“Hope” is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all -
And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -
And sore must be the storm -
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm -
I’ve heard it in the chillest land -
And on the strangest Sea -
Yet - never - in Extremity,
It asked a crumb - of me.
Quick: run for your life
You’re almost out of time now
Hold tight for dear life
Reader-friends, we have now reached the end of our haiku journey together. I had this wild notion to put sixteen haiku I wrote on a rainy afternoon onto this blog one at a time, and I really appreciate the response I’ve gotten from you all. So appreciative, in fact, that I have a little bonus for you.
Right now, I am putting together a collection of all the haiku I’ve published here on The Voracious Bibliophile and soon you’ll be able to have them all together. More to come on that later.
Thanks as always for being a faithful reader of The Voracious Bibliophile. If you like what you see, please like, comment, follow, and subscribe to my email list to get notified of new posts as soon as they drop. You can also email me at fred.slusher@thevoraciousbibliophile.com or catch me on Twitter and Instagram @voraciousbiblog. Keep reading the world, one page (or pixel) at a time.
I will love who loves me
I will love as much as I am loved
I will hate who hates me
I will feel nothing for everyone oblivious to me
I will stay indifferent to indifference
I will live hostile to hostility
I will make myself a passionate and eager lover
in response to passionate and eager love
I will be nobody’s fool
***Note: I received a free digital review copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.***
I must admit, before reading Basho’s Haiku Journeys I knew next to nothing about Matsuo Basho, the Japanese poet who lived in the seventeenth century and is credited with inventing the haiku. For those of you unfamiliar with the form, a haiku is a short-form poem most often containing seventeen syllables in three lines, with five in the first line, seven in the second line, and five in the third and last line. Most haiku are about nature and haiku purists insist that only haiku about nature can be considered true haiku, but the form has evolved to include other topics.
For most of his life, Basho lived a comfortable and cosmopolitan life in Edo, which was then the capital city of Japan. He made his living teaching and writing, but there was an unfulfilled longing inside him—to see more, to experience the vibrancy of life more fully. He lived in a hut outside Edo that his students had built for him, and one night it caught fire and burned to the ground.
Most people would feel devastated at the loss of all their earthly possessions, but Basho felt liberated. He wandered into the woods, basking in the elation he felt at his change in fortune. It was then he decided to adopt an itinerant lifestyle, beginning the first of what would become five long journeys. From 1684-1689, Basho would traverse the length of his country and write about the beauty of the natural world in books that would later become classics of Japanese literature.
This book is a must-purchase for children’s librarians, language arts teachers, and parents and guardians who want their children to be curious and creative citizens of the world.
Ng honors Basho by telling his story in haiku form and the result is nothing short of breathtaking. One of the hallmarks of a good book is that it leaves you wanting more and in that regard Ng has more than succeeded. Cassandra Rockwood Ghanem’s gorgeous hand-painted illustrations add depth and clarity to Basho’s story. This book is a must-purchase for children’s librarians, language arts teachers, and parents and guardians who want their children to be curious and creative citizens of the world.
Basho’s Haiku Journeys is due to be released on October 19th, 2021 by Stone Bridge Press and is now available to preorder wherever books are sold.
Thanks as always for being a faithful reader of The Voracious Bibliophile. If you like what you see, please like, comment, follow, and subscribe to my email list to get notified of new posts as soon as they drop. You can also email me at fred.slusher@thevoraciousbibliophile.com or catch me on Twitter and Instagram @voraciousbiblog. Keep reading the world, one page (or pixel) at a time.
Long nights, short years. Forgiving
silence
When morning comes, and pain—
no one is a stranger, this whole world is your home.
More than the fuchsia funnels breaking out
of the crabapple tree, more than the neighbor’s
almost obscene display of cherry limbs shoving
their cotton candy-colored blossoms to the slate
sky of Spring rains, it’s the greening of the trees
that really gets to me. When all the shock of
white
and taffy, the world’s baubles and trinkets, leave
the pavement strewn with the confetti of
aftermath,
the leaves come. Patient, plodding, a green skin
growing over whatever winter did to us, a return
to the strange idea of continuous living despite
the mess of us, the hurt, the empty. Fine then,
I’ll take it, the tree seems to say, a new slick leaf
unfurling like a fist to an open palm, I’ll take it all.
Thanks as always for being a faithful reader of The Voracious Bibliophile. If you like what you see, please like, comment, follow, and subscribe to my email list to get notified of new posts as soon as they drop. You can also email me at fred.slusher@thevoraciousbibliophile.com or catch me on Twitter and Instagram @voraciousbiblog. Keep reading the world, one page (or pixel) at a time.
