Haiku as Poetic Spell by
Martin Lucas
The following essay was first delivered at the fourth Haiku Pacific Rim Conference in Terrigal, Australia,
in September of 2009 (see photo below). The text is available on the New Zealand Poetry Society website,
and at the website for Presence,
the haiku journal Martin edited. Following this essay is an email exchange I
had with Martin shortly after I first read his essay, in which we discussed key details of his stimulating point of view. Martin Lucas held a PhD from
Cardiff University for his study of haiku as creative writing and edited the haiku
journal Presence from 1996 until his untimely death in 2014. He was a past president of
the British Haiku Society and author of
Stepping Stones: A Way into Haiku
(British Haiku Society, 2007) and
coeditor of The New Haiku (Snapshot Press, 2002). Martin lived in Preston, Lancashire, and was
a keen birdwatcher—selections of his bird haiku were included in the Wing Beats anthology (Snapshot Press, 2008). See also Dana Gioia’s “Poetry as Enchantment” and “Haiku as Poetic Spell and Existential Magic,” a response to Martin Lucas’s essay by Ken Jones.
Haiku
as an English-language form now has fifty years or so of history. There have been
many trials of new approaches along the way, and much has been learned. At the same
time, it’s probably true to say that only a minority of writers stay the course.
For many, it’s an enthusiasm that burns brightly for two or three years—sometimes
with brilliant results—and then burns itself out, as the writer comes to feel that
s/he has exhausted either the potential of haiku or his/her own potential as a haiku
writer. One consequence of this turnover is that although individual writers may
make great strides very rapidly, the movement as a whole evolves much more slowly,
and from certain angles it now looks as if it has reached something of a plateau.
This plateau is a position of conformity, complacency and mere competence. And the
pressures towards conformity are acute enough to make it difficult to remain true
to your own original inspirations, poetic preferences and little awkwardnesses that
resist hammering into shape.
To understand the context of this discussion,
we need to appreciate that haiku in English developed largely using translations
as models. Translations tend to concentrate on conveying content with accuracy,
sacrificing any attempt to replicate formal effects such as rhythm and alliteration.
The historical consequence of this has been that poets writing original haiku in
English have focused on what is said and paid relatively little attention to how
it is said. The internationally accepted formula runs something like this (expressed
here in 5-7-5 for my own amusement, though 5-7-5 is now outmoded as far as the arbiters
of taste are concerned):
seasonal ref’rence—
then two lines of contrasting
foreground imagery
Seen in isolation, any one of these haiku can be impressive. Taken in quantity,
the effect is numbing. For my point of departure I turn to Modern Haiku, not to
single it out, because suitable examples abound, scattered like the innumerable
stars right across the haiku firmament. But Modern Haiku comes close to the pinnacle of general respect,
and the haiku I am using was highlighted as an award-winner in 40/1. This helps
to make the point that it’s not bad haiku but generally accepted good haiku that
are holding back the development of the form. With my profound apologies to Lynne
Steel, because I could have chosen a haiku by any one of us, here it is (Modern Haiku 40:1, 2009, p. 8):
Indian summer
the old fan slows
to a stop
Let’s be clear: it’s a good haiku. If it had been submitted to Presence, I would very
likely have accepted it. But in Presence it would have kept company with haiku of more
divergent kinds; it would have been less centrally representative of the journal’s
guiding aesthetic. It is centrally representative of the haiku not only in Modern Haiku but in most of the other quality journals, whether
print or web, and the Red Moon and other anthologies. It does what so many others
are trying to do, and it has been selected for a best-of-issue award because it
does it well. It is a good example of its kind; it’s the kind I object to. For one
thing, it fits the formula too well. There it is—the well-worn seasonal reference,
followed by the significantly juxtaposed foreground image. You’re only 23 poems
into this same issue of Modern Haiku when you meet your next “Indian summer” haiku:
Indian summer
a knowing look
on the face of a pumpkin
—Alan S. Bridges (Modern Haiku 40:1,
2009, p. 15)
While this one conjures a very different mood, it is nevertheless structurally identical.
It fulfils identical rhythmical expectations, and the repeated encounter with this
pattern throughout this (and many another) journal contributes to an almost hypnotic
reading experience. To analyse Steel’s haiku more positively: the obvious focus
is on the juxtaposition, which contains elements of both comparison and contrast.
