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.
. . . 9th Sailing . . .
BY Peter Yovu
How do you feel about emotion in haiku?
I’m going to keep the intro to this Sailing brief, and simply invite a discussion about emotion in haiku. Are there limits to what the genre can encompass? Taboos? Things to avoid? What role might culture play in considerations about emotion in haiku? Do you write in order to discover what your feelings are about an experience, or simply to express them? Are you influenced in any way by a wish to connect with the reader?
Perhaps none of these suggestions will speak to you, and I trust you will find your own question, and hope you will articulate it. Beyond that, I think this is a good opportunity to gather a range of haiku which speak to the question. And so, I invite and challenge you to present haiku which you find embody emotion in significant ways. Do you know of one or more examples which in your opinion handle any of the following well: joy, anger, jealousy, compassion, envy, awe, confusion, bitterness, resignation, exultation . . .?
There are others of course, some hard to name, and one might argue that not all feelings are emotions. But as I said, I’m going to keep this brief.
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
{ 38 comments }
← Previous Comments
Next Comments →
crescent moon
jasmine under the pillow
eyes are window-panes
P.S> The above haiku is by Eileen Sheehan and I found it in”where the wind turns” – Sorry I pressed the send button before I had finished.
When I come to a haiku like this one:
pauper’s graveyard
only the long grasses
have names
What strikes me is the way haiku is able to handle complex emotions without being emotional. The image is what it is…even if you feel some sort of emotion…the image itself has no emotion in and of itself.
Lorin Ford brings up an important matter when she talks about “texture” as connected to haiku. I think she means as subject matter—seersucker; river/barefoot—and that is one approach. But the one I want to throw in is the texture of the poem itself, of the words, as conveyors of feeling. Here’s a celebrated (on this thread and elsewhere) poem by Marlene Mountain:
pig and I spring rain
It’s usually thought of as a joyful poem and I won’t argue with that. If you like to linger on the sound and body of a poem as I do, perhaps you’ll see/feel/hear the rolling contrast and alternations of short vowels (the repeated short i’s) with the long “I” and the “a” of rain. They do different things to the body when spoken. Both short vowels are delivered by “p” sounds, which adds to the delight. Other things can be spoken of as well. Its almost like one roly-poly word which means exactly what it says, and feels exactly how you feel. I do think that if one really takes the sound/texture/rhythm of a poem like this in, it will unfold several shades, not only of meaning, but of feeling. This poem has, for me anyway, some of that cubist quality I mentionned: I enjoy reading the word *spring* as a verb and also as an adjective. Makes for a kind of… ejoyculation.
Here’s a poem by Raymond Roseliep which I’m sure evokes shades of emotion I don’t need to name, but whose texture/sound is integral:
brushing my sins
the muscatel breath
of the priest
I’d be other interested to see some other poems where emotion is conveyed through sound. (I’m looking for a good one evoking disgust; Roselieps’s maybe?).
Finally, on the subject of “show don’t tell” let me offer three poems without commentary:
a single tulip!
hopelessly,
I passed on
Michael McClintock
On the way towards
the fountain I lag behind,
and how calm I feel!
Izumi e-no michi okure yuku yasukesa yo
Ishida Hakyo
A wind vast and slow
from the ocean’s library.
Here’s where I can rest.
Tomas Transtromer
No need to apologize for haiku when it comes to “emotions.” Basho: “by the fishing fires ,/ a bullhead — under the waves / choking in tears” (Barnhill). Attracted to the fire, the fish, though under the waves, feels doom, for he “knows” he will be “caught.” He IS caught: he is in the “power of death.” But humans too are fascinated by “the power of death.” While I say this haiku expresses despair, some may say “compassion”: there’s no compassion without a recognition of absolute evil. The hyperbole “choking in tears” (with the serio-comic image of tears in water) only provides the reader an excuse for not facing her own fascination with the power of death. Since death is a “given,” why are we fascinated? We can’t accept it. We are in that sense, unlike the bullhead, metaphysical beings. The difference is held in the tension of the haiku: this is haiku’s great strength as a literary form and why it commands growing attention in an age characterized by a refusal to deal with mysteries as such (we’d rather think of them as problems open to definitive solutions).
