Welcome to the second Autumn/Winter issue of
Autumn Moon Haiku Journal. The quality of the submissions has continued
to be important and I thank those who submitted and were accepted for
sharing their haiku moments with others around the world. In looking
over these and other submitted haiku, a few issues occurred to me: haiku
seems to be based on a balance between sensibility and phrasing.
Phrasing should be poetic and not simply conversational. Haiku phrasing
should not be overly flowery (which verges on sentimentality) nor overly
telegraphic (which even results in poor English), undermining both
haiku as poetry and haiku as clearly expressed insight. Sensibility
expresses a haiku moment. As it is in much poetry, haiku should be
almost musical in its nature. One of the reasons I have included the
original language the haiku was written in, is to give the reader,
perhaps, a sense of the music inherent in the given language. The music
reflects the heightened experience that the poet had in his or her haiku
moment. Sensibility is how each individual poet engages with the world.
Although it is the same world that each poet engages, their sense of
feeling, though often familiar, is decidedly their own. When these
issues are considered and expressed by a distinct sensibility, the
result leads to what most would consider great poetry.
Bruce Ross, December 2018
vespers –
a flock of crows crossing
the valley
vecernie –
un stol de ciori
traversînd valea Maria Tirenescu, Romania
https://www.autumnmoonhaiku.com/
