Harriot West’s Minimalist Haibun

May 3, 2026 ~ Ray Rasmussen ~ Leave a comment

Writing is not an exercise in excision,
it’s a journey into sound.
                       ~ E.B. White

If they wish to have their work published, most successful haibun poets understand the importance of revising, and revising, and revising that first inspirational splash of words onto the page. E.B. White, one of the great storytellers of the 20th century and co-author of the famous “The Elements of Style,” notes that revision is not mere excising but wordsmithing until a piece resonates.

Most published haibun contain far fewer words than nearly all closely related literary genres — memoirs, personal essays, travel accounts, short stories. Even most published flash fiction pieces I’ve read are longer than the average published haibun.

Given this, it’s odd that the term “minimalist haibun” appears in the literature at all, as if most published haibun weren’t already minimalist — a paragraph or two of prose coupled with a single haiku. Yet Harriot West’s published haibun are among the shortest and most resonant I’ve encountered in haiku-genre journals. They have just enough prose to present a storyline married with a haiku that steps out and completes the story in an important way.

With this in mind, I explore several of West’s haibun to consider what she achieves with so few words. The three I’ve selected have different storylines, suggesting that theme and story alone don’t account for the effect.

Harriot West

Maybe

he’s looking at me but I can’t be sure. I feign interest in the drummer’s solo, slide my index finger down the inside of my lover’s arm

candlelight
the horn player’s
swollen lips

The Way Things Were

There she is on eBay—the doll mother never let me have—poor Barbie, dismissed in the house where I grew up as cheap, not for the plastic she was made of but for her perky in-your-face breasts.

sepia shadows
a young girl tugs
at her tee shirt

What Matters

You call to say your husband is dying. “He has lost the will to live.” After a pause, you apologize for the cliché. I’m unsure what to say. People die every day—it’s hardly worth the effort to put his struggle into fresh language. Rather save your strength for the constant changing of sheets, the preparation of small meals left uneaten, endless phone calls from well-meaning friends, and the gentle swabbing of his parched lips.

after the funeral
slowly rolling socks
into pairs

Commentary:

The Issues to be covered are whether shortness and succinctness are the defining characteristics of minimalist work and whether such minimal work can have the aural/poetic quality suggested in White’s aphorism. In addition, I explore some of the more frequently mentioned characteristics of haibun composition to see what it is that makes West’s poems sing.

Short and Succinct:

Numerous writers have stated that haibun prose should be short with just enough text to convey the writer’s intent. Consider as examples the following terms: “terse” (Paul Conneally), “brief and concise,” (Jim Norton), “short and crisp” (Ken Jones), “economical in wording” (W.F. Owen).1 Shortness might be defined by the number of words and, as some have suggested, the length of sentences.

West’s “Maybe” has 34 words; “The Way Things Were,” 52; and “What Matters,” 84. Contrast these with a recent issue of Haibun Today (8:1) where 48 haibun average 166 words and Contemporary Haibun Online (9:4) where 67 haibun average 141 words. “Maybe” with 34 words would be the shortest piece published in either issue.

A passage by Ken Jones emphasizes both shortness and succinctness by discussing how best to avoid being long-winded:

The most common mark of the amateur is to try too hard, with fruity, overblown writing, sinking under the weight of its adjectives. . . . (Haibun) sentences are often short and crisp with an easy-going flow, and may eschew the niceties of grammar to achieve this effect. Abstract ideas and opinions, and anything else that is writer-centric have no place. If you want to write about love or any other such emotion, then the feeling needs to be expressed in appropriate imagery drawn from experience and not by simply expressing your thoughts about the matter or by creating a fictional romance story (emphasis mine).2

Notably, Jones is not calling for short word counts alone. His own haibun in those same two issues fall at 209 and 335 words and are among the longest in the two issues.

With respect to short and crisp sentences, two of West’s are relatively long, coming in at 30 or more words. And some very good haibun fall into a stream-of-consciousness style with very long sentences. Surely long sentences can be crisp with an easy-going flow. Consider this passage from “What Matters”:

Rather save your strength for the constant changing of sheets, the preparation of small meals left uneaten, endless phone calls from well-meaning friends, and the gentle swabbing of his parched lips.

I can’t think of anything in this paragraph that I’d cut. Would you, for example, cut “constant,” “small,” “endless,” “well-meaning,” or “gentle”? Or would you cut any of the phrases? Or would you replace the commas with periods to shorten the sentences? My answer to each is no. This, despite the fact that in roughly 90% of submissions I’ve received as an editor, I could easily have suggested significant cuts, and I often recommended breaking up overlong sentences to create a better flow. And I’ve seen and received comments by other editors on my own work to the effect, “Cut this by 50% and I’ll consider it.”

If a short word count and crispness of style are defining characteristics of minimalist haibun, then West’s pieces certainly fit the bill. What else makes her work so effective?

The Aural Aspect of Poetry: Journey into Sound

Haibun prose has also been described as more than short and succinct — for example, as a “short prose poem.”3 Indeed, while many of the above terms used to describe haibun seem to focus solely on shortness and succinctness, it is taken for granted that a haibun must also be well written, if not poetic. Even common definitions of these terms indicate that more is needed than brevity. As examples, “terse” is defined in Merriam-Webster Online as “the quality or state of being marked by or using only few words to convey much meaning (emphasis mine)”; and prose poetry has been defined as prose that incorporates some or all of the following: a focus on images, poetic meter, language play such as repetition, and image-driven metaphors and similes.4

Thus, the call is not just for shortness, but also for shortness with narrative quality or even poetic flair.

The emphasis on succinctness in modern writing was established by The Elements of Style, which has been called “the little book that has done more to shape writing in the English language than any other guide in modern times.” In it Strunk wrote:

Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell (emphasis mine).5

It is worth noting that Strunk’s later co-author — the very advocate of “no unnecessary words” — is E.B. White, one of the best short story writers of his generation. White evidently felt differently about what sounds like an imperative to cut, cut, cut. Here is a letter White wrote to a reader inquiring about his thoughts on the matter:

Dear Mr. –
It comes down to the meaning of ‘needless.’ Often a word can be removed without destroying the structure of a sentence, but that does not necessarily mean that the word is needless or that the sentence has gained by its removal.
If you were to put a narrow construction on the word ‘needless,’ you would have to remove tens of thousands of words from Shakespeare, who seldom said anything in six words that could be said in twenty. Writing is not an exercise in excision, it’s a journey into sound (emphasis mine). How about ‘tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow’? One tomorrow would suffice, but it’s the other two that have made the thing immortal.
Thank you, thank you, thank you for your letter.
Yrs,
E. B. White6

“Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow” is the beginning of one of the most famous passages in Shakespeare’s works. When Macbeth learns of Lady Macbeth’s death, he delivers it as his response. The soliloquy is a prime example of poetry as music, as an aural as well as visual experience. Try reading it aloud to get the gist of White’s usage of “journey into sound”:

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

It has been noted that when most people think of poetry, the first things that come to mind are sound and meter. Indeed, for thousands of years, poetic form has been defined by its cadence, its song-like rhythms, and its sound effects.7 Consider this first stanza from Kipling’s “Mandalay” where rhyme and repetition serve to make the poem aural, even when read silently, and almost like a song when read aloud.

