The Haiku Foundation is indeed a year old, and troutswirl is about 8 months old (does that mean it’s still in the womb)?
In any case, during the last 8 months, a tremendous amount of haiku have been shared through troutswirl‘s main sections (Virals, Envoys, Periplum, Sails, Headsets, Fluences, with more to come), Allan Burns’ Montage series, various other blogposts, and also, most importantly, through the comments you, as readers, have left to further and deepen the conversation (1,250 and counting).
The diversity of the haiku shared during 2009 was quite staggering, the range high and wide. All of which can now be viewed at THF Haiku Archives.
As a way to both reflect and celebrate this achievement, I thought it would be exciting to invite troutswirl readers to revisit this large collection of work and share a favorite from it.
What particular poem from the 2009 archive resonated with you most?
In addition, I thought it would be fun to ask you this: what was your very favorite haiku published in 2009?
Pull out those print-journal issues, reclick those e-zines, and share something that really stuck out for you.
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Thanks, Allan, for posting Hiroaki Sato’s reasonable and realistic view.
Gabi, if haiku in languages other than Japanese were suddenly given an entirely different name, where would the acknowledgment of Japanese origin, derivation and influence be?
Some Japanese poets write varieties of ‘free verse’ (of which it might be argued that there are as many schools of thought as there are of haiku), but I have not noticed the French (who originated ‘free verse’) demanding that Japanese poets should call their ‘free verse’ by a strictly Japanese name or by ‘Japanese free verse, classes 1 -5′, or somesuch, to distinguish it from vers libre/ free verse.
Art has always crossed borders, and language, the names for things as well. ‘Haiku’ is now a recognised loan word in the English language quite as much as ‘boomerang’ is. We can quibble forever about whether that boomerang a Chinese astronaut threw out into space a few years ago bears any resemblance to a traditional Australian boomerang, or whether the funny-looking plastic things Americans can buy in Walmart really should be called boomerangs or not, but it is too late.
The bus has already left!
A root from a maple tree is still called maple, and the branch of the maple is still called maple. The stone is still called stone, buddha or not. I consider it a mark of respect to dignify the root by the same name as the tree… it is all one of a piece.
here on Troutswirl, in 2009, i was particularly struck by the conversation surrounding:
stone before stone buddha
— Karma Tenzing Wangchuk
for Montage #40:
http://www.thehaikufoundation.org/2009/12/06/montage-40/
i thought it spurred some wonderful reactions and commentary. i thought it was great how different readers had picked up on the many different ways this ku could be read and interpreted.
the sum was great than its parts.
“More generally, a negative reaction to English haiku is something you must expect from the Japanese, my compatriots, whose attitudes toward cultural matters are in some ways lopsided, even perverse. On the one hand, they absorb all sorts of cultural manifestations of foreign countries indiscriminately, almost with abandon, in the apparent belief that there’s nothing incomprehensible or indigestible about them. At the same time, they harbor the deep suspicion, developed some time ago, that much of Japanese culture can’t be understood by non-Japanese…. At this late date–toward the end of the 1980s, that is–it may be largely irrelevant to speak of haiku in English, or any other non-Japanese language as if it were an extension or epigone of Japanese haiku or as it if were somehow still under its influence. Reed Shadows, a collection of haiku by John Wills…carries a simple statement: that haiku is ‘no longer synonymous with Japan,’ as it ‘has been adopted around the world as a poetic form of unique expressive power.’ In this assessment we must all concur. I have made my observations because there remain a good deal of confusions, assumptions, and plain refusal to see what’s happening.”
–Hiroaki Sato, from “Haiku in English: Beyond Assumptions,” a speech given at the Japan Society, 18 February 1988
It would be nice to see this conversation get back on topic–i.e., English haiku in 2009.
Gabi, if you would, supply your preferred translation of the Chiyo-ni poem! That would be so nice to have in circulation.
The urge to produce something “new” is no doubt part of every artist. But “new” relative to what is, well, relative. If a poet finds something that he admires (to put it politely) in a poem by, say, Horace, or, say, Basho, he may wish to “make it new” (Ezra Pound). That’s not quite the nuance I hear in the above comments–the either/or construction doesn’t quite admit of that, does it? Anyway, the idea of the “modern” as it took on momentum in antiquity and then again in the early 20th century Anglo-phone poetry is perhaps cyclical, governed by cultural dynamics haiku poets experience as part of their historical beings. I know this sounds heavy and academic, but the study of literary history leads to insights into these debates. Haiku, ku, or as I like to say, sometimes, delimiting the reference to modern American haiku, Ameriku: that is very much a historical phenomenon tied to American sensibilities we now call “modern” as opposed to post-modern (I’d call Jim Kacian’s recent work “post-modern”). To test that, I read, say, contemporary Scots haiku– e.g., Alan Spence’s “Seasons of the Heart”– and don’t feel this pressure toward an epiphany of the object which is pretty common in “traditional American haiku); rather I am engaged by a narrative.
We may produce our bastard haiku as long as we don’t call it that?
In Japan, translations are often referred to as
eigo ha.i.ku
英語ハイク
haiku is not written with the normal kanji 俳句
to show this is something different.
my English would read
eigo ha.i.ku
English ha.i.ku
It is good to create something new,
I encourage it!!
just give it a new name too.
Gabi
Thanks, John Scarlett, for you insights. Hass is not alone in his opinions on translation. I think translations to and from any language will restate, interpret, and reimagine the original creation.
Is the haiku inseparable from Japanese language and culture?
Scott Metz has eloquently maintained that we can create something new in our own idiom and language. He calls his new thing ku. Shiki called his new thing haiku. I could be wrong, but I believe most people writing in to the Haiku Foundation blog would agree that we are all are in some way continuing the lineage of renga. Anyone?
these last few comments seem to point to the idea that perhaps we need to make english-language haiku poems actual experiences as opposed to simply, or merely, being about experiences. that we need to do more with our language (english or otherwise) through poetic methods, culture, allusions, references, etc. to use everything we have available to us.
what *isn’t* poetic license?
do we read translations of Japanese haiku to copy, imitate, and mimic, or to create something new?— something entirely new in english that would be equally as difficult to translate, say, into Japanese?
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