My signature tanka “how you heave up…”

 

how you heave up

to the height of my eyes

pull up this darkness

and serve me tender dawn

O Sea, I want to know

 

cattails January 2016***Editor’s choice

 

Whoever might say that tanka isn’t “poetic”, hasn’t read this one by Alegria Imperial from Canada. As an Editor’s Choice, I selected it because Alegria’s words build from line 1 to a crescendo in line 5. This is comparable to the technique an experienced singer uses from a slow quiet start to a grand finale at song’s end. Alegria’s tanka is filled with yūgen, a Japanese word pertaining to a profound awareness of the universe, which evokes feelings that are inexplicably deep and too mysterious for words.

 

—UHTS cattailstanka editor an’ya, USA

 

 

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“angelus bells” and “being there”: finding a treasure

 

I’ve been browsing through my files and found this treasure that I have forgotten, buried as it is in my daily-writing years. I’ve slowed down a bit, especially on haiku, feeling like I’m skidding into a meltdown. I seem more productive with my mainstream/innovative/contemporary poems more accepted by only a couple of editors these days. But I’m amazed no end when I find my old works especially when it has been picked up and reviewed as Kathy Uyen Nguyen did to my haiku and haibun at her blog Origami Lotus Stone seven years ago. And my heart sinks…Thank you again, so much Kathy!

Wednesday, August 22, 2012

August Blog Bash, Day 22 – Alegria Imperial @gwhisp

Welcome to the Debut of the August Blog Bash 2012!

I am very much excited and honored to be hosting this new feature series… and it is a great way to end the summer!  This Blog Bash is an impressive talent showcase of poets, artists, and writers/authors from all walks of life.  For each day of this month, one individual will be featured here on this blog, at Origami Lotus Stones, my Twitter (hashtag will be #augblogbash), my Facebook community page, and on my blog page on Writing Our Way Home.  Please be patient while I post on all platforms.

**Please note that all authors/artists have given me permission to post their work on the following platforms/sites I have just mentioned.  Please do not plagiarize, modify, reproduce, or distribute any work without permission from the original authors/artists.  Thank you!** If you are interested in participating in this Blog Bash, feel free to check out the details here.

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Today’s Feature:  Alegria Imperial

This gorgeous haiku presents a new perspective of church bells tolling with words in minimalistic form.  Through this haiku, the reader can feel the heartbeat of every bell toll as well as his/her own heart beating along with the bells themselves.  I also love the fact that this haiku leaves a subtle touch of the “just enough” sensation for the reader to put his/her imagination into the haiku itself.  For instance, perhaps it’s a pair of newlyweds who’s just swapped vows.  However, notice that these are “angelus bells.”  Imperial was very precise with this choice of words.  It denotes something worthy of praise–like an angelic praise that is continuous and prolonged (“pealing”), which really does turn one’s pulse up a notch!  I also like the word play here too.  “Pealing” should not be confused with “peeling.”  If the angelus bells are “peeling / in heartbeats,” I would be perhaps thinking about peeling off flower petals such as bell flowers or bleeding hearts (and maybe sticking a flower behind my ear), which would make a wonderful transition between bells and flowers!

I am very excited to say that this is the first haibun presented through this August Blog Bash series!  This haibun presents a powerful experience of just simply paying attention to what’s around you and just “being there” in the moment.  There are so many lovely words and phrases here such as “the way the leaves sway and retract” and “the constancy of flowers.”  The stream-of-consciousness style in this haibun is steady and soothing like the river itself.  The delightful thing is that you realize that everything ends in the river when the haibun ended with a “river” haiku.  Both prose and haiku complement one another well.  I love how the prose ended with a floating “when,” which leads cleverly into “shifting tides” (wonderful syntax here), so that there seem to be no break (in the flow) between prose or haiku, even though visually, the reader can see the prose and the haiku separately on the page.  This haibun is very lyrical and meditative in composition and tone. Gorgeous work, Alegria!  Thank you so much for sharing and being one of the contributors!  And many, many thanks for your patience and understanding with what I’m going through now. (NB:  Text arrangement on MS PowerPoint by Kathy Uyen Nguyen.  Please note that text/graphics will be in this format.)

To check out more of Alegria’s work, you can click on the following link(s): Jornales (blog) Filipineses (blog) @gwhisp(Twitter) Please do promote this new feature on Facebook, Twitter, etc.!  Thanks so much for all the support!  And look, my blog now has buttons (see below) to make your life easier!  Come back tomorrow for a new artist/author feature!

 

being there

…it is the rhythm that’s constant it seems and not the stillness—the way the wind pulls and withdraws and the way the leaves sway and retract or how the clouds gather into masses and then dissipate into air or is it merely the eye that misses the jagged movements and edges and catches merely that moment when the rhythm shows and reassures us as in the constancy of flowers even as petals begin to brown and curl in the edges and fall, stripping the branches of their name because all we recall is their being there as in moments we have flowed into still flow into like on our early morning walks when

shifting tides–

the river unloading burdens

for us to decode

 

LYNX XXVII:I February 2012