Jan
8th Sailing
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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.
. . . 8th Sailing . . .
BY Peter Yovu
What is your Edge?
Many considerations and questions arose in the course of the past year, not only here on Sails, but throughout the blog. I am sure that some of these questions touched each of us to one degree or another, as challenge, as inspiration, as provocation or frustration. To start the new year, I want to ask a question which might allow for some review, but in a personal way. There are different ways of asking it. One might be: what is your haiku resolution? Another: where do want your haiku to go; what does it need? My intention in settling on the question— What is your edge?—is to include these and to be somewhat open-ended, to allow participants the space to explore what each feels would be most fruitful in developing his/her art, and therefore the art of haiku in general.
One way of considering this is to ask “What would I like to be able to do, and how can I learn more about it?” To me, one measure of the maturity of an artist resides in the ability to assess strengths and weaknesses, and there can be some discomfort in this, to be sure, but also joy in recognizing that there are, as we have seen, many islands on this journey, some of them new and enticing. It is this latter sense that I invite.
Is imagination your edge? The use of sound? One-line haiku? The bold explorations of gendai? Humor? Explicit emotion? The psychological dimension? A sense of mystery? Or perhaps your edge brings you to an exploration of what experience is, of what perception is? Would you benefit from writing more from memory, or dreams, or word association? Conversely, would you benefit from more direct experience with nature? And so on. Of course, some of these could be taken up as separate Sailings, and that may happen, but as I said, this is an opportunity to gather together some thoughts which may have been stirred up this past year. I hope readers will feel free to cite instances where an edge was revealed, here on Troutswirl, or elsewhere.
As always, I like to encourage the inclusion of examples. Would you consider posting a haiku (or two) which embodies a quality you admire and would like to develop?
I wish all a good and courageous journey through the New Year. The forests of the night are leaved with our sails.
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Peter you set such interesting questions for us to ponder and discuss.
I heard Martin Lucas (editor of UK journal Presence) speak at last year’s Haiku Pacific Rim conference in Australia and had my eyes (and ears) opened to one-line haiku, something I have rarely tried to write, but which I then challenged myself to at least try.
Martin believes “greater fluidity, ambiguity and reflectivity are made possible by the single unpunctuated line”. “The one-liner has great potential for authority, inevitability and ineffability,” he said (quoted from the Conference Proceedings).
Two examples he used, both originally published in Presence #37, that appealed to me:
my sister skating here comes her yellow hat
- frances angela
sharpening this night of stars distant dogs
- Stuart Quine
And one other favourite (placed senond in the 2005 Harold Henderson award):
gunshot the length of the lake
- Jim Kacian
For the past few years I have set myself a writing “resolution” (challenge) at the start of each year in an attempt to keep expanding my horizons and, with luck, broaden both my knowledge and skill.
Further to this annual resolution is an ongoing commitment to keep trying to get better at what I do – reinforced each time I read a masterful poem. I mostly know what my shortcomings are, but it’s not always easy to find a way to overcome them!
The keys to “improvement”, IMHO, include writing, reading, thinking, burrowing into oneself to learn about the world and finding some silence once in a while.
My ‘edge’, or at least an aspect of writing haiku that interests me a lot, is the capacity of language to suggest so much more than itself, the innate metaphorical or symbolic quality of language, if you like.
One of the first haiku I ever came across, before I started writing them myself, was Gail Sher’s:
sudden squall –
my hands
wrap around the teacup
(from One Continuous Mistake, Four Noble Truths for Writers, Penguin/Arkana 1999)
and this was a wonderful lesson for me in how ordinary descriptive language could be so significant, act as a vehicle for meaning and idea, but without forcing any message onto the reader.
This haiku keeps me in the reality of the physical moment but also invites me to ponder the emotional moment too. I wonder about the ’squall’, how it can suggest both weather and relationship. Does the narrator finds comfort in the activity of wrapping her hands around the cup, or does she do this as a result of tension? Whatever it is I’m convinced by the language she uses.
In addition, this haiku highlights another of my interests, one I’ve brought from writing free verse that I’m learning to apply with a lighter touch to haiku: line break.
The framing of ‘my hands’ on a line of its own encourages me to see them more clearly, separate from the action of ‘wrapping’, separate from the image of the teacup. The lineation slows down my reading of the haiku, offers me more time to experience it, as if I see the hands held out before they clutch the cup, in the gap between two moments.
Thanks, Peter, for the opportunity to articulate these thoughts.
This is a great question. I’m in the process of doing a couple of haigo for my snowbird notes…and it’s exactly the thing I came across when making my decision as to which haiku to use. I have an inner compass…I guess you could call it my “truth”. When I’m working with another poet if their “truth” in any haiku crosses the path of my “truth” then I find it reveals a new path.
I’m not saying anyone’s “truth” is any better or worse than anyone elses, it’s just an instinct. I can’t give an example since I can’t post the drawings that the other poet’s haiku evoked in me. But that’s what my edge is…a confluence of things that evoke a creation.
Typo! That is not “haigo” … it should be “haiku” in the second line.
I don’t know what I’m going to do about my typos… sorry folks
My edge? The precipice, (for myself), perhaps a better term.
You’ve summed it up in a word, courage. The courage to push an envelope already stretched to the outer limits by extremely gifted poets. Not an easy feat for a newcomer. And to still stay within understood limits. It’s the beauty of all art, and a challenge which I eagerly embrace. To illustrate here are examples of poems which skate within the boundaries but soar to outer limits. They are from two books of poetry recently purchased (I have avoided much printed choices):
here
for now
first snow
John Stevenson, Live Again, 2009,
Red Moon Press
the day now burnt out fireflies
Jim Kacian, Long After, 2008,
Albalibri Editore
In the last couple of years I’ve discovered equivalences between a post (or is it post-post)modern metaphysics of the metaxy and the Zhuangzian metaphysics of the Basho school. I turn increasingly to Pipei Qiu’s work and various translations and commentaries (esp the Wu commentary The Butterfly as Companion) of Chuang Tsu. I want to explore that shared space with greater poise and insight in my haiku. I suppose to comes down to siting my poems according to my inner Chiyo-ni! To wit: the shimmering haze/above/the wet stone. (trans. Donegan)
That sets me on fire. She captures both the flow of transformation and the ontological difference; the poem is a gift of gifts.
To wit:
the shimmering haze/above/the wet stone.
(trans. Donegan)
Do you have any Japanese to go with this?
I have a feeling the second line of the Japanese has 7 beats .
Gabi
from Donegan, Chiyo-ni Woman Haiku Master, 104:
kagero ya / hoshite wa nururu / ushi no ue
kageroo ya
hoshite wa nururu
ishi no ue
the shimmering haze
above
the wet stone.
(trans. Donegan)
The Japanese is 5 7 5 and has the cut markar YA after line one.
The last line reads to me
above the stone
Line 2 … hoshite wa nururu …
any suggestions for a translation would be appreciated.
Gabi
.
This is fascinating, and I hope Gabi can herself supply some version of the balance of the haiku. If the poem does indeed end on “stone” not “wet stone” the poem would to my mind be an even greater poem because it would witness more firmly the gap between the narrative of the base (the steamy/steaming ground at a certain time of year) and a more “original” and “vertical” siting. Cool!