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Haiku: The Gentle Art of Disappearing
Author: Gabriel Rosenstock
Date Of Publication: Dec 2011
Isbn13: 978-1-4438-3378-3
Isbn: 1-4438-3378-9
In Haiku, the Gentle Art of Disappearing, a renowned Irish poet shows us how haiku may be used as a powerful tool for spiritual interpenetration. This implies that we divest ourselves of the ever-chattering mind, shed the voracious ego and enjoy momentary glimpses of unity with natural phenomena. In the companion volume, Haiku Enlightenment, he further explores these thoroughly delightful experiences and invites us to disappear! Haiku is dynamically focussed on the present, from season to season, from day to day, from hour to hour, from second to second. But how illusory, how fleeting is that present moment? How caught up is it with the past, with the future? Can we stop its flow? Are there more ways than one of experiencing its essence? If we experience a moment intensely enough, might we disappear? Surprises await those readers who may have considered haiku to be nothing more than an innocuous three-line poem.

A renowned poet shares his experience of haiku and its potential to surprise us again and again into a sudden awakening and thus to a deeper sense of what it is to be truly alive. His remarkably refreshing insights have delighted confreres around the world.

Gabriel Rosenstock, poet, haikuist, playwright, writing in Irish and English, is the author/translator of over 100 books. He is a member of Aosdána, the Irish Academy of Arts and Letters. He has worked in theatre, radio, television, print journalism and book publishing. Some titles of note include his selected poems (from the Irish) Portrait of the Artist as an Abominable Snowman, from Domhan Books, New York; Forgotten Whispers, haiku and senryu (Anam Press, Cork); Signs of Rain: Irish Weather Wisdom (Appletree Press, Belfast); Irish Proverbs: in Irish and English (Mercier Press, Cork and Dublin) and the compilation A Treasury of Irish Love( Hippocrene Books, New York.) Recent volumes of poems in Irish are Syójó (Cló Iar-Chonnachta) and Eachtraí Krishnamurphy (Coiscéim). A forthcoming volume of poems in English, Uttering Her Name, consists of love poems in the classical tradition of spiritual longing.

A former Chairman of Poetry Ireland/ Éigse Éireann, he is a member of The World Haiku Club and an Hon. Life Member of the Irish Translators’ and Interpreters’ Association. He taught haiku at the Schule für Dichtung (Academy of Poetry), Vienna in 2008.

He has translated thousands of haiku and poems into Irish, including the selected poems of Heaney, Grass, Michele Ranchetti, Said, F X Alarcón, J W Hackett, Issa, Shiki, Buson, Santōka, John W. Sexton, Michael Augustin, Hansjörg Schertenleib, Peter Huchel, Georg Heym, Willem M. Roggeman, Andres Ehin, Zhang Ye, Georg Trakl, J P Tammen, Hilde Domin, Michael Krüger.

Rosenstock has read his poetry and haiku in Ireland, Britain, North, South and Central America, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Japan, Australia and India. He contributes a haiku column to the newspaper LÁ.

A new Selected Poems/ Rogha Dánta appeared in 2005 from Cló Iar-Chonnachta.

“Gabriel Rosenstock offers us a marvellous path into the essence of haiku and the state of being in harmony with the laws of the universe.”

—Ion Codrescu, Romania

“A learned, imaginative and profound commentary on haiku with many outstanding examples from around the globe, demonstrating the form’s universal appeal. Persons with little knowledge of haiku will be captivated, while those with expertise will feel renewed…”

—George Swede, Canada

“Rosenstock is an excellent teacher, wise enough to realise that in describing haiku (as in so many other things) examples are worth a million words. He spreads before us a variegated tapestry of haiku, by poets in all places and at all times since haiku began, as well as from his own ingenious pen, in which ‘the spirit of play and the play of spirit are simultaneous and one.’”

—David Cobb, England

“From the wealth of his experience, Rosenstock gives profound advice and useful tips for the wanderer on the haiku path, showing us how sudden enlightenment can happen in our ordinary life.”

—Ruth Franke, Germany

“With edifying purpose, the author subtly introduces examples of haiku’s apocalyptic potential of transfiguration, known in haiku and Zen as ‘spiritual interpenetration,’ and, by so doing, offers the reader an opportunity to witness—through numinous haiku moments—the entwining of the Universal Spirit with Its Self.”

—James W. Hackett, Hawaii

Price Uk Gbp: 24.99
Price Us Usd: 39.99

Sample pdf (including Table of Contents)

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