A Year of Haiku; poems © Judith Lauter 2013 108 haiku plus 13 black & white photos by the author 147 pp, 6"x 9" publisher: Xlibris, 2013 ebook & softcover formats order from Xlibris (softcover or ebook) ***** Excerpts below include: Preface; Table of Contents; sample pages |
PREFACE
For as long as I can remember, I have been a devotee of the natural world – in the words of Emily Dickinson, one of my favorite poets – an "inebriate of air ..., and debauchee of dew." And I have always found poetry and science to be equally viable and fascinating modes of exploring and expressing that devotion. (It seems significant to me that Dickinson, before she took up her career as a poet – in which she often displayed a scientist's knack for precise observation and description – studied at Mount Holyoke, a women's college founded by the chemist Mary Lyon who was dedicated to providing young women with an education in math and the natural sciences.)
During high school, college, and my initial graduate work in English literature and linguistics, I took courses in science as well as in the humanities. While my family supported such broad-spectrum interests, it eventually became obvious that society at the time provided scant encouragement for a woman going into science.
So I turned to poetry to express my love of the world, and wrote quite a lot – primarily for myself, though from time to time publishing poems in small magazines, and winning some local prizes.
Later in graduate school, when my focus shifted from the humanities into psychoacoustics and neuroscience, my need to write poetry seemed to diminish. Both sides of my brain were satisfied by the day-to-day challenges of science, whether in classrooms, clinics, or the laboratory – and for almost three decades I wrote virtually no poems. I found preparing scientific papers and lectures deeply engaging, taking up all of my time and energy.
And yet poetry did not go out of my life entirely. I met my husband Ken Lauter in a writing seminar taught by Donald Hall during my senior year at the University of Michigan, and we have shared our love of poetry since our marriage in 1966. Ken is a prolific poet, and through the years I have had the inestimable pleasure of reading and talking about poetry with him, including critiquing his own work.
Thus although I stopped writing myself, I felt a little like an athlete who may have retired from playing but still stays close to the game as an analyst and coach, and when I finally retired from university life (in 2012), it was no surprise that poetry began to beckon once more.
My first forays into writing again took a number of forms (short and long poems; rhymed, alliterative, and free verse; poems in Spanish as well as English), but I discovered that the haiku – particularly in the form of: 1st and 3rd lines of 7 syllables, 2nd line of 5 syllables – held a tremendous attraction for me. In fact, achieving the highly condensed observation demanded by haiku – matching concept to expression in only 19 syllables – seemed very similar to designing scientific graphs.
Thus, in the course of a single year (late 2011 through 2012), I wrote more than 300 poems – primarily haiku, plus a few in longer forms, including poems with haiku-structured stanzas. This book, then, is a selection of 96 of the haiku, plus 12 haiku-stanza poems, arranged in monthly sets, following the seasonal cycle around a year from January through December. Ideally, the sequence might best be read like a medieval book of hours – that is, reading the poems for each month during the same part of the year they were written to represent.
Finally, it should be noted that these poems derive from three very personal settings: our current home in Nacogdoches, in the beautiful pineywoods of Deep-East Texas; the Rocky Mountains (in October, to view color changes in cottonwood, willow, and aspen); and the Texas Gulf Coast, the location of our favorite midwinter break over Christmas and New Year's.
