National Poetry Month

The Academy of American Poets is sponsoring several activities in April in celebration of National Poetry Month, including the online “poem-a-day” project, the weekly “teach this poem newsletter,” and the “poem in your pocket day” on April 18^th.  For more information, visit www.poets.org.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti Turns 100

Poet, publisher, painter, and co-founder of City Lights Bookstore, Lawrence Ferlinghetti turned a hundred years old on March 24^th, and San Francisco’s Beat Museum celebrated the milestone with a panel discussion on his life and work.  In addition, the mayor’s office proclaimed March 24^th Lawrence Ferlinghetti Day, while performances and poetry readings took place at the landmark North Beach bookstore and at other sites around the city.  Still painting and writing, he has a new, autobiographical novel, Little Boy, (Knopf Doubleday) just out.  Many happy returns to Lawrence Ferlinghetti, a living treasure and champion of free expression.

Round Robin Poetry Reading at Books on “B”

Partnering with the Hayward Unified School District, Books on B, located at Main and “B” Streets in Hayward, CA, will host a round table poetry reading on Friday, April 12^th, from 6:30 to 8:00 p.m.  Local poets will read from their work, discuss craft, and answer questions for approximately ten minutes each.

This Path of Dew: the Haiku of Mitsu Suzuki

For centuries, people from all walks of life have written haiku as a way to mark the season, and to appreciate the gifts of bare attention: seagulls gliding above a cliff, soft pink of the first camellia flower in winter, the stillness of autumn dusk, steam rising from boiled noodles, children’s voices drifting from the playground, rainwater in a hollowed-out rock, early morning light on morning glories.  This is the kind of news that informs the heart, but it doesn’t always evoke joy; it may also evoke a certain sadness at the transience of life, and this feeling may not be specific.  The most effective haiku leave something unsaid, suggesting rather than defining, and in that way they may come to live in the reader’s imagination, however briefly.

Years ago, I had the privilege of hearing Mitsu Suzuki read from her book of haiku, Temple Dusk (Parallax Press, 1992; trans: G.Wood and K. Tanahashi).  In his review of that collection, David Schneider observed that “many of the poems have the quality of ‘objective heart’ — a subtle poignancy where the ordinary becomes extraordinary.”  He cited this haiku by Suzuki as an example:

since my youngest days

the same mole

New Year’s mirror

This poem would be considered a winter or New Year’s haiku due to the inclusion of the kigo (seasonal word), “New Year’s.”  It takes us from youth to maturity, from spring to winter via the image of a mole, and in just three lines invites deep reflection.  What is it that we see when we look into the mirror?  Here, the poet may be alluding to a lifetime of various roles — as a young girl in Japan, as a wife (of Zen teacher Suzuki Roshi), as a mother and grandmother, as a tea ceremony teacher, and as a widow — through it all, there is this one abiding thing, represented by a mole. Yet apart from personal associations, the mole simply is.  Look at that, the poet says, as we might say when gazing at a full moon, or a newly sprouted tomato.

Some of the best haiku resonate with both the reader’s and the writer’s associations while intimating a broader perspective.  “The art (of haiku) depends entirely on the poet’s own realization,” Schneider observes, and that clarity “can also move the reader’s mind without warning.”  Here’s another by Suzuki, this one from her final collection, A White Tea Bowl (Rodmell Press, 2014, trans: K. McCandless, ed: K. Tanahashi):

learning from haiku

sustained by haiku —

this path of dew

As the lines above suggest, the practice of haiku may serve as a path toward enhanced awareness or self-study, but it’s a path that’s unmarked and subject to happenstance — a “path of dew” that’s ever-changing.  If you look for it only in the extraordinary, you might miss what’s right before you.  Here’s one more, from Temple Dusk:

eating a persimmon

          I remember the one

          who loved this taste

On first reading, this haiku might suggest nostalgia for someone no longer physically in the writer’s life; the tart flavor of the persimmon awakens the memory of this person.  Yet another reading may suggest that the writer is recalling herself in her younger days, as a child perhaps, and is experiencing something different as she bites into the persimmon.  What that is, exactly, the reader isn’t privy to — we can never understand the experience of others precisely the way that they do, of course.  What these lines may allude to are the subtle changes that occur in our lives: how youthful passion evolves over time, for instance, and how memory intertwines with the present, deepening our experience of the moment.

Memory may seem like a topic that’s off-bounds in a form that specializes in renditions of the now.  Yet, even a haiku that’s written in the present tense is a form of recollection, isn’t it?  The experience that prompted the writing of the haiku isn’t the same as the process of writing it.  In the same way, the experience of reading a haiku isn’t the same as the experience of analyzing it.  In the end, though, the joy of haiku isn’t in analysis but a sense of the world that’s not strictly delineated by terms such as past, present, or future.  The tart flavor of a persimmon captures this sense of timelessness.