When I come across a haiku in nature, it is usually something in nature that brings to light that it seems to portray. The thing that makes me notice – to become aware – of something deeper, some connection, to say something that can not be said. I can only hope that the reader of the haiku will have had the same experience or that it brings something to their understanding as well. For an example, I came across this bluebird sitting on top of a milkweed plant on my way home from he Falls one day. The pods had burst and the seeds were drifting on the breeze.

milkweed days
drifting on a breeze to grow
on a new path

I used it for a haiga that was published in Reeds: Contemporary Haiga 2006. The image I had seen seemed to bring into focus the decision I was about to make. I don’t think I anthropomorphized the milkweed…it was just that we were both drifting on a breeze that day.

“Nature as she is”

In German it is DIE Natur,
seen as a female noun.
Maybe that is reflected in the above.

Gabi
(born German, living in Japan since 1977 )

I find more inclusive definitions of Nature more appealing, so it could happily include human experience within its broader regions (though it’s a good question whether Nature includes human civilisation. In my view there’s certainly a good case for saying “well, why wouldn’t it?”. Many tend to think our civilisation is something apart from nature – particularly because we alter natural materials into substances which do not “naturally” occur. However, are we the only species to do this? How much difference is there between a wasp, chewing wood and then regurgitating it as a papery substance to build a nest, and a human combining combining simple elements to create bricks? We consider a wasp nest a part of nature, so why not consider a human abode a part of nature – even if made of concrete and steel?).

In any case, given this expansive definition I find that the following is an excellent example of portraying Nature “as she is”:

walking through the forest
I rearrange
the trees

- Paul Reps

I think this highlights the relationship between subject and object, closely examining the role of perception.

By way of drawing attention to the complex interrelations of both the objective world with itself and also the objective world with the subjective world, it creates a simultaneously subjective and objective viewpoint. Thus we are given the subjective experience of the objective and the objective experience of the subjective.

On these grounds I find something really wholistic about this “haiku” which speaks a clear truth about reality (Nature) in the broad sense. The poet has made an object of his subjectivity, providing an ultimately objective account of Nature. This would appear to be Nature “as she is”.

“less and less nature is nature”
(Marlene Mountain, Pissed Off Poems and Cross Words, 1986)

Although it’s true that other species impact and modify the environment, such as birds building nests and beavers building dams, usw, the impact of humans obviously differs from that of other species in both degree and kind. This issue of what is nature and what is not has been debated on the blog before, so I’ll simply quickly point out a number of ways in which human impact differs from that of other species:

1) The development of language has allowed humans to coordinate efforts on a scale completely unknown to other species.

2) Humans are the only species that cause rapid mass extinctions of a wide range of other species and pose an ongoing threat to biodiversity.

3) Humans radically modify entire habitats and ecosystems, making them unsuitable for nearly all natural inhabitants and often introducing other invasive species in the process (e.g., cockroaches, Norway rats, house sparrows, European starlings, gypsy moths, kudzu, etc. etc.). One ex. of an annihilated habitat: the Mississippi Dead Zone, a lifeless area of up to 22,000 square kilometers (i.e., the size of New Jersey) at the mouth of the Mississippi River, has been caused principally by fertilizers, livestock waste, and sewage. There are at least 145 more such dead zones around the world, likewise caused by human activity.

4) Humans alter the environment through the introduction of decidedly unnatural pollutants, including pesticides, petroleum spills, industrial waste, heavy metals, and radioactive materials, all of which can be fatal to us and other species. Consider that the Exxon Valdez spill alone killed half a million seabirds, about a thousand otters, and billions of fish–and its effects continue twenty yrs after the fact.

5) The scale and rapidity of human impacts can be gauged from the fact that when European settlers first came to North America, the most common bird species occupying this land was the passenger pigeon, numbering in the billions. Today, the passenger pigeon is completely extinct, due solely to human activity, and introduced species such as house sparrow and European starling rank among the ten most populous bird species on the continent. This is just one concrete ex. Anyone looking for an in-depth study of European settlement on New World species should consult Peter Matthiessen’s devastating Wildlife in America (1959, rev. 1987).

Given these differences, their extent, and their rapidity, I would argue that it is necessary to categorize human activity as a different order from that of nature per se, even though humans originated from nature. At the very least, our civilization is an unprecedented force on this planet. So to answer one of Peter’s questions, yes, I think there is a quite significant “gap” between humans and nature.

