"A renowned poet shares his experience of haiku and its potential to surprise us again and again into a sudden awakening and thus to a deeper sense of what it is to be truly alive. His remarkably refreshing insights have delighted confreres around the world: "Gabriel Rosenstock offers us a marvelous path into the essence of haiku and the state of being in harmony with the laws of the universe."--Ion Codrescu, Romania
In this intriguing literary experiment, Ian Marshall presents a collection of nearly three hundred haiku that he extracted from Henry David Thoreau’s Walden and documents the underlying similarities between Thoreau's prose and the art of haiku. Although Thoreau would never have encountered the Japanese haiku tradition, the way in which the most important ideas in Walden find expression in the most haikulike language suggests that Thoreau at Walden Pond and the haiku master Basho at his "old pond" might have drunk at the same well. Walden and the tradition of haiku share an aesthetic that embodies ideas in natural images, dissolves boundaries between self and world, emphasizes simplicity, and honors both solitude and humble, familiar objects. Marshall examines each of these aesthetic principles and offers a relevant collection of "found" haiku. In the second part of the book, he explains his process of finding the haiku in the text, breaking down each chapter of Walden to highlight the imagery and poetic language embedded in the most powerful passages.
Favor of Crows is a collection of new and previously published original haiku poems over the past forty years. Gerald Vizenor has earned a wide and devoted audience for his poetry. In the introductory essay the author compares the imagistic poise of haiku with the early dream songs of the Anishinaabe, or Chippewa. Vizenor concentrates on these two artistic traditions, and by intuition he creates a union of vision, perception, and natural motion in concise poems; he creates a sense of presence and at the same time a naturalistic trace of impermanence. The haiku scenes in Favor of Crows are presented in chapters of the four seasons, the natural metaphors of human experience in the tradition of haiku in Japan. Vizenor honors the traditional practice and clever tease of haiku, and conveys his appreciation of Matsuo Basho and Yosa Buson in these two haiku scenes, "calm in the storm / master basho soaks his feet /water striders," and "cold rain / field mice rattle the dishes / buson's koto."
This is the most authoritative and concise book on Japanese haiku available: what it is, how it developed, and how it is practiced in both Japanese and English. While many haiku collections are available to Western readers, few books combine both translated haiku with haiku written originally in English, along with an analysis of individual poems and of the haiku form itself. Written by a leading scholar in the field--Kenneth Yasuda was the first American to receive a doctorate in Japanese literature from Tokyo University--Japanese Haiku has been widely acclaimed. This edition is completely repackaged for a digital format, and is the perfect book for lovers of poetry who do not have a solid background in haiku.
Basho's Haiku offers the most comprehensive translation yet of the poetry of Japanese writer Matsuo Bashō (1644-1694), who is credited with perfecting and popularizing the haiku form of poetry. One of the most widely read Japanese writers, both within his own country and worldwide, Bashō is especially beloved by those who appreciate nature and those who practice Zen Buddhism. Born into the samurai class, Bashō rejected that world after the death of his master and became a wandering poet and teacher. During his travels across Japan, he became a lay Zen monk and studied history and classical poetry. His poems contained a mystical quality and expressed universal themes through simple images from the natural world. David Landis Barnhill's brilliant book strives for literal translations of Bashō's work, arranged chronologically in order to show Bashō's development as a writer.
From back cover or book: "Richard Wright, one of the early, forceful, and eloquent spokesmen for black Americans, author of the acclaimed Native Son and Black Boy, discovered haiku in his last eighteen months of life. He attempted to capture, through his sensibility as an African-American, the elusive Zen discipline and beauty in depicting man's relationship not only to his fellow man, as he had in the raw and powerful prose of his fiction, but to the natural world. In all, he wrote over 4,000 haiku. Here are 817 he personally chose. Wright's haiku, disciplined and steeped in beauty, display a universality that transcends both race and color without ever denying them. He wrote his haiku obsessively; in bed, in cafés, in restaurants, in both Paris and the French countryside."
Mr. Henderson analyzes the popular seventeen-syllable haiku and provides translations of important works.
An anthology of haiku accompanied by photographs reflects nature in the city.
Poetry in America offers extravagantly formed lyric and narrative poems that function like works of social realism for our times: hard times, wartime, divorce, times of downturn and dissipated resources. Where, in such times, can poetry emerge, the book asks--and answers--again and again. Largely set in rural places and small towns, these poems are politically committed but deeply sensuous, emotionally complex and compassionate. They take up the everyday in meaningful ways, and deliver it with blunt force, yet not without hope or bright humor.
Winner of the 2010 Donald Hall Prize in Poetry
In her third poetry collection, Quan Barry explores the universal image of war as evidenced in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as Vietnam, the country of her birth. In the long poem “meditations” Barry examines her own guilt in initially supporting the invasion of Iraq. Throughout the manuscript she investigates war and its aftermath by negotiating between geographically disparate landscapes --from the genocide in the Congo -- to a series of pros poem “snapshots” of modern day Vietnam. Despite the gravity of war, Barry also turns her signature lyricism to other topics such as the beauty of Peru or the paintings of Ana Fernandez.
The Zine Library is a new resource for experiential pedagogy sponsored by the Faculty Center. The Library includes zines, pamphlets, artist books, chapbooks and radical and alternative publications of all kinds, both contemporary and historic. The Zine Library consists primarily of zines found at specialized bookstores and websites. Being student centered is the goal of the Library, so we want to have students select zines as much as possible.
The first two zines above are available at The Zine Library which is located on the 17th Floor at the Pace building at 161 William St. Turn Right out of the Elevators. You can see the titles and descriptions and pre-select zines you want to see at this spreadsheet. Use Ctrl F or Command F (Mac) to search for keywords on the page.
(For an appointment to visit, email Susan Thomas at sthomas7@pace.edu or Derek Stroup at dstroup@pace.edu to make an appointment to visit.)