Last night I watched the drag queen’s hip-pad
drift down her leg
and distort the full moon
of her figure. By dawn you won’t recall
how I hummed her song to you while you were
sleeping.
We call this a marriage, but it isn’t
called that
outside
this room. It isn’t called a thing. I’ve searched for
a word
that means what I mean it to - how we are a part
of the world as much as we are apart from it -
and it does not exist. Still, we make of this thing
an imitation, an effigy. Still, we make it each day
because we exist, weary phantom, as both the
flesh
and the illusion,
because we live together
even if we live as a drag queen does, drawing
applause from a world that holds her at bay.
In the Time of PrEP by Jacques J. Rancourt
Novena by Jacques J. Rancourt
Broken Spectre: Poems (due to be released on September 14th, 2021) by Jacques J. Rancourt
Thanks as always for being a faithful reader of The Voracious Bibliophile. If you like what you see, please like, comment, follow, and subscribe to my email list to get notified of new posts as soon as they drop. You can also email me at fred.slusher@thevoraciousbibliophile.com or catch me on Twitter and Instagram @voraciousbiblog. Keep reading the world, one page (or pixel) at a time.
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green
bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding
sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I
pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
It’s almost cliché to love Dylan Thomas at this point and what a shame that is. Do not go gentle into that good night is so popular because it is so profound, opening itself up to multiple interpretations. Thomas wrote it as his father was ill and dying, the poem’s urgency borne of both his current and impending grief.
If dreams are deferred and passions put aside for more pressing matters, the regret found at the end of a life not fully lived can drive a soul to despair and a mind to madness. You want to beg for more time and the plea falls on deaf ears.
There’s also a fair amount of regret expressed: Though wise men at their end know dark is right, / Because their words had forked no lightning they / Do not go gentle into that good night. Oxford Languages gives the definition of forked lightning as “lightning that is visible in the form of a branching line across the sky.” People who are facing death are forced to reckon with the way they’ve spent their time on earth, and part of this is measuring the impact of one’s words and deeds. If dreams are deferred and passions put aside for more pressing matters, the regret found at the end of a life not fully lived can drive a soul to despair and a mind to madness. You want to beg for more time and the plea falls on deaf ears.
What did you think about today’s poem? Do any lines strike you in particular? Let me know in the comments.
Thanks as always for being a faithful reader of The Voracious Bibliophile. If you like what you see, please like, comment, follow, and subscribe to my email list to get notified of new posts as soon as they drop. You can also email me at fred.slusher@thevoraciousbibliophile.com or catch me on Twitter and Instagram @voraciousbiblog. Keep reading the world, one page (or pixel) at a time.
I am a little world made cunningly
Of elements and an angelic sprite
But black sin hath betray’d to endless night
My world’s both parts, and on both parts must die.
You which beyond that heaven which was most high
Have found new spheres, and of new lands can write,
Pour new seas in mine eyes, that so I might
Drown my world with my weeping earnestly,
Or wash it, if it must be drown’d no more.
But oh it must be burnt; alas the fire
Of lust and envy have burnt it heretofore,
And made it fouler; let their flames retire,
And burn me O Lord, with a fiery zeal
Of thee and thy house, which doth in eating heal.
John Donne (1572-1631), in addition to being arguably England’s chief metaphysical poet, also served as a cleric in the Anglican Church. He was made Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral in 1621, where he spent the last decade of his life preaching and writing.
Thanks as always for being a faithful reader of The Voracious Bibliophile. If you like what you see, please like, comment, follow, and subscribe to my email list to get notified of new posts as soon as they drop. You can also email me at fred.slusher@thevoraciousbibliophile.com or catch me on Twitter and Instagram @voraciousbiblog. Keep reading the world, one page (or pixel) at a time.
I own my self, I own my leaving
Jorie Graham, Sea Change: Poems
I feel like Jorie Graham is one of those poets who just gets it. Her work seems to come from this wellspring of hidden and ancient knowledge, accessible only to a few people who are willing to dig, to seek, and then finally to see. I love this entire collection, but those eight words right there say everything. I own my self, I own my leaving. Carve that on my headstone, please. When birds are relieving themselves on my resting place, let these be the words that passersby can see.
Thanks as always for being a faithful reader of The Voracious Bibliophile. If you like what you see, please like, comment, follow, and subscribe to my email list to get notified of new posts as soon as they drop. You can also email me at fred.slusher@thevoraciousbibliophile.com or catch me on Twitter and Instagram @voraciousbiblog. Keep reading the world, one page (or pixel) at a time.
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