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.

Because Japan was closed to the West for about 250 years during the Tokugawa Era (1600-1868), the first translations of haiku in English did not appear until the late 1800s. Though Japanese-Americans wrote haiku before the 1950s, it was not until after WWII that the Beat poets became influenced by haiku when Gary Snyder returned to the U.S. after his study in Japan. In 1955, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and Snyder studied  the four volumes of Haiku by British ex-patriate and scholar R. H. Blyth. His books are still used as a guide to understanding haiku. In 1963, Blyth chose American J.W. Hackett as the international haiku poet with the most potential. These are two of Hackett’s haiku:

                                                            A bitter morning:
                                                                sparrows sitting together
                                                                    without any necks.  

                                                            Searching the wind,
                                                                the hawk’s cry . . .
                                                                    is the shape of his beak.

The Japan Airlines Haiku Contest picked “bitter morning” as it’s first winner in 1964. These two haiku still resonate and actually seem more modern than a lot of haiku written in the 21st century. The fact that these are not written in 17 syllables is explained by Hackett, “Don’t write everything in 5-7-5 form, since in English this often causes padding and contrivance.” The set count of 5-7-5 in Japanese corresponds to short sounds called “on” rather than syllables. It’s understandable that haiku in America has evolved in different ways; however, when it comes to good haiku, it is the essence that counts.

For the most part, Japanese haiku poets and Japanese Literature scholars are baffled by the strong connection between English haiku and Zen Buddhism. Zen has, however, contributed much to western culture, both through its understanding and its misunderstanding. How do you see this in your current attraction to, and understanding of, haiku?

Both haiku appeared in Zen Haiku and Other Zen Poems of J. W. Hackett, 1983.

We’re starting another section here on troutswirl. This one is entitled Essences and will be written by Carmen Sterba.

See the Intro below:

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.

 

Haiku, like dunes of sand, has shifted over time. The four great masters wrote as individuals with their own style and traditions. Buson’s approach differed from Bashō who came before him. Issa wrote in another way. Shiki went back to Buson and haiku evolved even further, including the change from hokku to haiku.
 
When translators first introduced haiku to the West, it was their translations, explanations and interpretations of haiku elements that came to be accepted as traditions. Yet, translations and explanations differed, and it was, and is, difficult to arrive at a definition of traditional haiku which is agreeable to all haiku poets. R.H. Blyth, for example, wrote of syllables; William J. Higginson wrote of sound units, not syllables. Richard Gilbert has written of -on and -ji; while robin d. gill writes of syllabets.
 
Rather than just discuss traditional haiku, this new section of Troutswirl will explore the traditions of haiku as well as how they’ve played a role in traditional, contemporary, and innovative haiku.
 
What are the traditions of English-language haiku? How were they established?  Are they relevant today? Which traditions are necessary for a haiku to be traditional? What is ignored, tweaked or added to be labeled contemporary or innovative? Does English-language haiku have its own set of traditions? Should it? Can it not?
 
These, and many other questions, will be discussed in Dunes.
 
Dunes is overseen by Adelaide B. Shaw.

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Some open questions to readers: Where would you like to see this section go? What areas and topics concerning English haiku traditions—its shifting dunes—would you like to see explored and dug into?

Virals is a section in which one person choses a haiku by another person and comments on that haiku. Then the author of that haiku is invited to select a haiku by someone else and comment on that poem, and so on. For an introduction to this section, see Virals.

                                                 the anglerfish frozen
                                                 right down to its very bones
                                                 is hacked to pieces

                                                                                 —Katō Shūson (1905–1993)
                                                                                 (translated by Dhugal J. Lindsay)

This poem may startle readers because of its bluntness and violence. Many readers and writers of haiku prefer that haiku focus on the beautiful, so much so that they may believe that haiku should be limited to the beautiful. In Japan, however, the subjects of many haiku are often merely mundane, and not specifically beautiful. Moreover, subjects also appear that are decidedly unbeautiful, as in the preceding poem. Robert Bly has asserted that American haiku could represent darker content, in the way that Shiki’s haiku, for example, reflected the tensions of dying from tuberculosis, or the way Bashō’s haiku are often directly or contextually tinged with the dangers of travel. Our haiku, too, has plenty of room for duende, as well as dark subjects. Haiku need not dwell entirely on the dark or seemly, but just as too much salt spoils a meal, so does too much sugar. As James W. Hackett has said in his guidelines for writing haiku, “Lifefulness, not beauty, is the real quality of haiku.”

