Ross - Journey to the interior: American versions of haibun

Bibliography

Periodicals

Albatross: Magazine of the Constanza Haiku Society, Romania

Frogpond: Journal of the Haiku Society of America

Modern Haiku

Point judith Light

Books

Ashbery, John. Haibun. Columbes, France: Collectif Generation, 1990.

Bash, Matsuo. The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches; Nobuyuki Yuasa, tr. Baltimore: Penguin, 1966.

Bostok, Janice. Silver Path of Moon: Haibun. Mt. Gravath, Australia: Post Pressed, 1996.

Easter, Charles. Spirit Dances. Flemington, N.J.: Black Bough, 1997.

Evans, Judson. Haibun for Dennis: December 12, 1994, in Hands Full of Stars. Boston: Aether, 1995.

Harter, Penny. At the Zend. Santa Fe, N.M.: From Here Press, 1993.

Herold, Christopher. Voices of Stone. Redwood City, Calif.: Kanshiketsu Press, 1995.

Higginson, William J., and Penny Harter. Met on the Road: A Transcontinental Haiku Journey . Foster City, Calif.: Press Here, 1993.

Issa, Kobayashi. The Year of My Life: A Translation of Issas Oraga Haru; Nobuyuki Yuasa, tr. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1960.

Japanese Poetic Diaries; Earl Miner, ed. and tr. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1969.

Kacian, Jim. Six Directions: Haiku of the Local Ecology. Albuquerque, N.M.: Las Alameda Press, 1997.

Kerouac, Jack. Desolation Angels. New York: Bantam, 1965.

Little, Geraldine Clinton. SeparationSeasons in Space: A Western Haibun. West Lafayette, Ind.: Sparrow Press, 1979.

Lliteras, D. S. Half Hidden by Twilight Norfolk, Va.: Hampton Roads, 1994.

_____. In the Heart of Things. Norfolk, Va.: Hampton Roads, 1992.

_____. Into the Ashes. Norfolk, Va.: Hampton Roads, 1993.

Lynch, Tom. Rain Drips from the Trees: Haibun along the Trans-Canadian Highway. Las Cruces, N.M.: n.p., 1992.

The Modern Japanese Prose Poem: An Anthology of Six Poets; Dennis Keene, tr. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univ. Press, 1980.

Neubauer, Patricia. Foxes in the Garden and Other Prose Pieces. Allentown, Pa.: n.p., 1993.

The Prose Poem: An International Anthology; Michael Benedikt, ed. New York: Dell, 1976.

Ramsey, William M. Driving to Myrtle Beach, in Modern Haiku XXVII: 1 (Winter-Spring 1996), pp. 30-32.

Roth, Hal. Behind the Fireflies. Glen Burnie, Md.: Wind Chimes, 1982.

Shelley, Pat. The Rice Papers. Saratoga, Calif.: Saratoga Trunk, 1992.

Snyder, Gary. Earth House Hold. New York: New Directions, 1969.

Spiess, Robert. Five Caribbean Haibun. Madison, Wise.: Wells, 1972.

Sturmer, Richard von. A Network of Dissolving Threads. Auckland, N.Z.: Auckland Univ. Press, 1991.

Tripi, Vincent. Haiku Pond: A trace of the trail... and Thoreau. San Francisco: Vide, 1987.

van den Heuvel, Cor. A Boys Seasons, in Modern Haiku XXIV:3 (Fall 1993), pp. 75-84; XXV:1 (Winter-Spring 1994), pp. 32-43; and XXV:2 (Summer 1994), pp. 33-45.

Willmot, Rod. Ribs of Dragonfly. Windsor, Ontario: Black Moss, 1984.

TOM CLAUSEN

Before School

Hes going to kindergarten in two weeks. The school was holding a pre-event at the playground for parents and children to mingle and get to know each other. We had gotten a notice about it a week or so ago.

I got home from work at twenty-five after five. My bike ride home had been a pleasant passage; noticing the sky and its scattered wispy clouds streaking way off, feeling the reassurance of once again making my way through such a long, long familiar space. I had fixed my arrival home on going for a refreshing end of the day swim.... It had been around ninety degrees at work. You get an idea, a vision and you can see how life just flows to meet that moment. Sometimes.

In the door my wife mentions the playground thing. She says its tonight, I say fine, you both go right ahead. She replies shes tired, too tired to go, a headache too. I sense the old test of self once again rearing its ugly head in mine, as it has thousands of times before and no doubt it will a good thousand times to come. The stand-off lasted all of ten tense minutes and then I said okay lets go Casey and sneakers on we let the screen door slap between us.

The playground... the school, the same one I went to over thirty years earlier, yet somehow heading there had no hold on my imagination or fancy. Instead a slight sullenness and dread filled me at having to make an appearance for some other adults who I feared would be less able than me to honestly confront how hard it is to be... a parent. No doubt Im having a time pulling it off and here was a test of my being... a parent. School for Casey was going to begin my need to meet head-on just what it is other parents are doing or more realistically what am I doing and does the job measure up on a public yardstick.

Well we get there and quite by surprise no one else is there. We wait and wait, Casey plays, I chase him around. We enjoy the space, the peace and quiet, the setting down day... must be she got the time or week or day... something...

before school

about the empty playground

a monarch

Birds

Both my parents despised guns and people using them so it was no small triumph when I ended up with my very own BB gun when I was in sixth grade. Of course I was restricted in how I could use it but proudly carried it about in the fields and woods behind our house. There was a feeling of connection to every soldier and hunter although I mostly shot at cans, trees, or little paper bulls-eye targets. Once along our brook I spotted a redheaded woodpecker way up on a dead elm tree. It peered down at me motionless. In a cruel moment of unclear curiosity I aimed up and pulled the trigger. The BB, totally against gravity, seemed to hit, puff, right in the chest, without any effect. I gazed up, it gazed down. It was a solemn-sad-satori to feel the hollowness of what I had done. I was relieved and glad when the woodpecker flew away. I had not a bit of hunter in my heart and vowed I would not aim at anything alive ever again.

My father had grown up a bird lover and had always wanted to become an ornithologist. We had bird feeders and bird houses all around our yard, including a two-tier, sixteen-hole deluxe purple martin house on a high pole in our back yard. Annually there was the problem of starlings finding the martin house to be an ideal nesting site and out-competing the martins for these spaces. This starling versus martin debacle caused my father no small amount of consternation. I was astonished when my father approached me about using my new BB gun to discourage the starling invasion. He didnt want me to actually shoot the starlings but suggested I shoot near them or hit the side of the martin house when starlings attempted to land. I was offered a vague bounty to spend time shooting from a second floor window, selectively trying to scare starlings away while protecting the nesting work of martins. There was a bizarre novelty to be shooting out from our house at my fathers bird house yet above that I remember wondering what on earth was I doing and thinking why is one bird better than another.

Today on my bicycle ride home from work on a stretch of walkway an elderly woman yelled to me as I was passing, I found out what kind of birds they are! Her manner indicated clearly she mistook me to be someone she had previously discussed this with. I stopped, puzzled at what she meant and now with my full attention she said again, I found out what kind of birds are in our bird house. I said Oh, what are they? She said disgustedly, Theyre starlings, and we so wanted flickers!

the garden

he tended so caringly...

all gone to weeds

New Sneakers

When our five-and-a-half-year-old son, Casey, began a campaign for new sneakers it awakened in me the memories of my own childhood love affair with the nearly annual new pair. For a child there is an extrasensory exhilaration that comes from having ones feet laced into a springy new pair of sneakers.