This Perfect Rose:
The Lasting Legacy of William J. Higginson
First published in the Haiku Foundation journal Juxta, 1:1, May 2015. See PDF version. Since its original publication, I’ve made a few minor corrections and updates, and have added the paragraph that starts with “Higginson’s promotion of current Japanese haiku.” This essay also appeared online in Haiku Reality 12:20, Summer 2015, where you can also read the Serbian translation. My gratitude to Penny Harter, who responded to this essay on 2 May 2015, immediately after it was first published, by saying “What a thorough, insightful, and caring tribute to Bill this wonderful essay of yours is! A bow of thanks from him, whatever dimension he’s in, and from me.” See also “The Democracy of Haiku,” my introduction to Fire in the Treetops: Celebrating Twenty-Five Years of Haiku North America, a book dedicated to Higginson.
When William J. Higginson died on 11 October 2008, at the age of 69, he left
behind a legacy of love for haiku poetry—his perfect rose. This legacy, chiefly
in the form of poems, criticism, and books, particularly The Haiku Handbook, has influenced and directed generations of
haiku poets for nearly half a century. His combination of being a poet,
translator, teacher, editor, publisher, and scholar—or “haiku coach,” as he
sometimes called himself—gave his legacy accessible appeal and lasting authority.
For the length and breadth of his legacy, William J. Higginson takes his place
with R. H. Blyth and Harold G. Henderson as one of the three most influential English-language
commentators to have written about haiku poetry.
Poetic Influences and Haiku Growth
William J. Higginson was born on 17 December 1938 in New York City,
and grew up in the Bronx and Bergenfield, New Jersey. After attending the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, he joined the United States Air Force, which sent him
to Yale to learn Japanese. He then served in Japan for two years at Misawa Air
Base, in Aomori prefecture, near the northernmost tip of Honshu. It was at Yale
and Misawa that his love of the Japanese language and its literature began to
flower. In his introduction to Ten Years’
Collected Haiku, Volume 1 (Fanwood, New Jersey: From Here Press, 1987),
Higginson wrote that “The haiku was my starting verse. . . . my initiation
began with an instructor at Yale reciting Bashō’s furuike-ya to my class in Japanese military terminology. . . .
Bashō’s poem struck me like the stick of a Zen master” (1). Higginson wrote again
of this pivotal influence in his haibun, titled “Well-Bucket Nightfall, or New
Day?” published in the Haiku Society of America journal Frogpond 32:1, Winter 2009, the issue dedicated to him shortly
after his death. This was to be “Bill’s last personal writing, a haibun,
written Friday, October 3rd, 2008, eight days before he died” (5):
Is this, then, to
be the journal of my own well-bucket nightfall, when my own life will be
snuffed out in a few weeks’ time? Or the journal of a dark night to a bright
new day? I have lived a long and productive life, to my own understanding,
lived much of it on my own terms, much on the pure dumb luck of some accidental
word or event no one could have predicted. Who could know that a single verse
spoken in an endless year of USAF Japanese vocabulary drills relating to parts
of weapons and flying airplanes would lead to a life-long interest in Japanese
poetry that has sustained me through all the rest.
smell of bile . . .
I waken to October
afterglow
Higginson’s passion for haiku led him
to a life of poetry, criticism, and translation that embraced his knowledge of
the language and culture, beginning with the publication of Twenty-Five Pieces of Now, translations
of classical Japanese haiku, in 1968. This was the same year that Higginson
became a charter member of the Haiku Society of America, which held its inaugural
meeting in New York City in October of 1968 (he also served as president of the
organization in 1976, and in 2007 he received the HSA’s Sora Award for service
to the society). In 1969, Higginson completed a BA in English (with honours) from
Southern Connecticut State College. In 1971, prompted by a desire to know more
about William Carlos Williams, he moved to Paterson, New Jersey. He edited Haiku Magazine from 1971 to 1976, and in
1975 he started From Here Press, which published mostly haiku-related
chapbooks, including collections by Allen Ginsberg and Ruth Stone. The press’s
website, listing selected books published over the years, is active at http://fhp.2hweb.net/contents.html.
Higginson stayed in New Jersey until 1991, when he and his wife, Penny Harter, relocated
to Santa Fe, New Mexico, a move chronicled in Met on the Road, his Bashō-influenced haibun book that my press,
Press Here, published in 1993—a book that focuses on various haiku friends and
their poems, all “met on the road.” He and Penny moved back to Summit, New
Jersey in 2002, where he died in 2008 after a three-month illness.
William Higginson was sometimes
imperial, but not imperious. He knew when to dress in a suit and tie when
giving an important speech, but wore a blazer with leather-patched elbows
rather than a three-piece suit. He was a dedicated and passionate scholar, but although
he did not have a PhD, he had educated himself more than enough to reach an equivalent
knowledge. In print he went by William J. Higginson. In person he went by Bill.
