are. To this end, haiku has an inherent preoccupation with discarding the self and the ego, as in Zen practice. Basho, the most famous haiku poet and the ideal of the poet-ascetic, instructed: "Learn from a pine things about a pine, and from a bamboo things about a bamboo." This communion with the object of the poem aims at the dissolution of subjectivity, and thus the ego. Dualisms between poet and object are transcended to initiate and express the satori experience. "The true poet," writes Makoto Ueda, "has his mind totally transparent… during his composition." This transparency, the absence of ego, speaks to both the transpersonal tendency of haiku poetry and the central practice of Zen, meditation. The one who is able to forsake personal emotion for transpersonal energy, through deep contemplation and communion with the universe, reaches a state that can allow for spontaneous creation. Haiku is thus formed, not through force or logic, but ideally from a place of emptiness, of satori. Similarly, haiku poems avoid reference to universal oneness, the emptiness and suchness it attempts to experience. "To speak of the one as though it were an entity among entities is precisely (and wrongly) to constitute such an entity." Again we see how concepts, in Zen and haiku, become useless. As an expression of Zen ascetics and values (if there can be said to be such a thing), haiku is perhaps the natural mediator.

The essence of haiku, in its ability to touch essential reality, seems more a result of poetic spirit than reliance on specific form. All poetry can initiate Zen fundamentals. "Poetic spirit," Basho wrote, "through which man follows the creative energy of nature, [allows for] everything they see [to] become a lovely flower." Thus a poem is simply the result of a much larger poetic framework, the expression of a holistic mode of being in which life itself becomes poetry. This is the real nexus of haiku and Zen, of poetry as religious dialogue. As the natural result of a religious/poetic existence (one in the same given the Zen approach), poetry is written all the time, not simply with pen and paper, but through the discourse known as life. The poem simply "crystallizes the moment of becoming or melting into the eternal stillness… It is an enlightenment as returning to the original oneness." But this crystallization is born of a much larger method, one which entails a deep connection with the phenomenal world, with nature itself. Most Zen poetry deals with concrete phenomena, the song of the cicada or frog, mountains and mists and moons. Any "notion of enlightenment that would transcend the phenomenal world in search of a world beyond" is rejected. Washing dishes, weeding the garden – therein is found satori, and thus poetry.

As the experience and expression of satori, of things-as-they-are (tathata), ego-transcendent emptiness (sunyata), of the oneness of the entire universe, poetry initiates an awareness as realized in Zen. While the haiku does so in form as well as substance, all poetry that is written from a place of emptiness, from a transpersonal perspective of suchness, can touch essential reality and instigate the essence of Zen mind. Yet the poem is only half the equation: the ability of the reader to likewise ascertain the transcendence of self, the momentary glimpse of satori, carries equal weight. He or she must also be available to the spontaneous connection, ready to experience that which a haiku or other poem seeks to transmit. "The reader comprehends the poem only to the extent that he himself is able to achieve similar intuitive perception through the re-created experience of the poem." Our own availability to the transmission of the satori experience is perhaps the completion of the poet's work, the circle that closes back in on itself, in which reality-as-it-is becomes realized, transmitted, and experienced anew.

1.Hiraga, Masako K. 1987. Eternal Stillness: A Linguistic Journey to Basho's Haiku about the Cicada. Poetics Today, 8(1). Durham: Duke University Press.

2. Huntley, Frank Livingston. 1952. Zen and the Imagist Poets of Japan. Comparative Literature. Eugene: University of Oregon Press.

3.Norton, Jody & Snyder, Gary. 1987. The Importance of Nothing: Absence and Its Origins in the Poetry of Gary Snyder. Contemporary Literature, 28(1). Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.

4.Lama Purevbat. Interview. May, 2006. Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.

5.Rextroth, Kenneth. 1971. One Hundred Poems from the Japanese. New York: New Directions.

6.Suzuki, D.T. 1951. The Philosophy of Zen. Philosophy East and West, 1(1). Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.

7.Thich Nhat Hanh. Interview. March 2006. Thenac, France.

8.Ueda, Makoto. 1963. Basho and the Poetics of "Haiku." by Makoto Ueda The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism. Philedelphia: The American Society for Aesthetics.