I believe haiku can engage the environmental situation both explicitly (as Marlene Mountain does, above) or implicitly, in nature-oriented work that simply values and endeavors to heighten awareness of “natural” (as opposed to “built”) environments and their characteristics and denizens. Many of the haiku in the current Montage gallery and previous ones could serve as exs., such as this by John Barlow:

early June–
the chack of a ring ouzel
and tormentil everywhere

Writing a haiku is obviously not going to change the world, but it can be both a symbolic gesture and, potentially, a gateway for expanding the awareness of others.

Today I received “paper moon” a collection of children’s haiku published by Friends of School of theArts, Rochester, NY
(many thanks Tom Painting.) Inside there is a statement by David G. Lanoue that seems to speak to this issue:

“Haiku is a posture, a way of seeing and being, a philosphy of life in which one dedicates one’s self to noticing, not ignoring; to being open not closed; to discovering, not defining; to inviting meaning onto the page, never imposing it.
Poets of haiku peer expectantly into the momebts and moods of this universe of which we are all part, ready always to be startled, to receive with open eyes the measures and enigmas that others miss in their rush through traffic and life.”
—David G. Lanoue

When I read the haiku these children are writing…it reminds me of the quote so often credited to Picaso. He said he spent a lifetime trying to paint like a child. Haiku for me restores the wonder of childhood.

autumn sky -
my haiku blown away
by the wind

sometimes nature is bigger than any haiku we could attempt to write about it. … grin ..

Click on my name to share my skywalk.

Gabi

I would suggest that this “way of seeing and being, a philosophy of life in which one dedicates one’s self to noticing…” (see David’s full quote in Merrill’s comment above) has nothing to do with haiku. Being open to life and the various interconnections therein is simply a way of living. We then chose to express what we have discovered “though” haiku–which is a form of poetry. I’m not comfortable elevating haiku to a religion or philosophy.

The Japanese do have the phrase “haiku no michi” (“way of haiku”). Often, this idea of haiku as a “way” is connected to the practice of Buddhism. Of course, the extent to which haiku is related or indebted to concepts such as “mindfulness”, “present-moment awareness”, “the suchness of things”, transience, and what Bashō called butsuga ichniyo (“self-and-object-as-one”) is complex and highly controversial, even politicized, territory. So much depends on what one emphasizes and what evidence one points to or ignores. What I’ve always found is that this connection is typically downplayed by haikuists and scholars who aren’t practicing Buddhists and of great importance to those who are. In English, for instance, James W. Hackett published his collected work under the title The Way of Haiku (1969).

To bring this back to one of Peter’s questions–”do we seek, bridging the gap between Nature and human nature, to write as or perhaps through her?”–I do feel that a Buddhist emphasis on selflessness and oneness with the cosmos provides a way of “bridging the gap” between humans and nature, created by our modern industrialized civilization and the ideologies lying behind it.

To close, here are some things Bashō said:

“Learn about pines from the pine, and about bamboo from the bamboo.”

“The basis of art is change in the universe [i.e., transience].”

“The secret of art lies in treading the middle path between the reality and vacuity of the world.”

“Composition much occur in an instant [like satori]….”

“It is admirable to have an undistracted mind….”

“One needs to work to achieve enlightenment and then return to the ordinary world.”

There are a lot of answers to this Montage’s question. A lot of directions to take. Our relationship with Nature is a complex one. One I’ll comment on is that I find in nature a perfect foil for my own activities. Nature often makes me question why I do certain things. I have used this old poem of mine as an example of this:

below the falls -
a stepping stone
just out of reach

This is a poem about faith–my lack of it. Of course streams don’t really have faith, or any emotions or even motivations; but in this instance I perceive the stream being fearless, jumping over the falls as if it were the safest and most natural thing in the world. It makes me wonder why I hesitate to jump to that stepping stone, regardless of how stable or safe it is.

‘How much is written about nature as somebody has portrayed her, how little about Nature as she is, and chiefly concerns us.’”

not only does Thoreau anthropomorphize Nature, he
speaks of Nature as a “she”, something “Other” than himself
(particularly in context of the mid-19th century).

don’t want to get into all that is involved with this, as there is way too much literature out there on the concept of
the Other and the engendering of Nature as female in relation to patriarchial cultures, to rehash it here.

I love Thoreau, and I personally do not buy into the essentializing that shapes much of the eco-feminists’ viewpoints, but, for me, the framing of the question–
” is it possible to portray Nature “as she is”? ”
already answers itself