1 July 2023

With the 17th biennial Haiku North America conference taking place in Cincinnati, Ohio from June 28 to July 2, 2023, followed by the Tanka Society of America’s Tanka Monday on July 3, I was busy in June with numerous preparations (I’m a director of the HNA nonprofit corporation, and president of TSA). Nevertheless, I managed to make the following additions to Graceguts in this busy month:

• The biggest addition is “Going to Gengorō: Senryu Dichotomies” on the Essays page, recently published in Frogpond (June 2023). Here I assess various poetic dichotomies, such as nature vs. human, in the entire body of poems in Gengorō’s 2003 senryu book, Distant Frogs.

• Also on the Essays page, I’ve updated “Haibun: Definitions of Light” to solidify the reference to Carolyn Kizer publishing in 1962 what I believe to be the first haibun in English (it was not Jack Cain, as has been widely believed for many years, since his haibun was published in 1964). This essay now also mentions tanka prose, and will soon be reprinted in Contemporary Haibun Online.

• In “Countin’ Up the Hits,” on the Poems page, I’ve added Donald Glover’s iconic “This Is America” video.

• On the Neverending Story page, available through Haiku and Senryu, check out a tanka of mine, newly translated into Chinese by Chen-ou Liu.

• New to the Videos page (although it’s audio only) is “Eastside Poets: RASP at Hugo House,” a recording of the 25 April 2023 reading by six Redmond Association of Spokenword (RASP) poets at Hugo House in Seattle, Washington, hosted by Jasmine Plaskon. Readers were Iz White, Catherine Kyle, Balin Lusby, Kari Tai (with interpretive dance), Darren Nordlie, Jeanine Walker, and me.

• I have numerous new additions to the Poems About Haiku page, as follows:

  • • “Spring Semester” by Amy M. Alvarez

    • “Upgrades” by Troy Jollimore

    • “As Crickets Chip Away the Light” by Michael Kriesel

    • “Poems into Guns” by Rick Lupert

    • “Poem in Search of a Horse” by Hayden Saunier

    • “John Berryman Used to Sway” by Donna Spector

    • “Asterisks” by Martin Vest

• And in case you need a distraction, the poets section of my Digressions page for “Famous People I’ve Met” now includes Dana Gioia, Jack Prelutsky, Sonia Sanchez, and Bob Taft (and his wife Hope). Not sure why I never listed at least the first three of them earlier.

• Meanwhile, I have seven new additions to my Rengay website, as follows, the first six of which were recently published in what may well be the final issue of the rengay journal Tandem:

  • • “A Day in D.C.” with Bill Waters (added to the City Rengay page)

    • “Born Free” with Sherry Grant

    • “Happy Ending” with Kathabela Wilson and Sharon Yofan

    • “Pushing Daisies” with Wilda Morris

    • “Spooked” with Jackie Chou and Richard Tice

    • “The Towers that Be” with Alan S. Bridges and Brad Bennett

    • “Catching the Sky” with Brad Bennett and Alan S. Bridges (in Frogpond)