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LINK, SHIFT, AND SMILE
Renku/Linked Verse Column  

by Paul MacNeil, Renku Editor

 

FOLLOW THIS ! 
Reader Participation With Renku Verses

The New Games
Issue 2, games #3 and #4

 

The previous page has the URL to the First Issue’s description of the tan-renga game.  Again, I’ll show you an extra verse to give a larger context. The challenge before you, tremble all who enter here, is to follow Old Master Basho himself in Game #3. Up to it? Are you?

In 1690, just four years before his death, Basho stayed for a time with one of his disciples, Boncho. Together with another prominent follower, Kyorai, the three wrote a kasen that summer: Throughout The Town. Excerpting two verses from the translation by Earl Miner, here is:

 

GAME #3

the apprentice spills
the water bucket that he holds

22. Boncho  (no season)

a house is up for sale
its broken doors and windows covered
with straw matting

23. Basho  (an autumn stanza)

 

ASSIGNMENT:

 

Since it is rare for either an autumn or spring verse to be alone, please compose another autumn verse in two lines.  This is not a moon or blossom verse.  Since the two stanzas I quoted are both human oriented, and kigo is required for #24, try to avoid humanity or at least do not write a human-centered verse.  Please send your one verse to me at: 

pwm.shippond@worldnet.att.net

by the deadline: September 30, 2001  
titled WHReview, renku game #4.

and identify the E-mail as for WHR renku, game #3.  In the next World Haiku Review we shall see how Kyorai followed his Master.  If you have access to this actual renku  . . .  no peeking!  It is not a contest.  I shall try to discuss all or most of the entries next time.  Have fun.

 

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GAME #4

 

Perhaps a bit less daunting, let us return in game #4 to modern renku, written on the Internet by self-acknowledged students of renku.  Here are two inner verses from a summer kasen renku:  Tin Dippers written in 1999 by Paul MacNeil, Ferris Gilli, and A.C. Missias.

 

waxwing straggler
pushes higher to join
the flock’s curve

7. fg     (a third and last autumn stanza)

 

wheelchair entrance
to the evangelist’s tent

8. pm   (no season)

 

ASSIGNMENT:

Please compose a three-line stanza that is the first love verse. No season. This is about human love.  It could involve the physicality or emotionality of love. As the first love verse of a sequence that of at least two (three or four is usual), it should not seem a final verse. That is to say, do not have a mourner at a spouse’s grave or the like. Just as with a season sequence, there is a temporal progression in renku. The verses shift subjects and are not three parts of one love story, but
they do show different aspects of love.  For example, in a spring sequence
the early, middle, and late parts of the season, or verses that are
"all-spring" will be explored. Of course you will link to #8 and pay special care to shift away from #7. In a real renku, you would also need to contend with all the topics of the first six stanzas. But for this game, only two others matter.

In the next Issue I will show you how ACM replied to my “wheelchair entrance.” Your own solutions will be published and I hope to discuss most of them with you.  Please submit your stanza to me, Paul MacNeil at:

pwm.shippond@worldnet.att.net 

by the deadline: September 30, 2001  
titled WHReview, renku game #4.

Thank you for playing!  On the next four pages are complete renku for you to enjoy. Please feel free to submit your own group’s renku to me as Editor. I may ask for changes and not all will necessarily be accepted. This part of the renku section of WHReview functions just as any edited journal. Please do not send any material that is currently pending before any other editor or contest. I do accept previously published work, but it should have completed its “ordinary run” with that other publication. 

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NOTICE for Submissions

All of the renku and renku selections shown here are by permission of the authors who retain full copyright. Your submission of original verses to FOLLOW THIS! and/or submission of your complete renku to the Renku Editor expresses your permission for the World Haiku Review to publish your verses if accepted. Not all submissions will be published. One does not need to be a member of WHC to submit to the reader participation renku games, but you are invited to join us by submitting your application through WHC's website pages: Mailing Lists: WHChaikuforum:

http://www.worldhaikuclub.org

or directly at our YahooGroups WHCschools homepage:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/WHChaikuforum

 

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