Off the page• •experience Jumps,

haiku!

By Alexis Rotella .

72 EASTWEST JOURNAl/MAY 1984

aiku are highly focused mo-ments of awareness when ob-

server and object become one. These littlepoems are capsules of energy that crystallizethe now-moment into a word-photograph.Yet when the haiku is read, its words ~dissolve and the reader is left with just thepure.experience. Haiku have been describedas "wordless' poems or "non-poems.'They're little arrows that penetrate theheart of nature itself.

Haiku seems easy tomaster. Most people who firstread these verses are so capti-vated by their simplicity thatthey go onto write hundredsonly to learn one day, muchto their amazement, that haikuis not just a prose sentencearranged in three lines of5-7-5 syllables.

When most Westernersbegin to write haiku, theylook for ways to pad theirwork. They throw in articlesand conjunctions which tendto stretch out lines to equalseventeen syllables. Some-where in our culture we ar-rived at the misconceptionthat verbosity is better thanconciseness, that long-windedexplanations are impressive.The expert haiku-writer, onthe other hand, is in touchwith an inner editor and ruth-lessly learns to hack away at !words until only the essenceof poetry remains.

Eric Amann writes inThe WordlessPoem, "For theWestern poet writing haiku,this need to show things asthey are, to keep the p:lind likean 'unclouded mirror', pre-

ALEXIS ROTELLA is editor ofFrogpond, an international haikuquarterly, former president of theHaiku Society of America, andauthor of five books of haiku.

Far Province, Dorothy Brit-ton writes, " ... the thought 'processes started by this poemgo on and on. The pondcould be eternity, God, or theUltimate Truth about theuniverse and man." Under-lying this verse is the conceptof ego being an illusion. Theego makes little waves on thesurface of eternity but thewater, or the One, remainssmooth. The point aboutBasho's verse is that we neednot explain away our feelingsabout the experience. We canjust allow our creative side,or right brain, to enter intothe energy the words point to.

sents many difficulties mainlybecause our customary West-.ern poetic process demandsthe exact opposite. In theWest the original poetic ex-perience plus the poet's intel-. lectual and emotional reac-tions equal the finished poem.But in haiku the original ex-perience minus the poet's per-sonal reaction equals the fin-ished haiku." Amann goes onto say that the Western poettends (0 add, while the haikuwriter subtracts. And whilethe Westerner talks "about"an experience, the haikuistgives us the pure.experience.Another way of putting itwould be to say that a haikuis done when the heart is con-vinced it is.

Consider this one byBas\1O, the father of haiku:At the old ponda frog jumps,plop!

-tr. R.H. BlythIn A Haiku Journey,

Basho's Narrow Road to a

But as IS the case here,too, the words in this articlepoint you in a direction tounderstand haiku. It is likethe paradox of enlightenmentwhich goes beyond words."There are no words to de'-scribe how I felt when I wasenveloped in pure goldenlight," says the spiritual aspir-ant, as he goes on to talkabout the experience and inmany cases, to write bookafter; book on that one word-less moment of joy. Keepingthis paradox in mind, let'sfirst take a look at Basho andtwo of the other traditionalJapanese masters; at Shiki,the father of modern haiku;and at how haiku is evolvingin North America today.

~ ven in Japan,~ where haiku orig-

inated, the art of writingsimplistically was not alwayspracticed. Haiku developed

from hokku, the introductory,stanza. of a renga. A renga isa highly restrictive, linkedverse' usually composed. bytwo or more persons under.the guidance of a master suchas Basho himself. Renga ruleswere intricate and so convo-luted that only a few peoplewere able to understand them:Stanzas were written in alter-nation of 5-7-5, 7-7 syllablesthroughout the poem. Versesshowed too much thought;poetry was belabored andphilosophical and often tookoff to planes of fantasy. Theexercise of imagining a settingfor the purpose -of writing-a 'ipoem had a long history. Ob-jective realism (shasei)was arevoltagainst this practice.

Although there were sev-eral good pre-Basho haikuwriters such as Onitsura and'Soin, it is Basho who is giventhe most credit for bringingpoetry back to basics.

