almost dark -
....
Humanity,
said Jeffers, is like a quick
explosion on the planet
we're loose on earth
half a million years
our weird blast spreading –
and after,
rubble - millennia to weather,
soften, fragment,
sprout, and green again
Hmm. Tanka doesn't really work for me. It's longer form is supposed to allow more space for development of the poet's emotions but I just feel that I have too much space to play with. I wonder if it's usual to find it difficult to switch between tanka and haiku? Haiku and Senryu, yes. Haiku and Haibun, yes. But somehow, tanka is harder to grasp. And I still enjoy the rigorous discipline of objectivity that haiku demands. 
Collection of haiku entries for one of the largest haiku events staged in the UK. Thoroughly enjoyable.
Eric Amann's Cicada Voices. Finally found it. Still can't quite believe that I managed to acquire it, without having to pay through my nose. Granted, I was grossly overcharged for pre-paid shipping cost (US$10 when it was only US$4.40 in the end) but what the hell, the book was only US$10. Pity Dr. Swede (ed) did not include more of his poetry. I really like Amann.
Modern Japanese writers and the nature of literature - This showcases the breadth and depth of Ueda's knowledge of and insight into modern Japanese literary history. Ueda's effort has helped readers to better understand and appreciate the literary works of 8 modern masters, from Soseki to Tanizaki, Akutagawa and Mishima.
Re-read this. This collection of premodern Japanese senryu remains accessible and highly readable a century after they were written. I find this concept of ukiyo ("floating world" is the best translators could muster and agree on) fascinating. It's a very Zen Buddhist philosophy that is closely linked to the perspective of "everything is nothing and nothing is everything". The Chinese call it 一切皆空. 既然是空，也就不必太介怀。
Pretty decent collection, although I wish they had left out the "oldies" and included more contemporary writers. I mean, R H Blyth has already been quoted to death.
Children panicking
Out of the tiger cage
A wasp
David Cobb
Damp morning
Cash for a journey
Warm from the machine
Dee Evetts
In a bookstore
Two flies settle
On a romance
Jackie Hardy
The heat of the sun
On the pool herding goldfish
Into our shadows
Michael Facherty
Dying has never been so melodramatic. Only the Japanese can die like that. Honestly, I find it hard to believe that the Zen monks can muster enough life to craft poetry and have it written down before keeling over. It's as if they could control life and death and hold the button until their pearls of wisdom are recorded before letting life pass out of them. Bizarre. Who did they think they were, that they could actually master Death? Even more strange is the way they characterise death as "quitting the world", like they, as human beings, can choose to quit or not. I guess in the suicidal sense, one can do so but these monks certainly didn't seem like they committed harakiri or seppuku or something like that. A lot of them, according to this book, just dropped dead right after they uttered their poetic pieces.
