- If you like this post, check out Erotic Poetry, Love & Passion • A Review of Poets & Anthologies and Erotic Haiku: Of Skin On Skin. In the former you will find three more collections of erotic haiku reviewed: Erotic Haiku by Rod Willmot & authors, Haiku for Lovers, and Cold Moon: Erotic Haiku of Gabriel Rosenstock. The latter reviews a new collection of erotic haiku by George Swede and Terrry Ann Carter.
coquette: Sensual haiku
Jeffrey Winke
My writing of Haiku has fallen off of late.
But I want to get back to writing more. And to get myself warmed up, I’m reviewing three splendid collections.
Eroticism and haiku are a perfect fit. Just as the haiku is the art of indirection, so too erotica. Whereas the explicit is an imaginative endpoint, the best haiku are a suggestive starting point for the imagination. Suggestiveness is all – allusion, inference, and association. And when haiku fail because they were made too explicit, eroticism fails for the same reason: eroticism becomes pornographic.
her seven button
blouse…
three undone
❧ Jeffrey Winke
What does the reader imagine? Does he or she imagine that the poet is unbuttoning his lover’s blouse?
Or maybe he sits at a café and can’t help notice a woman’s blouse – three of her buttons, not just unbuttoned, but undone. Where has she been, with whom, and doing what? – he might ask himself. Winke’s haiku invites the imagination, suggests the erotic.
Winke’s slim book, like his haiku, bespeaks care and experience. The backmatter informs us that he co-edited the first small press North American Haiku anthology, the Third Coast Haiku Anthology. He’s also published a separate book of haiku called What’s Not There: Selected Haiku of Jeffrey Winke (I picked up the last used copy at Amazon). If you can’t find his book, visit Byte Studios – the presentation of his haiku, some of which are from coquette, are pretty cool and you can also contact Winke directly.
Don’t buy coquette expecting hours of reading. There are two to three haiku per page but each haiku, if you give it a little time, can suggest a world of eroticism. Just read one and savor it. As to the pages themselves, the layout is spare but thoughtful.
The shadowy images that accompany the haiku quietly comment but remain as subtly suggestive as the poems themselves. All in all, this little collection is caviar for the general. Buy it if you like haiku. Buy it if you like eroticism. But don’t if you are looking for something more explicit.
Venus in view
Brynne McAdoo
Venus in View was not what I was expecting, but I like it and I’m glad I picked up.
Rather than a collection of erotic haiku, you will find six haibun. One of Japan’s greatest works of literature is a haibun – Matsuo Basho’s Narrow Road to the North. In a nutshell, haibun is the genre in which prose passages combine with haiku. Basho’s Journey to the North is a narrative account of his journey through northern Japan, interspersed with haiku, and Brynne McAdoo’s haibun are short erotic narratives interspersed with erotic haiku – Electric Fence, Breastless, Anosmia Affair, Haiku Rendezvous, Halloween Haibun, Nor’easter Coming.
Brynne MacAdoo, by the way, is the author’s pseudonym. She lives two lives, the author tells us. “By day she is a high school teacher, and in her shadow life, she writes erotic haiku under this pseudonym.” How did she think up the name? Brynne means “strong woman” while the “surname is borrowed from her grandmother, a renegade 1935 beauty queen.
McAdoo’s haibun are, by turns, humorous, wistful, salacious and thoughtful. Eroticism isn’t the goal, but the backdrop against which her small stories and poems appear. The protagonist in each narrative is a woman, and the men in each story frequently leave something to be desired – women who choose to read McAdoo’s book can expect to have their been there, done that moments, recognizing some of the men who have passed through the lives – or maybe even stayed too long.
personal ad date:
my purse ready with condom
and mace
But what might have been altogether too one-sided in the hands of a lesser poet, is made gracious by the poet’s own self-deprecating sense of humor. If her feet are stepped on, it’s because she picked the wrong dancer. Indeed, some of the haiku are really more senryu-like, a form as old as the haiku but which revels in human foible and are often humorous (if darkly in the hands of their original Japanese masters).
Compare Jeffrey Winke’s haiku, the blouse with it’s three undone buttons, to Brynne McAdoo’s wry riposte:
first & last date –
back from the ladies room
my blouse buttoned higher
If you’re collector, like me, this little book is worthy. Add it to your collection of erotic poetry. If you’re a woman in need of commiseration, look no further.