. Basho (1644-1694), theson of a samurai and a stu-dent of Zen, studied the ehi-nese classics as well as calli-graphy for five years in Ky-oto. Perhaps it was his badluck in love affairs whichcaused the master to contem-plate, the transient nature oflife (sabi, the pathos mirroredin nature's cycles). Basho'smost famous verse:

On a bare brancha crow alights:autumn dusk

exemplified sabi. Britton says,

AT THE IVY-COVERED STUMPby Rambo Shurin

"This verse marks the begin-ning of Basho's own distinc-tive style. There is nothingcontrived. No puns. No at- 'tempt at wit. Spare and un-pretentious, the lines are a'quiet, refined observation ofnature .... This poem projectsthe dreariness and sadness ofan autumn evening and itsundertone of old age anddeath, without explicitly say-ing so."

Ingeneral, Basho used'season-words (kigo) in hisverses. In the useof kigo, it isnot necessary to name theseason. "Snow," for example,is a season-word forwinter,"jonquil" a kigo for spring,"hollyhock" "a season-wordfor summer.

The cuckoo-« .its call stretchingover the water

Basho did not always useseventeen syllables in hishaiku; in some cases his verseswere composed of more thantwenty. Basho believed poetryto be a type of religion andstressed the spiritual .disciplinein writing. Makoto Ueda saysthat Basho's main poeticideal, sabi, requires a.disci-plined mind that recognizeshumanity's basic lonelinesswhile elevating it to an enno-bling aesthetic end.Along this road'goes no one,autumn eve

An admirer of the Chi-nese wandering poet, Li Po,Basho made hISown poeticpilgrimages. In 16~2thehome he called "Banana Tree

74, EAS.~ESJ:JOl!R~AIiIMAY1984

Cottage" burned down, an-other experience which ledhim to meditate upon thetransience of the materialworld.

It is evident fromBasho's deathbed poem thathe practiced the discipline ofsabi until the very end of hislife:III on a journey;my dreams wanderover a withered moor.

-tr. R.H. BlythAnother noted master,

Yosa Buson (1603-1667), firstacquired notoriety as a painterof both Japanese and Chinesestyles. Buson's pictorial eye isreflected in his own style ofhaiku:Spring rain:telling a tale as they gostraw cape, umbrella-ir. Bownas and Thwaite

Spring rain:soaking on the roofa child's rag bali-tr. Bownas and ThwaiteWhile Buson's sympathy

toward animals was not asgreat as Basho's, his empathywith people was probably ,stronger:Plum blossoms blooming,courtesans are buying sashesintheir room.

-tr. R.H. Blyth. The rooms of courtesans

were like prison cells. HereBuson paints a lovely picturewith great sensitivity but iron-ically the scene is only par-tially beautiful because the.courtesans are severelycut offfrom the blossoms and themost glorious season of theyear. While Basho strove tobecome one with nature as atraveling monk, Buson con-centrated on the more objec-tive, outer world. He was morea participant in life.

Teruoka Yasutaka, aBuson specialist, wrote thatBasho was a stoic seeking to

is lightly crowned.' ..

bya paulownia leaf. ,-tr. R.H. Blyth

It is almost as if this sleepingdog is a self-portrait of thepoet, the underdog. But al-though suffering was his fate,he was gifted with a sense ofhumor, the golden leaf.

Instead of complainingabout poverty, Issa madefriends with the smallest crea- ;tures, even fleas and ants. lieembraced the whole world as

-tr. unknown his family;

overcome ego while,Busonwas a participator in familylife and an epicurean. WhileBuson subjugated sabi, hecelebrated beauty:

The narcissusflowers,a beautiful womanwith an aching head ,

-tr. R.H. Blyth

Before the white chrysan- ..themums:

scissorshesitate

Issa (1763-1827),the third-of the haiku masters, was anorphan. He lived with a step-mother he loathed. In fact,Issa's entire life was one ofsuffering. It was not untilIssa turned fifty that he knewany stability. But his firstmarriage at this late dateended sadly. His wife died,followed by the death of hisbeloved childvOnly fivemonths before his own pas-sing, his house, like Basho's,burned to the ground. Issaspent his last few months'stricken with palsy and livingin a warehouse with an earth-en floor.

Issa expressed his sym-pathy for creatures arid peo-ple because of his kinshipwith suffering:

The sleeping dog

In our housethe mice arefriendlywith the fireflies.

-tr. R.H. BlythHe accepts himself as he is. Asnail has no ambition.Neither did Issa:

The snailgoes to bed and gets ,upjust as he is.

-tr. R.H. Blyth.

