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Judge Visnja McMaster (CR)
10 Selections

Three Top Choices

First Choice:

34

gurgling stream
the stone drying in my hand
dies silently

John Bird
Ocean Shores NSW, Australia

In the soul of a true lover of nature, the depth of feeling of oneness with all things expressed in this poem will find a resonance powerful to the point of physical pain. In today’s world, in which “nature” is being hurt and hurt and hurt again -- to such and extent that ecologically minded people find it emotionally too distressing to listen to yet another tale of woe, to a desperate and useless call for help to save another disappearing species -- the story of a dying stone brings a refreshing novelty. Is the death of a stone soon to be the death of the very last of the species? Thankfully, the thought reaches just far enough to release some of the tension created at first reading.

What shakes us so strongly here is the instant realization that a relatively innocent human intervention in nature can have almost cosmic consequences. How does the author achieve such a strong effect on the reader?

We could take in the time scale of the poem. In this act of quiet contemplation, the author measures his own, psychological time. How clear it all becomes: the observer, who is holding the stone in his hand, places himself between Earth, the beginning (the gurgling stream) and Heaven, the end (contemplating, with the death of the stone, his own demise). The stone in his hand is Hamlet’s skull, and the question is the one so well known to us all: the issue could hardly be more dramatic.

But this excellent haiku works on many levels. It is heavily impregnated with toriawase: the ultimate juxtaposition of life and death is strong enough -– but the reader is invited to work his way through layers of meanings and associations: through sounds, colours, textures, dynamics. The poem grabs him and does not let go easily.

As an example, we could glance at the dilemma -- to intervene or not to intervene in nature, by comparing the stone story with ikebana (how convenient that here, too, Man should find himself hanging between Heaven and Earth!). While making an ikebana arrangement, the master’s aim is to return the flower the dignity it had in nature. It will take a haijin to gather the audacity to drop the obvious question - Why remove it in the first place?

Man’s creativity is all about playing: it will make him cut a flower down in order to play with the new, different ways of putting it up again. He will kill it in order to give it a new life, meaningful only to him.

Haiku, too, is such an act of playful creation: according to Blyth, “haiku shows us what we knew all the time, but did not know we knew; it shows us that we are poets in so far as we live at all.” (The Genius of Haiku, Readings of R.H.Blyth, The British Haiku Society 1994)


Second Choice:

406

bus journey . . .                                    
an old lady knits her way
through miles of prairie

Maria Steyn
Johannesburg, South Africa

I feel happy to be able to draw attention to this haiku, and by doing so to pay homage to R.H. Blyth’s keen feeling for humour. Reading the bus journey instantly brings to mind the unforgettable Issa’s

Nagaki hi ya  ushi no yodare no  ichiri hodo

......A long day:
The cow’s slaver,
......About three miles of it.

Quoted by R.H. Blyth in Japanese Humour, 1957

The author of the bus journey brings the situation into a human context, thus making the poem walk the sometimes thin line between senryu and haiku. In each of these two poems, the very nature of the subject is being ridiculed faintly – they are both determinedly intent on doing what they do best, seemingly unaware of the surrounding world. Given a wider space/time frame, their behaviour, although in itself calming and reassuring, becomes “simple” and pointless to the point of stupidity.

And yet...both poems resonate with plenty of toriawase. Just as Issa’s long day is juxtaposed to the three miles of the cow’s slaver, the endless prairie journey is compared with the length of the knitting. But that is not all. The bus journey’s dynamics work on rather different, possibly resonating levels: the tiny knitting motions are resonated by the fast running of the vehicle on the road.

Further, the almost imperceptible movement of fingers is turning the senseless, undetermined intimidating miles of prairie into some defined piece of human creation, probably a functional, very defined item. Unwittingly, the old lady has found the way of dealing with time, and of giving it sense and shape; by doing this, she has made herself familiar to us to the point where we grant her identity.

Is there a kigo in the poem? Somehow, I imagine summer, that has turned the prairie brown (through miles of prairie suggests irritation, boredom). This brings one to see another juxtaposition here, by visualising a colourful knitted garment and oppose it to the monochrome open spaces around it (people who are affected by vast and often monochrome open spaces usually tend to produce, for their own amusement, very colourful items of craft -- Persian carpets are a typical example of this).

And so, starting in a very haiku, very karumi way with a simple humorous observation, we have come to see the old lady as a “creator”, a human being likely to have acquired wisdom, calm and determination - ”she knits her way …”.

As Blyth put it,

 … there is a faint humour at the back of every good haiku, but when we assert this humour it disappears, partly because of its slightness, partly because all humour dies with dogmatism and explanation.

Japanese Humour, Japan Travel Bureau, Tokyo, 1957

Third Choice:

202

returning geese --
dawn rises over the rim
of my coffee cup

kirsty karkow
Maine, United States

The first encounter with the poem brings an image well known to some people, probably always connected with the feeling of joy. The return of migratory birds is a celebration to a man’s mind -– it must have been so for as long as man has walked on earth.

In this way the haiku encompasses aeons of time, and includes feelings that must have entered our  genetic material itself. The appearance of well-known formations in the sky confirms with certainty the season and everything that is to come with particular time of year. But not only that.  The birds come from far away places: until not so long ago, they would have travelled where no man had been, had seen what no man had seen. Inevitably, geese in the sky have aroused feelings of yearning: yearning to fly, to be rid of the gravity that ties us to earth, to be able to move faster and further.

What child has not gazed at returning geese?, I would like to be able to say. Yet, I know that few children today will ever experience the magic that the event brings. One is made to believe that future generations will have even fewer such chances. From such fears comes the additional warmth that the image creates. All is right with the world, the appearance of the geese is saying to us, we need not worry, things are as they ought to be.

In this country (Croatia), geese return from far North in the beginning of winter. The author’s geese may be returning in spring. But no matter what, in the cold early morning, one clutches a warm coffee-cup for the same feeling of warmth and comfort that the geese bring: in order to bring the two experiences even closer, one holds the coffee cup to one-s lips, the rim almost touching the nose. A whole formation of the big birds may fit nicely into the remaining crevice.

Both the coffee and the geese have now fulfilled another yearning: the desire for a safe home. Like us in our houses, the geese will make their nests, court and mate and tend to their young. Then, in their own time, they will leave, only to return again next year. . .A huge array of images, memories, rhythms, colours, sounds and movements is contained in this deeply-felt poem. And the author shows a high degree of ability to put it all very gracefully into the three little verses that we call haiku.

Fourth Choice:

27

Calling once,                                                                
and again -- and again--
the mockingbird.

Christopher Baskind
Florida, United States

Fifth Choice:

238

sanderlings                                                                   
between waves between islands
winter wind

Paul MacNeil
Florida, United States

Sixth Choice:

385

full moon                                             
the widow's arms fall                                               
to her sides

Nancy Stewart Smith
Georgia, United States

Seventh Choice:

9

passing over                                                                            
me in my hammock
sunlit pelican bellies

Kay F. Anderson
California, United States

Eighth Choice:

221

minute by minute
the tree comes out of the night
with all its branches

Leatrice Lifshitz
New York, United States

Ninth Choice:

510

wind blown seed
where will you bloom next
forget-me-nots?

Sheila Windsor
Worcestershire, England

Tenth Choice:

279

rustling down the wind                                              
flags of the marching warriors -
corn stalks in the blizzard

Ruzica Mokos
Sesvete, Croatia

 

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