The year is drawing to a close, just as the fan is nearing the end of its useful
life. But the year is flickering unexpectedly to life, whereas the fan is passing
quietly away. It’s an intriguing mix, but almost all the interest is in this content,
and almost none in the expression. I do note three s-words that end the lines and
may contribute to the general feeling of lassitude, and a preponderance of single-syllable
words that may mimic the old fan’s stuttering decline. But since all these word
choices, not to mention the layout choice, are the most obviously appropriate to
sketch the moment—appropriate, at least, in the eyes of a practised haiku writer—it’s
hard to determine whether their formal qualities are anything other than accidental.
Content rules, and the sole function of form is to convey that content as lucidly
as possible. This it does well, but I do not feel I am being unfair in claiming
that this appears to be the limit of its ambition.
Having outlined my point of departure,
I will draw all my remaining examples from #37 of my own journal, Presence. This is partly
for the sake of convenience, and partly because they are, by definition, to some
extent representative of an apparently different guiding aesthetic. In recasting
haiku as Poetic Spell, I wish to emphasise, firstly, an ideal that is poetic as
opposed to prosaic, and secondly, an expression that is more akin to a magical utterance
than a mere report of an incident, however consequential or inconsequential.
I make no claim that every haiku in Presence conforms to this poetic ideal. Nor do I think
it desirable that it should. A complete issue of a journal should offer a variety
of angles and a varied reading experience. Senryu, and some of the simpler kinds
of descriptive haiku, can contribute to the total quality of this experience, even
if individually they are nothing more than fragments of prose. On the approach to
the ideal, some haiku of exceptionally resonant content read very much as poems,
however fragmentary, even without any significant contribution from form. At another
pole, we should have no difficulty in accepting as poems those haiku whose formal
and language qualities detain us, independent of any consideration of their information
content.
To approach the Poetic Spell via imagery
often appears to involve nothing more than mere description. The difference is that
what is described is somehow so satisfying that we linger in the moment, and almost
seek to dwell in it. This resonance is more readily evoked in rural scenes that
have about them something almost primitive or archetypal, than in urban scenes that
so often rattle with the shallowness of modern social life. I’m not saying by any
means that it’s impossible to write resonant urban haiku, but resonance is a natural
consequence when the human focus shrinks and the horizon expands:
mountain home the distant clunk
of the cattle grid
—Pamela Brown
(Modern Haiku 40:1,
2009, p. 26)
paddy field by the river .
. .
the voice of a farmer
speaking to the bulls
—K. Ramesh (Modern Haiku 40:1,
2009, p. 32)
The first of these centres on a relatively modern contrivance, the cattle grid,
but the implications of solitude and silence, not to mention the opening phrase,
suggest the ancient lineage of Saigyō’s tanka. The second, set, I feel confident,
in India, seems to stand in a direct line of inheritance from Bashō’s Japan. There
is such profound satisfaction in the image that even without any notable contribution
from the language, I’d happily regard it as an example of at least one kind of Poetic
Spell.
To approach the spell via language,
we need more emphasis on form as opposed to content, and on expression as opposed
to information. This haiku by Tito has it (Modern Haiku 40:1,
2009, p. 12):
Rained from the morning’s
Clear blue,
Settling on peony petals, too
Ash from Mt Asama.
It is constructed indirectly, delaying resolution until the final line; with the
unusual opening of a passive verb that is also marginally metaphorical. It has evident
alliterative patterning—“peony petals”, “Ash / Asama”—and, crikey!, a rhyme. Tito,
a.k.a. Stephen Gill, has been writing this style of four-line haiku for very nearly
as long as Modern Haiku has
been publishing, but very few have followed his lead, and outside his local circle
in Kansai, Japan, this approach is almost entirely neglected. This is in many ways
unfortunate, because this rich four-line style offers far more poetic nourishment
than the clipped three lines of the international formula. If I had to speculate
on the reasons for this neglect, I might suggest that in the very act of giving
the poem such a defined beginning, middle, and end, the prized directness of haiku
has been sacrificed. But I might also suggest that a rich four lines requires more
effort from the writer and more effort from the reader, and in a creative community
notorious for its short attention span there are too few willing to do this little
extra work.