By the old Moulmein Pagoda,
lookin’ eastward to the sea,
There’s a Burma girl a-settin’,
and I know she thinks o’ me;
For the wind is in the palm-trees,
and the temple-bells they say:
“Come you back, you British soldier;
come you back to Mandalay!”
Come you back to Mandalay,
Where the old Flotilla lay:
Can’t you ‘ear their paddles chunkin’
from Rangoon to Mandalay?
On the road to Mandalay,
Where the flyin’-fishes play,
An’ the dawn comes up like thunder
outer China ‘crost the Bay!

Jeffrey Woodward has suggested that published haibun may be roughly divided into two types:

I offer narrative and lyric . . . as two common tendencies in haibun — the poet’s focus, on the one hand, upon an event or action and the poet’s interest, on the other hand, in the aesthetic properties of the language proper.8

Most haibun poets use a rather straightforward narrative style with little attention to poetic devices. But haibun prose, at its lyrical best as practiced only by a few, tends to be more like free-verse poetry. As Woodward suggests, various poetic devices are used to make the words more than a simple narrative. These include repetition, assonance, consonance, alliteration, onomatopoeia, accent, and pause. In a commentary, for example, I explored Woodward’s conscious use of repetition to create a lyrical feel. His “Time with the Heron”9 surely is what White meant by “a journey into sound.”

Does West’s work have an aural quality via poetic techniques? In a private correspondence, Jeffrey Woodward offers this take on West’s three haibun:

There’s some alliteration and assonance in “The Way Things Were,” e.g., eBay/Barbie/breasts, plastic/perky, tugs/tee shirt (alliteration) while the long /e/ of she/cheap in the prose forms a significant link to sepia/tee shirt in the haiku (assonance).

“What Matters” has the concealed rhyme of cliché—say—day that binds together sentences 3, 4 and 5. It also has the grammatical parallelism of

Rather save your strength for the constant changing of sheets, the preparation of small meals left uneaten, endless phone calls from well-meaning friends, and the gentle swabbing of his parched lips.

where we have the implied anaphora of “Rather save your strength for . . .” that links the four clauses. That structure is so common in prose, however, that many readers may be deaf to its music.10

Even so, as I read West’s haibun both silently and aloud, it strikes me that it is more the well-crafted succinctness and easygoing flow that make her work sing.

Perhaps, as Paul Conneally puts it, if haibun poets do a sufficient job of the basics, their work will also sing:

I favor haibun where the prose element is ‘haikai’ in style — terse, imagistic — often with elements of shortened syntax leading to some phrase and fragment type phrasing . . . 11

Reporting from Experience: Honesty and Disclosure

Beyond the potential of achieving an aural quality through haikai-like phrasing, there are other aspects of West’s work that lend insight to why her minimal pieces work so well. Paul Conneally writes:

Many believe that all haikai writing should be of, from and about direct experience — well yes — but more than anything I feel it should be about honesty — and this does not mean that there is no room for fiction or empathetic writing — but that all such writing should strive for an honesty of feeling – feeling that comes directly from a linking with the writer’s own experiences both directly with the external world that we all inhabit and their internal world, the world of emotion, thought and yes, dreams.12

As a starting point, consider fiction, defined in the Online Oxford Dictionary as “literature that tells stories which are imagined by the writer.” Of course, most writing, even published haibun which on balance dwells in the non-fiction camp, is modified from factual reality in order to avoid overwhelming readers with detail and, thus, keep them engaged. Unlike other literary genres, most haibun contain narrative accounts of experiences the writers have had in the recent or distant past. If haiku is about a moment of time, a haibun is about an experience over time, even one linking past and present, real or dreamt. These might include travel journals, nature walks, conversations, small events, something read or seen in a film, remembered dreams, fantasy, and inner (unspoken) mental dialogues. And, of course, recently there has been a trend toward haibun prose that is clearly fiction.

In all three haibun, West uses imagery drawn from real events and people she has encountered — or at least her stories read that way. In “What Matters,” she both provides reportage about a telephone conversation and presents her unspoken inner dialogue about how the situation should be handled. I’ve taken the liberty of putting the reportage in plain text and the inner dialogue (or what Conneally calls descriptions of the writer’s “internal world, the world of emotion and thought”) in italics:

You call to say your husband is dying. “He has lost the will to live.” After a pause, you apologize for the cliché. I’m unsure what to say. People die every day — it’s hardly worth the effort to put his struggle into fresh language. Rather save your strength for the constant changing of sheets, the preparation of small meals left uneaten, endless phone calls from well-meaning friends, and the gentle swabbing of his parched lips.

West’s “Maybe,” presented below as a series of phrases, fits Conneally’s key characteristics. It contains 1) a series of shortened phrases, 2) in the present tense, 3) that are well linked, and 4) are about a personal experience. Together, these create a sense of “being there” — and fit Conneally’s key characteristics.

Maybe

he’s looking at me
but I can’t be sure.

I feign interest
in the drummer’s solo,
slide my index finger
down the inside
of my lover’s arm.

candlelight
the horn player’s
swollen lips

Clarity and Ambiguity

Billy Collins, past Poet Laureate of the United States, writes that readers crave “a mixture of clarity and mysteriousness.”13 We want clarity about what is happening in the story and the sense that it is a complete story. Yet we also need a sense of ambiguity, following the adage that a writer shouldn’t tell all, that room should be left for readers to relate the story to their own experiences. Canadian author Lisa Moore expands on this:

Stories never belong to the author who happens to write them down, they are also the creation of each individual reader. I sometimes imagine stories and novels are like the transparent film of soap that coats a child’s bubble wand — and the breath that blows it into a bubble, is the breath of the reader. The reader’s imagination gives a story shape and substance. It is a private and secret bubble of experience belonging solely to the reader, lasting for as long as the reading of the book lasts, ending with the turn of the final page, when the bubble bursts, and the ‘real’ world becomes solid again.14

The following six-word story is often, if perhaps apocryphally, attributed to Hemingway:

For sale: baby shoes, never worn.15

Three short pieces of descriptive detail — and immediately, imagination takes over, filling in the backstory. Does yours?

