QUOTES

Style is the element of writing which is most personal (as opposed to, say, content, which is largely shared . . ) Jim Kacian http://haikuguy.com/issa/kacian.html

 I worked hard on them, to be honest, perhaps even harder than on my fiction, paying attention to the heft and balance of each word and idea. With my fiction I focused on chapters and overall conceptions, while in poetry I crawled along in the trenches of each sentence, examining every word for a sign of a deeper significance. Each finished poem felt realized, arrived at directly by way of an inner struggle between whatever emotion had inspired  it and the nuanced thought needed to both express and propel its forward movement. Philip Schulz http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/05/24/my-novel-finally/

It is my belief that not a single word should be present that is not absolutely essential to the content. . . . and the loss of any word must take away its meaning. Martin Berner  http://www.thehaikufoundation.org/edwall/berner_contemporary_practice.pdf

Given his desire to define himself in terms of the journey  Basho’s Journey A Rumination by Jamie Edgecombe https://sites.google.com/site/worldhaikureview2/whr-december-2011/basho-s-journey

Desire to journey to the past to join those lost  https://sites.google.com/site/worldhaikureview2/whr/home/whr-april-2012/basho-s-journey-3

relates a journey, whether the travels are a physical exploration of the world or an internal journey of discovery. . . . The haiku connected to a haibun might be considered a microburst of detail. Haibun: Poetic Journey by Dawn L.  Stewart  http://www.dlstewart.com/haibun.htm

 It was early on the morning of March the twenty-seventh that I took to the road. There was darkness lingering in the sky, and the moon was still visible, though gradually thinning away. The faint shadow of Mount Fuji and the cherry blossoms of Ueno and Yanaka were bidding me a last farewell. My friends had got together the night before, and they all came with me on the boat to keep me company for the first few miles. When we got off the boat at Senju, however, the thought of three thousand miles before me suddenly filled my heart, and neither the houses of the town nor the faces of my friends could be seen by my tearful eyes except as a vision.

The passing spring
Birds mourn,
Fishes weep
With tearful eyes.

With this poem to commemorate my departure, I walked forth on my journey, but lingering thoughts made my steps  heavy. My friends stood in a line and waved good-bye as long as they could see my back.
BASHO Narrow Road to the Deep North http://terebess.hu/english/haiku/basho2.html