MITSUAKI KOJIMA

In Germany, Angelika Wienert joins haikuists worldwide such as Mickey Nasu in Tokyo and Horst Ludwig in Minnesota to comment on the second wave of terrorist strikes that hit London on July 21.

blasts in the tube ...
on the Rhine ferry
strangers talk

Patricia Neubauer contributed her haiku to commemorate the anniversary of 9/11. It was first printed in the Modern Haiku journal. In ``The Conscious Eye'' printed in Frogpond, the journal of the Haiku Society of America, Dee Evetts points out that hundreds of poems about 9/11 have been composed. Haiku about the war on terrorism flow readily from poets' pens. Similarly, the end of World War II is still commemorated writes Doc Sunday in Hiroshima.

Gradation
peace memorial
paper cranes

A literary search of some 5,000 poems published since 9/11 in the two aforementioned journals, plus Heron's Nest and Canadian Raw Nervz haiku magazines, reveals however that only 40 are about the war in Iraq. Similarly in a December 2004 survey of haiku poets attending a haiku meeting in Washington, Ruth Yarrow reported in the summer 2005 issue of Frogpond, that only four poets had published haiku about the war being waged in the Middle East. Yarrow concludes her essay noting that some haikuists ``with deep empathy can write from less immediate experience, such as photos of the distant war.'' Michael Corr wrote the following poem in Kyoto, perhaps after listening to a storyteller.

Talks haiku
wildcat logger from
Indian lands

The next poem by Zackary Glenn in Illinois shares a war memento, and J.D. Heskin in Duluth, Minnesota, sums up the challenges of communication between generations.

heavy brown leather
upon my shoulders
grandpa's bomber jacket

great great grandmother_
our phone conversation
awkward

Sosuke Kanda flew over the Amazon in Brazil where he caught this sight. Compare his simile to the surprise Sagami Matsuda had while walking along a sidewalk in Osaka.

Under a burning sun
great river weaving like a snake
through the forest

Snake
finding its long way
in the grass

Murasaki Sagano watched the Gion festival in Kyoto. Afterward, she composed this haiku in a coffee shop.

In a tall glass
coffee and milk mingle:
summer art

Want to try composing haiku ?

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