Despite their shortness, West’s haibun feel clear and complete. I don’t need to know more or have anything further explained or described to understand them. This doesn’t mean that there is no ambiguity. For example, in “Maybe,” the word “he” allows me to imagine who “he” might be. Is it the drummer? The horn player? A man at another table? Her lover? And why is she “feigning” interest in the drummer? Does she not want to appear obvious to the horn player or to her lover?

Not knowing what happens next in West’s story, I am free to imagine outcomes. Do she and her lover go home and frolic under the covers? If they do, will she be fantasizing about the horn player? Will they have a fight because her lover caught her being overly interested in the horn player? All are possible in my reader’s imagination. But what if my imagination has misled me or is different than yours? Does it matter? I think not. West has provided sufficient information to stir my interest and I’ve enjoyed taking the story to my own conclusions.

Disclosure

The Oxford Online Dictionary defines “disclosure” as the action of making new or secret information known. In “A Secret Life,” Stephen Dunn explores the place of secrecy in our lives:

The secret life
begins early, is kept alive
by all that’s unpopular
in you … 16
(emphasis mine)

We all have secrets, even from our spouses and most cherished friends. Most haibun are personal — some even called “confessional,” a term used pejoratively — revealing thoughts and behaviors not normally spoken aloud. In choosing personal experiences, we are at some level telling secrets about our lives and thoughts. Some secrets are more often hidden than others, and thus perhaps more compelling.

In my interpretation of West’s “Maybe” there is an attraction to a musician while dining with her lover, a transfer of the sensuality of the music and that attraction to her lover, who I am sure would not be happy being a surrogate for another man. She feigns interest in order to keep her secret.

In “What Matters,” a friend has called to say that her husband is dying. Instead of offering up the usual placations and platitudes, West reveals to her readers (if not to her friend) her inner dialogue, the secret things we think about the behaviors and experiences of our friends, but normally keep hidden: “People die every day — it’s hardly worth the effort to put his struggle into fresh language.” Such thoughts are unpopular to express at such times, and yet are what many of us might think, while diplomatically offering a conventional bit of sympathy.

In “The Way Things Were,” West reports the experience of not being allowed to have a Barbie Doll, of the doll’s perky breasts. As a boy, I remember secretly inspecting my sister’s dolls, disappointed to find they had neither breasts nor other particulars of the female anatomy. When my partner read through this commentary on West’s haibun, she asked: “Did you really do that?” That was my secret, until now that I’ve put it in print. West’s haiku is about a memory of herself or an observation of a young girl she has seen tugging at her tee shirt — checking, hiding, or perhaps both. Part of the charm of this piece is in its candor. Male readers might not know about these “young girl” behaviors, although having inspected our own bodies for signs of sexual maturity, we can well understand both the behavior and the impulse for secrecy.

Authenticity

The Oxford Online Dictionary defines “authentic” as “made or done in a way that faithfully resembles an original.” West’s haibun feel as if they happened to real people. As I read “Maybe” I had the feeling that I was there at the jazz club. It doesn’t matter so much whether West was actually at a jazz club or whether the piece was fantasy. What matters is that most readers have been in situations where they are attracted to someone other than their mate and have responded sensually to the music they’re hearing.

In “The Way Things Were,” women readers will readily identify with playing with dolls and the psychological and physical transitions from girl to woman. And even I, as a male reader, can identify with things our parents never let us have. In my case it was a pellet gun — my plan being to become a big game hunter by shooting birds in the backyard. That Christmas I got socks, underwear, and a book on birding, possibly as punishment for having announced my murderous intentions. (There goes another of my secrets.)

In “What Matters,” I felt as if I was on the phone line, and could identify with both parties. Or at the bedside of an ailing parent, experiencing the deadening routines of palliative care and the agony of the person receiving care. Who has not been in a situation where a friend calls to lament loss? Who has not called a friend with a lament about infirmity and death?

The Haiku

In my view, the more minimal the prose, the more important the haiku. This is not to say that the haiku are ever unimportant. As Nobuyuki Yuasa puts it:

. . . I should like to impose one severe restriction on haibun: that it has to be a blend of haiku poetry and haiku prose; the interaction between these is haibun’s greatest merit. In good haibun, the prose deepens the understanding of the poetry, and the poetry gives greater energy to the prose. The relationship is like that between the moon and the earth: each makes the other more beautiful.17

West’s haiku add new dimensions to the story and are complete stories in themselves. Take the haiku in “The Way Things Were”:

sepia shadows
a young girl tugs
at her tee shirt

The word “shadows” evokes subjects usually kept hidden. “Sepia” suggests memory and age. The young girl tugging at her tee shirt is a vivid “show” about the behavior of a young girl. No need to “tell” us what it means. We can let our reader’s imagination run with it.

The haiku in “What Matters”

after the funeral
slowly rolling socks
into pairs

moves us forward in time, past the funeral itself. The widow has a new set of challenges, her life no longer the snug pair it once was, but something to be lived singly.

In all, it is little wonder that West was included in A New Resonance 5: Emerging Voices in English Language Haiku.

Titles

Increasingly, there is a call for focus on titles in haibun composition; a haibun is seen as a form that links title, prose, and haiku. Roberta Beary, haibun editor of Modern Haiku, for example has written:

In haibun, the wrong title is like a wrong number. It makes the reader want to hang up the phone. A haibun’s title should be strong enough to draw the reader into the prose and make the reader want more. Let the title be a link to the prose and the haiku, not give away the rest of the piece. After reading the entire haibun, the reader should be able to look at the title and see more than one meaning.18

“Maybe” is the first word in the first sentence of the prose. By isolating it as the title, West has placed extra emphasis on her inner world … she isn’t sure, perhaps she’s hopeful?

“The Way Things Were” links in various ways with the prose and poem. We know two things that mattered to the girl. And that’s the way things were — the past of most families where things were more hidden, sexuality made less obvious.

“What Matters” also links to both prose and poem, suggesting that the details of care matter in the palliative life of an infirm or dying partner, and, after death, what matters is the new life of being single, no longer a pair.

