Jimmy Pappas's Blog, page 2
July 27, 2022
Poem Published by The Penmen Review
Poem Published by The Penmen Review
I had a poem published in The Penmen Review, the journal for Southern New Hampshire University. Here is the link to read the poem:
https://penmenreview.com/the-things-w...
After this poem was published, a woman wrote to me to tell me that she decided to call up an old friend she had not seen in a while. They decided to have a reunion that evening. How cool is that. Poetry does indeed travel and reach people.
I had a poem published in The Penmen Review, the journal for Southern New Hampshire University. Here is the link to read the poem:
https://penmenreview.com/the-things-w...
After this poem was published, a woman wrote to me to tell me that she decided to call up an old friend she had not seen in a while. They decided to have a reunion that evening. How cool is that. Poetry does indeed travel and reach people.
June 11, 2022
Haiku Accepted at Haikuniverse
Haiku Accepted at Haikuniverse
You have to scroll back by clicking Previous to June 8, 2022, to see my haiku, but you can enjoy some of the others along the way. I recommend subscribing to Haikuniverse for a daily poem. They are mostly non-traditional, and I like them a lot.
https://haikuniverse.com/
You have to scroll back by clicking Previous to June 8, 2022, to see my haiku, but you can enjoy some of the others along the way. I recommend subscribing to Haikuniverse for a daily poem. They are mostly non-traditional, and I like them a lot.
https://haikuniverse.com/
Haiku Accepted at Scarlet Dragonfly
Haiku Accepted at Scarlet Dragonfly
I have not been posting enough of my acceptances on my blog, so I will try to do that more often. Here is a haiku posted at Scarlet Dragonfly for June 11, 2022. Scroll down to read some of the others as well.
If anyone would like advice for submitting here, just drop me a line on Goodreads.
https://scarletdragonflyjournal.wordp...
I have not been posting enough of my acceptances on my blog, so I will try to do that more often. Here is a haiku posted at Scarlet Dragonfly for June 11, 2022. Scroll down to read some of the others as well.
If anyone would like advice for submitting here, just drop me a line on Goodreads.
https://scarletdragonflyjournal.wordp...
May 24, 2022
Kudos to Coach Steve Kerr for Speaking out on Gun Control
KUDOS TO COACH STEVE KERR FOR SPEAKING OUT ON GUN CONTROL
This evening before his NBA playoff game, Steve Kerr, the coach of the San Francisco Warriors, delivered an impassioned plea for background checks on gun purchases. Kudos to him for taking a stand. He put the blame squarely where it belonged: on the Republican party and its refusal to vote on reasonable gun control legislations. No other country in the world has it as bad as we do.
There is nothing "conservative" about this madness. It is past time for people to get fed up with this and speak out. Ultimately, this is about money and power over common sense, so please don't give me any of that Bill of Rights nonsense. The second amendment talks about "well-regulated militias." The one phrase the disgusting National Rifle Association and its lackeys leave out when they talk about that amendment. The gun companies are rolling in the dough. All of these groups have blood on their hands.
Below is a link to Coach Kerr's comments. And you can be sure there will be so-called "conservatives" who will tell him to shut up and coach. They can go to hell.
https://www.cbssports.com/nba/news/wa...
This evening before his NBA playoff game, Steve Kerr, the coach of the San Francisco Warriors, delivered an impassioned plea for background checks on gun purchases. Kudos to him for taking a stand. He put the blame squarely where it belonged: on the Republican party and its refusal to vote on reasonable gun control legislations. No other country in the world has it as bad as we do.
There is nothing "conservative" about this madness. It is past time for people to get fed up with this and speak out. Ultimately, this is about money and power over common sense, so please don't give me any of that Bill of Rights nonsense. The second amendment talks about "well-regulated militias." The one phrase the disgusting National Rifle Association and its lackeys leave out when they talk about that amendment. The gun companies are rolling in the dough. All of these groups have blood on their hands.
Below is a link to Coach Kerr's comments. And you can be sure there will be so-called "conservatives" who will tell him to shut up and coach. They can go to hell.
https://www.cbssports.com/nba/news/wa...
