Haiku – Page 5 – Imagist Blog

Nature’s anxious to reclaim our dreams

Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still. — Dorthea Lange

dreams dug out of dirt
exposed for all to see
nature reclaims her

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When my father (and tool and die maker) died I moved his tools to my home. The milling machine sat in a shed for a couple years and nature’s need to oxidize quickly made it unusable. I felt a good deal of shame in allowing this to happen. On Sunday my desire to make an adapter which would allow me to mount my Hasselblad lenses on the Ultima gave me the impetus to get the mill up and running. A long, hard day with wire brushes on grinders, WD40, and grease put me straight with my deceased dad; and by 10 pm I had my adapter. He made the precision tables himself. Unfortunately the “jeweled” surfaces were partially destroyed by rust and my cleaning of same. Scars: evidence of my neglect.

It all seems so fragile

Beauty can be seen in all things, seeing and composing the beauty is what separates the snapshot from the photograph. — Matt Hardy

thursday morning she
flew into the window and
ann loved her alive

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a walk through the play ground

continuing to learn the Ultima now with 90mm Apo-Rodagon and R8/DMR

The importance of craft — technique

“A good documentary photograph transmits the information of the situation with the utmost fidelity; achieving it means understanding the nuances of lighting and composition, and also remembering to keep the lenses clean and the cameras steady.” — Sam Abell, Seeing and Shooting Straight

Sunday morning:

cold wind bites the skin
even as the sun melts fresh snow
spring appears unsure

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the birthday party – delightful

Keep looking. If you can’t photograph; write. If you can’t write; draw. If you can’t draw; pickup a musical instrument.

“The virtue of the camera is not the power it has to transform the photographer into an artist, but the impulse it gives him to keep on looking.” — Brooks Atkinson – 1951, Once Around the Sun

some times the impulse
simply will not manifest
as on this foggy day
—
beauty seen yet no
proof beyond an impression
left on aging eyes
—
her youth and allure
spilled atop the lunch counter
splashing all over us

Perhaps the virtue of the written word is not the power it has to transform the author into a poet, but the impulse it gives him to keep expressing thoughts; however feeble.

Roberto Bolaño’s Infrarealist Manifesto

More from Roberto Bolaño’s Infrarealist Manifesto, “Risk is always elsewhere. The true poet is always leaving himself behind. Never too long in the same place, like guerrilla fighters, flying saucers, and the white eyes of lifers. LEAVE IT ALL BEHIND, AGAIN. GO OUT ON THE ROADS.”

“I dreamt that a man looked back, over the anamorphic landscape of dreams, and that his glance was hard as steel but still fragmented itself in multiple glances each time more innocent, each time more destitute.

I dreamt that a storm of ghostly numbers was the only thing left behind by mankind three billion years after the earth had ceased to exist.” — R. Bolaño, “A journey through literature”

those ones and zeros
blowing about the winter
without human kind

a memory locked in silver on paper

“A film is never really good unless the camera is an eye in the head of a poet.” — Orson Welles

In the case of a cinematic camera that would involve pace, meter, cadence and rhythm in addition to composition and proper lighting; perhaps even requiring a editor/poet to maintain that which the camera captured. A still camera, as an eye in the head of a poet, however, has more modest aspirations; a haiku; a short verse; a poetic phrase; a simple, often overlooked truth; a bit of passion; a memory; a mystery; a reminder; a nagging or aching;

seen frozen within
silver halides, thoughts, (past times)
still, reading their signs

words bouncing off visions

“I trust pictures, but no pictures in my world – because I know what goes on.” — Naomi Campbell

So, sitting in the kitchen, reading The Nation, or rather articles within, which refer to the life, times and work of Roberto Bolaño, who said, “Then what is writing of quality? Well, what it’s always been: to know how to thrust your head into the darkness, know how to leap into the void, and to understand that literature is basically a dangerous calling.” among other groups of words, mostly in variations of Spanish.

this spring visioning
implores me to discover
infrarealist

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