Bill Flowers • Bill's Haiku •

Alan Pizzarelli: Senriffic If you said the word "Haiku" to most ordinary people on the street, they would probably respond with, "God bless you." Most of us learned something about it in grammar school when we were told to clap our hands to the syllables 5-7-5, but in fact there's a lot more to a great haiku than that. Writing haiku is a precise skill that takes many years of studying and practice to achieve greatness. In haiku, every word and punctuation mark is crucial. To think the use of a semicolon can make or break a poem; now that's pressure! It's no secret that most haiku deal greatly with nature and emotion. That is, of course, the objective. The author is supposed to transport the reader to an exact place (not always the author's exact place) with exact smells, exact sounds, exact tastes, and an exact feeling. A truly great haiku can do for the reader in five seconds what a truly great movie can do in two hours. There are many forms of haiku. While most contemporary artists choose to ponder a frog jumping into the water, having an affair on a spouse, or waking up and unzipping the tent the morning after camping; one particular artist ponders moments such as a midget watering sunflowers and a mime giving his mute testimony in court. This poet's name is Alan Pizzarelli and he is a master of the haiku genre called senryu. Senryu is a comedic form of haiku. It is not meant to think deeply about, but just to laugh and enjoy the irony and sarcasm it brings. Pizzarelli says, ". . . if it is man within the world, it is haiku. If it is the world within the man, it is senryu." http://www.brooksbookshaiku.com/MillikinHaiku/haiku/writerprofiles/ReedOnPizzarelli.html To put this back into another movie perspective, Alan Pizzarelli is like the Jim Carrey of haiku. Alan Pizzarelli was born a Capricorn (like the author of this wonderful paper) on January 12, 1950 on a cold winter day in Newark, New Jersey. By the early 1970's he was under the tutelage and mentorship Harold Henderson. It was then that this genius of senryu was unleashed on the world. His first published work, Hike, came in 1984. Since, he has written such books as Baseball Poems, 1988; Amusement Park, 1990; Windswept Come, 1998; and the book to be covered in detail for the remainder of this essay, Senryu Magazine, 2001. Mr. Pizzarelli resides in New Jersey where "he squeezes out haiku like an automatic juicer." Senryu Magazine is the most side-busting hilarious piece of literature I have read in a long time. The ideas are so "outside the box" and creative that the reader has no idea what is coming next. The most devious aspect of the book is that it is formatted like a serious publication. It has a table of contents that is labeled "In this Issue" with a caricature of Alan Pizzarelli above it. From there it is comprised of mostly senryu (with one haibun) that Pizzarelli wrote but put under different names such as: Bushrod Wilcox, Sister Mary Crucible, and Pierce Needleman. Later he incorporates a section of translated haiku from Akira Kazuke, Eskimo Hokum, and Mangu Ga Abakwa, Wizard of the Tribal King. In this section he takes haiku written in another language and translates them to English. A few of my favorites from this section (pg 36-40) were: borrowing a cup of from the enemy camp what was I thinking? a frog looks at me as I take a dump by the old pond a polar bear shat on a glacier here comes dessert a monkey's hand reaches out of the soup a crescent moon This was a jocular section of the book because not only were the senryu funny, but the fake words they were translated from also created a laugh. The next section brings us book reviews. A few of the books he reviewed were The Monkey's Underwear where he discusses the author, Bob T. White's, anthropomorphism style of haiku stating ". . . an aggregation of carpenter termites is portrayed as union protestors picketing the hiring of an aardvark." An example from this book was: Building a dam, the old beaver muttering expletives. He also reviews Pigeons All Over The Place by Hilda Mockingbird. When he describes some of her poetry he states, "Many of these poems have accented vowel and movements and when read aloud, have the rhythmic beat of rap." His example of this was: piles of poop on the stoop, gotta pigeon coop say what? This was a funny section of the book because he brought to life books that do not exist and made every one unique and comical. His next section was a short one entitled "Books Received." He simply lists five different books that he has received and an example haiku from each one. A few examples are: One Hundred Farts by Hideki Soto a loud fart "what did you say?" she asks The Sheen of Linoleum by Dusty Blight after i wax the kitchen floor the dog runs in place This portion was short but funny. It was not as comical as the rest of the book, but still showed creativity. The last hilarious portion of the magazine was the "Letters" section where he writes