9.Watanabe, Manabu. 1987. Religious Symbolism in Saigyo's Verses: A Contribution to Discussions

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Interview with Judith Dupree, Author of Poetry Collection "Living with What Remains"

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Interview with Judith Dupree, Author of Poetry Collection "Living with What Remains"
Author: Juanita Watson

Judith Dupree is with us today chatting about her recently published book of poetry that focuses in an unusually prescient way upon the losses we face in our complex society. Welcome to Reader Views.

Juanita: Judith, you have written a lovely book of poetry. What inspired you to write "living with what remains"?

Judith: Well, I'd offer a pot full of reasons, but the over-riding one is decidedly my mix of hope and despair: an anticipation that buoys me constantly – but, always eating at it, my grief over the unraveling of our world.

And, as a citizen of the "first of the first-world" peoples, my nibbling sense of shame. So many factors impel it: our dysfunctional cultural mindset ("In greed we trust."), our political rabidity, our increasing polarization and "dismemberment." This covers a lot of different aspects, but all of the causes are interrelated, of course. We are watching our environment unravel, and know deep down that we're all participants – each of us has received the "charge" to live differently ("Less is more") in light of what we know, and to address the convoluted issues that pertain. We rarely do more than shake our heads and point fingers, and fuss about it all (or deny it) – trying to live comfortably with that "elephant in the living room." Or the oil tanker in the swimming pool? That's a major aspect of my need to write this book. I guess you could call it a jeremiad of sorts? Anyway, there's a lot of yin and yang in the book.

Juanita: Why do you think so many people are in denial over the unabashed dysfunction plaguing these times?

Judith: Ah, another pot full! I have to say this: it is hard to be "human." It is difficult to lift one's head and look beyond one's own needs and yearnings, and absorb the harsh realities that lie around us – and respond to them sensitively, effectively. That alone significantly accounts for the "ostrich effect." (The poor bird got a bum rap with this one!) Playing into that are our individual prejudices and pretensions, both of them largely unrecognized or unacknowledged, and of course our fear of anything that threatens our steady course through life. We don't want to be challenged in such dreadful ways! We don't want to know that life is so tenuous, and that we have harsh choices to make – particularly because the right choices were not established by our fathers and their fathers. If we can blot out future woe (as did our political/corporate grampas) and cling to what we have with tenacity, maybe we won't lose our grip on it. Close your eyes, click your shiny red heels and spin! We have lived largely in Oz.

It's scary – growing up, for us grownups. Add to this stew a ladle of self-indulgence that has congealed into greed. Our corporate mentality, our CEO complex. Them what has, gets. In spades. And, finally, considering all this (and all I've omitted), we don't really want to know that God, to whom we pay such pallid lip-service, is watching us . . . and, only if we choose, watching over us. Which are two far, far different matters. If we don't believe this, our elaborate fig leaves won't shield us. (Nor will the emperor's clothes…)

Juanita: Is this a book of Christian poetry and if so, will it only appeal to a Christian audience?

Judith: It is indeed "Christian" in context; I am a disciple of Christ. But that isn't or shouldn't be an impediment to the reader. Alongside that foundation, and predating it, is my response as one member of humanity to the whole of it. I have always experienced, perhaps as a basic instinct, a deep sense of the woundedness of mankind. Long before my overt spiritual awareness began, I fed upon works of past writers – their acute observations and laments and their dreams of something better, greater, than what they saw before them. Rumi comes to mind. The Greek philosophers, of course. And Latino poets. I literally inhaled their "expirations" throughout my college years, and have spent a lifetime sorting and shifting, adopting and adapting. And when the message of Christ became more than intellectual persuasion, it all gelled. So – to ask about the "appeal" of this work, I'd say "Read it as the cry of humanity itself." In writing some of this, I felt that I was standing naked before the world, saying "Shrug it all off – all the filthy rags; let's go skinny-dipping." (And this from a rather old lady!) We are all in this together, and I suspect we'll sink or swim together, ultimately. I believe, therefore, that this is not merely "a Christian book" in the sense in which we often weigh and measure concepts. I don't write with that concept as a focus.

Juanita: What is the theme that ties your book of poetry together?

