“To a clear eye the smallest fact is a window through which the
infinite may be seen.” —Thomas Henry Huxley
“The soul
never thinks without an image.” —Aristotle
“Those
moments before a poem comes, when the heightened awareness comes over you, and
you realize a poem is buried there somewhere, you prepare yourself. I run
around, you know, kind of skipping around the house, marvelous elation. It’s as
though I could fly.” —Anne Sexton +
How does one get started in writing haiku? All poets face the repeated task of moving from inspiration to
words. It’s not always easy. The following practical tips about process might
help beginners, and also interest more seasoned poets who are involved in
helping others learn the art of haiku. The English poet and scholar Thomas Gray
once said that “Poetry is thoughts that breathe, and words that burn.” But how
do you get from the breathing thought to the burning word?
One suggestion is to begin by
jotting down selected experiences that happen to you every day, focusing on how
you experience those small events through your five senses. For example, just
now a car drove past my house, and I heard its sound fade in and out as it
drove past. That’s a seed for a haiku—maybe not a good one, but maybe it is.
You never know. That’s how haiku starts for me—by closely noticing even the
simplest of experiences, and then forming words to describe them plainly and
directly, without judgment. The idea is to start with things as they are,
focusing on nouns and one of the five senses. A key technique to remember is
this: Instead of writing about your emotions, write about what caused your emotions. Here’s a start:
the sound fades away
from a passing car
So this is two lines, but just one phrase. A good haiku nearly always has two
parts, and one of the parts is like the preceding two lines. Although it’s
presented in two lines, it still reads as a single phrase (just one part). Now
it needs a third line (its second part) to go with it, and that’s where haiku
gets a little more difficult. For me it’s good to think at right angles to a
main image, to think about what else is going on out the corner of my eye, so
to speak. And sometimes, what is at right angles isn’t an image but a context
or setting. That’s where the other line comes from, often—and it could be a
first or third line. Perhaps this:
foreclosure notice—
the sound fades away
from a passing car
I hope there’s a feeling of sadness or emptiness here. The house across the
street from where I live was recently foreclosed on, and had a big white foreclosure
notice on the front door. The house is currently up for auction, so many cars
have been stopping by as people check the place out. This poem isn’t about
those cars that have stopped (in fact, they’re not part of the poem at all),
but about any car that passes by, perhaps oblivious to the foreclosed house.
Notice how the first two lines I originally wrote didn’t have anything in the
poem itself about a house, yet the foreclosure notice brings a house to mind,
without saying it. This allows the reader to have a gestalt sort of realization
(even if small). He or she can put together the setting with the emotion of being
in or seeing that passing car, whether aware of the foreclosure or oblivious to
it. Either way, we undoubtedly feel compassion for the stress of foreclosure,
even if it is someone else’s.
The poem may also make a
compassionate reader wonder about the observer in the poem (known as the poem’s
“persona”—usually presumed to be the author, but one cannot always assume
this). Is the observer in the house? In
a nearby house? Walking by? What is the relationship of the observer to the
foreclosed house? As we contemplate these questions, we can feel empathy for
the observer, and also for the people who live (or lived) in the foreclosed
house, whether that’s the observer or not.
Inspiration for haiku, of course,
can come from many places, whether through life’s experiences filtered through
our five senses, from memory, from stories, or even television images (see “How Do You Write Haiku” and “Haiku Stances”). Sometimes,
when I’m stuck with a poem, I like to go to random word generators online (such
as at Watch Out 4 Snakes, Creativity Games, and Word Generator).
More often than not, if I click a few times, I’ll get past my block. I also have
a book on my shelf by Barbara Ann Kipfer, called 14,000 Things to Be Happy About, which is a wonderful list of
everyday objects and events that the author is grateful for—and it’s a superb
resource for haiku ideas. I just opened it at random and found “crocuses” on
page 407, and “clean sheets” on page 263. Yes, I could write about those
subjects, especially if I tap into my personal memories to make sure my poem
feels authentic to the reader rather than contrived. I immediately think of the
first purple crocuses I saw breaking through melting snow when I lived in
Alberta.