WASP AND WILDFLOWER byUeshima Masaaki

, :

NEW YEAR SUNRISE by UeshimaMasaaki

This haiku:Insects on a boughfloating down the riverstill singing

-tr. R.H. Blythshould be enjoyed for thesound that springs forth froma summer evening, but as wefloat along with the chorus ofinsects, wethink of our ownlives and purpose. Each of usis placed in an incarnation toshare our own unique voicewith the world. It is a re-minder that we, too, blendjust like the insects ... that weare just passengers on thisraft called existence. Issachose to use his time singingaloud to the world, in creat-ing joy where most could notfind it. But although Issa'shumor brings a smile to ourfaces, it also' tugs at ourheart strings.

In A History of Haiku,R.H. Blyth writes, "Basho'sseriousness is lighter thanIssa's banter." Where Bashoshows the isolation of lifethrough sabi, Issa shows itthrough humor and irony.Issa's humor sometimes re-minds one of the Yiddishsense of humor, which calls

attention to pathos and suf-fering almost to a point ofself pity, as in this haiku:

Come and play with me,fatherless, motherlesssparrow.

-tr. R.H. Bly!hThe following verse was

one of Issa's last. It is filledwith perhaps more sabi thanBasho ever expressed:

Visiting the grave;the old dogleads the way.

-tr. R.H. Blyth

Shiki (1867-1902),an iconoclast,

might be considered thefather of modern haiku. Heaccused the traditional haikuwriters of the time of beingverbose and diffuse. He be-lieved the time had come forhaiku to stop honoring three-hundred-year-old schools ofthought and to begin respect-ing a poem for the poem'smerit, not for the person be-hind it. Shiki, an advocate ofthe,5-7-5 form, respected the

despite this failing, Shiki ascritic, teacher, and editor wasmost instrumental in leavingbehind how-to information onthe writing of haiku. He be-lieved poets should be as directas possible in their observa-tions, using the simplest lan-guage possible. Shiki ex-plained that shasei entailscopying the subject as naturepresents' it, but that a highdegree of selection and exclu-sion is involved in the process.He believed that a writer ,sketching an event shouldfocus on its most beautifuior moving facet, and that thiswould allow the subject tobegin to take on a life of itsown. Shiki writes:" ... the most beautiful ormoving aspect does not nec-essarily correspond to themost substantial or conspic-.uous ... part of the subject .. ~.A red camellia blooming inan ominously dark forestwould strike one as exceed-ingly beautiful .... In a caselike that, a writer shouldsketch the scene focusing onthe camellia. The flower doesnot have to lie described indetail. It will deeply move the

virtues of Basho's haiku, butbelieved Basho's work to belimited in content and toopassive, as well as mono-tonous.

As founder of the journalHototogisu, Shiki tried to killthe Basho father image, butas is often the case, Shiki re-placed one idol=Basho=foranother-Buson. Shiki be-lieved Buson's poetry shouldbe exemplified because of hisability to view people as anintegral part of ~ature. But

J

CHINESE LANDSCAPE by Buson

reader if the writerfirst de-scribes the ominous darknessof the wood in some detail,then presents the camellia inthe briefest word. " (ModernJapanese Poets, Veda)

Shiki thought a writer·who mastered shasei couldincrease the subjectivity need-ed. "At times," he wrote, ."the poet may even changethe relative position of thingsin an actual scene or subjec-tively replace a part of'the .scene by something that is notthere. An actual scene is likea beautiful woman withoutmakeup. She will not be freeJrom imperfections, so thatthe artist must correct hereyebrows, put on rouge andpowder, and dress her up inbeautiful clothes,"

In other words, once anartist captures an object'sbasic .nature, only then can heor she take license to correctnature's imperfections. And,needless to say, this secondpart of writing does not applyto the beginning haiku stu-dent. A student of Shiki askedhim how one can avoid end-ing up with a prosaic piecewhen following the confinesof shasei. The poem his stu-dent came up with was this:"a bamboo thicket/inside, acamellia/in full bloom."This haiku is merely a naturesketch, dull and limp. "Ifyou see dandelions, sing ofdandelions. If you see star-worts, sing of starworts .. '.'What you have stated in yourpoem," wrote Shiki, "can becondensed to just one line:'camellia in a thicket. ... ' Usethe remaining two for intro-ducingother material andthereby make the poem moreinteresting."

"Herein lies the secondstage of the creative process asconceived by Shiki," writesUeda. "In the first stage, a •

"J

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PAINTINGS P.73-77 FROM A NET OFFIREFLIES & A CHIME OF WINDBELLS BYHAROLD STEWART, HANDBOOK OFJAPANESE ART BY NORITAKE TSUDA, ANDHAIKU IN ENGLISH BY HAROLD G, ..HENDERSON. REPRINTED COURTESY OFCHARLES E. TUTTLE, CO.CALLIGRAPHY BY MAYUMI GLEASON

MAY 1984 IEASTWEST JOURNAL 75.

poet should go outside andobserve life or nature; in thesecond, he should select ma-terial arid theme in a way thatwill reveal his individuality.The manifestation of thepoet's unique personality iswhat keeps the poem frombecoming trite."

