Sails

                                    the sack of kittens
                                    sinking in the icy creek,
                                    increases the cold

                                          —Nicholas Virgilio

It doesn’t seem likely that very many writers would say, “When it comes to haiku, I tend to play it safe”. “Playing it safe” will mean different things to different people, but could mean such things as adhering to rules or format, writing for publication or for approval, or staying within one’s “comfort zone”. It implies a narrow sense of what haiku may be, and who would wish to admit to that? And yet how many writers would say, “When it comes to haiku, I like to play my edge”?

“Playing one’s edge” implies a willingness to go to the place where the familiar begins to crumble; where comfort is challenged. I watched a young child—maybe two years old—at the airport one day. She was running with great glee from her mother, who stood watching—farther and farther until she had to stop, look back, and return to her mother’s arms with equal glee. She did this over and over, each time a step farther. She was playing her edge—a developmental necessity for a child. Eventually, and perhaps with the help of a father or father-figure, she would take the next step, and not need to run back to her mother quite so quickly, but go out to explore the world and its many discomforts.

How do you relate—when it comes to haiku—to this idea of “playing the edge”? What does it mean to you, personally? Can you identify your edge, and are you drawn to it?

Please post examples of your own or others’ work which you feel tests the limits, the rules, or formulae of haiku.

I’m lacing up my skates. See you online.

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:

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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Sails is a section of troutswirl that is devoted to presenting questions for discussion and debate on the nature and possibilities of haiku. Sails is overseen by Peter Yovu. For an introduction to this section, see Sails.

Don’t be fooled: this Sailing is not, as promised, devoted to one-line haiku. We’ll get to that, but for now it seems that poor Viral 6.5 has taken on more than it bargained for, and so we have come in relief.

Can we bring the conversation about image-based and word-based haiku here? This includes the exploration of “the wordless poem”, and fingers with or without jewels. So how best to frame this, to bring it together in a way that picks up what has been scattered elsewhere and take it forward? Maybe we can start with something Michael Dylan Welch said:

“In a haiku, do the words point to the image, or to the author? A “word-based” poem tends to point to the author, I’d say, whereas an “image-based” poem tends to point to the image or experience, with the words becoming as transparent (or “wordless”) as possible”.

Michael will correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t believe he is saying “image-based: good; word-based: bad”, or: “image-based: genuine; word-based: false”. He may have, as you or I may have, a preference, but that’s a different matter. I like that he speaks of tendencies: we can work with that.

So, like those layered acetate sheets that illustrate one portion of the human anatomy at a time, I’ll set down several questions. (And please improve upon any as needed or wished).

First, do you find this distinction between image-based and word-based haiku useful?

Do you have a preference, and why?

Can you give/show us a haiku which for you exemplifies “the wordless poem” as you understand it.

Can you show us a “word-based” haiku which in your opinion “works”, despite the fact or because of the fact that the words point to the author? And, does a “word-based” haiku necessarily point to the author? Can you find one which doesn’t?

There are other questions which come up, but perhaps we have enough here to go on. I do want to encourage you to throw out some haiku for us to chew on. They help anchor the conversation, and this one may prove slippery, because when we are in the neighborhood of the “wordless poem” we tend to bump into paradox at every turn. But that, for many, may prompt the “argument with ourselves” that gives birth to haiku.

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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

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Sails is a section of troutswirl that is devoted to presenting questions for discussion and debate on the nature and possibilities of haiku. Sails is overseen by Peter Yovu. For an introduction to this section, see Sails.

                                                                        October loneliness
                                                                        two walking sticks

                                                                                 —vincent tripi

                                                                        on the wind somewhere a
                                                                        child, crying
                                                                        here

                                                                                 —Martin Shea

                                                                        pond ripples
                                                                        moving the clouds
                                                                        moving the sky
                                                                        moving

                                                                                 —Gary Hotham

It seems that poets who work in the haiku tradition, or whose short poems are inspired by it, have many choices, more perhaps than standard guidelines would allow. One choice, of course, is to stay within those guidelines, or within guidelines which one has discovered to be fruitful. Haiku plays within limits, does it not? Or is it truer to say, it plays with limits?

What determines the shape a poem takes? This question has been with us a very long time, has been explored, answered, argued, mooted and booted countless ways, primarily between two poles: free verse and formal verse. Perhaps where one lands on this question is as much a matter of disposition as anything else. Haiku is vulnerable to the same considerations, which for me is encouraging: it tells me that it is not a backwater but a stream, a tributary adding volume and force to the braided river it enters.

Among numerous elements, some of them subtle, which give a haiku its shape, the two most obvious are the number (and length) of lines employed, and how those lines are broken. That’s the territory I’d like to sail toward this time.

How do you determine how many lines your haiku will be? Formalists might say three lines are optimal, seventeen syllables, seven of them stressed, that such a structure will be magnetic to poetry, as an orchid is magnetic to its bee. Others might take a less patterned view, allowing the content, a sandpiper’s erratic running for example, to determine the form, including the number of lines. The question is not which is better, but how does this work for you? Does working from an established form give your imagination the support it needs and the freedom to unfold? Does your imagination require that you be open to something unforeseeable? (I am using imagination here to include every way by which experience may be embodied in language).

Line-breaks. How important are they to you? Do you honor them—that is to say, when reading a poem out loud or to yourself, do you pause at the end of each line, giving each line its moment? Do you feel there should be a reason (not necessarily intellectualized) that each line ends where it does?

A lot of questions. A lot of choices. What may be most useful here (and fun) is choosing poems which you feel demonstrate strengths inherent in some of these choices. Can you show us a poem which had to be written with two lines? Three? More? How come? Do you know a poem whose line-breaks amplify its meaning(s) and perhaps surprise us? Or one which you would simply like to present for exploration?

I realize it will be tempting to bring one-line haiku into this discussion, but I’d like to save that for the next Sailing.

I look forward to hearing from you.

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Sails

• 1st Sailing
• 2nd Sailing
• 3rd Sailing
• 4th Sailing
• 5th Sailing
• 6th Sailing
• 7th Sailing
• 8th Sailing
• 9th Sailing

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