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Jan 25, 2023·edited Jan 25, 2023Liked by SB Wright

Love 'through damp leaves'! Need to think more about why, but it seems to me an example of a type of haiku that is so often prose-like, one that almost seems to lack a real break, but is an observation that is not reductive, and is not trying for a metaphor. A charge is created. Perhaps also that it's proprioceptive, which many haiku are not. Enjoyed 'torn shoji' and 'a whisper of wind' as well. Geckos show up in my haiku a lot.

Your quote from Santoka, which I'd forgotten, reminds me of walking across Shodoshima (Shodo Island) in 2008 and stumbling across a small museum dedicated to Ozaki Hosai, a haiku poet I'd never heard of at the time, and who as you know has became one of my favourites. I met a Japanese microbiologist and enthusiastic amateur haiku writer at the museum and we went and found Hosai's grave, where in broken English he translated a plaque that explained how Santoka, another poet I hadn't heard of at the time, had visited to pay his respects and written a haiku to mark the occasion. Based on his translation, I translated the haiku as:

paying my respects to Hosai I offer only weeds

As I wrote at the time: "I'm not sure, but I gather Santoka really did lay some weeds on the grave, as he was too broke to offer anything else. I imagine he was also implying that his haiku were as weeds compared to Hosai. But I'm not sure; my translation is a very free translation of a free-style haiku. It may even be completely and utterly wrong. In fact, I secretly hope that it is, for then it would be an original haiku about me standing before the grave of a master poet and offering weeds!"

I read Santoka's diary later but don't remember making that connection to weeds.

Great that you're reading 'Disjunctive Dragonfly'; looking forward to engaging with it for my next post. And never too much silence in haiku, I don't think. :)

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Sorry i took so long to reply. Long covid hit me again.

I am trying to remember what I was trying to achieve with ‘through damp leaves”. I seem to recall wanting to to try and capture the slow movement caused by the cold. I think I was trying to use sounds that slow your speech down fricatives and plosives.

I am a little jealous of your Haiku adventures. I think the closest I ever got was boating past a spot on the Sumida(sp?) river that was important to Basho.

I wonder if Santoka saw himself as a weed ie a hardy plant, not especially beautiful, a survivor and true to him/itself.

I have to wait for a good day to read The Disjunctive Dragonfly again. It’s quite dense and illness and the need for new glasses has been keeping my reading on hold.

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I really enjoyed these haiku, especially "torn shoji". Don't beat yourself up over the kigo (seasonal reference). You have more here than you are giving yourself credit for; some sources have very broad ideas about kigo! I definitely see more than one here.

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Thanks for your kind words, Andrew. Yeah, I’m trying not to worry too much about kigo. I think it's hard to really use them as part of the form when there really isn't a culture of maintaining saijiki in the West. I hope to settle on my own definition of what constitutes Haiku/ Senryu by the end of this project. Mind you when people who have been writing Haiku for decades still quibble about definitions it's probably not going to be definitive.

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Thanks also for including the link to https://poetrysociety.org.nz/affiliates/haiku-nz/haiku-poems-articles/archived-articles/beyond-the-haiku-moment-basho-buson-modern-haiku-myths/

I found the historical discussion very illuminating, esp. how the kigo was part of setting the scene for the longer linked form.

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It was a good find. It was Chris, who's Haiku commentary blog is in my recommendations, that brought it to my attention again.

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Jan 23, 2023Liked by SB Wright

I need to look into getting those books myself. Growing up reading haiku is the sum total of my study of the art. It would be nice to learn more formally.

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It's a young poetry form in the west, only 100 or so years. Write and read is the best way to learn.

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