Even in Seattle: An Introduction to Haiku Poetry
The Origin of HaikuWhere did haiku come from? The term haiku, or “playful verse,” is only about a hundred years old, and was coined in the late 1800s by Shiki, one of Japan’s great haiku masters. Before then, haiku were known as hokku, which means “starting verse.” The hokku began a linked verse form known as renga, written by two or more poets. In a renga, the first verse (in a pattern of 5-7-5 sounds) was followed by a verse in a 7-7 pattern, followed by another 5-7-5 verse, and so on. Renga were typically written in lengths of 100 verses, sometimes even 1,000. The hokku poem set the tone for the entire renga, yet was also deliberately fragmentary and “incomplete,” a trait still evident in haiku today. Readers “finished” the poem in their imaginations. Hokku also commemorated the season in which the renga was written, and this seasonal element is still central to the haiku art. Bashō, the first great master of what became known as haiku, wrote mostly haikai no renga in a pattern of 36 verses (the modern term is renku), and his hokku were so good that his students collected them separately from the renga where they first appeared. It was not until the 1890s, though, thanks to the efforts of Shiki, that haiku became a truly independent poem. Here’s a haiku by Shiki, who was gravely ill with tuberculosis towards the end of his life:again and again I keep asking how high the snow is BashōOf the four great masters who dominated haiku in Japan, the first was Matsuo Bashō, who lived from 1644 to 1694. Bashō came from a samurai family and spent much of his life traveling and writing haikai no renga. He also wrote haibun, which was a mixture of autobiographical prose with haiku, often in the form of travel diaries. His most famous diary is the Oku no hosomichi, or The Narrow Road to the Interior. This book was not just about the interior of northern Japan, where he traveled on foot for many months, but was a journey to his psychological and spiritual interior as well. Bashō has been called the “Shakespeare” of Japan, and Japanese schoolchildren memorize Bashō’s most famous poems. Bashō once said to “Learn of the pine tree from the pine tree, learn of the bamboo from the bamboo,” and this is good advice for anyone wishing to write haiku with depth and empathy.Here are three poems by Bashō: a crow settles on a bare branch— autumn evening from cherry trees, into salads, soups, and everywhere, blossoms fall deep autumn— I wonder how my neighbour lives BusonThe second of Japan’s four great haiku masters was Yosa Buson. Compared to Bashō, who wrote his poems from a Zen-influenced spiritual perspective, Buson was more humanistic. He lived from 1716 to 1783, and not only excelled at haiku, but at painting as well. In Japan, Buson’s paintings are now considered national treasures. One type of painting that he excelled at was haiga, which is the art of harmoniously combining haiku, calligraphy, and brush painting. Buson’s poems were often strongly objective, employing an immediacy and imagism that we might expect from an accomplished painter. Through literary allusion, Buson helped to revive an appreciation for Bashō’s poetry, even while he added his own strong, distinctive, and sometimes philosophical voice to the history of Japanese haiku.Here are three of Buson’s poems: such coolness— the bell’s sound leaving the bell summer river— I cross it with sandals here in my hand sleeping in— cherry blossoms stuck to the soles of my shoes IssaKobayashi Issa is often considered the most endearing and lovable of Japan’s four great haiku masters. This is because he wrote so appreciatively about small and seemingly insignificant things. His poems about snails, fleas, sparrows, and crickets epitomize his folksy and empathetic style. Issa lived a hard life, from 1763 to 1828, undergoing repeated personal and family tragedies. His mother died when he was three, his stepmother despised him and made him work in the fields instead of going to school, he was forced to leave home at fourteen, and he lived a life of much poverty. Although he later married and found some literary success as a haiku poet, his children died very young, as did one of his wives. Yet he wrote 20,000 mostly joyous haiku in his lifetime, influenced by his practice of Pure Land Buddhism. Indeed, the best of Issa’s haiku are remembered for their intimacy, buoyancy, and indomitable joy.in this world we walk on the roof of hell gazing