Minimalism

Haiku have been variously described as a “moment,” a “snapshot,” an “epiphany.” Minimalist haibun are not just about brevity. Their focus, as practiced by West and others, is on small scenes or snippets of life expressed in crisp, haikai-like phrases. “Maybe” represents a few moments at a jazz club; “What Matters,” a short conversation coupled with thoughts about palliative care; and “The Way Things Were,” memories triggered by an observation — seeing a Barbie on eBay and/or a young girl tugging at her shirt — embellished with a memory. They use an economy of words to tell a story whole enough for the reader to feel that story’s completeness and yet leave room for the reader’s imagination.

Should we all write in a minimalist style? My answer is yes and no.

Yes, with a caveat. West’s minimalism has led me to consider making my writing more succinct, but not necessarily toward very short. When serving as the chair of the World Haiku Club’s haibun section, Paul Conneally recommended that after completing an early, often wordy draft, a writer might: 1) strip out the key phrases, 2) eliminate redundancies, 3) piece the fragments back together to attain the easygoing flow that Jones talks about.19 This would make any piece shorter and crisper, even if not aiming for the extreme brevity of West’s pieces. And if more poetics are needed, the writer could add back one or two excised “tomorrows” or consider employing poetry techniques such as repetition or assonance.

My answer is also no. As any reader of the genre can see, there are very few longer haibun in the published works. If anything, the genre would benefit if more writers, at least on occasion, reached for narratives that encompassed more of a life, larger experiences, a series of linked scenes.

Conclusion

Hemingway wrote:

All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you: the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was. If you can get so that you can give that to people, then you are a writer (emphasis mine).20

With a very limited use of words, West has created pieces that made me feel as if her places and people belong to me; her experiences matter not only to her, but also to me, the reader. She has led me to ruminations about my own, similar or related experiences. That is what she has given to this reader. Though this essay is not a review of West’s forthcoming book, Into the Light, I have read a draft and can strongly recommend it.

Acknowledgments:

Haibun by Harriot West are reprinted with her permission.

Harriot West’s book, Into the Light, will be published soon by Mountains and Rivers Press, Eugene, Oregon.
url: http://mountainsandriverspress.org/Home.aspx

Her haibun and haiku have been published widely and anthologized. She is one of the haiku poets featured in A New Resonance 5: Emerging Voices in English Language Haiku.

Thanks to Jeffrey Woodward and Nancy Hull for offering helpful suggestions. And particularly to Jeffrey Woodward, whose background in classical and modern poetry forms enables him to keep me on track when I delve into those areas.

Footnotes:

All three haibun appear in Harriot West’s book Shades of Absence. It can be purchased at Red Moon Press. She lives in Eugene, Oregon. Her first book, Into the Light, a collection of haibun (Mountains and Rivers Press, 2014) tied for first place in the Haiku Society of America’s Mildred Kanterman Book Awards. Her work appears in journals and anthologies, including Modern Haiku, KYSO Flash, Haibun Today, Contemporary Haibun, The Norton Anthology of Haiku in English, Journeys 2015 and Best Small Fictions, 2017. She has just released her second book,
Examples taken from the Haibun Today Resources page.
url: http://haibuntoday.com/pages/definitions.html
Ken Jones, “Guidelines for Our Would-be Contributors,” Contemporary Haibun Online Archives.
Add url: http://contemporaryhaibunonline.com/pages_all/Jones_Guidelines.html
Haiku Society of America’s Definitions Page.
Add url: http://www.hsa-haiku.org/archives/HSA_Definitions_2004.html
Megan Pryor, “Prose Poems: Definition & Famous Examples,” Education Portal website, taken October 17, 2014.
Add url: http://education-portal.com/academy/lesson/prose-poems-definition-famous-examples.html#lesson
“The Elements of Style,” taken from Wikipedia on October 16, 2014.
Add url: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elements_of_Style
E.B. White, “Letters of E.B. White,” Originally edited by Dorothy Lobrano Guth, and revised and updated by Martha White, Harper; Revised edition, 2006.
“Introduction to Sound and Meter,” taken from Purdue Poetry Website on October 16, 2014.
Add url: https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/570/01/
“Terra Incognita: The World of Haibun and Tanka Prose, An Interview with Jeffrey Woodward,” Contemporary Haibun Online Articles Section.
Add url: http://contemporaryhaibunonline.com/articles/woodward_haibun_09.html
“Jeffrey Woodward’s ‘Time with the Heron’ – Poetic Techniques in Haibun Composition,” Contemporary Haibun Online 9:3 October 2013.
Add url: http://contemporaryhaibunonline.com/pages93/aaRasmussen_Woodward.html
Jeffrey Woodward, Private Correspondence, September 28, 2014.
Paul Conneally, Editor’s Introduction, Simply Haiku.
Add url: http://www.simplyhaiku.com/SHv4n1/haibun/introduction_haibun2005.html
Paul Conneally, ibid.
“Collins Values Approachable Poetry, Not Pretension,” Transcript of an Interview, NPR Books Website, April 06, 2011 1:00 PM, taken from the Internet on December 8, 2013.
Add url: http://www.npr.org/2011/04/06/135181560/collins-values-accessible-poetry-not-pretension
“Lisa Moore on taking February from page to stage,” Canada Reads Website, taken on October 16, 2014.
Add url: http://www.cbc.ca/books/canadareads/2013/01/lisa-moore-on-taking-february-from-page-to-stage.html
“For sale: baby shoes, never worn,” taken from Wikipedia on February 20, 2014. “(This passage) is the entirety of what has been described as a six-word novel, making it an extreme example of what is called flash fiction . . . Although it is often attributed to Ernest Hemingway, the link to him is unsubstantiated and similarly titled stories predate him.”
Add url: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_sale:_baby_shoes,_never_worn
Stephen Dunn, “A Secret Life,” from Landscape at the End of the Century (W.W. Norton and Company). The entire poem can be read on The Writer’s Almanac website.
Add url: http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php?date=2002/06/24
Quoted on the Haibun Today Resources page from Blithe Spirit, V10, N3, Sept 2000.
Add url: http://haibuntoday.com/pages/definitions.html
Roberta Beary, “The Lost Weekend,” Frogpond, Volume 34:3 2011.
Private correspondence with Paul Conneally, December, 2008.
Quote taken from Goodreads website on October 16, 2014.
Add url: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/12483-all-good-books-are-alike-in-that-they-are-truer

Readings:

Readings of Kipling’s “Mandalay” can be found here:
Add url: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GnPBY-_3qD8
Add url: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bm9ItmU-kmg

Ian McKellen discusses and then reads Macbeth’s soliloquy.
Add url: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGbZCgHQ9m8

Two readings of Macbeth’s soliloquy by Brett Underwood:
Add url: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-VTOX-eBiQ

Can Non-Poetic People learn to Write Haibun?