Unceasinglythis stone on the summer

moorjests people.

-tf. R.H. BlythThere is no sentimental-

ity, none of the compassionof Issa. While Shiki·exaltedBuson for his ability to incor-porate people into haiku, Shi-ki views human nature fromanother side. Although theabove verse points to thetransience of life and thestability of nature, the word"Unceasingly" has an almosthostile ring.

Detail from .FROGS IN CONFERENCE byYamaguchi Hakushi

76 EAsi.lO'l;STJOURNAL ullAY 1984

r-II

FALLING PETALS AND PARA-SOL by Kikakudo Kiichi

In the following haiku,we are reminded of the sordidside of life:

This bleak winter scene;a village dog is barkingat ~ mad woman.

All the sick-nursesfast asleep,-Ah, the cold!

-tr. R.H. BlythShikiwas a sick man who diedat age thirty-six. In the abovehaiku, he depicts the irony ofthose living who are asleepwhile the one who nears death(Shiki) is wide awake watchingover the nurses.

According to his con-temporaries, Shiki was not areligious man, but in this lasthaiku he acknowledges the .unspoken greatness a~d or-ganic power of nature:

In the summer rainthe creeping gourdhas reached the trellis-work.

-tf. R.H. BlythWemight look at the trellis-work as our life and the thingswe've accomplished ,whilethecreeping gourd represents thetime we have.

After Shiki's deathin 1902, two of his

pisciples carried 'on in his foot-

steps. Hekigodo (1873-1937)was an avid experimenter andbecame well known for his"haiku without a center ofinterest." He said, "To doaway with a center of interestand to discard the process ofpoetizing reality would helpthe poet to approach thingsand phenomena in nature asclose as he can, without beingsidetracked by man-maderules." As a consequence, the5-7-5 form was now being .challenged although the sea-son-word would be kept, sincethe change of seasons wascompletely integrated into theworkings of the universe.

While Hekigodo and hisfollowers' haiku became moreand more mystical and con-cerned with communicationand using the art form as ameditative path, Kyoshi(1874-1937)became alarmedand declared the acceptabilityof writing a poem in free versewithout a season-word. But .he declared that such a poemshould not be called a"haiku." And so it was. Backto Basho, The fortress wasbeing rebuilt brick by brick.Kyoshi reinstated the 5-7-5form and was instrumental inpromoting a conservativehaiku-writing style in the19.20s.

Wrestlers are aboardthe ferry; why has it becomestormy weather?

-Hekigodo, tf. Ueda

I gaze at the river.A banana peel I heldslips from my hand.

-Kyoshi,tr. Ueda

In Japan today there are hun-dreds of haiku journals withvarious philosophies-rangingfrom traditional "Basho lives"viewpoints to haiku whichpromote the avant garde, sur-realistic, and symbolistic

schools of writing. There are "also many traditional and, 'modern writers such asChiyo-jo, Kikaku, Sojo, andTaneda.

), rth the influx ofW ~en into NorthAmerica in the 19.50s,haikuas an art form began to beaqknowledged ,by poets suchas Allen Ginsberg, Jack Ker-ouac, Gary Snyder, and Cid 'Corman. Snyder tried hishand at the art form'in thepoems labeled "Hitch Haiku"in The Back Country, butthey were.not as successful asmuch of his prose containingmany haiku-like moments.Ginsberg tried to write haikubut didn't focus long enoughon the form to really unravelits mystery.

·Jack Kerouac, however,in Scattered Poems contribu-ted some excellent Zen-in-spired haiku to the Americanmovement.

This July eveninga large frog'on my door sill.

Using an economy of words,we're reminded of Shiki'sstark objectivity. Kerouaceven used a season-word andchose to focus on the largenessof a frog to depict the stuffi-ness of a July evening.SONG OF A SUMMER SHOWERby Yuki Somei

Juju beads on the'. Zen manual:my knees are cold.

The Zen manual is decoratedwith a rosary-like quality. Jujubeads might help us focus, aZen manual can show us how '

. 'to sit -and instruct us on med-itation and point the way, buteven after we've 'surrendered, .the knees are still cold. The. path is a lonely one.

