for teachers
Haiku Guy and Laughing Buddha are excellent books for junior high, high school, and college students who are exploring the possibilities of prose, poetry, and creative expression.
student essays
No distractions.
One breath. In and out. Equal to the time span of about a half a second. We live our lives in the span of one simple motion. Running, talking, loving, we die in one breath. The job of holding onto these seconds and emotions is our poetry's greatest task. Since before we existed it has been so. Way before our skyscrapers and Internet. Way before our corruption and malice, our same hearts were beating, with the same rhythms. In and out, slow then fast. One breath. Haiku. [...]
Some poets believe that speaking a haiku out loud is wasted breath, that the poem's meaning dies as soon as it leaves the lips. In the subtlest form a haiku is an enigma, as people try and try their whole lives to write one great haiku. Some do; most, however, end up with semi-decent scraps of journal paper. The truth, as with most things, is relative. Broken down into structure and molecules and atoms a haiku is spoken in the span of one breath. This is the way it has always been. Since ancient Japan poets have been breathing one long breath, living one long life. With eyes and hearts open. Listening to the world speak. Breathing in, and breathing out. Maybe once in a great while, amongst all the bilge we exhale, words will stream together into poetry, poetry into power. We all live and die by the same processes.
Haiku is life, life is haiku. It's as simple as breathing.
—an essay by Sadie Frank, 9th grader
School of the Arts, Rochester New York
It took Buck-Teeth months of studying with master Cup-of-Tea, months of watching dew evaporate off the morning grass, months of listening and observing the haiku poets around him, for him to realize the ultimate point that master Cup-of-Tea was trying to convey to him—Life is haiku; haiku is life. And there's no single way of looking at either. Perhaps there are as many ways of examining this quote as there are of examining life or haiku, yet if we try hard enough, we may just be able to scratch the surface of the true meaning that lies within [...]
On his way to becoming a haiku poet, Buck-Teeth encountered three poets and friends of master Cup-of-Tea: Kuro, Mido, and Shiro. Each poet had a very different take on haiku and life as we know it. Kuro believed in the transient nature of things, that nothing we say or do matters, as it will undoubtedly be forgotten. Mido theorized that in order to achieve true art, true understanding, we must go out of our right minds. Shiro, the silent poet in white, simple stopped using words altogether, as he believed that they only corrupted the real meaning and beauty of things. When master Cup-of-Tea taught Buck-Teeth that there is no single way of looking at either haiku or life, he was trying to show Buck-Teeth that we must not approach haiku or life from only one point of view, as Kuro, Mido, and Shiro did [...]
Cup-of-Tea taught Buck-Teeth the secret of haiku, and in doing so, he also provided Buck-Teeth with an invaluable life lesson. For the whole of eternity, human beings may be forced to struggle under the burden of unanswered questions, or simply just learn to be content with the inexplicable reality that life has provided us. For now, maybe it is best to take our advice from David Lanoue that "...everything, yourself included, will be part of the picture; that nothing outside of that picture will be making the picture. Get the picture?"
—an essay by Elizabeth Gombert, 9th grader
School of the Arts, Rochester New York
student reviews
The setting is in Old Japan and Buck-Teeth, Cup-of-Tea's student, would like to be taught the art of haiku. At first the story seems clear cut with a basic plot. Yet already in the second chapter the reader is surprised. The chapter is a page out of a "How to Write a Haiku" book. The story begins to flip from being narrated to the narrator talking directly with the reader. Once the reader has begun to accept this interesting method of story-telling, the author throws in a third twist. The narrator tells of his life experiences in New Orleans and makes a modern-day story run parallel with the haiku. The author narrates the story with the impression that he is telling everything, that nothing is hidden between the lines. But I as a reader felt that amidst his hidden haiku the resonance was deeper than what it seemed.
—from a book review by Giulia Perucchio, 9th grader
School of the Arts, Rochester New York
Haiku Guy is one part memoir, one part historical fiction, and one part, "How-to" book ... An interesting aspect to this book is that the events transpiring around Lanoue's life directly affect the story. While this happens in every book ever written, in this case, we actually read about it; it makes me feel like I am inside an inside joke. Since the narratives cross between fantasies and realities, the fact is that the reality might not be real at all either.
—from a book review by Joe Sackett
School of the Arts, Rochester New York
Haiku Guy is three books. One is a fictionalized vision of Old Japan in which historical haiku writer Issa (known as "Cup-of-Tea" in the story) takes a burgeoning poet named Buck-Teeth on as his apprentice. The novel also fades out into a memoir as Lanoue describes his experiences while writing the book, which often parellel what's happening with Issa and Buck-Teeth's tale ... The novel also pauses and becomes an instructional guide to writing haiku. All three of these elements flow in and out of each other almost seamlessly, making the book hard to ever narrow down into a single thing.
—from a book review by Alex Degus
School of the Arts, Rochester New York
David Lanoue addresses his readers, explaining that haiku isn't just a writing style; it goes deeper ... it's almost a way of thinking.
—from a book review by Ted Mosher IV
School of the Arts, Rochester New York
a letter
I think you portray haiku in a way that even a beginner could relate to and come to appreciate and love. In Haiku Guy, I find your characters deep ... Buck-Teeth, Cup-of-Tea, even Chaz and Micky had me pondering your work. Every single character, to me at least, meant something greater to the whole plot.Also by David G. Lanoue...
—from a letter from Dani Skatharoudis, 9th grader
School of the Arts, Rochester New York
Kobayashi Issa Archive