Some news items:
DailyHaiga (an edited journal of contemporary and traditional haiga) is a new online gallery, now up here, that will be publishing a new haiga daily. DailyHaiga‘s Editor is Linda M. Pilarski and its Associate Editors are Patrick M. Pilarski (Poetry) and Nicole Pakan (Artwork).
For those not familiar with the form, haiga is the art of combining a haiku poem (or other short poem) and an illustration of some kind. Fused into one, the two create a new, independent work of art.
Some other valuable sources on haiga for those interested:
— Looking and Seeing: How Haiga Works by Jim Kacian
— Haigaonline
— Reeds: Contemporary Haiga
— World Haiku Association (haiga contests)
— Kuniharu Shimizu’s haiku/haiga blog See Haiku Here
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Periplum’s own David G. Lanoue was recently interviewed for NHK while visiting Japan for the publication of his book, Haiku Guy, into Japanese: Part I, Part 2, Part 3 & Part 4.
I found it interesting to know that David, like myself, first discovered haiku through the work of J.D. Salinger. For him, it was a hokku/haiku by Issa mentioned inside Franny and Zooey that got him going:
O snail
Climb Mount Fuji,
But slowly, slowly!
For me it was two haikai/haiku by Bashō inside “Teddy,” the last story in Salinger’s Nine Stories:
Nothing in the voice of the cicada intimates how soon it will die
Along this road goes no one, this autumn eve
David also repeats part of an interesting, and open, definition of haiku given by The Haiku Foundation’s founder, Jim Kacian: A haiku is, “as long as it needs to be, but as short as it can be.”
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Episode 3 (Senryū, Son of Haiku) of Haiku Chronicles is now up here.
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Over on The Huffington Post, Susanna Speier has created an ongoing section for what she calls Politiku. Speier writes that, “Politiku is my attempt to capture the ever morphing emotional response to the political landscape. . . Politiku replaces the traditional Kigo with a contemporary political reference.”
Though haiku have often tackled political subjects through the ages, both head-on as well as metaphorically, the aim and flavor of Speier’s Politiku seem closer to senryū and zappai. Only submissions written in 5-7-5, however, are accepted for consideration (and only selected ones are published on THP). This bow to “tradition” is a shame since it excludes many poets who compose haiku and short poetry who don’t prefer to do so by counting with their fingers. So, 5-7-5ers, put on your padding gear and helmets and dive in! Thus far, there have been calls for Politiku submissions concerning the topics of: Where Is My/Their Vote?, Father’s Day, Empathy, Memorial Day, Mother’s Day, and The Obama Administration’s First 100 Days.
Click here to see the archived Politiku posts.
For submission guidlines, click here, or here for the same and the latest topics.
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Finally, a winner has been selected from among the 84 submissions sent in for naming the new (and next) troutswirl section, to be headed by Peter Yovu. The winner will be announced on July 4th. Thanks to everyone who sent in their ideas!
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Thanks for re-framing the macro context, Merrill. Unlike haiku, Politiku is a hybrid genre. While it adapts the structure of traditional haiku (thus, the name and the concept) and circulates it through blogs and twitter as concise political commentary. Much as I love working with poets and writers, the Apollo 11 Politiku I posted on Huffpo yesterday, was selected based on the writer’s relationship to the topic: the 40th anniversary of the first lunar landing. I therefore sought out individuals with NASA affiliations. As might be expected, the posts reflected a variety of literary skills and talent. Some even deviated from 5-7-5 and I let that go, in deference to the expertise they brought to the table as well as time constraints. (Most of the publishers and publicists who helped me pull things together were astonished the contributors cooperated with the enthusiasm that they did). The outcome, I like to think, is as much historiography as it is poetry:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/susanna-speier/apollo-11-politiku_b_237934.html
Christopher, Perhaps the question is whether or not the structure is essential to poetry or in this case haiku…or ipso jure…is the poem/haiku a thing in itself…the fact. I guess that’s what I was getting at. Once you can identify the fact, the law of the thing itself, you can then determine if it is poetry or propoganda or if it requires certain structures or not. What I was getting at was that I have always felt that a poem has its own laws.
I may not write in 5/7/5 and may find it deadening to haiku, but that is my poetry…others may require that structure to determine what the law of their poetry is and find it essential to writing haiku. The decision then comes whether or not formula becomes another class of poetry or not?
And when you come to a type of poetry that we are dealing with here, is it not yet another form of poetry… Is the motive, is the fact of a poem fine art or is it propaganda or for that matter prose poetry? We have these designations to deal with.
In response to:
“Far as I can tell, 5-7-5 resonates with English Language writers and readers alike and I have yet to encounter a situation in which it limiting the overall rigor or complexity any more than, say, adhering to the iambs of a Shakespearean sonnet would. ”
and echoing Allan Burns’ and Merrill Ann Gonzales’ above comments:
As an English language writer and reader, I don’t really feel any great resonance with 5,7,5 structure. Occasionally a good haiku is written in English with that structure but, by and large, by chance.
I think Hasegawa Kai said it best in Richard Gilbert’s interview of him: 5,7,5 is the heartbeat of the language… (or words to that effect).
5,7,5 is simply a natural, rhythmic flow which the Japanese language falls into. Sometimes Japanese haiku are not written in 5,7,5 – whenever it suits the individual poem and flow is not compromised.
5,7,5 is not a natural rhythm for the English language, it is not its heartbeat. Perhaps the English language may have a slightly broader array of natural rhythms as the sound units vary so much in length (whereas all the Japanese sound units are of identical duration as far as I am aware).
It seems as though consciously trying to write an English haiku with 5,7,5 structure is actually changing the fundamental type of poem being written – one which has a greater emphasis on manipulating language for its own sake rather than in order to enhance the poetic power of the creation.
The gist is that while an English language haiku can occasionally work in the 5,7,5 structure, it generally won’t because the languages of Japanese and English are too different, and the reasons for having a 5,7,5 structure in Japanese actually dictate a different structural outcome in English.
Some of these arguments attempt to shed a bit of light on a situation in all poetry – when does fine art become propaganda? and can poetry or haiku hold them both? Perhaps if we get back to the motivation behind each composition, we might be able to determine which is which and where we want to be. My own muse would divorce me if I employed a formula or tried to mess around with the meter or length of the lines. Not that that makes me any better a poet than anyone else, but possibly a happier one?
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