Astute readers of this Substack will note that August 1 marks one year since I started sending out haiku postcards again.
One year! 365 haiku postcards! 365 recipients! Whoa, dude.
What should do with all those haiku? Publish them in a book? Let them sit quietly here in Substack or Instagram?
Tell me! I’d love to hear your ideas. I could use some new ones. Who couldn’t?
Meanwhile, here are last week’s haiku, and where I mailed them.
haiku 20230724 » Glindow, Germany
garden surprise
new tomatoes on a vine
we didn't plant
haiku 20230725 » Sacramento, CA USA
do you hear it too?
a string quartet
above the city madness
haiku 20230726 » Heber City, UT USA
another train trip
through steinbeck country
more tents than last time
haiku 20230727 » Ashland, OR USA
home again
after a short trip
how the moon has grown
haiku 20230728 » Los Angeles, CA USA
wild wisteria --
is this longing
mine or yours?
haiku 20230729 » Fair Oaks, CA USA
moving my old tools
into a new workbench
father would be proud
haiku 20230730 » Claremont, CA USA
pancakes finished
I smear blueberry mush
into sumi-e
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 if you’re so inclined.
Buy haiku books
I heartily recommend all the books below. I get no commission, no nothing if you buy through my links. (Amazon Associates gave me the boot because I didn’t move enough merchandise. Oh well.)
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.
Book! Yes, book! With those wonderful photos... yes, yes, yes!