RAISING THE BLADE
Collected Haiku & Tanka
1980 - 2000
by R. G. Rader
ALSO BY R.G. RADER
POETRY:
Kicking the Rain (forthcoming)
Neon Shapes (1985)
S/he (1983)
PLAYS:
Flow
The Wind Behind Us (radio play)
Heart-Beat
Perfect Joy
The Gift of the Magi
(A Stage Adaptation of O’Henry’s Short Story)Judas: A Short Meditation
Most of the hakiu & tanka in this book first appeared in the following magazines, journals, and anthologies: Brussels Sprout, Cicada (Canada), Dragonfly, The Erotic Haiku Anthology (Canada), Frogpond (Haiku Society of America), High/Coo, Inkstone (Canada), Japan Air Lines English Language Haiku Anthology, Ko (Japan), Mayfly, Modern Haiku, Wind Chimes, Zen Mountain Monastery newsletter.
For Raymond (1917-1983)
Sobi-shi whispers:
candle flame flickers
stays lit
For Mary-Jane & Jason - and Alex
NOTES
The haiku fly/on her breast/the summer heat was a contest winner in the Cicada Erotic Haiku contest, 1981.
S/he was first published as chapbook by High/Coo Press in 1983.
Neon Shapes was first published by Jade Mountain Press in 1985 and won a Merit
Book Award from the Haiku Society of America in 1986.The haiku fall sunset:/the faded rose tattoo/on her breast was one of two haiku awarded the Eri Nakamura Award for 1986 from the haiku journal Modern Haiku.
The two haiku bamboo cane/bending/with his limp and faint melody/of the shakuhachi/morning dew won first and second place respectively in the J.P. Humes Japanese Stroll Garden contest of the Zen Mountain Monastery in 1987.
Introduction
After a little more than a decade of what may appear to have been silence, R.G. Rader returns with this powerful collection, demonstrating again a mastery of the haiku genre and its related forms. He provides us with some of the poems that delighted and inspired his readers during the 1980s, and he presents a variety of new selections, which remain true to the themes and style of his earlier work.
Those of us who know Rader and respect his talent have missed him in print. This collection reminds us of the ways in which he, as poet, speaks for each of us. While the poems from Neon Shapes bring back the haunting intensity of the urban landscape, those from S/HE are enduringly intimate and suggest, through their profound sensitivity, our own special relationships. "Raising the Blade" is a recent sequence. Premiered here as the centerpiece and title work of the book, it is an evocative rendering of the psychology of suicide enhanced by meticulous attention to detail. The other poems, especially the tanka, demonstrate his versatility as well as his finely tuned perceptions of contemporary culture and the paradoxes of human experience, expressed in the mature and celebratory manner of a poet who has come to terms with life as it is.
Rader gives full weight and measure to each sparsely worded reflection, incorporating intelligence and compassion as well as verbal and metaphysical wit. His subjects deal with the spiritual and the temporal, and he achieves a musicality in his poems which is both lyrical and elegiac, communicating deeply felt and strongly assessed emotion. His poems are rich in language and sensibility and in their mindfulness of the extraordinary mystery of the ordinary.
Rader’s involvement in haiku led to publication in numerous magazines and periodicals throughout the United States and abroad. He has received several awards and prizes, including a well-deserved Merit Book Award in 1985 for his collection Neon Shapes. His small press, Muse-Pie Press, established in 1980, has brought the work of many poets to the public, poets who are recipients of major book awards, fellowships in poetry, and various national and international prizes.
That Rader has been with us is best exemplified in the way he has followed his own heart and mind without the self-promotion we have come to distrust in certain writers, rather, through a long period of personal growth and spiritual development. Although his haiku have been absent from the 1990s journals, he never stopped writing them, choosing instead a process of observing, learning, and writing which did not include publication as its goal. Most importantly, he has spent the last decade teaching, acting, and writing plays to serve in other ways the value of his artistic passion. His poetry and plays reflect this time involved in other artistic endeavors. His poetry and his plays all derive from the complexity of human encounter; his is a writing in which there is no seam between the personal and the universal.
Just as Rader’s longer poems and haiku are never one-dimensional, neither is the poet. He has proven time and again that his interests, achievements, commitments, and particular genius are multi-faceted. Through these characteristics, combined with an innate sincerity and generosity of spirit, he has touched the lives of many with his own. Perhaps it was an inkling of this and what was to come that attracted the attention of the eminent poet Raymond Roseliep. Correspondence between the two began early in Rader’s career and resulted in the great master becoming Rader’s most cherished and valued mentor, teacher, and friend; hence, the primary dedication to Sobi-Shi. Roseliep’s influence, along with the influence of the wandering Japanese poet Ozaki Hosai, find form in Rader’s similar but completely individual and distinctive style.
Adele Kenny
Fanwood, New Jersey
Spring 2001
RAISING THE BLADE
BY
R.G. RADER
NEON SHAPES
(1985)
full
moon
in
the
bum’s
glass
eye
the bum’s last few sips:
from the cathedral
a tenebrae chant
rain puddle:
the bum rinses
an apple core
winter wind
cigar ashes
back on the bum’s coat
a street musician
blows taps:
the morning rush
the muffled
church bells:
morning fog
convent garden
hands missing
from the stone virgin
turning
to feed the starling
pigeon lady
stray dog
sniffing
the bag lady’s old shoe
bag lady and robin
fighting over
a piece of yarn
shop window:
she stares at herself
in a crystal vase
pigeon
the panhandler’s
stttttuttttter
winter morning,
the pretzel vendor
hugs himself
thunder:
a newly painted
park bench
motorcycle
drowning out
the mockingbird
tapping in
the sunrise
the blindman’s cane
bumping
the blindman
autumn fog
pool hall:
eight ball misses
the roach
prostitute tapping
the car window
cold rain
blinking
in
her
eyes
P
E
E
P
S
H
O
W
chalk outline
of the pimp’s body:
first snowflakes
under a full moon
the mannequin’s
wink
wink
neon shapes
her
silhouette
evening snow
over the basketball court
pigeon tracks
S/HE
(1983)
breaking
the sacramental loaf -
the smell of her perfume
fly
on her breast -
the summer heat
hidden cave . . .
