Tweetspeak Poetry

“H is for Haiku,” An Invitation to Small Joys

By 101 Comments


Here at Tweetspeak, we love to celebrate poetry by pairing it with a holiday, like Take Your Poet to School Week, Take Your Poet to Work Day, and Poem on Your Pillow Day. So we are happy today, in the middle of National Poetry Month, to bring our three lines and seventeen syllables to International Haiku Day.

Haiku began in Japan. Among its masters are Matsuo Bashō, Kobayashi Issa, and Masaoka Shiki. As haiku has found a home in English, the rules of the form have changed to become more fluid.

About a year ago, I started writing a haiku a day. A friend tried it, and it seemed like a doable poetry dare. Knowing I’ll be writing a haiku about the day makes me pay attention to its unfolding and helps me synthesize the most memorable part.

When it comes to haiku, Amy Losak, a public relations professional in health care, finds writing haiku and senryu improves her writing, providing discipline and focus.

“I am not an expert. I’m a beginner, and I will always be a beginner,” she said. “The appeal for me is trying to catch and release a moment in our daily life that we might overlook. It’s the ability to slow down, take a breath, release the breath, pay attention to what’s going on around us, and find any kind of emotion in that and deeply express a moment with all the senses in three lines, not necessarily seventeen syllables.”

This month Penny Candy Books published a picture book titled H Is for Haiku: A Treasury from A to Z, written by Losak’s mother, Sydell Rosenberg, who passed away in 1996. The book is illustrated by Sawsan Chalabi. Rosenberg was a charter member of the Haiku Society of America, which celebrates its fiftieth anniversary this year. She also worked as a copy editor, a teacher, a short story writer, and a novelist (under a pen name).

“I can detect the poet she became,” Losak said.

The book is not only a picture book of haiku; it’s also an alphabet book. The poem for A starts with the word “adventures,” followed by B for “boy” and C for “car.” E begins with the word “even.” For the letter D, which starts with the word “drops,” Chalabi illustrates drops of rain “clanking.” Don’t you think clanking is a better choice than falling?

Rosenberg’s haiku have been used in schools in the Bronx and Queens, as well as in the New York City nonprofit Arts for All. Her haiku also appears in several anthologies.

Losak says she didn’t appreciate her mother’s interest in haiku until she began going through Rosenberg’s manuscripts, following her death.

“I realize now that my mother woke up every day greeting the day. Every day was not only a blessing but an anticipation of the small miracles of the world around us. I didn’t appreciate that at the time,” Losak said.

Now she is following in her mother’s footprints, slowing down and appreciating the small moments.

“I’d catch the bus to get into Manhattan, about a three-minute walk. I was rushing to the bus and past my neighbor’s house, and there in some kind of bush was this magnificent butterfly. It wasn’t a monarch,” Losak said. “The way it was just hovering around the bush, spiraling around, I had to write something about that. That was for me a haiku.”

Photo by Nathalie, Creative Commons license via Flickr. Post Megan Willome,  author of The Joy of Poetry.

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Megan Willome
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About Megan Willome

Megan Willome is a writer, editor, and author of The Joy of Poetry: How to Keep, Save & Make Your Life With Poems and Rainbow Crow: poems in and out of form. Her day is incomplete without poetry, tea, and a walk in the dark.

Comments

  4. Bethany R. says

    How fun. I just started tinkering with a haiku on Sunday. First time in ages that I’ve attempted one. 🙂 Enjoyed reading your poems in the comments, Laura, L.L., and Sandra. 🙂

    Reply

  18. Bethany Rohde says

    I’m enjoying this collection of haiku, TSP community. Such a variety of images and moods. Here’s one to go with today’s new post on Tweetspeak Poetry:

    Storybook Garden—
    orange nasturtium blossoms
    out of the straw

    Reply

    • Katie says

      I like your haiku Bethany and enjoyed the post.

      Here are a couple I wrote by pulling together some of the text and comments:

      mission to enrich
      the minds and hearts of children
      through art, nature, lit

      ***

      Storybook Garden
      hands-on children’s haven
      crafts, snacks, story time

      ***
      love of exploration
      and literacy, through gardening
      creating, story-ing

      Reply

        • Katie says

          And if there were such a sticker, I would wear it;)
          Thanks, Megan!

          Suppose I should have sent these to the comments for The Children’s Storybook Garden post by Bethany.

          SO many inspiring articles, etc. recently. Here are a couple of quotes I came across at other places on the net this week:

          “Our bodies are our gardens, to which our wills are gardeners.” William Shakespeare, Othello

          “Literature is a form of fondness-for-life. It is a love for life taking verbal form.” George Saunders, Festival of Faith & Writing

          Love the adventure and learning of this TSP community:)

          Reply

  24. Prasanta says

    Choked, stifled tendrils
    Ears strain toward greening silence
    April snow showers

    We are getting yet another round of snow today! Hence, the above haiku. Spring WILL come. 🙂

    Reply

  25. Katie says

    bloom, umbrella tree
    petal soft, reaching over
    sheltering our prayers

    ***

    prayer walking the trail
    sisters offer petitions
    Lord, Your will prevail

    Reply

  26. Laurie says

    Spring’s varied array
    tax, alligators, open-
    mouth flowers, cold devoured

    Since I wasn’t sure if I wanted to put a comma or a hyphen between tax and alligators, I wrote this one too.

    Tax-alligators
    governments’ take, greater end
    mine’s the lesser than

    Reply

    • Megan Willome says

      Laurie, so glad you’re here! Another haiku-er in these spaces, Sandra Heska King, lives in alligator country, so the two of you should discuss the intriguing idea of “tax alligators.”

      Reply

      • Laurie Klein says

        HA! Just found this online, Megan, Sandy, and Laurie:

        “Tax exposure is like a baby alligator, as it grows so does the potential …” didierconsultants.com/2018/02/02/tax-exposure-is-like-a-baby-alligator/

        Reply

      • Laurie Flanigan says

        I don’t consider myself much of a haiku-er yet, Megan, but I am having fun. I’m especially enjoying the skill, variety, and humor of the ones shared in these comments.

        Reply

        • Laurie Flanigan says

          Thanks for sharing the link, Laurie. I guess I’m not the only one who thinks of taxes that way. 😀

          Reply

  27. Laurie Klein says

    Delightful reading, Megan, and company! Sighs, chuckles, quiet nods of the head—there’s so much wealth and wit here.

    Here’s my birdbrain offering.

    Again, the rain. Gold-
    finches bob like lanterns. Hope,
    I am your bare branch.

    A scold of magpies,
    claws inscribing aspen bark:
    jittery footnotes.

    Teach us to live. Bowed,
    there, beneath the sprinkler’s arc,
    the feeding quail bathes.

    Reply

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