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.
. . . 10th Sailing . . .
Making the Break
BY Peter Yovu
October loneliness
two walking sticks
—vincent tripi
on the wind somewhere a
child, crying
here
—Martin Shea
pond ripples
moving the clouds
moving the sky
moving
—Gary Hotham
It seems that poets who work in the haiku tradition, or whose short poems are inspired by it, have many choices, more perhaps than standard guidelines would allow. One choice, of course, is to stay within those guidelines, or within guidelines which one has discovered to be fruitful. Haiku plays within limits, does it not? Or is it truer to say, it plays with limits?
What determines the shape a poem takes? This question has been with us a very long time, has been explored, answered, argued, mooted and booted countless ways, primarily between two poles: free verse and formal verse. Perhaps where one lands on this question is as much a matter of disposition as anything else. Haiku is vulnerable to the same considerations, which for me is encouraging: it tells me that it is not a backwater but a stream, a tributary adding volume and force to the braided river it enters.
Among numerous elements, some of them subtle, which give a haiku its shape, the two most obvious are the number (and length) of lines employed, and how those lines are broken. That’s the territory I’d like to sail toward this time.
How do you determine how many lines your haiku will be? Formalists might say three lines are optimal, seventeen syllables, seven of them stressed, that such a structure will be magnetic to poetry, as an orchid is magnetic to its bee. Others might take a less patterned view, allowing the content, a sandpiper’s erratic running for example, to determine the form, including the number of lines. The question is not which is better, but how does this work for you? Does working from an established form give your imagination the support it needs and the freedom to unfold? Does your imagination require that you be open to something unforeseeable? (I am using imagination here to include every way by which experience may be embodied in language).
Line-breaks. How important are they to you? Do you honor them—that is to say, when reading a poem out loud or to yourself, do you pause at the end of each line, giving each line its moment? Do you feel there should be a reason (not necessarily intellectualized) that each line ends where it does?
A lot of questions. A lot of choices. What may be most useful here (and fun) is choosing poems which you feel demonstrate strengths inherent in some of these choices. Can you show us a poem which had to be written with two lines? Three? More? How come? Do you know a poem whose line-breaks amplify its meaning(s) and perhaps surprise us? Or one which you would simply like to present for exploration?
I realize it will be tempting to bring one-line haiku into this discussion, but I’d like to save that for the next Sailing.
I look forward to hearing from you.
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Sails
- 1st Sailing
- 2nd Sailing
- 3rd Sailing
- 4th Sailing
- 5th Sailing
- 6th Sailing
- 7th Sailing
- 8th Sailing
- 9th Sailing
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well, yeah I guess that i am old fashion too Merrill, but
I probably would have published the poem as:
on the wind
somewhere
a child
crying
here
Thanks Eve, I hadn’t thought of that.
acorns
headstones
more acorns than headstones
Peter I’ll check that out later…this morning vincent called with a haiku that fits right into “making the break”…he recited a haiku that sounded like:
acorns
headstones
more acorns
than
headstones
but if I know vincent, he’d want it written as:
Acorns, headstones
more acorns
than headstones
Acorns, headstones
more acorns than
headstones
Now I’m waiting to hear again from him so I can see how he really wants it written out on the page… and I’d be very interested in hearing how people viewing this post would think it should be written. The results of this little study of mine could be very interesting…to me anyway.
It always helps to go back to the author…but what do we do when the author is not available???
Jim, I’m delighted that you shared your ‘clouds’ ku process with us.
It’s affirming to all writers that, after all the versions and considerations, you arrived at the final form of the poem with a sense that ‘it looked right’. You found the version which most completely ‘enacts’, not just the literal sense, but the experience of those drifting cloud layers.
Your quoting of the Stephen Addiss ku is an eye-opener for me: I’m reminded of ‘the magic of thrice’ in incantations and spells.
An interesting exchange is ufolding under Viral 6.5 which relates to, and could easily take place under this Sailing. I find it very rich when there are cross- currents on this blog, and for “archival” purposes I’d like to open a window here so folks can more easily keep track… Here’s the link to that exhange:
http://www.thehaikufoundation.org/2010/03/07/viral-6-5/comment-page-3/#comment-2238
I appreciate Jim’s post and did not feel that the three lines as he had set it forth should have been written in any other way. I contained no words other than those necessary and in a form that made clear what he was saying.
I guess the longer I write haiku, the more I seem to be drawn to one breath haiku…although I have been accused of being too curt… but I find too many words in haiku diminish the poem somehow. So I’ve been trying to work out a happy middle way. But to me a haiku is an instantaneous impression…the words themselves hold the poetry.
Wow! Thanks so much for taking the time to share your process, Jim. I really appreciate that.
Thanks for remembering my poem and sharing your comments on it, and for asking me to comment on it as well.
I think it’s probably wise to begin by recalling what Jung wrote: “Being essentially the instrument for his work, he [the artist] is subordinate to it and we have no reason for expecting him to interpret it for us. He has done the best that is in him by giving it form and he must leave interpretation to others and to the future.” So, bearing this proviso in mind, I can share with you some of my thinking in casting my cloud poem as I did, for what it’s worth.
It will probably not surprise you that I considered the one-line version that Sandra offers, as well as the two-line version where both lines are exactly the same, and even the three-line version that Claire offers, with “cloud” solo on the first line.
The multiple stops available in the one-liner
clouds seen through clouds seen through
work against the sense of this poem, I feel, and the speed so engendered also discourages finding the cumulative layering which Allan suggests is central to its effectiveness.
The two-liner
clouds seen through
clouds seen through
struck me as very slick, and the less effective for that; also, I found that I wanted more poem in this version, something similar to Stephen Addiss’s
late summer rain
late summer rain
late summer rain
Without that third line, something feels missing. Besides, I was after a much different effect than Addiss achieves here.
Claire’s suggestion
clouds
seen through clouds
seen through
captures the literal sense of the poem, but also limits the reading to that literal sense. Also, the poem is not so dense looking, again returning to Allan’s sense that the layering of the lines is important to the ultimate feel of the poem.
I also liked the slight irregularity of the lines at the same time that they appeared quite regular: that is, I liked the fact that each line is two words, and that the whole poem is made up of three pairs of identical words, and yet no two lines are quite the same, either in terms of which words, or in terms of length (including spaces, the lines are 11, 14 and 12 characters long, so they appear ragged, refusing to line up even though they seem to suggest some sort of unity). In musical terms, this arrives at a kind of hemiola, admittedly of a most abstruse sort, but it appeals to me nevertheless.
Ultimately, all this sort of argument can bolster a decision that is often made quite subconsciously: the poem looks right in the final version, at least to my eyes, and it contains not only a literal meaning but also suggests overtones and elisions. But it didn’t simply arrive at that version: it was worth living with all these other versions as well, to let the “final” version emerge and inform me, the instrument of the work, which was “correct.” I ultimately trusted the version you have come to know, and I have been happy with that decision.
clouds seen
through clouds
seen through
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