April 15, 2026April 16, 2026 ~ Ray Rasmussen ~ Leave a comment

The morning sun is just touching my canoe, suggesting a promising midsummer day canoeing in Algonquin Provincial Park. But until it warms up, I put it out of mind, pour coffee and read the morning email. One is from a writer interested in haibun, one of those little bright spots that comes with being a journal editor. Having read it, I ask my partner, Nancy, to join me for coffee. “I want to read this to you,” I said.

Hello Ray,

After a walk with Rufus, my border collie, I returned home to find an envelope you had sent containing Harriot West’s collection of haibun, “Into the Light.” I remember you and I discussing haibun, but until I read her book, I didn’t have an appreciation for the sort of personal memoirs one finds in that genre. I took it to our dining table and read a few pieces to my wife, Joan, and we had quite a discussion.

It clearly requires a person of both courage and great honesty to author such a book. I am sure that reading her work will invite others to be more reflective of their life experiences, as it did me. Having read her offerings, I felt as if I was a bit dead to the world and asked myself, “Have I lived life asleep at the switch?”

In my undergraduate years, a philosophy course I took was taught by a man I much admired, Professor Samuels, a bright and warm person, an ex-Marine who wore wide brimmed hats and a funky vest, his black Labrador always at his side. As it happened, I and another chap received the top marks on an assigned paper. Going over mine, Samuelson mentioned that the other student and I had different strengths, mine was logical analysis whilst his was more a poetic or literary bent.

I’ve always thought of myself as linear, logical thinker, rather than an insightful type. I wish I had better capacity to see and express what I see in the world—in writing, photography and art.

When I finish reading it, she looks up and says: “He writes beautifully, Does he know that?”

“He seems not to and I’m going to try to set things straight.”

We further discussed James’ writing, noting how he moved from Rufus’ walk to West’s courage to his philosophy class and Professor Samuels’s black Lab to Samuel’s pronouncement James is a literal, and not a poetic thinker. The sequence illustrated the way memory works, one concrete thing leading to another, sentences carrying the weight of twenty years since that comment and the ache of roads not taken.

Hi James,

Your email reached me this morning at our rental cottage on Harp Lake. Nancy and I read it over coffee, and she looked up and said, “He writes beautifully. Does he know that?”

I agreed with her and I’m going to try to convince you to drop that idea that you lack a poetic mindset.

Your line about feeling “dead to the world” after reading West’s poems … I’ve been there. Last month I picked up E.B. White’s One Man’s Meat and felt the same kind of sting, watching his sentences flow like water while mine stumble along like old dogs.

It struck me that the details of your philosophy course with Professor Samuels remained in your memory after all these years. That’s not logical analysis—that’s a writer’s eye for the detail that makes a good story.

Your letter itself moves the way memory and haibun memoirs work—Rufus’s walk leads to West’s book and then leads to that undergraduate moment when someone decided to divide his students into categories: linear and poetic. What you’ve actually done in a few succinct sentences is poetic: you caught the texture of an afternoon, the weight of a professor’s casual pronouncement, the particular ache of wondering if you’ve been asleep at the switch.

You already know how to see and this was a good start at expressing what you observed about the class and the impact on you to this day. The question isn’t whether you can write—it’s whether you’ll trust what you’ve already written, and do what we writers all must do, polish it up some more, and if you want to publish it as a haibun, you’ll need to add a title and a haiku. These aren’t easy tasks, not for experienced writers, and especially not for writers new to the haibun memoir genre. This is a great start, don’t give up on yourself now. Gitting a start is a big first step and too often is the place where new writers get stuck.

I’m enclosing an offer. Send me a redraft and let’s go back and forth on it. And, start a personal journal. Try capturing one moment each day or the most memorable moment of the last week—just note what happened, what you noticed, what memories were associated, how you felt. Also consider more reading of other’s haibun. After West’s minimalist haibun, try David Lanoue’s more expansive pieces in “My Journal with Haiku Sprinkled in.” Look closely at how he writes about each of his days while traveling through Japan and Bulgaria. In return, if you wish, I’ll send you a draft of one of my working ideas, and you can provide me with comments. You’ll also develop your writing skills by critiquing the work of other writers. Every writer should have at least one working partner and one person who is a good reader offering their views on what works for them, and what doesn’t.

Best, Ray

About the Author

Ray Rasmussen resides in Edmonton, Canada. His haibun, haiga, haiku, articles and reviews have appeared in the major print and online haiku genre journals. Ray presently serves on the editorial staff of contemporary haibun online. In the past, he has served as part of the editorial/technical teams for Drifting Sands Haibun, Notes from the Gean, Simply Haiku, A Hundred Gourds, the World Haiku Review and Haibun Today. Ray’s Blog is “All Things Haibun” and his haiku-genres website is “Haiku, Haibun & Haiga.”

What Are We Writers Up To, Really?

April 14, 2026April 17, 2026 ~ Ray Rasmussen ~ 1 Comment

Ray Rasmussen

This essay was previously published in Drifting Sands Haibun.

I’ve recently been reading essay collections as a means of getting away from the easy-to-fall-into routine of mainly reading haibun and, as important, a way of escaping the very dismal world news. Personal essays tend to offer good, imaginative writing with a poetic flavor.

The type I seek are quasi-autobiographical, but neither overly prosaic nor didactic. Like haibun they tend to focus on the personal experiences of the writer but are typically much more expansive than haibun. Thus they’re akin to non-fiction and short memoirs, providing a larger bit of a lived life than haiku (which represents but an Ah Ha! moment in the poet’s life) and haibun and tanka prose (which represent an outstanding experience, a more expansive snippet of life).

Michael Chabon’s Manhood for Amateurs, is one such collection I’d recommend to anyone who likes well-written memoirs and personal essays. In a passage from “The Loser’s Club,” Chabon offers his own experiences and thoughts about the motivations of artists of any stripe:

“Every work of art, every project seemingly created for self-realization, every impulse to create work that can potentially be seen or read or listened to by others is one half of a secret handshake, a heliograph flashed from a tower window, an act of hopeless optimism in the service of bottomless longing. Every great record or novel or comic book or poetry collection convenes the first meeting of a fan club whose membership stands forever as one, but which maintains chapters in every city—in every cranium—in the world.”

What Motivates Haibun and Tanka Prose Poets? Or at least me?