Without departing at all radically
from the familiar three-line format, it’s possible to approach the Poetic Spell
through both imagery and language. This haiku by Matthew Paul does so, though it
may stand in need of some explication (Modern Haiku 40:1,
2009, p. 19):
on
a day the colour
of rolling tobacco
ragged-robin
To access the haiku it’s more or less essential to be able to visualise “ragged-robin”,
or at least to know that it’s a flower. Found in verges and woodland margins, it’s
barely knee-high, and its beautiful pink flower is cut into thin filaments—so “robin”
probably from the colour, and “ragged” from the shape. One criterion of the Poetic
Spell would be original rather than conventional use of season-words, and this poem
meets that test immediately. In imagery, too, it has no apparent antecedents—I know
of no other haiku that compares the day to “rolling tobacco”! This has to be an
exaggeration—even the old-fashioned London smogs were hardly a thick tobacco brown.
I assume it’s the sky that’s meant, but it might be the landscape, or it might be
a subjective mood. It certainly seems to feed into a mood—a kind of depression,
perhaps, that’s so intense there’s almost a perverse pleasure in it; and growing
out of it, complementing it, or fulfilling it, or counteracting it, there’s the
unassuming wayside flower, frail and lovely. Original thought; original imagery;
and, with its unobtrusive alliteration, pleasingly musical language. Importantly,
it also resists definitive interpretation. My own speculations about “depression”,
for instance, might be well wide of the mark as far as the writer is concerned.
It’s very much the reader’s poem.
Even greater fluidity, ambiguity and
reflectivity are made possible by the single unpunctuated line, deployed with striking
effect in the pages of Presence over the years by my friend and colleague Stuart
Quine. Stuart’s lead has now tempted so many to follow that, for the first time
in #37, I found myself discouraging one-liners, rather than encouraging them, as
a necessary step to avoid devaluing the currency. The one-liner has great potential
for authority, inevitability and ineffability. It heightens both ambiguity and immediacy,
and seems more tolerant of effects that are in essence poetic rather than prosaic,
without any sacrifice of the haiku ideal of image-based understatement. Here are
four favourites from Presence #37:
hatless the seeds of winter
in the morning sky
—Duro Jaiye
(Modern Haiku 40:1,
2009, p. 26)
torn clouds the horse’s black
tail trailing
—Pamela Brown
(Modern Haiku 40:1,
2009, p. 26)
my sister skating here comes
her yellow hat
—frances angela (Modern Haiku 40:1,
2009, p. 29)
sharpening this night of stars
distant dogs
—Stuart Quine
(Modern Haiku 40:1,
2009, p. 29)
What we notice immediately in each of these examples is a driving rhythm, which
makes the decisive contribution in transforming each of these fragments into something
akin to a spell or charm. Equally we notice that this rhythm, and the placing of
pauses and stresses, varies considerably from poem to poem. We cannot—on the basis
of these examples, at least—draft any kind of formula. There is nothing here akin
to the predictability of the “Indian summer” haiku with which we are, by now, over-familiar.
In relation to the idea of haiku as charm, Stuart Quine sees a connection with dharani. He asserts that, although mantra
and dharani share structural and rhythmic similarities, they have different functions.
Mantra are means of centring and settling the mind, whereas dharani are essentially
invocations. However, it is important to realise that dharani are not calls upon
Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. The dharani is in itself the manifestation of the particular
Buddha or Bodhisattva invoked. The dharani of Jizo Bosatsu is the actualisation
of Jizo Bosatsu. Nembutsu, similarly, actualises Amida
Buddha and the Pure Land.
In considering a haiku-spell, it’s
hardly possible to determine who or what is being invoked. Yet the idea has relevance
in the sense that for the charm or spell, the final effect depends on the totality
of the utterance: form and content unite, and the latter does not claim all our
attention. I find a prose paraphrase of Duro Jaiye’s poem impossible, because I
can’t with any confidence say what is happening or what it’s about. I assume it’s
the poet who is “hatless”, but we’re tempted by the fluid syntax to attach the adjective
to the seeds. The seeds may be actual seeds of some late-flourishing plant or tree,
or this may be a poet’s way of saying “the signs of winter”, early indications,
something like that. Although I took “winter” as a season-word and placed the poem
on the winter pages of Presence, I could readily
accept an interpretation that placed it at any time of year after the summer solstice.