Judith: I'd say that would be an over-riding sense of both the sacred and profane. How they come before us endlessly. And how they rub against each other, how they both balance and unbalance each other. There is no phenomenon without its counterpart: thesis, antithesis. We walk through life on a tightrope, in a way, trying for steadiness. Truly, we don't always recognize what "unbalance" really is. I have tumbled off the thin strand of reality many a time, of course. It is primarily a sense of the sacred that has held me in a kind of stasis, providing a point to fix my eye upon. Something to walk toward. All this is thematic for me. These poems are my walk, what I take with me, what I see ahead: The growing darkness, and the incredible largeness of life, and the wonderful stubbornness of the human soul toward renewal. And ultimately, the personalness of God invades, pervades, provides "shelter" for us when it gets rough.

Juanita: How did this collection unfold onto paper?

Judith: As I leafed through the growing pile, I felt something developing – mulching – within it. My personal manifesto, perhaps? A way of saying (with Martin Luther) "Hier Ich stehe!" Honestly, I was a bit scared to put it out there, with all the pain it contains. But it was the beauty of life – the holy antithesis – that gave me the push I needed.

Juanita: When did you start writing, and is this your first book?

Judith: I started writing when I started putting words on paper. Terribly, of course. My earliest efforts were simply ways of getting words to rhyme, which I thought was the whole of it. Throughout my youth and young adulthood, I blurped out occasional, rather innocuous or dreadful poems – love and existential despair, etc.. The usual. And I was seesawing between art (I did portraits.) and writing. I loved both, but had no direction. I finally got serious about words when the Fearsome Forties loomed before me. Ultimately it gave me a book: Going Home,©1984. My next book actually began in 1976, prompted by our BiCentennial – and I wrote at it sporadically over the decades, between other projects. It's a long historical narrative – a prose-poem titled I Sing America – rather Whitmanesque. (I played on his title, but the content is much different.) I didn't feel it resolved coherently until about four years ago. It ends with 9/11. I sent out some review copies, and got a few fine comments, but never really marketed it. It's in revision now, and I will release it through Quiddity Press when it's ready. An unusual journey….

Juanita: Tell us about the cover of "living with what remains" and what it represents.

Judith: The cover picture on this book is simply an ancient, enormous dead oak in our small village. It is one of multiplied thousands in CA lost over the past few years to drought and disease. A common symptom of our times. This skeletal tree represented to me our centuries of "covering," and how exposed we are now. Loss and survival again.

Juanita: What are some of your favorite gems that fill the pages of your book?

Judith: Well, beauty is famously in the eyes of the beholder, but the poems that haunted me most in the process are probably my favorites, if only for that reason. They may not be the best, of course. "Coveting It All" was one that kept urging me on, feeding my "greed" to experience and encapsulate nature. The poem "The Mantis" was a remarkable transcendental experience. My husband and I were both a part of it, and my sense of identity with all earth-life was truly affected. The poem I consider most awkward is also probably one that fits here: "Dear World." I literally didn't know how to put it on paper, and finally left it stumbling along to the end. One of my most poignant experiences was the finale of "I Bring To You." It literally fell together before me. The owl, eyeing us with his unending "Whooo?" – as if we could answer him. As if we can answer each other.

Juanita: What would you like your readers to come away with after reading your book?

Judith: I guess to share both the shame (even vicariously) and the hope. Taking a long look at humanity and its frailty and strongholds . . . and stepping up to the benchmark that is always before us, seen or unseen: "Do unto others…." That means to "do unto" those who are coming behind us, not simply around us. We're leaving our grandchildren a potential disaster. If it is largely unavoidable, by now, let us leave a repository of hope. For me, it's the Kingdom of God, an "inner territory" we desperately need to inhabit. "Blessed are the gentle, and merciful, and pure in heart, etc., …for they shall inherit the earth." And perhaps, Deo volente, they shall renew it. But it is my adamant principle that we try. Each of us, in some small, incremental way.

Juanita: Judith, what would you say to people that think 'all hope has been lost' for humanity?

Judith: I'd say we don't really understand hope. Hope is anything but "pie in the sky," or a magic reversal or retrieval. It is a personal attitude-into-act that grows from one choice after another. It comes to us as an understanding – a whisper, soul-deep, that says "You can do this." Or "DON'T do that." And we know, really. We always have the choice to create hope, to welcome hope. One step forward, or back, and we're on solid ground. Sacred ground. Something happens, something is effected and affected that is true and good – and we will recognize what we have actually done by this [perhaps] smallish choice. We will realize that it takes us forward – even if, perhaps especially if, we have "stepped back" from some slight precipice. (Precipices can fool us with their slanted depths!) An "inch" of life has been restored by this. Hope is restored by inches.

