May 18: Black flies

black fly season

forced to write haiku

indoors

August 23: Quintet

Writing about crows

when five crows appear

on my neighbor's lawn

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July 13: Moth

fluttering moth

on my computer screen--

is it the light or the words?

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July 11: Haiku Workshop

Today I taught a day-long workshop on haiku at the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens. I was so grateful to have such a responsive group of students, open to paying attention, being creative, and sharing their poems. And we couldn't have asked for a better setting for a (partially) plein air class. The gardens are an endlessly inspiring landscape for the arts.

 

In the Five Senses Garden

 

A few of my in-the-moment jottings from our writing exercises out and about in the gardens:

 

(Five Senses Garden)

 

Stopping to touch

the black stone rabbit

warmed by sun.

 

Above the lily pond

black-and-white dragonflies

coordinate with her kimono.

 

Construction noise--

the dragonflies

go about their business.

 

(Children's Garden)

 

Rooted in mud

the yellow waterlily

seems to me perfect.

 

Junco visits our table

hoping for crumbs.

All I have are words.

 

Finding a small patch

of old-man's-whiskers

in the children's garden.

 

(Vayo Meditation Garden)

 

Purple love grass.

If only my life

could be so exciting.

 

Warbler still singing

in heat of the day.

Hay-scented ferns.

 

Alliums gone by

 

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February 5: Haiku Workshop

I spent my weekend immersed in a workshop on Haiku, the Moon & Ekphrastic Poetry, taught by Gary Lawless at Maine Media Workshop. Our discussions were wide-ranging and inspiring, from the story of Gary's apprenticeship with Beat poet Gary Snyder and life-long friendship with Snyder's mentor Nanao Sakaki, to the evolution of the haiku form from more formal Japanese poetry, to names of the moon in various cultures, punctuated by a presentation from Jim Nickelson of his series of moon photographs, Adventures in Celestial Mechanics, and a visit to the book arts studio where another class was making letterpress prints.

These haiku arose from the weekend's experiences and conversations:

Half moon
split above bare trees--
six more weeks of winter.

Fossilized shark's tooth--
at a certain angle
it looks like a heart.

Nanao said,
No swear words in Japanese.
What the fuck?

Granite quarry--
reliquary
for his grandfather's sweat.

Fixated on
a severed chipmunk's head--
this floating world--

A poem, not really mine, that wrote itself from a classmate's story:

He stops to check
the wind--
mother's ashes.

Another poem, not mine, that wrote itself for Gary from a classmate's story:

Owl flies
in the headlights--
mating season.

This class was a gift from my parents for my 50th birthday, so this haiku by Issa, one of the big three classical Japanese haiku poets, spoke to me:

The moon and flowers
Forty-nine years
walking about wasting time.
                 --Issa

Found poems created from Jim Nickelson's presentation, some almost verbatim:

Too close to the moon
and the photos look the same--
the moon is the moon.

In square photo format
only so many places
to put the moon.

Pale moon, pale sky--
how subtle can you get
and still show the moon?

Astrophysics professor--
no homework on nights
of the full moon.

He remembers where
he was that night
but forgot the name of the moon.

Moon of Falling Leaves.
Moon When Eyes Hurt from Bright Snow.
Hunger Moon. Bone Moon.

January 7: Distractions come easy when you're trying to write

Distracted by a flock of birds,

then by falling snow.

Trying to write.

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November 30: Wood-stoves are lit

Neighbor's chimney-top glows

under the Big Dipper--

thoughts for a poem.

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November 9: Open to winter

cold as the new moon

I write about Snowy Owls

wish it were that easy

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September 13: Translation

I spent this rainy afternoon working through a book I bought in Quebec City: a French translation of Japanese haiku by contemporary poet Mayuzumi Madoka. The book is arranged in four seasonal sections, with each haiku and its explication by the author on facing pages. I read through Spring and into Summer, fascinated by the nexus of several languages: the original Japanese, the French translation, my attempt to piece it together in English, and the universal poetic sensibility, which renders a good poem timeless in any language. It feels like a good exercise to play with words, image, and feelings in this way; I found myself longing for a retreat to submerge myself in this world for several days to see what might come out of it for my own poetry.

 

Here is my halting translation of one of her spring haiku:

 

Amplified

by the toll of the temple bell--

this spring twilight.

__

 

Rainy afternoon--

I can almost hear the fog horn

or a temple bell.

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July 24: Haiku on Hatchet Mountain

This afternoon I led a haiku hike up Hatchet Mountain in Hope (such alliteration!) for Coastal Mountains Land Trust and Sweet Tree Arts. Two familes, including four children, three adults, and two dogs, and I walked up the hill with stops along the way to compose short poems. Highlights included a singing Scarlet Tanager, a porcupine climbing a tree with surprising speed (trying to get away from us), views of the Camden Hills and all the way to the ocean, and lots of blackberries and raspberries to eat along the way.

