. . . 6th Sailing . . .
presented by Peter Yovu
How do we write about Nature?
This Sailing honors Robert Spiess, featured in Montage #32. To be thorough about this, I should say it also honors Henry David Thoreau. Here is one of Spiess’ many “speculations on haiku”:
“Haiku poets should give full consideration to Thoreau’s observation: ‘How much is written about nature as somebody has portrayed her, how little about Nature as she is, and chiefly concerns us.’”
“Full consideration” of this observation will undoubtedly open up numerous questions, not only about the nature of Nature, but also, of course, about the role of the haiku poet in portraying “her”. (Interesting that Thoreau anthropomorphizes Nature, and yes I realize it was, and to some extent still is, customary to do so. I’ll continue in that fashion to maintain his tone).
One question: is it possible to portray Nature “as she is”?
Another: what is it about Nature, nearly 150 years after Thoreau’s death, that “chiefly concerns” you, and how is this reflected in, and engaged by haiku?
And one last, prompted by a word I used twice above: do we portray Nature, write about her, or do we seek, bridging the gap between Nature and human nature, to write as or perhaps through her? Is there a gap?
I realize this is an enormous and possibly daunting matter, but I trust you will find your own question, your own exploration. As with the previous Sailing, I would strongly encourage you to post poems which you feel somehow embody this consideration of “Nature as she is” and not “as somebody has portrayed her”. Perhaps something from Spiess himself, or something from Thoreau.
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Sails is a section of troutswirl that is devoted to presenting questions for discussion and debate on the nature and possibilities of haiku. Sails is overseen by Peter Yovu. For an introduction to this section, see Sails.
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wilderness park
i pitch a tent
on the outskirts
of my life
Ed Markowski (Simply Haiku, Winter 09)
drawing from nature…or drawing form nature… you have to learn how to read a drawing before you can make a judgment…sometimes the words are not what they seem to mean to the reader? How can that be? So often I hear judgments about haiku that seem to miss the point entirely.
It seems to me that there are so many ways of addressing haiku that I have to learn to read things in many ways. But since I come to haiku wordless…in the first place…
Your discussion is beautifully written, Peter, and with great understanding. I have to say that my experience is in accordance with my belief. Saying this, however, does not mean that I don’t, like yourself and everyone else, experience the world as being there, as present as fact, etc., on occasion. However, once upon a time, when i was young, the sea was the sea and the sand was the sand and I was happy. Having grown older-too old, I’m afraid- I more often experience things as ideas. Things that once had connotative and emotional joy associated with them, became ideas and no longer held the same simplicity of being they once had.
It is not a release, Peter, to realize that the things that once brought me such happiness were really associated with a sense of belonging-not just to the “physical” world,l but to the world of human beings. I no longer have that joy of experience. The experiences of the body are experienced as mind events.
And, I can’t help but recognize that binary opposition, the methodology of mind, is at the essence of our society and everything in it. We understand by discrete differences-this is how we recognize letter and words-and this is how we conduct all our activiites-sporting events, politics, sexuality, racial relationships,international relationships.
It is a pity that the Italian semiotician Umberto Eco, who proposed that rather than binary opposition language and thought operated on a continium, is not more emphasized. Perhaps he is; I’ve been out of the intellectual community for decades and have not kept up with philosophy and language theory.
Perhaps your distinction (and again differentiation is the modus operandi of thought) of eternity and time (or, diachronic and syndronic, which are the languaget terms for these differences) is appropos and points to the bridge I was earlier discussing.
Lorin Ford’s quotation from the Tao and Allan Burns’ agreement that pre-existing “reality” has no categorical reality are in keeping with what you are saying and I am content to leave it at that.
All the best to you and your life and experience and poetry.
Jack– it’s difficult to explore this without knowing if you speak from experience or from belief. When I read someone like Nisargadatta Maharaj or J. Krishnamurti (for many years I was an ardent student) I feel great affinity and a wish sometimes to dissolve into…– choose your word. But wish is not the same as actuality and I have to be mindful of the kind of precocity that wants to jump out of my actual experience into a preferred state, or belief.
