Tuesday, November 11, 2014

Carpe Diem Ghost Writer #33, Richard Wright on Autumn by Jen of Blog It Or Lose It


!! I publish this episode this early, because I am in the nightshift !!

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

It's time for another GW-post, this is our 33th episode and it's a GW-post written by Jen of Blog It Or Lose It. Her GW-post is about Richard Wright. I will tell you first a little bit more about him, before I give the GW-post by Jen.

Richard Wright (1908-1960), one of the early forceful and eloquent spokesmen for black Americans, author of "Native Son," and "Black Boy", was also, it turns out, a major poet. During the last eighteen months of his life, he discovered and became enamored of haiku, the strict seventeen-syllable Japanese form. Wright became so excited about the discovery that he began writing his own haiku, in which he attempted to capture, through his sensibility as an African American, the same Zen discipline and beauty in depicting man's relationship, not to his fellow man as he had in his fiction, but to nature and the natural world.  
Richard Wright (1908-1960)
In all, he wrote over 4,000 haiku, from which he chose, before he died, the 817 he preferred. Rather than a deviation from his self-appointed role as spokesman for black Americans of his time, Richard Wright's haiku, disciplined and steeped in beauty, are a culmination: not only do they give added scope to his work but they bring to it a universality that transcends both race and color without ever denying them. Wright wrote his haiku obsessively--in bed, in cafes, in restaurants, in both Paris and the French countryside. The discovery and writing of haiku also helped him come to terms with nature and the earth, which in his early years he had viewed as hostile and equated with suffering and physical hunger. Fighting illness and frequently bedridden, deeply upset by the recent loss of his mother, Wright continued to spin these poems of light out of the gathering darkness.
One of his wonderfully composed haiku:

The webs of spiders
Sticking to my sweaty face
In the dusty woods.


© Richard Wright
And here is our GW-post about Richard Wright. I hope you all like it and of course I hope it will inspire you all to write an all new haiku (or two or three ...)
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Richard Wright: Man’s Realm Within Nature’s Realm
For this Ghost-Writer episode we’re going to revisit Richard Wright (1908-1960).  Chèvrefeuille featured his haiku several weeks ago in an episode of “Little Creatures”.  (You can re-read his post here.)

Wright composed over four thousand haiku in the last eighteen months of his life – of these he selected 817 for publication. And they have a wonderful style and voice.   They generally follow a 5/7/5 format, can be written as a sentence, and quite often the first and third lines can’t be interchanged.  And still – I think they’re quite effective and elegant in their own way.
As a haiku poet Wright “attempted to capture, through his sensibility as an African American, the same Zen discipline and beauty in depicting man's relationship, not to his fellow man as he had in his fiction, but to nature and the natural world.” 

Bank of Leaves photo © Jen

I wanted to offer Wright as the focus of a Ghost Writer prompt – but where to start, with 800 poems to choose from?  Chèvrefeuille suggested “autumn” and/or “departure” as a theme.  What do you think of the following haiku?

The chill autumn dusk
Grows colder as yellow lights
Come on in skyscrapers
.


© Richard Wright

It seems to reflect elements of early Kerouac with elements of Ginsberg’s “American Sentences”, doesn’t it?  Plus, he’s describing nature beautifully within that human framework. 
Autumn moonlight is
Deepening the emptiness
Of a country road
.


© Richard Wright


Credits: Autumn Moonlight Woodblock print by Shibata Zeshin

What’ emptier than a country road in the moonlight?

As the popcorn man
Is closing up his wagon,
Snow begins to fall.


© Richard Wright
And with the end of autumn we have the first snow.  Is the popcorn man closing his wagon for the night – or for the season?  There’s a sense of finality, of quiet, of emptiness – perhaps of man’s realm returning to nature. 

Here is my attempt to write haiku on this theme, reflecting Wright’s style and tone:

The first autumn snow
gleams blue on the parking lot
under the moonlight.

Next to the gutter
the raked-up pile of leaves
huddles under snow
.


