In the Eye of the Beholder: Haiku Interpretation
First
published in Blithe Spirit 30:4,
November 2020, pages 37 to 39. Originally written March to June 2020. See the new postscript below. See also
“Misreading Haiku.” The Japanese poet Seisensui has described haiku as an “unfinished” poem, not in the sense that it’s incomplete or inadequate, but in how it requires the reader to complete the poem in his or her heart and mind. Those who dwell in the writing and reading of haiku know this. Such a responsibility seems to be more true with haiku than any other kind of poetry. This is partly what I believe Czesław Miłosz meant when he described haiku as “extra-literary,” not just to anticipate the seasonal reference and the effect of the two-part juxtapositional structure but for readers to enter into the poem so deeply that they experience what the poet experienced and profoundly share the poet’s emotions. As such, haiku writers can gain extra meanings and reverberations through a careful cultivation of ambiguity—even while too much ambiguity can be unhelpful and confusing. One risk that haiku poems therefore take is that a reader may apprehend a poem in a way that differs greatly from the poet’s intent. Or, if the poet claims to have no particular intent, the poem may suffer from having too many possible meanings, or even conflicting meanings. Consider the following poem by Mary Ellen Rooney, published in the 2011 Haiku Society of America members’ anthology, In Pine Shade (page 38): theatre dark the child releases fireflies from her jar At first glance this poem feels magical and joyful. How wonderful that a child should wish to share her joy at seeing fireflies by releasing them into a dark space where many people are present, such as in a theatre. However, another reader might be appalled at the child’s seeming selfishness or shortsightedness for releasing the fireflies in an enclosed human space where surely they will die. How thoughtless! After their brief show for the superficial and unnatural benefit of human observers, the fireflies will undoubtedly not be able to find their way outside where they could thrive, and live out their typical year of life. So is the poem delightful or offensive? Whimsical or distasteful? These are perhaps extreme ways to interpret the poem, and one way to appreciate the experience might be through the possibility that the poet intended both meanings. Or, if the poet did not intend both meanings, which one was her intent? Or, since haiku is often in the eye of the beholder, what is the reader’s preference? Does the chosen interpretation therefore reveal more about the reader than it does about the writer? Yet another intent might be that the theatre is not real, but just a metaphor, and that the child is releasing the fireflies back into the wild where the darkness is equated to being as dark as the inside of a theatre. But most likely that’s a stretch. I remember William J. Higginson reminding me that words in haiku always denotate before they connotate. In other words, the standard dictionary meaning has to work first before any secondary or metaphorical meanings might possibly come to play. But even without the idea of “theatre” merely as metaphor, which of the other two meanings was the intent? And could it be that one or the other meaning was not even anticipated at all? And if so, as a result, does the poem stumble? Haiku observers have often said that ambiguity is useful in haiku, enabling reverberations and oscillations of meaning to give the poem energy. So ambiguity can be good—I like to call it perpetrated ambiguity. But I would say not too much. One wants to control ambiguity so that one can prevent misreadings. This is part of the process of taking a poem from private significance to public clarity, to anticipate how the words might be received by people with different cultural perspectives, geographical locations, or personal histories—or simply to anticipate how particular words might have different meanings than what you might wish them to mean. And by “meaning” I also mean “effect,” which can be emotional and experiential. Creating meaning is a skill that takes practice, it seems to me, but is well worth cultivating. Yet the reader has a responsibility too, to go to where the poet is, and not always expect the poem to explain itself with so much obviousness that it loses its engagement. I’ll cite an example from my own history of commenting on haiku, and how I initially missed the poet’s clearly intended meaning. On a Facebook discussion page I once offered commentary on the following poem by Robert Seretny originally published in Frogpond 34:1, Winter 2011: downgraded hurricane combers hiss back to the sea I’m now a little embarrassed by my hasty commentary, but I’ll share it here as a way, I hope, to be instructive. I had originally written the following, where my first sentence is utterly incorrect, meaning that everything thereafter went in a wrong direction:
Well, it was even more well crafted than I realized. I should have paid more attention to the word “hiss,” because it doesn’t make sense that beachcombers would need to “hiss” at anything. I was simply trying too hard to explain “hiss,” and missed the poem’s real meaning. Indeed, “combers” is a word for waves that have reached their peak and have broken into foam, thus sounding like hissing. I don’t know how I missed or did not discover this meaning, but the word “combers” is not common where I live, or at least not to me. So much for my initial thought that “of course” combers means beachcombers. Still, I appreciated this poem despite my misreading of it (some poetry critics take misreading as a positive, mind you, and as a source of potential creativity—in The Anxiety of Influence Harold Bloom talks about what he calls “misprision,” or situations where writers deliberately or accidentally misinterpret prior works in order to make new or innovative works). I now feel certain that beachcombers were not intended at all, but the poem still portrays the waves after the hurricane in a sympathetic and arresting way. Whatever one does with haiku, it is worthwhile both as a writer and as a reader to pay close attention to one’s writing and reading, and for readers to spend more time with a poem if any element might be puzzling. We might well find a great deal of beauty that goes beyond just the eye of the beholder. PostscriptAs an addendum to the preceding short essay, I’d like to share some Facebook commentary made on one of my poems on 17 January 2021, for which I’m grateful. It appeared on the Triveni: World Haiku Utsav page, initially posted by Ashish Narain Haiku:
Some of the comments in response included the following (lightly edited here):
I don’t see my poem as being any kind of experimentation, nor as breaking any particular rules. I offered the following commentary:
I don’t expect readers to know that picking trillium flowers apparently kills the plant or that it is illegal to pick these flowers in some locations, even though that’s what first inspired this poem. Instead, I hope the poem emphasizes respect for nature and not destroying it for selfish motives. + + + —17 January 2021 |