Sunday, May 12, 2019

Carpe Diem #1662 Tan Renga Challenge Month May 2019 (9) Watching a Snail


Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

I hope you all have had a wonderful weekend, I had for sure a nice weekend. Welcome at a new episode in our TRC month May 2019. As you all know I see Basho (1644-1694) as my sensei, my master therefore I have chosen a haiku written by myself in honor of him, my master,

As I discovered haiku back in the late eighties I hadn't heard of Basho, but after reading one of the most popular haiku books in Dutch ("Een Jonge Maan", by J. van Tooren; "A young Moon" by J. van Tooren) I was caught by the beauty of the haiku written by Basho ... I read all haiku that are known by him and so I am ... influenced by Basho's way of writing haiku. I owe a lot of my haiku skills to him and of course to Jane Reichhold, who has given me the opportunity to read all the haiku by Basho in her "Basho, The Complete Haiku".

Snails in the Moonlight
And here is the haiku to work with. It's part of a cascading haiku I created back in February 2012:

I bow to my master
Matsuo Basho told me the way
to watch a snail

© Chèvrefeuille

Well ... a nice haiku I would say (how immodest) in honor of my master Matsuo Basho. And now it is up to you to add the 2nd satnza of this Tan Renga ... have fun!

This episode is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will remain open until May 19th at noon (CEST). I will try to publish our new episode later on.


1 comment:

  1. I can't thank you enough for having these exercises and challenges. It has been very helpful to me during a stressful time of my life and, indeed, has created a new mindset. Anyone who thinks that Haiku is a useless poetry form because of its brevity (and I have known those who believe this very thing) is sadly mistaken.

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