f/k/a archives . . . real opinions & real haiku

A few friendly, helpful, inspiring reminders from the f/k/a Gang (penned while procrastinating over a more substantive posting):

As we wrote a week ago: The Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival, during which families traditionally get together and eat moon cakes, is celebrated and concluded tonight.

cutting the moon cake
just like my mother
Mid Autumn Festival

………………………………… by yu chang– Upstate Dim Sum 2002/I

The Harvest Moon will arrive in all its glory tomorrow night, September 26, 2007. The moon has been especially bright and beautiful here in Upstate New York all this week. Sadly, cloud covering will probably block our view of the Harvest Moon tomorrow. So, the f/k/a Gang will be out pre-Mooning over the Harvest Moon this evening.

.. … We have accumulated Harvest Moon lore and scores of Harvest Moon haiku over the past few years. To find them, go to

1. “this moon’s for you!“
2. “more harvest moon haiku“
3. “don’t forget to look up“

his frail hands
the last harvest
ungathered

sway
of the harvest moon
the barn door open

harvest moon
a spider farms
the wall ivy

…………………………………………………… by Laryalee Fraser
“harvest moon/spider”- Haiku Harvest (fall/winter/05)
“sway” Roadrunner Haiku Journal (Nov. 2006 Issue VI:4)
“his frail hands” – Simply Haiku (autumn 2004)

(large) In “Poetic Justice: Another Verse,” Bob Ambrogi told us yesterday at LegalBlogWatch (Sept. 24, 2007) , that “poetry is sweeping the profession.” Frankly, it looks more like bad doggerel and parody verse is sweeping the profession. However, this is a great chance to remind you that you can read thousands of real poems by real lawyer-poets online at the fabulous Law in Popular Culture Collection at the Tarlton Law Library of the University of Texas (Austin).

Over the past few years, we’ve told you (here, here and there) about three gigantic collections of lawyer poetry published by Law Prof. Jim Elkins, at West Virginia Law School, in the Legal Studies Forum (also see his online website about lawyer-poets, Strangers to Us All). The Tarlton Library has reproduced each of the LSF poetry volumes online — well over a thousand pages of text — and you can find them here:

• “Lawyers & Poets” Legal Studies Forum, Volume XXX (2006) (large)
• “Intelligible Hues: Lawyers & Poetry” Legal Studies Forum, (Vol. XXIX: 1, 2005)
• “Off the Record: an anthology of poetry by lawyers” Legal Studies Forum, (Vol. XXVIII, cover image)

Now forget billable hours for awhile, and commune with your Muse (and bookmark the pages).

The Unworn Necklace, Roberta Beary‘s first collected volume of haiku and senryu is finally available. (Snapshot Press, August 2007, order form) We first told you about the upcoming book, and posted five poems from it, when Robert’s manuscript won 1st Prize in the Snapshot Press Haiku Competition for 2006. A copy just arrived directly from the author yesterday (many thanks, RB!), so you can bet that we’ll soon have much more to say, once the entire 69-poem collection is savored and digested by the entire f/k/a Gang. Meanwhile, here are two poems honoring the current change of season and celestial show:

another summer over
red dahlias
fill a vase

harvest moon
the long pull
of faraway children

………………… by Roberta Beary from The Unworn Necklace (Snapshots Press, 2007; order)
“harvest moon” – The Heron’s Nest (Special Mention, 2006 Readers’ Choice Awards)

Some of you seem to have missed (judging from the sad dearth of click-throughs) this blurb from our recent post about the 2007 Annual Meeting of the Haiku Society of America:

“Just Fell Off the Haiga Truck” (Sept. 14, 2007) To celebrate my attendance at the 2007 HSA Annual Meeting, I’ve mocked up a little two-sided, one-page, trifold brochure called “Just Fell Off the Haiga Truck.” It is filled with haiku and senryu that I originally wrote for haiga created using my brother Arthur’s photography (and occasionally Mama G’s). The hope is that the poems will stand up on their own, as good haiga poetry should. The brochure can be printed out if you click on the link above. It contains thumbnail images and hyperlinks to more than a dozen haiga.

haiku party . . .
I’ll cut
and you choose

……………………………. dagosan – similar haiga at MagnaPoetsJf

. . . Finally, a few of dagosan‘s Harvest Moon haiku:

three-headed stranger –
on his shoulders a pumpkin
and a harvest moon

double-dribble –
harvest moon hanging
on the rim

harvest moon party –
the hostess stares
at the cloud cover

night game –
bocce balls kissing
the harvest moon