April 21, 2022
On Haiku by Hiroaki Sato pages 159 to 176 Gun Smoke Haiku
On Haiku by Hiroaki Sato pages 159 to 176 Gun Smoke Haiku
(from) chapter called The "Gun Smoke" haiku poet Hasegawa Sosei (pages 159 to 176)
Mukai Kyorai was a disciple of Basho and a samurai:
* An outrage: A man viewing cherry blossoms with a sword on.
Masaoka Shiki wrote this on New Year's Day 1892:
* Soldiers are the nation's blossoms: sprint today
And this one on New Year's Day 1893:
*With a 100,000-man standing army the country in spring
Shiki may have been the first poet to praise his nation for its soldiers and standing army.
Shiki wrote a friend saying, "The Sino-Japanese War is a delight to me. Although everyone has stopped me, I've been unable to restrain myself and I'm finally going to the front. This is the best thing that has happened to me since I was born."
He was sick and the war was pretty much over. He wrote these haiku:
* Long day: driving donkeys the whip and its shadow
* In the big country the mountains are all low in haze
* After a battle there are only a few swallows
* Pear blooms: after a battle a collapsed house
* China is a place famed for apricot flowers
* Hide the corpse of the one who's deceased: spring grass
Shiki died at 35 but others took him up on reforming haiku.
Shiki criticized "trivial versifying" utterly devoid of the "actualities of the ferocity of war." I agree with him. I can handle only so many cherry blossoms and frogs kerplunking in the pond.
Two poets who took his request seriously were Hekigodo ("as cool as ice") and Kyoshi ("as hot as fire"). Hekigodo developed untraditional ideas, promoting free-rhythm haiku that ignored the 5-7-5 form and discarded seasonal words while Kyoshi stuck to the use of kigo and keeping the form.
After Japan went to war with Russia in 1904, Segawa Sozan searched for haiku dealing with war and published War Haiku.
Hoshino Bakujin, who studied haiku with Shiki, celebrated the battle of Tsushima in a series of 11 haiku ten years later. Here is an example:
* In summer haze enemy warships are clear waves high
That haiku uses a famous telegram sent on spotting a Russian fleet: "Although the weather is clear the waves are high." But none of the ten pieces describe the actualities of war.
When 1937 rolled around, Japan expanded its military activities in China. Saito Sanki announced, "This fierce reality is the most glorious opportunity to magnify what non-seasonal haiku truly is." The shinko haiku movement had started several years earlier rejecting the requirement of seasonal words. The magazine Kyodai Haiku pushed for greater freedom and flexibility in haiku subject matter.
In September 1938, an entire war novel Wheat and Soldier was turned into a series of haiku. The author Hino Ashihei wrote a realistic account of Japanese operations west of Shangai. It was an instant best seller. Three poets--Hino Sojo, Higashi Kyozo, and Watanabe Hakusen--undertook this haiku-ization of the novel. Some haiku poets condemned the action because they believed haiku poets should only write about what they see. For others, it became fashionable to be "imagining and seeing the fire of war from afar," according to the words of Hino Sojo.
The November 1938 issue of Haiku Studies had "3,000 haiku on the China incident." In April of 1939 there were 3,000 more. Here are some examples:
By Hirahata Seito:
* The military bridge now sways with refugees' loads
By Saito Sanki:
* In the trench gleams a single identification tag
* Having buried my war buddy I shoot my pistol into heaven
These two poets along with thirteen others were arrested in 1940 by the "thought police." It was later known as the Kyodai Haiku incident. The arrest was based on a 1925 law enacted to suppress Communism. It was expanded to cover anything detrimental to mainstream conservative thought, including democracy, liberalism, realism, antiwar sentiments, and "friendliness" to the United States and United Kingdom.
The law had been first directed against senryu writers. Here are two examples from the magazine Senryu Man:
(The first written by Tsuru Akira, who died of dysentery in prison.)
* Returned as logs with arms and legs wrenched off
(The second is by Nakagawa Kamenbo who survived the war.)
* Can't wait for a retreat with guns on shoulders
The poet who most stood out in the war was Hasegawa Sosei and his "Gun-Smoke" haiku.
In 1937, Sosei was promoted to second lieutenant in field artillery. He fought in various parts of China for a year and a half before being struck down by tuberculosis. In 1939, the editor selected 214 of them for the book Gun Carriage. The editor singled out the author as someone who actually experienced what he was writing about.
