Sails is a section is devoted to presenting questions for discussion and debate on the nature and possibilities of haiku.
. . . 12th Sailing . . .
BY Peter Yovu
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Can you make just one line dance?
close to someone in the stars white seeps inward
—Marlene Mountain
moon almost new we pass through the construction of unseen walls
—Chris Gordon
their wings like cellophane remember cellophane
—Lorin Ford
In his Montage for the week of May 3, 2009 (and also as Gallery Three in Montage: The Book), Allan Burns writes:
“English-language haiku tend to be written in three lines, corresponding to the metrical division of Japanese haiku, but Japanese haiku are actually usually printed in a single vertical column. By way of analogy with this form, poets such as Matsuo Allard and Marlene Mountain began writing English haiku in a single horizontal line—and thanks to their efforts that form has become established in English as the major alternative to the typical three-liner”.
To get to the heart of things, what does this alternative offer? What can a one-line haiku do that a 2, or 3, or 4 line haiku cannot? For you, does working with (or curiosity about) one-liners come, as Allan suggests, “by way of analogy” with the Japanese form, as a kind of natural extension of it? Do you look outside that tradition, to Western poets like Apollinaire and others, who explored the one-line poem from a different perspective? Or both?
Emily Dickinson, frequently admired on troutswirl, wrote:
I dwell in Possibility—
A fairer House than Prose—
A one-line haiku might resemble a line of prose, but it does decidedly different things. What are its possibilities? Can we dwell there a while?
*******
For an ongoing discussion about looking beyond Japanese traditions for inspiration and information, please see POSITION 1.
And for more information, especially about the history of one-line haiku, and its possibilities, here are three places worth checking out:
From One-line Poems to One-line Haiku by William J. Higginson
from the mountain/backward by Marlene Mountain
The Way of One by Jim Kacian (inside Roadrunner X:2)
And also, not to be forgotten, four important print sources on translating Japanese haiku (and tanka) into one line, by Hiroaki Sato:
Chapter 6 (“Translating Hokku, Haiku, and Renga”) of One Hundred Frogs: From Renga to Haiku to English (Tokyo and New York: Weatherhill, 1983)
“Lineation of Tanka in English Translation” in Monumenta Nipponica (Summer 1987)
“The Haiku Form Revisited, with a Thought on Alternatives for Kigo” (Haiku Society of America Newsletter, August 1990)
“On Translating Haiku in One Line” in Right under the big sky, I don’t wear a hat (The Haiku and Prose of Hōsai Ozaki), p 21-22 (Stone Bridge Press, 1993)
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Sails
- 1st Sailing
- 2nd Sailing
- 3rd Sailing
- 4th Sailing
- 5th Sailing
- 6th Sailing
- 7th Sailing
- 8th Sailing
- 9th Sailing
- 10th Sailing
- 11th Sailing
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“In summery; when penning true haiku we don’t need single lines we need the efficacy of three-line structural presentation.” The Haiku Master
Summery or wintery, springy or autumny, Zenny or Taoisty or animisty or even bad old Fundamentalisty, there have been and perhaps always will be different views on what constitues a ‘true haiku’.
- Lorin, a haiku student
To The Haiku Master —
ancient ice
one word unearthed—
siberian tundra
Single line poetry is an affectation – tweet an email instead.
Three lines allow for and visually assist the main formative image compounds of a haiku to act as clear sub-themes – the whole being more than the parts.
Synergy.
These signal,evoke and conjure the vivid diorama, which, in proper haiku, does all the work, as intended, vis-à-vis aesthetics, meaning and shifts of cognition to other disparate or contiguous associations embedded in the personal / transpersonal psyche.
‘SHOW not tell.’
A gross lack of authenticity is bad enough here in the Western haiku world without allowing the appearance of snippets from random books to be an alternative model.
My firm advice would be to compose quality material, from direct experience, in the original traditional form (converted to Western conventions of layout, of course) and, by striving thus, become increasingly worthy of being read.
With haiku, as we should all know (but often do not,) the primary spin-off is an enhancement of ‘Zen-vision’. Haiku is the ONLY form of ‘poetry’ that does this as it’s essential criteria – to my knowledge. As vision enhances so to do our haiku become more qualified. Allow them their natural formal justice. The typical reader will, albeit unconsciously, appreciate that.
In summery; when penning true haiku we don’t need single lines we need the efficacy of three-line structural presentation.
