The day before my birthday, I completed a second round of the Buson Challenge. This time, I had friends joining me via email, Discord, and WhatsApp. Though I had a bigger group of writing buddies, this go-around was a bigger struggle than last year. Winter is not my most creative time, and the state of the world really has me down. Plus, my job is intense (and I’m unhappy in my current role). There’s been a lot weighing on my mind, and that never makes for a smooth writing experience.
But the point of the Buson Challenge, for me, is that it’s a time-bound period in which you commit to showing up no matter what. And as always, such a big project reveals new insights. I’m still pondering some of the ideas that surfaced for me, so more on those later. But I did want to share the reading list I used this time around.
I didn’t go into Round 2 expecting to come up with a reading list. But as I was communicating with my fellow writing buddies, I often found myself referencing texts I thought would be helpful. Many of these are reference texts or educational essays; some are more general writing advice. But they all served a purpose in some way. Some of them might seem out of place for a haiku challenge. I certainly was surprised to find myself reaching for a handbook on metrical verse in Week 2! But when creative intuition calls, you follow.
The Old Farmer’s Almanac (use the one for the current year)
Haiku World: An International Poetry Almanac by William J. Higginson
A Dictionary of Haiku Classified by Season Words with Traditional and Modern Methods by Jane Reichhold. (Available as a PDF at https://thehaikufoundation.org/omeka/items/show/1798)
The Five Hundred Essential Japanese Season Words by Kenkichi Yamamoto (Available as a PDF at https://thehaikufoundation.org/omeka/items/show/821)
“A Definition of Haiku” by Michael Dylan Welch (Available here: https://www.graceguts.com/essays/a-definition-of-haiku)
“Fragment and Phrase Theory” by Jane Reichhold (Available here: https://thehaikufoundation.org/omeka/items/show/781)
“Beyond the Haiku Moment: Bashō, Buson, and Modern Haiku Myths” by Haruo Shirane (Available here: https://thehaikufoundation.org/juxta/juxta-1-1/beyond-the-haiku-moment-basho-buson-and-modern-haiku-myths/)
Poetry Pea S7E33: Madku Workshop with Bona M. Santos. Available here: https://poetrypea.com/s7e33-madku-featuring-west-coast-poet-bona-m-santos/
Rules for the Dance: A Handbook for Writing and Reading Metrical Verse by Mary Oliver
“Belief and Technique for Modern Prose” by Jack Kerouac (Available here: https://writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88v/kerouac-technique.html)
Bernadette Mayer’s list of journal ideas and writing experiments: https://www.writing.upenn.edu/library/Mayer-Bernadette_Experiments.html
Natalie Goldberg’s 7 Rules for Writing Practice from Writing Down the Bones (Available as a PDF here: https://lauradavis.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Rules-of-Writing-Practice.pdf)
“The Etiquette of Freedom” by Gary Snyder from The Practice of the Wild. (Available as a PDF here: https://bewildrewild.org/wp-content/uploads/The-Practice-of-the-Wild-by-Gary-Snyder.pdf)
I spent the better part of 2024 trying and failing to get in the habit of sharing my published work more often. On top of that, there’s the ongoing concern about how anything posted to a Meta site (Facebook, Instagram, Threads) is being used to train their AI. (I’m not even considering the dumpster fire that is Xitter up for discussion.) Of course, these days putting anything on the internet runs the risk of it being scraped to train AI without our consent, but there’s only so much anyone can do at this point. I’m about to go on a further tangent about how our riches tech bros are actively enabling fascism, but that’s not the point of this post.
Anyway, since my greatest source of creative control is through my own website that I pay for, I’m going to focus on posting my creative accomplishments here more regularly. So without further ado, here are some recent publication credits for 2025. I hope to make this a regular series (and come up with a witter title for it).
I was featured on Haiku Poet Word Search.
I have work in To Live Here: Haiku for the Victims of Hurricane Helene. All proceeds go to support hurricane disaster relief efforts.
I have two haiku in the Winter 2024/2025 edition of Wales Haiku Journal
I’m also pretty sure I’ve submitted more work in the first six weeks of the year than I did in all of 2024, so from a poetic standpoint, 2025 is off to a good start!
