Virals is a section in which one person choses a haiku by another person and comments on that haiku. Then the author of that haiku is invited to select a haiku by someone else and comment on that poem, and so on. For an introduction to this section, see Virals.
Viral 6.5
From Here On Earth
BY Judith Christian
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that star
seems close enough
to swim to
—Diane Gillen Lynch
We are, always have been, and always will be, among the stars. It was natural enough, pleasant enough, to choose this haiku by Diane Gillen Lynch. I first heard the rhythms of language in songs such as “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” and I am dazzled by the images sent by the Hubble Space Telescope. It is also easy for me to travel off into intellectual musings about our relationship to stars. Why do we travel among them? Why do we want to touch them?
Ancient Buddhist cosmology asserted the existence of multiple, if not infinite, world systems. Then, as now, the light that travels from stars is what defines, what gives us the knowledge of those worlds. Epicurus, about 23 centuries ago, wrote, “There will be nothing to hinder an infinity of worlds.” Is it that the light of our minds knows that the stars will never end, and so to be among them means that we, too, have no beginning and no end? Modern astrophysics edges closer and closer to the ancients’ belief in the coming into being and passing away of an infinite number of universes, the system itself having no beginning and no end.
But wait . . . Basho is shaking his head and warning me away from such musings. Look at the first line of this well-tempered haiku. That star . . . of course. One star, the particular (Venus?), shining in the night sky, and from its light, the coming into existence of the observer. From our position on the Earth, with the naked eye we can look at only one star at a time. We can see many, but to really look, to discern the color and brightness with the naked eye, it’s one at a time. It is that particular star, and this particular poem, we are to look at, with the same intense gaze that is required to look at the night sky.
Where is the star and where is the observer? I see the star on or near the horizon, and between that star and the observer is a lake, or more likely, an ocean; but even if there is no intervening body of water, the night sky has its own horizons, and its own endless black pool. And, yes, the star seems close enough, but to swim to? There is a longing set up by the word seems, and the wistful desire to rejoin our eternal star selves is mediated by that word. We are firmly on terra firma, we are, alas, stuck here on Earth, which is exactly where a haiku should be. There is a beautiful hesitation, a gap between the second and last line, a place of expectation. I’m hooked. I’m there gazing into the distance for a moment, until the wave comes in and wakes me: to swim to. There is a dark danger in the last line. Overcome by longing for the eternal, desperate, or just impulsive—there could be many reasons for a night swim to a star; but like a hand grabbing one’s elbow, “seems” keeps us safe. There will be no swim. There is only the wonder, the inscape, the lapping water, and the lasting light of this poet and this poem.
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As featured poet, Diane Gillen Lynch will select a poem and provide commentary on it for Viral 6.6.
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• Viral 6.1 (Metz ➝ Robinson)
• Viral 6.2 (Robinson ➝ McClintock)
• Viral 6.3 (McClintock ➝ LeBlanc)
• Viral 6.4 (LeBlanc ➝ Christian)
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Allan and Michael…I am so glad for your posts…maybe that’s why I feel so uncomfortable when an editor selects my people haiku (haiku with either myself, others or implied people) over my nature haiku. In the nature haiku I find the image and the words fall away, with the people, there seems to be some disturbing element in the haiku…and I often wonder if that’s why the editor selects them…
I am so glad for THF…finding some of the answers that I could never find on my own. Many thanks.
Thanks to Lorin and Michael for their responses to the two “haiku” I found and posted. I’m not very up with the avant-garde writers and so appreciate the thoughts of others to help me understand a little more.
And, Michael, your definition of “wordlessness” has helped clear a few strands of wool.
To excuse myself I will say that my knowledge of the theory of haiku, certainly to the esoteric level of detail as often discussed on THF, is pretty basic – I enjoy writing haiku, it’s a pleasure … sometimes even fun!
Do I need to know what a monk/nun said about “hokku” in the 15th century to enhance that pleasure? No, not really, although I do enjoy the fact that there is a huge repository of knowledge rattling round out there. It just doesn’t have to be in my head
Lorin, so many go through their lives and never find themselves at all. I suppose my bathroom would be as good a place as any for that to happen. Just wait until I tidy up a bit.
“I refuse to call a sparrowhawk an “American kestrel” -lampfish
…and I refuse to call a tap a faucet : yet were I to find myself in your bathroom, I’d have no trouble filling the bath.