He was a tall-looking man, but not quite as tall as his slender frame usually
suggested. He wore glasses and a beard that gave him a grandfatherly demeanor. He
could be stern, yet he laughed readily. He expected something of every poet who
approached him, whether encouraging a beginner to write a better haiku by
learning more of its traditional propensity for season words, or by demanding that
a peer rise to his level of scholarship and clear thinking. He could be
impatient, but this was because he expected much of everyone around him. Yet he
could also be patient, always taking time to respond to every question when he
could, especially from those who were new to haiku. In a long letter to me, dated 6 July 1990, more than a year
before we would meet at the first Haiku North America conference, Higginson
wrote “I have enjoyed your work . . . and look forward to seeing what sort of
things you will do as an editor and publisher.” Words such as these, surely
shared with many others first making his acquaintance, were tremendously
encouraging. Above all,
his goal was to be helpful to modern poets. As he wrote in Ten Years’ Collected Haiku, Volume 1, “The game was to take haiku
out of the hands of those poetasters who would keep all poetry in antiquity,
and bring haiku and its devotees full-bore into the heat of our own time and
place” (4).
In a private email message to me on 19 April 2015, haiku
scholar Richard Gilbert noted the following about Higginson—observations that
catch something of who Higginson was, and how supportive he was to so many
people, in all spectra of experience (Gilbert
was the first person to deliver the biennial William J. Higginson Memorial
Lecture, first established in 2011, at my suggestion, by the Haiku North America conference):
Haiku
North America 2007 [in Winston-Salem, North Carolina] was the first and last
time I would meet and talk with Bill, though I’ve continued a warm collegial
friendship with his wife, Penny Harter. In print, Bill sometimes crossed the
line between objective criticism and personal attack. At the same time, as anyone
familiar with criticism knows, strong critics hold strong opinions—strongly
negative critique is part of the game. . . . Bill was at times a savage
gatekeeper, with strong opinions. At HNA, I gave a talk on Hasegawa Kai, as a
way of establishing new possibilities for English-language haiku. After the
lecture and in the following days Bill and I had a chance to talk. I found Bill
to be expansive, intellectually deep, and open-minded—also he was quite excited
about my work. It was my impression he appreciated the rigor and research
involved in my arguments, as well as the grounding in haiku history and contact
with notables in Japan. I’d also mention that, to date, there is really nothing
to compete with Bill’s Haiku Handbook
for expansiveness, for scope—where else would you find haiku (or haikuesque)
poems discussed, which were penned by Paz, Seferis, Éluard, etc.? Bill taught
me not just about haiku, but about haiku in cultural and historical settings.
He helped make me aware of new avenues of literature, and alerted me to
possibilities of critical approach, for haiku.
Similarly, in an appreciation that
appeared in Simply Haiku 6:4, Winter
2009,[1]
George Swede wrote about Higginson’s connection with poets and scholars of all
levels of experience:
Bill was a different person to different people. . . . In
all that he did for haiku, Bill was diligent, independent and non-elitist. . .
. Bill was also always ready to help anyone—from novice to master—in solving
any problem to do with Japanese poetic forms: definitions, the proper season
word, the appropriate next line in a renku, the right reference text, a
translation from Japanese into English and vice-versa, the best place to
publish one’s work, and so on. No wonder the descriptor, “He was generous with his
time,” is frequently included in discussions about Bill after his death. . . .
Undoubtedly, in the future William J. Higginson will be remembered as an icon
in the history of English-language haiku. But in the present, we cannot help
thinking mainly of Bill’s generosity and his outreach to other poets.
In his early years as a poet, the
1960s and 70s, Higginson balanced his haiku studies with longer poetry,
publishing small anthologies, such as Between
Two Rivers: Ten North Jersey Poets (Fanwood, New Jersey: From Here Press,
1981). He also published numerous volumes of his own poetry, such as Paterson Pieces: Poems 1969–1979
(Fanwood, New Jersey: Old Plate Press, 1981), continuing the practice with such
later books as The Healing (Fanwood, New Jersey: From
Here Press, 1986), and Surfing on Magma (Summit, New Jersey: From Here Press, 2006). In 1973, he started teaching
poetry in the Poets-in-the-Schools program, which deepened his practical
experience of converting scholarly explorations into accessible knowledge for
his students. He continued to be not just a teacher but a teaching poet, and in
1989 was inducted into the New Jersey Literary Hall of Fame. In the 60s and
70s, he also started publishing translations and essays on haiku that appeared
in leading haiku journals of the time, at first in Jean Calkins’ Haiku Highlights and Eric Amann’s Haiku, the latter of which Higginson
took over in 1971 and renamed Haiku
Magazine. His early criticism in Haiku
Highlights, published serially under the pen name of Hian (until someone
correctly guessed that William J. Higginson was the author), promoted
significant change in the poems published in this early haiku journal. This
series of essays culminated in the book Itadakimasu:
Essays on Haiku and Senryu in English (Kanona, New York: J & C
Transcripts, 1971), which won an award for critical writing in
the inaugural Haiku Society of
America Merit Book Awards in 1974. Itadakimasu
was also a forerunner to Higginson’s most influential book, The Haiku Handbook, which also won the
HSA’s Merit Book Award for textbook/scholarly work, in 1986.
