When I was growing up in northern New Jersey, I didn’t appreciate autumn at all. Autumn meant back to school after the wild liberty of summer. Autumn meant raking leaves, shorter afternoons in which to enjoy oneself, and increasingly cold days.
Even the lovely autumn colors meant little to me. I’d grown up with them after all, and all I saw were increasingly bare branches heralding the onset of monochrome winter.
Things changed in my college years, especially after I transferred to a school in Upstate New York. My friends and I would go for drives just to look at the colors, an experience that often benefited from the ingestion of certain psychoactive compounds.
Life in Northern California, especially San Francisco, was largely seasonless. You had your green season (October to May, if you were lucky) and your brown season, but even these were muted. On a foggy summer day in San Francisco, with a thick coat on, the tilt of the planet relative to the angle of the sun, etc., meant almost nothing.
Moving to the Sierra foothills, however, has put the awe back into autumn. The dogwoods are on fire! Maple trees are bright gold! Sure, it’s no Upstate New York, but damn it is beautiful.
With the un-muting of the seasons, I find my haiku-sense heightened. The changes in temperature, angle and quality of light, and the visual beauty strike me as a poignant reminders of the passage of time, and the importance of living in the moment.
Quite the inspiring season! And weirdly enough, I’ve found that I like raking leaves. Kind of zen.
Anyway, here are last week’s haiku postcards and their destinations…
haiku 20231030 » Washington, DC USA
asters bouncing
with the weight of bees
still some daylight left
haiku 20231031 » Folsom, CA USA
halloween --
do we have
enough candy?
haiku 20231101 » McKinleyville, CA USA
all saints day
an early morning moon
gracing the garden
haiku 20231102 » Fort Bragg, CA USA
low afternoon sun
hanging laundry
amid falling leaves
haiku 20231103 » Barrington, IL USA
enough to make us
go outside to look
bright red dogwood tree
haiku 20231104 » San Francisco, CA USA
counting stars and
remembering lost friends
cold november night
haiku 20231105 » Groton, CT USA
daylight savings
the rain arrives
an hour early
That’s all seven! See you next week! And remember…
I STILL 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.
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And I’m posting reels of each week’s haiku postcards on Instagram. The “live” photos feature lets you see my sloppy attempts to angle in on the best shot. Check it out!
Recommended reading
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 merch. Oh well.)
Haiku: An Anthology of Japanese Poems, Stephen Addiss/Fumiko Y. Yamamoto/Akira Y. Yamamoto
With the exception of The Haiku Anthology (see below), this was the first haiku anthology I bought when I first started sending out haiku cards. I stumbled across this small, beautiful book, while making my requisite writer’s pilgrimage to Shakespeare’s Books in Paris (ooh la la). The richness and scope between the covers in this little book is simply amazing, featuring over 102 poets, many more if you include anonymous authors. It’s my go-to when packing for a trip. Buy it here.
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 sake by 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 mission, and I love his versions. Buy it here.
Beautiful✨