Believing and receiving on behalf of our better self, thought by thought, we can engender hope even in the midst of despair, and despite gargantuan loss. We move away from frantic survival into a kind of Genesis mode. There, others find us and come alongside, and we welcome each other as a part of this new creating. This is not fatuity; it is practicality and perseverance and preservation: the timeless Kingdom of God among us.

Juanita: What writers have been your inspiration?

Judith: Those I mentioned before, in my student years. Off the top of my head: initially I found a lot of fodder in Frost's elegantly simple – and rustic – look at life and nature. His impact remains. Emily Dickinson, of course. Some of Millay's work, particularly "Renascence," written at so young an age! Denise Levertov – and Mary Oliver: stunning! Some great guy poets, known and unknown: Whitman was a break-through person, of course, for all who follow after. Contemporarily, John Leax (i.e., Out Walking), a strong voice; Robert Wrigley, very accessible. And anything Wendell Berry says, poetry or prose. Solzhenitsyn, non-poet, for timeless reasons. And, among gifted unknowns, I have a poet friend in Oregon, David Kopp, who must be discovered. (He's a book editor, busy churning out everyone else's writing.) There are a lot of Davids and Judiths out there. I've read a number of them, eager for their witness to life. (Small poetry journals are a rich deposit. Rock & Sling and IMAGE come to mind. They know good poets when they see them, and give them a hand.)

Juanita: Tell us about AD LIB and your endeavors teaching poetry and creative writing?

Judith: My motto could be: Make lemonade. You know the old adage. When it became apparent that I was on a lonely trail, and I failed too many times to count, I realized I was, in part, a symptom of a larger problem: The state of the arts in America. Too many good artists and writers struggle on for years without encouragement or recognition. Maybe I could pull together a small "outreach" to reach just a few of them, giving them something of a home base. We have, with Ad Lib, done just that for 10 years. We meet in the Colorado Rockies every fall. Nothing spectacular, simply people coming together to share their arts-journeys and gulp the lemonade, so to speak. A couple of speakers and workshops. The principle I mentioned earlier, "Less is more," actually applies here – in a different context. There's no shame in being in a small place with a large talent, when you have fellowship to sustain you. I try to celebrate God's diversity and daily Grace in ways that mend and heal and offer hope.

As far as teaching poetry/creative writing is concerned, I have availed myself of offers to do this off and on throughout the past quarter-century – at workshops and conferences, in retirement homes and schools. Keeping the edges honed. Now I'm developing a full arts network in our county, which incorporates a number of fairly small and scattered villages. We'll see where it goes, what we do together. Fun stuff!

Juanita: You and your husband have developed Quiddity Press, a small publishing company. Please tell us more, and how your readers can contact you.

Judith: Well, QP is another glass of lemonade. I really wanted to offer others like me a voice – a creative, low-key way of structuring a publishing experience. It is stalled right at the moment for lack of funds, primarily due to a need for someone with marketing skills (hardly my forte) to come alongside, part-time, and get our small [pending] inventory "out there." If that should happen, we can continue to move forward. Check the web site: www.quidpress.com, and you'll see what we want to bring to the table. Maybe someone "out here" can give us a new idea of how to make this Dream viable.

Juanita: Judith, thank you for your interview. Are there any last thoughts you would like to share with your readers?

Judith: Maybe this: We each have a reservoir within. Go skinny-dipping. Let the encumbrances sink. Find out what floats to the top, and be faithful to it. That's where the Hand of God will reach you

Juanita Watson is the Assistant Editor for Reader Views http://www.readerviews.com

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I Drank Tea in December

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I Drank Tea in December
Author: Arthur Zulu


The two writers laughed aloud as I ended the story. Not that it was the kind of thing that one likes to hear in the morning. Some would quickly go on their knees and pray that the "cup" passes next door. But pray as they might, it is a "cup" that we all must drink from.