-
NOTE: None of this sort of nonsense either – although the form is good enough :
A quip
snipped in three, stacked
vertically
— jp
http://www.facebook.com/haikucrossroads
Peter wrote: “For me, what many one line poems seem to do, actually, is *undermine* the sense of the concrete. Perhaps the chief means here is ambiguity, a multiple presentation of meanings. The excitement of it is in the play of control and loss of control—at least on the conscious level.”
This hits the nail nicely on the head, I think. And because English-language haiku has tended to emphasize the importance of presenting ‘concrete’ images, Peter’s point also explains why one-line haiku tend to seem more experimental than conventional three-liners. Personally, I’m keen on variation from the 3-line template, whether in 1, 2, 4 or more lines, particularly when reading a collection or large number of haiku at a sitting. It allows for more contrast and interplay between poems, as well, of course, as changes of pace. Such poems may also help haiku “survive” in “Western soil” (to recall Hasegawa).
Continuing with Scott’s poem, I think the one line presentation offers a richness– some nuance– that a 2 or 3 line presentation does not. A fairly logical three line version might go:
trees
almost bare
touching you
It may be that much or all of what I and Jack have suggested as layers of meaning can be mined from this version– but I’m not sure. For one thing, if in reading the poem one honors the line breaks, one is directed to pause after each line, if only briefly. This, to me, alters the sense of layering– it places emphasis where the one line version does not. My notion is that every possible meaning comes through at the first reading, some, or maybe most of it below awareness. Going back we may discover meanings, but we are not directed as to how to do this. One line poems, not exclusively, are like dreams in this regard: we don’t know what we have experienced until we wake and talk about them a bit, pull back the layers like those sheets of acetate (?) one on top of another, each depicting a different portion of anatomy. “Oh yes, that was going on too!”
Every meaning: I’ll push that out beyond what some will feel acceptable and say that, if only for a moment, even the two words “tree almost” will have meaning, which won’t exist in the 3 line version. This “meaning” may be quickly rejected as impossible, or improbable, but is that not how perception works? Not only as directed by language, but prior to that. We may have the momentary, raw perception, for example, that a tree’s branches are rooted in the sky. We may reject it almost as quickly as we perceive it, because we know better, but that does not change the f(act) of perception.
The danger with this is that one may get lost in language. I suppose it is the poet’s job to do that– up to a point–, but
not get so lost as to get locked into some closed system of self-reference.
Scott’s poem works because all the meanings that have been teased out thus far feel true and coexist, as I see it, in ways that go beyond cleverness.
Years ago Modern Haiku used to publish compressed poems such as Emily Romano’s on a fairly regular basis. I published one myself:
alphantomega
I always thought if one were to go along with this, it would be necessary to accept every possible word within the compression. So for me, the main event was the word “phantom” sandwiched between “alpha” and “omega”. But then what about the words “alp” and “ant” and “tome” etc.? Are they important? Well, they would have to be. Though I suppose that any system- genetic, cosmic, what have you, is going to develop a share of junk RNA, random quacks and quarks, etc.
One can get lost in a one line haiku in similar fashion, but the key is, is one being merely clever, as I was, or using language to convey and embody a felt, intuited reality (multi-dimensional) unavailable by other means?
The editor of Haiku Presence, Martin Lucas (whom I’ve quoted earlier) publishes a fair number of one-liners:
at the edge of the wood again that childhood dread
Stuart Quine, Presence 21
my shadow could be anyone
Owen Bullock, Presence 18 (two spaces after “shadow”)
a fish leaping ripples the sunset clouds
Martin Lucas, Presence 15
This, I feel, could work just as well in a single line, inserting a space where the em dash now sits:
beyond
the snowflakes —
a single star
John Barlow, Presence 8
beyond the snowflakes a single star
There seems to be nothing tying it to 3 lines.
My approach to one-liners, of which I’ve written only about half-a-dozen (and none accepted yet for publication), is which form fits the poem best – sometimes it’s one, most likely 3 (I find 2 very unsatisfying) and sometimes it’s more than 3 (only had 1 of those accepted for publication so far).
If it didn’t sound so “mad”, I’d say that the poem “tells” me what it wants!
http://haiku-presence.50webs.com/haiku/index.html
A correction (boy, I wish we could edit): fossilence is Nick Virgilo’s poem. I won’t bother with my grammatical mistakes.
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