As a publisher, too, with From
Here Press, started in 1975, he demonstrated a penchant for service, to help
others rather than focusing just on publishing his own work. In the 70s, he also
began to write and study renku and related linked poetry, at first under the
influence of Tadashi Kondō. Renku became an intense and lifelong passion, and
he led many renku sessions at conferences and other gatherings, with statues of
Bashō and Sora often placed near him as he offered instruction and guidance
(these statues are now mine, a gift of Penny Harter). Renku and related
collaborative genres would give further social awareness to his writing, adding
another dimension to his drive to promote seasonal reference in haiku. In the
past, as today, haiku served to connect poets to each other as a social art,
but also served to connect each poet and his or her poem to time—both the
specific time of year and to the metaphorical time of life, in all their
unfolding seasons. Higginson was not merely studying the haikai of old Japan,
but actively bringing it into the twentieth century through the writing and
appreciation of new work.
Higginson’s promotion of current
Japanese haiku included the publication of a compendium of translations and work
on at least three additional books by prominent Japanese haiku poets. These collections,
with Higginson’s translations, some translated with Tadashi Kondō, include The Big Waves: Meisetsu, Shiki, Hekigotō,
Kyoshi, Hakyō (Fanwood, New Jersey: From Here Press, 1989), A Simple Universe by Sonō Uchida (Foster
City, California: Press Here, 1995), Red
Fuji: Selected Haiku of Yatsuka Ishihara (Santa Fe, New Mexico: From Here
Press, 1997), and Over the Wave: Selected
Haiku of Ritsuo Okada (Santa Fe, New Mexico: From Here Press, 2001). With
these books Higginson helped to bring attention, at least amid the Western haiku
community, to leading haiku poets in Japan, emphasizing that haiku was a
contemporary living art, and not just plucked from the pages of Japanese
antiquity.
As an editor, Higginson could be
relentless, but only because he insisted on high standards, not just for
himself but also for those with whom he worked. In 2001, he provided a
back-cover blurb for The Nick of Time,
a collection of essays on haiku aesthetics by Paul O. William that I published
with my press, Press Here. He also reviewed the introduction that I wrote with
Lee Gurga for the book. His edits were forceful and detailed, decrying the paragraphs
that didn’t flow, or lacked clear logic, taking us to task for sloppy writing.
My first reaction was to resist nearly everything he said, but when I looked
past his stridency, I saw that he was right. He had invested himself in the
essay, being generous with his time as he had done in previous interactions.
Through this investment he found a better way to say what needed to be said,
and offered it to us. It wasn’t just that he wanted what we’d written to be
better. Rather, his intensity demonstrated that he cared, that discussions of
haiku mattered to him. Ultimately, these interactions showed him to be accepting
me as a peer. I reciprocated as best I could by reviewing some of his essays,
such as his detailed and impatient review of Jane Reichhold’s Writing and Enjoying Haiku,[2]
providing numerous examples of problems pointed out in the review. We also
worked closely together, long before this, on A Haiku Path, the monumental 1994 anthology that documented the
first twenty years of the Haiku Society of America from 1968, and also debated,
at length, each Haiku North America conference, and all the papers and
discussions that arose from this gathering of the haiku tribes every two years.
He was at odds with me about Garry Gay’s invention of the rengay form, which I
had promoted heavily as an alternative—or complement—to renku, but we both saw
past that disagreement to value the fact that each of us in our own way was on
the haiku path.
In later years, Higginson started
a blog about haiku books, an extensive website, Renku Home,[3]
devoted to renku and other writing about haiku, and also edited (yet more
service on his part) the “Haiku and Related Forms” portal site[4]
of the Open Directory Project. This website, in its long day, was the single best
and most egalitarian online assemblage for worldwide haiku-related resources,
one that brandished Higginson’s democratic approach to haiku by acknowledging even
pseudo-haiku. The site has been neglected since Higginson’s death. Perhaps no
one could do it justice the way he could.
Haiku and Senryu
It is worth sharing the following poems from a span of five decades
to give a sense of William Higginson as a poet as well as a translator and
scholar. As much as he valued his recognition as a commentator on haiku, as a
teacher and haiku coach, he wanted to balance that work with poetry too.
More
intricate
than
all winter’s designs,
this
spring flake
The preceding poem won the Haiku Society of America’s first contest, in 1968.
Holding the water
held by it—
the dark mud.
