What is the plural of 'non sequitur?'

While we are on the subject of haiku, here is one from Richard Brautigan's collection of poems "June 30th, June 30th."


Strawberry Haiku

• • • • •
• • • • • • •
The twelve red berries

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Other random stuff:

Are trees musical, or is that just some silly notion made up by effete sensitive artistic dreamy people?

The idea is that trees make a pleasing noise when the wind blows through the limbs and leaves. They creak. They rustle. And when trees or branches bend in the wind, they bend with a certain rhythm or cadence. Aspen leaves wiggle invitingly.

But rabbits wiggle and make noise, too. And mice. Does anybody wax poetic about the music of rabbits or mice? Trees have been so romanticized it’s almost not fair to other plants. Yes, sonnets and songs have been written about roses, but that’s because of their smell or their color or texture, not their sounds.

Oak = Sousa march
Aspen = polka (or American folk music)
Redwood = acid rock
Jackpine = country swing
Linden = lullabye
Locust = Bach fugue
Magnolia = New Orleans jazz
Live oak = delta blues

Listening to the black walnut trees out my back window, I hear Shostakovich. Or maybe that’s my neighbor’s 13-year-old daughter practicing, I don’t know. I’m just killing time tossing this metaphor into the breeze to see where it lands, how high it bounces, what pleasing noises it might make.

Two blocks from my office is a state highway, a major east-west route across the bottom third of the state. This week, there’s some work being done on that highway, and the detour takes traffic right past my window. There sure are lots of big trucks rumbling by. Some of them are kind of smelly, too. One especially noisy and pungent truck had these words stenciled on the door: “Midwest Byproducts.” This little town has more than its share of meat processing plants, so it’s not hard to imagine what might have been in that truck.

Pool cue handles are often made of exotic woods, as much for appearance as performance. But the shafts should be made of a simple straight-grained light wood (maple, usually) for better control and feel. Shaft and handle are the perfect marriage of function and decoration. The joint should allow a wood-on-wood connection even where the joint is some fancy brass fitting with cloisonné decoration. Ivory-butted handles are pretty, but the shaft and tip are what make a cue work. Likewise, a stock made of African rosewood doesn’t make the rifle shoot any better.

Someday, I would like to drive a pickup truck with flames painted on the side.

Four haiku

Just for fun, inspired by reading some classic haiku (Basho, Issa, Buson), I wrote these.


Yellow leaves floating
on the green slow-moving river;
where will they end up?

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Make the dough early;
it may take longer to rise
on this cool fall day

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Parking enforcement.
Can there be a job less fun?
Yes, but very few.

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In baseball and life
it’s the little things that count;
wins losses ups downs

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These are not the ones submitted to Issa's Untidy Hut in response to the Basho Haiku Challenge. Those are better!

Buncha unrelated junk 'n' stuff

Issa's Untidy Hut (see link at right) is sponsoring the Basho Haiku Challenge. I've already submitted four haiku. Winner gets a poem or two published in The Lilliput Review (or at least posted on IUT blog) and a new book with the complete collection of Basho's verses. Contest runs for another couple of weeks. Join in!

Twins bullpen has been bad. The clever folks at Alright Hamilton! (see link at right) have written a blues song about the bullpen. Check it out. It begs to be recorded and played on the day the Twins are eliminated.

Every September, Northfield holds a community festival commemorating the foiled bank raid by the James-Younger gang in 1876. It's over for another year. We try to avoid the crowds but do enjoy at least one greasy meal. This year the line was so long for sish kebabs that I settled for a pulled pork sandwich with some BBQ sauce. It wasn't very good. Also in September, school resumes. So the two events -- school and The Defeat of Jesse James Days (DJJD) -- always prompt me to re-read Richard Brautigan's little gem:

The Memoirs of Jesse James
I remember all those thousands of hours
that I spent in grade school watching the clock,
waiting for recess or lunch or to go home. Waiting: for anything but school.
My teachers could easily have ridden with Jesse James
for all the time they stole from me.

Primary elections were held today. The secretary of state predicted that about 15% of eligible voters will show up at the polls today, which I gather is about normal for a primary. But in Northfield, seven candidates are running for mayor. After today's primary, the two biggest vote-getters will sqaure off in the general election. The race has garnered quite a bit of interest locally for a variety of reasons.

The incumbent is running even though he was locked out of his city hall office by the city council (they can't fire him) and was found by an independent investigator to have acted improperly by trying to get the city to locate a new municipal liquor store on property owned by his son.

Anther candidate is a city council member who nearly lost his city council seat because he moved out of his district. "Moved out" is a charitable way to put it. He was evicted for not paying rent, which is the third time that has happened to him in recent years.

Another is a former mayor who did a good job the first time around. This time, one of his ideas is to give the city council the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) test. He might be kidding. I hope he's kidding.

Haiku education

"The Essential Haiku: Versions of Basho, Buson, and Issa" by Robert Hass, The Ecco Press 1994.

An attractive feature of many poetic forms like the sonnet or the haiku is structure. The writer's challenge is to be true to the form (lines, syllables, meter) and be original at the same time.

I always shied from the challenge, retreating (if you will) to free verse.

Now, reading Hass' history of the Haiku form, I discover that the rules we were taught in high school (17 syllables divided into 3 lines [5/7/5]) aren't really a big part of the haiku at all. What a liberating revelation!

Hass says that the important characteristics of Haiku are (aside from the three-line form) a reference to time or season, personalization (that is, the subject is something the writer experiences directly and in the present), and a sense that the observation is both simple and connected to something more. Humor is also frequent, though not required.

Hass* was the verse translator for this volume and there are some essays translated by others.

My favorite by Basho:

A cicada shell;
It sang itself
utterly away.

The cicadas are putting on a concert in my yard as I write this, four centuries after Basho wrote those words.

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*My dad's name is Robert Haas. Not the same guy.