By cup, I am not referring to the cups of tea in our hands that we now resumed to enjoy after telling them the story. DD Phil, the romance writer who the ladies like to call Filemon, with a stress on the last syllable, was looking dreamily. Sitting with his right hand supporting his chin, his left on the chair, and the suspended tea cup on the table, one would have thought that he was plotting a scene in his next fantasy novel.



Of course, the story that I was telling them was more fantasy than real. What is real again in this world? For Val K the poet, sitting with all the cares in this world—his legs wide apart as the poles—everything (and that includes life) is poetry. It is no wonder that someone says, "Never take life seriously. Nobody gets out alive anyways."



Whether the story was a comedy or a tragedy is another matter. But it was a story about life. And whether life stories are sweet or bitter is for you to judge. Look at the verdict of these people.



A chief of King Edwin says: "The present life of man is like a sparrow." Apostle James, a Bible writer, calls it "a mist that appears for a while and then disappears."



But the story was more about equivocations—double tongues. And is life not a tale of equivocations? So, after I finished the story, we resumed our tea drinking and compared the story with other equivocal tales.



The first to come to mind was King Croesus who went to consult the oracle before embarking on a major military expedition. He was assured that if he went to war, a mighty empire would fall. He believed and went to do battle. But the empire that fell was his!



And then there was Macbeth who was thoroughly deceived by the witches. He didn't think that tress "move" and he never believed that there was any man not "born" of a woman. But he was dead wrong. Equivocation did both people in.

The best of such double tongues, however, was that of the great hinter who was warned that he was to be killed by an animal on a certain day. So the finicky hunter refused to step into the bush on that day. But lying in his room, the head of one the animals that he had killed which he had suspended on a rafter, got loose and landed a death-blow on his head!



When I got the message to proceed to the country with God speed, however, the first thing that came to my mind was not a word that began with letter E. And then the message became more incessant: You must come home in December. I refused the invitation. Yet, my people sent an emissary who spoilt the case for not explaining why I was wanted back home. So I tarried in the city, waiting for the war of the cyclpos.



January 10, 2005. I sat down to read a letter from home. And then came the sentence: "The juju priest who said you will die in December died that very month and has been buried." That was when I knew the reason for the distress call in December. I had been required to come and to make sacrifices to impotent gods to survive December. Pity the "authoritative," "all knowing" juju priest. Didn't know that death is everywhere. Didn't know that he was prophesying his own death. Didn't know that I was enjoying my tea way back in December. Equivocation.



Mohandas Gandhi said: "Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you would live forever." That has been my guiding principle. Who is afraid of death? Someone said "the tragedy of life is not that it ends so soon, but that we wait so long to begin it." What matters in the end is not how long we live. But "it's the life in your years, said Abraham Lincoln. So the question that we should ask ourselves is, How would I be remembered? Not a few people care if they were remembered for vileness. But even if you were known in your lifetime for some spectacular achievement, it adds to nothing.



If the Bible were a book of epitaphs, the second verse of Ecclesiastes is dear to my heart. It simply states: "The greatest vanity! Everything is vanity!" And that's the dinkum oil.



As we take our tea, with DD Phil and Val K happy that their controversial writer is still alive, the fact remains that we must die of something someday. And if my people supposing I was dead had wept over me and buried my effigy, I will have the singular honor or infamy of being mourned and buried twice.



Yet it is good to be alive.



So even if I were to pass on tomorrow, let it be known that the priest LIED. I drank tea in December.


Arthur Zulu is an editor, book reviewer, and author of Chasing Shadows!, How to Write a Best-seller, A Letter to Noah, and many other works. For his works and FREE help for writers, goto:
http://controversialwriter.tripod.com
Mailto: controversialwriter@yahoo.com
Web search: Arthur Zulu

About the Author

Arthur Zulu is an editor, author, and book reviewer.

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Hurricanes and Poetry Writing

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Hurricanes and Poetry Writing
Author: Lance Winslow

Some of the greatest poet writers off all times have had much adversity in their lives. Perhaps it is this adversity, which helps them see the world differently and makes them take stock of themselves and their surroundings?

They say that when people are threatened with a life-threatening illness that often they begin to appreciate life more and the little things such as the smell of a flower or just simply looking at the stars. It is those times of life that perhaps the greatest poetry of all times has been written.

