1942

  • Brueggemann, James G.

    James G. Brueggemann

    Born: Austin, Texas USA (1942)
    Current: Mount Pleasant, South Carolina USA
    Born into a Wisconsin pastor’s family, he became a physician, practicing in Duluth, Minnesota for 26 years. His haiku, personal essays and poetry have been published in literary and medical journals since 1979. After the Night Rain, a haiku collection, was published in 2014. He blogs weekly since 2018.
    Blog: http://www.jamesbrueggemann.com

     

  • Tico, Tom

    Tom TicoTom Tico

    (15 May 1942 – 4 February 2016)

    Thomas Michael Tico was born on 15 May 1942 in San Francisco, California and he lived nearly all his life in the city he loved. Tom Tico’s first haiku appeared in American Haiku in 1966. And since then his poems have been steadily published in various haiku magazines and in a number of anthologies: Cor van den Heuvel’s “The Haiku Anthology”, Bruce Ross’s “Haiku Moment”, and the “San Francisco Haiku Anthology”.  Tom also had numerous essays published, mainly in Frogpond, Modern Haiku and other haiku journals. In 1989 Tom Tico was a co-judge to the “1989 Gerald Brady Senryu Awards”. In 1992, he co-edited The San Francisco Haiku Anthology (Smythe-Waithe Press, 1992).

    Committed to living an artistic life, Tom Tico dedicated his life to his passion as a haiku poet. In the early 70's, he determined conventional employment was no longer for him. He resigned from his work with the US Postal Service, and dedicated his time and energy for the remainder of his life to creative and personally satisfying pursuits. While his commitment to this path was not without challenges, Tom never wavered from his absolute certainty that he was living his life the way he needed to in order to be true to himself.

    In 1998 Tom self-published a book "Spring Morning Sun". In the ‘Introduction’ to the book he wrote: “From 1985 through 1995 I spent over seven years in a state of homelessness, sleeping in a redwood forest in Golden Gate Park.”  His experience from those years shaped his haiku significantly. Tom’s life just comes through in his haiku:

    At the soup kitchen,
       a faded reproduction
          of The Last Supper

    In my sleeping bag
       in a fetal position;
          this cold autumn night

    Later in his life, Tom developed a passion for photography, and applied the same lens evident in many of his haiku - the beauty of the marriage between the natural and the urban environment.

    Tom loved to walk, which gave him the opportunity to find inspiration for his haiku or his photography. Movies and books were two of Tom's other life-long enjoyments. He had an extraordinary knowledge of movies, directors, actors and authors.

    Tom Tico passed away peacefully on 4 February 2016 due to a degenerative lung disease. On the last night of his life, he reflected with contentment on his life "as an outsider", the significance of being able to take satisfaction in the character of his children, and his readiness for whatever came next. Tom is survived by his brother, Edward Tico; children: Christopher, Alexander, Minerva and Nathanael Tico; daughters-in-law: Wendy, Kristin and Rebecca; and grandchildren: Jonathan, Alex, Jordan, Morgan, Reeva, Adrian, Gabriella, and Sawyer.

    Some publications:

    • Tico, Tom. “Personification” [workshop]. Frogpond 21.1 (1998);
    • Tico, Tom. “The Imaginative Haiku: Readings by Tom Tico” [workshop]. Frogpond 20.1 (1999);
    • Tico, Tom. “Affinities: Thoreau and the Japanese Haiku Poets” [workshop]. Frogpond 22.3 (1999);
    • Tico, Tom. “Like a Fine Wine” [workshop]. Frogpond 22.2 (1999);
    • Tico, Tom. “The Dark Side of Kali” [workshop]. Frogpond 22.1 (1999);
    • Tico, Tom. “The Music of Haiku” [workshop]. Frogpond 24.2 (2001);
    • Tico, Tom. “The Sad, Lonely Poetry of the City” [workshop]. Frogpond 20.3 (12/1/1997);
    • Tico, Tom. “Endlessness in a Small Frame: Readings” [workshop]. Frogpond 18.2 (summer 1995);
    • Tico, Tom. “A Handful of Shadows, Readings” [workshop]. Frogpond 18.4 (winter 1995);
    • Tico, Tom. “Tassajara Zen Center” [sequence [5]]. Modern Haiku 10:1 (Winter–Spring 1979);
    • Tico, Tom. “A Reading of Marjory Bates Pratt” [workshop]. Modern Haiku 13:1 (Winter–Spring 1982);
    • Tico, Tom. “Scarecrow Reading” [workshop]. Modern Haiku 13:2 (Summer 1982);
    • Tico, Tom. “The Sun the Moon and the Stars: A Reading of Foster Jewell” [workshop]. Modern Haiku 14:2 (Summer 1983);
    • Tico, Tom. “The Peach-Blossom Spring [O Southard]” [workshop]. Modern Haiku 14:3 (Fall 1983);
    • Tico, Tom. “River and Mountain: A Reading of Larry Gates” [workshop [10]]. Modern Haiku 15:1 (Winter- Spring 1984);
    • Tom Tico, "The Spice of Life", Frogpond 30:1 (winter 2007).