I created a pamphlet called 100 St. Louis Season Words, a combination of classical and region-specific haiku to support local haiku practice. It’s also available as a printable PDF on my Buy Me a Coffee page. If you don’t own a printer (my 15-year-old laser printer just gave up the ghost) and want a copy, send me an email and I’ll get one in the mail for you!
I’m thrilled to announce that next month, I’m launching a quarterly ginko (haiku walk) series around the Soulard neighborhood. The first event takes place on Saturday, October 26th at 9:30 a.m. It’s free, family-friendly, and open to anyone in the St. Louis area.
I’ve wanted to start hosting ginkos in St. Louis for over a year now, but with everything else I have going on, it kept getting pushed to the back burner. Finally, though, I realized I could start hosting them in conjunction with the Soulard Restoration Group Community Involvement & Events Committee.
Here are my goals for the series:
We will meet at the Soulard Community Garden and spend 90 minutes learning about haiku, walking, exploring, and writing. The event concludes at the historic Soulard Market, a great place to explore at the conclusion of events.
If you have any haikurious friends in the St. Louis area, forward this post along to them!
Last week, after at least five failed attempts over the past four years, I finally completed the Buson Challenge. The goal of this challenge is to write 10 haiku a day for 100 days. Other than that, there aren’t many guidelines, though you can hear Mike Rehling talk a bit about it in his 2020 HSA conference talk here: YouTube link.
Even if you dare to write badly, writing that many haiku in that short a time is difficult. So if you think you want to give this a try, read on for some tips that finally helped me make it to the finish line.
1. Get a challenge buddy
This attempt at the Buson Challenge was the first one where I put out the call for an accountability partner. I found one in the haiku Discord group I’m part of; we started on the same day, and occasionally sent each other updates and drafts. We didn’t check in every day, but just often enough to keep each other motivated and on track. Knowing there was another person in it with me helped me stay focused. Plus, I appreciated having someone to share both my good and bad writing days, who really knew what it was like to not feel the creative spark but to show up and write anyway. Even when your community is small, having community at all is a game-changer.
2. Don’t overthink it
Most days, you’re going to write at least a few haiku that are duds. That’s okay. If you get too hung up on trying to write 10 absolutely skillful poems a day, I think you’re going to struggle unnecessarily. Don’t worry if they’re good enough; just write them down. If, after your 10 poems, you have a creative burst and want to write more, write more; you don’t have to limit yourself if your creativity becomes completely unbridled. Don’t worry if you think you’re repeating yourself thematically (you probably are). Don’t worry if your haiku feel repetitive; sometimes that might be true, but sometimes it might just be your perception after trying to write so many haiku. Just get the writing done. All you have to do is write 10 haiku a day. Let that be good enough.
3. Have a tracking system
When you’re trying to do something every day for an extended period of time, having some sort of tracker helps you stay organized and on track. You can do whatever you want; in the past, I’ve just used a spreadsheet with the day and the number of poems I managed to write. This time around, I set up the tracker in my bullet journal. I I had the date, what day of the challenge it was, and the number of poems I wrote that day. I also had a space to keep track of my extras (described below). Using the tracker made it easier for me to remember what day I was on and to keep myself motivated. It wasn’t just an organizational tool; it was a concrete depiction of my challenge progress.
4. Bank your extras
You might think that there’s no possible way that you might write more than 10 haiku a day. I know I was surprised when one morning, I attended a haiku group and drafted 14 poems during the writing period. On one particularly emotional day, I drafted 23 haiku and senryu. Days when I drafted more than 10 were few and far between; I only wrote extra pieces on 6 out of 100 days. Still, those extras mattered. While one of my challenge buddies chose to apply their extras to the next day (so if they wrote 12 one day, they only had to write 8 the next day), I chose to bank mine for days when things didn’t go as planned. I kept a running record of how many extras I had in my haiku bank, and on one of the 7 days I didn’t manage to write 10 poems, I simply applied the extras toward that day, and adjusted my banked amount accordingly. I still completed the challenge with 13 extras!
5. Plan a reward
In theory, writing 1,000 haiku in just over 3 months would be a reward unto itself. However, sometimes you don’t just need a finish line; you need a shiny trophy at the end of it. So decide how you’re going to celebrate. Maybe you’ll buy a new notebook (since this challenge is a great way to fill all those half-used ones lying around), or a haiku anthology you’ve had your eye on. I decided to make myself a set of stickers for crossing the finish line. Making myself a medal wasn’t practical, but stickers sure were! And the best part is, they’re easy to share! I’m mailing them out to my challenge buddies. (If you’ve completed this challenge in the past and would like a sticker, I’m happy to mail you some as well! Just message me at my contact form.)
