Peggy Lyles - Three Questions

During the warm months, I enjoy sitting in an old rocking chair on my front porch with a magazine or book of poetry. One book that has made several trips with me to my reading spot is a wonderful collection of haiku entitled To Hear the Rain: Selected Haiku of Peggy Lyles.

Peggy Willis Lyles, haiku poet, Magnapoet, and co-editor of The Heron's Nest responds to Haiku - Three Questions.

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1. Why do you write haiku?

Vince Tripi asked me that question many years ago, and after considerable thought I answered, "To participate." That may be as close as I can come to the nearly impossible answer. I could add, "Because I want to and need to." Writing haiku is a way of partaking and sharing, of contributing to and becoming one with humanity, the earth, the universe. Searching, being, expressing, and discovering merge in this life-enriching habit that sharpens observation, intuition, and experience.

2. What other poetic forms do you enjoy?

A great many! I came to haiku from a love of British and American poetry, studied in some depth, and world poetry sampled in translation. Although haiku has become my "specialty," I continue to read and enjoy a broad variety of classic and contemporary poems.

3. Of the many wonderful haiku you've written, what do you consider to be your top three? (Please provide original publication credits.)

I hope the best ones are still ahead of me. I know that other people remember and value these:


summer stillness
the play of light and shadow
on the wind chimes


first published in Modern Haiku XI, 1980

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shimmering pines
a taste of the mountain
from your cupped hands


first published in Mayfly
#31, 2001


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and


in spite of everything forsythia


first published in The Snapshot Press Haiku Calendar 2008

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Next week, Paul David Mena.