For years now, I’ve felt that a
haiku needs to create some sort of “vacuum” by leaving something out. This
vacuum sucks readers in until they think about something unstated. Perhaps not
much is unstated in my foreclosure poem, except the feeling of sadness and
empathy, but I hope it offers at least that. Readers may also wonder about what
a passing car might symbolize—perhaps an uncaring public, or perhaps someone
who’s going to his or her own house that isn’t foreclosed upon, which creates
contrast. These possibilities are what make these lines an “unfinished poem,”
which is how the Japanese
poet Seisensui once described haiku. This “unfinished” nature, when done right,
is what creates the vacuum that draws in the reader, and it’s often
accomplished by the careful juxtaposition of the haiku’s two parts. In
Japanese, this technique employs what’s called a kireji, or cutting word, that divides the poem into two parts, both
grammatically and imagistically, and it’s exactly this technique that can help you create a
“vacuum” in haiku.
Creating implication and an
intuitive leap between two often fragmentary parts is perhaps the most
difficult art that haiku has to offer, yet also its greatest reward. It’s one
thing to make a grammatical or imagistic shift, but it’s quite another for the
two parts to generate some sort of magical relationship when paired together. The
point is that the two parts of the poem shouldn’t be 1 + 1 = 2, but somehow be
1 + 1 = 3. It should be
like mixing vinegar and baking soda—voom! The vacuum of leaving something out is one way you can make the
poem more than the sum of its parts. This art of creating a haiku vacuum doesn’t
have to be hard, though. If you trust what occurs to you, provided your
juxtaposition is not too close or similar to the original image (too obvious)
or too far away (too obscure), then it just might work.
For examples of poems that create
a vacuum, here are two from the Millikin
University Haiku Anthology (Decatur, Illinois: Bronze Man Books, 2008). Most
students whose work appears in the book are new to haiku, yet they pull them
off, frequently creating effective “vacuums” in their poems. This first poem is
by Eva Schwartz (page 63):
sitting on the edge
of the bathtub
pink line
Is there a high-water mark around the tub? If so, why would it be pink? No,
that doesn’t make sense. Rather, the person in the poem has just taken a
pregnancy test, and the device’s test result line is pink, indicating, I
believe, that she is pregnant. What a moment, and so subtly stated just by referring
to the pink line. Think of all the emotion that would flood over the person at that moment. So much is left out, yet it’s all clearly implied, if you
give the poem sufficient attention, sometimes eliminating, just as I did, a
possible misreading. That’s exactly the vacuum that a good haiku creates.
Here’s another example from the
same anthology, this time by Megan Klein (page 129):
speechless at her news
his gaze drops
to her navel
By chance, this poem is also about pregnancy. The reference to the girl’s news
and her navel makes this clear. It is common for haiku to indicate a season. Neither of
these two poems suggest a season (some readers might feel that these poems are
therefore senryu rather than haiku), but they compensate in an understated way by
deftly referring to that special season of pregnancy. T. S. Eliot talked about
the “objective correlative,” the bond of emotion to objects in poetry, and
there is indeed emotion, deep emotion, in that pink line and a woman’s navel if
she has some “news.”
Returning to the foreclosure poem,
it too doesn’t have a seasonal reference (called a kigo, or season word, in Japanese). I’m reasonably happy with the
poem the way it is, though, and adding a seasonal reference in this case might
just mangle it. However, writing any poem’s third line—the juxtaposed part—could
present the opportunity in some poems to inject a seasonal element. Here’s an
attempt:
snowy bus shelter—
the sound fades away
from a passing car
Here we can feel a different sort of loneliness, of being left behind on a cold
snowy day, and feel longing for the warmth of a bus or that passing car. And
notice how the season changes the sound, too. In my foreclosure version, I imagine
summer, or at least not winter, and thus I hear a regular road noise from the
passing car. But now, in winter, perhaps the road is wet or snowy, and thus
louder, as wet roads often are, or quieter, which they might be with a lot of
snow.
