Comments on: Headset (((one))) http://www.thehaikufoundation.org/2009/12/22/headset-one/ Mon, 06 Feb 2012 14:47:07 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3 By: Adelaide B. Shaw http://www.thehaikufoundation.org/2009/12/22/headset-one/comment-page-1/#comment-1559 Adelaide B. Shaw Thu, 24 Dec 2009 20:46:28 +0000 http://www.thehaikufoundation.org/?p=4336#comment-1559 In Paul O. Williams haiku I feel a playfullness. Summer is a time of play, and I liken the fog to children playing tag. If this were in autumn, I would perceive a somber tone. In Jane Reichhold's haiku there is a comforting mood. Home is a comfort word, unlike house which is just a structure. "coming home" perhaps the poet has been away a long time or even for a short time, she is welcome, even by the flowers, standing in line like family waiting to greet her. The individual reader will have his own memories and association. Home for some may be unhappy and coming home is a downward descent into bad memories. Fog may be felt as clostrophobic and scarey, uncomfortable and depressing. The poet has no way of knowing the reader's reaction and must write the poem as he feels it. Adelaide In Paul O. Williams haiku I feel a playfullness. Summer is a time of play, and I liken the fog to children playing tag. If this were in autumn, I would perceive a somber tone.

In Jane Reichhold’s haiku there is a comforting mood. Home is a comfort word, unlike house which is just a structure. “coming home” perhaps the poet has been away a long time or even for a short time, she is welcome, even by the flowers, standing in line like family waiting to greet her.

The individual reader will have his own memories and association. Home for some may be unhappy and coming home is a downward descent into bad memories. Fog may be felt as clostrophobic and scarey, uncomfortable and depressing. The poet has no way of knowing the reader’s reaction and must write the poem as he feels it.

Adelaide

]]> By: Allan Burns http://www.thehaikufoundation.org/2009/12/22/headset-one/comment-page-1/#comment-1555 Allan Burns Wed, 23 Dec 2009 20:03:02 +0000 http://www.thehaikufoundation.org/?p=4336#comment-1555 Williams's minimalist haiku certainly intimates "inner weather", although because of its ambiguous nature, it yields both "glass half-full" and "glass half-empty" readings. Is the fog rolling in or out? Are we watching the trees vanishing or being revealed? I admit my own (initial) tendency is to read it the former way, so the poem's "covert" psychological theme becomes that of diminishment. Yet the other reading remains available, and like Tenzing's "stone" one could place this haiku in the "Necker cube" category. The word "summer" here, btw, isn't at all superfluous, fog (kiri) functioning traditionally as an autumn kigo. It reacts upon "tree/ by tree", bringing into focus an image of luxuriant greenness, which has its own psychological associations. I suspect it was also necessary to convey the motivating experience and adds as well a judiciously-chosen "anchor" to the poem's otherwise evanescent "weightlessness". There's also, of course, the evocation of place (SF). More generally, "the writer’s expressed attitude toward the material...and the reader’s subjective associations, both conscious and unconscious" seem crucial topics to explore in today's fragmented, ideological haiku scene, and I thank Paul Watsky for focusing on them. What might be regarded as a "mere nature sketch" yields much more when the poet's nuanced relationship to his materials is taken into account. This subtle ex. by a recently-departed master of North American haiku seems well-chosen indeed to illustrate the "psychological dimension" of haiku. Also--I find it interesting to contrast the minimalism of this haiku with the free-flowing amplitude (relatively speaking) and sound-resonance of another that employs a loosely related strategy, yet more elements, to create such a different inner and outer effect: dusk lights the ridge evening grosbeaks pinwheel tree to tree (Wally Swist, The Silence Between Us, Brooks Books, 2005) (Do you participate in the child-like joy and wonder, the feeling of "being there" in this crystalline intensity of the moment, conveyed in part by that "killing" word, "pinwheel"?) Williams’s minimalist haiku certainly intimates “inner weather”, although because of its ambiguous nature, it yields both “glass half-full” and “glass half-empty” readings. Is the fog rolling in or out? Are we watching the trees vanishing or being revealed? I admit my own (initial) tendency is to read it the former way, so the poem’s “covert” psychological theme becomes that of diminishment. Yet the other reading remains available, and like Tenzing’s “stone” one could place this haiku in the “Necker cube” category. The word “summer” here, btw, isn’t at all superfluous, fog (kiri) functioning traditionally as an autumn kigo. It reacts upon “tree/ by tree”, bringing into focus an image of luxuriant greenness, which has its own psychological associations. I suspect it was also necessary to convey the motivating experience and adds as well a judiciously-chosen “anchor” to the poem’s otherwise evanescent “weightlessness”. There’s also, of course, the evocation of place (SF).

More generally, “the writer’s expressed attitude toward the material…and the reader’s subjective associations, both conscious and unconscious” seem crucial topics to explore in today’s fragmented, ideological haiku scene, and I thank Paul Watsky for focusing on them. What might be regarded as a “mere nature sketch” yields much more when the poet’s nuanced relationship to his materials is taken into account. This subtle ex. by a recently-departed master of North American haiku seems well-chosen indeed to illustrate the “psychological dimension” of haiku.

Also–I find it interesting to contrast the minimalism of this haiku with the free-flowing amplitude (relatively speaking) and sound-resonance of another that employs a loosely related strategy, yet more elements, to create such a different inner and outer effect:

dusk lights the ridge
evening grosbeaks pinwheel
tree to tree
(Wally Swist, The Silence Between Us, Brooks Books, 2005)

(Do you participate in the child-like joy and wonder, the feeling of “being there” in this crystalline intensity of the moment, conveyed in part by that “killing” word, “pinwheel”?)

]]> By: Daniel de Culla http://www.thehaikufoundation.org/2009/12/22/headset-one/comment-page-1/#comment-1554 Daniel de Culla Wed, 23 Dec 2009 12:02:31 +0000 http://www.thehaikufoundation.org/?p=4336#comment-1554 O happy gazing A Poet going to sea Poetry in Christmas Love has gotten us 3 points of the starboard Lives forgotten Was this silly and spiritless leadership premeditated? We are justified in complete cynicism¡ Mystery there. O happy gazing
A Poet going to sea
Poetry in Christmas

Love has gotten us
3 points of the starboard
Lives forgotten

Was this silly and
spiritless leadership
premeditated?

We are justified
in complete cynicism¡
Mystery there.

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