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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It’s just about impossible to translate a Japanese haiku into 5-7-5 syllabic form in English and not pad it out.
Take Eli Siegel’s trans of Basho’s most famous haiku:
Pond, there, still and old!
A frog has jumped from the shore.
The splash can be heard.
It adds a lot of stuff not in the original (“there”, “still”, “shore”, present perfect tense instead of simple present, etc.) just to squeeze out those syllables.
Harold Henderson provides the following literal word-by-word translation of the original:
Old-pond frog jump-in water-sound
That’s all the information in the original poem in eight English syllables although it’s not intended to be an idiomatic rendering into English. A good modern translation is Jane Reichhold’s
old pond
a frog jumps into
the sound of water
Which comes out to 12 syllables and is entirely faithful to the meaning of the original.
Also note that I never mentioned Elizabeth Bishop in this discussion; but I did cite one imagistic haiku-inspired poem by Amy Lowell.
I suggest consulting a readily available book like The Essential Haiku (The Ecco Press, 1994, ed. by Robert Hass) to get a feel for translations that approximate the duration of the originals. Some can be extremely terse:
I go,
you stay;
two autumns.
(Shiki; previously attributed to Buson)
That’s what the poem says; why pad it out? English and Japanese are very different languages.
Up to this point, the Basho, Buson, Issa and Shiki translations I’ve been reading are from a 1960 Peter Pauper press three volume anthology. Although the translator is unnamed (presumably it was a team) Jeff Hill did illustrations and lettering. Are you familiar with it?
Although most are in 5-7-5 there is an occasional deviation. Coming across one of these deviations is something like coming across a mutation in an otherwise identical DNA strand. A glitch in the genomic symmetry which, to me, simply comes across as more human. The mutation is acknowledged and absorbed so that life may continue to move forward and new haiku may continue to be formed. At least that’s how it resonated for me. But then, I lack your familiarity with the Japanese rhythmic cadences.
Yesterday, my boyfriend was telling me that when my cat, Kee-hap, meows and purrs simultaneously it is physically uncomfortable for her because cat’s aren’t designed to meow and at the same time. Many cats do this, however, if they want to be fed or let outside, because they know people respond to it and Kee-hap just happens to be one of the many domestic cats whose smart like that.
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.
Nothing in the anthology I have seems remotely Western (in the Kerouac sense). Doesn’t even evoke Elizabeth Bishop although you cited her as a haiku writer also.
Perhaps what I really need is to put two translations of the same haiku side by side. One of them would be a 17 syllable translation and the other would not be. That would enable me to really compare.
Not sure about the precise percentage, but we definitely find variations among Basho’s haiku from the period of what’s usually regarded as his early maturity (late 1670s to early 1680s)–e.g., such forms as 6-7-6, 6-8-5, 5-9-5, 10-7-5 (all cited by Ueda).
But more importantly from the standpoint of English-language practice–and as I noted earlier–these patterns aren’t based on “syllables”. And they certainly aren’t equivalent in duration to the same numbers of English syllables. On the basis of extensive study of the matter William J. Higginson concluded “that an English-language translation of a typical Japanese haiku should have from ten to twelve syllables in order to simulate the duration of the original” (The Haiku Handbook, pg. 102).
Did Basho’s earlier works adhere more to 5-7-5 in Japanese? Allen mentioned some works that exceeded 17 syllables but he didn’t say as much as one-third did.
Basho’s letter to Biji, dated June 20 1682, is one of the oldest remaining documents containing his teachings on the art of haikai. In it he says: “Even if you have three or four extra syllables — or as many as five or seven — you need not worry as long as the verse sounds right. If even one syllable stagnates in your mouth, give it a careful scrutiny.”
(from the book Basho and His Interpreters, by Makoto Ueda, p.80)
Needless to say that the Master himself wrote quite a few hokku of irregular structure, different estimates have it up to 1/3 of his hokku. So did all other Japanese classics…
FWIW
“Omoiyari hito ni kuruma ni kono machi ni
(Sympathy / toward people, toward cars / toward this town). Seventeen syllables. Five-seven-five format. ”
Right, the format is 5 7 5, which is in Japanese language almost like Wilhelm Bush is for German rhyme. It works in so many fields of our daily life in Japan.
This one could be called senryu, if that fits it better as a label.
“five seven five” is the rhythm of the Japanese soul !
as one Japanese haiku poet has put it.
Gabi
.
Bump bump
This message got buried so fast, which is good, but I want to lift it again, so please read what this bossy, grumpy old Frenchwoman said right up there.
I have a problem with the blog.
Not the blog, but where are the people? Alright, I am pretty old now, and sometimes when you are old to feel a little young again it is good to stir things. This is the way I see this blog:
I have a sky chart, names of many stars, little stars, big stars, names I have never heard, names I have heard like Hotham, van den Heuval, Mountain, tripi, Swist, Tico, Olson, Aoyagi, Brooks, Clausen, Swede, Tchouhov, Patrick, owen, Reichhold, Merwin, Snyder, Brandi, Lippy, Herold, Hackett, Welch, Beary, Berry….
And many, many more, a big sky chart, so many names. I take it out into the night, I look up, but I can only see a few stars, a half dozen maybe, scattered. Is it cloudy? No, how strange that is. It is strange to have the feeling that there are so many stars up there and they are not lighting, and I want to see them! In France, when I was a child I was told by my
grandfather that the stars have voices, too, you have to be quiet to understand, to hear them.
I want to hear them!
So that is how I see this blog right now. What good is
a sky chart if the stars are wearing hoods? Well, I must be clear (that is my name, after all)– I’m not talking Hollywood. I’m talking everyone.
“The problem came to a head one day as I was driving through Tokyo. While waiting for the light to change, I saw the following public service announcement on the side of a bus: Omoiyari hitonikurumani konomachini (Sympathy / toward people, toward cars / toward this town). Seventeen syllables. Five-seven-five format. It must be a haiku, I thought. But when I reached the office and repeated the announcement to my Japanese coworkers, none of them thought it was a haiku. I knew they were thinking to themselves, What kind of a lunatic is she? One tried to break the news to me gently, It’s not a haiku, it’s an advertising jingle. Well, I knew it was an advertising jingle, but still, wasn’t it an advertising jingle haiku?”
Abigail Friedman: The Haiku Apprentice
Link to the Sarah Palin Swan Song Politiku. Hope you enjoy reading it!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/susanna-speier/sarah-palin-swan-song-pol_b_227485.html
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