ProetryPlace Blog 22: ‘ku bug
caught
the ‘ku bug again
hope it isn’t fatal
Blame my sister for this latest bout of haiku fever, though in truth, it is a chronic ailment for me. Knowing my penchant for these weird little poems, she alerted me to “Haiku in English” published this year by W.W. Norton & Company. This little volume compiles 800 of the tiny poems penned by 200 poets in English over the past 100 years and presented in somewhat chronological order.
We gave the Japanese baseball, a capitalistic, democratic post-war society and an inordinate fear of radiation. 100 years ago or so, they gave us haiku, though they were writing it for centuries before. Poets of the “Imagist” group picked it up and played with it, attracted by its imagery and brevity of expression. The book allows us to watch the evolution of haiku in English since that time.
The Japanese gave us a one-liner with 17 “on” (a sort of syllable) in a poem referencing nature in one vividly or artistically described moment. For example, Basho wrote (the interpretation presented here in three lines):
all along this road
not a single soul–only
autumn evening comes
and
wrapping dumplings in
bamboo leaves, with one finger
she tidies her hair
and this one that breaks the rule to avoid metaphorical allusions, but strikes a chord with me:
this dark autumn
old age settles down on me
like heavy clouds or birds
Haiku are meant to be read in one breath, though for me, with pausing at the kireji, it sometimes requires two. Still, you get the point—these are very short poems, often much shorter that the once sacred 17-syllable, three-line form. One, by the poet Cor Van Den Houvel, consists of the single word, Tundra, set in the middle of a blank white page.
(The kireji, by the way, is a sort of mental change-up pitch that may catch the reader by surprise.}
In view of this apparently simple and brief form, one might expect writing and understanding haiku to be equally simple. Aint so. Quite the opposite, and volumes have been written to explain and describe haiku. These explanations, while not essential, can enhance one’s appreciation of the poems and the poets’ intentions.
I like what Billy Collins, one-time US poet laureate, says in his introduction to “Haiku in English.”
He first notes that “haiku is both easy and impossible to define,” but goes on to offer some useful concepts.
“. . . haiku not only convey the beauty of individually experienced moments, they are powerful . . . assertions of the poet’s very existence.
“Every haiku makes a common claim: I was there!
“The best haiku contain a moment in time caught in the amber of the poet’s attention and the poem’s words.”
English-language haiku have undergone evolutionary change in content as well as form. The natural world is not necessarily referenced in many haiku, and human nature often is the poem’s focus. Some refer to such poems as senryu, a subset of or separate category from haiku. Whatever; there no longer seems to be limits or restrictions regarding the subject matter of these poems.
Given this wide variance in form and content, how should we now attempt to define haiku—or should we even bother? This great freedom requires great responsibility. It is what makes writing good haiku so difficult and writing bad haiku so easy. For a taste of contemporary haiku, here are a few recent samples of my own works in progress (they seem subject to eternal revisions) that I consider at least legitimate and possibly good:
sweet summer breeze
rustles fragile curtains
you may kiss the bride
her hand shoots up
excited and triumphant
Bingo! Bingo!
beneath the rose buds
a black snake lifts its head
quiet as a mouse
we speak of
our mundane experience
until it grows late
savoring a slice of sausage from my youth
the pink knit jump suit
strains to contain its owner
waddling down the hall
on the shelf
the camera gathers dust
memories
For me, the essential haiku presents an image of a significant observation or occurrence in the poet’s life or imagination, significant because it evokes emotion, epiphany or clarity to the poet that may or may not be apparent or transferred to the reader.
reading haiku
tiny moments
fill a lifetime
Richard Allen Anderson, ProetryPlaceBlog: http://richardandersonblogs.blogspot.com
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