Viral 5.5

Let there be some symmetry between haiku and the attempts to describe, clarify or understand them. Respecting the haiku way can be underscored by applying a lot of the same principles involved in haiku composition to the writing/editing of one’s own prose that takes haiku as its central focus.

I take as axiomatic the following:

1) No essay on haiku will ever supplant one good haiku that shows the way instead of telling about the way through long and windy corridors of verbiage. To use other words I have said before, the best commentary on a haiku is another haiku.

2) Far more often than not, a 1000-word essay about one particular haiku will bring to mind Gertrude Stein’s description of Ezra Pound as the “village explainer” or the functional equivalent thereof.

Bill C

Many haiku poets are familiar with the Japanese concept of karumi, or “lightness,” an aesthetic stance that Basho aspired to in his later years. I’ve contemplated what lightness means in haiku, and my favourite way to interpret it (not the only way) is that one TREATS THE SUBJECT LIGHTLY, and doesn’t manhandle it. This approach has been important to me for many years.

Peter, I interpret your comments about my poem as sensing the possibility that I haven’t treated my subject, at least in this case, with enough karumi for your tastes. And you’re probably right. The positioning of “warm change” at the end, in a place of emphasis, with a deliberate double meaning, could easily make you feel manipulated. I’ve loaded up the poem with a Christmas context, or so it would seem. I had no intention to manipulate, especially because the poem came so directly out of personal experience, but I agree that I have not treated the subject as lightly as I or others have done in other poems.

On the other hand, there are many ways to write haiku, and one need not be limited to any single way, so I’m glad that this poem does still seem to touch many readers. Moreover, because one CAN write haiku in many ways, THIS one is written this way, and others will be written in a different way — and both can be fine.

I am also concerned about attempts to overanalyze when the point of poetry is to let it wash over you. W. S. Merwin was just interviewed on our local NPR radio station recently, and he said that the point of poetry is to be heard and felt, not understood — and that we try too hard to “understand” poetry, as if there’s always some secret meaning we have to pry out of each poem. But Merwin argues for the heart. Or, as E. E. Cummings said, “feeling is first.” Sure, we don’t want our scaffolding to be visible on the poem, and maybe you see scaffolding on my poem, Peter, where others do not — but I would bet that others see scaffolding on poems where you happen not to. Ultimately, I am pleased if this poem resonates with some readers. I do not expect it to resonate perfectly with everyone, such as if you live south of the equator and Christmas comes in the middle of summer! Or, more importantly, if the subject just happens to not be part of your life experience.

I am reminded of something Jocelyn Conway once said to me — that a good haiku should make you care. Does my haiku make some readers care? I sure hope so — and I do believe it does. And maybe that’s all that matters. I hope they care about the person taking the tolls, and feel what they probably felt in receiving warm change. And maybe they care about the persona in the poem, which happens to be me, for being aware of that brief moment of interaction during the holiday season. I want to care about what people write about in their haiku. It’s their responsibility to select subjects and to craft the poem in such a way that I do care. One of the joys of haiku is how often, indeed, they do make me care.

A further thought on karumi. Years ago, Brian Tasker reviewed the second issue of my journal Tundra. You can read his review at http://www.poetrymagazines.org.uk/magazine/print.asp?id=11935. In his opening paragraph he says that the “ubiquitous haiku-liteTM make an appearance.” He then quotes some of my most favourite poems from the issue. Brian says, by way of quotation, that these poems “take the pith out of life.” What Tasker seems clearly not sensitive to is the utter brilliance of karumi in the poems he quotes, which I’ll repeat here. How delicate these poems are — even the one about the sack of clams! Again, this is not the only way to write haiku, but rather than take the pith out of life, I think they ARE the pith of life, and karumi such as this takes a sensitive reader:

working late / in the office / someone opens a drawer
Nikhil Nath

a spool of thread / left on its side / summer rain
Burnell Lippy

midday heat / under the shade tree / an empty chair
Penelope Greenwell

morning twilight / a truck driver gently unloads / sacks of clams
Alan Pizzarelli

To me these poems all have the notion of karumi, of treating the subject lightly, as if trying to hold a soap bubble without popping it — which, in fact, might be a good definition for haiku. My point here is that I agree with you, Peter, that my poem, at least that one in particular, is not exactly an example of karumi, certainly not compared to the other poems I quote above, or hopefully others I have written — and that you have written. This does not bother me, though, because there are many ways in which one can write successful haiku.