Chabon’s passage led me to musing about what motivates us haibunists to send our writing to journals and writing forums, to post it on personal websites and blogs, to offer it to publishers and, of course, send it to friends and family. Are we, as Chabon asserts, driven by a “bottomless longing” for a “fan club.”

I personally don’t like the idea of having fans which implies a kind of cultish devotion to a celebrity. However, Chabon, who makes his living from his writing, does want and need fans. They tend to buy his books, and thus help feed, shelter and clothe his family. I don’t earn a living from my writing, and if I tried, I’d be starved out in a matter of months. So far, I’ve earned about $300 Cdn in Royalties from my Amazon Posted collection: Landmarks. Nor do I know of any haiku genre poets who make a significant amount of money from the sale of their collections.

I also don’t desire a “bottomless” readership. But I would feel good if a good number of people to read my work, far more than the 300 or so that have been purchased, many by family and friends. I’d also be please if more people would use the “comments” pages in our journals to let me know that they’ve appreciated something I’ve written, but while a simple, “like” would be okay, more detail would be even nicer. I’ve deleted the names, but posted the comments of many readers who commented on this essay when it appeared in Drifting Sands Haibun 6 years ago. Bless you all!

I’d also like to see haibun in general, not just mine, appearing in mainstream poetry journals and literary magazines. Even Reader’s Digest, read by a wide variety of people, would make me happy because RD is not just writers writing for other writers. I’d also like to see the number of writers grow dramatically in the next decade and the readership of our collective writing grow.

But let’s be realistic. Not much of what I want, and particularly what Chabon thinks I want, is going to happen. I’ve not yet been discovered by a publisher, either of literary or Reader’s Digest stripe. Nor have I even been found by the mainstream poetry folks. Nor does our genre have a superstar like free verse’s Billy Collins with a style that allows him to both make a living (I’m guessing) and enjoyed by a wide variety of readers. But there are very few poets in any genre who have that sort of readership.

So, if I long for anything, it’s simply what I have, a community of like-minded writers, a reasonable number of readers, a number of good venues to which I can submit my work, and a flock of volunteer editors who read and assess my work. Even if they reject a piece, I only grumble for a year or so.

I’d also like to have a number of people sending and exchanging comments on both my work and the work of others. I comment from time to time by writing commentaries and reviews. It’s useful that some online journals, drifting sands haibun and Contemporary Haibun Online (to name two), have comments sections allowing detailed comments to be made, much more than a simple “I liked it.” Alas, I didn’t notice many meaty or even many simple I-like-it comments in either the last issue of CHO or DSH addressed to the writers.

So here are two questions that come to mind from what I’ve written above. Why do we care about readership? And since we care (at least I think we do) why aren’t more people reading and commenting on haibun?

Why Do We Care?

My answer is that serious haibun composition, and writing of any type, requires a good deal more time and energy than a tweet or short facebook post with the message: “Here’s where I am, what I’m doing, and a pic showing who I’m with.”.

Serious writing for submission and publication requires even more work, particularly redrafting until there’s a high level of quality in content and style leading to a personal story worth readers’ time and attention. It’s also much more demanding than simply posting early drafts on an online writers’ forum, for example, where mostly people send either “attaboys” or polite silence in return. Beyond writing the piece, the act of preparing and sending a submission to journal editors takes an enormous amount of work. Even more work is involved in preparing a manuscript for a publisher or for self-publishing. And then there’s the ego cost. Getting those “No Thanks” from editors and publishers is costly to the writer’s spirit – I don’t care who you are or how thick your skin is – it just plain hurts. And never getting comments on the work also produces a kind of hurt, a feeling of emptiness that our note in a bottle hasn’t been picked up and read by a beachcomber, and may never be.

Why Aren’t More People Reading Haibun (and Commenting?)

My answer is that haibun is a very small drop in the pond of haiku poetry, and but a water molecule in the ocean of mainstream poetry and various related short genres like short stories, memoirs and personal essays. Our publication venues don’t number much more than 20 and the multi-genre venues like Modern Haiku and Frogpond only publish a few haibun per issue along with hundreds of haiku. The number of writers in our haibun community is probably less than 500. That’s just an impression I formed while editing over the last 20 years at Haibun Today, Contemporary Haibun Online, A Hundred Gourds, Simply Haiku, The World Haiku Review and Notes from the Gean. The same names tended to reappear at least once a year and many repeated in almost every issue. When a name disappears, I feel the loss.

Our mass mailout announcing issue releases of Haibun Today was sent to about 400 folks associated with haibun and/or haiku. The software stats told us that only about 250 opened the issue as a result of the mailing. Of those, we don’t know how much of the issue was actually read. (Don’t worry, we’re not the secret email police or at least not very adept at it). I think that many of us click on our own pieces to see how our work looks on the journal’s pages, and then look at a few others. I admit that I look at my own and then shop for my favorite writers and then shop a few titles that interest me. And then I burn out.

Writing as a Solitary Journey

Chabon also wrote:

“Art, like fandom, asserts the possibility of fellowship in a world built entirely from the materials of solitude. The novelist, the cartoonist, the songwriter, the poet, knows that the gesture is doomed from the beginning but makes it anyway, flashes his or her bit of mirror, not on the chance that the signal will be seen or understood but as if such a chance existed.”

Advice for New Writers to Haibun

I think that lack of response and particularly those early rejections are very discouraging to new writers in any genre.

I’d suggest that you keep writing through the rejection period and learn what you can. Eventually something will come of it. Do seek places where you get coaching and honest feedback and your skills will improve and writing memoir type pieces means you’ll come know yourself better.

Having said that, I know that you will or you won’t keep at it according to the thickness of your own skin and your need for responses and contact. In that sense, Chabon is right, particularly early on, writing is a solo journey and with respect to sailing into the world of writing, many people probably jump the boat and swim home.

If you keep at it and get that first acceptance, I can predict your spirit will rise and motivation increase. And after a few more “Yes Responses” you might even be hooked. Or you might not. It is, after all, a lot of work.

One thing that will happen, or at least happened to me, both as a photographer and writer is that I now appreciate at a higher level both photography and fine art and writing in many genres. Consider your writing journey not so much as a gathering-of-fans endeavor, but more as a poetry appreciation course.

Of course, there’s always the noble idea of “writing for oneself.” I think it’s true that writing can be a path to the fulfilling that famous “Know Thyself” adage which is thought to be a path to leading a more worthy life. Particularly, largely autobiographical writing – a series about the highs and lows of the one life we have to live. As such, writing is cheaper than a weekly meeting with a shrink and it might be more effective.