* With a summer-scorched gun carriage I myself go
(This implies "go to war" so he is in Japan.)
* A friend interred, in my tearful eyes geese are high
* Burned out: a village only with walls and wintry trees
* To bury my horse the soldiers dig the withered field
* Those hiding in a pile of rice plants pulled out with swords
* Frost settles on piled prone corpses in the moat
On December 13, 1937, "Nanjing finally falls." The attack on Nanjing resulted in the death of 6,000 Japanese soldiers and 8,000 Chinese soldiers. But it was the deaths that followed that brought infamy. The number of dead varies widly so I won't give figures. It was known as "the rape of Nanjing."
* For a while we are within Nanjing Castle on guard duty
* Nanjing having been destroyed the year too turns anew
(The word "destroy" comes from a word used in slaughtering animals.)
* Saying they'll dig fukujuso soldiers search the field
(The fukujuso flower is a harbinger of spring.)
* Prostrate in snow the enemy joins hands I see with hate
(These are captured enemy soldiers in the snow pleading for their lives.)
* On the snow I slaughtered him as if he were a beast
* In the cruel cold without even grass to eat: the natives
* Because of war the starved saunter the withered field
* Piteous people: even frozen rice they receive on palms
* They beg for food opening the frozen hands, fingers
* Facedown on snow an enemy corpse coppers scattered
* Plum blossoms abloom it is a peaceful village however
(They surrounded a village to seek out "native rats" to kill.)
* Under blurry moon in the battle aftermath such corpses
(They attack the village.)
Sosei's close friend the haiku poet Hashimoto Kenji reported "the body blow Sosei received from the war was tremendous." As Sosei was moved from hospital to hospital "his loathing of war became fierce." Now his haiku changed.
* Pulling the light in the sun mandarin ducks proceed
* The cold behind the large tree trunk is quiet indeed
* Things that have warmly withered in the sun's yellowness
Sosei died of TB in 1946 about one year after the surrender.
* Tomorrow departing my heart picks up a fallen leaf by my hand
(from) chapter called The "Gun Smoke" haiku poet Hasegawa Sosei (pages 159 to 176)
Mukai Kyorai was a disciple of Basho and a samurai:
* An outrage: A man viewing cherry blossoms with a sword on.
Masaoka Shiki wrote this on New Year's Day 1892:
* Soldiers are the nation's blossoms: sprint today
And this one on New Year's Day 1893:
*With a 100,000-man standing army the country in spring
Shiki may have been the first poet to praise his nation for its soldiers and standing army.
Shiki wrote a friend saying, "The Sino-Japanese War is a delight to me. Although everyone has stopped me, I've been unable to restrain myself and I'm finally going to the front. This is the best thing that has happened to me since I was born."
He was sick and the war was pretty much over. He wrote these haiku:
* Long day: driving donkeys the whip and its shadow
* In the big country the mountains are all low in haze
* After a battle there are only a few swallows
* Pear blooms: after a battle a collapsed house
* China is a place famed for apricot flowers
* Hide the corpse of the one who's deceased: spring grass
Shiki died at 35 but others took him up on reforming haiku.
Shiki criticized "trivial versifying" utterly devoid of the "actualities of the ferocity of war." I agree with him. I can handle only so many cherry blossoms and frogs kerplunking in the pond.
Two poets who took his request seriously were Hekigodo ("as cool as ice") and Kyoshi ("as hot as fire"). Hekigodo developed untraditional ideas, promoting free-rhythm haiku that ignored the 5-7-5 form and discarded seasonal words while Kyoshi stuck to the use of kigo and keeping the form.
After Japan went to war with Russia in 1904, Segawa Sozan searched for haiku dealing with war and published War Haiku.
Hoshino Bakujin, who studied haiku with Shiki, celebrated the battle of Tsushima in a series of 11 haiku ten years later. Here is an example:
* In summer haze enemy warships are clear waves high
That haiku uses a famous telegram sent on spotting a Russian fleet: "Although the weather is clear the waves are high." But none of the ten pieces describe the actualities of war.
When 1937 rolled around, Japan expanded its military activities in China. Saito Sanki announced, "This fierce reality is the most glorious opportunity to magnify what non-seasonal haiku truly is." The shinko haiku movement had started several years earlier rejecting the requirement of seasonal words. The magazine Kyodai Haiku pushed for greater freedom and flexibility in haiku subject matter.