    In anthologies:

    • Cor van den Heuvel, editor. The Haiku Anthology: English Language Haiku by Contemporary American and Canadian Poets (1974).
    • Cor van den Heuvel, editor. The Haiku Anthology: Haiku and Senryu in English (revised [2nd] edition, 1986), and (expanded [3rd] edition, 1999).
    • Bruce Ross, ed., Haiku Moment (1993)

    Selected haiku: 

    autumn evening . . .
       a page of the old book
          separates from the spine

    (Honorable Mention: 1999 Harold G. Henderson Memorial Award)

    *
    First days of summer . . .
          already the leaves gather
                beneath the sycamores

    (Honorable Mention: 1990 Harold G. Henderson Memorial Award)

    *

    A wisp of spring cloud
      drifting apart from the rest. . . .
         slowly evaporates.

    (“The Haiku Anthology Revised Edition”, Simon and Schuster, 1986, pg. 242)

    *

    old plum trees:
       how quickly the one dies
          after the other

    (Modern Haiku 38:3, autumn 2007)

    *

    at the burial
    one of the black umbrellas
    breaks down

    (Modern Haiku 41:3, autumn 2010)

    *

    in this little part
    of the solar system
          dust motes

    (Frogpond 37:3, Autumn 2014)

    *

    Sandpipers
    running along the glassy beach
    on top of themselves


    a windless morning
    and still the plum blossoms
    flutter to the ground


    Dusk …
    the whole forest dark
    except for the lilies


    Engulfing
    the purple rhododendrons
    shadows of evening


    a morning fog:
    again and again the caw
    of an unseen crow


    On every step
    of the old stone stairway –
    autumn leaves

    (Haiku Moment: An Anthology of Contemporary North American Haiku, Tuttle Publishing, 1993) edited by Bruce Ross

    *

    As day breaks...
       the lightness of her breath
           on my back

    (“The Haiku Anthology”, ed. by Cor van den Heuvel, Norton 1999, pg.222)

    *

    Sitting in the sun
        in the middle of the plants
            that I just watered

    (Woodnotes 25, 1995)

    *

    Beside the tenement
    a box of broken glass
    filled with autumn sun


    Mud-puddle water
    going this way and that--
    spring wind


    After gazing at stars . . .
    now, I adjust to the rocks
    under my sleeping bag


    Nothing to bring her . . .
    except flowers from the gardens
    all along the way


    Shortening the line
    at the soup kitchen--
    the first fall rain


    The old carving tree . . .
    a new pair of initials
    and the first young leaves


    The white butterfly
    just the touch of my shadow
    and it flies away

    ("Spring Morning Sun" (1998)

    *

    Misting across
    the cold bright stars -
    my own breath

    (Published in San Francisco Chronicle on Feb. 28, 2016)

    This profile was created with the kind help of Charles Trumbull, Peggy Mather, John Stevenson and Michael Dylan Welch.

    And this is Tom’s tribute written by his children at the San Francisco Chronicle, Feb. 28, 2016:

    http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/sfgate/obituary.aspx?n=thomas-tico&pid=177872280

    Sources:

     

    foghorns…
    the vague shapes
    of familiar trees

     

    beneath purple leaves
    the unpicked fruit
    stains the sidewalk

     

    after a long stretch of stargazing   first light

     

    around the corner
    from the swank nursing home
    one for the poor

     

    Valentine’s Day:
    my heart favors
    the plum blossoms

     

    in this little part
    of the solar system
          dust motes

     

    loosening        
        the hard and fast lines
            fog

     

    following the lead my elongated shadow

     

    cold park:
    so many trees
    skeletonized

     

    emphysema --
    it could be the name
    of an exotic femme fatale
    who ends up leaving you
    breathless

     

    Easter morning
    rising later
    than usual

     

    angels’ trumpets
    yet here and there
    a bit of rust

     

    insomnia…
    getting to know
    the night

     

    the chiaroscuro of crows and morning mist

     

    intermittent rain the long and the short of it

     

    making the most
    of the broken-down fence
            nasturtiums

     

    in the world
    but not of it --
    autumn wind

     

    just another
    of winter’s losses --
    my singing voice

     

    every bit as black
    as the plumage of the crows --
    their strident cries

  • Tico, Tom

    Tom TicoTom Tico

    May 15, 1942 - February 4, 2016
    Tom Tico's Legacy Biography