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• Viral 5.1 (Metz ➾ Lyles)
• Viral 5.2 (Lyles ➾ Chang)
• Viral 5.3 (Chang ➾ Stevenson)
• Viral 5.4 (Stevenson ➾ Yarrow)
• Viral 5.5 (Yarrow ➾ Welch)

Virals is a section in which one person choses a haiku by another person and comments on that haiku. Then the author of that haiku is invited to select a haiku by someone else and comment on that poem, and so on. For an introduction to this section, see Virals.

                                             toll booth lit for Christmas—
                                             from my hand to hers
                                             warm change

                                                                               — Michael Dylan Welch

I find this poem full of contrasts and of hope.  The contrasts include the lighted booth in the early dark of a December evening, the coins warmed by his hand reaching out into cold Christmas weather, and the warmth of the connection in what is a very impersonal fleeting monetary exchange.  The hope I feel in this poem comes from the light in the darkness, the hope of the season, the reach across what may be class and race as well as gender lines, including the smile and thanks I assume are there.  And that last line has so many reverberations. We are all humans, giving us the potential to connect with warmth.  We have the potential to change the global messes we are in if we make those connections.  I admit this is laying a lot on a short poem—maybe far too much.  But the feelings of connection, warmth and hope are all in that moment, and after all, emotions are what makes any poem poetry. Thanks, Michael.

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• Viral 5.1 (Metz ➾ Lyles)
• Viral 5.2 (Lyles ➾ Chang)
• Viral 5.3 (Chang ➾ Stevenson)
• Viral 5.4 (Stevenson ➾ Yarrow)

Hi folks,

Here is the latest update regarding additions to the Haiku Registry. Each poet’s page is accessible by last name: simply click on that initial in the search index on the opening page.

Added between January 19 and February 2:  Zoran Antonić, Deb Baker, Kirsten Cliff, Ljubica Vukov Davcik, Madeleine Findlay, Dubravko Ivančan, Dubravko Korbus, Duško Matas, Boris Nazansky, Sanja Petrović, Patrick M. Pilarski, Željka Vučinić-Jambrešić. Also: a photograph has been added for Rebecca Ball Rust’s page.

Added between January 6 – 18: Kay F. Anderson, Margaret Beverland, Randy Brooks, Lee Gurga, Penny Harter, Keith Heiberg, William J. Higginson, James Kirkup, Günther Klinge, Catherine J.S. Lee, Thomas Martin, Tanya McDonald, Marlene Mountain, Kathe L. Palka, Zvonko Petrović, Darko Plažanin, Lynne Rees, Robert Spiess, Willem Johan van der Molen, Saša Važić, Max Verhart, Paul O. Williams, Peter Yovu, Jadran Zalokar.

To submit your own information, click the appropriate link on the Registry’s opening page.

Headsets addresses the psychological aspect of literary craft as it applies to haiku and senryu. Poetry elicits emotion and associations from readers by means of subjectively potent rhetorical devices. Classic psychotherapy questions will be asked: “What’s happening here?” and “How do you (might one) feel about that?” Readers are invited to examine their responses, and poets to explore their purposes.

Headsets is overseen by Paul Watsky.

Sometimes we read poetry in order to experience a soothing sense of refuge from life’s stresses. We want a gentle swoop downward to darkness on extended wing rather than rage, rage, against the dying of the light. Haiku which provide conventional images, rhythms, and diction, even perhaps a nice cliché, affirm that the world’s peaceful rituals and nostalgic consolations remain at hand, comfortably unchanged, e.g. Southard’s bland

In the garden pool,
    dark and still, a stepping-stone
        releases the moon

(The Haiku Anthology, 3rd edition, p. 190)

or Virgilio’s

after father’s wake
the long walk in the moonlight
to the darkened house

(p. 263)

Dark and still, darkened house—no surprises or discords here, nothing to disrupt sleep, and, as we know from scientific studies, excessive sleep disruption precipitates madness.