It may not be clear from what I say, which can have passionate presence I suppose, but I don’t intend to take a position– I have nothing to defend, or rather, when I do, I want to know about it. My experience, though sometimes it abandons me, is that I am both eternity and the productions of time with which it is in love. For the most part it seems to be the latter which want to come out and play, and which need to be explored and understood in order for the former to know itself more clearly.
Jack, if you have experienced the freedom which your words point to, I bow to you. If you speak from belief, I bow to you also, and wish that through it, you come to freedom.
I don’t think I can say anything more.
Phew!
I’m very happy to have had the chance to speak to you all on the subject of nature and mind. I’m particularly pleased to have had the valuable insights offered by Allan and Lorin on the subject. Both have given me a good deal to think about.
Now, to some good haiku.
Here is a bridge…found it over on ‘virals’:
a deep gorge . . .
some of the silence
is me
— John Stevenson
Having, for ‘useful’ and survival and ‘progress’ purposes, considered ourselves separate from ‘Nature’ (in Allan’s sense) for so long, are we (perhaps not too soon, considering the very real ‘eco-system’ problems that Allan refers to) becoming ‘adult’ enough to discover that we are of it, again? Approach that, not through abstractions or mysticism, but as a felt, experienced thing?
I read this haiku of John Stevenson’s as a real and personal discovery. The season is not important here. The depth oif the gorge is. (I thought of gorges in the South Island of New Zealand, but it doesn’t matter where) Such a small thing, ‘me’, confronted with that depth, coldness and silence(even in Summer) but to find oneself, not completely alienated, not completely overwhelmed, not dominant, but part of it…’some of the silence’… not able to provide commentary or definition but to respect where language/ naming ends and to say that, is to discover (again?) something of mystery of our being?
ok, I realise someone will pooh-pooh me for saying mystery;
I don’t know how other to put it.
lorin
‘. . .but irrefutable evidence shows that the things themselves existed before they were perceived and named.’ Allan
‘Things can exist in such a way that they do not exist until they are known.’ Jack
I don’t think there is any real conflict here. It seems to me that it’s just a matter of holding both viewpoints simultaneously, or switching quickly between the two.
‘Heaven and Earth
begin in the unnamed:
name’s the mother
of the ten thousand things’
Tao Te Ching, rendition by Ursula le Guin
‘Absent is the name for sky and land’s first life.
Present for the mother of all ten thousand things’
Dao De Jing, translation by Moss Roberts
‘Things as they are’ exist, but once named/known by a knower/namer they are not ‘as they are’, but something in relation to a knower/namer. So we have two things, a knower/namer and a named/known thing. Before or ‘outside’ that knower/known split, there are not two things.
‘I’ began when I formed the idea/perception of ‘not-I’. Then I made distinctions within the ‘not-I’ and gradually learnt to name some of them ‘correctly’ according to my kind.
. . .everything with four legs was ‘dog’ for a while…dogs grazing in the paddocks, men riding dogs, etc
I was very pleased about language and spotting dogs everywhere. There are many things, especially concepts, that I still don’t know the correct names for.
lorin
“Forty thousand years” (in the Dickson), though, isn’t visual information–regardless of one’s attitude toward that. There are depths one could plumb: the contrast between living, flying bird and motionless stone; natural history (the process of fossilization, what birds were like back in the day); the depth of time–of four hundred centuries of stillness; life’s transience, mutability, haphazard traces. I find it gives me more to contemplate than a lot of things I’ve read.
Jack Galmitz: In the spirit of your bridge, I agree language is needed in order to assign what you call a “categorical existence” to things. Anyway, welcome to the “virtual party”, where you’ll find enthusiasms, sideswipes, open debate, volunteer work, “subtle” allusions, and more.
thanks for the links, Scott
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