At the moment, it seems, Troutswirl is like a kind of mama-bush onto whose rootstock a number of berries have been grafted and are at different stages of ripeness. Some have been squeezed a bit and left juice stains on my screen; others have been barely touched. To extend this metaphor a little, I’d say these are the sorts of berries that ripen only when picked, handled and tasted…. Here are a few subjects I’ve picked up on:
*the importance of haiku* (personally and as part of the whole field of poetry;
*shadow and duende*;
*show don’t tell*;
what I’ll call *cubism* by which I mean the presentation of multiple shades of meaning and interpretation, and sometimes ambiguity—this came out in Judith Christian’s: rising from your bed/ remembering/the train whistle, though other poets, like Scott Metz and Marlene Mountain, probably fit this description of “cubism” better;
I’d say the matter of *subjectivity and objectivity* are also present (they’re never far)—Christian’s poem could be discussed in terms of subjectivity, while Kato Shuson’s (presented by Michael Dylan Welch in Viral 5.6); the anglerfish frozen/right down to its very bones/is hacked to pieces—
could be discussed in terms of objectivity. (subjectivity as history/memory, objectivity as sensation/presence).
There are two other subjects. *Emotion*, the basis for this forum, and *beauty*, as presented by Michael in the aforementioned Viral, dovetail nicely I think. Here’s something Michael said: “A… useful topic of discussion would seem to be what subjects are appropriate for haiku, and if we have biases that preclude a certain range of topics. I think perhaps we do. We may CHOOSE to write about beautiful things only, but making that conscious choice [is] better than unthinkingly defaulting just to certain subjects or tones. Again, as Hackett wrote, ‘Lifefulness, not beauty, is the real quality of haiku’. This understanding is a crucial one for haiku, and facilitates the dark as well as the light”.
One could easily rewrite this using different keywords associated with emotion and the point remains. I’ll take it personally: do I have biases that preclude a range of topics and emotions? Yes, but I welcome the challenge to examine them. It is not just that I want to write with greater variety, but, as poetry for me is one portal to inner/outer experience, I want that portal to be as wide open as I can tolerate. Discovery otherwise is impossible, or limited.
So as not to strain the board, I’ll continue this on a separate post. Stay posted.
Lorin,
I would say yes, our bodies are the medium here–
for whatever it’s worth,
a friend once offered this distinction:
feelings are the sensations in the body,
and emotions are how we process those sensations through the mind, an interpretation of the physical sensations.
I agree, I think our cultural conditioning, as well as our personalities, play a huge role in how we access feelings and process them, let alone how we express them.
A few poems from another side of the spectrum:
After an affair
sweeping
all the rooms.
Trying to forget him
stabbing
the potatoes.
Alexis Rotella
ps… both use texture, or the tactile sense, so that ‘feeling/ emotion’ is embodied, and we approach the emotion through the body. Which is where emotion registers… the mind is secondary, with emotion, perhaps. If we don’t feel it in the body, on the skin or in the gut or (as in fear) in our hair, or other parts of the body, is it really emotion, or just an idea about emotion?
I have no argument for this…it’s just something that’s occurred to me now. Do we need our bodies to feel emotion, or respond emphatically to emotion? If we were disembodied minds, would we feel the range of emotion that we do?
Lorin
‘What role might culture play in considerations about emotion in haiku? ‘
Peter, this is an interesting point, as I think culture plays a great part in the way we express emotion. Having read some Romanian and Israeli haiku, and Dimitar Anakiev’s essay in the latest Red Moon anthology, I realise that there are cultures which more freely encourage overt emotion, in haiku and in general expression, than my own. Even some American haiku (certainly not all) can seem overly sentimental to me. I don’t believe that emotion in haiku has to mean wearing one’s heart on one’s sleeve, and a sensitive reader will pick up on the emotional qualities in haiku, as in other poetry. My own cultural bias is toward the non-declarative, the implied.
Nevertheless, the most recent haiku I’ve read that expresses a joyful, expansive emotion I can fully relate to is not by an Australian, but an Englishman:
summer river –
when I’m barefoot
it’s forever
Martin Lucas (‘Presence #39′)
And here is a recent American one which delighted me, where the nostalgic emotion is clean and light and difficult to define in terms other than the author used, since she has chosen a stunningly simple and accurate ‘objective correlative’ (for want of a better term):
the kind of breeze
I knew as a child. . .
seersucker
Jennifer Corpe, (‘Notes From the Gean #3)
Lorin
I thought that I had better show accomplished haiku to illustrate my point of deeply felt experiences I believe that the writer shares with me:
Muttering thunder…
the bottom of the river
scattered with clams
Robert Spiess
starry night –
biting into a melon
full of seeds
Yu Chang
meteor shower . . .
a gentle wave
wets our sandals
Michael Dylan Welch
a robin listens
then flies off
snow eddies
William J. Higginson
Therefore, Mr. Welch, what do you think of what I said and do you agree from Basho to Mr. Higginson they experience and write their hokku and haiku with the intensity provoked by their emotions.
← Previous Comments
Next Comments →