THE MESSAGE OF QUEEN MARY*, a haibun written in Sept. the 20th, 2014
by Dimitar Anakiev
American haiku started within cosmopolitan anarchistic movement world-wide known as "Beat Generation". Poets and writers of "Beat" confronted American capitalism and imperialism with massive movement and quality anti-formalistis literature, music and art. In that frontal but unequal fight American anarchists suffered the greatest losses by the tools of escapism from the reality that didn't came from the field of art: drugs & alcohol.
Soon, people working for government, the Cold War warriors, took important places in American haiku literature. They made of American haiku provincial, strictly formal, dogmatic literature. The haiku literature of capitalism is created avoiding all human and social aspects, attacking the multi-culturalism. This year they even directly linked American haiku with symbols of imperialism.
Declared lovers
of Basho's hut moved to Queen Mary–
Haiku North America meeting
I cannot forget that one of the most important literary influence of my life came to me from American anarchists. I still see Kerouac & Snider climbing towards Matterhorn in Sierra Nevada, discussing and writing haiku. I still hear Woody Guthrie... Compare how impotent are today's American haiku poets who sit on the Queen Mary and fight against multiculturalism.
From Yasukuni Shrine**
to the poets of Queen Mary
the same spirit
But I do know that many American poets were not on the board of Queen Mary
The next HNA rally
should be in Harpers Ferry
in John Brown's hut
notes:
*RMS Queen Mary is a British imperial ship retired in Long Beach, CA. A favorite destination of contemporary American haiku poets.
**Yasukuni Shrine is famous Shinto shrine where Japanese imperial soldiers are buried. Among them about 1.000 are listed for the war crimes against 35 million killed Chinese civilians during WW2. This year 175.000 Japanese visited Yasukuni to pay respects to Japanese soldiers died for the Emperor.
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