THE GREAT BCWW LITERARY HAIKU CONTEST
Winners announced on Friday, Nov. 16, 2012
at 86West Restaurant & Bar, 86 W. State St., Doylestown -- 6:00 PM
Natalie Dyen coordinated our informal gathering
Super photo-essay on the TGIF by Alan Shils HERE
A literary contest for BCWW members only
RULES
To write THREE haiku, each with a LITERARY theme: writing, authors, books, literary characters, style, publishing, etc. Why three haiku? To give each contestant more than one shot at it. The winning haiku were selected on the basis of cleverness, creativity (puns allowed), irony, and adherence to a literary theme.
Judging the contest was former BCWW member Bill Donahue,
editor of Suburban Life Magazine and Philadelphia Life Magazine. On his own, Bill awarded a fourth prize. See bottom of page to read Bill's tribute to Philip Roth.
BCWW HAIKU IN CONTEST POSTED HERE
ONE -- JULES WINISTORFER
(Second Prize)
Through the fog it came.
Ere long it ate our food.
I shot the ALBATROSS.
Writing is mysterious;
we'd like to have rules.
Few pretend to know.
The book is heavy,
as the thoughts within.
Sort them out.
TWO -- JAVAD MOHSENIAN
(First Prize)
Tonight in the darkness I am alone
without lover or moonlight to call my own.
Tonight even my shadow has deserted me.
I will no longer drink.
Your lips are my cup.
I am drunk on love forever.
If I was only the God,
no, no, I don't want to be.
Can't tolerate the troubles I see.
THREE -- WILLIAM KIRK
It lit upon Samuel Becket's spread,
Crepe yellow bright and lithe
Eaten along with the kipper snacks.
Red red headprint against a white plaster wall
Kerplop kerplop
Long livid Hemingway is dead.
This was no London surf a'comin' in;
Tourquoise with sprinklings of potato chips;
Jack was at the helm, snot glory on his eyebrows.
FOUR -- DON SWAIM
paper burns at 451
Montag fires his flamethrower
ebooks rise from the ashes
(Third Prize)
Emily in her carriage
Too rushed to stop for Death
So Death grabs a cab
Twenty-thousand leagues...
Nemo ponders in the Nautilus under the sea,
Pro baseball doesn't have enough?
FIVE -- VIRGINIA BORTON
A book authors prize
Reveals just the word needed
Roget's Thesaurus
Emerald City:
Wizard unmasked! Witch melted!
Click heels, Dorothy
True friend, good writer
Charlotte weaves her web: SOME PIG
Wilbur wins -- no ham!
SIX -- DANIEL DORIAN
Madeleine dipped in tea
Lost memories came to be
Did turn in early
Endlessly waiting,
Will this buffoon ever grasp
Life's absurdity?
Marlin in my sight
With the marlin I will fight
Three days and three nights
SEVEN -- ALAN SHILS
S h e f e l l i n a r a b b i t h o l e ? ! ?
F o r g e d a b o u d e r .
W e d o n 't n e e d n o s t i n k i n ' r a b b i t h o l e .
T h e B i b l e s a y s
G o d s a i d
L e t 2 H → H e + E
Hemingway takes another drink
Hem-ing and haw-ing
His-way a-way.
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EIGHT -- JIM BRENNAN
Whores, drunks and bums
Life's gaiety; revolving around Doc
A universal deity
Staccato, sharp and fast
Pause, poise, and then meander
The rhythm and cadence of slander
Bold, frail, and eloquent;
Paranoid, benevolent.
Idiosyncratic writer
NINE -- PINA RAHILL
Whirling in the mind
Aching to be relevant
Words land on the page
(Fourth Prize)
A hunger to tell
An obsession throughout life
The writer is born
A mother at dawn
Cherished wife by the moonlight
A writer at heart
TEN -- CATHY HILLIARD
What is it she loves?
Misty, Flicka, Black Beauty
Magical creatures.
My mate Julia
Poured beer at J.W. South's
But McCourt never joined us.
Rabbit represents
Sadness of society
Will it ever change?
ELEVEN -- MATT BARRETT
Artists have no bounds.
