Very much enjoyed your rendition of one of my favorite poets , Mary Oliver. Her poems are simple yet profound. I, too, am a Poet but specialize in Japanese forms: i. e. haiku, tanka, haibun, kyoka, senryu. I hope you don’t mind me sharing a tanka and my haiku tribute poem to Bashō’s frog with commentary by the late AHA founder and poet Jane Reichhold who considered my poem among her top 10 haiku of all time. What an honor. Here’s the Bashō poem and commentary: Bashō,s frog four hundred years of ripples - -Al Fogel “At first the idea of picking only 10 of my favorite haiku seemed a rather daunting task. How could I review all the haiku I have read in my life and decide that there were only 10 that were outstanding? Then realized I was already getting a steady stream of excellent haiku day by day through the AHA forum. The puns and write-offs based on Basho's most famous haiku are so numerous I would have said that nothing new could be said with this method, but here Al Fogel proved me wrong. Perhaps part of my delight in this haiku lies in the fact that I agree with him. Here he is saying one thing about realism-ripples are on a pond after a frog jumps in, but because it refers back to Basho and his famous haiku, he is also saying something about the haiku and authors who have followed him. We, and our work, are just ripples while Basho holds the honor of inventing the idea of "the sound of a frog leaping is the sound of water". As haiku spreads around the world, making ripples in more and larger ponds, its ripples are wider-including us all. But his last word reminds us all that we are only ripples and our lives are that ephemeral. It will be the frogs that will remain”. And my tanka: returning home from a Jackson Pollock exhibition I smear my face with paint and turn into art -All love in isolation from Miami Beach, Florida. Al
Very much enjoyed your rendition of one of my favorite poets , Mary Oliver. Her poems are simple yet profound.
I, too, am a
Poet but specialize in Japanese forms: i. e. haiku, tanka, haibun, kyoka, senryu.
I hope you don’t mind me sharing a tanka and my haiku tribute poem to Bashō’s frog with commentary by the late AHA founder and poet Jane Reichhold who considered my poem among her top 10 haiku of all time. What an honor.
Here’s the Bashō poem and commentary:
Bashō,s frog
four hundred years
of ripples
- -Al Fogel
“At first the idea of picking only 10 of my favorite haiku seemed a rather daunting task. How could I review all the haiku I have read in my life and decide that there were only 10 that were outstanding? Then realized I was already getting a steady stream of excellent haiku day by day through the AHA
forum.
The puns and write-offs based on Basho's most famous haiku are so
numerous I would have said that nothing new could be said with this
method, but here Al Fogel proved me wrong. Perhaps part of my delight in this haiku lies in the fact that I agree with him. Here he is saying one thing
about realism-ripples are on a pond after a frog jumps in, but because it refers back to Basho and his famous haiku, he is also saying something about the haiku and authors who have followed him. We, and our work, are just ripples while Basho holds the honor of inventing the idea of "the
sound of a frog leaping is the sound of water".
As haiku spreads around the world, making ripples in more and larger ponds, its ripples are wider-including us all. But his last word reminds us all that we are only ripples and our lives are that ephemeral. It will be the frogs that will remain”.
And my tanka:
returning home
from a Jackson Pollock
exhibition
I smear my face with paint
and turn into art
-All love in isolation
from Miami Beach,
Florida.
Al
Killing Time lady!
Ок.