Higginson told me that he wanted to retain the capitalization and punctuation
of this 1970 poem because that was the way it was originally published, even if
he no longer wrote that way. This poem shows, too, that he was not needlessly
rigid in employing season words in his haiku, omitting them when it was best
for the poem.
grey
dawn
ice
on the seats
of
the rowboat
the
tick, tick
of
snow on the reeds . . .
sparrow
tracks
The preceding two winter poems, from 1982 and 1989, show Higginson’s continuing
emphasis on seasonal reference. Listen to the T, K, and S sounds of the latter
poem. Higginson once reminded me that in Japan they talk of “composing” haiku,
not “writing” them, a point that underscores the lyrical and musical feeling in
Japanese haiku that poets writing in English should also remember.
New
Year’s Eve . . .
thieves
have left my car open
in
the falling snow
going
over a bump
the
car ahead
going
over a bump
These two car poems, from 1994 and 1999, are examples of both haiku and senryu.
While Higginson wrote extensively about haiku, he also embraced senryu. He was
very encouraging to me in a review in Modern
Haiku of my anthology, Fig Newtons:
Senryu to Go (Foster City, California: Press Here, 1993), and was passionate
about distinguishing between haiku and senryu, even while his primary focus was
on haiku.
summer
storm . . .
a
shopping cart rolls past
the
end of the lot
crescent
moon
would
I look at the clouds
without
it?
These 2001 and 2004 poems illustrate Higginson’s ability to notice details,
including close observations of himself and his emotional state, and to write
about the ordinary and everyday. He encouraged others to write about such
topics, to keep haiku accessible.
I
look up
from
writing
to
daylight.
writing
again
the
tea water
boiled
dry
spring
rain
rereading
my own book
I
fall asleep
 William J. Higginson’s “I look up” haiku appears in clay at the Haiku Pathway at Santa Fe Community College in Santa Fe, New Mexico. +
These three poems, from 1970, 1986, and 2005, cover a span of thirty-five
years. They show a dedicated author at work, yet one who is not afraid to poke
fun at himself, not taking himself too seriously.
Here are two more poems, from 2004
and 2005, that seem to look ahead to his final illness and perhaps his own
passing:
fireworks
crashing
and
fireflies so silent . . .
tomorrow
the biopsy
one
maple leaf . . .
end
over end on the sand
without
a trace
In the very first paragraph of The Haiku
Handbook, Higginson wrote that “The primary purpose of reading and writing
haiku is sharing moments of our lives that have moved us, pieces of experience
and perception that we offer or receive as gifts. At the deepest level, this is
the one great purpose of all art, and especially of literature” (v). In his
haiku and senryu, William J. Higginson participated in this social act of sharing,
of giving the reciprocal gift of haiku, and hoped not only that others could
see what he saw, but that he could see and feel what others saw and felt.
Seven Successes of The Haiku Handbook
Where Higginson cemented his legacy was with the publication of The Haiku Handbook, published by
McGraw-Hill in 1985, reprinted by Kodansha International in 1989, and reissued
in a twenty-fifth anniversary edition in 2010, also from Kodansha
International. In inscribing my copy of the McGraw-Hill edition in 1991,
Higginson referred to the book as “these rambles through brambles—watch for the
thorns, but see the dewdrops.” He knew from decades of experience, before and
after the book was published, that understandings of haiku were a contentious
business. He knew that what he offered was one perspective, but I believe he
also knew, with confidence, that he offered a balanced and informed perspective
that would enable his readers to see the dewdrops despite any thorns.
Booklist referred to The
Haiku Handbook as “the standard work in the field,” and that observation is
still true today, even decades later. I believe the book has succeeded, and
continues to succeed, for at least seven reasons. The first is that it covers
the genre’s history, yet not exhaustively. Higginson provides overviews of the
Japanese masters as well as the development of haiku in English, with just the
right amount of information to be informative but not taxing. His chapters on
“Haiku Old and New” hint at greater depths of exploration, but not with so much
information that he would tire readers who did not already have a specialized
or academic interest in haiku poetry. For someone with so much knowledge that
he could have unloaded with a blast, then or later, he chose a path of
restraint—a characteristic not unlike haiku poetry itself. He was, in a sense,
an idling Ferrari of haiku knowledge, but knew that some of his readers needed
just a bus ride. Nevertheless, he wanted to make sure they got somewhere.
