Essences explores the roots of the “haiku movement” in North America
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Essence #3
(part 3)
By Carmen Sterba
Carmen Sterba’s Interview with Cor van den Heuvel
〜Part 3 of 3〜
Carmen Sterba: Does the fact that you read your early haiku in coffee houses cause you to be more dramatic in your readings? Would you like to see haiku read more often with jazz? Or even hip hop?
Cor van den Heuvel: I’m sure the way I read my work, including my haibun and haiku, has been influenced by my early experience in coffee houses. I think the haiku spirit as I usually try to follow it, with the emphasis on simplicity, can be complemented with many of the sounds and rhythms of jazz. It could be used in the period of silence between two haiku or after a passage of prose to introduce a following haiku. I don’t think hip hop would work for me.
C.S.: In understanding the roots of the haiku movement in North America, I hope to include both those who see haiku as poetry and those who see it as a Zen poem or something in between. Since 1999, when the last edition of The Haiku Anthology came out, the numbers of haiku poets have exploded through online groups, online journals, and instant news through blogs. In New York, you had such a tight knit group to meet with and write with from 1971. Do you have any advice for those whose contacts are only through the Internet?
C.V.: Only that examining how the poem means word for word and how it is structured on the page is only a beginning to finding out if it works. Sometimes the poet sees in the words what he wants to see, even if it is not really present in the poem. Getting others’ reactions is very important to finding out if the poem is really suggesting what the poet wants it to suggest. I think it is much easier to find this out in direct face to face contact then going through the web. Not only do you get a more immediate verbal reaction, you also get clues from facial reactions and other body language.
C.S.: I would be interested in how you interpret your one word haiku, “tundra”. Or is that left to the reader?
C.V.: It is what it is: “a level or undulating plain characteristic of arctic or subarctic regions.” The important things are to see it alone in the mind or in the middle of an otherwise blank page and to color it with a season, preferably spring when it is blowing forever with grasses, flowers, birds (with their nests and eggs), and insects; or in winter when it is covered with endless drifted snow. To see the vastness of it spreading out from the word across the page and across the world. And to hear the sound of it. The word.
C.S.: May I have your permission to publish the following four haiku?
C.V.: Yes.
sun
on the saddle-bags
snow in the mountains
[Sun in Skull, 1961 Chant Press]
summer afternoon
the long fly ball to center field
takes its time
[Play Ball, 1999 Red Moon Press]
a tidepool
in a clam shell
the evening sunlight
[Dark, 1982 Chant Press]
after the speeches
the honored dead return
to their silence
[A Boy’s Seasons, 2010]
(To be published this year by Single Island Press; Originally serialized in Modern Haiku in 1993)
❧
Thanks to Cor van den Heuvel for his generous interview!
It is my hope that Essences will become fluid with new voices and continue in a way that will encourage new research into English-language haiku history. To make this happen, I have already chosen my successor for 2011 from another country.
Meanwhile, I will continue with the Sixties and Seventies explosion of journals, and haiku organizations in North America, while highlighting some of the English-language haiku masters. I hope that other poets will join in with anecdotes about these times.
Which haiku poet would you like to interview if you had the chance? What are some of the interviews or articles that you read in haiku print journals or internet journals that have been most valuable in your personal haiku journey?
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Essences began as a column written by Carmen Sterba in the North American Post in Seattle, WA, a bilingual newspaper in Japanese and English. Its purpose is to go back to the roots of the “haiku movement” in North America: the major poets, the individual styles of haiku, the books, the journals and conferences as they evolved from the sixties and seventies onwards. This will be a short version, so feel free to add information and comments as we go along.
{ 37 comments }
← Previous Comments
Next Comments →
Without indulging myself, I think if one is at the edge of a precipice, then one has the same feeling of dizzying emptiness below, with nothing to hold on to but the precipice, just as in the example of “shark,” so I think the white page works in conjunction with it. It is certainly not as expansive a poem as tundra is; perhaps, the experiment was to create a word that one has to hold on to with nothing else surrounding it for support; in that way, I think it works. The word rises sheerly above a void or sense of void and one has to hold on to it, or so, me thinks.
As for other one-word poems offered here, some brief comments:
precipice
I suppose, if one is perched on a precipice, one can think of nothing else BUT that, and perhaps that’s what the word forces us to do, too. We sense the danger, and the precipice could be both literal and figurative for its readers. The poem doesn’t go much further than that for me, and doesn’t gain anything (or much) from the whiteness or expanse of a page surrounding it the way “tundra” or “shark” or “oasis” do.