Who can write haiku
with all these blackberries
to pick and eat?

April 14: In the studio

Spent all day in the writing studio that my husband and I rent in one of the renovated mill buildings in downtown Camden. If I'd stayed home, I'd have found myself doing laundry and watching the Masters, allowed myself to be distracted by today's NYT crossword on my iPad. Here, I got accomplished what I needed to, while in the background like a white noise machine, the river roared over the waterfall that used to power the mill.

River, oak, mill, mountain--
who's to say which of these
has more significance?

March 12: Cursive

A friend's seven-year-old daughter was scrawling on her napkin at dinner, trying to write her name in cursive. I didn't think they still taught cursive in school. Doesn't everyone use a computer these days? I remember as a very young child, maybe still in kindergarten, being taught by my great-grandmother how to write my first name in cursive. I felt like I'd really learned something key to growing up. Then in third grade, the pleasure of filling that special lined paper with fancy capital F's with their extra slashes and Q's that looked like 2's. It was like learning a code, a code with flourish. A code that adults had all figured out, to the point that their cursive didn't look anything like the carefully rendered letters aligned on the school worksheet. They had it down so well they could improvise.

 

I once convinced a store clerk

that my signature

was written in Arabic.

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March 2: Ennui

One of my favorite lines from Edward Gorey's delightfully morbid alphabet book, The Gashleycrumb Tinies: "N is for Neville who died of ennui." The illustration shows the top half of a child's round face peering out above the window frame. I thought of that image today as I sat at my desk looking out the window, chin in my hands, watching snow flakes drift about and water drip off the roof. I'm supposed to be writing, but feel so uninspired. That time of year.

Snow falling listlessly,
eaves dripping.
Where is my focus?

September 8: Red-bellied woodpecker

A poet friend writes, "Haiku is the art of meaning what you don't say." My flaw as a haiku poet is I'm too narrative-minded. My impulse as a writer is to tell stories, make the connections between what I'm experiencing and what I'm feeling so the reader can be there with me. I think I need a lot more practice before I'll actually write what a true haiku practitioner would consider a good haiku. It's such a challenge to present the moment and let it stand alone, be what it is and not impose myself on it further. Today's poem is not successful in that way. But there it is.

*

Red-bellied woodpeckers, while very common in southern states, were relatively rare in Maine until an incursion of hundreds of birds in fall 2005. Now they seem to be here to stay, and I occasionally encounter one in my neighborhood. This week I heard one calling nearby twice, but haven't seen it yet this summer. It still seems so strange to me, to hear this bird I encounter regularly in Florida here in my own yard.

Global climate change has done more than just shift weather patterns. It's been slowly but surely pushing southern bird species northward, where our many bird feeders also help keep them here. Fifty years ago, there were no mourning doves here, no cardinals or titmice. Thirty years ago or so, I remember seeing my first turkey vulture in this area. Red-bellies are just one of many even more recent arrivals.

Red-bellied woodpecker calling.
Absorbing this humid air
I think of melting ice caps.

August 18: Bread Loaf Writers Conference

I'm visiting the Bread Load Writers Conference, where I worked many summers in my youth, for a weekend. This incredible place, centered on an old inn nestled in the Green Mountains, is one of those magic, timeless spaces where all experience, even ordinary ones, are somehow transformed. I've reconnected with old friends and already experienced some wonderful readings by the faculty writers. For a writer, there's nothing more invigorating and inspiring than being steeped in the writing life like this, in such a beautiful setting, even if just for two days. Conversations about haiku while looking out on the sunlit hayfields where Robert Frost once walked... Waitstaff in feathered boas and fezzes... A reading from her memoir by a dominatrix... Seeing the stars clear and bright over the silhouette of Bread Loaf Mountain as I walk back to my room... All part of the Bread Loaf experience.

I don't have the words
to describe so many words
so beautifully read.

A couple of the Bread Loaf dorms

Front porch of the Bread Loaf main building, The Inn

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August 7: Nostalgia

My husband asked me yesterday if I ever have nostalgic thoughts. What poet could honestly answer "no"? This time of year, as the start of the Bread Loaf Writers Conference approaches in the Green Mountains of Vermont, my thoughts often drift to the eight summers that I attended the conference, seven of them as part of the administrative "social" staff. I was in my twenties. Those two weeks spent with fellow poets, many of whom became close friends, living, breathing, eating, talking, writing, listening to, and reading poetry, surrounded by inspiring, well-known poets and other writers, in an idyllic mountain setting, were truly a highlight of my young life. We stayed up late, drank too much, danced in the barn, frolicked through hay fields, wished on falling stars while huddled around a bonfire, caught fireflies, skinny-dipped, and, most of all, were fueled by excellent lectures, readings, and workshops that kept me going as a poet for the rest of the year. Ah, those August days (and nights) on the mountain...

