Museum of Haiku Literature Awards:
A Retrospective Selection
First published in Frogpond 40:2, Spring/Summer 2017, pages 85–94. Originally written in May of 2017. A PDF version of this essay is also available on the Haiku Society of America website.
The Haiku Society of America is rich with traditions. One of these traditions, worth celebrating with Frogpond’s fortieth anniversary in 2017, is the Museum of Haiku Literature Award, which has sought to recognize the best contribution to each issue of Frogpond, as selected by the HSA executive committee. The award began in 1981 by honoring the following poem by Tadashi Kondō from Frogpond 4:1:
hoping the shape
of the navel will be good
father cuts the cord
Since then, selections have included mostly individual haiku, but also tanka, haiku sequences, and renku or other linked verse. Each award has included a cash prize of $100. Total prize money has now exceeded $12,000, with funding provided by the Museum of Haiku Literature in Tokyo—a place well worth a visit if you ever have the chance. The Haiku Society of America and its members are grateful for this ongoing support.
Some Museum of Haiku Literature Award selections have remained memorable, others less so. Either way, they reflect the changing tastes and perspectives of HSA leadership, and may serve as a microcosm of English-language haiku development over the last several decades, as the following selections indicate (one selection per year, except as noted). The award continues to encourage the submission of each person’s best poems for publication in Frogpond. Long may this tradition continue.
1981
hot rock by the stream
each of the baby’s toeprints
evaporating
Ruth Yarrow
This poem is 5-7-5, though completely natural. Frogpond had by this time largely moved on from the predominance of 5-7-5 syllables found in early English-language haiku journals (the first such journal was American Haiku, which started in 1963, and Frogpond started in 1978).
1982
the old garden fence
now keeps the goldenrod
from the goldenrod
Paul O. Williams
1983
Against his coat
I brush my lips—
the silence of snowflakes
Alexis Kaye Rotella
1984
The sound of scissors
through quilt stuffing:
chill autumn moon
David LeCount
1985
The family gathered—
a tear of embalming fluid runs
from my brother’s eye
George Swede
1986
a steady rain
the dentist’s drill
turning to snow
Jane Reichhold
1987
still in the taste
of afternoon tea,
my grandmother’s brogue
Jerry Kilbride
1988
snow geese
Sarah discovers
the letter V
James Minor
The year 1988 saw the first selection of sequences for the Museum of Haiku Literature Award. In fact, each issue that year honored a sequence and an individual haiku, a practice that continued through 1992 for a total of five years.
1989
gone from the woods
the bird I knew
by song alone
Paul O. Williams
This selection is one of the classics of English-language haiku. It was written as a memorial poem for Nicholas Virgilio, who had died in January of 1989. Paul had never met Nick, but knew him only by the “song” of his poems in haiku journals.
1990
Into old pots and pans
thrown out in the backyard—
the musical rain
Tom Tico
In 1990 a sequence of tanka was selected, as was a renku, both for the first time. Back then, there were no separate journals for tanka, and thus tanka were welcomed in Frogpond. But later, with the emergence of various tanka journals, starting with Five Lines Down in 1994, and my founding of the Tanka Society of America in 2000, tanka came to be excluded from Frogpond.
1991
in a backyard
two women folding sunlight
into sheets
Sandra Fuhringer
One highlight from 1991 was the selection of a hundred-verse renku—something that has rarely been attempted in English. This renku was “Green-a-Glitter,” led by Hiroaki Sato, with twelve other writers.
1992
falling leaves
day by day
the house grows brighter
Peter Duppenthaler
The year 1992 also saw the selection of “Windswept Walk,” a kasen renku by thirty-six different participants, which I started. My calculation, in those days before everyone emailed, was that this renku traveled at least 32,000 miles by postal mail before it was completed, even though it stayed entirely within North America.
1993
the petals scatter
over graves swept
and unswept
Kohjin Sakamoto
1994
bird shadow
from tree shadow
to fence shadow
Christopher Herold
1995
leaving the park—
glimpses of cherry petals
on the soles of shoes
Ebba Story
1996
spring planting
her refusal
to compromise
Anthony J. Pupello
In 1996, Frogpond switched from four issues a year to three, making it a little harder to be honored, not just because there was one less award each year, but because the number of poems in each issue also increased. Indeed, Frogpond has grown in size, making the Museum of Haiku Literature Award a rarer and greater honor as the years go by.
1997
undefended:
in the cold rain
their snow fort
Tom Clausen
faint city stars . . .
the moth’s copper dust
in my palm
Ebba Story
Father’s funeral
Mother
suddenly small
Celia Stuart-Powles
porch swing
now and then a breeze
from the river
Robert Gibson
January thaw
the narrow path
fading away
Mark Alan Osterhaus
Of all the years that the Museum of Haiku Literature Award has been given, 1997 has been my favourite, thus I present all five selections (two each were selected for the first and second issues of the year).
1998
starry night—
biting into a melon
full of seeds
Yu Chang
1999
garden work—
talking to each other
back to back
Dimitar Anakiev
2000
snake hunting the boy sheds his shirt
Makiko
whistling
he
hangs
the
birdhouse
he
built
Carolyn Thomas
These two poems show variety—horizontal and vertical. A one-liner was first selected in 1981. Other one-liners have been chosen since that first year, mostly in the last decade, but fewer than five percent of all individual award selections have been one-liners.
2001
Independence Day—
I let him touch
a little bit of me
Fay Aoyagi
2002
spring plowing
a flock of blackbirds
turns inside out
Tom Painting
2003
dim light
the night nurse
describes the rain
Joann Klontz
2004
jackknifed rig
the trooper waves us
into wildflowers
Robert Gilliland
2005
spring evening
the children’s promise
not to get cold
Marcus Larsson
2006
circle of pines
God absent
from the wedding vows
Carolyn Hall
open scissors beside a vase of water
Eve Luckring
2007
distant singing—
the winter stars
almost touch
Ian Daw
2008
the glare off snow
has the run of the house
February’s extra day
Burnell Lippy
2009
bare maple
my daughter says
she’ll come back
Yu Chang
2010
woodsmoke . . .
the guilt of living
on
Roland Packer
2011
whale songs . . .
when did we stop
talking
Bud Cole
2012
summer heat
the strands of hair not captured
by her braid
Michael Ketchek
2013
silence of snow
we listen to the house
grow smaller
John Parsons
2014
her letter . . .
I’d forgotten
paper can cut
Tom Tico
2015
afternoon rain
emptying a book
of its words
Peter Newton
2016
third deployment
the unfinished dollhouse
beneath a sheet
Steve Hodge
What might we learn from the preceding poems, and from Museum of Haiku Literature award winners not represented here? We might expect to see a progression toward shorter poems, or perhaps toward more variation and experimentation, but I don’t think this occurs, at least not strongly. The sweep of this award may raise more questions than answers. The technique of juxtaposition seems to have been used steadily, but have seasonal references been changing? How are genders and nationalities represented? Should the award limit itself to individual haiku, or should sequences or linked verse again be recognized? And what about haibun and haiga? And are some of these poems possibly senryu rather than haiku? Perhaps a more psychological vein has emerged at times, but overall the selections seem steady and reliable in quality, even while the nature of committee selection may have overlooked possibly stronger poems in some issues. Ultimately, it is a pleasure to read and reread these poems, and that’s really what haiku—and the Museum of Haiku Literature Award—is all about.