Marlene Mountain

(11 December 1939 – 15 March 2018)

Marlene MountainMarlene Mountain (born Marlene Morelock) was an American artist, writer, and haiku poet as well as social and political activist. She was born on 11 December 1939 in Ada, Oklahoma, and earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Oklahoma and Master of Arts from the University of North Dakota in painting with a minor in literature. Her works have been included in many exhibitions and they strongly reflect her view on women's issues, environmental matters, and politics. She was a fiction and non-fiction writer and has printed cards, produced books and written plays with haiku incorporated. Marlene also taught courses in drawing and design. She painted and wrote in the mountains of Tennessee, from which later in 1982 she took her pseudonym.

In 1966 Marlene married John Wills, one of the first modern practitioners of English-language haiku, and she contributed minimalist artwork to his innovative 1970 collection ‘river’. She began writing haiku in 1968 and was one of the first haiku poets to focus on the one-line approach by way of analogy with the one-column vertical writing of Japanese haiku thus becoming a major contributor to the English-language haiku in her own right. Marlene also published numerous "concrete" poems for which she coined the term "unaloud haiku".

In recognition of her continuing devotion to the development of haiku and related arts in 2014-2015 Marlene Mountain was appointed as the Honorary Curator of the American Haiku Archives which include the HSA archives and is one of the largest public collection of haiku materials outside Japan.

Marlene also maintained a website that featured selections of her essays, reviews, paintings, calligraphy, poetry (incl. one-line poems, visual poems, unaloud haiku, dadaku, tearouts), and other creative art forms. She had a unique influential voice in the haiku circles and changed some preconceptions by developing her own style. For instance in her ground-breaking essay, "One-Image Haiku" (first published in the Australian haiku journal Tweed and reprinted in A Haiku Path), Marlene challenged the idea that haiku must consist of two juxtaposed images. In his review of her first book, the old tin roof, (1976) considered to be one of the most seminal books of haiku ever published, Cor van den Heuvel wrote that some of the best poems in that collection "immediately placed [her] in the front rank of American haiku poets."

Until her death on 15 March 2018 Marlene Mountain stayed true to herself and continued to write with outspoken conviction, developing, experimenting and mastering the possibilities inherent to the haiku genre.

Books by Marlene Mountain:

  • the old tin roof, haiku senryu & dadaku; & unaloud haiku not yet termed, 1976, 97 pages, right side only, plastic-coil bound, 3.5 x 8.5 inches, self-published, Tennessee;
  • new bridge,
  • aware becoming, haiku sequence/visual haiku, c 1977/78;
  • moments/moments, unaloud haiku, High/Coo Press, 1978;
  • naturenotes, unaloud haiku, mid-1970s;
  • preying mantis, unaloud haiku, poemcard #11 High/Coo Press 1979;
  • femmarks, 3 sets of bookmarks, self-published 1981/82;
  • solstice cards, 1981 to present;
  • equal hell, art, haiku, untamed haiku & beyond untamed haiku, booklet and 40 cards, including 4 bumper stickers,1982, self-published, Tennessee;
  • a poem, women, poems and haiku, early 80s/abandoned [hal roth, editor];
  • tonight i am mountain,
  • pissed off poems and cross words, haiku sequences & 13 sketches for painting series, 1986, 32 pages, saddle-stitched, 8.5 x 7 inches, self-published, Tennessee;
  • intimate posters, haiku with images c. 135 images, self-produced/published 1990;
  • a crone’s haiku highcoup, haiku criticisms via captions to “famous art” c. 255 images, self-produced, 1992;
  • from the mountain, book of 20+ years of one-line haiku, etc., with annotations and visuals, 1992, self-published;
  • ? lined-paper blues, tear outs;
  • femail boxes and junk male, development of a painting series, text and visuals, self-produced/published 1993;
  • home away from home, development of a painting series, text and visuals, self-produced/published 1993;
  • nature talks back, tear outs, etc., self-produced/published 1994;
  • visualante, tear outs, etc., self-produced/published 1994;
  • now you too, dadaku/high coup, self-produced/published 1994;
  • when the mountain comes over the moon, tear outs, etc., self-produced early 90s;
  • how to flounder and fiddle, the making of 2 unaloud haiku, self-produced;
  • cur*rent,
  • , [book one] 2000, Kris Kondo, Marlene Mountain, Francine Porad, one-line linked haiku & color artwork, 85 pages, perfectbound, 5.5 x 5.5 inches, Vandina Press;
  • , [1 volume] 2000, Kris Kondo, Marlene Mountain, Francine Porad, one-line linked haiku & artwork, 116 pages, perfectbound, 8.5 x 5.5 inches, Vandina Press;
  • trio of wrens, [book four] 2000, Kris Kondo, Marlene Mountain, Francine Porad, one-line linked haiku & artwork, foreword by Dennis H. Dutton, 64 pages, perfectbound, 8.5 x 5.5 inches, Vandina Press;
  • , [unpublished], one-line linked haiku with Francine Porad and Kris Kondo, 2001;
  • , [unpublished], one-line linked haiku with Francine Porad and Kris Kondo, 2001;
  • , [unpublished], one-line linked haiku with Francine Porad and Kris Kondo, 2001;
  • , [unpublished], one-line linked haiku with Francine Porad and Kris Kondo, 2002;
  • , [unpublished], one-line linked haiku with Francine Porad and Kris Kondo;
  • mother nature’s heat/a desert snake,
  • probably ‘real’ renga sorta,
  • probably ‘real’ renga sorta 2,