Leafy Gutter photo © Jen

For this challenge, can you write a late-autumn haiku (in Wright’s style and tone) showing a relationship between man’s realm and nature’s realm?  

CARPE DIEM HAIKU KAI: Carpe Diem "Little Creatures"#9 "spiders"

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Well ... it was really a joy to read this GW-post about the haiku of Richard Wright, whom will be our featured haiku-poet next month, and the haiku Jen shared here written by him and the response of Jen herself are wonderful. Will not be an easy task to respond on this GW-post ...

Here however is my attempt to write a haiku in response on this GW-post:

dancing in the wind
between colorful leaves
a birthday balloon


© Chèvrefeuille

Or what do you think of this one:

next to the skate-track
all types of shoes hanging from branches
finally visible


© Chèvrefeuille

Credits: shoes hanging from branches (Dutch website)

Awesome ... I hadn't thought that I could respond on this GW-post ... And that second haiku I shared is really nice, in front of the hospital were I work there is a skating-track and in a kind of skater-tradition you have to throw your shoes (both) into a tree next to the skating-track.
It's a craze (rage) which the skaters have taken from the USA I think ...

This GW-post will be open for your submissions tonight at 7.00 PM (CET) and will remain open until November 14th at noon. I will (try to) post our next episode, Mount Fuji, later on. For now ... have fun, be inspired and share your haiku with us all here at Carpe Diem Haiku Kai, the place to be if you like to write and share haiku with the world.

15 comments:

  1. Richard Wright is one of my favorites, so I'm looking forward to working with this prompt. Thanks, Jen!

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    1. Glad you liked this -- isn't he magnificent? And it was quite a task to choose just 2-3 great poems as a focus. Loved your response.

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  2. Great post.. yes there is a Kerouac tone to these haiku.. and I love that. (as well as American Sentences) .. when I had composed my haiku I had to write a fictitious haibun too.. I love your examples Kristjaan.. you must have been very inspired here.

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    1. Your response is just magnificent, Bjorn --- Lolly is right, you know.

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  3. What a lovely post, Jen and Kristjaan. I had not heard of this writer and look forward to looking up more about his writings. The examples you gave are really nice and helpful to write to. Kristjaan, your last one is so adorable and a cultural accent to it too.

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    1. "Haiku: The Last Poems of an American Icon" is on Amazon and B&N - you should really look into it. Plus its notes and afterword are pretty useful. :)

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  4. Jen that last haiku with leaves in the gutter is stunning!!!

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    1. Thanks -- it's difficult to do him justice -- his tone is wonderful -- he combines so many features and creates something completely unique.

      [Magnificum upseedaiseeum! Come on, Captcha -- let this comment go through, please ....]

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  5. Lovely post, Jen and Chevrefuille. I enjoy reading the work of haiku but American artists who were just learning the ropes of haiku. Wright's work is a lot like Kerouac's, I agree. Delightful if a bit clunky at times. Still fun to read. Thanks for the post.

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    1. Sometimes that clunkiness is kind of reassuring in a strange way, isn't it?

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    2. It's not clunky when you consider that Wright was writing for his life. His outpouring of haiku (thousands upon thousands) was an attempt to live life to the fullest, even as his days waned. What a body of work to leave behind!

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    3. I was really impressed with that too --- his life pouring out -- and he wrote thousands of haiku -- like he was grasping for the light while it was slipping through his fingers. So while it's a bit rough around the edges and ignores a lot of "the rules" -- you can't fault the images or the spirit behind them. Great stuff ---

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  6. Oh, how neat, Chevrefeuille -- I love the haiku -- but I'm especially fond of that second one -- so playful and hopeful!

    Thanks for letting me help as a ghost-writer. So much fun :)

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  7. Great post Jen. Thanks for the intro to Richard Wright. Love his haiku ! KP both your haiku were inspired particularly the second. You have set a high standard. Looking forward to doing this one.

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    1. Thanks -- so glad you were inspired by the prompt and the haiku.
      I loved the playfulness of your response! :)

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