Although tending toward the cliché, dark and its cousins darkness and darken are venerable power words partaking of a western literary tradition that descends from Homer’s wine-dark sea and Milton’s well known description of hell in Paradise Lost, which hinges on the inspired oxymoron darkness visible:

A Dungeon horrible, on all sides round

As one great Furnace flam’d, yet from those flames

No light, but rather darkness visible

Serv’d onely to discover sights of woe . . . . (Lines 61-5)

Epic traditions, however, gradually degenerate, as exemplified by this oft-parodied opening sentence from a Bulwer–Lytton’s 1830 novel Paul Clifford: “It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents—except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.”

A poet’s unmindful insertion of dark or one of its variants into a haiku can mean trouble, since many readers will be equipped not only with numerous unpredictable literary and other cultural associations, including death, ignorance, and racial stereotypes, but also idiosyncratic emotionally-charged memories of encountering the dark: scary nights in childhood, thrills at the movies, adventure while exploring caves, etc. All that dark constitutes a special challenge for haikuists, because a single clumsy word choice can wreck a short poem’s tone. In the 1999 edition of Cor van den Heuvel’s, The Haiku Anthology, from which all of the present column’s examples are drawn, dark, and its variants, appear in twenty-nine poems (see pps. 15, 30, 34, 47, 49, 71, 77, 83, 91, 96, 110, 148, 149, 173,190, 193, 195, 231, 233, 238, 241, 244, 247, 249, 250, 261, 262, 263), usually in the more conventional mode, but not glaringly cliche. Several, however, illustrate how, if carefully presented, dark still can increase a haiku’s stimulus value, its novelty.

One way to achieve this is by offering the starkest, zen-like simplicity, as with Kerouac’s

Birds singing
  in the dark
—Rainy dawn

(p. 96)

Minimalist, chiseled diction, just the “what is.” There’s no attempt to stage-manage a reader’s mood, to steer projections, except perhaps a cryptic dismembered echo of the homily It’s always darkest before the dawn.

Another way is to play traditional associations of dark off against the poem’s idiosyncratic context, as in Larry Gates’

The lights are going out
    in the museum, a fetus
        suddenly darkens

(p. 47)

An already-dead unborn child, deceptively reanimated by the lit-up exhibit case, suffers a second death. That’s heavy! as old-time stoners used to say—and certainly not conducive to restful sleep.

But such strategy also can produce humorous effects: Garry Gay’s first two lines, Snowflake’s fall/into the darkness, sets us up for a comic turn: of the tuba (p. 49) What a tomb! And what a sound. That tuba evokes an elaborate American scene: under gray skies a chilly halftime at the college or high school football game, bands parading on chilly fields. . . .

Then there’s the ironic approach, as exemplified by two of Alan Pizzarelli’s non-standard pieces:

a spark
falls to the ground
          darkens

that’s it

(p. 148)

The blank line after darkens allows us an interlude for maudlin projection before the poet pulls out from under us the self-indulgent rug.

And how about “Porno Movie:”

the girl
         loosens her bra
starts peeling off panties
         darkens

         25¢

(p. 149)

The editing process offers an opportunity to evaluate your haiku’s tonality. Decide what responsive mood you want your readers to experience, and whether that’s a realistic agenda. If you’re uneasy about the results try the poem out on truthful friends. If you identify a problem, ask yourself whether any previously unrecognized discordant feelings or attitudes of yours may be responsible. Make adjustments—and repeat the debugging sequence as often as necessary.

Here are a few questions that came to mind after reading Paul’s piece:

While “dark” and its cousins are, as Paul writes, “venerable power words partaking of a western literary tradition,” do you think this is where this influence is predominantly coming from when it comes to English-language haiku? My immediate, personal, associations were to a few of Bashō’s more popular poems. So, do you think the influence is western, or from translations of haikai/hokku/haiku?

Also, are there other ways to attain the same kind of mood without leaning on the use of the word “dark” or any of its variations? Can you think of examples of haiku that are able to create this mood, feeling, or idea, without being so explicit?

Lastly, is the overt use of “dark” and its cousins something we should avoid in haiku? Sometimes, “it depends,” always? Are you mindful of using it—if not avoiding it altogether—when you write?

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