While the Buson challenge could be considered a once-in-a-lifetime writing event, I actually find myself wanting to try yet again. I’ve decided I’ll start another round on January 1st, 2025. Starting the new year with a big writing challenge sounds fun. I’ll be posting more about those plans in December to keep those who want to join me in the loop.
While the details are still in progress, I’m excited to announce that I plan to release two new chapbooks in 2023! One will be a self-published collection of free verse, and the other will be my first haiku collection published by Cuttlefish Books, a small press out of my hometown of Cleveland, Ohio. Both chapbooks are devoted to my last few years in Texas, and as I move through the processes for each, I feel more and more each day like I am really closing that chapter in my life.
As I plan for two new releases, and therefore lots of new copies, I want to make some space in my office for the new words coming through. So, for the month of February, you can get my first two chapbooks for just $8.00 each . . . and that price includes shipping!
While I’m definitely not a minimalist, Marie Kondo’s work has always spoken to me. I’ve also always just loved the way it feels to clear out the past to make more space for the present. Even something as simple as zeroing out my inbox leaves me feeling energized and inspired. My first two chapbooks will always be dear to me. I still believe in those poems, and I will always keep copies. Yet this June will be 10 years since the publication of We’re Smaller Than We Think We Are, and seven years since the publication of Come Into the World Like That. So much has changed in that time. Those books represent very different places in my life’s journey. I will always love them; I will always be proud of them. It’s also time to make more room on my shelf for this next phase of my poetic journey.
This sale will only last until February 28th, or until I sell out. So if you’ve always been eyeing a copy of either of these, grab one now!
As I finish this post, I’m thinking about the meme that complains about the essay that inevitably comes before a recipe on a poetry blog. So I’m going to lead with John’s four key tips for negotiating a car. If you want the context for why I have car negotiation tips on a poetry blog, the essay will be at the end.
You are probably wondering what negotiating for a car has to do with poetry, or anything else I talk about on this blog. And I’ll admit, I’m not usually one to talk about finance, or finance-related topics, in any of my writing. I have, however, written a number of poems about driving. And this morning, I realized I’ve been a happy Subaru owner for half a decade! I bought my preowned Outback in the summer of 2016, and even though the car is now 12 years old, it’s still going strong!
I’ve always been slightly ashamed to admit that I paid full sticker for the 2008 Volkswagen Beetle I had before the Subaru… that one I also bought preowned in 2011, but though it was only a year older than the car I now have, within five years, my beloved convertible Beetle was sadly proving to not be a reliable vehicle. Each year, one of the window regulators broke. In the last year I owned it, the trunk wouldn’t work, the rear window fell in, and the rear struts went out. By the summer of 2016, I was ready to cut my losses and move on.
Of course, being embarrassed over paying full sticker, I was reluctant to go car shopping again. Words cannot express how much I loathe having to negotiate for anything. The one and only time I had to negotiate for my salary, I honestly felt like I was going to die. I am not being hyperbolic. I would rather have a root canal than negotiate for anything. I was aware, however, the extent to which I’d really lost out by paying full sticker for my Beetle.
John happened to be in Morocco when this whole excursion was happening, but over Facebook message, he wrote me an excellent negotiation outline that served me well. I followed it step by step, and got a car I wanted at a shockingly low mileage, especially for Austin, where you are lucky to find a used Subaru with less than 100,000 on it already.
Over the years, friends have asked me for the method, but as I only used it once, I didn’t commit it to memory. However, it was useful. And at some point, I will have to buy another vehicle… but I only hit 100,00 miles on my Outback in December 2019, and I’m angling for 300,000 before I get a new vehicle. But between people asking for negotiation tips, and the difficulty of finding old information in the Facebook messenger interface, I’m reproducing the negotiating outline here, for anyone who wants it. May the odds be ever in your favor when it comes to a vehicle negotiation.
(Also, may you never have to wade through five years of old Facebook messages to find the one you are looking for. This might be the most time-intensive blog post I have ever written, just because of the terrible Messenger interface.)
