Two Favorite Haibun: Unsettling Clashes by Alan Summers

Comparing and talking about two different ways of writing the haibun genre.
 
“Dear Human, I don’t think poets are more troubled than others” by Kati Mohr
and
“Life Without Mars” by Alan Summers
 
HAIBUN: in a nutshell:
When at least two different genres appear inside a single creative written ‘poetry’ package, it can be surprising. Against all odds the “clashing” of more one than different genre inside an overall genre of haibun—the prose storytelling, the radical interruptions of haiku— somehow allows us to embrace disquieting contradictions and differences in startling ways.
 
A little about the essay:
 
Kati Mohr offers a superb and ground-breaking example of this with “Dear Human, I don’t think poets are more troubled than others.”
 
It’s a tour-de-force of haibun, both in cool and emotive approaches to the literary and poetic. Far more than just a journey of observational boxes being ticked, it’s educationally and deeply personal, in its self-revealing—not only of the author, but also of any reader prepared to enter the territory of a deep revelation that could be about themselves or a friend or family member even.
 
My haibun “Life Without Mars” is where I conjure up a wish-fulfilment of a world without fear and aggression.
 
There are some divergences in how we both approach our topics.
 
My haibun contains nationally reported facts, including zuihitsu-like inserts of press releases.
 
While Kati Mohr presents her personal revelations in devastatingly personal and searingly honest prose; I use single-line haiku to give a personal viewpoint with an ambivalent use of italics where we might wonder if are they lifted from direct speech, or the lines of a secretly hidden “other” poem?
 
My method was to write two seemingly unassociated genres in direct opposition to each other.
 
FULL PUBLISHED ESSAY:
Two Favorite Haibun: Unsettling Clashes
https://contemporaryhaibunonline.com/table-of-contents-20-3/articles-reviews-20-3/alan-summers-two-favorite-haibun/
 
BONUS FEATURE
 
A more recent haibun, accepted from thousands of entries, to appear in this superb print and online/audio magazine. This has an audio recording by Alan Summers:
 
The Moon is in My Torch
https://rattle.com/the-moon-is-in-my-torch-by-alan-summers/
 
This unusually long haibun did not deter Rattle magazine!
 
I often write what I call 'para-biography' which is both using straight up facts, utilising fictional elements to tell my life slant, and faction where ‘reality/actual experience' and 'memory' fuse alongside imagined moments and details, creating a blur over days, months, years, even longer.
 
Haibun has become more than a template of a bit of prose and one or two haiku!

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