A second reason for the book’s
success is its carefully refined and wide-ranging translations. The translations
of Harold Henderson and Kenneth Yasuda in the middle of the twentieth century had
been gilded with titles, rhymes, and sometimes contorted syntax (although I
believe Henderson, to his credit, later disowned the rhymes and titles). Unlike
these stilted, Victorian versions, Higginson’s were modern, accessible, and
disarmingly simple, a balance of the academic and poetic. He also presented them
in historical and cultural contexts that brought them alive, making them seem
as if they’d just been written. Higginson told me (and surely others) that he
was particularly proud of his translation of Bashō’s furuike ya, which he said he worked and reworked in countless ways
over many years:
old
pond . . .
a
frog leaps in
water’s
sound
It is so simple, yet the details were very important, such as the ellipsis
rather than a dash to indicate the ya
cutting word, to suggest a moment of passing time when we encounter the pond,
and to help emphasize the temporal contrast between the pond’s oldness against the
newness of the frog and its splash. He also knew that, before Bashō’s haiku,
Japanese poems about frogs celebrated their croak rather than their jump. Here
the poet was celebrating a different kind of sound, a radical departure from
centuries of previous poems. This was an overtone to the meaning of “old” that readers
miss too easily today. It was also important to Higginson to say “in” rather
than “into,” because he said the poem was not metaphysical in the way it would
need to be for the frog to somehow leap “into” the sound rather than into the
pond—a translation that he considered to be in error. Bashō’s poem was much
more direct and unpretentious than that, even while it had layers of depth. And
he found “water’s sound” to be better than “the sound of water,” another
possible translation of mizu no oto,
because it was more concise. This version of Bashō’s most famous poem is so unassuming,
and so widely known, that we forget that it began with Higginson, and distils
multiple considerations, not all of which are addressed here. Higginson cared
deeply about every nuance in his translations. On occasion he has been taken to
task for some of his choices, as any translator will be, but his versions all
reflect his deep caring for poems in the haiku genre, his love for these perfect roses.
A third influence on the success
of The Haiku Handbook is its succinct
writing guidance. Where R. H. Blyth excelled at translating a great volume
of haiku, describing what he saw as the aesthetics or techniques used in
Japanese haiku and what to look for when reading them, Higginson extended well-considered
advice to embrace the writing of
haiku in English, in the context of Imagism, modernism, and postmodernism. He
moved from the descriptive to the prescriptive, but was gentle if he was ever didactic.
His guidance was as direct and immediate as the following, something I’ve
adapted into my own workshops on haiku when I say, “Don’t write about your
feelings; instead, write about what caused
your feelings”:
This is the main
lesson of haiku. When we compose a haiku we are saying, “It is hard to tell you
how I am feeling. Perhaps if I share with you the event that made me aware of
these feelings, you will have similar feelings of your own.” Is this not one of
the best ways to share feelings? (5)
A fourth reason for the book’s
success is its wide appeal to poets, teachers, and general readers at the nexus
of scholarly and popular writing. He did not dumb anything down, but respected
the reader’s intelligence as well as patience by concisely offering informed
substance and practical guidance, not just for poets but for those who would
teach poetry. Penny Harter’s haiku lesson plan adds to the practicality of the
book, and many teachers of haiku, myself included, have adopted the seminal
guidance offered here. Contributing to this wide appeal is the fact that the
material is not overly specialized. Perhaps haiku itself is a specialized
interest in the context of all poetry or other literature, but for those
interested in haiku, the book was not excessively detailed, perhaps wisely for
an introductory work. Higginson’s later books, Haiku Seasons and Haiku World,
were much more specialized in their focus on seasonal references, and their
exploration in a worldwide context, something that had never been done in
English before, at least not to the same extent.
A fifth contribution to the
success of The Haiku Handbook lies in
its liberal use of examples by various poets, complete with contextual references
to other poets, such as the poetic ideograms of E. E. Cummings. Where
others writing about haiku have used their own poems, sometimes exclusively, to
illustrate their points, Higginson uses poems by poets from around the world,
the sung and unsung. He was celebrating his subject, not himself, and not even
other poets. His selections recognize the value of particular poems, without
regard to whether the poet is well known. Consequently, someone like Marion J.
Richardson (have you heard of her?) could be treated the same as a Nobel Prize winner.
He did not shy away from quoting haiku by famous writers—such as Dag Hammarskjöld,
Richard Wright, Tablada, Rilke, Machado, Snyder, Ginsberg, Borges, Seferis,
Paz, and others—but his emphasis was more on the poem. By this emphasis, he
demonstrated the democracy of haiku, that haiku was a poetry of the people,
accessible to anyone, even while it also attracted well-known writers. By
quoting so widely, too, Higginson builds confidence in his readers, who see
that he knows his material, providing a passion that becomes infectious.
A sixth reason for the book’s
success is its simple title. The alliteration goes a long way in making the
book memorable and marketable, while the choice of words also promotes the
book’s practicality. Need help with haiku? Then you need a handbook, and
William J. Higginson has written one. It’s an unpretentious yet informative
title, with just a touch of catchiness. Would it have sold so well if it had
been blandly named How to Write Haiku?