letters from other people about the magazine's previous publication. In the "Call of Praise" letter, Hilda Mockingbird writes, "Thank you for the thought-provoking articles, which I plan to share with my parrots." In the "Another Source" letter, Woody McCarthy writes, "I laughed so hard that I wrenched the muscles in my neck and could only speak properly with the aid of a ventriloquist's dummy." One of the best quotes from these letters came from Stella Stoolmaker in the "Look Again" letter when she writes, "I especially delighted in the fun-filled photograph of a buck-toothed monkey, which provokes and explosive guffaw whenever I look at it." To this there is an Editor's Note stating, "...the cover photograph you are referring to is of the renowned senryu poet Kaai Fufuie." The "Letters" section again had great originality throughout every letter. Each one has an unexpected twist. His lexicon that he used to describe laughing was also uproarious as he used words like "cackle", "guffaw", and "chortle." This was one of my favorite sections. Although the other parts of the magazine were great, Alan Pizzarelli is known for his senryu. So here are responses to a few of my favorites from this particular publication: at the community hall one old lady shouts "BINGO" the others say "shit" SM pg. 7 This one gave me a vivid image of my grandma playing Bingo. She absolutely loved it! She had trained me ever since I could remember for the day I turned sixteen and was able to go play with her. I could just picture all the gray "poofed-up" hair in clean rows down every table. Not one face could be seen as they were all pointing down at, not one card, but a plethora of cards to increase their chances of winning. They have handfuls of neon bingo-stampers that they have just in case one runs out and good luck charms such as rabbit's feet, horseshoes, clovers, and stuffed animals that their grandkids gave them lined up in front of their cards. The smell of overused perfume is almost unbearable. Old women are frantically stamping numbers on their cards until on of them yells, "BINGO!" and the rest of them throw their stampers down in disgust. One of Alan Pizzarelli's greatest assets in writing senryu is his ability to write about irony. Here are a few that I enjoyed: "I'm serious!" he shouts wearing a pinwheel hat SM pg. 12 This one is just an ironic situation where nobody can take this guy seriously, even though he is very serious, because he is wearing a silly hat. I can just picture a bright spring day with a slight breeze and father outside playing with his kids. For fun his children put a pinwheel hat on them and he plays along. The children then do something they're not supposed to, such as attack their little brother, and he yells at them, but they can't take him seriously because the breeze is blowing the pinwheel on his hat and they think it's hilarious. on a bicycle built for two the schizophrenic SM pg. 18 This one is funny because of the irony as well. It's is never stated that the schizophrenic is riding alone; we just add that in ourselves because he is a schizophrenic. This just goes to show how much fun readers of haiku have filling in their own thoughts. We were given one incomplete thought and yet, I'll bet most people pictured a crazy man riding by himself on a tandem bicycle. the dog pretends to run after the stick I throw SM pg. 27 1 really enjoyed this one because of its irony. Usually the dog chases the stick that someone pretends to throw. I pictured my old dog, Benny, who wouldn't chase anything because he had an attitude that he was better than everyone else. If you threw something for him to chase, he would simply look at you as if to say, "Are you serious?" Then he would walk away. Pizzarelli also has some clever forms of writing senryu placing the letters and words to create visual images. Here is one of my favorites: hOOt     e     r     s SM pg. 29 This one was an outstanding form because it is designed in the shape of a woman's body with the two "O's" obviously being the "hooters." Many of the different visual forms of writing haiku that I've seen have not appealed to me, but this one, in its simplicity, was very amusing, I like the way the "O's" are capitalized so that they are highlighted and made to get the visual image of bigger breasts. Alan Pizzarelli is truly a master of senryu. He uses his wit and humor along with his knowledge of haiku to create some of the best senryu ever written. He is the bar to be met for all present and future senryu writers. But he gives the wise advice, "...one must have both a natural ability as well as many years of study and practice to develop the skill." http://www.brooksbookshaiku.com/MillikinHaiku/haiku/writerprofiles/ReedOnPizzarelli.html This, again, proves that haiku is not about clapping your hands to syllables; it's about putting the reader in a moment and letting them lose themselves in it, whether it's inspirational, moving, or just plain funny. —Bill Flowers