Many a poet in love will write fantastic poetry. Likewise many people experiencing the ultimate adversity or challenges will come up with some of the greatest artwork in poetry ever written. During the 2005 Atlantic tropical hurricane season we saw regions of the United States of America, which were devastated and destroyed by major category hurricanes and many people lost everything or were forced due to mandatory evacuation to leave the areas where they lived and loved.

If you are considering writing some poetry and are forced to evacuate from your city perhaps this might be a chance for you to do so. After all what else are you going to do while you are stuck in traffic for 15 hours trying to get out of the city or state? You may as well take with you a notepad and a pen and start jotting down your thoughts. Please consider this in 2006.

Lance Winslow - Online Think Tank forum board. If you have innovative thoughts and unique perspectives, come think with Lance; www.WorldThinkTank.net/wttbbs/

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Hurricanes and Poetry Writing

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Hurricanes and Poetry Writing
Author: Lance Winslow

Some of the greatest poet writers off all times have had much adversity in their lives. Perhaps it is this adversity, which helps them see the world differently and makes them take stock of themselves and their surroundings?

They say that when people are threatened with a life-threatening illness that often they begin to appreciate life more and the little things such as the smell of a flower or just simply looking at the stars. It is those times of life that perhaps the greatest poetry of all times has been written.

Many a poet in love will write fantastic poetry. Likewise many people experiencing the ultimate adversity or challenges will come up with some of the greatest artwork in poetry ever written. During the 2005 Atlantic tropical hurricane season we saw regions of the United States of America, which were devastated and destroyed by major category hurricanes and many people lost everything or were forced due to mandatory evacuation to leave the areas where they lived and loved.

If you are considering writing some poetry and are forced to evacuate from your city perhaps this might be a chance for you to do so. After all what else are you going to do while you are stuck in traffic for 15 hours trying to get out of the city or state? You may as well take with you a notepad and a pen and start jotting down your thoughts. Please consider this in 2006.

Lance Winslow - Online Think Tank forum board. If you have innovative thoughts and unique perspectives, come think with Lance; www.WorldThinkTank.net/wttbbs/

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Haiku Poetry and the Concept of Wabi/Sabi

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Haiku Poetry and the Concept of Wabi/Sabi
Author: Edward A. Weiss

It may sound like a tasty sushi dish, but the concept of wabi/sabi is a Japanese idea that literally means "sweet sadness." It's a feeling one may have when winter is approaching and you notice the change in nature's cycles. It's a feeling of impermanence that surrounds all living things on this planet. Nothing lasts and this idea finds its expression well in haiku poetry. For instance, look at this haiku poem by Bruce Ross;

winter sun...
the pigeons foot crackles
a dry leaf

The first line suggests the time of year and the general ambiance of the day. It is wintertime and as we all know, the sun's position and relative affect on the earth is quite different during this season. Lines two and three complete the poem and focus, quite remarkably I might add, on the activity of a pigeon. Here, the pigeon happens to walk on a dry leaf and the leaf crackles because of it.

Now, lines 2 and 3 really have no poetic effect by themselves. But, when combined with the sentence fragment "winter sun," we get what many have called an absolute metaphor.. a snapshot if you will of a moment in time. And it is precisely this moment in time that creates the wabi/sabi affect!

Nothing lasts. Not the winter, not the sun's position, and surely, not an incident so small as the crackling of a dry leaf. Yet these seemingly small events are what life is about. To catch them is the haiku poet's job and it is done superbly in this poem. When we read this haiku as a whole, we come away with that sweet sadness that most of us have felt at one time or another. We realize that this life is only temporary and that each "small" act is a miracle in itself.

Edward Weiss is a poet, author, and publisher of Wisteria Press. He has been helping students learn how to write haiku for many years and has just released his first book "Seashore Haiku!" Sign up for free daily haiku and get beautiful haiku poems in your inbox each morning! Visit http://www.wisteriapress.com for haiku books, lessons, articles, and more!

