Anti-abortion terrorist Eric Robert Rudolph has agreed to plead guilty for four bombings: the bombing at the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games, a lesbian nightclub near Atlanta, an abortion clinic in Atlanta, and the deadly 1998 bombing of the New Woman All Women clinic in Birmingham. Other than having to listen to an unwarranted swipe at anti-government extremists, and hear a few self-congratulatory fork-tongued words from Alberto Gonzalez, this is some very good news:

The deal that led Rudolph to give up will spare him his life, U.S. Justice Department officials said Friday in announcing they had reached an agreement with the man once held up as the ultimate anti-government extremist.

The fugitive who claims he lived on the land for five years as authorities searched in vain agreed to plead guilty and admit setting off a deadly bomb at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics and three other blasts. The deal will leave him with four consecutive life sentences.

The many victims of Eric Rudolph’s terrorist attacks … can rest assured that Rudolph will spend the rest of his life behind bars, U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said.

Hearings have been scheduled in Birmingham, Ala., and Atlanta on Wednesday, where Rudolph is scheduled to admit his guilt. He will have no possibility of parole.

— Asheville Citizen-Times 2005-04-09: Rudolph avoids death penalty with plea agreement in four bombings

This is justice–a justice that only a year ago many of us never thought we would see. Justice will not bring Robert Sanderson back, and it will not heal Emily Lyons’ wounds. Nothing will. But it is something to welcome, after all these years, and to be glad for, even if our gladness comes with terrible pain.

It is also good to see that justice for Rudolph will come untainted by wrath. The last thing we need is a martyr for the terrorist wing of the anti-abortion movement, and the last thing I need is to be stuck with defending the rights of yet another ghastly shell of a human being who is obviously guilty as hell to be free of the hangman’s noose. Thank Heaven for small mercies.

hello birmingham
it’s buffalo
i heard you had some trouble
down there again
and i’m just calling to let to know
that somebody understands

i was once escorted
through the doors of a clinic
by a man in a bullet proof vest
and no bombs went off that day
so i am still here to say
birmingham
i’m wishing you all of my best
oh birmingham
i’m wishing you all of my best

— Ani DiFranco, Hello Birmingham

April is the poet’s month.

This weekend’s poetry is a selection of haiku. This calls for wisdom: what you have heard called a haiku is probably not one. For example, contrary to popular opinion, the following may be amusing, but it is not a haiku:

Three things are certain:
Death, taxes, and lost data.
Guess which has occurred.

— David Dixon, Haiku Error Messages [sic] (1998)

You may have heard that a haiku is a Japanese poetic form with three lines in a 5-7-5 syllabic pattern. Actually, that’s doubly wrong. First, because Japanese haiku aren’t measured in syllables; they are measured in characters of hiragana, which correspond to morae, not syllables, and in some cases may be somewhat shorter than what an English-speaker would recognize as a syllable. Second, because haiku is only one of the Japanese poetic forms that are written in a 5-7-5 pattern. Senryū, for example, are also written in a 5-7-5 pattern; what distinguishes a haiku from a senryū is not their construction but their subject-matter. If you have a poem–especially a light or comedic poem–about human foibles, it may be a senryū, but it’s not a haiku; haiku are not primarily about people at all. They’re about nature, and especially about moments in a particular season. Unfortunately, a lot of people in the English-speaking world–grade school creative writing teachers in particular–have mistakenly thought that any three-line poem with a 5-7-5 syllabic pattern is a haiku, and they’ve inflicted this misunderstanding on a lot of kids who never knew any better because they figure that it will be a good way to get them started on formal poetry with something short and easy. But the double confusion causes a triple problem. First, if you try to mechanically transfer the 5-7-5 rule–and mechanically transfer rules based on mora counts to rules based on syllable counts–you’ll get a form that is actually subtly inappropriate to the English language, and also a form which encourages poems substantially longer than the classic Japanese haiku. (It’s for precisely this reason that most contemporary translators don’t stick to 5-7-5 form when they are translating Japanese haiku into English, and why most contemporary poets writing haiku in English don’t stick to 5-7-5 form either.) And second, since the students never learn the distinctive subject-matter of haiku, they may go through the whole course without ever writing a single haiku. And third, since most students are taught haiku as an easy form and aren’t taught anything about the sort of stylistic discipline that goes into writing them, they end up dashing off a bunch of silly non-haiku and spend the rest of their lives thinking that haiku poetry is trivial and silly.

Whatever the silly poetry that the students end up writing is, it’s usually not haiku. If it’s anything at all, it tends to be senryū. I suppose if you had to give a name to the homeless mongrel form that you learned in junior high school, you could do what L. does and call it gaiku (the poets who write haiku are called haijin; the people who write gaiku can be called gaijin).

All of this is too bad, because when well done, a genuine English-language haiku is anything but trivial; it can be beautiful stuff, and classical haiku, in the hands of the masters, is often absolutely stunning. Rather than expand on the quiet elegance or the sense of space or the intense presence of masterful haiku, I’ll simply shut up at this point and let the masters speak for themselves.

Spring

Teishitsu (1610-1673):

Ah! I said, Ah!
it was all that I could say —
the cherry flowers of Mt. Yoshino!

Basho (1644-1694):

even in Kyoto
when I hear the cuckoo
I long for Kyoto

Buson (1716-1783):

treading on the tail
of the copper pheasant
the setting sun of spring

Chigetsu (?-1708):

the songbird’s song —
it stops what I am doing
at the sink

Summer

Buson (1716-1783):

longing for the grass
at the bottom of the pool
those fireflies

Chiyo-ni (1703-1775):

cool clear water
and fireflies that vanish
that is all there is …

Basho (1644-1694):

a clear waterfall —
into the ripples
fall green pine-needles

Autumn

Kyoriku (1656-1715):

even to the saucepan
where potatoes are boiling —
a moonlit night

Issa (1762-1826):

grasshopper —
do not trample to pieces
the pearls of bright dew

Buson (1716-1783):

the harvest moon —
rabbits go scampering
across Lake Suwa

Winter

Suzuki Masajo (b. 1906):

no escaping it —
I must step on fallen leaves
to take this path

Basho (1644-1694):

the sea darkens —
the voices of the wild ducks
are faintly white

Chiyo-ni (1703-1775):

it’s play for the cranes
flying up to the clouds
the year’s first sunrise …