I Don't Even Know What to Call This Thing
All seven daily haiku from Haiku Andy 05/08/23 - 05/14/23
Before reviving this daily haiku project last August, I revamped my haikuandy.com website, which included adding a gallery featuring the 1,001 postcards I mailed back in 2012 - 2014.
Seeing them altogether like that, I realized (some ten years after the fact) that what I had created was not merely a bunch of haiku poems and photos, but a singular work of art.
Crazier still, this work of art exists outside a singular location, unless you count the planet itself. The gallery is not the work, but rather a record of the work. The map, not the territory.
The postcards themselves collectively form the work, each like a pixel or a dab of paint in an impressionist painting. And each of these are distributed across the globe. No doubt a good number have been destroyed, or never reached their intended destinations in the first place.
I have to assume there is a name for this type of art project, but I don’t know what it is. The elements are manifold: the haiku themselves, which exist independently of the postcard medium; each postcard as a unique artifact; the interplay between the poet (me) and the recipients, as well as the participants who supplied me with their own addresses, as well as those of friends and relatives. A good number of recipients were those I found myself, usually poets or writers I admired and whose addresses I gleaned from university and individual web pages.
I admit to being a little self-conscious about restarting this project, and a lot more intentional. Yet my original objective endures: to improve as a haiku poet.
Anyway, here are the seven haiku I sent to people last week…
haiku 20230508 » Littleton, CO USA
morning quiet
even the cats
walk on tiptoe
haiku 20230509 » Rodeo, CA USA
blossom by blossom
the dogwood tree turns green
spring almost over
haiku 20230510 » San Francisco, CA USA
stopping to chat
with a new neighbor
her dog licks my hand
haiku 20230511 » Castro Valley, CA USA
our neighbors' aspens
finally filled with green --
privacy at last!
haiku 20230512 » Sacramento, CA USA
silver white ponytails
still fighting for the earth
county board meeting
haiku 20230513 » San Francisco, CA USA
blue and gold morning
sierra nevada clouds
crowd the ridgeline
haiku 20230514 » Minnedosa, Manitoba CANADA
in the woods
near the school
a faded hall pass
That’s all seven! See you next week! And remember…
I want to send you a card
It’s kinda weird you read my Substack but haven’t requested a card yet. I don’t get it. Please ask! It’s free. I ask nothing in return, aside from your good graces or maybe a cup of coffee.
Buy haiku books
Yes, I do get a small commission if you buy these through my Amazon links, but these are books I would happily recommend without mercenary motivations. You can support my work and build up a fine haiku library!
The Haiku Anthology (Third Edition), Edited by Cor van den Heuvel
Want to know what modern English-language haiku really looks like? What it is capable of? Here is your answer, and a must for every haiku poet’s bookshelf. When I first started writing haiku, this volume served me very well. Many of the haiku within have remained with me throughout the years, and I have been privileged to now count some of the contributors as colleagues and friends. Buy it here.
Three Simple Lines: A Writer’s Pilgrimage into the Heart and Homeland of Haiku, Natalie Goldberg
Many writers will immediately recognize Goldberg from her forever bestselling Writing Down the Bones. As it happens, she has been writing haiku for her entire adult life, and has much to teach us. In Three Simple Lines, she intertwines memoir, history, and travelogue in a magnificent way as she journeys through Japan, chasing down the ghosts of Bashō and Buson, among others. She also draws much needed attention to women haiku poets, who were too often overshadowed by their male contemporaries. Buy it here.
Mountain Tasting - Haiku and Journals of Santoka … (tr. John Stevens)
I found Santoka challenging at first. Much of his haiku feels incomplete to me or dashed off. But he grew on me. Soon I felt like a companion on his journey, bouncing from inn to inn, begging for alms by day, pounding the sake at night. Buy it here.
The Essential Haiku - Versions of Bashō, Buson, & Issa
Essential is right! Edited by Robert Hass, a great poet in his own right. Hass includes great essays on the history and evolution, as well as other writings by the poets themselves. A true master class in haiku! Buy it here.
Narrow Road to the Interior and Other Writings, Matsuo Bashō (tr. Sam Hamill)
Haiku poets have a tradition of wandering the countryside, and Bashō set the example! Buy it here.
Selected Poems, Masaoka Shiki (tr. Burton Watson)
I wrote a whole post about Shiki. Haiku might not exist today without his influence and renewal of the form. Buy it here.
Issa's Best: A Translator's Selection of Master Haiku, Issa Kobayashi (tr. David G. Lanoue)
Issa is probably the most beloved of the classic poets. His humility and joy in the face of unbearable loss and poverty endear him to haiku lovers everywhere. Lanoue seems to have made translating Issa his life’s work, and I love his versions. Buy it here.