The haibun on Ploughshares (and a poem from my second book!)
I’m in love with a Japanese poetry form called the haibun. I teach it in my poetry class at National, I’ve taught it at poetry conferences, and if you’re around long enough, I’ll probably try to get you to write one.
Aimee Nezhukumatathil has a wonderful post covering the basics of haibun on the Plougshares blog and kindly used one of the poems, “The Fox-Wife Describes Her Courtship,” from my upcoming second book from Kitsune Books, She Returns to the Floating World, as an example. Thanks for the shout out, Aimee! I appreciate it and I’m glad to have more props for this very cool (and surprisingly contemporary-feeling despite its ancient origins) poetic form. When can we make an awesome haibun anthology?
Confession: I’ve never been much for a rhyme scheme but somehow syllable counts don’t bother me. Another confession: if you read through my second book and pay close attention, you’ll notice a lot of the poems are in syllabic forms. Am I becoming a secret semi-formalist? The answer: no, probably not.
Justin Evans
I just noticed that I posed my v=comment in the wrong place.
I wanted to say, here, that I have two haibun in my first book—one near the beginning, and one near the end of the manuscript.
Jessie Carty
looking forward to checking out the article on haibun. I think this could be an interesting topic to cover in my essay writing class as well 🙂
i’m also not big on rhyming but i find syllabics very comforting. there is something about creating subtle rhythms in poetry that I find very appealing.
Kristin
I write to say thank you. I wrote a haibun yesterday! Or at least, my first attempt at a haibun. And if you hadn’t posted, I wouldn’t have been inspired to try. So, thanks for a good writing day yesterday.
mariegauthier
I love that poem! I seriously can’t wait for your new book to come out. Hooray for your props from Aimee Nez!