Hi, Guys, I guess the worst part of hell is no voice at all. So I do understand what Peter is getting at even if I found from my own experience that even if I found the words, no one could do anything about it…and that there are many aspects to any human being. I ended up tossing them since I did not want others to feel that the shadow was my true color. But I can understand a person being in the darkness and finding that it is his true nature…and that too needs a voice.

Although most of the really great haiku I’ve read of the darkness has also found room for the light…either with humor or by any number of human means

Might I recommend to you “KNOTS: An Anthology of Southeastern European Haiku Poetry” edited by Dimitar Anakiev & Jim Kacian. If you can get a copy, it’s a “beautiful”
book…in all the ways “beauty” has been revealed to us here.

I am much in debt to the Japanese in many ways to come to grips with my own darkness and to learn from it. I only argue that we make room for the voice… As there were many times when there were no words…there were no means of expression…only endurance.

Peter,
Peter,

My perspective is, as you say, a bit different.

During the greater part of the history of hokku, it would have been virtually impossible — given conditions in Japan — to escape from the darker realities of life. But instead of writing hokku about them, writers instead adopted the aesthetic of seeing them in the wider perspective of the Buddhist concept of transience, amid which wars and rumors of wars are just waves on a vast sea of impermanence.

Bashō wrote:

Summer grasses;
All that remains
Of warrior’s dreams.

That is not an anti-war hokku, nor a pro-war hokku. Instead it transcends both by placing a long-past event in the context of the impermanence that touches everything from the ephemeral morning glory to a worm boring into a nut to the weakened, wind-blown body of an old traveller.

It is not that the writer has brought these things — messiah-like — out of darkness through some kind of deep personal struggle between consciousness and the shadow — but simply that he has recognized the transient nature of all things as an inherent part of reality. That is a part of the contemplative nature of hokku because it was part of the Buddhist cultural background in which hokku developed.

Modern haiku is another matter. It is often heavily influenced by Western poetry and concepts of the poet as a revolutionary figure, it is not surprising that the issue of social consciousness arises — suggesting that one should bring social issues and political events into verse. But that is not done in hokku.

Instead, though there are a few exceptions, hokku on the whole deliberately avoids deaing with subjects that disturb the mind such as war, violence, and sex. That is because the human mind is so prey to temporary emotions that one must pull far back from them so that they are seen in a much wider and more tranquil perspective in order to properly understand them.

Otherwise, one faces the syndrome of which Aldous Huxley was so aware when he wrote that without this kind of perspective, the pillars of society that are so concerned with social issues are likely to become their own Samsons.

And of course one must beware of a false either / or dilemma. Leaving war and violence out of hokku does not mean that awareness of it is not admitted into consciousness. It just means that one is looking for a deeper perspective than the current whirlpool of turmoil sweeping through the evening news.

But again, I am speaking of hokku, not haiku, and cannot prescribe for the latter.

Hi, Peter,

I don’t know any poet that doesn’t work through innumerable haiku/poems etc. in his/her journals of a dark nature dealing with the darkness of life. I know I’ve thrown away reams of it.

Writing it was a way of going through it with someone without really burdening friends and relatives. But most of the time I could never find the words that could translate most of it so that it was of any interest for publication. I sneak it in sometimes but often it’s not recognized or understood. But I understand your point about the darkness. You can’t see in bright light.

I’m a black and white artist and the darks are what give any drawing it’s power…the black lines the grace. Still, most people only see the bird in the tree…the blossoms on the branch. It is a bit of a joy for me to bring light out of darkness though. I can’t deny that.

I just had published a bluebird haiga in “red lights” Vol. 5 No.2

the verse read:

spring water flows
with the sound of it mingling
in your song
bluebird, bluebird,
I’m as thirsty as you….

The bluebird was drawn half in shadow and half in light…giving the bluebird different markings in my drawing than it owns. The branch cuts through the shadow rising to light.

Perhaps it was too oblique for most people to follow. Shall I give up the gentleness to enter the darkness more deeply? But would that be following my own reason for being?

Many questions on this post. I’m not quite so thirsty any more!
Thanks guys. This is great.

