Aha Moments and the Miracle of HaikuFirst published in Kō 32:4, Autumn–Winter 2017, pages 33–34. Also published in Blithe Spirit 28:1, February 2018, pages 30–31. Originally written in 2008 and
revised in 2017, with a few additional revisions here. See also “Taking a Bite: The Haiku McMoment” and “A Moment in the Sun: When Is a Haiku?” “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” —Albert Einstein The so-called “aha moment,” also called the “haiku moment,” seems to be greatly misunderstood. Or, perhaps more likely, the term is used in a way that presumes a common understanding even while haiku poets have differing ideas of what it means. Whatever the understanding—or misunderstanding—the notion of the haiku moment needs sorting out. Haiku is, first and foremost, poetry. It’s a means of artful expression that communicates from one person to another. The poem begins with an inspiration of some sort. Let’s call that the original “aha moment” or “haiku moment.” This inspiration is not a poem—it is something you experience or realize that may inspire a poem. You then write the poem—and this action may take place either a split second after the inspiration or many decades later (and it completely does not matter which, so long as the experience or memory is vivid—all haiku, after all, are moments of history). The haiku poem you write should not attempt to explain the “aha moment” or “haiku moment” but somehow dwell in that moment or imply the emotions that result. In other words, a good haiku often takes out the most important thing so that it can be implied. an old woollen sweater taken yarn by yarn from the snowbank I don’t say a thing about a bird building a nest in spring, but of course that’s what the poem is about—and precisely why William J. Higginson included it under the spring category of “bird’s nest” in his Haiku World saijiki (almanac of season words; Kodansha International, 1996). So there you are with your finished poem. You share it with others in any of various ways—online, in a magazine, or by reading it aloud. The reader reads the words and “gets” the implication, feeling what you felt. This is what makes haiku miraculous. Intuiting the implication is not unlike the cognitive effect of getting a joke. Thus the reader can experience the realization that you originally experienced—or that you created, which I assert is also acceptable (some readers may object to this last claim, but Bashō heavily revised his poems and pastiched many details, thus there seems to be no valid argument against it). So there are perhaps three sorts of “haiku moments”:
It therefore seems worthwhile to unfetter oneself from the chains of the so-called “haiku moment.” I do not mean that you should ignore the haiku moment, for it is the very vein of gold that inspires many haiku, and it’s what you want to capture in your haiku—and recreate in the reader (as David Steindl-Rast once said, “A haiku [you read] does not talk about an experience: a haiku triggers an experience—your own”). Rather, you can unfetter yourself from the moment’s chains by using the original haiku moment—the moment of inspiration—as a springboard into writing the finished poem. It’s just a tool, not a sacred and inviolable grail. If you create your haiku well, crafting and revising the poem as necessary, the reader can take the same jump with you, and jump into the same water’s sound. This is the miracle of haiku. |