It seems appropriate that this Viral, selected and commented on by Yu Chang, follow Viral 4.3 and Periplum #3, both of which accumulated such great discussions and so many interesting thoughts and readings. One of the key questions it seems that was being alluded to but not being addressed head-on was this: what is Nature? How do we define it?
It seems that because our definition of Nature is expanding to include us (humans) and our inventions—that human nature is indeed part of Nature and vice versa and not separate or divided from it—our definitions of haiku and senryu, and what they can be (and what they are capable of doing), must expand as well. The lines become blurred, as they should. Isn’t this a good thing, and a natural trajectory for haiku and senryu as they become more global? Kigo (season words) become less vital and exclusive, and more work that employs season-less, universal words (muki-kigo) become prevalent—the human nature of Nature becoming more central, more accented. Is this subjectivity, or a new objectivity?
This Viral (5.3) seems to be yet another example of this kind of artistic progression: a seasonless poem where human nature-consciousness-emotions and something physically perceived outside it are spiraling around one another, pushing and pulling, with deep connections that go all the way back to the origins of humankind (“Where there are rocks, watch out!” -Alan Watts). In many ways, the seasonless poem goes deeper than seasons, and, with the openness they create, require the reader to go deeper as well. You the reader, bringing your life experiences and imagination in tow, are allowed to come in contact with a world the seasonless poem creates more openly, with more freedom, and are given the chance to create your own season for it, or however the poem works through you. It’s a collaborative workout. What season does it leave you in and with, and why? Take a look. And watch out.
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Virals is a section in which one person choses a haiku by another person and comments on that haiku. Then the author of that haiku is invited to select a haiku by someone else and comment on that poem, and so on. For an introduction to this section, see Virals.
• Viral 5.1 (Metz ➾ Lyles)
• Viral 5.2 (Lyles ➾ Chang)
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Some by Yu Chang
a deep gorge . . .
some of the silence
is me
— John Stevenson
Franz Kline
“Ah, the color gray . . . a lonely man, in a deep gorge under a misty sky, not even a crow in sight.” That’s the picture I painted right after the first read. I find it curiously satisfying. Much later, after a closer read, I was delighted to find another portrait for the poet – centered, humble, and at peace with his surroundings.
The sense of elation has stayed with me since I first read this lyrical, and evocative poem. The gentle pull of the understated first line “a deep gorge . . .” sets the scene, and the invitation for the reader to join in is put forth in the second and third lines. The poem succeeds effortlessly, without raising a single decibel.
On a bridge in Ithaca, I caught a glimpse of the gorge after our (Route 9 Haiku Group) poetry reading at Cornell’s Mann Library to celebrate the 2006 Poetry Month. It’s like any other gorge just deep enough to rattle me out of my complacency.
A man on a bridge looking down into a gorge is a common scene, but a poet with an open mind has found a poem. Like my composer friend, Hilary Tann, says, “Composing music is making the commonplace incandescent.”
What was in the poet’s mind when he wrote the poem? Could it be that he just wrote it down with nothing particular in his mind? It really doesn’t matter. Each time I read the poem, I am thankful for the space and the freedom to let my imagination play a part.
The poem’s telescoping construct provides enough room between the first line “a deep gorge . . . ” and the third line “is me” to accommodate layers of unspoken emotions effectively juxtaposed in three short lines. Two concrete images, a man and a gorge, are brought together by silence, a word which could conjure up all sorts of sounds, from thunderous waterfalls to the faintest whisper of a wounded heart. A bridge is made, and the reader is invited to come in.
But what is the poet trying to tell me? A voiceless confession of some action/inaction in the past that gave rise to the formation of the gorge? The last two lines when read as a single sentence seem tinged with regret. Could this be a change of heart in the darkest hour of his life? Does he feel centered again and the poem is wide open? Could it be true that if we all open our hearts and talk to one another, the world would be a better place? We’ll never know. Maybe that’s why a poem like this is so tantalizing.
≈
“deep gorge” was first published in Geppo (July/August 1996)
≈
As featured poet, John Stevenson will select the next poem and provide commentary for Viral 5.4.
{ 27 comments }
← Previous Comments
Required viewing after hearing all this stuff about masters and giants and stuff. Just squeeze the little red lumpfish, and don’t worry, it won’t bite.
I had thought the question of subjectivity would come up in Sailing #163, but the blog seems about 8 months pregnant with it, so we have to hoist that sail somewhat sooner to get this baby out of the amnion and over the sea. (Isn’t that a Cole Porter song?)
