Travis Meisenheimer • Travis' Haiku •

The author I chose is Gary Steinberg and the collection I read and am responding to is from a selection he sent to me. The haiku from a self-described “village idiot” as Gary Steinberg describes himself is anything but the ramblings of an idiot. His haiku reflect the deep thinking of an educated philosopher (he earned a degree in philosophy) and also have the same qualities that many of the traditional Japanese haiku poets have, in my opinion. I have found his haiku to be both difficult and easy with his haiku taking one to places sometimes not found in the haiku world. But this isn't really that surprising because when asked about his inspiration he responded with how people in general are troubled or messed up and yet have the innate ability within to step outside this conditioning and find freedom from the suffering. In an email interview I asked him why he chose haiku and did it choose him or he haiku. He replied: “I think I chose it more than in chose me . . . at least initially. I have a long-term meditation practice and a deep appreciation for the poetry of the wisdom traditions. I decided I would become a haiku poet. As ridiculous as that may sound. The part where haiku chose me is where I matured as a poet, and I started seeing haiku in life as opposed to trying to simply manipulate words to create poems.” This attitude toward haiku perhaps isn't often found; in fact an attitude like this isn't often found in many areas where an individual has such a respect for the tradition and what came before and then actively makes it a part of their lives. This feeling is especially evident in the haiku that I have enjoyed and appreciated from Gary's collection. winter rain I finger each seam on the baseball When coming across a haiku like this, one gets this down-to-earth essence and the sense that the narrator has a deep longing for the days of summer and baseball. One can almost feel the stitching in the seams as the narrator turns the ball over in his hand while daydreaming about nothing, or everything during a winter rain. We also get what Gary describes as everything being “in flux and thus impermanent.” “The irony of it is that what we do not like now, we may like again soon. What seems very desirable in this moment is apt to lose its luster in the not so distant future.” This is the essence of the haiku moment and this is a core element in all of his haiku. summer dusk a pebble falls from the tire tread Gary has the perfect sense of timing when to step outside of the moment and let the experiences come, “a vehicle for rendering a clearly realized image just as the image appears at the moment of aesthetic realization...” (Yasuda, 31). Here we are invited to experience the aesthetic moment that happens when one has a “thousands words” to say but can't speak. We can feel for this person even though we don't quite know why. This is the power the moment has for us. fireflies her tongue catches my lip Much like the Japanese masters, Gary incorporates the human element alongside the natural. In this example I get the feeling of a summer's evening spent outside, somewhere secluded or intimate. That one word “fireflies” communicates to me everything natural about summer—the heat, long days, evenings spent outside—and yet we have this whole world of action and intimacy inside this summer evening. We can feel both the heat of summer and of the moment, the longness of the days and the longing for intimate contact and we also get a sense of the urgency of the moment. We only have light enough and for as long as the firefly light lasts (half a second?) and this is the real beauty in this haiku that the image lasts only a moment and then it is gone, much like the real moment. Scotch Neat The nuances of ice: I've learned them well being that all these breakups occur in the depths of winter. There is the irony of fresh snow when it surrounds a house of dis-ease. There is hail, louder than the slamming door. And the cubed ice, clinking inside of 'her' vodka. Taken in just the right dosage to numb 'her' pain but never enough to let on who she's been with. the sound of sleet when there's nothing left to say This is the one that started my interest in Gary Steinberg. I don't know why I liked this so much other than I had never seen a haiku with a paragraph of prose before it. It adds to the haiku moment in a way that isn't normally there and also lets you feel more precisely what the author is feeling. Alone, the one line haiku is great. It sums up the frustration and anger that we all feel from time to time when we are so angry at someone that we do not want to speak to them about why we are angry at them. This haiku is so full of sound yet it speaks of silence. The sound of the sleet hitting the windows and walls of the house is the only thing we hear and in hearing this sound we also get the silence of the man and the woman. This uncanny sense of the moment is evident in his poetics. When asked about his poetics, he responded with: “I tend to lean towards brevity. Most of my poems are less than 13 syllables and I usually strive for 11 or 12. I avoid punctuation where possible, not as a rule but as a personal preference. Most of my poems intermix a strong human element with some aspect of the natural world. If possible, I write in one line though I let the necessity of the poem dictate. Often, to create a break it is better served to split the lines.” I would have to add that this emphasis on brevity is certainly evident in his collection as many of his haiku were one-liners and nearly all had a short syllable count. I believe this adds in the emphasis on the moment as it stresses the sense of “now” and how quick a moment lasts before it is past its time. moonless night while changing the tire the taste of road salt The last line adds in the effect of perhaps a car driving by and instead of helping out splashing the tire changer. I enjoy this one because of the off-beat seasonal element in “road salt.” I feel this adds a lot to the haiku because of the “saltiness” and perhaps the reason for having road salt (icy roads). The first two lines set the place and image of someone changing their tire during a dark night and then the third one just throws this new sensory image at us—much like a passing car would throw salt onto someone changing a tire on the side of the road. Though I had a chance to interview Mr. Steinberg, I did not ask him about the meaning behind any of his haiku, but I did ask him what his muse was and he responded, “the innate ability within everyone to step outside of that conditioning and find freedom from suffering.” This answer does not surprise me because a good portion of his haiku are about an experience someone has stepping out of the normal senses, a cutting away from the normal to experience something different. Gary Steinberg’s haiku have appeared in RAW NerVZ, FrogPond, The Heron's Nest, the last 4 Red Moon anthologies, and recently in New Resonances 3. He lives with his son in Mahwah, NJ.