..
.
.
.
.
.
owl’s wing
the darkness
darkens
.
.
.
.
.
.
darkness
November 27 (Deep autumn)
deep autumn
learning to live
with the dark
(originally posted at Haiku-doodle as a comment to Margaret Dornaus’s blog post “Deep Autumn“)
__________________
I’m continuing what has apparently become my Thanksgiving week tradition of saving myself the work of writing a whole new haiku every day by stealing from myself. Specifically, by stealing the haiku I have dribbled around in other places across the Interwebs, like Facebook and Twitter and other people’s blogs. (I did change the line breaks here a little from the original. Does that make me less pitiful?)
I might do this for a few more days, at least until I finish my stupid novel, or the 50,000 words of it I’m supposed to have written by the end of the month anyhow.
(In case you were suspecting me of violating my sacred vow to write haiku every day, I am still scribbling the things down, but I would not be so cruel as to force you to read anything I’ve written lately.)
November 23 (B side)
B side
the dark side
of the moon
August 23: Three more of one
1.
spitting watermelon seeds the dark spits back
2.
the grasshopper rises so slowly — I think I must be dreaming
2.
the Buddha hides behind the fence where the chickens peck feed
August 2: Found haiku: Macbeth
In the last ten days I’ve seen five performances of “Macbeth” with four different casts. So many lines of the play have become earworms for me, especially those (and there are so many in this play) that use either sound or imagery (or both) to gorgeous effect. For instance (in no particular order):
• If the assassination could trammel up the consequence, and catch, with its surcease, success …
• Weary sennights nine times nine shall he dwindle, peak, and pine …
• Tonight we hold a solemn supper, sir …
• Stars, hold your fires; let not light see my black and deep desires …
• There’s husbandry in heaven; their candles are all out.
• It will have blood, they say; blood will have blood. Stones have been known to move and trees to speak …
• By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes. Open, locks, whoever knocks.
• Safe in a ditch he lies, with twenty trenched gashes in his head.
Some of the lines echoed in my head in the same way that some haiku does, which made me wonder if you could pummel iambic pentameter into haiku. I’m not sure how well these meet the technical definition of haiku (whatever that is), but they do seem to have something of the haiku spirit in them. And Shakespeare and Basho were (rough) contemporaries … so that must mean something.
*
the earth hath bubbles as the water has
(I.iii)
the moon is down
I have not heard
the clock
(II.i)
the obscure bird
clamor’d
the livelong night
(II.iii)
the shard-borne beetle
with his drowsy hums …
night’s yawning peal
(III.ii)
light thickens …
the crow makes wing
to th’ rooky wood
(III.ii)
untie the winds
and let them fight
against the churches
(IV.i)
I have words that would be howl’d out in the desert air
(IV.iii)
August 1: 1-3: Three of one
1.
I can’t remember where I got this scar, or that one, or that one.
2.
streetlights switch on the child runs away from his mother
3.
Cassiopeia she refuses to stand next to her lover
*
Over at Troutswirl right now there is a great discussion about one-line haiku.
There are links to several other discussions of the subject, and several enlightening comments. Among other interesting points:
- The late, great Bill Higginson seemed to think that if there were spaces in your one-line haiku, it wasn’t really a one-line haiku (because you were indicating, apparently, where a line break could go, and so why not write it in more than one line). To me, this seems to ignore the visual advantage to displaying a ku all in one line — it can be scanned more rapidly by the reader so gives more of a sense of wholeness or urgency, yet sometimes you still want to give a visual cue as to where a pause should occur.
- Marlene Mountain has a page where a number of her ku are displayed both as three lines and as one, so you can decide which way you think works better.
- Jim Kacian categorizes several of the effects that can be achieved by English one-line haiku (“one line–one thought,” “speedrush” and “multi- stops”). (Click on the big X:2 on the linked page to download the issue of “Roadrunner” this essay appears in.)
- Charles Trumbull, in a July 29 comment, makes the sensible observation (I say it’s sensible because it’s what I think myself) that “[b]ecause of the internal rhythm of the material, sometimes one line works best. Period.” (He is slightly cranky about people imitating Japanese poetry or referring to historical precedent to justify their one-liners.)
I keep finding more and more that if I am having a great deal of trouble with a ku, transforming it to one line frequently instantly solves my problem. This is when I say that the ku “wanted” to be one line.
