One: First, do no harm.
Easier said than done. It
bleeds touch, breath, sight.
Rule two: All else is
commentary. Smoke, mirrors
tricks and slight of hand.
Three: It will all work
out. How? When? In my lifetime?
Clock is tick, tick, tick....
In all this, silence.
Refuse to engage, answer.
Guilt, wisdom or fear?
Can I borrow a
cup of sugar, book, scissors,
someone else's life?
by robyn
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Monday, September 21, 2009
The Rime of the Ancient Bicyclist
See! Here! I have an
albatross upon my head.
Not only there, but
around my neck, too,
squeezing the breath out...
by robyn
93 characters
albatross upon my head.
Not only there, but
around my neck, too,
squeezing the breath out...
by robyn
93 characters
Sunday, September 20, 2009
In Pittsburgh, It Takes Just 17 Syllables to Tell the G-20 How You Really Feel
From the wall street journal, sept 17, 2009
http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB125303596299912693-lMyQjAxMDI5NTEzODAxMzg1Wj.html
Haiku Contest Draws the Proud, the Lyrical and the Annoyed; 'We Won't Be Greeting You'
Tanja Cilia, a newspaper columnist in Malta who hates politics but loves the Japanese poetic form known as haiku, recently found the perfect outlet for those diverse feelings.
She entered Pittsburgh's G-20 haiku contest. Conceived by Pittsburgh Filmmakers, a nonprofit that promotes film and other arts in the city, the competition sought the best haiku inspired by next week's summit of the Group of 20 industrialized and developing nations.
"I tend to enter any competition that involves haiku," says Ms. Cilia, a 50-year-old who has written haiku on a range of topics, including how to teach physics to a dog. Her entry for the G-20:
Matinee idols
At the G-20 Summit...
See them in Pittsburgh!
Ms. Cilia says meetings like the G-20 are "a lot of hot air," but she's glad it gave her a chance to put pen to paper.
The haiku contest isn't the only event linked to the meeting. There also will be a beer summit, which includes tasting beers from G-20 summit countries, and a project to let people flash messages at the delegates, using Morse code, from the windows of an office building across the river from the summit. Messages sent to a Twitter account called "heyg20" will be translated into a "multicolored Morse code light show, illuminating not only the night sky but also the concerns of the world's citizens," says Osman Khan, a Pittsburgh-based artist coordinating the effort.
Mr. Khan says the fact that few people can read Morse code is actually in keeping with the larger symbolism of the project: "It's the same lack of transparency that the summit is showing us."
Haiku is a traditional Japanese poetry style that today is written in more than 60 languages, according to some estimates. In its English adaptation, it often contains 17 syllables over three lines of verse. The first and third lines contain five syllables, the second line, seven.
The nearly 160 poems submitted in the Pittsburgh contest include hopeful messages, congenial welcomes, Pittsburgh Steeler cheers and a mix of political messages and pleas for peace. Some appear to disregard the G-20 theme entirely, like one composed by a onetime inmate at the Allegheny County Jail:
I can't feel my face
I thought it's been a whole day
Still the awful stench
Poet Sandra Gould Ford conducted the poetry program last winter for county-jail inmates where that haiku was composed. She says she submitted about a dozen haiku that she thought were particularly good. The one about the "awful stench" is "quirky," she says.
Richard Engel, the marketing director for Pittsburgh Filmmakers, says no haiku was disqualified for being off message, or even for having an irregular syllable count. If a haiku "is good, it's good," he says.
There's no prize for the winner, either -- only what Mr. Engel says is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to have a haiku displayed on a theater marquee a few blocks from where the summit is being held. The spot will be visible to leaders of the world's biggest economies. Among the participants: President Barack Obama, Chinese President Hu Jintao and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Some poets expressed frustration with the inconveniences and traffic problems expected to arise from the security clampdown attending the summit. Mary M. Shirey, a 77-year-old retired high-school English teacher, wrote:
Known for friendliness,
We won't be greeting you,
Thanks to congestion.
Other entries, like this one from Jean Kirby, a Pittsburgh software engineer, were more earnest:
what country am I
dying of hunger and thirst
number twenty one
Ms. Kirby, who says she just started writing haiku this past year, is thinking of having that one printed on T-shirts.
Jim Kacian, founder of the Haiku Foundation in Winchester, Va., and author of 14 books, mainly of haiku, notes that Pittsburgh won't be the first place where haiku has appeared on theater marquees. A 1994 program, he says, put haiku on theater marquees in New York's Times Square.
