Haiku Society of America Haibun Renku Awards for 2005

Haiku Society of America Renku Awards
in Memorial of Bernard Lionel Einbond

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HSA Renku Awards for 2005

Judson Evans, William J. Higginson, Hortensia Anderson
judges

First Place

City on the Hill

John Stevenson
Merrill Ann Gonzales

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City on the Hill

city on the hill
offering up
an aura of green

J

prize peonies
grow in your garden

m

the language
of the honeybee
in wide use

J

Bach's Little Fugue
fills the room

m

crescent moon
at the tip
of a mitten

J

under Orion I long
for an embracing warmth

m

Juliet awakens,
as she was promised,
in a tomb

J

gypsum chandeliers
dazzle in the cave

m

tandoori chicken
arrives at the the table
with a sizzle

J

the feathers must be tied
in just the right way

m

we wander
pathless heavens
in our hot air balloon

m

fewer this year
at the class reunion

J

along the boardwalk
the words and looks
of those in love

m

brushing fallen leaves
from your hair

J

bright moon
turns the shack
to gold

m

"I'm supposed to be
Rumplestiltskin!"

J

the day
draws near
for the birth

m

bluffing
with a pair of deuces

J

morning shadows strawberry blossoms
for us to find

m

the beachcomber's
widening smile.

J

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Honorable Mention

Twitter

Peggy Willis Lyles
Mark Brooks
Christopher Herold,
Paul MacNeil
Billie Wilson
Carol O'Dell

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Twitter

the twitter
growing louder . . .
sunrise

pwl

snowmelt creeks gather
into a mountain stream

mb

rust I've filed
from lawnmower blades
falls to the shed floor

ch

her #2 pencils
all perfect points

pm

for now
only the moon
and the outlined pine

bw

Dad pours the sweet smell of apples
into jam jars

co

are those trick-or-treat bags
on the trunk
of the stretch limousine?

pwl

yoga students stop to watch
a cat lick its loins

ch

the grit
of beach sand
between us

mb

so slowly he slips off
my silk stockings

co

after the bellman leaves
the sudden arc
of champagne

pm

a frayed Macbeth
forgotten in the rain

bw

moonlight fades
blood on a street
through Pamplona

mb

another base hit
for the hometown girls

pwl

once organic carbon
now a famous diamond
on display

co

the death row inmate
describes her cotillion

bw

wisteria blooming
in the shadows
of a crenelated wall

pm

your beehives stacked
by a furrowed field

ch

"Honey,
help me tie these balloons
and then clean up that room."

co

poof!
no more debt

ch

fingers crossed
as they fervently pledge
eternal love

bw

wooing his angel
with a harp serenade

pwl

turns out
she never did like
cigar smoke

pm

it starts to frost over
the analyst's windows

mb

northern lights
crackle above
withered gardens

co

pop art posters
glued to cork

pwl

across the dorm hall
a guy in his bathrobe
with wild eyes

mb

audience cheers or jeers
vote the best comic

pm

the full moon
appearing as a crescent
on each drop of dew

ch

a red leaf
wrenched loose by the wind

bw

my scarecrow grips
a photo of Mao Tse Tung
and reeks of patchouli

ch

"How many tears
shall we cry?"

mb

ten thimbles
on consignment
at the needlework shop

pwl

an old lady twirls
then catches her cane

pm

dervishes
mesmerized
by cherry blossoms

bw

becoming part of your dream
rhythms of the spring sea

co

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The Haiku Society of America sposors this annual award for renku of 36, 20, or 12 stanzas.

See the contest guidelines for the HSA Renku Awards.

For more information about the goals of this contest, download a copy of the HSA Renku Contest Committee Report (pdf) published in Frogpod XIII:2 (May 1990).

Awards by year:

| 2018 | 2017 | 2016 | 2014 | 2013 | 2012 | 2011 | 2010 | 2009 | 2008 | 2007 | 2006 | 2005 | 2004 | 2003 | 2002 | 2001 |

 

2005 judges commentary:

First Place - City on the Hill

While it maintains variety and forward momentum, "City on the Hill" simultaneously establishes a sense of complex unity by the cross-association of several overarching themes. It establishes a sense of doublenessÑ"city on the hill" seems both a real and present place and a utopian space in imagination. This doubleness works through the preface; after a more general opening verse, the wakiku brings the context of the city down to earthÑthis is a real place, home to one particular urban person, with a specific plant in a real garden. Then, the daisan opens up the fanciful, utopian dimension of this place: "the language/ of the honeybee/ in wide use". The wide is particularly effective in letting the reader re-contextualize the "place" as an imaginative invention like the spaces of Hesiod's Works and Days or Thoreau's Walden channeled through Yeats. The fourth stanza moves further into the realm of the shaping imagination and its connection to patterns in nature with Bach's "Little Fugue". Thus the opening section suggests a link between a utopian community and a real human place in nature, between the community at large and the individual, with the emphasis on the community.

