Haiku in Concrete

By Bruce Kingery Ed.D.

n/a

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 16, 2012
• ISBN: 9781465380234

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Copyright © 2012 by Bruce Kingery, Ed.D.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

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CONTENTS

Foreword:

Title Poem

Epigram

EPILOGUE

Reference to the titles of the haiku in this manuscript:

Throughout the pages of this manuscript, haiku are numbered in sequence, concomitant with their titles, as they appear in the following table of contents:

Foreword:

haiku in concrete takes this concept of Japanese verse form and applies it to contemporary social, philosophical, moral, and metaphysical thought and the problems of today.

Possibly, haiku are best used in abstraction.

Such subject matter as love, trees, flowers, the changing seasons, and man’s better or perhaps, gentler virtues, have heretofore constituted the simple themes and essence of this splendid form of experience, expression and meanings.

I have used these forms of expression throughout these pages, utilizing many years of study, writing, editing, and creativity – all embodying the life experience of many years, in producing this verse form, and these verses.

Going beyond this, I believe that haiku can and should be used to discuss and to write contemporary thought in our time. Applied to current problems, theories, moral discussions and facts, events and eventualities of our existence, and among them such things as: civil rights, social justice, labor, and the working poor; war, peace, and the concept of this one small planet: a grain-sized particle in the limitless space of billions of stars, planets, suns, and galaxies; mankind’s thoughts – both in microcosm and macrocosm – are the essence of haiku expression.

The written word has no limitations as to length, content, context, and depth of meaning. But people do not speak in terms of sagas, letters, narratives, essays, and novels. People speak in terse tones with the conciseness and abruptness of haiku. Haiku are, in effect, the greatest challenge to condense thought into its most brief and concise form. People talk in haiku, more than in any other verse form. The obtuse reader may speed by a haiku like a motorist going through a stoplight. The editor, looking for stereotyped verse and even more stereotyped thinking, would quickly reject such a manuscript. But the quiet thinkers, knowing how to think on their own, will understand. It is to them that these haiku are written.

Bruce Kingery, Ed.D.

My special thanks to Scott DeVogelaere, for his help in preparing this manuscript.

To My Family…

Title Poem

etheric visions

   create

splendid verses

       and

haiku in concrete

Epigram

Thanks to the human heart by which we live,

Thanks to its tenderness, its joys and fears,

To me the meanest flower that grows can give

Thoughts that often lie too deep for tears.

                               -William Wordsworth