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Haiku Poetry and the Concept of Wabi/Sabi

Poetry
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Haiku Poetry and the Concept of Wabi/Sabi
Author: Edward A. Weiss

It may sound like a tasty sushi dish, but the concept of wabi/sabi is a Japanese idea that literally means "sweet sadness." It's a feeling one may have when winter is approaching and you notice the change in nature's cycles. It's a feeling of impermanence that surrounds all living things on this planet. Nothing lasts and this idea finds its expression well in haiku poetry. For instance, look at this haiku poem by Bruce Ross;

winter sun...
the pigeons foot crackles
a dry leaf

The first line suggests the time of year and the general ambiance of the day. It is wintertime and as we all know, the sun's position and relative affect on the earth is quite different during this season. Lines two and three complete the poem and focus, quite remarkably I might add, on the activity of a pigeon. Here, the pigeon happens to walk on a dry leaf and the leaf crackles because of it.

Now, lines 2 and 3 really have no poetic effect by themselves. But, when combined with the sentence fragment "winter sun," we get what many have called an absolute metaphor.. a snapshot if you will of a moment in time. And it is precisely this moment in time that creates the wabi/sabi affect!

Nothing lasts. Not the winter, not the sun's position, and surely, not an incident so small as the crackling of a dry leaf. Yet these seemingly small events are what life is about. To catch them is the haiku poet's job and it is done superbly in this poem. When we read this haiku as a whole, we come away with that sweet sadness that most of us have felt at one time or another. We realize that this life is only temporary and that each "small" act is a miracle in itself.

Edward Weiss is a poet, author, and publisher of Wisteria Press. He has been helping students learn how to write haiku for many years and has just released his first book "Seashore Haiku!" Sign up for free daily haiku and get beautiful haiku poems in your inbox each morning! Visit http://www.wisteriapress.com for haiku books, lessons, articles, and more!

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Haiku Poetry - a Description and a Weather Report

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Haiku Poetry - a Description and a Weather Report
Author: Edward A. Weiss

A while back I heard haiku poetry referred to as a description with a weather report. And while this may not always be the case, it's pretty much true!

Haiku poetry uses the concept of macro and micro very well here. For example, if I started a haiku out with the fragment "cool spring day," what we have here is a macro description of what kind of day it is - a weather report if you will.

Now, if I add a specific descriptive phrase to it like "a hummingbird darts out of sight," we have a micro view of something happening on this day. Combined, we have this haiku:

cool spring day --
a hummingbird
darts out of sight

Good haiku poetry need not be more than a description of the general ambiance of the day and something that is taking place during the day. As long as what is taking place is happening in "a present moment" the haiku will be OK. The problem some people have is that they remove themselves from the thing "as it's taking place" and describe something that already has or will happen. Not very haiku like at all.

Personally, I have a problem with haiku poets who try to be sophisticated thereby losing the haiku spirit. They try to write something that is "good" or they try and come up with something that will impress others. Don't do it! Keep it simple and your haiku will be little gems.

Edward Weiss is a poet, author, and publisher of Wisteria Press. He has been helping students learn how to write haiku for many years and has just released his first book "Seashore Haiku!" Sign up for free daily haiku and get beautiful haiku poems in your inbox each morning! Visit http://www.wisteriapress.com for haiku books, lessons, articles, and more!

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Grief of Loss and Healing through Poetry

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Grief of Loss and Healing through Poetry
Author: Joy Cagil

Any loss perpetuates grief, and conversely, grieving is the humankind's way of dealing with loss. William Faulkner says, "Between grief and nothing, I will take grief." Without adequate grieving, we lose our spontaneity and our sense of being alive. Life turns into something to endure and the world feels like a hostile place.

One way to mourn loss is to write about our feelings and what we have lost, but then, there are feelings for which straight prose is not always adequate, since grief refuses to accept definition. In this instance, poetry fills the gap, because poetry has the capacity to imply a lot more than what prose can achieve. Also, a poem publicizes and legitimizes our grief, making the community draw closer to us in our pain.

Probably, poetry for loss has existed before any written history. Since poetry is originally oral, it carries within itself a very long history. One of the earliest epic poems we know of is the Sumerian Gilgamesh. Inside this poem, the mighty Gilgamesh laments the death of his friend Enkidu and orders the creation to never fall silent in mourning.

The epics of Ramayana, Iliad, and Odyssey contain serious laments about the nature of loss through poetry. In Ramayana, Raja Dasharatha grieves just before his death, lamenting:
when the the season for fruit cometh he will grieve!
So is it now with me: I die of grief for Rama's exile."
After Raja dies, he too is grieved by Ayodha.