I would like to say at this point, ” hold on, save it, don’t push yet, don’t push”, but that ain’t gonna happen is it?
I think David makes an interesting point about the objective to subjective ‘line’ (for lack of a better word). Some poems we observe, and thus are on the more objective side of the scale/line. But a poem like John’s moves more toward the subjective as it hits deeper to him, and he is more personally engaged. In fact, I’m not sure you could write John’s poem with just objective facts. That said, I’d hate to see “haiku” at the far end of the subjective line. At that point the reader is only marginally engaged since they are told everything. A question to be asked is: how far can one dance along the line and still call it a haiku? Questions of how we define a haiku aside, I think as we’ve seen in these discussions it varies with each poet.
Perhaps this is what Scott meant by his ‘progression’..? And in fact it isn’t seasonality but the poet’s engagement? Less external, more internal?
Oh, Gabi! Excellent work on Tan Taigi. His other poems, your readable translations, and the art by Buson, are very welcome as you pull it together.
With Gabi’s addition of the notion of “geta” and the picture of such a bridge on her website, I get a strong feeling of the bridge as musical instrument. A marimba or xylophone played by the hard wooden clogs. Each plank a slightly different note, as struck directly by the poet, and as it echoes up from the bottom of the bridge via the water and the side walls. This haiku shares the silence with John Stevenson’s, but is punctuated by footfalls. It is the silent space _between_ that brings about the haiku qualities of loneliness.
I am reminded of another of John S’s haiku about silence — it later served as a book title for him (a must-own, by the way):
snowy night
sometimes you can’t be
quiet enough
John Stevenson
The Heron’s Nest Vol.V,#2,2003
I wrote about it in his Award commentary: “Sometimes the very presence of the haiku poet or another person changes what is being observed. The intrusion may be exquisitely painful. The kayak paddle makes a splash as it enters a lily-filled cove. A walk in autumn woods is interrupted by leaves so loud underfoot they seem to echo. The sound of a distant hammer, a jet ski, or an airplane makes a deer jump, a fish startle, or a dragonfly take off.
“I easily recognize the writer’s emotional discomfort as he disturbs the snowy scene; I am drawn in by it. The quiet, and the sheer beauty of this night, should not be disturbed. The scrunch of new snow compressed under a booted foot; the car door shutting; the beep as the car locks; the poet’s breathing-all of these things are just too loud.”
This haiku, too, may fall into the Category described by David Giacalone. It is well worth your time, as Peter has suggested, to click on David G’s name (in red) and read his well put-together treatise. I think David and I are not far apart if the parameters of “tell-ums” and “psy-ku” are stretched a bit… more flexible. It is a matter of focus. Is John’s “gorge” or his “snowy night” _about_ his conclusionary language, or about the very real basis in the actual, physical word? If all I see, just one observer of the haiku scene, makes me think of the mind of the poet, then I’m out of the sharing-of-experience mode and into thinking about thinking — distracted. As Allan shows us, the Old Masters, even through translation, often used a mix of philosophizing and the here and now of actual experience. Experience I can share as in “snowy night.” I can also share in the fact of insight. It is also in the here and now that John is suddenly aware of the silence of the gorge and his place in it. Beyond that, metaphor of haiku-as-a-whole can take over as it does for both types of haiku.
As he is often wont to do, John S. treads the edges. And as it has been said, he does it so well. Sometimes behind his glasses there is a twinkle of amusement . . . I happen to agree with David G. about “dust devils” but, as above, I have a wider threshold for other, more complete, works. I have been with John for many, many inner verses of renku. “Dust devils” seems such a verse of a renku poem… but it lacks the other 11, 19, or 35 stanzas!
After HNA, Ottawa, I expect John may comment (or not, as is his right). I’m not wild about deconstructing my own humble works in public. Others may, but what is written just is, and it doesn’t belong to me, or John, anymore. Readers/listeners get it or they don’t. I may be judged by _my_ effectiveness.
a last ramble about effectiveness … it is profitable to read again the Commentary for this Viral by Yu Chang. It is interesting to see the poem through Yu’s eyes, a friend of John’s, and a Master haiku poet, himself.
– Paul (MacNeil)
Thanks to Gabi for that additional info about Taigi–very interesting. And thanks also to everyone who has responded.
Christopher’s “foghorns” is a real favorite of mine. The double meaning of the final word (“sound”) is a brilliant stroke that pulls everything the poem presents–foghorn, water, kayak, “we”–into a larger whole.