lover’s hand
leads
me
parting her
lips
to the dawn
my tongue
exploring
the earth
entering her
the space between
our silence
making love
the fly against the screen
again and again
at dusk
her
red lips
open
close
after
afterglow . . .
the cool breeze
a weed
between his teeth
their silence
moonlit goodbye:
neon blinks away
her shadow
evening snow
filling her footprints
a second time
neon off
on
her love
their divorce -
we weed
the garden
hoeing her garden
the ground
around her
between hello
and goodbye -
her withered hands
lowering her coffin
the ground
full again
RAISING THE BLADE
(a sequence)
her suicide threat
the silence
before thunder
raising the blade
to her wrist
she swats a fly
between the pages
of her childhood scrapbook
petals of a rose
sleeping pills
summer morning’s
mourning dove
in
the
shade
of
a
summer
sunset
her
shadow
disappears
her funeral:
faintly
the groundkeeper’s lawnmower
after her funeral
the incessant clang
of windchimes
a rose in bloom . . .
reflection in the eye
of the camera lens
JAZZ
a sequence
thunder
the
street
musician’s
clarinet solo
child’s fingers
chasing the k e ys
of the player piano
summer mist
the street musician’s
sour note
prostitute’s shadow -
dimly blinking
the neon JESUS SAVES
ice storm:
the male prostitute
tripping into a limousine
pigeons mate
atop
the neon JESUS SAVES
evening fog -
almost missing
the neon JESUS SAVES
summer jazz concert:
unfolding
herfoldingfan
street musician’s
high C
flutter of pigeons
WHALE
a sequence
harpoon
stretching
into the sun
humpback whale
bending into cloud
the red dusk
whale’s belly
smell
of newborn
whale ship
falling
off the horizon
humpback
mountain
mist
buried
in the record sleeve
humpback’s call
more
haiku
withered garden,
still within its earth
summer heat
bamboo cane
bending
with his limp
faint melody
of the shakuhachi
morning dew
fall sunset;
the faded rose tattoo
on her breast
hearing
of her departure
the gull’s distant cry
archer
just missing the bullseye
summer breeze
no shade
but
the hawk’s shadow
after the earthquake:
on the floor of the stone church
pieces of stained glass
abandoned monastery:
cricket
chorus
a bellowing laugh
tumbling
over
the
w
a
t
e
r
f
a
l
l
parrot
mimics
his curse
trap . . .
again the cheese
gone
leaving the casino -
the seagull’s
cackle
pet shop cricket:
a penny
for its silence
currying the horse,
flutter of a moth
under-
foot
old farmer
snaps his suspenders . . .
fly moves an inch
YIELD sign:
in a nearby bush
starlings mate
pruning his rosebush -
grandfather tells us
a tall tale
after her garden walk
the old woman’s
breathless tears
among the weeds
she builds a rock garden
to fill her time
nibbling
a tasteless berry . . .
her breasts
cold winter night
her backward UOY EVOL I
on the steamed window
I’m no good, she says
the house plant blossoms
in the shade
sunset:
morning dream
lingering
concrete wall . . .
my shadow
follows
fat woman
bends to fold her wash -
folds f
o
l
d
TANKA
reading Takuboku:*
thinking
of age 15,
whistles were more
than poems then
*
written on readingeven whistled
in my sleep-
in fact, at 15
whistles
were my poems
eagle
flies from its nest
and back,
I know the going
and coming
entering ruins
of the farm house
a cow grazes
in the shadow
of charred rafters
her face
a smooth white
of pearl
dulls gray
in your shadow
never knowing
the touch
of her skin,
the misery
of this hot summer day
hearing your voice
on the telephone
I hang up without speaking,
the insistent coo
of the mourning dove
after
our argument
stops,
the soothing melody
of the bluejay’s cackle
this icy night
I lie alone
in the fetal position;
the glean white
of your naked back
the distant rhythm
of a foghorn
this summer night;
your deep-throated snore
awakens the dog
her hair
slipping slowly
through my fingers,
without saying goodbye
this summer solstice
back to face,
your walking away
reminds me
only
that it is autumn
the red imprint
of her hand etched deeply
on my cheek,
a winter goodbye
worth remembering
So, so long
traveling this highway
alone---
vanishing V
of geese heading south
this summer night
my head
on her chest
heartbeat
slows steadily
chiseled
into the cedar bark
lovers’ initials
have leveled more trees
than most lumberjacks care to
the mirror -
a crack running down
the middle
reflects two stares
all too familiar
London Tanka (1996)
London Street preacher
in front of St. Paul’s Cathedral
telling a tale of Christ —
his eyes
seeing no one
Toy museum
a window of toy soldiers
the old man tapping
at his fond memories
of war
Big Ben’s chimes
the ancient waves
of the Thames
still shudder
silently
Slowly
the London canal boat
cruises —
ripples in this city life
my own
pale light
(a tanka sequence)
sleeping
but now awake
her smile
a pale light
of the joy remaining . . .
her eyes -
mirrors of pain -
gather
into them another
day’s sunlight
today
her voice stilled,
half moon sitting
on her windowsill
aching
gone now,
her memories
planted
on my lips
will pass on
Book and poems Copyright © R. G. Rader 2001
You are invited to contact the author.
Published as an AHA Book Online 2001.
Read more of AHA Books Online.