In Odyssey, Homer says:
"Even his griefs are a joy
long after to one that remembers
all that he wrought and endured.

Then, in the Iliad, Achilles' grieves.
"Why mourns my son? thy late preferr'd request
The god has granted, and the Greeks distress'd:
Why mourns my son? thy anguish let me share,
Reveal the cause, and trust a parent's care."

He, deeply groaning—"To this cureless grief,
Not even the Thunderer's favour brings relief.

In the Jewish tradition, a poem was the most powerful way to express grief. It probably started with David's dirge urging the Israelites to teach their children to weep and mourn. The same feeling is echoed in the Latin hymn Dies Irae where David's word is mentioned in the first stanza.

A grief poem or an elegy has always been a balm against despair. Classic or Romantic Age poets and poets up to our day have used grief to announce to the world that pain eventually teaches us solid values and an understanding of the human experience.

Of all the grieving poets, Edgar Allen Poe has raised his sorrows to the altar of poetry. Who can forget the mourning in Annabel Lee, in the mystery of Ulalume, or in Raven's bleak utterings of "nevermore"? Then, closer to our time, Whitman created a true monument for Lincoln, in "O Captain! My Captain!"

Today, contemporary poets choose a more poignant attitude towards grief. Late Stanley Kunitz's "Night Letter," Billy Collins' "The Dead," and Jane Kenyon's "Coat," are examples that come to mind. Rather than using expected phrases and conventional lamenting, these poets hint at their sorrow by shaping their lines around concrete images and physical objects. As a result, their poetry carries a genuine voice with a delicate and powerful expression of feeling.

Joy Cagil is an author on http://www.Writing.Com/ which is a site for Poetry. Her portfolio can be found at http://www.Writing.Com/authors/joycag

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For the Love of Poetry

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For the Love of Poetry
Author: Terry Coyier

"Work is love made visible.

And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gates of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy.

For if you bake bread with indifference, you bake a bitter bread that feeds but half man's hunger."

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Five Keys To Leaner And Meaner Copywriting

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Five Keys To Leaner And Meaner Copywriting
Author: Robert Warren


Grab 'em and don't lose 'em. Every marketer knows that one. Human beings have very short attention spans, so you can't afford to waste your prospect's time - give them the good stuff and then let them go as soon as you can. Writing effective marketing material is all about writing crisply with just a handful of words.

Clean writing isn't an accident, but is instead the result of the careful application of certain principles and tools. Try these five techniques for crafting leaner, meaner, more effective business copy:

Avoid modifiers. Modifiers change the meaning of other words; the most common of these are adverbs and adjectives (words that describe verbs and nouns, respectively). They're used when the writer feels that the noun or verb needs a little something extra: "the shining sun", "run quickly", etc. Get rid of as many modifiers as you can and choose nouns and verbs that stand on their own.

No lazy words. Every word should be doing real work, conveying necessary information and supporting other parts of the piece. Think of your sentences as support beams and rafters in a building, and analyze the piece word-by-word: are there any nails sticking out of boards? Anything that's there purely for show? http://www.rswarren.com/articles/fluff.php">Anything that doesn't strengthen your writing weakens it. Strip your copy down to its most essential parts, and throw out the words that are sleeping on the job.

Reduce it to a single sentence. Do you really know what you want to say? You might be surprised - try phrasing http://www.rswarren.com/articles/writing_structure.php">your entire piece into one simple sentence. Can you do it, or are you insisting that your message is too in-depth? Taking your point down to a single statement can give your copy new focus and clarity.

One thought per sentence. Sentences and paragraphs are different things. Avoid long, complex sentences built up of multiple thoughts. Keep your sentences to one thought each, keep them short and simple, and use your paragraphs for the complex ideas.

When in doubt, cut it out. Every writer has written the perfect sentence that just doesn't play along well with others. Hemingway was right - kill your darlings. If you can't figure out how to ease that bit of poetry in with the rest of your marketing piece, cut it completely and don't look back. Be merciless. You'll be surprised how often that's the best solution.

About the Author

Robert Warren (http://www.rswarren.com">www.rswarren.com) is a freelance copywriter in the Orlando, Florida area, specializing in providing for the marketing and communications needs of the independent professional private practice.

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