ULURU
I’m not sure if the all-capital treatment is part of Lorin’s intent, but it seems important. It hides the proper noun treatment of “Uluru,” which would push some people to realize it’s a place name (I like that that’s hidden in the capitalization of “ULURU,” thus allowing it to be a place name and something more). My parents have climbed Uluru (also known as Ayer’s Rock), and I’ve seen their photos and videos, which make me want to visit it, and be attracted to climbing it too. It’s one of the world’s most famous natural formations. If it were my spiritual place, I wouldn’t mind others climbing it, the same way thousands of people climb Half Dome at Yosemite (or hike up the backside) — a place that I consider very spiritual. After all, isn’t the whole world sacred? But that point aside, just as Uluru is a massive and distinctive natural landmark in Australia, so too is the word upon the page, with the word echoing the effect of the rock formation itself. I believe the formation is famous enough that the word works as a one-word poem.
plague
To me this piece is too much like many other single words that could be put on a page by themselves. To me it doesn’t quite reach the level of a small handful of other words that work better. Oh, sure, it works okay, the way probably ANY noun would, forcing us to think about it and the metaphorical relationship of the word to the surrounding page, where we apply meaning to its surroundings. But to me that’s too easy to do with many words (and thus relatively superficial). Also, because Cor has already gone here before, and much more successfully, “plague” doesn’t do much for me. In contrast, “core” is vastly more effective, not only because of its own meanings, but because of its homonymic allusion to Cor and thus to his “tundra” poem.
howl
The word by itself is of course a howl in the “silence” of the white page. But of course, it also refers to Ginsberg’s “Howl,” and that is what gives this piece its depth. Many readers might also see the “owl” in the poem, a bird associated with wisdom. Perhaps such an overtone is a long-shot, but if I noticed it, I suspect others would too — that Ginsberg’s “Howl” is a sort of wisdom, or wise observation, and that any kind of necessary howl to break the silence on any pressing topic might be wise also.
Michael
Six years ago, Geof Huth published “&2: an/thology of pwoermds” (from Bob Grumman’s Runaway Spoon Press, 2004), the first-ever anthology of one-word poems. It contains “tundra” and at least one of my poems, as I recall. For more information about the book, go to http://comprepoetica.com/RASP/RASP.html and search on the page for “ampersand squared”.
In addition to the one-word renku that was written a few years ago, the HaikaiTalk list has recently written another one.
Michael
Something to note about “tundra” is that many tundras are essentially considered deserts (defined by lack of precipitation, not sand!). Yet, if you look closely at tundra landscapes, everything is smaller—tiny flowers, smaller scrub brushes, and, below the tree line, even the trees are significantly smaller. So while many people might think of the tundra as barren like a desert, I would say they aren’t looking closely enough. One reason I named my erstwhile (but hopefully one day resurrected) poetry journal Tundra was for this very reason, as a call to notice the value in the small, to change one’s perspective and scale, and to realize that the tundra is indeed an entire ecosystem, as Carmen has mentioned, but that it operates on a more minute level. As writers of short poetry such as haiku, I suspect we all have a refined appreciation for noticing and appreciating the small.
Michael
Other one-word poems (haiku?) that I know of are the following, each in the middle of an otherwise blank page:
oasis
shark
sakura [in Japanese]
I think a few particular words lend themselves to this treatment, making us think more deeply about them if for no other reason than their audacity. The word “oasis” strikes me as simply a visual pun (the word itself being like an oasis in the desert). Maybe words, for poets, are indeed an oasis of refreshment and sustenance in a world of blank canvases. The word “shark” is stronger, I think, because we can sense an ominous feeling from this shark in its vast expanse of ocean. And “sakura” is interesting but, for me, lacks the overtones found in “shark” and emphatically in “tundra.” However, it’s more likely a comment on how often cherry blossoms are written about (“reused, like Gilette razor blades” as E. E. Cummings said, “to the mystical moment of dullness”). So the poet has reduced the subject purely to the act of naming it. If you agree with Roland Barthes, who asserts that haiku don’t “mean” but simply “signify,” then surely “sakura” alone on a page is the ultimate signifier for this particular subject. Thus the poem does have intellectual overtones, but I think I’d prefer deeper emotive overtones as well.