Also, I think I am still treating American sentences and one-line haiku as more or less interchangeable, though they’re not, really. I mean, number 1 above seems clearly to be an American sentence to me; the other 2 one-line haiku. Must think more about this …
July 30: 1-4: The Technique of Above as Below
(See this post for an explanation of what’s going on here.)
Jane:
“… Some say one should be able to read the first line and the third line to find it makes a complete thought. Sometimes one does not know in which order to place the images in a haiku. When the images in the first and third lines have the strongest relationship, the haiku usually feels ‘complete.’ For exercise, take any haiku and switch the lines around to see how this factor works, or try reading the haiku without the second line.
holding the day
between my hands
a clay pot”– Jane Reichhold, Haiku Techniques
*
Me:
This was way harder than it looked. And it looked hard.
I think part of the problem was that I really loved Jane’s example and none of my efforts came anywhere near her standard. I even resorted to breaking down her ku into parts of speech hoping that would provide some sort of formula for success:
gerund, noun object
prepositional phrase
modifier, noun
It didn’t.
But now I am a little bit obsessed with making one of these work, somehow, sometime. Anyone else got anything?
*
summer rain
one leftover cloud
frustrates
watching your eyes
by moonlight
the summer stars
a tree full
squirrels making lists
of supplies
night sheltering
from sunrise
our dark words
July 16 (Waiting Till Dark)
waiting till dark
to take in the laundry
fireflies
July 5 (The Dark)
the dark
before the play
cherry pits
July 4: 1-16: Fireflies and Freedom
Happy Independence Day, to all the Americans out there. And to all the rest of you … enjoy your freedoms too.
In that vein …
“fireflies are indeed a fascinating topic. of course, they allow total freedom.”
— Scott Metz
1-4.
on the same wind
fireworks
and fireflies
shining
as if you weren’t there
fireflies
fireflies
spending the night
for the first time
the moon
waxing and waning
fireflies
5-8.
never to know
about fireflies
mayflies
bees
wits unsettled
by fireflies
reciting
multiplication tables
fireflies
fever dream
a thousand fireflies
breathing
9-12.
death
the consolation of
fireflies
white pebbles
imagining the afterlives
of fireflies
bitter oranges
spitting out the seeds
at fireflies
sweet jam
at the breakfast table
last night’s fireflies
13-16.
trust
a hand cupped
around a firefly
innocence
spending money
on fireflies
ignorance
looking away
from fireflies
chained men
the light from
fireflies
June 23: 1-8: what I wrote/(in a tiny red notebook)/when I couldn’t sleep
(not a narrative)
four a.m. bitterly spitting sleep out of my mouth
the speeds of light and sound meet in the storm
dying wind
where they were left
the dolls sleep
at the end of the storm the birds begin again
the newspaper brought
by the car in the night
the crane cries
light reorganizes itself around the edges of the leaves
dawn
the cat crows
in my ear
morning juice
a green bug climbs up
the broom handle
*
You’re not going crazy. I’ve revised a bunch of these since the last time you read them.
Gendai haiku
Continuing in my time-honored tradition of writing lengthy, dull essays about things I know practically nothing about, I wanted to ramble on for a while about my recent explorations of gendai haiku. A plea: even if you are not interested in my sketchy research, uninformed opinions, or pretentious literary analysis, you should at least skim down to read what are some pretty cool haiku. (By other people, needless to say.)
The Japanese term “gendai” simply means “modern,” but in the context of haiku it seems to carry the connotation of something more like “avant-garde” or “experimental” in English. Scott Metz, who is a pretty avant-garde American haiku poet himself, explains its origins on his blog “lakes and now wolves”:
“… influenced by changes in culture, society, economics, art, and literature—globalization—many different schools and strands of haiku developed during the 20th century. … Starting with a foundation centered more on realism and experience, 20th century haiku immediately expanded into areas such as politics, subjectivity, the avant-garde, feminism, urbanism, surrealism, the imaginary, symbolism, individuality, and science fiction: in general, free-form and experimental aesthetics. … The rigid limitations and conservatism of traditional techniques (namely 5-7-5 on/syllabets and the necessity of a kigo) were no longer absolutes for Japanese poets.”
— Scott Metz, for ku by
I first encountered the term “gendai” in an essay by Peter Yovu on the website of The Haiku Foundation, troutswirl, where several compelling examples of the genre are cited, such as:
like squids
bank clerks are fluorescent
from the morning
—Kaneko Tōta (trans. Makoto Ueda)
in front of the scarlet mushroommy comb slips off
—Yagi Mikajo (trans. by Richard Gilbert)
from the sightof the man who was killed
we also vanished
—Murio Suzuki (trans. by Gendai Haiku Kyokai)(All examples from Peter Yovu, What is Your Reponse to Gendai Haiku?)