The piece shows some wonderful tonal control. For example, the move from "we wander/ pathless heavens/ in our hot air balloon" to "fewer this year/ at the class reunion". On one level there is a mysterious elegiac backward pull that can let us read the hot air balloon ride as a kind of afterlife of the dead classmates. On another, there's the link between hot air and the empty small talk of the reunion that pulls in another direction without canceling or muting the previous association. We enjoyed these subtleties here and again, as in the expostulation that identifies "I'm supposed to be / Rumplestiltskin!" as relating to Hallowe'en, rather than using an obvious season word. This humorous tone plays well against an unpretentious use of cultural references that includes Bach and Shakespeare as well as the fairy tale. The images are concrete, but a subtle sub-text of relationships between people and between us and our environments runs throughout. All this despite the great variety of shifting images and situations that renku demands.

One interesting note: The authors of "City on the Hill" apparently chose consciously to observe the common "astronomical" seasons, rather than the traditional seasons of Japanese poetry that govern virtually all season-word lists. For example, we have "peonies" in the wakiku, which are normally an early summer topic in renku; here they serve to continue the spring imagery of the hokku. Later on, "fallen leaves" appears in a verse that must be in autumn according to its position and surroundings, though the set phrase "fallen leaves" is firmly in winter in the traditional Japanese view of the seasons. These references clearly alert the reader to which seasonal system is in play, and since the whole poem works consistently within this common understanding of the seasons, this feature seems an aspect of the poem's uniqueness, not a fault. (It's a bit like the use of a dictionary in Scrabble; the group has to agree on one, and then stick to it.)

There are a few problems with "City on the Hill" which kept us from moving it to a Grand Prize level, as could happen in this contest. In the preface, there is an immediate throwback of place-person-place. This kind of throwback did not reappear, however, and the general observance of the fine points of person-place variation in this poem is part of what set it above all of the kasen. At the same time, greater variety in linking methods would have improved this poem. A spate of linking by word rather than meaning or scent on the second side threatened to slow down the development, then the third side shifted to mainly meaning linkages. And the stanzas of "City on the Hill" often seem a bit shorter than they need be, with an occasional movement from a very brief three-liner to a two-liner actually longer both aurally and in syllable count. This tends to upset the prosodic rhythm, and is an area that all of our renku poets could pay more attention to. Finally, having two verses about blossoming flowers is nice, though not required in this short form; but having used a non-traditional blossom in the opening, if one wanted a blossom at the end it would be more traditional to at least use a blossoming tree.

These comments should not discourage the authors, however, as "City on the Hill" reads well and was enjoyed by all three judges on each round of reading and commenting on the renku.

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xxxx judges commentary:

Honorable Mention - Twitter

"Twitter" seems particularly fresh with its move from auditory to visual to tactile sensory images in the first three stanzas. And what has already been a sensuously rich opening ends with smell, from pine to apple. The seasons are particularly well handled throughout.

A number of linked pairs seem memorable: the #2 pencils suggest the beginning of school while also introducing the yellow/orange color of an autumn moon. The writers create first an exotic scene in "moonlight fades / blood on a street / through Pamplona", then move to a more mundane, local contest "another base hit / for the hometown girls." This pair's scent link is followed by a word link with "once organic carbon / now a famous diamond / on display". One judge laughed out loud at the link from a spouse asking "Honey" to help "tie these balloons / and then clean up that room" to "poof! / no more debt". This kind of variety in linking and the shifting meaning as a stanza plays first against the previous verse, then against the following, greatly enhances the readability of the renku.

The main problem with "Twitter" is the authors' apparent lack of awareness of the need for variety in person-place, which tended to bog down in runs of verses all from the same point of view, such as the run of "other" verses from 18 to 24 (verses about an apparent third person), and a preponderance of place verses (no people present) from 25 to 30, with the last three also all "other". Greater variety in this department, along with a little more attention to alternating stanza length and weight and avoiding almost telegraphically short stanzas, would have placed "Twitter" at the top of our list.

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