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What exactly is haiku? And how is it written? …theory and history, appreciation and composition…

 

 

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Marlene Mountain, who I admit I know very little about as yet, has some wonderful haiku online and some great thoughts on the form and practice of haiku. A pioneer, I think, of the one-line haiku. Also some very interesting thoughts on art, criticism, and gender. And so on. Here are her essays and self-interviews; and her  “haiku on haiku” pages, two good places to start…

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This book sounds amazing!

In this intriguing literary experiment, Ian Marshall presents a collection of nearly three hundred haiku that he extracted from Henry David Thoreau’s Walden and documents the underlying similarities between Thoreau’s prose and the art of haiku.

Although Thoreau would never have encountered the Japanese haiku tradition, the way in which the most important ideas in Walden find expression in the most haikulike language suggests that Thoreau at Walden Pond and the haiku master Basho at his “old pond” might have drunk at the same well. Walden and the tradition of haiku share an aesthetic that embodies ideas in natural images, dissolves boundaries between self and world, emphasizes simplicity, and honors both solitude and humble, familiar objects. Marshall examines each of these aesthetic principles and offers a relevant collection of “found” haiku.

- referring to Walden by Haiku, by Ian Marshall. Text excerpted from the University of Georgia Press website.

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The World Kigo Database … “is collecting words from all over the world that may be used as seasonal words… for haiku of the respective areas. It is based on the concept of a Japanese Dictionary of Seasonal Words… but addresses all cultures, areas and regions of the world, where people are now writing haiku in languages other than Japanese.”

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Shamrock, the Haiku Journal of the Irish Haiku Society, has an excellent page of guidelines and inspirations, rules and recommendations for the writing and appreciation of haiku. Includes suggestions for both English grammar and Japanese poetics.

• Don’t follow good dead poets but search for what they searched for.
• Hokku can’t be assembled from component parts. Poet’s work is similar to that of a goldsmith.
• Haiku are always set in the present moment. Nevertheless, listen out for history breathing behind our contemporaries’ backs.

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Another good place to start: Aha Poetry has a huge selection of haiku-related links, articles, how-to, criticism, history, and so on… 

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Haiku

(1) An unrhymed Japanese poem recording the essence of a moment keenly perceived, in which Nature is linked to human nature. It usually consists of seventeen onji (Japanese sound-symbols).

(2) A foreign adaptation of (1). It is usually written in three lines of five, seven, and five syllables.

NOTE TO (2):
That part of the definition which begins “It is usually written” places a heavy weight on the word “usually.” We depend on that word to provide latitude for variations in syllable count and in number of lines or other external aspects of “form” providing they meet the primary stringent requirements expressed in the first part of the definition. Though 17 syllables is still [in 1973] the norm in English language haiku, it is more and more common for a haiku to consist of fewer syllables. Rarely is a haiku [in English] longer than 17 syllables.

While all Japanese classical haiku, as well as most modern ones, contain a kigo (season-word: a word or phrase indicating one of the four seasons of their year), extreme variations of climate in the USA make it impossible to put a recognizable “season-word” into every America haiku. Therefore, American adaptations are not so concerned with season-words as are most Japanese haiku.

…from the Haiku Society of America

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In poetry the empty space is the surrounding silence… a silence of the mind in which one does not “think about” the poem but actually feels the sensation which it evokes – all the more strongly for having said do little.

By the seventeenth century the Japanese had brought this “wordless” poetry to perfection in haiku,  the poem of just seventeen syllables which drops the subject almost as it takes it up… a good haiku is a pebble thrown into the pool of the listener’s mind, evoking associations out of the richness of his oen memory. It invites the listener to participate…

The development of haiku was largely tyhe work of Basho  (1643-1694), whose feeling for Zen wanted to express itself in a type of poetry altogether in the spirit of wu-shih – “nothing special.” “To write haiku,” he said, get a three-foot child” – for Basho’s poems have the same inspired objectivity as a child’s expression of wonder, and return us to that same feeling of the world as when it first met our astonished eyes…

Basho wrote his haiku in the simplest type of Japanese speech, naturally avoiding literary and “highbrow” language, so creating a style which made it possible for ordinary people to be poets (183-184).

Watts, Alan. The Way of Zen. New York: Vintage Books, 1957.

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In his excellent Poet’s Dictionary, William Packard gives the following definition:

Japanese short-form poem, sometimes called hokku, with origins as far back as the thirteenth century. Haiku are written syllabically with seventeen separate syllables arranged in three stanzas according to a 5/7/5 count.

Every traditional haiku uses a kigo, or season word, to specify whether the poem is of winter, spring, summer, or autumn mood. Traditional haiku will also be characterized by a renso, or loose association of disparate images, and contain an elliptical leap from the second to the third line which simulates sudden zen satori or enlightenment, illumination of the true manner of reality.

Haiku are noteworthy for their use of plain-style, everyday language, according to the teaching of the classical master Basho (1644-1695), who advocated the principle of hosomi, or slenderness, the use of terse expression and understatement. Basho taught the most rigorous objectivity and strict observation:

One can learn about pine only from the pine, about bamboo only from the bamboo. When one sees an object, one must leave one’s subjective concerns with oneself, or one will impose oneself onto the object and not learn anything. Oneself and object must become a single thing, and from that singleness the poetry issues. No matter how eloquent, if the feeling is not absolutely natural – if the object and oneself are still kept separate – then the poetry is not true poetry but just one’s own perception (85).

Packard, William. The Poet’s Dictionary. New York: HarperCollins, 1989.

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There are myriad haiku journals and newsletters online, for example HaikuWorld and Modern Haiku. And how could I forget DailyHaiku?

And of course there are differing opinions about the definition of haiku! There are numerous debates, for example does an English-language haiku need to maintain the 5-7-5 syllable count? What are the English equivalents to Japanese seasonal words? And so on.

Beat-generation poet and novelist Jack Kerouac is a good case in point. There are a few interesting sites on the subject, for example Pop! and the Nonduality Salon. Kerouac emphasized the brevity and enlightenment in haiku, and paid less attention to the strict rules regarding syllables, etc., developing what he called the “Western haiku”:

I propose that the ‘Western Haiku’ simply say a lot in three short lines in any Western language. Above all, a Haiku must be very simple and free of all poetic trickery and make a little picture…

Kerouac, Jack. Book of Haikus. Regina Weinreich, Ed. New York: Penguin, 2003.

(Basho image: public domain)