A seventh reason for the success
of Higginson’s best-known book may simply be that its author was the right
person at the right time. He was a poet, unlike Blyth and Henderson, and a much
better poet than Yasuda, and he was a translator and a student of Japanese
culture. He was not as fluent in Japanese as Blyth, Henderson, or Yasuda, but
perhaps that was a strength, in that it forced him to study carefully, and to empathize
with his readers who were also not fluent in Japanese. Translations of Japanese
haiku had been appearing from Blyth and Henderson, and through the widely
popular Peter Pauper Press editions into the 1970s, and now that interest could
be developed into English-language haiku by a wide swath of readers. At this
point, too, there had been only one major collection of English-language haiku,
Cor van den Heuvel’s The Haiku Anthology
(New York: Doubleday, 1974), but although it was a major accomplishment, it was
in some ways still formative. More guidance was needed, and The Haiku Handbook was just the book to
help. Higginson was also a teacher, used to sharing ideas and fielding questions
in a classroom, juggling learning styles and reader resistances to make his
subject clear. And he lived close enough to the publishing powerhouses in New
York City so that he could more readily approach them. By the time the book
appeared, Higginson had been building a name for himself with poems,
translations, and criticism for almost twenty years. Even if that was only
within a small community, it gave him a voice that the haiku community wanted
to hear more from, yet he extended his reliability on the subject to a broader
poetry community as well, and to teachers and those with a general interest in
Japanese arts. These factors all came together at the right time, when there
hadn’t yet been a book published about haiku that could bring this poetry into
the modern age.
In contrast, for example, Joan
Giroux’s The Haiku Form (Rutland,
Vermont: Tuttle, 1974) seemed too narrow in its focus, dwelling more on
Japanese haiku than on writing them in English, and lacked the range and
context of Higginson’s awareness, poetics, and scholarship. Giroux’s book also
reused Blyth’s translations as well as Blyth’s perspective on Zen and Yasuda’s
idea of the “haiku moment.” It wasn’t breaking much new ground, and asserted
such misguided notions as believing that “punctuation . . . should also be
included in the syllable count” (80) and that, despite language differences,
haiku should still lean to the 5-7-5 arrangement. The book included only a few
examples of haiku in English, mostly 5-7-5, almost all from just two sources,
James W. Hackett and Helen Stiles Chenoweth’s now largely dismissed regional
anthology, Borrowed Water (Rutland,
Vermont: Tuttle, 1966). Higginson’s book was more informed. It helped, of
course, that it also came out from a major publisher, thus receiving healthy
distribution and at least basic publicity. The
Haiku Handbook found its audience, and its audience promoted the book to
others because it found it helpful. The book has stayed in print since it was first published in 1985.
Indeed, Higginson wanted his book
to make a difference, to help poets, no matter what their experience level. He lamented,
as so many haiku advocates still do, that haiku continued to be mistaught in
schools merely as a syllable-counting exercise, but The Haiku Handbook began to shift public understandings, providing
a literary underpinning to haiku that was invariably absent in the
misinformation passed off so quickly in grade schools and curriculum guides. Writing
in “The American Haiku Movement, Part I: Haiku in English” (in Modern Haiku 36:3, Autumn 2005), Charles
Trumbull wrote that Higginson’s Haiku
Handbook “made accessible for the first time in English a concise,
eminently readable compendium of haiku history, modern developments, and
information on both writing and teaching haiku and related forms. Now twenty
years old, it is still essential reading for the American haiku poet” (55). The
same is still true today, ten years further on, and may well be true for many
years to come.
Although The Haiku Handbook remains essential reading for anyone interested
in haiku poetry, Higginson wanted to update the book to accommodate haiku’s tremendous
advances in the Internet age, but was never given the opportunity, despite
asking. But with the book still selling consistently, so he once told me, the
publisher was reluctant to invest in any manuscript revision and redesign. He
wanted to include many poets who had furthered the art and craft of haiku since
1985, and to document the rise of many national and regional haiku groups, such
as the British Haiku Society and the Haiku Poets of Northern California. He
also wanted to promote new presses that specialized in haiku, including my own,
Press Here, Charles Trumbull’s Deep North Press, Jim Kacian’s Red Moon Press, and
John Barlow’s Snapshot Press, among others.
The original Haiku Handbook was groundbreaking in its exploration of world
haiku, and its reminder that English was not the only language in North
America, but Higginson wanted to document worldwide developments much more extensively,
especially when so much had been happening. Many haiku organizations had started
around the world since 1985, and they and many individual poets had increasing
communication with each other thanks to the Internet, online discussion lists,
and social media sites.
Higginson wanted to acknowledge
new poets and translations and journals, and to say more about changes in
Japanese haiku that were just beginning to influence Western haiku, including gendai haiku. He wanted to talk about
the inevitable fragmentation of haiku, and how that was both a beneficial and
challenging development. He also wanted to refine some of his opinions about
haiku, fill in historical gaps, provide easily updatable companion resources
online, and revise his reference to “onji,” which he acknowledged was an
incorrect or at least outdated term for the sounds counted in Japanese haiku.
