My indebtedness to a few haiku spirits

I've lately begun to see the terrible tragedies in Japan as a metaphor for that country's greatest cultural legacy: haiku. Natural disasters, & the terrible displacements and anguish they've caused, cannot ever kill the spirit of a deeply meditative people and nor will haiku shun the purity of form in deference to the fractal poetics of the postmodern world. How easily Western poetry, on the other hand, lacking the profundity & discipline of haiku (& with its penchant for tradition-bashing), shatters at the slightest force into a thousand pieces! The post-avant movement provides ample evidence of this fragility. And how stolidly Eastern poets defend and practice a style of writing that, if done well, can still the spirit itself.

It's the poets (haijin) infused with a sense of stylistic purity who've developed the form & kept it alive through a lifetime of haiku study, teaching and publication: a breed of writer marked by an almost Zen-line focus on their craft. I've encountered some remarkable people in my own brief stint in Eastern writing who've nourished the poetic heart in me, & whom I'd like to personally acknowledge here as teachers, mentors and friends: Susumu Tagikuchi, Karina Klesko and, of course, the irrepressible Ed Baker. They will always be the most formative Eastern influences in my life.

Susumu Tagikuchi

My first exposure to haiku came through Susumu Tagikuchi & his World Haiku Club (WHC) and World Haiku Review (WHR) where I saw some of my earliest efforts make it into print. I was struck almost immediately by both the traditional as well as transnational character of his Eastern poetry network, comprised primarily of Yahoo! groups, publications and conferences.Tagikuchi has globalized haiku, reaching out to an Eastern readership in many countries. Not that haiku hasn't had to adapt to individual poetic sensibilities. It's been subjected to experimention & generated a lot of debate on the purity of its form. The haiku nucleus, however, is the same regardless of differing national styles & temperaments: a cluster of essential principles from which there's really no wavering. Susumu Tagikuchi, a great doyen of haiku & tanka, has kept the debate alive for many years though careful to preserve traditional principles of composition. In an article entitled "Haiku as a World Phenomenon" he mentions, for instance, the recurrent tensions between "permanent values" and "changes" in haiku structure. Both his HAIKU (WHR) 1 blog and WHCvanguard Yahoo! group actively write & theorize about haiku form, one ranging from the most radical to neoclassical. 

Karina Klesko

If Susumu is the architect of his global haiku 'club', the teacher-student is the inspiration and impetus for the daily (mostly online) interactions among haiku practitioners. Tagikuchi is a friendly presence but WHC structure can't help but impose a certain distance between him and his students: only a few, in fact, have actually met him in person. His scale is felt mostly as expertise & group organization. Were it not for Karina Klesko, however, I wouldn't have known either founder or WHC; and without her I certainly would haven't learned the main Eastern forms, such as haibun, tanka, sijo and cinquain nor experienced (as energetically as I did) the simplicity of the creative act. Karina's is a single-mindedness of purpose I haven't seen in many poets. When I think of her worsening eyesight & the strain of constant writing & editing she's had to endure, I can't help admire her tenacity and devotion to work even more. She has an endearing presence that's drawn many to her. There was a time when we wrote together almost every day, churning out a  prodigious amount of work most of which was posted at her Yahoo! group but some even finding their way into the WHR & other online magazines. As she reminds me still, I'm a much better Western writer because of the time I've spent with Eastern forms. Karina currently co-edits the extremely popular Sketchbook E-Journal for Eastern and Western short verse forms.                     

Ed Baker

And without Karina's online poetry group I would never have met Ed Baker. In my opinion (& even Ed may disagree) he's a haiku master who's adapted his 'barebones' minimalism to art, the product of which is his Stone Girl poetics. I've also learned to appreciate the artistic influences in Ed's own work such as Cid Corman whom he'd personally known and corresponded with, ancient calligraphy and brushwork technique and a whole buddhist 'mindfulness' that permeates the man & his work. A friendship has naturally ensued as how would it be possible not to admire one of the most congenial people in the poetry scene today? Ed's also been something of a gateway into American poetry, the first to introduce me to names like John Martone, Carl Rakosi, John Perlman, Geof Huth, Frank Samperi, Jeremy Seligson, etc. and how diminished my familiarity with authors and literary styles would be without him. Ed's a friend and a mentor from whom I learn almost daily through correspondence and conversation, as well as an ally in the battle we wage against the lowering of poetic standards and integrity in the fashionable post-avant movements of the day. I've always celebrated Ed's work as a genre purity that's attributable directly to his Eastern roots.