A while back there was a controversy on the Haiku Now Facebook page. I wrote a poem about a spider slipping on ice. Quickly, someone said you didn’t see that, that was a desk haiku and the debate began!
Contributors admonished me so thoroughly for this egregious act that even I was convinced I had done wrong.
The mob with sticks had cornered my little poem.
But what if I told you that Basho never saw that famous frog? He never saw that old pond!?
That’s right! I just read that in an essay from the book Poems of Consciousness by Richard Gilbert. In this essay entitled, Basho’s Old Pond, Realism and Junk Haiku, that is exactly what is said.
“Therefore, we can say that this ku is not consecutive, and on the contrary has a break within it — there are two different levels, two different elements, intermixed.
“So, Basho neither saw an old pond nor a frog…
“Examining these two ideas leads to the conclusion that Basho was listening to the frogs-jumping-into-water-sound, and then he imaged an old pond. This means he was listening to sounds of frogs jumping into water, and a vision of an old pond arose in his mind.”
So if the most famous haiku in the world was a desk haiku, how do you feel about desk ku?
Is it a fine idea or a no-no?
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On the subject of time in haiku, I’ve written at some length about the subject in the following two essays. Essentially, I think of all haiku as “history” — we can never write in the moment, but at best, as mentioned, from the moment. I also find that moments in haiku are typically either what I call dynamic or static (which could also be called active and passive), and that, for me, each haiku is an approach to infinity — both the infinity of all existence in time and space, and the infinity of the smallest possible here and now. Comments welcome on the following essays.
Haiku as History: The Ultimate Short Story
http://sites.google.com/site/graceguts/essays/haiku-as-history
(first published in Modern Haiku XXIX, Winter-Spring 1998)
A Moment in the Sun: When Is a Haiku?
http://sites.google.com/site/graceguts/essays/a-moment-in-the-sun-when-is-a-haiku
(first published in Notes from the Gean 3:3, December 2011)
Hi Don,
Thanks! Glad you like what I said–and that we perceive the world (whatever that is) the same way. I worked on that last sentence, trying to get it to say just what I thought / think / felt / feel! When you read my FP essay you’ll see the results of that in action.
Hi Penny! …
Excellent points you’ve made. In a way, there is only a present – an everlasting continuum of present. All the rest is an illusion and most likely, our perceptions are as well! We can call it desk-ku or past-ku: I call it haiku.
We write in the present (as a function) … but, in a technical sense, our topics are “from” memory, no matter if the inspiration was from moments ago or years ago. It indeed is all the same (give or take some fuzziness). You’ve made and brought up an excellent point in your comment. “future, fact or fantasy, are all happening within my psyche as I perceive and write them, in “now” ~ penny.
Don
I have an essay coming out in the next *Frogpond* that explores how I define “the present”. Since it’s almost impossible to isolate the present, any haiku we write is already based in memory, even as we are writing it. Plus, whether I write a haiku in response to something in my immediate here and now; in response to a memory or dream; evoked, or even invented, in response to what I’ve just written in the prose of a haibun; or, as on NaHaiWriMo, in response to a prompt (which may pluck a response from my memory, or may prompt me to totally fantasize)–it’s all the same.
Any thought or feeling I am having becomes my present, and in my essay I share a number of haiku and short poems that came from what the ancients might call “the muse.” We would probably call it the subconscious, or the psychic. Anyway, to me, poems prompted by perceiving experiences in the past, present—or future, fact or fantasy, are all happening within my psyche as I perceive and write them, in “now”.
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