A year and a half after Higginson
died in 2008, Kodansha International republished the book in a 25th anniversary
edition, with a new cover and brief foreword, but none of Higginson’s text was
changed. Because Higginson was not able to update The Haiku Handbook, it has become a milepost for how haiku was at
its time of publication, and perhaps the passing of time calls for new mileposts
to be marked. As such, the book cannot help but eventually become dated,
especially when most of the contemporary poets it quotes have died, and new
books and organizations have come to the fore, but until then the book will continue
to instruct and inspire.
Other Books and Publications
If The Haiku Handbook was
Higginson’s most influential book, it was not his magnum opus. That was to be
the twin publications of Haiku Seasons
and Haiku World, which both appeared
in 1996 from Kodansha International. They were originally intended as a single
book, but the publisher suggested splitting them in two. Of the two books, that
decision made Haiku Seasons a much
more accessible overview than a combined single book would have been. This also
made it easier for Stone Bridge Press to republish this volume in 2008—however,
the publisher, Peter Goodman, chose not to republish Haiku World, suggesting to me it was perhaps too specialized a book
for his press to invest in, much more so than Haiku Seasons. In both its original printing and slightly revised
reprint, Haiku Seasons provides a
thoughtful and finely researched exploration of the role of season words in
English-language haiku, expanding the Japanese model to address worldwide
concerns, including latitude and longitude, the oppositeness of seasons in
different hemispheres, and other challenges. It also addresses the difficulty
of defining seasons in the first place, complicated by the early Japanese
tradition of basing seasons on the lunar calendar, which has been replaced by
our current solar calendar. He educates his readers on how the new year
(counted as a fifth season in Japanese haiku), was originally celebrated according
to the lunar calendar in February and so was immediately followed by spring. Knowing
details like this can help one better understand seasonal references in
traditional Japanese haiku. Haiku World,
in contrast, takes the ideas of Haiku
Seasons and manifests them in what was the first worldwide English-language
saijiki, or almanac of seasonal
topics and poems—a monumental production that incorporated knowledge of botany,
zoology, climatology, and other natural phenomena, linguistics, geography, and
more. Higginson set himself a limit of including no more than three poems per
person, to avoid favouritism or imbalance, a restriction that no doubt made it daunting
to find example haiku for particular season words. As a reference book, it is
unequaled in demonstrating the role of season words in haiku, and helps to
underscore the fact that haiku is a seasonal
poem, not strictly a nature poem (a
common, if slightly misleading, perception). As Charles Trumbull wrote of Haiku World in his “American Haiku
Movement” essay, cited previously, “For the first time English-speaking haiku
poets had adequate tools for studying the Japanese kigo system and could debate the adequacy of these conventions for
non-Japanese haiku” (55).
To give a fuller sense of what Haiku World is like, the following is an
example entry, on the early summer season word “rose” (bara in Japanese), with the first of its five example poems. This
sort of detail goes on for hundreds of pages. Imagine confirming all those
Latin names, researching related plants, and creating accurate descriptions, as
well as finding and getting permission for suitable poems.
ROSE, bara (early). In Japanese saijiki this
refers to cultivated roses, which would also be understood in English if the
word “rose” were used by itself. A number of well-known varieties could be
named; I imagine that most Americans will picture a red rose unless the poem
indicates otherwise. But in Europe and North America there are several kinds of
summer-blooming native wild roses. These include the multiflora rose (Rosa multiflora) with clusters of small
white flowers, common from southern New England south; Virginia rose (R. virginiana) with pink flowers,
Newfoundland south to North Carolina and west to Missouri; and wrinkled rose,
also called beach rose (R. rugosa)
with rose-lavender or white flowers, especially noted along roadsides, in
seashore thickets, and on sand dunes, and cultivate both for show and to
prevent erosion, ranging from eastern Canada south to New Jersey, west to
Wisconsin. Despite its name, the white Cherokee rose (R. laevigata) was introduced from China, but has gone wild,
especially in much of the south-central U.S. England has the pink-flowering
sweet briar (R. rubiginosa or eglanteria)—also known as eglantine—and
dog rose (R. canina). The wild rose
of Japan is the yellow-flowered MOUNTAIN ROSE (yamabuki) of late spring. Also: white roses. (160)
reading a mystery—
a cool breeze comes
through
the beach roses
Cor van den Heuvel
Before Haiku Seasons was republished, when there was still a possibility
to reprint Haiku World as well, I
provided Higginson with dozens of pages of notes, at his invitation, for
improving both books. This sort of engagement with his readers made his books
better by embracing various points of view, and might well have been an
accidental marketing technique, in that it gave so many readers (not just those
whose poems were quoted) a vested interest in his books. This engagement is
represented by the extensive list of names collected in the acknowledgments of the
Stone Bridge Press edition of Haiku
Seasons, and in Higginson’s other books.
