12th Sailing: one-line haiku

Thanks, Lorin, for showing the original context of your “cellophane” one-liner. It’s interesting to see how the fragment allows for, or least enhances, the reading which (for me) makes it most effective: the “impossible” possibility that “their wings … remember…” The way in which you found a potential haiku within a longer poem is an example of how beneficial it can be (for haiku) to remain open to variety of possibilities in writing: of letting “form follow function” (as Charles put it in this thread a little while ago) then finding what works or seems interesting to present as haiku.

Good to hear you found my comment on working “within” haiku smilingly provocative! I do not, of course, mean to criticize poets’ choosing (like yourself) to work experimentally “within” haiku, having explored poetry more broadly and perhaps found that haiku is what they do best; or as a way “in” to poetry. (I’m using the word “experiment” here in the sense of seeing what happens under certain conditions or within certain parameters; not to suggest that the experimenter doesn’t know what s/he’s doing!).

“Which may also mean (I would add) that the would-be haiku ends up best as something else.Obviously enough, perhaps, but it is tempting, in specialist venues such as this, to speak as though haiku were a mode of writing to work entirely “within”, rather than one to move into or out from as, with each poem, seems fitting.” – Philip

hmmm provocative, Philip , but interesting.

I’ll be completely transparent here (as is my wont, come hell or high water, and sometimes both do come). Though I’m now so interested in haiku that I’m concentrating on (what I consider to be) haiku entirely these days, there *is* of course an overlap, since I consider haiku to be poetry. My one-line ku in Peter’s ’12th Sailing’, above, which I submitted to ‘Roadrunner’, also forms part of a ‘long ‘ poem, which is also published (though published later than the ku in Roadrunner). I thought it might ‘stand alone’ as a ku. I was actually deliberately testing the boundaries, trying to learn, attempting to gain an understanding of what might be considered to be ‘gendai haiku’ or that misty border between what is considered to be haiku/almost haiku ‘at the edges’.

In the interest of transparency, and I hope in relation to Philip’s posts ( and will the …essential… spacings work out?):

*Lamentation at 45 °C*

we dreamt wheat-fields compressed within thunderheads
bruised indigo

prayer kites aloft on an old promise our rain focused
hope inbreeding

resurgent creeks deep as the blood beat along believed
channels awash

despite forecasts there’s the mustard seed parable but
shakti shakti

where tree-ferns were such wet dreams fade we fail these
cropless seasons

in grief for lost bees once one year’s weeds made seven year’s
seeds an antique

adage now that clouds have gone and given up on dragonflies
damselflies wasps

their wings like cellophane remember cellophane before
PlakkiRap Kleer

and these the coral reef the coral trout the coral lipstick
model famous

in her day in her day-glo lime bikini against this wide
blue ache of sky

i recite the water cycle backward pride in my expert mind
remember rain

Lorin Ford (c) first published ‘Going Down Swinging’ #28, 2009

- written in 2008 *before* we had actually did have days with temperatures of 45 degrees C here in February of 2009, and the bushfires.

Lorin wrote: “My view is that one-line, three-line, two-line (& yes, even four-line) haiku work differently, and that we have the choice of rendering any particular haiku in the form that seems to us (as writers) to suit it best.” Which may also mean (I would add) that the would-be haiku ends up best as something else. Obviously enough, perhaps, but it is tempting, in specialist venues such as this, to speak as though haiku were a mode of writing to work entirely “within”, rather than one to move into or out from as, with each poem, seems fitting. To work exclusively within haiku (at least for poets writing in languages other than Japanese) does seem limiting.

I remember reading somewhere that a “one-line stanza” seems a contradiction in terms, and the same could be said of a one-line poem – pushing the boundaries of verse and prose. This, I think, is why, as Carmen put it, one-line haiku in English often seem to “have an edge”; and as an approach to exploring the potential of the one-line poem, the one-liner is surely one of the most interesting things that haiku has to offer.

My view is that one-line, three-line, two-line (& yes, even four-line) haiku work differently, and that we have the choice of rendering any particular haiku in the form that seems to us (as writers) to suit it best. Blame my early reading (long before I even heard of haiku) on Denise Levertov.

I think it’s fair enough to say that three-line haiku is the ‘default’ form in ELH and that a haiku that could be rendered just as well or better in three-line form is better presented that way.

Also (& I know this won’t be popular) that a haiku that the writer considers best presented in 5-7-5 form should be presented *that* way, despite fashion.

We have alternatives! We are not bound. The pauses that can be subtly emphasized by line breaks are as useful as the blurring speed at which one-line haiku is read. It depends on what we hope to convey.

Janice M. Bostok, the pioneering haiku poet in Australia who understood how Marlene Mountains haiku worked, wrote many one-line haiku, as well as three-line haiku.

From memory, a favourite one-liner:

wind blows a glimpse of duckings through the reeds

- Janice M. Bostok

Yes, Peter, let’s “dwell a while” on one-line haiku.

Since I began writing haiku in Japan, not America, I have never felt that one-line haiku are something daring because in glossy haiku magazines or journals (in Japan), haiku are often written in one vertical line to save space, whereas haiku written in calligraphy presents three vertical lines.

In my preparation for my columns in the North American Post and Essences, I have been in touch with Anita Virgil. She told me that Harold Henderson gave a group of the NY haiku poets an assignment to write one-liners in 1971. Here’s Anita’s:

twilight blue & pale green leaves everywhere scent of watermelons

I’ve always enjoyed reading marlene mountain’s and jim kacian’s one-line haiku as well as others who often use that style. I wonder if some journal editors only accept a sprinkling of them. As far as the heron’s nest, none are accepted, probably to keep the unity of the text. In EL haiku, it often seems that haiku written in one-line have a bit of an edge.

Most of those I have written have been rejected by journals. However, Presence has published one:

faded freight cars the bloated letters of fresh graffiti

Presence #23