By the way, Alan, you will, I hope, excuse me for taking some amusement from the fact that you support your incorrect and anachronistic use of “haiku” by offering the analogy of the old term “Duck Hawk” for what is now termed the Peregrine Falcon.
Paradoxically, however, the bird was originally known as the Peregrine Falcon since very early times (even in Latin and in Old French) and the use of “Duck Hawk” in early 19th-century America is due to an error by the Scots-American ornithologist Alexander Wilson and perpetuated in his book American Ornithology.
Wilson, while recognizing the identity of the American bird with the species that had “long been known in Europe” (i.e. the Peregrine Falcon), nonetheless made a serious error: He refused the term “peregrine” because, he wrote, “The epithet “peregrine” is certainly not applicable to our hawk, which is not migratory, as far as our most diligent inquiries can ascertain….”
Of course today we know Wilson was quite wrong about that. It is in fact a migratory bird, which is why the name has been CORRECTED AND RESTORED TO ITS OLD FORM of “Peregrine Falcon”
That provides an apt analogy to why we in the 21st century, knowing the true facts about the history and proper use of the term “hokku,” should similarly and equally responsibly correct erroneous, relatively recent pop-haiku misrepresentations and misuse by employing the historically correct and precisely accurate term “hokku” for the pre-Shiki verse form and for modern hokku as distinct from haiku.
In other words, your argument actually makes just the opposite case from what you intended.
Alan wrote:
“The best poems of Bashō, Chiyo-ni, Buson, et al. are, obviously, great regardless of whether we call them “haiku” or “hokku”. The fact is that “hokku” is reserved now for the starting verse of a renku, and “haiku” is understood to indicate standalone verses, including those from before the 20th c. Blyth titled his four-volume study of mostly pre-20th c. work Haiku. When the HSA Definitions Committee approached the Japanese scholar Kametaro Yagi, he told them in no uncertain terms: “‘Hokku’ as a synonym of ‘haiku’ is now completely obsolete” (Haiku Path, p. 75).”
That is simply the propaganda of modern pop-haiku books, as I have already demonstrated. It sounds like a quote from Wikipedia, not anything remotely reflective of scholarship.
If one is teaching a class in breadmaking, it is important to call what one is teaching students to make “bread” and not “pie.” There is a reason why it is important for words to have meaning. Otherwise we are left in a Looking-Glass world where meaning dissolves into personal whim and nonsense:
“There’s a glory for you!’
`I don’t know what you mean by “glory”,’ Alice said.
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. `Of course you don’t — till I tell you. I meant “there’s a nice knock-down argument for you!”‘
`But “glory” doesn’t mean “a nice knock-down argument”,’ Alice objected.
`When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, `it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’”
That was the attitude of the revisionist pundits of modern haiku in the 20th century, a tiny group of people such as William J. Higginson who were so intent on promoting their own notion of what haiku in English should be (in contrast to what hokku was in the roughly two centuries from Bashō to the end of the 19th century) that they were not beyond ignoring history:
“`The question is,’ said Alice, `whether you can make words mean so many different things.’
`The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, `which is to be master — that’s all.’”
Japanese popular usage in Blyth’s time has nothing whatsoever to do with correct historical usage outside of Japan. When the hokku first came West, it was correctly termed the hokku, not “haiku.” And even in Russia the term “hokku” is still in common use and is the preferred term. There is no reason why English usage should be less accurate.
Just because George Bush was so ill-educated as to pronounce “nuclear” “noo-kyoo-ler” does not mean that educated and sensible people must adopt that common and obvious mistake. The same applies to “haiku” which is well known among scholars to be anachronistic and historically incorrect when applied to all writers prior to Shiki’s revisionist creation of the “haiku” near the end of the 19th century.
For those who practice hokku, however, terminology is of critical importance. As already mentioned, what is one to do with students who, whenever hokku is mentioned, mentally replace it with the characteristics of modern haiku? Such people, as I quickly found in years of teaching, have a great deal of difficulty in learning hokku because they constantly confuse its more extensive and demanding aesthetics and practice with the multitude of contradictory things they read about how to write “haiku.” It is the same problem a baking teacher would face, as already mentioned, if whenever the teacher said “bread,” the students mentally translated it as “pie” and worked accordingly.
There is not the slightest reason to maintain a usage that was inaccurate from its late inception in English.
One cannot, as Humpty-Dumpty asserted, simply assume that a word means what one chooses it to mean. Language is a system of conveying meaning, and not to use it as such is to take a step through the Looking-Glass.
I refuse to call a sparrowhawk an “American kestrel”.
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