I wonder, though, if this version
suffers from being just a description, with too obvious a connection between
the person at the bus shelter, wanting a ride, and envy for a car that passes
by. There is at least a seasonal element, but maybe the results aren’t quite good
enough. Perhaps the other version is better, because it has more gravitas. And
this is the point where you have to put on your editor hat and decide which
version works best for you. Or share both versions with friends, especially if
they’re poets, to see which version they prefer, and why. They might suggest
that the poem be revised to fit a 5-7-5-syllable structure, but it’s worth some
research to understand that the traditional Japanese pattern is of sounds, not
syllables, and that 5-7-5 isn’t necessary in English. Indeed, it’s worth
understanding why this pattern isn’t followed by the vast majority of accomplished haiku poets
publishing literary haiku in English.
Another way to put on your editor
hat is to ask if these words are in the best order or if they express the preferred
moment most efficiently. Writing haiku is all about making choices. Here’s the
“foreclosure” version of this poem with an alternative ending, which changes
the poem’s emphasis:
foreclosure notice—
the sound of a passing car
fades away
The previous
version focused on the sound of the car, but this version emphasizes the fading
of that sound. But you can make other choices, too. Instead of a
car, what if the vehicle were an ambulance or a fire truck? Or an ice cream
truck? These and other options each lend a different tone to the poem. The
sound of a receding emergency vehicle might be too close to the financial
emergency of a foreclosure, and merely saying “car” might be too flat. Adding
“ice cream truck” to the preceding poem would make for a very long middle line,
so how about changing the poem to focus on the truck coming and going instead of just its sound? This would allow
the truck’s ice cream jingle, of course, to be implied.
foreclosure notice—
an ice cream truck
comes and goes
There comes a point, you might
notice, when you try too hard, revise too much, and beat the poem to death. Is
this last version the way to go? Or might it be better to stick with an earlier
version? When a poem goes through many revisions, sometimes it’s vital to step
back and inhale deeply. Go back to the original experience and see if you’ve
caught it well—the moment of poetic inspiration that poet Richard Hugo called
the “triggering town.” And ask yourself if that experience really is what you
want to capture, or if the poem’s evolution in a different direction is okay
with you. When you find yourself asking these questions and reaching answers that
satisfy you, then you’ve moved beyond getting started with haiku and you’re well on
your way.
For my own part, I think I like the “ice cream
truck” version of my foreclosure poem best. While there may be a
cause-and-effect reason why the ice cream truck comes and goes (the foreclosed
house is empty, so no one will be coming out for ice cream), I think there’s a
deeper sadness to the contrast between the necessity of housing and the treat
of ice cream. And perhaps, too, the foreclosure will come and go like the ice
cream truck, and maybe things will be better down the road. On the other hand,
this version moves away somewhat from the initial experience, so I confess that
I like “foreclosure notice— / the sound of a passing car / fades away” as well,
and might even consider them separate poems.
As Robert Frost once said, “Poetry
is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.” This is how a
haiku comes about for many people—starting with a sensory experience
(especially if it gives you a particular emotional feeling), trying to put that
experience into words, and trying different versions. Then you can think about what
works and what doesn’t. It takes practice. And the best way to practice, of
course, is to get started.
Postscript
Some months after
publishing the preceding essay, I read an essay by Martin Lucas, titled “Haiku
and Haiku,” in which he wrote the
following:
To begin writing haiku, and to make progress to any significant
extent, requires two gifts:
- The ability to be alert to the subtleties of sensory or psychological
experience (i.e., to notice things).
- A sensitivity to the subtleties of language (i.e., to be able to
express things).
However, it isn’t necessary to know
that you possess these gifts before
beginning to write: the gifts are very often revealed—and developed—in the
writing. In the process, you may enter something which we might call “haiku
mind.” This isn’t any special or exceptional state, and there are no magic
words of access; there are as many haiku minds as there are readers and writers
of haiku.
But what “haiku mind” points to is
a certain way of seeing the world, and relating to it, which is an unfolding
process of discovery. Once you’ve started on this path, it can take many twists
and turns, but there is no real reason to turn back: if you’re seeing the world
through your haiku mind, why would you ever choose to unsee it?
For anyone who is interested in getting started with haiku, and for those
wishing to continue on the haiku path, perhaps there is nothing more I could possibly
add. I invite you to see it—and discover it—for yourself.
—4 May 2014