at flowers Issa’s poems are deservedly among the best-loved poems of Japan. Here are three more: melting snow— the village flooded with children the radish puller points my way with a radish bugs on a branch floating down the river, still singing ShikiMasaoka Shiki, the fourth of the four great masters of Japanese haiku, lived from 1867 to 1902. He is said to have coined the term haiku. This was part of his successful effort to recognize the hokku (the starting verse of longer linked verses) as a separate and independent genre of poetry. Shiki was sometimes critical of Bashō, giving more favour to the imagism of Buson, yet, in the process, he helped to revive and elevate haiku. He was also innovative with tanka (a longer and much older cousin to haiku, written in a pattern of 5-7-5-7-7 sounds, often about love). In haiku, Shiki emphasized the technique of shasei, or “sketching from life.” With this technique, he promoted the use of objectivity in haiku, enabling the image to show rather than to tell. Despite the tuberculosis that he suffered from through much of his short life, Shiki probably had more influence than any other poet on modern haiku in Japan and even around the world.Shiki revolutionized haiku with his commentary and criticism, opening the door to broader variety and experimentation. Many of his own haiku, however, were fairly traditional, and he valued discipline, aesthetics, and careful crafting. Here are three Shiki poems: rear window— a woman’s face looking out at the falling snow my body pressed against the plaster wall— such heat my view of it through a hole in the shoji— slanting snow Chiyo-niThe poet Chiyo-ni should rightly be considered a “fifth” master of Japanese haiku of equal stature to Bashō, Buson, Issa, and Shiki. That she has not been recognized equally was largely because of patriarchal traditions in Japanese society, but she is easily Japan’s most celebrated female haiku poet. Chiyo-ni lived from 1703 to 1775. In her 50s, she became a Buddhist nun to pursue her poetic art, because nuns did not have the normal social expectations imposed on them that other women had. Being a nun gave her the freedom to write. This freedom nurtured Chiyo-ni’s heart and helped her to produce her best poems. Chiyo-ni’s approach to haiku, like that of Bashō and Issa, was spiritual and compassionate. She often wrote about impermanence, thereby celebrating its sad beauty. Like Buson, Chiyo-ni also excelled at haiga, or haiku painting.Here are three poems by Chiyo-ni, the first of which is about her son who had died: I wonder where he chases dragonflies today, my lost little boy the morning glory entangles the well bucket— I seek water elsewhere coming home— not a word to say after moon viewing Contemporary Haiku in JapanTranslator R. H. Blyth once wrote that “A haiku is . . . a hand beckoning, a door half-opened, a mirror wiped clean. It is a way of returning to nature, to our moon nature, our cherry blossom nature, our falling leaf nature, in short, to our Buddha nature.” He also said, “It is a way in which the cold winter rain, the swallows of evening, even the very day in its hotness, and the length of the night become truly alive, share in our humanity, speak their own silent and expressive language.” In Japan, haiku attracts many millions of practitioners. According to the Kadokawa Haiku Almanac, in 2006 Japan had 835 known haiku groups, each typically having a monthly meeting known as a kukai where members vote anonymously for the best poems submitted by members. Most of these groups publish a journal, typically monthly, and each issue contains many hundreds of haiku. One of Japan’s largest haiku journals, Hototogisu, is available at newsstands across the country. It has perhaps the longest ongoing lineage—Shiki published in the journal more than a hundred years ago. Hototogisu has 15,000 members who receive the publication monthly, and each issue typically has about 350 pages and 10,000 haiku in each monthly issue. Japan obviously has a complex and active haiku scene. Television shows regularly feature haiku, including, in English, the current “Haiku Masters” program on NHK, available through Comcast cable television in the Pacific Northwest. In addition, many cities maintain museums for haiku literature and its leading poets. You can find haiku in restaurants and hotels, in temples and shrines, on haiku stones by the side of the road, on soft drink cans sold in vending machines, and in daily newspaper