“It’s been nearly a year since I’ve seen him. I even moved, not leaving a forwarding number.
you don’t know
where I live but still
i leave the porch light on
Our phone conversation is short, nothing much exchanged except when and where we will meet, a secret spot: a cheesy cabin restaurant with an artificial fireplace. It is another place neither of us has been to and will never go again. I make sure I wear a black, fringed sweater he’s never seen, a new shade of lipstick, Scarlet O’Hara Red.”
Erotic Haiku
Compiled and Edited with Translations into Japanese by Hiroaki Sato
Sato’s book, rather than being by a single author, is a collection of erotic haiku. Some of the names, like Charles Trumbull & Lee Gurga, will be recognizable to followers of American haiku. The haiku, being by a variety of authors, also vary in tone. Some are more suggestive than the others and some are explicitly unembarrassed, though Sato has been careful to choose haiku that nevertheless uphold the form’s suggestiveness.
The book is also filled with line-drawn illustrations of the most simplistic sort – deliberately amateurish. I love them. They compliment the haiku without turning them into Haiga – which would detract from the creators’ original intent – haiku that speak for themselves. Some of the drawings are out and out explicit and on a different blog I might be tempted to reproduce one or two. As it is, the image at right will give you their flavor.
old lovers
only her left nipple
becomes erect — Lee Gurga
Sato, a resident of New York, translator and essayist, writes for the Japan Times and was president of the Haiku Society of America from 1979 to 1981. In the backmatter of the book, he discusses the Senryu-like qualities of erotic haiku.
What? Erotic haiku? You mean erotic senryu, no? Haiku sing of seasonal transitions, senryu of human foibles, such as erotic stirrings, don’t they? ¶ Yes, that is the usual distinction made. But when you think of the history of Japanese verse — the tanka splitting into the upper and lower hemistiches, thereby creating the renga, which, in turn, spawned the hokku, then the haiku—you realize that there was difficulty from the outset in making a distinction between haiku and senryu by subject matter. “Love,” an important subject in tanka, was not only inherited by renga, but renga masters such as Minamoto no Sozei (died 1455) and Nishiyama Soin (1605-1682) have left “Love Hyakuin,” in which each of the one-hundred units dealt with “love.”
Then, after reminding readers that eroticism can find historical precedent in classical Japanese literature, he makes the curious argument that English haiku, unlike Japanese haiku, is free (read: has no rules). He writes: “So, to define haiku in English, you must say ‘it is that which the person who wrote it calls haiku.’ No, I’m not joking.” Sato may insist that he’s not joking but, fortunately for the rest of us (and according to those who were involved in the project), he seems to have had a very clear grip on what constituted haiku when collecting them for his anthology. Even if he’s not joking, I don’t take him seriously.
In his choices, he did a gorgeous job.
mouth open skyward
on her tongue raindrops
of my love — Jukka Saario
Of the three books, this book will be the most difficult to find. It appears to be out of print and Amazon’s resellers are trying to retire on its resale value. Be patient. If you wait long enough, as I did, a reasonably priced copy may show up. Wait, buy it, and you won’t regret it. My own feeling is that the book is a gem of poetic eroticism, the best collection of erotica haiku available, but I don’t recommend paying more than $30 dollars for it unless you’re the type who just has to have it for your erotic collection. Wait, and you won’t feel as though you’ve paid too much for too little. (The book was originally priced at $9.95.)
spring equinox
with the lilacs she comes out
as bisexual
❧ Brynne McAdoo
Erotic Haiku & Senryu Online
There are also bloggers and online poets who are trying their hand at erotic haiku and senryu. The sites, obviously, aren’t for the under aged or the prudish. For the rest, you may enjoy what you find.
Remittance Girl, among the most talented of erotic writers on the Internet, has tried her hand at haiku.
The Erotic Writer is a relatively new blog.
Senryū: Edge of the World, Metamorph, Vignettes
Cernuus is also a relatively new blog whose Senryu you might enjoy:
And here are some erotic haiku by Steve Mount
And here is a collection of erotic haiku at AHAPoetry.
Lastly, you can find my own erotic haiku at right: Categories/Haiku/Erotic.
Enjoy. And if you can recommend other sites or books please do so. I and other readers will thank you.
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These sound great, thanks for the recommendations.
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Enjoyed the senryu
but where
are the haiku?
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apples, she says,
but they taste nothing
like oranges.
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Ha.
Very nice.