Awards and Other Honours:

  • Outstanding Senior in Art;
  • Lew Wentz Service Scholarship;
  • Special Commendation in Painting, Drawing, Graphics;
  • Mothers' Association Scholarship;
  • Alumni Development Fund Purchase Award;
  • Delta Phi Delta National Art Fraternity.

Selected Haiku:

                 o                       g

     r

f                                                       frog

(the old tin roof, Marlene Wills, 1976)

*

alone-

the taste of summer water

from the faucet

(Cicada 1:3 (1977)

*                           

pig and i spring rain

(Frogpond 2:3-4 (1979)

*

seed catalog in the mailbox     cold drizzle

(Frogpond 3:1 (1980)

*

he leans on the gate going staying

(Amoskeag I (University of Southern New Hampshire, 1984)

*         

old pond a frog rises belly up

(Pissed Off Poems and Cross Words (1986); Modern Haiku 17:3 (1986)

*

winter night writing letters to get letters

(Modern Haiku 17:1 (1986)

*

thrush song a few days before the thrush

(Modern Haiku 21:3 (1990)

*

end of the cold spell

i’d forgotten the color

of my under socks

                                                                                                                       stick

                                                               my neighbor’s rooster hops the         i throw

(the old tin roof, Marlene Wills, 1976; van den Heuvel, The Haiku Anthology 3 (1999)

*

on this cold

         spring 1

   2 night     3   4

       kittens

     wet

     5

(moments/moments, unaloud haiku, High/Coo Press, 1978; van den Heuvel, The Haiku Anthology 3 (1999)

*

together as we dry there is the listening to rain

(Global Haiku: Twenty-five Poets World-wide (George Swede/Randy Brooks, Mosaic Press, Canada, 2000)

*

one fly everywhere the heat

(Cicada 2:1 (1977); van den Heuvel, The Haiku Anthology 2 (1986); Global Haiku: Twenty-five Poets World-wide (George Swede/Randy Brooks, Mosaic Press, Canada, 2000); van den Heuvel, The Haiku Anthology 3 (1999); Blithe Spirit 10:4 (2000)

*

spin on dead and wounded any scratch of pines

(Haiku in English: The First Hundred Years, ed. by Philip Rowland, Allan Burns; W. W. Norton & Company, 2013)

           

With gratitude to Charles Trumbull who has kindly provided most information for this profile. Many thanks indeed!

Selected Essays:

Sources: