Sails is a section of troutswirl that is devoted to presenting questions for discussion and debate on the nature and possibilities of haiku. Sails will be overseen by Peter Yovu. For an introduction to this section, see Sails.
• 1st Sailing
• 2nd Sailing
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3rd Sailing
presented by Peter Yovu
Haiku? Senryu? Something else?
You have probably noticed, under Viral 4.3 and Periplum #3, an ongoing discussion about a poem by Penny Harter, much of it centered around whether it is a haiku, a senryu, or something else. In this Sailing, I would like to continue and broaden the discussion somewhat. The central question is this: do these considerations help or hinder the understanding and/or enjoyment of a poem? In what ways?
As evidenced in the Viral and Periplum discussions, some people feel that the distinction is important. Others do not. But chances are, those who do not have studied the distinctions, and probably have even, for a while anyway, kept to them in their writing, or as guidelines for reading. Here then are two related question: how important is it for newer students to learn the distinctions and to practice them? How important was this for you?
This is an open forum of course, but I believe the most helpful approach here may be a personal one. If your imagination is best served by staying within certain bounds, it would be good to hear how that works for you. And similarly, if it is best served by testing the bounds, how does that work?
I feel it would be quite enlivening to see a poem or two which, like the Harter poem, may yield to us dimensions otherwise missed without this kind of examination. So please feel free to introduce (or re-introduce) to us such work. At some point, I may do that myself with a famous poem by Chiyo-ni. I hope looking at it in this light will be fun and perhaps instructive. But maybe I won’t need to.
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William Cullen brings up an interesting point of view on the comments section of his entry in Tobacco Road Blog. I’m not sure if I’m saying this right but it seems to be his feeling that American haiku writers try too hard to “cling” to the Japanese when in fact that Japanese have clearly given their poetry up to the international community. I’m not too sure of his facts though as I’ve yet to meet a Japanese haiku poet who does not feel haiku is essentially Japanese…no matter how many variations the nations come up with.
I see no harm in exploring the culture and back ground of these ancient poems and learning from them a little bit about human nature. I think by trying to understand the Japanese it broadens our own world view.
I do feel though, that even though Basho did sometimes write about emotional things…things that touched him deeply, I feel he did so to try to understand those emotions better…to put them down and look at them objectively to see what is “nature” and what is caused by something else, and if there is something else, what is it and why did it have such an effect on him.
A lot to think about…
With so many depths of context unavailable to us, it is difficult, impossible probably, to know what to make of this poem. It seems to go contrary to what we generally consider fundamental to haiku in that it *directs* our experience. It makes me think of advertisements one sees appealing to (manipulating some might say) our sense of compassion for impoverished children. It certainly does not, for me at any rate, open up the soulspace of some of Basho’s best work. But I don’t think that was his intention, to be fair.
Thanks for sharing those examples. For all our intelligence, we also abandon our children. A sad way to connect to the animal world.
As for deviant syllable counts, I think the Basho poem (haiku?) is 7-7-5.
The tone also interests me. I don’t know Japanese, but if the translations above are faithful, that poem written today might be dismissed as melodramatic.
reminds me of a tanka that I wrote for Katherine Cudney,
I think in 2002/3? Ribbon’s may have published it in ’08, maybe?
the sound
of a broken bottle swept
across asphalt
like the cry of a child
you have given away
This is a good example why I have a problem with Japanese to English translations, besides other issues.
If 17 sound syllables equal to somewhere between 9 & 11
syllable count, then why doesn’t this work.
Am 100% sure that I never wrote a haiku about being abandoned, placed into the foster system and the likes.
It’s difficult to imagine how anyone can give up a child let alone abandon one. let alone find an abandoned child or baby, then continue on your way. You can feel the author’s remorse and I would imagine that it would have been haunting for a very long time, even at a time, when
this image could have been common?
I believe that there is a video on the Net based on this poem and/or in part?
I think it’s indeed a good ex. of how the form of classic haiku often goes well beyond simplified models.
I also see it very much as a poem that connects human nature and nature. It really does so in both parts of the haiku: the people who have heard the monkey’s cry and then the child abandoned in the autumn wind.
It meets the classic structural requirements for haiku (and hokku), with a cut (albeit a somewhat atypical-looking one in translation) and a kigo.
Btw, the indigenous Japanese macaque or snow monkey is famous for its intelligence. Its cries are learned (rather than simply inherited) and exhibit regional dialects. Also, along with humans and raccoons, it’s the only animal known to wash its food before eating. All these things probably serve to enhance the identification between the monkey and the child.
The business of washing food made me think of this haiku by Garry Gay:
Hunter’s moon;
a raccoon washing something
in the river
those who have heard a monkey’s cry:
how about this abandoned child
in the autumn wind?
That’s Basho translated by Makoto Ueda in his book, “Basho And His Interpreters: Selected Hokku with Commentary”. It can be found in Hass’s “Essential Haiku” translated like this:
You’ve heard the monkey crying-
listen to this child
abandoned in the autumn wind.
How do we categorize this poem? It begins with not an observation but a reference to nature. While the child’s implied cry is compared to and has the feel of nature, it is human behavior, as is the act of abandonment committed by the child’s parents or whoever might have cared to help after they were gone.
The form of the poem, with its plea or challenge or cry of anguish, is so different from most of what we see published today. I’m curious what you all have to say about it.
Gabi, “The changing of heaven and earth is the heart of the nature spirit of haiku.” When I read that line it made me wonder if the changing of heaven and earth are also the changing of a human being in his/her progression through life and as we come across these evidences of ourselves in nature, if these subjective/objective “moments” lie at the core of the spirit as it binds up the emotional/intellectual/sensibility of the person.
Sometimes I come up with some haiku that are probably better haiku than the ones I keep, but they are not true to my own changing nature.
Like Gene, I have to be true to the spirit of the poem – but that has to be true to my own nature.
Does any of this make any sense? It probably lies at the reason I find that more often then not I end up breaking rules right and left.
Hi, Guys, I can’t help but respond to jazz. I married a jazz musician..one of the purists before 1925…he was amazing. He played and arranged for some of the greats…Fats Waller, Benny Goodwin, etc. etc. etc. Many of the great jazz men had classical training. This classical training had a great affect on the base upon which they stood. But jazz progressed as it grew beyond that classical training. It was exploration into the unknown. It was alive and it was wonderful for them as they watched a world open up for them.
John always told me that the mark of the artist was to know when to break the rules. (By the way he was a fine artist also and won many awards for his work.)
When I became engaged in haiku, I was drawn to the great comradery among haiku poets. One day John asked me what the attraction was for me and I told him…”It’s my jazz band!” It is not unlike jazz at all.
As an artist I come to it from the same well-spring. We learn, we learn from the rules, we learn from the art , we learn from each other, and we learn when we listen to our own song. It’s a wonderful place to be, and to watch it in it’s becoming.
while I am at it:
Monday morning —
a flaw in the shadow
of the sugarbowl
H. F. Noyes
Vol: 5:5, The Heron’s Nest
to me the entire issue becomes personal, and both Japanese
Traditional poems and English Launguage poems are different.
I’ve already give you folks Kacian’s “family album” as an example, and here is another poem published by The Heron’s Nest, vol.4:4, April 2002, by Tom Noyes.
religion aside
there are plum blossoms
and pussywillows
H. F. Noyes
I would include a poem of my own, Berlin Wall, but personally, Berlin Wall, can also be an event, so, I
will withdraw my poem.
I am not going to get into the “haiku spirit,” since this
too can be personal, emotional, etc., and I tend to write
by feel; emotionally feeling an image in my mind. If that makes sense?
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