Guest Poet: vincent tripi
Here is our lucky thirteenth issue. Why lucky? Because of you. We have been blessed with a growing list of thoughtful readers, whose encouragement and support have been our strength, and for whom we are immensely grateful. The average life expectancy for a new haiku journal is probably somewhere between two and three years. As we begin our seventh year of Upstate Dim Sum, we proceed with a buoyancy and optimism that comes from the energy you have added to our own efforts. Thank you.
And, speaking of inspiration and collaboration, we are once again pleased to be able to bring you a haiga created specifically for Upstate Dim Sum by Ion Codrescu. The joining of a guest poet’s words with the visual poems of this artist is another example of what this journal has been about from the beginning.
Most of us who are engaged in writing haiku (if not most poets of any kind) have, to some degree, a sense of the spiritual quality of this writing. In our deepest moments of spontaneity, the words seem to come through us rather than from us. Some even feel that this is a defining characteristic of haiku. Among his peers, perhaps no one is more strongly identified with this approach to the genre than our current guest poet, vincent tripi. In his poems and his commentary on haiku and the haiku community he has emphasized the sense that this poetry exists in a sacred space and that its readers and writers are joined in something that transcends nationality and modern culture by partaking of a more ancient and familial connection.
“Haiku enlarges the heart until it is capable of containing who we really are.”
– tribe~ Meditations of a haiku poet by vincent tripi
js
Sample Poems
The pond . . .
over the pond-lilies
dragonflies mating
vincent tripi
mountain stillness
the loon call
held by the lake
ht
no one
to forgive
spring again
js
near zero
just rabbits
and crows
tc
just in time
to pick blueberries
August evening
yc
Upstate Dim Sum 