And when you finally do take the step to feel good enough about your writing to produce a collection and offer it to the world, I think you’ll feel, as I do, that you’ve accomplished something important. At the very least, you’ll have left a legacy for children and grandchildren and have a gift to give to your friends. Many of my friends have told me that my Landmarks collection sits in a prominent place in their bathroom. Don’t get me wrong … haibun make for good short reads while busy with the daily unmentionables. And, to be honest, it makes my day thinking that I’ve helped someone find enjoyment in those visits.

Notes:

Quotes from “The Losers’ Club” in Michael Chabon, Manhood for Amateurs: The Pleasures and Regrets of a Husband, Father and Son, HarperCollins, September 30th 2009. I’ve paraphrased Chabon’s passages a bit, but they’re quite close to the original.

Another collection of personal essays I’ve found worthwhile is E.B. White’s One Man’s Meat, Tilbury House Publishers, 1942.

Yes, for whatever our reasons, we’ve chosen to live in relative solitude as writers when we joined what might be called “The Tiny Companionship of Haibun Poets.” And we’re not unique. This is also true of the Bigger Company of Haiku poets and the Very Big Association of Mainstream Poets.

For myself, I enjoy seeing the work of other writers and feel I’ve gotten to know them precisely because we are a small gathering. And that’s sufficient, isn’t it?

19 Comments on “What Are We Writers Up To, Really?” Again, Bless you all. Made my day!

I love haibun. I have admit that I read far more than I comment on. I prefer to rate a haibun because so many times it’s the gordian knot holding it together that appeals rather than a single comment-able part. The kinds of responses I like most on mine are ones that say I can relate to that even when it’s mind blowing surreal.
Yes, I am still trying to survive the many rejections phase. It has helped me to be more critical of my own work and to read others for clues to their successful publication. Thanks Ray!
I, too, hesitate to comment on the works of others because I am a novice and don’t think I have anything to offer. Ray’s essay makes the point that “useful” is not the point, recognition ( in the interpersonal sense of the word) is the point, community is the point, vision is the point. Thank you.
Ray, I read every haibun and tanka prose in each issue after the first one of mine published in HaibunToday, until I hit a personal stumbling block and left the scene. Same with CHO. Ahhh…now you burst my bubble. I thought writers were like me and so I thought at least everyone who published in that issue read mine! Oh, how egotistical of me. No big deal. I enjoyed the process and being published. Just stumbling back in. Don’t foresee myself writing much. Maybe after reading a bit.
Thanks for that wonderful piece, Ray. It dwells on writerly experiences in such an honest spirit. I was also reminded of Bashos’s views on poetry from the opening paragraph of The Records of a Travel-worn Satchel:“In this mortal frame of mine which is made of a hundred bones and nine orifices there is something, and this something is called a wind-swept spirit for lack of a better name, for it is much like a thin drapery that is torn and swept away at the slightest stir of the wind. This something in me took to writing poetry years ago, merely to amuse itself at first, but finally making it its lifelong business. It must be admitted, however, that there were times when it sank into such dejection that it was almost ready to drop its pursuit, or again times when i was so puffed up with pride that it exulted in vain victories over the others. Indeed, ever since it began to write poetry, it has never found peace with itself, always wavering between doubts of one kind and another. At one time it wanted to gain security by entering the service of a court, and at another it wished to measure the depth of its ignorance by trying to be a scholar, but it was prevented from either because of its unquenchable love of poetry. The fact is, it knows no other art than the art of writing poetry, and therefore, it hangs on to it more or less blindly.”
On the rare days when I scroll through my haiku, haibun or other poems (including the mediocre ones that have not been sent for publication, or have been rejected), I clearly see a record of my life’s journey, and relive the many moments that I have forgotten, in a slightly different light. So, in that sense, it’s also an important journalling that helps one grow, I feel.(And the shameless plug: My poetry collection, In The Sanctuary of a Poem, sold about 600 copies and then was largely forgotten. There are two shops here in Goa (a clothing store, and a seed store) that sell about 20 copies in six months, and then I replenish the stock).
Initially I was shocked that ‘Landmarks’ sold only a few 100 copies, and I’m glad I wrote to Ray probably a year ago now, telling him that ‘Landmarks’ had become one of my favourite books in any genre and was the book that really got me going on the haibun path. But of course a sale of 100 books is actually pretty good going in the world of haiku and haibun (even if friends etc make up a good percentage of sales). Initial print runs don’t number much above this and a long time ago, in my mainstream writing days, I remember once reading that only Hughes, Betjeman and Gunn sold more than 200 copies of their ‘slim volumes’. I have re-read ‘Landmarks’ on a number of occasions now and it has become nicely dog-eared in next to no time. Perhaps we should think about the success of a book in terms of how it is treasured and re-read by those who bought it, rather than sales figures – not that it would be possible to measure this with any degree of accuracy!
As one new to haibun, I’ve had the sense that I didn’t have anything “useful” to offer in a conversation. Your thoughts here make it clear that “useful” is not necessarily the point; just a note about what I liked in a haibun is welcome. I do like using haibun to comment about intriguing little aspects of the world, not just the more personal memoir topics.Thanks for this essay, and for the many ways in which you’ve made it possible for the “tiny” haibun corps to thrive and expand.
1. What an enlightening and beautiful essay dear Ray. Your thoughts made me contemplate as to why we write haibun and why we don’t comment on the haibun of our poet friends. It’s true that we write to express ourselves, to relive some moments of our own life, our childhood memories and stray encounters. We do read the published haibun, (albeit selectively) and enjoy them too. Yet as you say writing is a solitary journey and your thoughts are inspiring for writers. Here I would also like to add a word about editors who take time to guide and refine the submitted poem rather than an outright rejection. Their kindness and guidance motivates writers to write and submit more. Ultimately the art needs more reading, more practice, more honesty and humility. Grateful Ray for the guidance and ideas given.
Such sound advice. I love what you’ve written and being new to haibun I will keep your thoughts in mind. I usually write because I need to. Someday I might submit and keep my expectations low. Even thick skin hurts. (Lol)
Ray, thank you for this inspiring essay. I am immeasurably grateful to have found the ‘Haibun Way’– loving the wind, ‘sailing into the world of writing’, and doubt I will ‘jump the boat’ anytime soon. Very much a novice, with three haibun accepted by online journals so far, though I dare say–I’m hooked! There is a longing, yes, but not for fans, only to share with like minded beings.
Thanks for writing this essay, Ray. It resonates with me and many others who felt early on being drawn toward what Tom Clausen calls “A Haiku Way of Life.” (For those who have not yet read or do not recall Tom Clausen’s 10-page essay from 1998, download a PDF of it from The Haiku Foundation’s digital library.) Some of us have also explored a side road called “Haibun Way,” and others have traveled down “Tanka Road” and meandered along “Haiga Path.” They are what William Least Heat Moon calls “Blue Highways,” roads not far from the interstates but overlooked, unused, almost hidden.Reading the following paragraph from your essay got me thinking about an “official” name for this widespread guild of isolated writers we have unofficially formed or joined, but no name could possibly encompass its many “Third Order” vocations:“Yes, for whatever our reasons, we’ve chosen to live in relative solitude as writers when we joined what might be called ‘The Tiny Companionship of Haibun Poets.’ And we’re not unique. This is also true of the Bigger Company of Haiku poets and the Very Big Association of Mainstream Poets.”However, your “Tiny Companionship” name works just fine, with a nod to Dylan Tweney’s tinywords. And, yes, I bought, read, and enjoy your “Landmarks: A Haibun Collection” for my Kindle and recommend it to everyone who writes and cares for haibun. I look forward to reading your next collection of “inuksuit,” but this time with photographs!
Just the joy of creating that children enjoy when mark making , the joy of creating something as part of a creative universe. These are enough for me.
Chabon’s statement that “Every work of art, every project seemingly created for self-realization, every impulse to create work that can potentially be seen or read or listened to by others is . . . an act of hopeless optimism in the service of bottomless longing” brought a sense of relief. I am not alone with bottomless longing! My core longing is to write as a way of making sense of the world of humans and to be connected with nature. I began recording my observations and reflections decades before discovering haiku and haibun – partly because it was enjoyable and partly so I wouldn’t forget unique experiences. What motivates me to write haibun? My old jottings could be left in their original form for my own enjoyment and yet I find myself mining them for material for haibun. I enjoy the challenge of linking title, prose and haiku into haibun. But, I often wonder why I take the time to transform some of them into haibun worth submitting for publication.I was so caught up in pondering the longing to write that I was surprised to realize longing for readership was the primary focus of the essay. I do not long for a fan club, but I do long for people to read what I write and, yes, some of that longing is for my writing to be appreciated. Part of what drives me to publish haibun is that it is a way of saying “hey, look at this amazing thing I saw” to a community that is observing life as carefully as I am. I suppose that is a way of breaking the solitariness of writing.I can only offer these vague ideas about why I write haibun and strive to have it published. All I know for sure is that a deep longing calls me to do it and so I do.
Ray, As a “fan” of your “largely autobiographical work,” I particularly appreciated your inclusion of this notion in your essay:
“I think it’s true that writing can be a path to the fulfilling that famous “Know Thyself” adage which is thought to be a path to leading a more worthy life. Particularly, largely autobiographical writing – a series about the highs and lows of the one life we have to live.”
In pursuing a short form career (if we can call a largely unpaid endeavor a career), the work one willingly undertakes can allow not only the honing of one’s writing, but the refinement of oneself. The reflection and introspection autobiographical writing requires has the potential to deepen self-awareness and broaden consciousness. As a person with an active interest in Jungian ideas, I would submit that autobiographical writing is a form of alchemy, and as such, is one path to individuation. This could explain why authentic, autobiographical work so often resonates with a uniquely palpable energy. Because it has been lived, it is alive.
Thank you for delivering a thought-provoking essay in your characteristic grounded, relatable way.
I find a piece of writing is a way to explore and unravel the self. I don’t write for an audience, I write to make meaning, to decode the conflict within me, lay it out in neat categories where I can look at them and then go back to them again and again, shuffling these categories, mixing them up, arranging them under different rubrics to make sense of patterns.The act of reading is quite like finding a friend among strangers. I tend to read randomly picking up pieces here and there. It’s also about access. There are certain people whose work I will actively pursue, then there are others where I have literally stumbled upon a piece and enjoyed it. Although I read and try to write regularly, there are periods where I need space. It is like taking time out because one is exhausted by the form or style or voice. I haven’t actively read a novel in a long time. More and more, I find, I’m edging towards work that is shorter, crisper and flows honestly without pretense. I like Haibun for that reason because many writers tend to write from that sort of space. The link and shift within a piece of writing then becomes interesting because someone, has arranged a new pattern while still exploring the duality(juxtaposition) that exists in this world. I find the simple often the most beautiful, the honest often the most resonant.
I share your sentiments, and was heartened by your comment, “This could explain why authentic, autobiographical work so often resonates with a uniquely palpable energy. Because it has been lived, it is alive.” Thanks for the breath of optimism.
For the artist, poetry might be the most rewarding of the arts (who knows, but I cherish the “alchemy”, as you say). This is what motivates to make the effort. But it sure is nice when someone appreciates the finished product.
Enjoyed reading this. It’s always a pleasure to see how I measure up to what or how other writers do things or if I’m completely off base!
I found your comments so relatable. As a relative newcomer to haibun and tanka prose, I have benefited immeasurably from writers and editors like you. Thanks for sharing some of your journey with us.
i loved reading this essay. The writing life is a lonely one. I always appreciate your careful reading and keen insights.