So here’s one, which I didn’t think I had the syllabic count, but now realize does. It doesn’t quite make sense to send it now, but here it is.
Yoga “Haiku”
Mula Bandha – genital
smile, I’d walk a mile
to be in your yoga class.
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Correction:
They’re apples, very
good apples, but the menu
said, oranges, no?
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Love your poetry….I put one on my blog and linked it to yours. Take a look, let me know what you think and if you would like for me to remove it, I will.
Thanks for the inspiration,
Tiffany
http://www.antontherapy.wordpress.com
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Hi Tiffany. I checked out your site and I like it very much. I’m adding it to my “Sites I Just Like” list. I couldn’t find where you posted the poem but, in either case, you’re welcome to do so.
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Hey, I like this, lol, neat, I may have to try it, thanks for such great post and inspiration, you have so much here saved to favs, look at my blog roll, we have a poetry scholl online, take a look, and if interested I can set you up a class, great site you have, thank you much appreciated, WS
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Looking for collaborator for small book of sensual line drawings- I can share my work with you. They cry out for haiku which I don’t write.
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Hi Anon, I’m always interested in collaborating. Send some of your line drawings. You can find my e-mail address at the top right under Contact. :-)
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Will you be reviewing Wilmott’s Erotic Haiku Anthology? It’s Out of Print, so you’ll have to use the library, but it’s still worth investigating.
How about Cold Rain by Gabriel Rosenstock?
There’s also Hummingbird Tattoo that Ellery Littleton recently published.
I’ll let you know if I can think of any more.
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There’s also Manu Bazzano’s anthology “Haiku for Lovers” that’s easy to find a cheap, used copy of. That’s another solid antho.
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I ordered Bazzano’s.
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I found Wilmott’s Anthology at a relatively inexpensive price. I also found Bazzano’s Anthology. I’ll try picking both of those up and reviewing. The collection by Rosenstock is called “Cold Moon” not “Cold Rain”, unless he published another one I don’t know about. (I also found that inexpensively.) The used booksellers at Amazon are indulging in their usual moronic pricing: $500 for Wilmott’s Anthology. I couldn’t find anything by Littleton. Fascinating how OP erotic poetry goes for a premium. Christ, I should put together some erotic haiku of my own and let it go out of print the following week. I’ll retire.
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Amazon is a jack. I’d recommend Abebooks.com. Better prices, wider variety of sellers, etc. These OOP books are still going to be pricey, but they’re worth it!
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Hi – I posted a link to this great post on my FB page – if you are not happy with that then just let me know and I will remove it. Kindest regards – Michele….xx
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Erotic-words/448305978546311
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Hi Michele,
Since I’m not a member of Facebook, Facebook doesn’t permit me to view the page you wanted me to see. Facebook is a bit like AOL that way. They control access to your page, not you. And that’s the problem with Facebook. But I certainly don’t object to your linking to the post. :-)
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my whispered desire,
even her thong underwear,
– blushes
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Hey. that’s good. :-) I’m going to have to check out your blog.
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From ‘Mackems Sex Life Senryus’
Allergic to semen
she wipes her mouth
goes back for more
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Ha! Is that from a book or ebook you’ve put out?
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It is part of a collection that will be featured in a poem book that I’m nearing to finishing. I’m going to self publish. Then send a copy off to a commercial publisher to be considered. :)
Enjoy another:
I slap that silk thong clad ass
you giggle and bring me
more coffee and pancakes
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Hey, that’s great news and these erotic senryu aren’t bad. You know, I’m about to review another collection of erotic haiku/senryu and the author really doesn’t get it. They’re not haiku and they’re only occasionally senryu—more by luck, I think, than skill. Keep me up to date.
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This where research pays off and knowing your history. Haiku is the evocation of a memory or moment that blossoms from a centralised seasonal reference or implication where the human aspect is a secondary connection that finishes it if it is needed. Senryu evocation blossoms from the centralisation of the human as the conduit of expression and nature as a secondary source when needed applied. Any this is just my musing on it, by no means is it a standard. Thank you for the appreciation of my work as well. When I get this collection all tied up. I would be very pleased if you would like to give it a review.
Haiku
Rose Garden
where children play together
watch both bloom
Senryu
Roses decline
as my love
for her grows
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You’re a breath of fresh air, Macken. A little research is all it takes. All too often poets give the impression (either through lack of talent or outright ignorance) that three lines is all they need to know.
And, yes, I’d be happy to give your collection a review.
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