Where you place it in time in turn colours your interpretation of “hatless” and
its associated moods. This ambiguity is of the essence: you can’t nail it down;
you can’t boil it down; and you can’t say it any other way. The form of the poem,
in its authority and inevitability, adds dimensions far beyond the information-value
of its content.
Pamela Brown’s seems easier, until
you start to analyse it. It’s stitched together by alliteration, as if in imitation
of the tapping of a horse’s canter. The internal comparison suggests the tail either
is, or appears to be, ragged or “torn” and, in reverse, the clouds are, if not “black”,
then dark, threatening, and moving on a rapid wind. All other background clues are
absent—is there a field? is there a fence? is there a rider? is there actually a
horse at all, or just the suggestion of a horse in the tail-like threads of cloud?
We can make our own choice, but we can’t know for certain. It’s fundamentally resistant
to any kind of reductionist solution.
Frances Angela’s, by contrast, seems
absurdly easy to paraphrase. Surely this isn’t poetry at all, but two prose sentences
run together: “My sister (is) skating. Here comes her yellow hat.” But running them
together, in a single breathless utterance, results in a masterpiece of what I call
“non sequitur” haiku. The poetry of the yellow hat lies not in its relevance but
its irrelevance. If you’ve read R.H. Blyth, you’ll know that time and again he counsels
against cause-and-effect in haiku. If you explain something, you explain it away,
and all the poetry seeps out like air from a slowly punctured tyre. Here there’s
no explanation. Everything builds to the climax of the yellow hat as if it were
the most meaningful thing in the world; yet in terms of prosaic everyday meaning
it has no obvious significance whatsoever—other than being attached to the head
of a sister, with whatever feeling that conveys; and even this is conjecture, since
the hat may have fallen free. Like an object in a dream, it is preternaturally pregnant
with importance, and it’s this bare-faced irrationality that makes this a poem.
The unintentional inspiration for Stuart’s
haiku was probably my own at dawn the din of distant dogs, but
that’s by-the-by. His haiku conjures a radically different scene, and what a contribution
is made here by the opening word! Its appropriateness is not in question, but its
prose equivalence eludes us. Is it a night of “sharp” frost? Is it therefore cold
and harsh, and colder and harsher against the background of dogs barking? Well,
something like that, no doubt, but that’s not actually what the poem says. What
it says is
sharpening this night of stars
distant dogs
and this is the starting-point and the ending-point of each reader’s individual
reflection. Through the clarity of imagery, feeling emerges: a cold, dark, sharp
feeling that is at the opposite pole from sentimental assumptions of what makes
a poem, far more alert, far more alive:
sharpening this night of stars
distant dogs
There is no other way of saying it. That’s what I mean by Poetic Spell. Words that
chime; words that beat; words that flow. And once you’ve truly heard it, you won’t
forget it, because the words have power. They are not dead and scribbled on a page,
they are spoken like a charm; and they aren’t read, they’re heard. This is what
I want from haiku: something primitive; something rare; something essential; not
some tired iteration of patterns so familiar most of us can produce them in our
sleep. It’s not the information content that counts, it’s the way that information
is formed, cooked and combined. Poetic spells don’t tell us anything, they are something,
they exist as objects of fascination in their own right. You can hold them in the
light and turn them about and watch each of their facets gleam. They begin and end
each reader’s unique reflection.
Concluding note: The appended table outlines the “battle positions”
between what I’m calling the International Formula and the Poetic Spell. Note that
no one poem will exhibit either set of characteristics perfectly. Some that are
written to the formula possess one or more characteristics of the Spell, and others
that I’d want to class as Spells possess one or more characteristics of the Formula.
It’s also possible that a haiku written in close conformity to the formula nevertheless
appeals as a lively and satisfying piece of work, while one that possesses many
of the outward qualities of the Spell somehow falls short on inscrutable charm.
Nevertheless, as a generalised table of opposites, this account holds true and is
potentially useful.