-- JLL, Nacogdoches TX, January 2013
TABLE OF CONTENTS
JANUARY
Winter on the Gulf Coast
Which Way is the Wind Blowing? -- 1
Which Way is the Wind Blowing? -- 2
Which Way is the Wind Blowing? -- 3
Seaside Palette
Coastal‐Bend Potter's Wheel
Patience at the Water's Edge
Beach‐Sitter's Diary
Gulf Morning After Storms
FEBRUARY
Home Again
February in the Pines
Meridian
200 Miles Inland
Storm Before Dawn
Alternative Medicine
The Chemistry of Happiness -- 1
Time and the Tree
Johnny One-Note Birdsong
MARCH
Foggy Morning
Bird Family
Lady Cardinal Visits the Birdbath
March Hatching
Tipped Birdbath in Early March
Easter Parade
Vernal Equinox: Afternoon Nap in the Hammock
Trees' Calendar
Sunset Fashion Show
APRIL
Lessons from a Sandy Creek
Downhill Stretch
Boardwalk Through Wetlands
Full Many a Honeysuckle
Green Respirations
Male Cardinal
Storm‐front: Assignation
1000 Miles per Hour
Stormchasers
MAY
Oscillations in Spring
Walking Fast, Looking Up
Technique
View from the Backyard Deck
Drought Economics
Another Day Without Rain
Cool Front in Mid‐May
To a Poet Waiting for Words
Easy Breathing on a Foggy Morning
JUNE
Brassy Sunrise
50:50 Chance of Rain
My Job: A Weather Eye
Coloring Book Garden
Pineywoods Workshop
Mockingbird's Rope Tricks
Lawn Chair Dreams
Summer Solstice
Finding Ursa Major
JULY
Barometer
Storm Front
For e e cummings
Anti‐gravity
July
Green Thumb
A Forest is a Forest
Sun Dances
Summer Twilight at the Dairy Queen
AUGUST
Dawn Walk in August
Nautilus Dawn
Silent Movie: A Morning Show
Blue Heron in Summer Remembers Winter on the Coast
Summer Lover
A Vision for Anyone
Stasis and Antistasis
Summer Evening Serenade
Egret Travel Plans
SEPTEMBER
Fall Work Order
The Stoicism of Pines
Sign on the Door
Beyond Any Singing of It
The State of Things
Autumnal Equinox: Valle Vidal NM
Autumnal Equinox: Nacogdoches TX
Full Moon
Airs from the West
OCTOBER
Virginia Creeper Masquerade
Sunsets in October
On the Road
October Light and Air
Dry Land Arrival
Going for the Gold
As Days Grow Short
Winter is Coming
Home Again
NOVEMBER
Oscillations in Fall
November Memento
Makeover
Living on November Time
After a Late Autumn Storm
Woods Clearing Out
Ménage à Trois: Perils of a Rope Hammock in November
The Chemistry of Happiness‐2
Hawk Whistle Made Me Look Up
DECEMBER
Horizon Designs
Getaway
Why We Like It
256 Shades of Grey in the Coastal Bend
Favorite Place
Beach Naps on Sunny Afternoons
On the Coast for Christmas
The Next Voyage
Winter Solstice
SAMPLE PAGES
For as long as I can remember, I have been a devotee of the natural world – in the words of Emily Dickinson, one of my favorite poets – an "inebriate of air ..., and debauchee of dew." And I have always found poetry and science to be equally viable and fascinating modes of exploring and expressing that devotion. (It seems significant to me that Dickinson, before she took up her career as a poet – in which she often displayed a scientist's knack for precise observation and description – studied at Mount Holyoke, a women's college founded by the chemist Mary Lyon who was dedicated to providing young women with an education in math and the natural sciences.)
During high school, college, and my initial graduate work in English literature and linguistics, I took courses in science as well as in the humanities. While my family supported such broad-spectrum interests, it eventually became obvious that society at the time provided scant encouragement for a woman going into science.
So I turned to poetry to express my love of the world, and wrote quite a lot – primarily for myself, though from time to time publishing poems in small magazines, and winning some local prizes.
Later in graduate school, when my focus shifted from the humanities into psychoacoustics and neuroscience, my need to write poetry seemed to diminish. Both sides of my brain were satisfied by the day-to-day challenges of science, whether in classrooms, clinics, or the laboratory – and for almost three decades I wrote virtually no poems. I found preparing scientific papers and lectures deeply engaging, taking up all of my time and energy.
And yet poetry did not go out of my life entirely. I met my husband Ken Lauter in a writing seminar taught by Donald Hall during my senior year at the University of Michigan, and we have shared our love of poetry since our marriage in 1966. Ken is a prolific poet, and through the years I have had the inestimable pleasure of reading and talking about poetry with him, including critiquing his own work.
Thus although I stopped writing myself, I felt a little like an athlete who may have retired from playing but still stays close to the game as an analyst and coach, and when I finally retired from university life (in 2012), it was no surprise that poetry began to beckon once more.
