Carpe Diem Tokubetsudesu (former Ghost Writer) #44, N. Scott Momaday's "the Delight Song of Tsoai-talee" CD-Distillation

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

As you maybe know in the beginning of this month I changed the idea of the Ghost Writer posts, it's not longer a ghost writer, but mostly I will make the episodes myself, but I also want to give our family members the opportunity to share their ideas and posts. As I stated at the start of this month I love to bring back the special features which we had and I would like to use the GW-post for that. Because the Ghost Writer isn't longer what it was I have decided to change the name of the Ghost Writer post to Carpe Diem Tokubetsudesu. Tokubetsudesu is the Japanese word for "special" and I think that's a better name. As we have now a new name for the Ghost Writer posts I have also changed the logo of this feature. On the logo you see a woodblock print of the holy mountain Fuji with blossoming cherry blossom in the front.

In this feature I will sometimes bring articles written by CDHK family members or several of the once used special features like e.g, Soliloquy no Renga or Carpe Diem Imagination or as in this episode a Carpe Diem Distillation in which the goal is to distill haiku (or tanka) from a longer poem. This CD Tokubetsudesu episode I have a CD Distillation for you opposed by Paloma of Blog It Or Lose It.

In this CD Tokubetsudesu episode Paloma wants to challenge you all to distill haiku from a poem by N.Scott Momaday.

Credits: N. Scott Momaday (1934 -)

Navarre Scott Momaday (born February 27, 1934) — known as N. Scott Momaday — is a Native American author of Kiowa descent. His work “House Made of Dawn” was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1969. Momaday received the National Medal of Arts in 2007 for his work that celebrated and preserved Native American oral and art tradition. He holds 20 honorary degrees from colleges and universities, and is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Momaday is considered the founding author in what critic Kenneth Lincoln has termed the Native American Renaissance.
“House Made of Dawn” is considered a classic in Native American Literature. (More about Momaday you can find by following the link under the photo).

Here is the poem which is chosen by Paloma of Blog It Or Lose It to distill a (or more) haiku from. It's a gorgeous poem, as I may say so, and I think it can inspire you a lot. It's a challenge of course to catch the essence of the poem in a haiku (or few), but it is also a way to look at haiku built from a longer poem ... 

The Delight Song of Tsoai-talee

I am a feather on the bright sky
I am the blue horse that runs in the plain
I am the fish that rolls, shining, in the water
I am the shadow that follows a child
I am the evening light, the lustre of meadows
I am an eagle playing with the wind
I am a cluster of bright beads
I am the farthest star
I am the cold of dawn
I am the roaring of the rain
I am the glitter on the crust of the snow
I am the long track of the moon in a lake
I am a flame of four colors
I am a deer standing away in the dusk
I am a field of sumac and the pomme blanche
I am an angle of geese in the winter sky
I am the hunger of a young wolf
I am the whole dream of these things

You see, I am alive, I am alive
I stand in good relation to the earth
I stand in good relation to the gods
I stand in good relation to all that is beautiful
I stand in good relation to the daughter of Tsen-tainte
You see, I am alive, I am alive

© N. Scott Momaday

Credits: Pomme Blanche or Prairie Turnip

I think this will be a wonderful challenge and I hope to see wonderful haiku. Thank you Paloma for sharing this poem with us.

This episode will be open for your submissions tonight at 7.00 PM (CET) and will remain open until April 24th at noon (CET). I will (try to) publish our new episode, harmony, later on. For now ... have fun, be inspired and share.

Carpe Diem Ghost Writer #43 and Carpe Diem Special #142, "taking flight" by Kala Ramesh

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

It's my pleasure to bring an all new CDHK episode to you. This is, what I call "a double-post", because I have two episodes to write, but I have chosen to bring them both together in one post. Maybe you can recall that I have decided to bring the CDHK-special-features back through these Ghost Writer posts. So today I love to challenge you to write a haibun based on the haiku which I will share here written by Kala Ramesh.

For this haibun I have a few rules, to make it more challenging:

First, you have to use the haiku by Kala Ramesh and second, your haibun may have a maximum of 150 words (including the haiku). It's not gonna be easy I think, so I give you 24 hours more to respond on this "double" episode.

Here is the haiku which you have to use as an inspiration for your haibun, you may use the given haiku in real, but you also may compose another one in the same sense, tone and spirit as the one by Kala Ramesh.

taking flight -
a butterfly shrugs off
its shadow

© Kala Ramesh

I had a busy day today, so I wasn't inspired enough to share my own haibun inspired on the haiku by Kala, but I hope to share it later.

This episode is open for your submissions tonight at 7.00 PM (CET) and it will remain open until April 18th at noon (CET). I will publish our next episode, pranayana (breath control), later on.

!! By the way: I am behind with commenting, but I will try to catch up a.s.a.p. In the menu above you can find the e-book about the Haiku Writing Techniques and the e-book "For the sake of the moon" (our first anthology) in a just read version. Enjoy reading. I will chance those "just read" e-books on a regular base !!

Carpe Diem Ghost Writer #42, 5-7-5 not easy

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

As I was preparing yesterday's post I ran through older posts and I encountered a question by Birgitta of Crazy Art - Photo and Poetry. She asked that question a while ago and I had promised to write a post about it. Until today it had slipt my attention, but today I will try to fulfill my promise. Birgitta her question was about the 5-7-5 syllables rule of haiku. This will not be an easy post, because (as you all know), I am not a fan of the 5-7-5 syllables.

In ancient Japan the common rule was to write haiku in one line (mostly vertical) which was cut in three parts. Every "part" followed the idea of 5-7-5 "onji" or "sound-units". Japanese is a wonderful language which is based on sound as I have explained in our Haiku Writing Techniques chapter 2 "onomatopoeia". a Haiku Writing Technique which is especially for languages based on sounds.