In September 1938, an entire war novel Wheat and Soldier was turned into a series of haiku. The author Hino Ashihei wrote a realistic account of Japanese operations west of Shangai. It was an instant best seller. Three poets--Hino Sojo, Higashi Kyozo, and Watanabe Hakusen--undertook this haiku-ization of the novel. Some haiku poets condemned the action because they believed haiku poets should only write about what they see. For others, it became fashionable to be "imagining and seeing the fire of war from afar," according to the words of Hino Sojo.
The November 1938 issue of Haiku Studies had "3,000 haiku on the China incident." In April of 1939 there were 3,000 more. Here are some examples:
By Hirahata Seito:
* The military bridge now sways with refugees' loads
By Saito Sanki:
* In the trench gleams a single identification tag
* Having buried my war buddy I shoot my pistol into heaven
These two poets along with thirteen others were arrested in 1940 by the "thought police." It was later known as the Kyodai Haiku incident. The arrest was based on a 1925 law enacted to suppress Communism. It was expanded to cover anything detrimental to mainstream conservative thought, including democracy, liberalism, realism, antiwar sentiments, and "friendliness" to the United States and United Kingdom.
The law had been first directed against senryu writers. Here are two examples from the magazine Senryu Man:
(The first written by Tsuru Akira, who died of dysentery in prison.)
* Returned as logs with arms and legs wrenched off
(The second is by Nakagawa Kamenbo who survived the war.)
* Can't wait for a retreat with guns on shoulders
The poet who most stood out in the war was Hasegawa Sosei and his "Gun-Smoke" haiku.
In 1937, Sosei was promoted to second lieutenant in field artillery. He fought in various parts of China for a year and a half before being struck down by tuberculosis. In 1939, the editor selected 214 of them for the book Gun Carriage. The editor singled out the author as someone who actually experienced what he was writing about.
* With a summer-scorched gun carriage I myself go
(This implies "go to war" so he is in Japan.)
* A friend interred, in my tearful eyes geese are high
* Burned out: a village only with walls and wintry trees
* To bury my horse the soldiers dig the withered field
* Those hiding in a pile of rice plants pulled out with swords
* Frost settles on piled prone corpses in the moat
On December 13, 1937, "Nanjing finally falls." The attack on Nanjing resulted in the death of 6,000 Japanese soldiers and 8,000 Chinese soldiers. But it was the deaths that followed that brought infamy. The number of dead varies widly so I won't give figures. It was known as "the rape of Nanjing."
* For a while we are within Nanjing Castle on guard duty
* Nanjing having been destroyed the year too turns anew
(The word "destroy" comes from a word used in slaughtering animals.)
* Saying they'll dig fukujuso soldiers search the field
(The fukujuso flower is a harbinger of spring.)
* Prostrate in snow the enemy joins hands I see with hate
(These are captured enemy soldiers in the snow pleading for their lives.)
* On the snow I slaughtered him as if he were a beast
* In the cruel cold without even grass to eat: the natives
* Because of war the starved saunter the withered field
* Piteous people: even frozen rice they receive on palms
* They beg for food opening the frozen hands, fingers
* Facedown on snow an enemy corpse coppers scattered
* Plum blossoms abloom it is a peaceful village however
(They surrounded a village to seek out "native rats" to kill.)
* Under blurry moon in the battle aftermath such corpses
(They attack the village.)
Sosei's close friend the haiku poet Hashimoto Kenji reported "the body blow Sosei received from the war was tremendous." As Sosei was moved from hospital to hospital "his loathing of war became fierce." Now his haiku changed.
* Pulling the light in the sun mandarin ducks proceed
* The cold behind the large tree trunk is quiet indeed
* Things that have warmly withered in the sun's yellowness
Sosei died of TB in 1946 about one year after the surrender.
* Tomorrow departing my heart picks up a fallen leaf by my hand
April 20, 2022
Reading John Updike's Self-Consciousness
Reading John Updike's Self-Consciousness
Something at the beginning of the book reminded of a blog post I wrote on Goodreads once. Updike describes someone asking him about writing his biography. But that idea seemed "repulsive" to Mr. Updike. Lots of writers have biographers, why not him? If he doesn't want one, that is fine too, but repulsive? That is too much.