These examples seemed so exciting to me, so much more interesting than the standard Zen-nature-moment haiku, which I confess I’m getting a little weary of, that I went straight off to gendaihaiku.com, a website by Richard Gilbert, one of the most influential Western scholars and proponents of gendai. It contains profiles of some of the masters of gendai haiku, videotaped interviews with them, and examples of their work. There I found stuff like this:
wheat –
realizing death as one color
goldrevolution
in the snowy kiosk
for sale .?
–[Gilbert adds an explanatory note to this haiku:] … Kiosks filled with novel items began to appear in train stations throughout postwar Japan as the rail lines developed, and represented a new world, a new era of consumption and economic development. The resulting revolution spoken of here is domestic and cultural. A unique formal feature of this haiku is its last, fragmentary character na, which follows a question marker (ka), comma, and space, a uniquely creative contribution. Hovering between a statement of certainty and strong doubt (disbelief?), an indefinite solution is created by the orthography, causing this haiku to reflect back upon its topic, deepening the question.
cherry blossoms fall— you too must become
a hippo
water of spring
as water wetted
water, as is–Hasegawa comments. Almost anything in this world can be wetted by water. However, the one thing that cannot be wetted in this way is water itself. Although water wets other things but cannot itself be wetted, I nonetheless intuit that the water of spring, uniquely, has a special quality in that it can be wetted — though it too is water.
There are clearly a lot of cultural and translation barriers to a non-Japanese fully understanding these poems — among other problems, I still don’t quite get why Tsubouchi wants me to be a hippo. But it struck me forcefully that these poets were clearly not interested in following the “rules” about haiku, particularly about haiku subject matter, that so many English haiku poets seem insistent on and fearful of breaking.
These poems aren’t about “haiku moments.” They have vivid and compelling images; but they’re allusive, elusive, experimental, full of large ideas — not just tiny moments of awareness. I say this not to cast aspersions on tiny moments of awareness, just to point out that in the culture where haiku developed, there is apparently a much broader conception of what constitutes a “real” haiku than in our own.
In an interview with Robert Wilson, Gilbert points out that gendai haiku poets are not breaking off decisively from the classical haiku tradition, that haiku has always been about referencing the past while making accommodation to the present:
“Gendai haiku partake of a tradition and culture in which, unlike that of the historical Judeo-Christian West, nature and culture were not extensively polarized. So in gendai haiku exists an invitation to the present and a future, in congruence with the past. This congruency is also an uprooting, accomplished via expansive and often experimental avant-garde language and techniques. Yet the old is likewise held in the new, in plying the form. The key to haiku, what makes it a brilliant literature, is that haiku cut through time and space …
“The gendai haiku tradition partakes of Bashō’s ‘world of mind,’ and like Bashō and other accomplished classical masters, extends a literary conversation. … [H]aiku are never merely singular works of art, they swim in an ocean of poetry, in which any given term (e.g. kigo or kidai) and image has multiple reference to over 1000 years of literary history (poems, historical events, personages, authors, myths, etc.). …”
— Richard Gilbert, “A Brilliant Literature: Robert Wilson Interviews Professor Richard Gilbert”
I would add that haiku, in its several hundred years of existence, has undergone many changes in style and approach and has never been as limited in subject matter and structure as many Westerners seem to believe. A lot of what we now think of as “proper” haiku (the nature observation, the Zen moment of enlightenment) was a late-nineteenth-century development and actually, ironically, owed a lot to the realism of Western poetry, which was just beginning to be known in Japan at the time. Haruo Shirane, in his great essay Beyond the Haiku Moment, points out that early haiku were just as likely (or more so) to concern historical or literary or entirely imaginary subjects as the personal experience of the poet:
Basho traveled to explore the present, the contemporary world, to meet new poets, and to compose linked verse together. Equally important, travel was a means of entering into the past, of meeting the spirits of the dead, of experiencing what his poetic and spiritual predecessors had experienced. In other words, there were two key axes: one horizontal, the present, the contemporary world; and the other vertical, leading back into the past, to history, to other poems. … Basho believed that the poet had to work along both axes. To work only in the present would result in poetry that was fleeting. To work just in the past, on the other hand, would be to fall out of touch with the fundamental nature of haikai, which was rooted in the everyday world. Haikai was, by definition, anti- traditional, anti-classical, anti-establishment, but that did not mean that it rejected the past. Rather, it depended upon the past and on earlier texts and associations for its richness.