Over the past quarter century, Mr. Kacian says, haiku increasingly has been used for social commentary. Mr. Kacian hasn't seen any of the Pittsburgh submissions, but he doesn't have high expectations.
"We recognize there's Little League baseball and Major League Baseball," he says. Pittsburgh's contest "would be Little League."
Don't tell that to Madelyn Rice. She's 11 and just started sixth grade in the Pittsburgh suburb of Mount Lebanon. Maddy, as she likes to be called, says she appreciates all kinds of poetry, but thinks writing haiku is special "because it's not like writing normal poetry, where it usually needs to rhyme." Her message to the world leaders is that they need to promote peace, an idea that came to her, she says, from watching the nightly news. Her entry:
Countries having peace
This is just a dream right now
But it can happen
The winning haiku, to be announced Thursday, was penned by Angele Ellis, a Pittsburgh community activist and author of a book of poetry delving into issues of her Arab-American identity. She wrote:
we harvest leaflets
blown like autumn leaves: our hopes
speak truth to power
One haiku that didn't take home the gold came from local Manny Theiner. His entry had a hometown feel, and included the word "yinz," Pittsburgh slang for "y'all."
No movies tonight
The drama is in the streets
See yinz on Monday
Mr. Theiner, an organizer of live-music events, declined to discuss his haiku, telling a reporter who reached him by phone, "If you aren't calling to tell me I won, there's nothing for me to talk about."
An Ode to the G-20
The nonprofit group Pittsburgh Filmmakers has solicited G-20-themed haiku ahead of the Sept. 24 to Sept. 25 meeting there. Here are some entries:
Hey you 20 peeps
Please make wise decisions now
Human needs not greed
--Jude Vachon
World leaders arrive
Protesters are also here
Pittsburgh welcomes all
--Carmen J Biondo
G-20 arrives
Autumn global agreements
World markets survive
--Denis Good
Ten billion people --
Environmental debate
Won't feed all those mouths
--Stanley Harms
A Haiku Contest?
Perhaps I should enter it.
Nah, I'm too sleepy.
--Adam MacDonald
Neighbors of the world
Welcome to our three waters
Share with us your peace
--Kelly Lynskey
We may lose our jobs
But no matter what happens
We won't lose our hope
--Joshua Hoey
Lights, camera, action!
Will change make its grand entrance?
Now? For Good? For All?
--Josh Futrell
World leaders meeting
Visiting here and bringing
Protests and traffic
--Iysha Evelyn
Our hard times have passed
We've continued to stand strong
Like our steel, we'll last
--Nichole McGuire
Pittsburgh is our town
This week, it bridges the world
Welcome, one and all!
--Jamie Fritz
http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB125303596299912693-lMyQjAxMDI5NTEzODAxMzg1Wj.html
Haiku Contest Draws the Proud, the Lyrical and the Annoyed; 'We Won't Be Greeting You'
Tanja Cilia, a newspaper columnist in Malta who hates politics but loves the Japanese poetic form known as haiku, recently found the perfect outlet for those diverse feelings.
She entered Pittsburgh's G-20 haiku contest. Conceived by Pittsburgh Filmmakers, a nonprofit that promotes film and other arts in the city, the competition sought the best haiku inspired by next week's summit of the Group of 20 industrialized and developing nations.
"I tend to enter any competition that involves haiku," says Ms. Cilia, a 50-year-old who has written haiku on a range of topics, including how to teach physics to a dog. Her entry for the G-20:
Matinee idols
At the G-20 Summit...
See them in Pittsburgh!
Ms. Cilia says meetings like the G-20 are "a lot of hot air," but she's glad it gave her a chance to put pen to paper.
The haiku contest isn't the only event linked to the meeting. There also will be a beer summit, which includes tasting beers from G-20 summit countries, and a project to let people flash messages at the delegates, using Morse code, from the windows of an office building across the river from the summit. Messages sent to a Twitter account called "heyg20" will be translated into a "multicolored Morse code light show, illuminating not only the night sky but also the concerns of the world's citizens," says Osman Khan, a Pittsburgh-based artist coordinating the effort.
Mr. Khan says the fact that few people can read Morse code is actually in keeping with the larger symbolism of the project: "It's the same lack of transparency that the summit is showing us."
Haiku is a traditional Japanese poetry style that today is written in more than 60 languages, according to some estimates. In its English adaptation, it often contains 17 syllables over three lines of verse. The first and third lines contain five syllables, the second line, seven.