Here is the blog post where I describe meeting Mr. Updike once:
https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog...
I will say one thing about John Updike: That dude really knows how to write a sentence.
I loved a quote at the end of the book:
". . . it appeared to me that when we try in good faith to believe in materialism, in the exclusive reality of the physical, we are asking our selves to step aside; we are disavowing the very realm where we exist and where all things precious are kept--the realm of emotion and conscience, of memory and intention and sensation."
"I have the persistent sensation, in my life and art, that I am just beginning."
Something at the beginning of the book reminded of a blog post I wrote on Goodreads once. Updike describes someone asking him about writing his biography. But that idea seemed "repulsive" to Mr. Updike. Lots of writers have biographers, why not him? If he doesn't want one, that is fine too, but repulsive? That is too much.
Here is the blog post where I describe meeting Mr. Updike once:
https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog...
I will say one thing about John Updike: That dude really knows how to write a sentence.
I loved a quote at the end of the book:
". . . it appeared to me that when we try in good faith to believe in materialism, in the exclusive reality of the physical, we are asking our selves to step aside; we are disavowing the very realm where we exist and where all things precious are kept--the realm of emotion and conscience, of memory and intention and sensation."
"I have the persistent sensation, in my life and art, that I am just beginning."
April 13, 2022
My Tanka in New Verse News
My Tanka in New Verse News
I had a tanka published about a picture I saw in The New York Times that showed a loaf of bread with a light covering of snow on it. Two people who were about to eat the bread were just killed by a Russian mortar shell. The crows were crowing.
Here is the link to my tanka in New Verse News, a daily journal of poetry related to current events:
https://newversenews.blogspot.com/202...
I had a tanka published about a picture I saw in The New York Times that showed a loaf of bread with a light covering of snow on it. Two people who were about to eat the bread were just killed by a Russian mortar shell. The crows were crowing.
Here is the link to my tanka in New Verse News, a daily journal of poetry related to current events:
https://newversenews.blogspot.com/202...
April 12, 2022
Carolina Wren's Nest
Carolina Wren's Nest
A pair of Carolina Wrens have formed a nest inside the top lid of my propane tank. At first I thought it was a mouse nest when I saw the stack of moss, grass, and twigs inside the cover of the tank. I opened the lid and peaked over the top. I saw a tunnel into the nest with three spotted eggs. I am thrilled to have those birds in my yard. It is a bit far north for them which could be another sign of the effects of climate change.
I called the propane company to make sure there were no more deliveries until the fall. I have read that the birds will reuse the nest over the summer. May they live long and prosper.
Here is a link for more info about Carolina Wrens' nesting habits:
https://www.wild-bird-watching.com/Ca...
A pair of Carolina Wrens have formed a nest inside the top lid of my propane tank. At first I thought it was a mouse nest when I saw the stack of moss, grass, and twigs inside the cover of the tank. I opened the lid and peaked over the top. I saw a tunnel into the nest with three spotted eggs. I am thrilled to have those birds in my yard. It is a bit far north for them which could be another sign of the effects of climate change.
I called the propane company to make sure there were no more deliveries until the fall. I have read that the birds will reuse the nest over the summer. May they live long and prosper.
Here is a link for more info about Carolina Wrens' nesting habits:
https://www.wild-bird-watching.com/Ca...
March 23, 2022
YouTube reading at Poetry Lit!
Here is a link to YouTube for my reading at Poetry Lit! I included a wide variety of my poems:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4D_-h...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4D_-h...
March 22, 2022
"How to Get Enough Pain Medication to Allow You to Die"
A Poem Published at Pulse
I have a poem published at Pulse: Voices from the Heart of Medicine called "How to Get Enough Pain Medicine to Allow You to Die." Please feel free to comment at the site if it is a topic of interest to you. Here is the link:
https://pulsevoices.org/index.php/poe...
Feel free to ask me any questions on the topic here as well.
Jimmy
I have a poem published at Pulse: Voices from the Heart of Medicine called "How to Get Enough Pain Medicine to Allow You to Die." Please feel free to comment at the site if it is a topic of interest to you. Here is the link:
https://pulsevoices.org/index.php/poe...
Feel free to ask me any questions on the topic here as well.
Jimmy