Strings Tied in Knots

September 20, 2020April 13, 2026 ~ Ray Rasmussen ~ 1 Comment

| Recently Published Haibun by Ray Rasmussen |

In her poem “The Flaw,” Molly Peacock writes, “The best thing about a hand-made pattern in a weaving is the flaw.” She suggests that a red string standing out in a blue-toned carpet weave could be likened to a red bird flying into a blue sky.

My partner is a talented fabric artist, and so I read Peacock’s poem to her and ask, “What do you see as my red strings, if any?”

After a long pause, she replies, “Your swearing – when you get frustrated and curse at something like your computer when it’s not working. No one in my family ever swore.”

“Is there a way you could turn my rarely exercised flaw into a red bird soaring into a blue sky?” I suggest.

“No, for me it’s more like a screeching Bald Eagle with talons extended as it swoops down on a lamb,” she says.

I mention that Peacock wrote that a flaw can be thought of as a reaching out, as the string saying, in effect, “I’m alive, discovered by your eye.”

“Oh, I do know you’re alive when you shout and swear,” she replies.

“What if I tell you that the ancient Persians deliberately put a flaw in their carpets because only God is entitled to be perfect and it would be arrogant for a mortal to aspire to perfection?”

“I’d not worry too much about being close to perfection.”

couples counseling –
picking strings from
my frayed sweater

This is a revision of a piece published in Frogpond.

Molly Peacock’s wonderful poem, “The Flaw,” can be found here -> link