The nearly 160 poems submitted in the Pittsburgh contest include hopeful messages, congenial welcomes, Pittsburgh Steeler cheers and a mix of political messages and pleas for peace. Some appear to disregard the G-20 theme entirely, like one composed by a onetime inmate at the Allegheny County Jail:
I can't feel my face
I thought it's been a whole day
Still the awful stench
Poet Sandra Gould Ford conducted the poetry program last winter for county-jail inmates where that haiku was composed. She says she submitted about a dozen haiku that she thought were particularly good. The one about the "awful stench" is "quirky," she says.
Richard Engel, the marketing director for Pittsburgh Filmmakers, says no haiku was disqualified for being off message, or even for having an irregular syllable count. If a haiku "is good, it's good," he says.
There's no prize for the winner, either -- only what Mr. Engel says is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to have a haiku displayed on a theater marquee a few blocks from where the summit is being held. The spot will be visible to leaders of the world's biggest economies. Among the participants: President Barack Obama, Chinese President Hu Jintao and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Some poets expressed frustration with the inconveniences and traffic problems expected to arise from the security clampdown attending the summit. Mary M. Shirey, a 77-year-old retired high-school English teacher, wrote:
Known for friendliness,
We won't be greeting you,
Thanks to congestion.
Other entries, like this one from Jean Kirby, a Pittsburgh software engineer, were more earnest:
what country am I
dying of hunger and thirst
number twenty one
Ms. Kirby, who says she just started writing haiku this past year, is thinking of having that one printed on T-shirts.
Jim Kacian, founder of the Haiku Foundation in Winchester, Va., and author of 14 books, mainly of haiku, notes that Pittsburgh won't be the first place where haiku has appeared on theater marquees. A 1994 program, he says, put haiku on theater marquees in New York's Times Square.
Over the past quarter century, Mr. Kacian says, haiku increasingly has been used for social commentary. Mr. Kacian hasn't seen any of the Pittsburgh submissions, but he doesn't have high expectations.
"We recognize there's Little League baseball and Major League Baseball," he says. Pittsburgh's contest "would be Little League."
Don't tell that to Madelyn Rice. She's 11 and just started sixth grade in the Pittsburgh suburb of Mount Lebanon. Maddy, as she likes to be called, says she appreciates all kinds of poetry, but thinks writing haiku is special "because it's not like writing normal poetry, where it usually needs to rhyme." Her message to the world leaders is that they need to promote peace, an idea that came to her, she says, from watching the nightly news. Her entry:
Countries having peace
This is just a dream right now
But it can happen
The winning haiku, to be announced Thursday, was penned by Angele Ellis, a Pittsburgh community activist and author of a book of poetry delving into issues of her Arab-American identity. She wrote:
we harvest leaflets
blown like autumn leaves: our hopes
speak truth to power
One haiku that didn't take home the gold came from local Manny Theiner. His entry had a hometown feel, and included the word "yinz," Pittsburgh slang for "y'all."
No movies tonight
The drama is in the streets
See yinz on Monday
Mr. Theiner, an organizer of live-music events, declined to discuss his haiku, telling a reporter who reached him by phone, "If you aren't calling to tell me I won, there's nothing for me to talk about."
An Ode to the G-20
The nonprofit group Pittsburgh Filmmakers has solicited G-20-themed haiku ahead of the Sept. 24 to Sept. 25 meeting there. Here are some entries:
Hey you 20 peeps
Please make wise decisions now
Human needs not greed
--Jude Vachon
World leaders arrive
Protesters are also here
Pittsburgh welcomes all
--Carmen J Biondo
G-20 arrives
Autumn global agreements
World markets survive
--Denis Good
Ten billion people --
Environmental debate
Won't feed all those mouths
--Stanley Harms
A Haiku Contest?
Perhaps I should enter it.
Nah, I'm too sleepy.
--Adam MacDonald
Neighbors of the world
Welcome to our three waters
Share with us your peace
--Kelly Lynskey
We may lose our jobs
But no matter what happens
We won't lose our hope
--Joshua Hoey
Lights, camera, action!
Will change make its grand entrance?
Now? For Good? For All?
--Josh Futrell
World leaders meeting
Visiting here and bringing
Protests and traffic
--Iysha Evelyn
Our hard times have passed
We've continued to stand strong
Like our steel, we'll last
--Nichole McGuire
Pittsburgh is our town
This week, it bridges the world
Welcome, one and all!
--Jamie Fritz
Thursday, September 3, 2009
Tears are Salt Rain
When you cry, voiceless
How can I? What do I? [deep breath]
You rip my heart out,
Chasing yours, trying, wanting
anything to be your net.
by robyn, 137 characters
How can I? What do I? [deep breath]
You rip my heart out,
Chasing yours, trying, wanting
anything to be your net.
by robyn, 137 characters
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
