Jack Kerouac's American Haiku

This is the debut of my own poetry on this blog! This is probably a one-time thing, I don't generally share what I write, but these are fun, so there's not too high a risk of baring my soul.

Jack Kerouac reinvented the Haiku, saying, "I propose that the 'Western Haiku' simply say a lot in three short lines in any Western language. Above all, a Haiku must be very simple and free of all poetic trickery and make a little picture and yet be as airy and graceful as a Vivaldi Pastorella". (Thanks for lending me the book, Tess!)

Some examples from Kerouac:

White clouds of this steamy planet
     obstruct
My vision of the blue void

Why'd I open my eyes?
      because
I wanted to

The pine woods
     move
In the mist

So, I woke up this morning, and wrote a few Kerouac-style American Haiku (Haiku is the plural). They're a bit wordier than his, but that's okay, because they aren't under syllabic constraint.

and this winter has turned to summer
     with a single wave of a
quivering leaf

I slept with the stars last night,
      to feel the closeness of their
celestial bodies

This morning an eagle
      flew over my head
straight to the mountains

I stole a bit of moss.
       You may laugh, but
I once had to live without forests.

If one stares at an object long enough
        in contemplation,
it becomes dear.

Metamorphic Journal 3

Installment number 3!

My friend... My friend, I would like
to talk to myself about you: beginning
with your bright, hazel, attentive eyes,
the curving lines of your mouth.
I would like to ponder the way
I have grown so slowly aware those lines
are beautiful, generous. Energy lights your
whole face, matching
the way you walk. A gradual seeing,
not in a phantom flash of storm...
But I'm not ready
to speak about you,
Not yet.
Perhaps I will never be ready,
nor you to be spoken of.

Metamorphic Journal 2

Installment Number 2!

If I came to a brook, off came my shoes,
looking could not be enough -
or my hands at least must be boats or fish for a minute,
to know the purling water at palm and wrist.
My mind would sink like stone
and shine underwater,
dry dull brown
                      turned to an amber glow.

Metamorphic Journal

I found this fantastic long-form poem by Denise Levertov. It's called "Metamorphic Journal", and it's broken up into 3 parts, which consist of several poems each. Thus, I'll be posting this poem, one piece at a time.
PS it's beautiful.

Part 1 - December

A child, no-one to stare, I'd run full tilt to a tree,
hug it, hold fast, loving the stolid way it
stood there, girth
arms couldn't round,
                               the way
only the wind made it speak, gave it
an autumn ocean of thoughts
creaking on big wings into the clouds, or rolling
in steady uncountable sevens in
to the wild cliffs when I shut my eyes.


Stay tuned for tomorrow's episode...

Levertov...

Somehow, this poem encapsulates today. I don't think I could even explain to myself exactly why. But this is what poetry does: it gets at something deep down, and takes hold until we understand it. Or we may never understand it, but it becomes a part of us...

Emblem (I)

Dreaming, I rush
thrust from the cave of the winds,
into the midst of a wood of tasks.
The boughs part, I sweep
poems and people with me a little way;
dry twigs, small patches of earth
are cleared and covered.
Then I find myself
out over open heath, a sigh that holds
a single note, heading
far and far to the horizon's bent firtree.

Emblem (II)

A silver quivering cocoon that shakes
from within, trying to break.
                                          What psyche
is wrestling with its shroud?
Blunt diamonds
scrape at its casing,
urging it out.
But there is too much grief. The world
is made of days, and is itself
a shrouded day.
It stifles. It's our world, and we
its dreams, its creased
compacted wings.

Beyond Pleasure

Beyond Pleasure
Jack Gilbert


Gradually we realize what is felt is not so important
(however lovely or cruel) as what the feeling contains.
Not what happens to us in childhood, but what was
inside what happened.  Ken Kesey sitting in the woods,
beyond his fence of whitewashed motorcycles, said when
he was writing on acid he was not writing about it.
He used what he wrote as blazes to find his way back
to what he knew then.  Poetry registers
feelings, delights and passion, but the best searches
out what is beyond pleasure, is outside process.
Not the passion so much as what the fervor can be
an ingress to.  Poetry fishes us to find a world
part by part, as the photograph interrupts the flux
to give us time to see each thing separate and enough.
The poem chooses part of our endless flowing forward
to know its merit with attention.

The Peace of Wild Things

The Peace of Wild Things

Wendell Berry

When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting with their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.