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Presents of Mind
Jim Kacian is one of the halfdozen best-known practitioners of haiku outside of Japan. He has produced a dozen books, and his work has been translated into more than 50 languages. This volume represents his first fullscale appearance in Japanese, and will help readers of haiku understand why his work has been so favorably received in so many cultures. In addition to his own work, Kacian has edited and published scores of other books related to haiku, especially The Red Moon Anthology series, an annual compedium of the best haiku published in English around the world, and the contemporary haibun series, which does the same for haibun and haiga.“Kacian’s poetry exhibits a refreshing spark of imagination, a deep affinity with nature, and a joy in sharing experience— all of which draws the reader warmly in . . .” — H. F. Noyes“Reading Kacian’s haiku helped me find my way into the tradition of this form, but I read them most of all because they present a sense of wonder in a setting familiar to me. Bringing this wonder home is his gift.” — John Stevenson
80 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1996
6 people want to read
About the author
Jim Kacian
101 books4 followersJim Kacian is an internationally-acclaimed poet, theorist, motivator, editor, and publisher. He has published seven books, which have won major awards; authored How to Haiku as well as numerous articles on haiku form and praxis; co-founded the World Haiku Association, which encourages poets from around the world to share haiku and theory, as well as being a long-time board member of the Haiku Society of America; edits South by Southeast and Frogpond (the international membership journal of the Haiku Society of America); and owns and operates Red Moon Press, the most prestigious publishing house dedicated to haiku in the world.
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March 22, 2019
I have no idea exactly how many really wonderful haiku anthologies edited by poet Jim Kacian I have in this house. To get a count would involve a long scramble through a bunch of rooms and some book excavations (bookscavations?) in the Tsundoku Zones. The books edited by Kacian wouldn't fall in the tsundoku category. I tend to reread those anthologies fairly constantly. Because, for me, those books are great consciousness-shifters, opening the portals of the mind to see everything differently. I particularly recommend the A New Resonance series of anthologies, which are ten in number with two follow up anthologies, Echoes 1 and Echoes 2. Those are total keepers. I am still in the process of acquiring the entire collection.
Jim Kacian writes haiku in a range of styles, from traditional to gendai. This collection from Katsura Press in 1996 is a beautiful physical specimen of a book, design-wise. The recycled acid-free paper has constellations of colorful particles in it, sometimes things that look like little eyelashes of strange forest creatures. Poetically, it's admirable for the clean sweep of the poems, which tend to be in the traditional style, although the adherence to a "season word" is not slavishly followed. The book is, however, designed as a quadriptych of the seasons (plus an opening "New Year's Day" section). Each section opens with a minimalist drawing consisting of a single blue line that feels like "if Richard Tuttle did blue sumi-e."
The book opens with a short disquisition on presence, the nature of haiku, and this poetic form's relation to silence.
Kacian states here in his preamble, "Silence can exist without language, but language cannot exist without silence."
He wants to remind us of our utter homelessness in our language (whatever language that may be)--a situation which we have disguised:
"The name of a thing is not the thing.
The name of a thing is as far
from being that thing
as language is from being silence."
The precision gets even better:
'Every object is possessed of silence.
It is silence which is the secret fund
of its being."
The haiku that follow embody these thoughts very well.
I'll share a few of my favorites from the book below, which are perhaps my favorites because of the way(s) they explicate the shifty nature of presence. Roland Barthes says it very well and succinctly: https://terebess.hu/english/haiku/bar...
I love how Barthes seizes on the haiku's illusory transparency: "The haiku has this somewhat phantasmagorical property, that one always imagines being able to make it oneself easily. We say to ourselves: what's more accessible to spontaneous writing than this." But try it. And see how quickly you realize the learning curve is long and sweeps out over years, over decades, and actually lifetimes. (And yet sometimes children can write the most amazing haiku; but what did Picasso say about trying to get back to childhood's mind with all its spatial and temporal freedom?)
falling leaves
the house comes
out of the woods
*
walking in
the orchard suddenly
its plan
*
late at night
the cold white edges
of the bed
*
frozen paradise
a little piece of hell
in the woodstove
*
bitter night
the stars seem nearer
seem farther
*
coiled snake
only its tongue
has thawed
Jim Kacian writes haiku in a range of styles, from traditional to gendai. This collection from Katsura Press in 1996 is a beautiful physical specimen of a book, design-wise. The recycled acid-free paper has constellations of colorful particles in it, sometimes things that look like little eyelashes of strange forest creatures. Poetically, it's admirable for the clean sweep of the poems, which tend to be in the traditional style, although the adherence to a "season word" is not slavishly followed. The book is, however, designed as a quadriptych of the seasons (plus an opening "New Year's Day" section). Each section opens with a minimalist drawing consisting of a single blue line that feels like "if Richard Tuttle did blue sumi-e."
The book opens with a short disquisition on presence, the nature of haiku, and this poetic form's relation to silence.
Kacian states here in his preamble, "Silence can exist without language, but language cannot exist without silence."
He wants to remind us of our utter homelessness in our language (whatever language that may be)--a situation which we have disguised:
"The name of a thing is not the thing.
The name of a thing is as far
from being that thing
as language is from being silence."
The precision gets even better:
'Every object is possessed of silence.
It is silence which is the secret fund
of its being."
The haiku that follow embody these thoughts very well.
I'll share a few of my favorites from the book below, which are perhaps my favorites because of the way(s) they explicate the shifty nature of presence. Roland Barthes says it very well and succinctly: https://terebess.hu/english/haiku/bar...
I love how Barthes seizes on the haiku's illusory transparency: "The haiku has this somewhat phantasmagorical property, that one always imagines being able to make it oneself easily. We say to ourselves: what's more accessible to spontaneous writing than this." But try it. And see how quickly you realize the learning curve is long and sweeps out over years, over decades, and actually lifetimes. (And yet sometimes children can write the most amazing haiku; but what did Picasso say about trying to get back to childhood's mind with all its spatial and temporal freedom?)
falling leaves
the house comes
out of the woods
*
walking in
the orchard suddenly
its plan
*
late at night
the cold white edges
of the bed
*
frozen paradise
a little piece of hell
in the woodstove
*
bitter night
the stars seem nearer
seem farther
*
coiled snake
only its tongue
has thawed
Displaying 1 of 1 review