My first forays into writing again took a number of forms (short and long poems; rhymed, alliterative, and free verse; poems in Spanish as well as English), but I discovered that the haiku – particularly in the form of: 1st and 3rd lines of 7 syllables, 2nd line of 5 syllables – held a tremendous attraction for me. In fact, achieving the highly condensed observation demanded by haiku – matching concept to expression in only 19 syllables – seemed very similar to designing scientific graphs.
Thus, in the course of a single year (late 2011 through 2012), I wrote more than 300 poems – primarily haiku, plus a few in longer forms, including poems with haiku-structured stanzas. This book, then, is a selection of 96 of the haiku, plus 12 haiku-stanza poems, arranged in monthly sets, following the seasonal cycle around a year from January through December. Ideally, the sequence might best be read like a medieval book of hours – that is, reading the poems for each month during the same part of the year they were written to represent.
Finally, it should be noted that these poems derive from three very personal settings: our current home in Nacogdoches, in the beautiful pineywoods of Deep-East Texas; the Rocky Mountains (in October, to view color changes in cottonwood, willow, and aspen); and the Texas Gulf Coast, the location of our favorite midwinter break over Christmas and New Year's.
-- JLL, Nacogdoches TX, January 2013
TABLE OF CONTENTS
JANUARY
Winter on the Gulf Coast
Which Way is the Wind Blowing? -- 1
Which Way is the Wind Blowing? -- 2
Which Way is the Wind Blowing? -- 3
Seaside Palette
Coastal‐Bend Potter's Wheel
Patience at the Water's Edge
Beach‐Sitter's Diary
Gulf Morning After Storms
FEBRUARY
Home Again
February in the Pines
Meridian
200 Miles Inland
Storm Before Dawn
Alternative Medicine
The Chemistry of Happiness -- 1
Time and the Tree
Johnny One-Note Birdsong
MARCH
Foggy Morning
Bird Family
Lady Cardinal Visits the Birdbath
March Hatching
Tipped Birdbath in Early March
Easter Parade
Vernal Equinox: Afternoon Nap in the Hammock
Trees' Calendar
Sunset Fashion Show
APRIL
Lessons from a Sandy Creek
Downhill Stretch
Boardwalk Through Wetlands
Full Many a Honeysuckle
Green Respirations
Male Cardinal
Storm‐front: Assignation
1000 Miles per Hour
Stormchasers
MAY
Oscillations in Spring
Walking Fast, Looking Up
Technique
View from the Backyard Deck
Drought Economics
Another Day Without Rain
Cool Front in Mid‐May
To a Poet Waiting for Words
Easy Breathing on a Foggy Morning
JUNE
Brassy Sunrise
50:50 Chance of Rain
My Job: A Weather Eye
Coloring Book Garden
Pineywoods Workshop
Mockingbird's Rope Tricks
Lawn Chair Dreams
Summer Solstice
Finding Ursa Major
JULY
Barometer
Storm Front
For e e cummings
Anti‐gravity
July
Green Thumb
A Forest is a Forest
Sun Dances
Summer Twilight at the Dairy Queen
AUGUST
Dawn Walk in August
Nautilus Dawn
Silent Movie: A Morning Show
Blue Heron in Summer Remembers Winter on the Coast
Summer Lover
A Vision for Anyone
Stasis and Antistasis
Summer Evening Serenade
Egret Travel Plans
SEPTEMBER
Fall Work Order
The Stoicism of Pines
Sign on the Door
Beyond Any Singing of It
The State of Things
Autumnal Equinox: Valle Vidal NM
Autumnal Equinox: Nacogdoches TX
Full Moon
Airs from the West
OCTOBER
Virginia Creeper Masquerade
Sunsets in October
On the Road
October Light and Air
Dry Land Arrival
Going for the Gold
As Days Grow Short
Winter is Coming
Home Again
NOVEMBER
Oscillations in Fall
November Memento
Makeover
Living on November Time
After a Late Autumn Storm
Woods Clearing Out
Ménage à Trois: Perils of a Rope Hammock in November
The Chemistry of Happiness‐2
Hawk Whistle Made Me Look Up
DECEMBER
Horizon Designs
Getaway
Why We Like It
256 Shades of Grey in the Coastal Bend
Favorite Place
Beach Naps on Sunny Afternoons
On the Coast for Christmas
The Next Voyage
Winter Solstice
SAMPLE PAGES
Copyright © 2023 Judith L. Lauter