As haiku became more known in the western world we have sought for the right way to translate the Japanese haiku in to our western languages, but the most western languages aren't based on sounds. So western scholars choose to follow the 5-7-5 onji rule by translating it into 5-7-5 syllables, however that made it almost impossible for several languages (including e.g. Dutch). In that time as we westerners started to translate first and later wrote our own haiku the most haiku following the 5-7-5 syllables became artificial, and were called "counted verses".

Every language has its own rules for syllables. In English the rules for syllables are different than e.g. in Dutch or Swedish ... so it's not easy to use the 5-7-5 syllables rule. Several scholars, e.g. Jane Reichhold, introduced the alternative way of composing haiku by bringing up the idea of "a haiku is a poem with three lines following the sequence short-long-short. Others started to bring another way of counting syllables e.g. 3-5-3 syllables, which is more easy to compose.

As you all know I am not a fan of the strict syllables count mostly because of the idea that it is to structured for me and gives to less freedom to compose my haiku ... and becoming artificial. There are several haiku poets of our times who started with that 5-7-5 idea, but during their growth as a haiku poet they more and more got rid of the 5-7-5 rule.
To start with haiku it's ok to use that 5-7-5 rule, but try to loose it after a while, more or less syllables will not harm your haiku ... and it gives you more freedom to compose haiku from your heart. In my opinion using the 5-7-5 rule is really artificial and more with your mind, your brain, and I think poetry has nothing to do with artificiality or your brain. Maybe this is a pure western thought, but I think we, westerners, have re-formed haiku to our western way of thinking, living and so on.

I think we have to let go the 5-7-5 rule and have to try writing haiku as westerners. It's not a "sin" if you don't use the 5-7-5 rule, it's more a blessing to become free of that rule .... it makes haiku (in my opinion) even better and stronger.
Of course that choice is yours. If you love to write your haiku in the 5-7-5 sequence .... than feel free to do so, but it is no obligation. Maybe writing haiku in the 5-7-5 way is a new challenge, to me it is for sure a challenge and not only because of my ideas about, but also because of the fact that I am not familiar enough with the syllables-rules in English.

This was our GW-post for this week and I have a challenge for you all .... Try to write a haiku with the above mentioned 3-5-3 syllables option, a haiku with the 5-7-5 syllables option and a third haiku in the "free-style" as we saw e.g. in the haiku by Santoka Taneda.

Here are my three haiku:

sunflowers
stretch out to the summer sky -
a dog barks

© Chèvrefeuille

As I "count" the syllables of the second line following the Dutch rules, than that line has 7 syllables, but in English the syllables-count is 5 ...

Now I will try to write a haiku following the classical count of 5-7-5 syllables, an oldie:

finally dreams become true
just one peaceful spring night -
blossoms of cherry bloom

© Chèvrefeuille

And finally I will try to write a haiku in the "free-style":

at sunrise
poppies still redder
sacrifice for God

© Chèvrefeuille

Well ... I hope this GW-post has given you all an idea of the 5-7-5 rule and I hope to read wonderful haiku written by you all in response on this GW-post.

This episode is open for your submissions tonight at 7.00 PM (CET) and will remain open until April 10th at noon (CET). I will try to publish our new episode, the second CD Special by Kala Ramesh, later on.

Carpe Diem Ghost Writer #41, Soliloquy No Renga "the spring wind!"

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

The first quarter of 2015 all Wednesdays were for Haiku Writing Techniques (which are now available as e-book in the right column of our Kai) and now we will return to our Ghost Writer posts on Wednesdays, however I have changed the idea behind the Ghost Writer posts. There is of course still room for Haiku Family members to write a Ghost Writer post, but in the Ghost Writer posts I will also bring back the special features of Carpe Diem Haiku Kai e.g. Carpe Diem "Little Ones", Carpe Diem "Soliloquy No Renga" and other special features we had.

This week I bring back our "Soliloquy No Renga" or in other words "Renga written by one poet". Back in 2014 somewhere in September I introduced this special feature, this "solo-renga", in a post which you can find HERE. And of course you can find some more background on Renga above in menu or by clicking HERE. I will give the starting verse (or hokku) here and the goal is to write a "solo-renga" of a maximum of 12 stanza through association on images in the divers links. So you are getting to the second stanza by associating on images in the first stanza. (See also our Haiku Writing Techniques e-book chapter 11 baransu).

Here is the hokku ... I have chosen a haiku written by myself to start this "Soliloquy No Renga":

At this moment we have a really heavy wind and I am anxious for the young cherry blossoms, yes my Sakura has bloomed and now this storm will scatter the beauty of the fragile cherry blossoms, so I have a nice starting verse, or hokku, for you all based on this moment:

Hokku:

such a malice
cherry blossoms in full bloom
the Spring wind!

© Chèvrefeuille

For the second stanza you can choose for example malice to associate on for your 2nd stanza of two lines. Maybe I have to give you the chain links lengths .... first stanza (3 lines), second stanza (2 lines); third stanza (3 lines) and so on. You may use the classical or the non-classical syllables count, for a three lined link 5-7-5 and for a two lined link 7-7, but that's not an obligation ... just feel free, maybe do some "free styling" as Santoka Taneda did, you can use several Writing Techniques as we have seen in the last three months ... just go for it.
  

This episode is open for your submissions tonight at 7.00 PM (CET) and will remain open until April 4th at noon (CET) ... that's a day longer than I usually do, but that's because of the task .... to write a "Soliloquy No Renga". I will try to post our next episode, chariot, later on. With that episode we will start our journey through the Bhagavad Gita and maybe find Peace of Mind as is the theme for April. Have fun!