Religio: Introduction

[DavidGrayson]

Today, haiku is being written all over the globe. The Winter 2010 issue of Frogpond, for example, featured poems from twenty-one countries. These poets naturally bring their own cultural and religious inheritances to the haiku tradition.

Religion, of course, has influenced how each of us views the world and our place in it. This is true not only for “believers” who subscribe to a specific religious tradition, but also for those who are broadly religious but do not follow a single religion, are agnostic or indifferent, or are even staunchly anti-religious. The constellation of our ethics and values; sense of community; understanding of the meaning and purpose of the world; perception of reality and time; and much more are grounded in the religious-cultural heritage of the society in which we have been raised.

How are these assumptions, attitudes, and beliefs carried into haiku? What are the key ideas and concepts of the major religions, and how do haiku poets today reflect and elaborate these? These questions will be the mandate for this column.

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[snowbird a/k/a Merrill Ann Gonzales]

It has been my experience with haiku that intersect with religious tradition that often the connection is not recognized unless one uses images that have been so worn by religious use that they are virtually useless in haiku.   I find that writing haiku for any "purpose" ends in failure... But that does not exclude in the contemplation of every day simple images... an awareness of the mystery beyond what may be so familiar.   It's important not to apply concepts to what we present...but to be able to present the fleeting moment of the experience.   
    I recently came across a hawthorn tree and this Christmas had a grand time using it in haiku - often to the people in my Church who were not familiar with the many concepts that tree has inspired in the past...but the ones who "got it" seemed to be caregivers for family members enduring cancer treatments.

[DavidGrayson]

Hi Snowbird,

I tend to agree that explicitly trying to use a particular religious principle, whatever it may be, will often end in failure and is beside the point. As I think you are saying, that’s not the point of haiku. I do think that, in our day-to-day lives, we sometimes have experiences that we interpret (consciously or not) through a religious/spiritual lens. For example, when people I know tell me about something good they did, they’ll sometimes say that they hope it’s good karma. That may not be the best example, but I enjoy finding these convictions and concepts in haiku.

[DavidGrayson]

Snowbird - Do you mind sharing the hawthorn tree haiku?

[merlot]

I like the point about standard cliches and images of religion being ineffective for haiku. Here is a haiku I wrote that seems wholly, deliberately irreligious:

   even frost
along the privy path
   knows the way

The final word suggests the religious, but the destination is a stinking place of feces. There are two sensibilities that intersect here. One is existential and postmodern: religious belief seems an absurd, insupportable social construction in our times. The other is that if indeed reality issues from a divine dimension, then all is included in that mystery, and even feces emanates from the refulgent sacred. That's how I communicate spiritual orientation in a way that respects the despair and alienation that I recognize are part of the fabric of modern existence.

[DavidGrayson]

Merlot,

I think your haiku stands in a long tradition of honoring everything as emanating from the divine, including (especially?) the unattractive realities of life. In my view, this is one of haiku's strengths. By the way, I like the language in your haiku.

Regarding "the despair and alienation" that some have observed as inherent in modernity... this topic may arise at some point in my column, maybe in regards to mysticism. Some have argued that mysticism intends to address this alienation, and this could certainly play out in haiku with a mystical bent.  

[snowbird a/k/a Merrill Ann Gonzales]

The hawthorn haiku was not especially great...it was affixed to the photo of the hawthorn tree itself...the idea that the tree itself was a hymn to its own existence and the centuries of meaning that had accumulated around the image brought some fresh insights about Christmas.  Like a haiku the photo itself creates the point of contemplation ... words fail...the image fails...but if the connection arises in a viewer or a reader's mind that can be felt as essential it doesn't matter. 

[snowbird a/k/a Merrill Ann Gonzales]

If there was a way to post the photo...that would be best...ipse dixit...

[DavidGrayson]

Thanks, snowbird. I really like the idea of the tree being a hymn to itself.