As for “core,” of course its brilliance is found in the name “Cor” to which it refers, and bravo to John Stevenson for that master-stroke. It becomes an inside joke, as has already been mentioned, but aren’t all allusions a sort of inside joke? Someone once said that “poetry is conversation.” For the haiku community, at least those who know Cor’s “tundra” poem (whether they like it or not, and regardless of whether they consider it a haiku or not), John’s poem presents not only its own meaning (imagine if it had no reference to Cor) but also embraces the meaning on “tundra” (the same way that a season word in a good haiku in Japanese evokes other famous haiku with that same season word).
I also have a one-word poem that I first published in 1989 in a book, and then it later appeared in Raw Nervz (mid to late 90s?), as I recall. It appeared in two different versions:
fog:
fog
The colon seems too overt and deliberate, as if the reader can’t figure it out. And without the colon, the poem is not much different from “oasis” — a visual pun and not much more, except that, like “tundra,” which implies snow in the white page around the poem, the whiteness around “fog” implies the fog itself (so in that sense it may have a slight less up on “oasis” — or perhaps not if that meaning is too obvious). I now think the poem would be much more interesting as follows:
fog;
And to conclude, as already mentioned, I personally consider “tundra” to be a haiku, albeit on the fringes. Certainly not a haiku for beginners to emulate. It doesn’t really matter, though, whether it’s a haiku or not, because neither haiku or poetry needs to be confined to discrete buckets. Rather, poetry is a continuum, and at the very least “tundra” lies between haiku and concrete poetry. It not is what it is, but I’m very grateful for it.
Michael
P.S. “two trees” doesn’t do anything for me, although it might help to know more of the context. The two words echo the number of trees, and perhaps we see them, and only them in an expanse of prairie. The poem goes no further than that for me, however.
Thanks Sandra!
“Alan, you might mention your appearance on the Fourth Plinth in Trafalager Square, London, last northern summer.
For those of you who didn’t see him in action (I watched a webcast), the brave poet stood on the empty Fourth Plinth (which is being used for rotating artworks) and read out single words to watchers and passersby. The idea was that the words were “important” to those who submitted them to Alan for the reading.”
The experience is now archived by the British Library:
http://www.webarchive.org.uk/wayback/archive/20100223124345/http://www.oneandother.co.uk/participants/Alan_S
Antony Gormley, famous for the “Angel of the North” in England, and currently making New Yorkers look up at their skylines, created this 24/7 for around 3 months, where someone each and every hour got up onto this large plinth, no matter the time of day or night.
Some of the comments will show how much even a single word meant to them.
Alan
The With Words International Online Haiku Competition
http://www.withwords.org.uk/comp.html
An interesting discussion everybody, thanks.
Scott, I wonder if there’s any way those of who don’t subscribe to Frogpond might see “cobweb”?
Personally, I don’t have any problem with a single word being classified as a haiku (or even a “regular” poem) – the power of the word will rest with the reader and he/she will then either accept or not.
Alan, you might mention your appearance on the Fourth Plinth in Trafalager Square, London, last northern summer.
For those of you who didn’t see him in action (I watched a webcast), the brave poet stood on the empty Fourth Plinth (which is being used for rotating artworks) and read out single words to watchers and passersby. The idea was that the words were “important” to those who submitted them to Alan for the reading.
It was up to the listener, then, to either dismiss a word as banal or sentimental or to gasp at the force a single word can have.
And there are words that go to the very heart of our life on this planet, for instance:
water
or, as Lorin has pointed out, that have very deep cultural meanings, and we can all up with one of those, I bet.
As readers we all choose whether we like what we’re reading, whether to skip ahead, whether a poem touches us or bores us … and the reading of a single word on a page is the same.
Haiku or not? It’s up to the reader!
Lorin said:
“The Aṉangu are rightfully owners, and appear to humour the rest of us by allowing climbers. ” – Alan
Alan, actually, the traditional owners have *always* opposed the climbing of Uluru and with growing support from many Australians over the past several decades. They do not, however, have the power to allow or disallow: that remains in the power of the Federal government. The only progress that’s happened is that for some time, tourists have been asked to respect the wishes of the traditional owners by *not* climbing it. More than thirty per cent climb it anyway. It was hoped that finally, this year, the ban might’ve been brought to force, but it didn’t happen.”
Yes, I know. Perhaps I was being too diplomatic. As you also know, there is a plaque showing just how many people die climbing this beautiful rock that should stay untouched:
Uluru the cloud formation above list of tourists killed below
Alan Summers
unpublished
Uluru –
barefoot children
kick at stones
- 10th ‘paper wasp’ Jack Stamm anthology, Oct. 2009
← Previous Comments
Next Comments →