— Haruo Shirane, Beyond the Haiku Moment
An interesting historical note about this movement is that gendai haiku poets underwent significant persecution at the hands of the Japanese government during World War II, as is chillingly explained in an article in the haiku journal “Roadrunner” (again, by Richard Gilbert):
“[B]y the 1920s … the ‘New Rising Haiku movement’ (shinkô haiku undô) wished to compose haiku on new subjects, and utilize techniques and topics related to contemporary social life. These poets frequently wrote haiku without kigo (muki-teki haiku), and explored non-traditional subjects, such as social inequity, utilizing avant‑garde styles including surrealism, etc. …
“During the war, over 40 New Rising Haiku poets were persecuted; they were imprisoned and tortured, and some died in prison. … [The director of a haiku society associated with the government stated:] ‘I will not allow haiku even from the most honorable person, from left-wing, or progressive, or anti-war, groups to exist. If such people are found in the haiku world, we had better persecute them, and they should be punished.’
“… According to the fascist-traditionalists, to write haiku without kigo meant anti-tradition, which in turn meant anti-Imperial order and high treason. …
“One sees that, historically, ‘freedom of expression’ in the gendai haiku movement was not an idle aesthetic notion. … The liberal, democratic spirit and freedom of expression exhibited by the New Rising Haiku poets remains at the core of gendai haiku.”
— Richard Gilbert, “Gendai Haiku Translations“
In this same article Gilbert and Ito Yuki offer translations of some haiku by this generation of persecuted poets, all of which, naturally, are a little on the dark side — but exhibit the same freshness of approach as my previous examples:
clean kills: in a night war a canyon a crab
– Hirahata Seito
the shriek of artillery
birds beasts fish shellfish
chilling dim— Saito Sanki
leaving a withered tree
being shot as a withered tree
— Sugimura Seirinshimachine gun
in the forehead
the killing flower blooms
— Saito Sanki
(Translations by Richard Gilbert and Ito Yuki, from “Gendai Haiku Translations“)
If you’re starting to wonder if all gendai haiku are dark and depressing…fear not. A wonderful place to sample a wide variety of gendai haiku is Blue Willow Haiku World, the website of the fine Japanese-American haiku poet Fay Aoyagi, which features both her own haiku and that of modern Japanese haiku poets in her own translations. A few examples:
no hesitation
he comes and whispers
in a dancer’s ear
–Suju Takano
from “Gendai no Haiku” (Modern Haiku), edited by Shobin Hirai, Kodansha, Tokyo, 1996
— posted by Fay Aoyagi on Blue Willow Haiku World June 9, 2010
azuki-bean jelly
I prefer a comic play
with a quiet plot
–Shuoshi Mizuhara
from “Gendai no Haiku” (Modern Haiku), edited by Shobin Hirai, Kodansha, Tokyo, 1996
— posted by Fay Aoyagi on Blue Willow Haiku World June 7, 2010
bubbled water
it wets
an equation
— Keishu Ogawa
from “Gendai Haiku Hyakunin Nijukku” (“Modern Haiku: 20 Haiku per100 Poets”), edited by Kazuo Ibaraki, Kiyoko Uda, Nenten Tsubouchi, Kazuko Nishimura, You-shorin, Nagano, 2004
Fay’s Note: “sôda-sui” (bubbled/carbonated water) is a summer kigo.
One can write a Japanese haiku without a subject word. Most of time, the subject is “I,” the poet. But this one, I am not sure. I see two people (somehow, a male and female students) studying together. It is a summer time.
Between them, cans (or glasses) of bubbled water… But the translation can be
bubbled water
I wet
an equation
— posted by Fay Aoyagi on Blue Willow Haiku World June 6, 2010
So far I’ve been discussing this genre as a strictly Japanese phenomenon. But the inevitable question is: Are there “gendai haiku” in English?
Richard Gilbert responds:
“I’m not even sure [the term ‘gendai’] should be used for any haiku natively-written in English. For instance, I would not say so-and-so a haiku is ‘gendai’ as a matter of style, unless I meant it was similar in style to that of a known gendai poet of Japan … As of yet, we do not have a ‘gendai-like’ movement in English-language haiku poetry, though there are some poets writing innovative works. … It’s my thought that we can learn and appreciate, though innovate with autonomy.”
