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ALL THAT ASIDE
Richard Gilbert partially answers the three profound and mystifying questions posed (in reverse order).
1) Why do you write [xhaikux]?
2) What other poetic forms do you enjoy?
3) Of the many wonderful [xhaikux] you’ve written, what do you consider to be your top three?
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ALL THAT ASIDE: Partial answer to Question 3:
3) Of the many wonderful [xhaikux] you’ve written, what do you consider to be your top three?
In Field Notes 3, I wrote:
Reply #1 on: September 14, 2013, 07:34:34 AM
http://www.thehaikufoundation.org/forum_sm/index.php?topic=5575.0
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It’s rare to experience a poem that has caused me to rethink my approach. By “rethink,” I take this to mean “expand” widen my conceptual range or understanding; to become aware of new modes of possibility or approach within the form. Haiku that have catalyzed such experiences have been presented in various articles and books I’ve published since 2000.
I’d like to share a poem which has most recently caused me to see haiku in a new way. This same poem catalyzed a new category of disjunction, which I termed “forensic parthenogenesis,” and is now found as one of the newly coined “disjunctive techniques of ‘strong reader resistance’” in Disjunctive Dragonfly (Red Moon Press, August, 2013, 132 pp.). By way of explanation here is an excerpt describing this poem—with some additional examples (from pp. 98-100):
In “Forensic Parthenogenesis,” particulars of non-human sentient beings self-generate a cosmos (as environments, a wilds, expressions of nature) through strong disjunction; such beings appear as autonomous creatures (i.e. not as pets, or associated to the human body). Concerning notions of sentience, haiku that do not place themselves so strongly in alternate types, such as “misplaced anthropomorphism” or “displaced mythic resonance,” and usually utilize the genre-style of naturalist description.
In haiku with strong parthenogenic disjunction, transformative elements, though presented as objectively descriptive fact (naturalistic), will also often be “impossibly true.” As relatively urban/nature-insulated moderns, surrounded by environments of utility and digital realities, technology, etc., haiku possessing forensic parthenogenesis reveal something about how we sense wild nature. There seems an urge or desire for new forms of mythos here being expressed — new ways of animal dreaming — that are at the same time, animals dreaming us.
inside a bat's ear
a rose
opens to a star
Eve Luckring, 2011, RR 11:3
(The haiku which inspired this category. The idea that an animal (or animal particular) provides a motif or fulcrum for a new poetic cosmos, impelled via disjunction. The poet draws the reader into a unique contemplation, from “inside a bat's ear,” within its dark auricle, drawn from a creature of darkness, colorblind, ultrasonic, navigational, acoustic — and offers a mysterium coniunctionis (“mysterious conjunction”; a final alchemical synthesis) which may represent the unification of body, soul and spirit.)
in the nucleus
of a migrating cell
the summer sea
Mark Harris, 2012, MH 43.3
within mist
the blueness of a fox
falling petals death in war
Kaneko Tohta, 2012, Selected Haiku, Part 2 (Gilbert et al, trans., RMP)
clouds in a mare’s eye the fracture beyond repair
Clare McCotter, 2012; HIE 314
never touching
his own face
tyrannosaurus
John Stevenson, 2011, Acorn 27
(As Tyrannosaurus Rex couldn't even touch its mouth, with arms so short. This poem of realism forges a connection between that most terrible king of predators and our own face, by implied contrast: with the crucial difference of touch.)
ants begin to look like an idea
Scott Metz, 2009; lakes & now wolves (MHP, 2012)
as the world fails saxophone in the lips of a walrus
Marlene Mountain, 2009; H21 130
Disjunctive Dragonfly: A New Approach to English-language Haiku http://bit.ly/1to12kB
Richard Gilbert
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Acorn -- http://acornhaiku.com
H21 -- Haiku 21 (Gurga & Metz, eds.), Modern Haiku Press, 2011.
HIE--Haiku in English (Kacian et al eds.), Norton, 2013.
MH--Modern Haiku Journal. http://modernhaiku.org
MHP--Modern Haiku Press. http://modernhaiku.org/mhbooks
RMP--Red Moon Press. http://redmoonpress.com
RR--Roadrunner Haiku Journal. https://roadrunnerhaikublog.wordpress.com
(see also: "is/let." https://isletpoetry.wordpress.com)