Unless they're poets
who keep close track of sylla--
Musty books, the author loves,
Hidden in shelves, what is that smell?
The cat had died, and left its mark.
For sale: baby shoes, never worn
A size too small, even at birth
Blame the mother, pj's 1/2 off.
TWELVE -- JACKIE NASH
A treasured red purse
Dropped aside the rumbling train
Anna's last gesture.
[Anna Karenina]
The empty eyes of
Doctor T. J. Eckleburg
Observe Jay's folly.
[The Great Gatsby]
Truman's blood ran cold
When prayers were left unanswered
Holly, go lightly.
[Truman Capote]
THIRTEEN -- ELIZABETH KELLY
The ghost of Poe laments intrusion,
The Barbarians are now inside the walls,
The Bronx that was is now an illusion.
Paterson, Brennan, Bauer, and Bierce,
Cell phone charged, water, Twinkies and batteries stacked,
Snug but not safe from Sandy's rage.
"Teacher Man" stands tipsy up on the bar, and drinks his fill,
He cries, "A toast to Mao and his Chinese hoard,
Because of them, I got bed, board, and the GI Bill."
(This is a memory from Thanksgiving eve 1963, in the "Caves" on Staten Island, when Frank [McCourt] was teaching at the Tec.)
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ADDENDUM! STILL MORE HAIKU...
composed by BCWW members but not entered in competition
Don Swaim
Dorothy's not in Kansas
Doesn't ignore the man behind the curtain
Ass-kicks him with her heels three times
For I had killed the bird
And all the boards did shrink
I rose sadder, wiser without flood insurance
When the child asks what is grass
Walt doesn't know
As he celebrates himself
Michelangelo etherized upon a table
After eating a peach...
Pit in throat
Madness, starving, hysterical, naked
How the generation's worst minds Howl
No easy fix for the censor
Jules Winistorfer
Avoid the word was.
Spell out numbers in dialog.
Beware of danglers.
The Godfather rules;
He makes hard offers.
Sonny kills a cop.
Number pages, every one.
Justify left after breaks.
Double space lines.
The elephant is thirsty,
her water tub long dry.
Rosie kills August.
Daniel Dorian
A nose is a nose
But this one points like a sword
That'll kill with wit
My plan was a cinch
I didn't want witnesses
Had to kill them all
What a miracle!
Two enormous lumps of shit
On a silver plate
Alan Shils
B e f o r e y o u " t u r n o t h e r c h e e k , "
p r e v e n t a r e - a t t a c k .
F i r s t b r e a k t h e i r a r m s a n d l e g s .
In War and Peace
you want me to bury the dead?
"Bother," says Whinny the Pooh.
Goodbye Mister Chips
Hel-Lo Hi-Koo.
Screw-you Chips.
A s p y c a m e i n f r o m t h e c o l d ?
I t w a s n 't t h a t c o l d !
P o o r b a s t a r d w a s n a k e d .
Dr. Seuss
did it with a moose.
That silly goose.
Jim Brennan
Inhale, exhale, tap, tap, pant.
Dreams become words, and then a novel;
The writer's marathon
Brooklyn to Paris to the Nile;
Cliffs of Moher, return to Manhattan, and then
Warsaw; travels of the BCWW
Elizabeth Kelly
I must go down to the sea again,
To the sandy shore where my home should be,
'Tis gone and nary a star can old John see.
On Easter morn, Yeats wept for his Viking city,
Inside the GPO, ink stained hands held Sein Fein guns,
Victoria raged and rendered his Abbey mute.
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Bill Donahue, our haiku judge, wrote his own haiku, a tribute to Philip Roth, who in 2012 announced his "retirement" as a novelist:
Cannot bear it, says the jealous man-boy in tweed
Another suitor at Consuela's gory moit
It will never work, us, spare her the gleaming knife
Indignant, no home for me, all rage and piss and fire
Nobody knows, least of all me -- dot dot dot
Best I die, unknowing, on a Korean vacation
An Everyman's cemetery plot
Overgrown with weeds, broken bgottles, discarded blunts
Four more years, cries the peanut gallery; four more years, Mr. Roth
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