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Unwritten Fragment of Basho’s Second Death Poem (“Last Words” Series)

Posted on March 28, 2016March 28, 2016 by Stewart

Not much in the way of commentary this week, since (1) I think the genesis of this one should be fairly obvious and (2) do you really want to see me talk about haiku for 500 words?

Unwritten Fragment of Basho’s Second Death Poem, Pulled Half-Finished from His Mind and Brought Forward in Time to the Twenty-Third Century at the Moment of His Last Breath

by Stewart C Baker

No more journeying
I rest—

I said no commentary, but I guess you really have to know what Basho’s last recorded poem was for this to make sense: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matsuo_Bash%C5%8D#Last_years

On a semi-related note, I’m pondering writing a short story (and/or a piece of interactive fiction!) about a sort of magicianly warrior group who uses spoken haiku sort of like spells to create literal changes in the fabric of reality.

It sounds weird, and probably would be, but it also makes an odd kind of sense. Haiku’s all about juxtaposition. And the idea of a haiku “cutting” to create worlds is sort-of almost canonical! As I explored in a previous story.

On an unrelated note, don’t forget to guess which title in Writers of the Future is mine! You could win a signed copy of this year’s anthology.

Five reprints now available on Quarter Reads

Posted on April 7, 2015April 8, 2015 by Stewart

Do you like stories? Do you like quarters? Do you like reading? Do you like reprints? Do you like five?! ~~(Fnord)~~

Wait, wait, wait. Where was I going with this…?

Ah, right. I have five new reprints (does that even make sense?) available over on Quarter Reads as of right now. Here are links to each, and where they first appeared:

Nikumaroro, July 1937 – In which Amelia Earheart attempts to co-exist with a number of coconut crabs, with unpredictable results. First appeared in Fine Linen Magazine, January 2015.
Oubliette – In which Neuroscience! And Regret! And Long Periods of Time Glossed Over! And other fun things. First appeared in Flash Fiction Online, April 2014. (Where you can, in fact, still read it for free if you’d prefer!)
Little More than Shadows – Which plays with the boundaries between dream and reality, and does not use quotation marks (you have been warned). First appeared in Daily Science Fiction, November 18, 2014. (Again, it is still online for free if you can’t spare a quarter.)
The Robotic Poet Reads Bashō – A story masquerading as a scholarly article on haiku criticism. First appeared in Beyond Borderlands in September of 2014. (Not only is it still available for free, but so is my essay, “Fishing for Bashōs,” in Modern Haiku which treats the same theme at much greater depth and without the SFnal trope on top of it.)
Against the Dark – An older story, obliquely inspired by Dunsany and Lovecraft’s Dream Cycle of Unknown Kadanth stories. Not much like what I write these days, overall. :) First published in the Journal of Microliterature in August 2010 (link)

If any of those sound like they’d be up your alley, go give them a browse!

Original Essay: “Fishing for Bashos: Interpretive Communities and Haiku in English” at Modern Haiku

Posted on March 19, 2015March 18, 2015 by Stewart

I’m very excited to announce the publication of this scholarly essay, which is based on a presentation I gave at Haiku North America last year.

In short, the essay tackles translation, Stanley Fish’s idea of Interpretive Communities, and

I had a blast doing the presentation and writing the essay. Who knew literary criticism could be so fun?! (Okay, ~~maybe~~ I’m just a nerd.)

What makes it doubly exciting is that the whole essay is available to read for free(!) on the Modern Haiku website as a PDF: Fishing for Bashos: Interpretive Communities and Haiku in English.

Give it a read, and I’d love to hear what anyone thinks about it, either here in the comments or via e-mail.

Original Fiction: The Robotic Poet Reads Bashō

Posted on September 25, 2014 by Stewart

I’m pleased to announce that Beyond Borderlands, a hybrid academic/creative arts magazine, has just published “The Robotic Poet Reads Bashō,” a story of haiku criticism, parallel worlds, Thoreau, and the nature of reality. (I wrote the thing. In case that wasn’t clear.)

Here’s a brief teaser:

The robotic poet (who refers to herself in the third person, for reasons which may become clear) has been reading translations of Bashō, and has discovered two things in his work:

First, that our understanding of reality is largely a consensus agreement.

Second, and more importantly, that poetry can serve as a gateway to an infinite number of realities.

It may be tempting to attribute these little epiphanies to the vagaries of translation—to differences in interpretation and idiosyncratic syntax choices. (The robotic poet’s children were of the opinion that we all saw a single reality, but children have not lived. Not fully. The robotic poet herself remains convinced there is more going on.)

Intrigued? Confused? You don’t even?

You can read the rest of the story at Beyond Borderlands here: “The Robotic Poet Reads Bashō”.