1 January 2024
To wrap up the year, here are new additions I made to Graceguts in December 2023, although the first item isn’t actually on my website.
On my Deja-ku Diary blog, linked to from the Essays page, I’ve added “Countering Songs: Haiku Opposites,” an essay exploring haiku poems, mostly in pairs, that deliberately say opposite things. Please have a look.
On the Reports page, look for two new big additions—results of the 2022 Morioka International Haiku Contest, and the 2023 Morioka contest, along with my commentary on the top poems. I cojudged these two contests with Toshio Kimura, and I’ve now cojudged the contest for five years. The 2022 page also includes photos from the awards ceremony in Morioka, Japan.
The Poems About Haiku page now offers “After the Snow” and “In Har-Poen Tea Garden” by Linda Pastan, plus an untitled poem by Michael L. Evans.
On the Poems by Others page, check out “The Fish” by Elizabeth Bishop, “Archaic Torso of Apollo” by Rainer Maria Rilke (you must change your life), and “There Are Poems” by Linda Pastan. Such poetic marvels.
It’s essentially cosmetic, but I’ve added an image carousel to my Editing page, showing the covers of a few books I’ve edited.
The Heron’s Nest and Tinywords pages (available through Haiku and Senryu) now include the following additions:
missing you—
slowly the ceiling fan
comes to a stop
funeral procession—
a classic Harley
with an empty sidecar
Speaking of Christmas, which I wasn’t, new on the Haiku Christmas Cards page, available through Digressions, is my Y2K “Christmas” card, plus a 1998 red origami shirt “card,” with a poem that I’ve also added to my Christmasku page, available through Haiku and Senryu. ’Tis the season!
And over on my Rengay website, have a look at “Terminal Illness,” a rengay I wrote with Allyson Whipple, recently published in Presence.
Here’s to a superb 2024, and thank you, as always, for exploring Graceguts.