About 300 poems were submitted for the 2009 You Haiku edition. Collectively they say a bit about Anchorage Press readers, maybe something about Alaskans as a whole. You love blueberries.  Aluminum foil helps you sleep during summer. Traffic and tourists annoy you. Bears frighten you, or at least earn your prudent respect. Some recent political scandals disappoint, but don’t surprise you. Ted Stevens remains heroic, albeit tarnished, in your eyes. The poems made us wonder if this sample—about 70 writers willing to pare their thoughts to 17 syllables—is as good as any window onto Alaskan thought as one could find.

Six volunteer judges and five Press staffers vetted the poems and chose winners this year. The Press staff chose the arbitrary categories, throwing in timeless Alaska themes such as bush airplanes and round-the-clock daylight with stuff meant to capture the zeitgeist of current affairs. One noticeable trend is that our judges tended to prefer poems that used our arbitrary categories as mere starting points, poems that blazed a trail off the beaten path the Press’s category seemed to point toward.

Two categories, “Abstinence Alaska Style” and “Uncle Ted’s Second Act” attracted several seemingly agenda-driven poems and a few obviously mean ones; none of which made the grade.  Some poets admirably tried to navigate those topics within the framework of recent headlines. They were simply outpaced by poets who thought outside the news box. George Nagel took the abstinence category with a cautionary joke about winter cycling. Thomas Pease (our grand prize winner in 2008) earned a runner-up with an observation about remote employment and the separation it imposes on lovers. Our winner in the Ted Stevens category, Johnthomas Williams, wrote a poem that described voters, rather than Stevens or his recent political undoing. This year’s grand prize haiku was written by Yereth Rosen, an Anchorage resident and writer for Reuters news service who drives through the intersection at Lake Otis Parkway and Tudor Road nearly every day. Her poem reminds us that there are better things than the traffic to ponder while stuck in traffic. The poem, wrote volunteer judge David Cheezem, “finds its way though and beyond the frustration” of the traffic jam.

Rosen says the busy intersection is part of her neighborhood. It’s also a bustling medical district with signs and buildings her children recognize from the backseat. The family dentist is near there. So is the sonogram center where Rosen first saw an image of her son Marty, now five years old. “There’s also this place my son calls ‘the ear house’ and I guess people get hearing aids there, but we’ve never been in there,” Rosen says. “It’s all part of our ‘hood, I guess. We do spend a lot of time there, and so we know that place very well.”

Besides avoiding obvious commentary on the traffic jam, Rosen’s haiku also plays on the strengths of her observations and personal thoughts. It makes a subtle nod to the importance of family life, some of which is inevitably spent in a car stuck in traffic or hurrying to the place where a child needs to be retrieved. Like all of our winners, Rosen seems to have taken the adage “write what you know” to heart. She shows readers that while traffic might be a top-of-the-mind obsession for drivers, we should never allow it to erase our minds of more important things.

—Scott Christiansen

Erosion

Winner

Brooke Edwards

Time on canyon walls

winds backwards, spirals downhill

lapses into dust...

Runner up

Lincoln Garrick

slipping gliding stone

liquid rock is where we sleep

bedrock is a myth

Judge’s comment: “A reminder that nothing’s forever.”



    ***

The bear out back

Winner: Beth Johnson

We had a meeting

Your homes are too close and we

Hate your yappy dogs

Judge’s comment: “…to be posted somewhere lower Hillside.”

Runner up:

Johnthomas Williamson

Australian nudist,

omnipresent omnivore?

I chose bare outback.

Judge’s comment:  “Neat homonymics.”

    ***

Lake Otis and Tudor

Winner: Yereth Rosen

Pre-school pickup time

Traffic jammed to where I saw

his first sonogram

Judge’s comment: “I love this! Finds its way through and beyond the frustration in the traffic!”

Runner up: Brienne Mabry

Stopgoscreechhonkstop

Gostopfingerstophonkgo

Should have used Elmore.

Judge’s comment: “I recognize that finger!”

    ***

Uncle Ted’s second act

Winner: Johnthomas Williamson

The same bandwagon,

carrying the same folks in a

different direction.

Judge’s comment: “A nice comment on how fickle we are.”

Runner up: Michael H. Sonju

You knew I’d be back.

Or if not, you sure should have.

That’s politics boy.

   

   

    ***

Roller derby

Winner: Wes Schacht

 

Roller derby babe

I saw you on the poster

I hope your team wins.

Runners up:

Beth Johnson

Outta my way, bitch

I'm retro, sweaty and fierce

And fond of shoving

Judge’s comment: “I like the ‘retro,’ and you can picture the look on her face.”

Wes Schacht

One can get hurt

At the roller derby games

My girlfriend hit me.

 

Ethics, Schmethics

Winner: Rick Resnick  

I've heard of Ethics

I think it's in Great Britain

Just outside of Graft

Judge’s comment: “Particularly nice in the way it takes familiar words and strips them of their meaning, reducing them to place names.”

Runner up: Therese Stokes

Reporting the news

is cost prohibitive. Spin

is cost effective.

   

    ***

One for the tourists

Winner: Evan R. Steinhauser

Always remember,

It’s ‘Brown lay down’, ‘Black fight back’.

Um, I think that’s it.

Runner up: Doris Von Tish

Ya'll bring your RVs

and your little white poodles.

Eagles are hungry.

    ***

Abstinence, Alaska style

Winner: George Nagel

Balls atop bike seat

Ten below zero to boot

No desire remains

Runner up: Thomas Pease

seasonal listings

deckhand, pilot, big game guide

sat phone intercourse

Judge’s comment: “I like this poem because it covers a lot of territory (seasonal romance, personal ads, phone sex) while staying true to traditional haiku limitations.”

    ****

Stuck in Whittier

Winner: Jason Mark

The shadow of Her

Darkens the entire town

Maybe it's just me

Runner up: Beth Johnson

Tunnel’s out, no boats

This is how bad movies start.

Is that a chainsaw?

Judge’s comment: “…vivid enough that you could just see Jack Nicholson with a gleam in his eye.”

    ***

Midnight sun insomnia

Winner: Beth Johnson

Instead of sheep in

All their thick, hot glory he

Is counting salmon

Judge’s comment: “sums up summer”



Runner up: Brienne Mabry

Glad he broke my heart

In Spring. Now when I can’t sleep

I can blame the sun

    ****

A bush pilot’s view

Winner: Christopher Waalkes

A green tundra suit

Fits the landscape well

Small towns are buttons

Judge’s comment: “Kinda crazy imagery, but it has imagery.”

Runner up: Evan R. Steinhauser

Grounded, Talkeetna.

Flyin’ low at the Fairview.

You come here often?

Judge’s comment: “Unexpected.”

    ****

In the blueberry patch

Winner: Gina Pastos

Digging in the patch

This is a blueberry, yes?

No, a crowberry

Judge’s comment: “Been there.”