Punk’s Reviews > Poetry of Chiyo-ni: The Life and Art of Japan's Most Celebrated Woman Haiku Master > Status Update

Patricia Donegan's essay on renga actually comes out and says that the rules were meant to ensure no continuity in the poem as a whole, that it was closer to an exercise in Buddhist meditation—of all times and seasons at once—than a cohesive piece of work. I don't enjoy renga as an art form, but I can appreciate it as a social activity, a kind of literary game, and Donegan's description makes me see that appeal more.

This is one of Chiyo-ni's best known Buddhist haiku and is supposedly expressing the peace of detachment, but I just love how dismissive it is:

anyway
leave it to the wind—
dry pampas grass

Got this back from the library just in time to finish up the winter section:

falling down laughing
at others falling down—
snow viewing

Managed to squeeze in a few more poems before my loan expired. Now on page 189.

This book is about to self-destruct, so for future reference, I'm on page 184.

but for their voices
the herons would disappear—
this morning's snow

I feel like many of Chiyo-ni's haiku depend on their zen exhibitionism and don't offer much to the non-enlightened reader. But occasionally I find one that is enjoyable or meaningful even without the zen background, like the previous gourd poem, and this one:

autumn field—
some grasses flower
some don't

Chiyo-ni's other famous haiku:

a hundred gourds
from the heart
of one vine

Chiyo-ni's most famous haiku:

morning glory–
the well-bucket entangled
I ask for water

the mosquito net
with a corner untied—
ah, the moon

I don't care what this poem is really about, something zen, I'm sure, or that there's some question of whether Chiyo-ni even wrote it, I just love how it sounds like the moon's snuck inside the netting.