Painting by John White Alexander

WALT WHITMAN

A Farm Picture

Through an ample open door of
the peaceful country barn
A sunlit pasture field with cattle
And horses feeding,
And haze and vista, and the far
Horizon fading away.

[from: SONG OF MYSELF AND OTHER POEMS, by Walt Whitman, selected and introduced by Robert Hass, Counterpoint, 260 pp., $23]

JIM HARRISON: Haiku

I want to look at a cow
without my mind saying “cow.”

–Cliff (main character in THE ENGLISH MAJOR)

[from: THE ENGLISH MAJOR, Jim Harrison, Grove Press, 2008, $14]

Editor’s Note: A MUST read for English majors, English teachers, poets, novelists, Jim Harrison fans. Classic Harrison. It lives and breathes. Harrison Country from Michigan, the Midwest, the plains, the West and Southwest.

“It used to be Cliff and Vivian and now it isn’t.” With these words, Jim Harrison begins a riotous, moving novel that sends a sixty-something man, divorced and robbed of his farm by a late-blooming real estate shark of an ex-wife, on a road trip across America. Cliff is armed with a childhood puzzle of the fifty states and a mission to change the banal names white men have given them. His adventures take him from a whirlwind affair with a former student, to a “snake farm” in Arizona, and into the high-octane existence of his son, a big-time movie producer in San Francisco. A 2009 Michigan Notable Book, The English Major is vintage Harrison—reflective, big-picture American, and replete with wicked wit.–from the back cover

TOM MONTAG

Remember, Ben, he tells himself
You are a poet, not a comedian

Not all the notes,
Just the right ones
And the silence

Ben’s silence says
What cannot be said

If you say anything,
You’ve said too much.

The road is long,
Ben says. Bring shoes.

Go so far,
He says, you

Surprise yourself
Coming back.

[from BEN ZEN, THE OX OF PARADOX, Cross+Roads Press, 1999]

Breakfast enjoyed
in the company of
morning glories

All along this road
not a single soul—only
autumn evening comes

This dark autumn
old age settles down on me
like heavy clouds or birds

[from THE SOUND OF WATER, Haiku by Basho, Buson, Issa, and Other Poets, translated by Sam Hamill, Shambhala, 2000]

AMOS OZ

How would I like to write?
Like an old Greek who calls up the dead and shakes up the living. Or like a snowman passing alone and barefoot. To record the mountain to note the sea with a fine tip, like sketching out a pattern for embroidery. To write like a Russian travelling merchant making his way from here to China. He finds a shack. And sketches it. In the evening he looks, in the night he draws, and he finishes before dawn. Then he pays and goes on his way with the break of day.

[from THE SAME SEA. Harcourt, 1999]

KAY RYAN

The Best of It

However carved up
or pared down we get,
we keep on making
the best of it as though
it doesn’t matter that
our acre’s down to
a square foot. As
though our garden
could be one bean
and we’d rejoice if
it flourishes, as
though one bean
could nourish us.

Chinese Food Chart

Every part of us
alerts another part.
Press a spot in
the tender arch and
feel the scalp
twitch. We are no
match for ourselves
but our own release.
Each touch
uncatches some
remote lock. Look,
boats of mercy
embark from
our heart at the
oddest knock.

Chop

The bird
walks down
the beach along
the glazed edge
the last wave
reached. His
each step makes
a perfect stamp—
smallish, but as
sharp as an
emperor’s chop.
Stride, stride,
goes the emperor
down his wide
mirrored promenade
the sea bows
to repolish.

[from: THE NIAGARA RIVER, Grove Press, 2005]

deepening dusk
a canoe comes in
with the fog

fallen leaves
do I have to
go home?

blinding snow
there is no need
to understand everything

[from SEEDS, 2009, Red Moon Press, PO Box 2461, Winchester VA, 22604….www.redmoonpress.com]

Ed. Note: Yu Chng’s poems first appeared on the Shiki List in the mid-90’s. Hundreds of them have found their way into print since then, including prize-winners for the Museum of Haiku Literature, the Harold G. Henderson Contest and the Red Moon anthologies. He has served as editor of the journal Upstate Dim since 2001.

Barbara Larsen

Be aware

of
the
radiating
pulse
of
hope
which
needs
your
permission
to
transmit
its
hidden
message

[from FINDING TONGUES IN TREES, Beach Road Press, 2010]

On this day he wears

the old man’s faded blue cap,

Honor thy Father.

..an exhalation
of crickets—
..tap dance class

..humming softly
the bumblebee
..goes out for lunch

..inching down the street
a centipede
..of 4-year olds

..old pond paved over
into a parking lot—
..one frog still singing

[from CLOUD CALLIGRAPHY, Red Moon Press , 2010] www.redmoonpress.com

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

After studying with John Cage, Stephen Addiss traveled for 16 years performing folk and traditional music in Asia, Africa, and the United States as part of the duo “Addiss & Crofut.” He then completed a PhD at the University of Michigan and began teaching a variety of subjects, focusing on Japanese and Zen arts, first at the University of Kansas and now at the University of Richmond. Addiss is the author or co-author of many books and museum catalogues on East Asian culture, serves a co-editor of South by Southeast Haiku Arts Journal, and has had his poems and paintings published and exhibited frequently.