columns read by tens of millions of people every day. Matsuyama, Shiki’s birthplace in Ehime prefecture, is often called “Haiku Country” because of the many famous haiku poets who were born there, and you can find nearly a hundred “haiku boxes” all around the city where you can share your poems. In Japan, haiku is not only a highly respected literary vocation but also an adored pastime of ordinary people. The beauty of haiku is how these unassuming poems celebrate the ordinary. Their brevity makes them easy to write, and they are even easier to enjoy, because of the powerful emotions that they evoke through sensory imagery. Everyone can celebrate life through haiku.Here’s a selection of haiku by five contemporary Japanese poets. These translations are by Emiko Miyashita and Michael Dylan Welch: 紅梅の莟は固し言はず 高浜虚子 kōbai no tsubomi wa katashi mono iwazu the red plum’s flower buds are tight— I say nothing Kyoshi Takahama 秋来ぬと思ふ木蔭に入るたび 鷹羽狩行 aki kinu to omou kokage ni hairu tabi autumn has come— or so I think, whenever I enter a tree’s shade Shugyō Takaha 夜桜を映せる水の深さかな 有馬朗人 yozakura wo utsuseru mizu no fukasa kana the depth of water reflecting cherry blossoms at night Akito Arima 秋澄むと石垣に手を当てにけり 井上弘美 akisumu to ishigaki ni te wo ate ni keri saying how clear the autumn is, I touch a stone fence Hiromi Inoue 水槽に橋を沈める立夏かな 宮下惠美子 suisō ni hashi wo shizumeru rikka kana I sink a little bridge to the aquarium floor— first day of summer Emiko Miyashita Contemporary Haiku in EnglishFrench philosopher Roland Barthes once wrote that “haiku has this rather fantasmagorical property: that we always suppose we ourselves can write such things easily.” Haiku do indeed look easy to write, but to write them well can be much more challenging than the superficial way they are typically taught in schools. As already mentioned, haiku is usually mistaught as being a 5-7-5-syllable poem, yet this is not only inaccurate but neglects requirements of the genre that are more important than form—the season word and a two-part juxtapositional structure, usually presented using objective and commonplace language. In the West, the Haiku Society of America began in 1968, and there are now thriving haiku organizations in many other countries as well. In the Seattle area, the Haiku Northwest group was founded in 1988 (although greatly predated by the Rainier Haiku Ginsha, for Japanese-language haiku, which began in 1934). The Seattle Japanese Garden often has haiku-related activities, including a haiku contest for its annual moon viewing festival in late summer or early fall each year. Numerous haiku journals, such as Modern Haiku, Frogpond, and The Heron’s Nest, are published regularly, and the Haiku North America conference has been held biennially since 1991 in various cities around the continent, including Port Townsend, Washington in 2005, and at Seattle Center in 2011 (with the banquet up the Space Needle). The California State Library in Sacramento also houses the American Haiku Archives, the largest public collection of haiku literature outside Japan, founded in 1996. An online search of these societies, publications, and organizations will help you find more information. Further reading online or in essential books such as Cor van den Heuvel’s The Haiku Anthology and William J. Higginson’s The Haiku Handbook, and, more recently, Jim Kacian’s Haiku in English: The First Hundred Years, will help to inspire you to write some haiku of your own. The word haiku is both singular and plural, and haiku poems typically avoid titles, rhyme, and overt metaphors and similes. Haiku also tend to avoid initial capitals and closing punctuation because they are fragmentary and not complete sentences. Haiku may look easy to write, but it’s challenging to make them work well, without artifice. As Seattle-born haiku pioneer James W. Hackett once put it, a haiku is like a finger pointing to the moon, and if the hand is bejeweled, we no longer see the moon.Here are a five haiku by contemporary poets from Washington State: snapped line— the salmon’s full length in the air Francine Porad deeper pink where cherry petals overlap— my hand in yours Ruth Yarrow spring memorial the dampness in a handful of soil Alice Frampton moonlight billows through a mosquito net the sound of the sea Christopher Herold summer garden the full stretch of the hose Connie Donleycott To conclude, here’s a poem of mine that parodies a Bashō haiku about Kyoto: misty garden— even in Seattle I long for Seattle |