Not to be forgotten amid the
fanfare of Higginson’s handbook and his two books that explored international
season words is his 1991 hardback book for children, Wind in the Long Grass, published by Simon & Schuster, with
sumptuous illustrations by Sandra Speidel. This book also took a worldwide view
of haiku, with poems arranged by season representing poets from seventeen
countries, as diverse as Ecuador, Cuba, Senegal, Greece, and Brazil. In his
introduction, Higginson writes that “The haiku and pictures in this book will
all make you imagine that you are seeing hearing, smelling, tasting, or
touching something in a special way” (5), emphasizing that haiku’s central
focus is on things we can experience through our five senses. Although intended
for children, the book is equally appealing for adults.
Three other publications by
William Higginson, among many, are worth at least a brief mention. The first is
Haiku Compass: Directions in the Poetical Map of the United States of America,
a very short book, more of an essay, published in Tokyo in 1994 by the Haiku
International Association. It summarized American haiku activities for a
Japanese audience, and appeared in both English and Japanese. As with so many
of his other books, Haiku Compass
showcased poems by numerous poets from around the country, seeking to be as
wide-reaching and representative as possible. This was one way that Higginson
demonstrated that haiku was a poetry of the people, and not just an academic
pursuit. He valued and harnessed its democratic and social aspects in writing
about it, quoting others widely as a way to give back to poets—and a poetry
genre—that had given him so much. Another publication is The Seasons in Haikai, published in Portland, Oregon in 1996 by Ce
Rosenow’s Irvington Press, a book that was a precursor to Haiku Seasons, in a greatly condensed form. And a third notable
book was Kiyose: Season Word Guide, which
Higginson published (Summit, New Jersey: From Here Press) in 2005. This small
booklet was a basic listing of essential season words, a much handier reference
than the weighty Haiku World book. It
enabled English-language poets to do what Japanese haiku poets have been able
to do for decades—carry a handy guidebook in their pockets to check their use
of season words, or to find inspiration while out on haiku walks.
Higginson’s last major
contribution to haiku was a return to translation, in Butterfly Dreams: The Seasons Through Haiku and Photographs, a privately
published collection of about 200 poems arranged by season, with photographs by
Michael Lustbader. These poems appeared not as a conventional book but as an
electronic book, on CD-ROM, as a multimedia presentation with vibrant nature photographs
and poems. After the aesthetic presentation of each poem and photograph, the
book also includes commentary and cultural information on each poem, as well as
photographic data. Higginson’s first book was Twenty-Five Pieces of Now, a short collection of translations released
in 1968. With the translations in Butterfly
Dreams, in 2006, almost forty years later, it seems he returns full circle.
The value of this publication is not just the translations themselves, but the
beautiful and aesthetic way they are presented with photography and fine
typography, embracing new technology. This way of not sitting still, of keeping
up with trends and technology, was a key part of how Higginson developed and
maintained his considerable influence in haiku poetry.
This Perfect Rose
Around 1991 or 1993, I remember Higginson vociferously questioning
me about the authenticity of a haiku I’d written about “soft hail” that had streaked
down the front of my sweater. He was at first adamant that such a thing wasn’t
possible, that hail couldn’t be soft. I assured him that I’d recently
experienced exactly that, in Southern California—and it arrested me enough to
want to write a haiku about it. Later, I shared more information with him about
soft hail, more properly known as graupel, and he was genuinely pleased to
enlarge his understanding of a natural phenomenon new to him. Higginson at first
encouraged me to use the more accurate and colourful word graupel, but he came to agree with me to use “soft hail” instead
because some readers might not know the word “graupel,” and could feel
alienated by it. Soft hail was more intuitive to me at the time, but now I wonder
if I might use “graupel” after all. As with so many topics we discussed over
more than two decades, Higginson was fascinated by the detail and subtlety of
language, all of it part of his search for excellence in haiku expression. That
caring was what led him to be on the Haiku Society of America’s original
definitions committee in 1973, and again thirty years later, in 2003, when he
and new committee members revisited the society’s oft-quoted definitions. Such
was Higginson’s longevity with haiku, and his passion for this poetry. He cared
for haiku, as if they were prized roses.
William J. Higginson was never
more in his element than at Haiku North America conferences, and he was the
keynote speaker at the very first one, in August of 1991,
talking about “North America and the Democracy of Haiku,” an egalitarian approach
to this poetry that he advocated for as long as I knew him. He was the only person
to have attended all nine of the first nine biennial HNA conferences. At that first Haiku North America conference, which I helped to
organize in Livermore, California, I asked Bill to sign my haiku autograph
book, the first of what is now five volumes, filled with poems and signatures
from many hundreds of haiku poets from around the world. From the beginning, I
asked all poets who signed to include one or more of
their favourite or best haiku, and to autograph and date it. Here’s the poem
Bill wrote:
after
the shower
finally
able to see
this
perfect rose
For William J. Higginson,
haiku was a perfect rose, glistening with dew—and, in the latter half of the
twentieth century, he was its foremost gardener.
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