“Halloween Masque” (Montage #34) features haiku by Clement Hoyt, Tomas Tranströmer, and Ann K. Schwader.
A Hallowe'en mask,
floating face up in the ditch,
slowly shakes its head.
— Clement Hoyt
A corrosive wind
blasts through the house in the night—
the name of demons.
— Tomas Tranströmer
razored through to the void raven — Ann K. Schwader
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Let me just clarify that, as it may be unclear…
Is it too much of a statement, and does he make things too explicit? Is he telling when he should be showing? And are these things I’ve just mentioned principles which haiku should follow?
Resulting from these questions there’s another tired old question, but still one worth asking – does the “show don’t tell” idea we often talk about in haiku form part of our definition of haiku? And if not, what are the limits that make what we speak of haiku rather than (in the case of one-liners) monostichs, or otherwise simply very short poems. The old definition problem is probably still the one which most haunts haiku.
So, any thoughts or comments?
Merrill, great first comment and I also found David’s explanation of the space in Transtomer’s work very interesting.
My question, as a result of all this, is what status something like the following, by Transtomer, has as a haiku:
Rugged pine trees
over the same tragic moor.
Ever and ever.
In a poetry often defined on the basis of its concrete, objective approach to communication does this contain too much of the abstract?
I’m not taking one side or the other myself – but I want to know what others think and I’d like to form a clearer idea about this in my own mind.
So,
“Ever and ever” seems incredibly abstract. Calling a moor “tragic” is also fairly abstract, although I think much less so and probably within the more usual bounds of haiku.
I’ll leave it at that for now. I don’t want to add much more of my own thought – I really want a sense for what others feel rather than a response to what I feel.
As I said, I’m not on one side or another right now, I am just making an observation that the poem contains a lot of abstraction which is usually / often looked on as a weakness in haiku.
What do others think about this?
Mark, I see your point, but there seems to be a transferance of that trepidation onto the raven…whereas the other two still internalize it.
Tonight I was searching for an old poem I loved years ago by Eugenio Montale (translated by William Arrowsmith) from his book Cuttlefish Bones:
Maybe one morning, out walking in air like dry
glass, I’ll turn around and see the miracle occur—
nothingness at my shoulders, the void
behind me—with a drunkard’s terror.
Then, as on a screen, the old illusion:
hills, houses, trees will suddenly reassemble,
but too late; and I’ll thread my way among men
who don’t look back, quietly, with my secret.
*****************************
I know, it’s not haiku, but there it is again….
You gotta admit, Allan has selected some pretty good stuff for our Halloween spook.
Thanks Dave, that helps flesh out my intuition. I enjoy Transtromer’s leaps between cuts.
….and Merrill,
razored through
to the void
raven
could be read more than one way, but whether physical or metaphysical, I’d say it contains plenty of psychological trepidation.
I am just struck by the seeming (seeming to me anyway) of the psychological trepidation I find in both Clement Hoyt and Tomas Transtomer…like making our way in dark rooms in a long deserted house, while on the other hand Ann Schwader’s haiku seem fully in control..in the cold light of day…she seems quite at home and comfortable with her ravens. While the other two give me the feeling that they’ve seen things that might just give us pause to consider…
I agree Mark.
Robert Bly wrote of Transtomer’s longer poems: “One of the most beautiful qualities in his poems is the space we feel in them. I think one reason for that is that the four or five main images which appear in each of his poems come from widely separated sources in the psyche.” (from Friends, You Drank Some Darkness).
The feeling I get from these three line haiku is like that.
I’m not sure how to read the Transtromer poem Merrill mentioned above. The revelation of the 1st line is not, I think, about the tree or sea, but a separate (or related only in part) thought he’s commemorating. The way he incorporates the product of his mind into the scenery, as if he’s observing it in the same way, I find intriguing. His use of periods at the end of each line adds to the sense that the revelation is frozen in time, life-altering, an end and a beginning.
On the other hand, I might be way off the mark. Any more thoughts?
A three-part haiku (such as the last two I’ve selected by Tranströmer) is a rare creature, and difficult to pull off. I leave it for readers to decide in these instances. Buson, who experimented quite a bit with form, took this approach on occasion–
yanagichiri shimizu kare ishi tokorodokoro
The willow’s bare
The stream’s dry
Here and there, stones.
(trans. Takafumi Saito & William R. Nelson, 1020 Haiku in Translation, BookSurge, LLC, 2006)
Hoyt’s work takes us back to the early days of the ELH “movement”. Despite the 5-7-5 norm and through-phrased structure, I find many of his images indelible and wonder whether other readers feel likewise. It’s possible a measure of “historical imagination” may be necessary to read him sympathetically. Certainly, though, I’ve never forgotten his Halloween mask slowly shaking its head in the ditch or the door slamming and slamming in the empty house, usw.
Ann gives us, as it were, “Seven Ways of Looking at a Raven”. Not all too familiar either, as her Scorpion Prize-winning–
razored through
to the void
raven
The Lovecraft excerpt I’ve used as the headnote is a mood-setter and alludes, albeit rather indirectly, to Jim Kacian’s idea of haiku as anti-story. It’s also an “inside” reference to Ann’s Lovecraftian mythos poetry. By way of explanation….
This collection surely reveals the diversity of haiku…even ELH.
With Clement Hoyt we have the sentence haiku…and with Tomas Transtomer several different forms…Look at this one:
A revelation.
the crooked apple tree.
The sea is close by.
So many subjects…or is the first line a title? Does it matter?
And with Ann K. Schwader we come to a more familiar form and expression.
To my mind, each is haiku, and the ghosts of doubt can go on and haunt anyone who thinks differently! Boo!
Happy Halloween everyone!
Go soft as the rain,
meet the whispering leaves.
Hear the Kremlin bell!
How much of our lives is directed and controled by powers and forces beyond our control! In a haiku like this I find a documentation of the cultural circumstance this human finds himself in as well as the power of words to lie there dormant in the minds and hearts of others as a warning… How we each heed that warning is up to each of us…but he has sounded the alarm… It is enough to change things I think, as others understand more completely through these words what we are creating in our cultures.
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