Kissing in a field--
what could be more innocent
on a summer night?

July 23: Ice cream

This is the first post I've written in four days, because I've been on an island with my six-year-old niece. The combination of an intermittent wi fi link out there and having to focus all my energy on a small, active person prevented posts, though there were certainly many poetic moments. They will have to remain in my memory for now.

Tonight my poet friend Elizabeth and I met for our monthly poetry session so we could both feel like writers again for a few hours. To prepare for our scheduled time of intense sharing and discussion, we enjoyed drinks and dinner al fresco at a hip bistro near my writing studio, and after dinner, walked to a riverside ice cream stand for dessert.

I had to laugh, because my niece's favorite thing about spending the weekend with me on the island was that I let her get an ice cream for dessert after lunch and dinner every day. She ended up eating five ice cream cones in three days. So you'd think I'd have had enough ice cream. But there's something about walking the sidewalks of our hometown on a warm summer evening that made getting an ice cream cone the natural activity, somehow helping us transition perfectly from the mode of enjoying dinner out with a friend to a serious discussion of each other's writing.

Ice cream cone in hand
I'm in a child's state of mind--
open, word-ready.

July 7: Old mill

My husband and I have a new writing room: a rented office/studio space in the renovated Knox Woolen Mill building in the heart of downtown Camden. Our windows are directly over one of the dams that used to be part of the millworks. In fact, the controls to the dam itself are located in a corner of our studio, with a little sign indicating how long it takes to raise or lower the dam. Since we've gotten a lot of rain, the river is still running high. The drop over the dam is substantial, creating a vigorously churning waterfall that will serve us effectively as a white noise machine when we're hard at work.

The big windows of our third floor studio frame an interesting view. On the other side of the river sits the part of the old mill that was converted to condominiums, several of which boast nice decks. A mature oak tree grows up through a hole cut into one deck, its leafy branches blocking a view of Mount Battie which we will undoubtedly enjoy come winter. If you lean out the window, the mill's smokestack rises high into blue sky above the mill buildings and the fast-moving river. On the mill pond of calm water behind the dam, a family of geese hangs out amid the reeds. And on Saturday mornings and Wednesday afternoons, the Camden Farmers' Market is visible through the trees in the mill parking lot.

When I was five, we lived for a while with my great-grandmother in her apartment across the street from the mill. It was still very much a working mill then, and I remember hearing the daily whistles for lunchtimes and shift changes, as well as the machinery clacking away day and night. I had to walk past the mill to get to kindergarten, and I always hurried over the dark, turbulent river as it flowed beneath the mill and under the street on its way to the harbor. Thanks to my great-grandmother's vivid warnings, I could imagine all too well what would happen to me if I fell in. Now my studio overlooks that very stretch of river. Hopefully it will once again spark my imagination.

White water: white noise.
I lose my thoughts in the falls,
river of childhood.

View of the old mill buildings from a neighboring office

January 17: Haikubes on Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Birthday

For Christmas my sister gave me Haikubes, a set of 61 six-sided dice with short words or phrases etched on their faces in black and two dice with phrases on the faces in red. You're supposed to roll them all, and the red-lettered dice set the theme for your haiku. Today, my first time trying out Haikubes, I rolled A VISION FOR and OUR WORLD. That struck me as thematically appropriate for a holiday celebrating Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday.

The words on the other dice are supposed to inform the resulting poem. Fortunately among the many words--obey, swimming, dripping, finally, this, us, what, so not, I, baby, embraced, etc.--are some blanks to enable a little creative latitude.  Still, it took me about 20 minutes to come up with something, anything, and the resulting haiku is probably a bit more bleak and negative than I would have created if left to my own devices:

This still so screwed up:
war touches every surface.
What shines for us next?

What interests me is how a fixed but random set of words like this (or the ever-popular Magnetic Poetry sets, for example) begins to tell its own little stories. Like these, face-up now on my desk: swimming, dripping, salty, fathom. Or these: girl, room, charm, body, embraced, hot, limbs, glorious. Or these: war, dead, screwed, hellbent, so not. The thematic dice then help guide the tone for pulling out and following the most appropriate of the stories. If I'd rolled A DREAM ABOUT and MY ROMANTIC LIFE, you can imagine I'd have gravitated toward different word choices!

While I prefer creating my own haiku, sometimes working within the strictures of an exercise like this can free your mind in unusual ways or take your imagination to new places. (Even your imagination can get in a rut sometimes.) For that same reason I like to periodically play with formal poetry--to write a rhyming sonnet, for example, or a poem with a set number of lines per stanza or syllables per line. The act of fitting into the rules can lead to some surprising adjustments that often result in something more interesting than the same old "free verse."