Frogpond 34.3 • Autumn 2011 (pdf) - Haiku Society of America

After its first and only submission to a publisher, I later withdrew
my guidebook manuscript in order to refine it further.
Paying close attention to the words of a number of wise and
generous people, including Christopher Herold, Peggy Willis
Lyles, Paul W. MacNeil, Dr. Randy Brooks, William J. Higginson,
John Barlow, and Dr. David Lanoue, I made crucial
revisions in 2005 and 2006. In the years since, I’ve continued
to revise but hesitate to again pronounce it finished. Maybe,
like those who make a career of college, I can make a career
of everlasting edits?
That is not an entirely frivolous thought. I admit to sloth as I
attempt to keep up with every journal, every article that comes
my way, and it’s surely possible that I missed the handwriting
on the wall, failed to hear the pendulum swing. Already I
fear that a few of my manuscript’s principles are on the way
to becoming passé. I worry that the basics of haiku rooted in
tradition that I have taught for the last twelve years, the fundamental
qualities in which I place my trust, may be depreciating
in some camps.
Oh, what a weight it is to know that I have not read nor yet
unearthed even a smidgen of everything available on all things
haiku, by the best of teachers both here and gone; have not
heard even one hundredth of one percent of all the discussions
and conclusions by fellow poets; that what I taught five years
ago may be out of vogue this year—or worse, that one of my
“don’ts” has become a “do.” How I sag, limp with chagrin,
whenever a whiff of such change wafts my way. Read “whiff”
as the baffling poems I now and then find published as haiku
in the top journals, and as the question I often get from serious
and respected haiku poets about one published poem or another:
How does this pass for haiku?
And I wonder…before I offer guidance to any trusting haiku
poet who requests it, should I first step outside and test the
air, lift a wetted finger to the wind? Do I lay too much on the
agreeable folk who ask for haiku writing tips, for dependable
guidelines, reliable do’s and don’ts? I don’t believe so, for I simply
share tools that have done the job for a multitude of poets,
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