. Here Kerouac employsthe use of sabi:

In my medicine cabinet,the winter fly

has died of old age.

While poets in the '50sand '60s nibbled at haiku, andas Gene Shepherd read thelittle gems over the airwaves,seeds germinated into a fewsmall groups of North Amer-ican editors: and writers whodedicated much energy tofostering the art of haiku. Al-though the haiku community.in North America is relativelysmall, with about five journalsdedicated to the form, theadherents are an active andenthusiastic group. And as isoften the case with art formseverywhere, there are factionswho war against each other.There are the traditionalistswho believe the 5-7-5 formmust be adhered to at allcosts; there are groups whowrite solely one-liners, andpoets who insist on using sea-son-words. And as is oftenthe case, there are those 'artistswho have mastered the tradi-tional form and have traveledbeyond, it. Whenever neces-sary, they are able to write inwhatever style the occasioncalls for.

,I( order to come(JJ ~ull circle, let meintroduce a few North Ameri-can haiku poets who have.also been recognized inter-nationally: Eric Amann, a

. 'medical doctor.and formereditor of Cicada, h~s donemuch to modernize the NorthAmerican haiku movement 'asShiki did in his days. Amannembraces experimental haikuyet at the same time is able tocompose in the 5-7-5 form:Last day of autumn:

and still the sunset lingersin a one-way street.

As Shiki said of one ofBasho's poems, "The mean-ing is just what it says, it hasno other, no special meaning."

And in this haiku, weexperience sabi during a longwinter season:A mouse stirs .in the kitchen cupboard;winter solitude.

Bob Boldman, still in hisearly 30s, began seriouslypublishing his experimentalZen-like haiku a few yearsago in Cicada. There is aslight similarity to Kerouac'swork, yet Boldman's haikuare much starker. While Ker-ouac mentioned the coldnessof his knees, Boldman doesn'tneed to say it-he showsit.Like Hekigodo, he contributednew experimentation to themovement in juxtaposition oflines:frozen/to thestream/ '/myface

With the slashes, we morereadily feel our own skintighten and stick to the ice..

the priesthis shadow caught

on a nail-Boldman surrounds his haik~by a lot of white space so thearea around the poem is justas strong as the work itself. Inthe above verse, the nailpuiIsus back to' our center. Theraised period Boldman uses at·the end of the haiku furtheraccentuates the "nowness" ofthe haiku moment.

Elizabeth Searle Lambhas been writing haiku formany years. This delicatehaiku is one that comes backto me again and again:

Still ... some echothe pale jade cricket boxin the museum.

In general, two adjectives todescribe a noun is frownedupon in haiku writing. But inthis particular case "pale"and "jade" add to the faint-ness of the echo sound' andenhance the stillness of themuseum.

Two veryelegant Buson-like haiku will one day taketheir places as classics in thehaiku annals;Skipping ropethe butterfly passesunder the girl's skirt

-David LeCount

Piano practicethrough an open windowthe lilac

-Raymond Roseliep ." ... no haikuis ever fin-

ished, it is only abandoned ...

th'e:reader keeps getting on " ,, where t~lepoet got off,";wrqte. Raymond Roseliep, the late .haiku poet-priest. In this ..three-liner;" , .

Snow:all'snew ...

Roseliep goes right to theheart of snow. This haikuwas probably the most con-cise three-syllable poem everwritten.

Nick Virgilio has writtenone of the most universalhaiku, one which the 'poethimself admits wasbroughtto him on.wings:Lilyout of the waterout of itself.

"Lily" is beautiful in its im-"mediacy and the poem is aspure as the lily if;elf; This is ametaphysical statement as wellas a 'haiku, a truth which liftsus to our highest chakra, thecrown. In most cases, philo-:sophical statements do notmake haiku.

Rod Willmot,in his earlytwenties, wrote some verytender Issa-like haiku:

:Y!"s,little fly:you may ha~~:

apencil ride

'On that bubble- ,', /:.why, that's me there _ :

. .washingdishes.Haiku can be written

about any subject, but youmay still be asking, "What is. a haiku?" Sigh. Answeringthis question is akin to an-swering, "What is Zen?" The,Zen masters have cautionedus not to .get caught up on ,the finger which points to themoon. It 'is 'the experience orraw energyof the moment ,that matters. In the case ofhaiku, w.e can capture a mo-ment forever. Photograph'swill fade but haiku are eternal .

....DTRE FI~T WHITESASANQUAby Ueshima MO$(l(1ki .' ....• ..... ..,'