MITSUAKI KOJIMA

A growing number of poets are writing haibun and haiku sequences. Haibun are a paragraph-length piece of prose culminating with a haiku such as the following one by Paul Conneally: "After a Sunday stroll up Beacon Hill, a place of magic and some of the oldest rocks in Britain, on a perfect English autumn day, the children, already dressed for bed, sit down with us for supper,

The prose accentuates and helps the reader to interpret what the haiku means, suggesting why it was an interesting moment to describe. Understanding the relationship between the poetic text and how the reader understands it, and is affected by it, is an area of study known as stylistic analysis.

When poets compose, they share linguistic, contextual and general world knowledge with the reader. These constraints help the reader to interpret meaning in a particular way. The shortness of the haiku form, however, ensures that the reader is not overly constrained, allowing for varying interpretations. For example, Kiyoshi Fukuzawa explicitly mentions that he was inspired by the music of Maurice Joseph Ravel (1875-1937). We can infer that despite having to walk in a cold rain he was delighted to have attended a recital held not far from his home.

Satoru Kanematsu saw scarecrows watching over rice fields near his Nagoya home. Perhaps a farmer with a sense of humor had positioned one of the scarecrows in a raised-arm banzai pose. Kanematsu says he's not sure if the scarecrow he writes about below in 11 syllables was a traitor welcoming birds or a surrendering coward.

Michael Corr writes haiku sequences, which often show how writing one haiku can inspire the writing of another. These poems were composed on the same day under the title "Chime.'' He caught the first haiku by chasing acorns in the Old Narumi district of Nagoya and the second in Shiroso.

Mitsuko Robertson has been writing a stream of cathartic haiku since she lost a dear friend earlier this fall. A returning college student in America, she has also tried to find respite in the words of poets such as Robert Frost (1874-1963) whose works influenced her following poems.

Haiku anthologies and saijiki, lists of season words, are organized chronologically by season. The Asahi Haikuist Network calls for haiku according to the season, therefore selected haiku often relate to a similar theme. Satomi Masuzono in Kagoshima, and Sagami Matsuda in Osaka respectively composed the following pair.

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The next issue of the Asahi Haikuist Network appears Dec. 3. Send haiku to David McMurray at the International Herald Tribune/Asahi Shimbun, 5-3-2 Tsukiji, Chuo-ku, Tokyo 104-8011.