I would hasten to add, too, that Japanese poetry is rife with wordplay and double meanings, and careful placement of words for emphasis. These are the aspects of haiku that give translators the biggest headaches. We may get watered-down haiku translated into English as a result, at least sometimes — and this cannot be helped, just as our best haiku are probably watered down when translated into Japanese. In any event, I would say that not all haiku have to seek after karumi, nor do they have to always avoid what you see as issues in my poem, Peter.

Sometimes, indeed, writing a good haiku is like holding a soap bubble without popping it. But I hope there’s room in this literature for haiku that might be flakes of snow on one’s tongue, or drops of dew in one’s palm.

Michael

The question of importance has been on my mind today. I wonder how people would respond to the question: what to you is the importance of haiku? For me, a haiku is a poem, and poetry is important. It is important in the way that eating good food is important, and I want to be able to distinguish what is good for my body from what is not; the same for poetry: what is good and what is not– for my senses, for my clarity, for my love of language and truth …

Haiku may be a tiny form, but poetry is boundless, and for me haiku is one expression of that boundlessness—it helps keep me connected and focused on a number of questions which I find important indeed, concerning language, imagination, perception , consciousness, and what it means to be human. What it means to be.

But I’ve said a number of times before, in different ways, it is all play. Even at its most serious, it is play. I regard what I say on this blog equally as play—that is, I am willing to try things out, to find out what I have to say by saying it, even if at times it is my neck which is most exposed. Play, but not playing it safe.

Bill, as you proposed it, I think it is *your* job to come up with a set of rules for writing commentary and to try them out here on the blog. I ‘m seriously kidding. I mean, I mean it.

But to get back to importance. Here are two quotes,
the first is from Cid Corman, from his preface to *Little Enough*:

“Making haiku—properly embraced—is no more a business than making love or making life should be. It is a form of poetry– which means—if the word means anything—precisely where each word is a matter of life *and* death”.

And this by William Carlos Williams, which I present as part of an interview I came across:

John Felstiner: On the BART train this morning, someone said to me, “Ask Gary for one haiku I can take home with me.”
Gary Snyder: I don’t remember who wrote this one, but . . .

Walking on the roof of hell gazing at the flowers.

That haiku makes me think of William Carlos Williams’ challenge to poets toward the end of “Asphodel, That Greeny Flower”:

It is difficult
to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day
for lack
of what is found there.

“The kind of over-analysis found in Peter’s comment, and the apparent need to imbue haiku with such weight and importance, keep me from spending any time at this site. It surely turns off more readers to the haiku genre than it attracts or inspires”

Well said, David.

There is a disquieting disproportionality between a tiny form such as haiku and the excessive commentary about the same on these blogs. It would be great to see some of these prose responses to haiku begin to emulate some of haiku’s touted virtues including concision and focus.

Better yet, instead of giving extended commentary on a haiku, give us a better haiku or one that expands on the orginal haiku in new directions.

We almost need a set of rules for how to write commentary on haiku.

Bill C

Peter:

Your contrast of exoteric and esoteric reminds me of my college creative writing instructor, who was not pleased with my first effort (as I had not been pleased with the constraints of his assignment). He said to me, “Perhaps if I let you write about what you care about you won’t feel compelled to produce this esoteric bullshit.

I’m stuck by how closely this eso/exo dichotomy parallels the contrasting styles of acting that I learned about as a theatre student. One approach is to totally submerge oneself in the character – the aim being to make each role utterly unique. DeNiro did some extreme things in this regard – gaining 60 pounds during the shooting of Raging Bull in order to play the same character over a thirty year span. The contrasting approach is to fit the role to the actor – the aim being to capitalize upon the innately artistic quality of the performer. Chaplin created a character that was the basis for nearly all of his movies. Think of Mae West, W.C. Fields, or the Marx Brothers. Thank goodness there are those who take one or the other approach and those who fill in the gap with various permutations. We are all the richer for having their examples.

It seems to me that there’s a continuum in art that runs from, at one extreme, expressing oneself no matter whether anyone else likes the results and at the other, pleasing one’s audience, even to the extent that one is doing work that one does not oneself enjoy or value other than as a means to some other end. Each of us are somewhere along that continuum every time we begin a piece and most of us are probably nearer the middle of the road than we would like to think.

I strongly relate to your idea that being surprised is an important experience in art. I love surprises and I’m very grateful that I can still, sometimes, surprise myself.

PS “Man Carrying Thing” is one of my favorite Stevens poems!