— Richard Gilbert, “A Brilliant Literature: Robert Wilson Interviews Professor Richard Gilbert“
I’m planning to write a post soon about some English-language haiku poets who are innovating in what seem to me gendai-like ways — including Metz and Gilbert themselves. In the meantime, I’d welcome comments on these poems and this poetic phenomenon: How do you feel about haiku in this style? Do you think there is a similar movement in English? Should I just stick to haiku and leave the dry academic treatises to the experts? Let your opinion be known.
June 11: 13 (Hospital Moon)
the moon not yet set
the long dim corridors
of the hospital
June 6: 3-5: The Technique of Metaphor and the Technique of Simile
(See this post for an explanation of what’s going on here.)
Jane:
The Technique of Metaphor:
“I can just hear those of you who have had some training in haiku, sucking in your breath in horror. There IS that ironclad rule that one does not use metaphor in haiku. Posh. Basho used it in his most famous ‘crow ku.’
on a bare branch
a crow lands
autumn dusk
“What he was saying in other words (not haiku words) was that an autumn evening comes down on one the way it feels when a crow lands on a bare branch.”The Technique of Simile:
“Usually in English you know a simile is coming when you spot the words ‘as’ and ‘like.’ Occasionally one will find in a haiku the use of a simile with these words still wrapped around it, but the Japanese have proved to us that this is totally unnecessary. … [T]he unspoken rule is that you can use simile (which the rule-sayers warn against) if you are smart enough to simply drop the ‘as’ and ‘like.’ …[B]y doing this you give the reader some active part that makes him or her feel very smart when they discover the simile for him/herself.
a long journey
some cherry petals
begin to fall”– Jane Reichhold, Haiku Techniques
*
Me:
I combined these techniques because it’s difficult for me to see how a simile that doesn’t use the words “like” or “as” is different from a metaphor. There obviously is a subtle distinction in Jane’s mind but I am not subtle enough to understand it. I’d love to hear from anyone who is.
tree climbing
boys taller
than last year
hot water running
your hands on
my shoulders
cats paw at the screen door
we sign
the papers
*
June 7: I edited one of these haiku slightly. Anyone who can tell me how gets a prize. 🙂
June 5: 1 (Starless Night)
starless night
siloes
with their own light
May 23: 1-30: My father
1.
freeze after thaw
cell phone ring
makes me slip on the ice
2.
colder than yesterday
my sister’s voice
on the phone
3.
on my back on the ice
clouds torn open
reveal more clouds
4.
cell phone ring
the airport
vanishes
5.
a stranger’s car
roads darker than I’m used to
curve toward home
6.
snow on dark steps
inside
the family waits
7.
pancakes heavy
in my stomach
throwing out his painkillers
8.
the day after his death
the death of the neighbor’s dog
we sympathize
9.
cold draft in his room
the cards
we used to play with
10.
knocking with cold hands
at the wrong door
of the funeral home
11.
list of funeral expenses
scratches on
the polished table
12.
early dark
white sheet pulled away
from his surprised face
13.
snow on a low wall
choosing between
two burial places
14.
PowerPoint slides
of gravestones
chairs with hard seats
15.
stack of Sunday papers
can’t stop reading
the obituary
16.
morning fog
running up the hills
I left behind
17.
trying on dresses
my sister’s
opinion
18.
Olympic snowboarding
I blow my nose
on his handkerchiefs
19.
thin pajamas
Googling the words of
his favorite hymn
20.
steam from my mother’s tea
showing her
Facebook condolences
21.
day of the funeral
rust from the leaky
faucet
22.
unheated waiting room
one by one
we put coats back on
23.
my father’s funeral
truth
and lies
24.
standing for a hymn
memory of my head
reaching his elbow
25.
minister’s hug
his sympathy card
will regret my unbelief
26.
frost on the windowpane
unfamiliar
relatives
27.
their sympathy
taste of
sweet red punch
28.
snow in the cemetery
wrong kind
of shoes
29.
fresh snow on his car
another
dead battery
30.
my inheritance
a car to drive
a thousand miles home
*
My father died in February. I’d made no effort whatsoever to write about his death before. Or speak about it, really. Or think about it, come to think about it.
Something about haiku makes it easier, by forcing you to remember and concentrate on the tiny physical details of the experience. Writing these has been like compiling a mental photo album of the week of his death. It’s allowed both distance and immediacy. I approach the experience, come close enough to touch it, then draw back quickly, as soon as I start to feel it burn.
Red Dragonfly 