I posted the following comments under Envoy 4 but it doesn’t seem to come up there, so I’m repeating it here, where it also has some relevance.

—-

War stood at the end of the corridor

The subject of this envoy is of daunting importance I believe. I would say I have avoided it until now, and even now I come into its neighborhood with trepidation. There is something about shadowy material that wants to protect its own turf, to keep observers out, hissing in dark corners at the intrepid with their candles, curiosity and determination.

There are elements in the human psyche that would do, and have done, and likely will continue to do, acts of astonishing cruelty upon others, and which turn upon the individual as well, if you consider how vicious one’s “inner critic” can be. It wants, for reasons I can’t say I fully understand, to keep us out of that neighborhood. But we have to go there, or it will come to us. The corridor, after all, starts with you and me, and it ends with us.

This is a view not all share. There are many who believe that such cruelty and violence originates outside of us. For all I know they’re right, but I don’t find the view workable. It seems to compound things.

In a review I did a couple of years ago, I quoted Robert Bly, who said: “American haiku poets don’t grasp the idea that the shadow has to have risen up and invaded the haiku poem, otherwise it is not a haiku. The least important thing about it is its seventeen syllables or its nature scene.” If this raised hackles in the community, I barely heard. Maybe I’m foolish to bring it up here, but surely it fits, surely it pertains to the poem we are considering, and to the question of what haiku may be, how it signifies, and what one may say about its “purpose”.

Robert Hass, in his essay “Images”, opens this a little differently. Speaking of Basho he says: “Capable of enormous clarity, of an extraordinary emotional range, there is at the center of his work… a sense of the sickness or incompleteness of existence”. Perhaps I am only fitting it to my case, but I read this as referring to the unconscious and to the shadow realm. What Bly seems to be saying is that Basho and others worked with this sense of “sickness” or “anxiety” (a word Bly uses elsewhere re: Basho), which may be the anxiety one feels approaching any dark neighborhood, including, especially, the one within. But he did enter. More than anything, one might argue, this is what gives him his authority, and why we delve into his work even today.
Iraq and Afghanistan stand at the end of a corridor so long, and with so many side hallways leading to the TV room, the movie theaters and the beach, as to be ignorable. I find myself making occasional forays beyond these distractions, then retreating to my comforts, including sometimes, this blog. But the shadow realm is a superconductor—the atoms of war and violence smash into one’s heart at the speed of light—or, if you will, the speed of darkness. In fact, if you will allow the quantum analogy, they exist at both ends of the tunnel simultaneously.

I don’t think Bly’s statement is far removed from Scott Metz’ question: “If we want to stop the atrocities of war and their destructive repercussions, shouldn’t we be writing about it then, instead of, say, birds and baseball?” I do not wish to resume the tensions that arose earlier here, but I do wish to respond to Scott’s question.

I don’t know what I *should* be writing about, but I know that if I stay in my comfort zone as a writer, it is usually because I have not wanted something challenging, or squirmy, or with teeth, to reveal itself. I probably do this most of the time. It comes partly from laziness, stopping too soon with my explorations, sometimes saying, under the breath of my breath: someone will publish this, it’s good enough.

I’m not saying my poems or yours should always have teeth or look like dragonfly larvae. But if in our writing there is a persistent ignoring of our larval natures and a preference for our angelic natures, we may be giving strength to forces which will emerge somewhere, grow wings, and maybe drop bombs.

Can poetry stop wars or violence or cruelty in the world? I don’t know. I do believe however, that engaging with one’s whole life in any art may be a means of discovery, of self-uncovering. The more we see about ourselves, the less we need to act out. I don’t know that this needs to be a conscious purpose, and certainly not a program or agenda, but I do know that when I come across work in which it is evident that the author, or painter, or composer has faced him or herself, has allowed some shadow material to rise and has found the means of showing what was found, I am grateful. It has often been said, in different ways, that the role or purpose of the artist and spiritual seeker is to go into the depths, into hell if need be (and as many myths demonstrate), in order to reveal the living light upon their return. It is a paradox of great art that it may find beautiful expression for what is most repellent. The best art, the best haiku whatever the subject, shines the brightest when it has come through the dark.

All art fails because it attempts impossible things. The failure is beautiful.