newly planted

newly planted
our banana tree
droops

after Communion

after Communion
he kneels, fumbles
to check his phone

in the shade

in the giant agave's shade
            a ring
    of younger agaves

closing her eyes

closing her eyes
my wife
catches her first wave

a haiku from Muriel Rukeyser

The sea
comes toward me
               across the sea


 [excised from Muriel Rukeyser's "The Outer Banks", discovered in the North Carolina Literary Review, issue no.14 (2005)]

Don Wentworth on R.H. Blyth

Don Wentworth -- editor of the Lilliput Review and Issa's Untidy Hut haiku blog -- recently posted a brilliant riff on R.H. Blyth. It begins:

"Sometimes, it seems that R. H. Blyth is to modern American haiku as Sigmund Freud is to modern psychology: a bit of a dotty old granddad, overdressed in a woolen suit on a hot, humid day, crumbs of this and that all down his front, with a glint in his eye of philosophical shenanigans none too pleasing to the parents in attendance.

Of course, all the grand kids are jumping up and down in his lap like there's no tomorrow."

Hmm -- taken out of the context of the full essay that sounds more negative than it should (funny and accurate as it is). The piece turns into more of an appreciation as it goes on, though.

For the full post, check out http://lilliputreview.blogspot.com/2012/05/r-h-blyth-aim-of-haiku.html.

On a different note: Discovering William T. Vollmann

Although I've been aware of his name for years, I'm just now starting to read and discover the work of William T. Vollmann. The first thing I read was his book about hopping freight trains, Riding Toward Everywhere, and I'm hooked. That book is full of close observation that will make any haiku poet smile, and portrays a gritty, wandering world that Basho and Issa would surely recognize.

Here are a couple of favorite short passages:

Now from the blackness I began to see other stars, right over that foot-high strip of steel that reminded me not to fall into Anywhere. I sent my hand an inch over the edge and touched cold wind. I touched darkness. And beside me there came more and ever more stars, brighter and whiter and clearer than I had seen in a long time. Indeed, I had forgotten the stars, as I so often will on those other nights of my life. No matter what I have accomplished and whom I have loved, how much I have lost by missing the stars for so many of my nights! And now I am grey, and who knows when I will die, and never see the stars again? Who would I have been if I could have been alongside these stars always?

And, talking about the loneliness of riding freights, and the decline in the number of hobos on trains these days:

I had expected my travels to be picaresque, teeming with wise, bizarre or menacing outlaw characters. At the very least, I had imagined that without really trying I would meet dozens of people of Pittsburgh Ed's sterling caliber. In fact my various odysses were haunted by absence, with only here and there a few lost voices... singing about the way things used to be back then, as if they were crickets who had inexplicably outlived their summer.

Man, I love that last line. I highly recommend that book, and now have moved on to a collection of essays, Expelled from Eden -- also excellent so far.