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to the Modern American Haiku Poets
ruth weiss (1928–2020)
https://www.ahapoetry.com/twchp2.HTM
"As with any art form, in haiku also are many women who never hook into the establishment, the magazines and organizations. At the risk of remaining unknown -- or at least unrecognized -- they proceed, one way or another, to write, produce, and distribute their books of haiku. A few of these will have to here represent all the others which unfortunately remain unnamed.
ruth wiess, a recognized poet and artist of the North Beach scene in San Francisco during the late 50's and early 60's was introduced to haiku through her intimate association with Jack Kerouac. It was from him she learned that what she had been writing were haiku. With (and from) him she learned to "speak in haiku." Both interested in setting haiku to and against jazz music, they formed a method of dialogue of haiku to haiku between themselves.
In 1960 ruth weiss took part in a poetry reading at The Cellar as benefit to save Chessman (a man awaiting execution) in which she read thirteen senryu written for the situation. After Jack's death, ruth moved into other relationships and places, but she always took haiku with her. For her fifty-second birthday ruth hung a showing of twenty-five of her watercolor paintings, each accompanied by a haiku at the Gallery Become at Haight Street and Market in San Francisco "celebrating the word BECOME as-is becoming a poet in-volved with visual-visionary artist at the most of her creative life."
Still ruth gives jazz-haiku performances in which she passes a hat full of haiku. Members of the audience each pick a haiku which they can read aloud. As each haiku is read by a participant, the jazz musician, very often a saxophonist, changes his variation and to this ruth reads a corresponding haiku. The effect is almost a musical renga which binds together performers and spectators which in itself has been instrumental in giving individuals the feeling that they too could write haiku.
ruth weiss' haiku have also been reproduced as broadsides and in serigraphs with the work of Paul Blake and are exhibited and sold in that form."
https://www.discogs.com/ru/release/16099772-Ruth-Weiss-Jazz-Haiku/image/SW1hZ2U6NDk0Njk5OTA=