I do hope to see our conception of haiku move increasingly away from a limiting notion of “rules” and more toward a flexible conception of “norms” and “practices” that reflect the reality of what has been written in this genre and do not artificially constrain what poets feel they need to say. As Peter says: “passionate exploration”. Rules are for games. Renku is usually approached in this spirit–and that’s probably appropriate for this communal enterprise. But haiku is an artform and should be able to express anything we need it to. There are textbook notions of haiku, and then there is the real thing, a good bit messier and more interesting.
Perhaps inevitably we will end up embracing the term Scott likes to use: “ku”. To some ears it might sound “cutesy” at first, but it is not just Western shorthand. It really is used by Japanese poets and provides a needed broader category that includes haiku, senryu, and zappai and everything that blurs the distinctions between them. The more I think about it, the more useful it seems.
“To burn always with this hard, gem-like flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life.”–Walter Pater
Oh but I like rules! And laws! Like the laws of physics. Like gravity. How could we learn to fly without it?
I want to enter this somewhat obliquely, by way of a poem in the current Montage and another from Montage #14.
I wonder what readers make of Taiga’s poem:
I walk over it alone
In the cold moonlight—
The sound of the bridge
No doubt many readers will take “the sound of the bridge” to mean the sound of its being walked upon, and that what’s being walked over is a river, perhaps a gorge.
For me what is intriguing and what deepens the poem is the sense that the bridge itself has a sound; or, that the bridge *is* a sound, which may be a stretch for some. You’ll have to tell me. This reading then includes the possibility that the “I” is walking over a sound. I think this does more than suit my imagination. I think it speaks to the intuition radiating out of “in the beginning was the word” and a sense that all things essentially, in their quantum immeasurable vibrations, *are* sound. This takes me to a deep subjectivity—not the subjectivity of an individual’s impenetrably closed circuit, but of a fundamental inwardness, a revelation of *what is* as *I am*. And this may include a whole lot of space.
Perhaps the original poem would direct me away from this reading. I only know what’s on the page here, and what I see is staggering; the nexus to which I am drawn, of art, psychology and the sacred, is dizzyingly present.
Here’s a poem by Christopher Herold which Allan included in Montage #14:
foghorns
we lower a kayak
into the sound
*****************
I have been pondering John Stevenson’s poem since it arrived as a Viral. I’ve known it for a long time, as many no doubt have. One of its strengths is that it makes me want to go on pondering. John, I believe, is familiar with Wallace Stevens, whose poems often embody a mental sensuality, or a sensuous mentality. “The shadows of the pears/Are blobs on the green cloth./The pears are not seen/ As the observer wills”. (Telling and showing both).
At any rate, I believe “a deep gorge” juxtaposes the conceptualizing observer with (the thing) observed; abstract with concrete. He says: “*some* of the silence”– an observation of holding back from the enormity before him, which is, of course, very human. So he is observing the gorge *and* himself, and what interests me is the possibility that one can be aware of something like a gorge and also to one’s response to it, in a unified, if paradoxical way. And present it as a poem.
I think the Taiga poem, or my reading of the translation at any rate, occurs in a similar outer/inner space, though the conceptual realm is either very subtle or absent. I believe Taiga’s may be the more realized poem. With Taiga’s I enter the mystery of the gorge; with Stevenson’s I stay on the edge and more in my mind. But I suspect that many people will relate strongly to staying on the edge as more human. Do we enter the question of haiku or senryu again?
I would like to add that I think David Giacalone’s thoughts are valuable. I do not necessarily agree with the content or tone, but I respect them, and get the impression that he is defending something he considers precious. His views, which are probably shared by others like Clark Strand, though it’s been a while since I’ve looked at Mr. Strand’s work, may help some who do not share them to hone and clarify their own ideas, as Allan Burns has done. Giacalone will not prevent me from experimenting. One’s understanding of things like subjectivity, of showing not telling, of the uses or misuses of abstraction or the conceptual, of what an image is and can do, and of a huge range of approaches, techniques and considerations to be taken or not, is not well served by *following* rules, but by passionate exploration which may lead the artist to find out for him/herself what a given poem requires. I hope Mr. Giacalone realizes that poets, even haiku poets, do not necessarily experiment out of reactivity, but out of a genuine wish to “make it new”, or, to be a bit clever about it, out of a new wish to make it genuine.
← Previous Comments