Category: haiku

I visited the Leverett Peace Pagoda today. It’s only a short drive from Amherst. You park at the bottom and walk up the mountain for around a quarter mile. It’s always an opportunity for quiet reflection. It is one of many pagodas constructed after Hiroshima and Nagaski by a Buddhist order dedicated to opposing nuclear weapons.

I can’t remember when I first discovered the Peace Pagoda. I probably hadn’t been living in the Pioneer Valley for more than a year or two. At the top, there is the amazing pagoda with gold statues at the cardinal points. Nearby, there’s a little pond with an island in the middle. Just beyond, built in the foundation of an older temple that was destroyed by fire, there is a little zen gravel garden. Usually, there are several strings of multi-colored prayer flags fluttering in the breeze. The pond is covered with lily pads and has frogs, tadpoles, minnows, and newts. It’s the among the most peaceful places I’ve ever visited.

Over the nearly 30 years I’ve been visiting, a number of changes have occurred. Over many years, they built new temple near the pagoda. There is a new area near the pond dedicated by and to native American people. A number of new monuments have been erected. There are number of new buildings and residences on the road up to the pagoda. But the message of the pagoda is the same.

At some point, I started writing haibun in Esperanto about interesting places in the Pioneer Valley. In 2010, I published Patro kaj Filo ĉe Sukerpanmonto (Father and Son Visit Mount Sugarloaf). Three years later, I published Spuroj sub Franc-Reĝa Ponto (Tracks Under French King Bridge). And in 2014, Morto… kaj vivo en Amherst, Masacuseco (Death… and Life in Amherst, Massachusetts), a haibun about a visit to the Emily Dickinson homestead, that tied for second place in the Belarta Konkurso. I had always intended to follow it up with a haibun about the Peace Pagoda. I made notes and had started writing it, but it was around that time that I had my falling out with the Esperanto movement. And I pretty much quit doing anything with Esperanto.

I think the last time I visited the Peace Pagoda was shortly after I got out of the hospital. I wasn’t well enough to make the climb, so I drove up and parked near the top. This time, I made the climb on foot. With my reduced lung capacity, it’s a struggle. But I had my walking stick and walked slowly, while other people passed me on the climb. Going back down was also difficult. I injured a knee in a fall maybe 10 years ago and doing downhill is painful. But I used my stick, took small steps, and made it back down.

It was a glorious day in the sunshine at the top. I sat to enjoy the view, walked around the little island, and was inspired to write a haiku.

pinpinglo falas / a pine-needle falls

aliĝas la aliaj… / and joins the others…

jam mararmeo / already a flotilla

As I was getting ready to leave, I ran into another old man at the announcement board getting ready to mow the lawn. He mentioned a ceremony planned for early June. I thanked him and said I had been coming for nearly 30 years and it was nice to see the changes and on going commitment of the community. He said he’d been coming for nigh on 30 years himself. “It doesn’t seem we’re getting any closer to peace, though,” I said. We shook our heads sadly and parted.

Maybe I should finish that haibun…

Writing takes both patience and persistence. Unfortunately, I’m rather lacking in both.

I want to be patient, but I am constantly chafing at the bit. But so much of writing is a waiting game. No matter how much you want to move quickly, there are limits all along the way, in writing, revising, and publishing.

I can only write so much at a time. I’ve known for a long time that my creative output is uneven. Some days, I can only write a few hundred words. Frequently, I find I need to find my way through a story by taking a break to turn things over in my mind before I can write productively again. But it’s hard to wait.

Revising requires leaving some time after writing before coming to look at the text again. If I try to revise something too soon, I can’t see the problems: I remember too clearly what I was trying to say and so I can’t see what I’m actually saying. But it’s hard to wait.

Publishing requires the most patience of all. Submitting work and waiting for a reply. Submitting work over and over again through rejections. And, when something is finally accepted, waiting while the work is edited, edited again, proofed, and then scheduled for release. It’s so hard to wait.

Through all the ups and downs you just have to keep going. The writing life is filled with disappointment. You constantly have to put yourself out there and, more often than not, there’s simply no reaction. Or you get get rejected. You submit manuscripts and they’re rejected. You offer a reading and nobody comes. You apply to appear at a convention and aren’t scheduled. You apply for a writing retreat and are passed over. The worst is when you just don’t hear anything. Sigh…

That said, now and then, all of the work really pays off. Recently, I took a few minutes to look at my very first book of haiku, Poŝtmarkoj el Esperantujo. Published in 2010, it’s fifteen years old now and it still holds up pretty well. All of the work it took to produce it has paid off for me in terms of having something that stands the test of time. I’m similarly proud of all of my books. If anything, they’ve just gotten better. Now if other people would just notice…

No matter. I can wait. I’ll just keep to my path writing and publishing books when I can.

When I was in grad school, circa 1994, I started writing haiku in Esperanto and exchanged them with my brother Phil. It was a way to practice Esperanto and have “a moment of zen” each day during a time when I was very busy.

At first, most of my haiku were “joke haiku”. I eventually learned that there is a name for joke haiku: senryu. But some of the haiku I wrote, even in those early days, were actually not bad. And doing something creative, however small, was meaningful to me.

A few years later, after I had secured a faculty appointment and moved to the Pioneer Valley, the Haiku Society of America met in Northampton. I attended out of curiosity, and was intrigued when my haiku were taken seriously. I realized that I didn’t have to treat writing haiku as a joke. And that there was a long history of haiku, going back hundreds of years. And a larger world of practice that included tanka, renga, haibun, and more.

Ten years later, I decided to self-publish a book of haiku in Esperanto with English translation: Poŝtmarkoj el Esperantujo. I decided to include artwork along with the haiku and developed a theme of imaginary postage stamps from Esperantujo — Esperanto Land, a fabled country that springs into existence around people when they speak together in Esperanto. I used photographs I’d taken, combined them with a frame that looked like perforations, and added a monetary symbol that used the unicode glyph for spesmiloj, a proposed universal currency.

It was my first attempt to lay out a book. It was a lot of work and it didn’t turn out quite perfectly. But it was pretty good. It was incredibly gratifying to receive the proof in the mail and actually hold it in my hands.

Due to the full color illustrations, it was pretty expensive. But I had a great time showing it to people and giving copies to family and friends. Since it was so expensive, I set the price to be effectively at cost. As costs increased, Amazon became unwilling to sell it (since they don’t make enough profit). So I eventually decided to make it available via Google Books for free. I can still order author’s copies, however, so if anyone really wants printed and signed copy on paper, let me know.

I published three more books of haiku. Premitaj Floroj (Pressed Flowers) used images from the UMass Herbarium. My best work, I think, was senokulvitre (without eyeglasses) for which I created a series of black-and-white illustrations with a narrow range of focus. I still use these images frequently to illustrate blog posts. In 2016, I published the last one, Ideoj Ĝermas (Ideas Germinate) that used creative-commons licensed imagery of seeds from a French museum. These are all still available for purchase.

I’ve written hundreds of haiku in the intervening ten years, but I haven’t published another book. I came up with a great idea for one. But collecting the imagery would be a lot of work and so I haven’t done it. I’m not sure the world needs another book of haiku in Esperanto. I’m not sure it ever did, honestly. It certainly didn’t appreciate them. But I had fun making them and that’s what really counts in the end.