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ALL THAT ASIDE: Partial answer to Question 1:
1) Why do you write [xhaikux]?
Re: Field Notes: Where do your haiku begin?
« Reply #21 on: June 19, 2013, 08:35:08 AM »
Richard Gilbert:
silence, what is
to be mentioned:
as far as how to speak where things concatenate
seems to be there is no me to be
I say "I prefer," the preference for a given word,
definition of rhetoric:
to persuade. silence
is what I see, the power of symbols to create reality. it serves no purpose
to belittle language, what is silence
for a languaged being.
options.
an argument against.
opting out.
co-opting in.
choosing "not."
choosing not to knot or unknot.
no having to cut silence in two.
before / after.
craving something.
just a minute or moment.
between space and fear.
not having to compose a list.
not having to beg a word for prayer.
mostly not.
not that anyone would care to listen.
not a performance.
not silence, not the choice not to utter.
not shutup not invisible not mine.
that's what i like; when i prefer not
to communicate.
you remember the shapes of silence
as time transmits space, time unburdens itself
time does not dream or have a past or a book
time fuck shit piss blue mine love mend leaf kiss must call
an instrumental four letters, analogous
silence because I want you to find out
silence because I want you to look
silence because I want you to take the time
not to speak, silence because the ear
is made more sensitive to pressure variation
surrendering to the plenum of acoustic space
alive with endless reflection; all what has
been said, to rest to rest to rest, at times
silence is like this repeating itself
a book with pages of folded knowledge
silence has levels of silence,
resting silence
thoroughly resting silence
completely thoroughly resting silence
silence which is neither thought nor unthought
silence which has no name
so with a will I need to be
so I must call to you
without sound.
***
Haiku as groupings of trees
it was in the trees that the smell of the air came through her writing
never at night in the radiator sounds of home-baking and old bones
along the slice of water and sky where beneath the surface a poem
glides along. time stopped for the present. a moment or two. then
with new determination an ecology of selves shining and new
what was in the trees to begin with just before and just after love
when he had almost saved her. that she could write.
as a body born of words, inasmuch as clinginginto forms thoughts
as a body bones of words, in arrears as forms of whatstheuse of
words to which the world happens to be. how my furthering
unfurls against moving horizons as she writes preoccupations.
not everyone is safe, who can be saved, who can be safe and
these days our world tilts while I hold the sun without capture:
backlit skirted pantsuit in umbral fortitude descending the nautilus day.
taste the asian pear, gingko berry, the seed hidden within.
moon cradled you recall the voice of another I might be the distance
measured by drawing out string from here to there: do you remember
someone will remind you one day will say not I am here but I am there
that the thine that becomes the subject of one stroke of genius no as-if
about it, on the beach by the trees between two moments. that is me.
***
Commentary on track
I don't know that I can write "where do your haiku begin" in a prosaic manner. I seem to psychologically strongly resist the thought -- so I’m glad you left the form [thread moderator: Peter Yovu] and genre style open, as to comments. A lot of my writing is about some kind of contemplation of origins and poetic/consciousness process-experience (in my fantasy). Referring to the two poetic statements I sent to you [the poems above], I feel they are sincere or honest in addressing the question, in that their answers have arisen as unintended consequences, coming to your question at a tangent. In both writings, I later published a line (of four-letter words from “silence”), and several lines from “trees” as haiku, with little or no alteration.
As praxis, the answer of “where do your haiku come from” is “they came from there” (in these instances). In the midst of composition of (such) a longer piece, when writing those (later-extracted) haiku lines, I was sometimes partially consciously possibly aware of perhaps composing something with the power and form of haiku then and there in it; like hey, that cuts well, says it; yeah, Daddy-O. Yet it was after the fact of writing, later (much), working from an editorial head – like almost everyone, I’ve come to realize – that I saw there was autonomy. Luckily Roadrunner Haiku Journal is open-minded regarding experiments—the fact of R’r’s existence can’t be overstated; I felt encouraged, knowing there was potentially a place for them, a collegial, even receptive audience—unlike the longer poems themselves, which were posted as notional letters to a few friends; kind of like nightstands with doilies.
This compositional method isn’t typical; it’s just something I thought to try. The pieces were written within a week of each other; and I was thinking about haibun; the idea of embedding haiku into longer poetic forms; loosening the genre-concept of poem versus prose; hardly new ideas. Yet if writing for the reader always ends in 'goodbye'; to give that goodbye gist is something like mono no aware -- that cutting moment of resolution, wholeness/emptiness in presence/absence -- where a world breathes, dissolves, and conjunctives such as ‘and’; an abiding ‘with’ or an ‘or,’ or ‘however’ may exit the palette (so, an elemental palette?), along with similes like ‘like being’: A flowering world, lacking simile? Isn’t language always “like” something? Isn’t a poem, read, heard or sung a dynamic simulacrum? Simulacrum, yet paradoxically, the real thing. It's good to ask the question, though as a self as a national park as a managed trail as an air there I don't immediately find the ferry. Haiku take us here to there; wee ferries of the invisible or surely certain ineffable secret fantasies. Plus cargo. Like any good instrument that places the cosmos in your hands, it takes time to work the tools; the payoff is they can effect novel navigations to near and foreign shores. That's why I like reading excellent haiku, because haiku always begin there. And goodbye.
Haiku taken from the longer poetic writings above, and later published:
there in the trees to begin with just before and just after love
moon cradled you recall the voice of another I might be the distance
(Published in R'r 11.2, 2011.)
about it on the beach by the trees two moments between that is
time fuck shit piss blue mine love mend leaf kiss must call
along the slice
of water and sky
never at night
as a body born of words
as a body bones of words:
preoccupations she writes
that the thine that becomes the subject of one stroke no as if
(Published in R'r 12.2, 2012.)