International Formula
|
Poetic Spell
|
Predictable seasonal phrase,
in predictable position
|
Original seasonal phrase,
in unusual position
|
Predictable word order
and “cut” position
|
Original word order and
“cut” position
|
No significant word music
or language effects. Predictable rhythm.
|
Significant contribution
of word music and language effects—notably rhythm.
|
Essentially rational—prose
paraphrase possible
|
Essentially irrational—prose
paraphrase not possible
|
Can be analysed in terms
of information content alone
|
Cannot be analysed in terms
of information content alone
|
A written form, not readily
memorable
|
An oral form, readily memorable
|
Linear / Static
|
Circular / Fluid
|
Clear
|
Ambiguous
|
Reductive / Descriptive
|
Expansive / Reflective
|
Simple
|
Complex
|
Confirms security
|
Induces insecurity
|
Goal: acceptability
|
Origin: integrity
|
Martin Lucas first delivering his “Haiku as Poetic Spell” paper at the fourth Haiku Pacific Rim Conference in Terrigal, Australia, convened by Beverley George in September of 2009.
Photo by Beverley George.
Postscript
What follows is an exchange of email I
had with Martin right after I read his essay.
From: Michael
Dylan Welch
To: Martin Lucas
Sent: Tue, Sep 25, 2012 5:28 pm
Subject: Haiku as Poetic Spell
Dear Martin,
Not sure why I hadn’t read it before, but I just devoured your excellent article
on haiku as poetic spell. When you use terms such as complacency, plateau, and numbing
in reference to the state of some haiku being published today, your essay brings
to mind my own essay, covering similar complaints, titled “The Seed of Wonder: An
Antidote to Haiku Inflation”—focusing, as it does, on what I call “haiku ennui.”
You may well have seen the essay, but if not, it’s online.
I offer my solution, which is to cultivate a sense of wonder, which is something
that may help before one gets to the act of writing, whereas your solution takes
an approach that applies to the writing process itself.
One point of yours that particularly stood out for me is that “it’s not bad haiku,
but generally accepted good haiku, that are holding back the development of the
form.” This middle-of-the-road “acceptable” haiku is perhaps akin to pictures of
kittens and puppies that are so popular on Facebook, but haven’t really earned any
photographic respect. In the camera clubs I’ve belonged to over the years (and one
that I left because of this problem), a few too many photographers catered to this
need to be accepted and acceptable, so they’d trot out their kitten and puppy photos
and the less savvy would vote for them in club competitions. This isn’t to say kittens
and puppies aren’t cute and appealing—of course they are. But they’re exactly the
kind of “acceptable” photograph that does nothing to advance photography.
This begs the question, of course, Is it necessary to advance haiku? Or as you put
it, recasting your words into a question, is it necessary to develop the haiku form?
This urge smacks of the influence of Pound and his “make it new” minions, but I
deplore novelty just for the sake of novelty. If the “form” (as opposed to formula)
of haiku is good, why does it need to be constantly reinvented? Well, the fact is
that it doesn’t. But that doesn’t mean new inventions and freshness aren’t valuable.
So I agree that one should seek the whole picture and include the standard “form”
as well as variants or anti-variants to demonstrate range and creativity. The pressure
to conform and the need to be accepted is indeed a hindrance to voice and individual
expression. Here’s where I agree with Jane Hirshfield’s counter to Pound, where
she says to “make it yours.”
Another main point that appealed to me was the idea to think more deeply about how
something is said, and not just what is said. So John Martone’s vertical poems (not
necessarily all haiku) and Lee Gurga’s more recent cross-shaped poems are a means
of thinking about how to say something and not just an exercise in what to say.
Tao Li (Evenlyn Tooley Hunt) had a creative three-column, three-line format that
she played with decades ago. Gary Hotham more recently explored the variant of putting
his juxtapositional dash on a line by itself, between the line before and after.
These and other variants may run their course, of course. Even these experiments
can grow stale. I used to write all of my haiku in the Martone vertical style, in
the late 1980s, long before I heard of Martone, but grew tired of this approach—I
called them “stick poems”—although no one would think of me as having written that
way, even though I did it for several years (I hardly published any of them, that’s why). Similarly, it’s
not just traditional haiku that has its set phrases and patterns and tired structures,
but even gendai can exhibit predictable structures and tropes on occasion (such
as tacking on a phrase like “all the words / we could not say” onto a surreal image).
One can naively try too hard to be hip and surreal and edgy, but all it is is a
sort of masturbatory musing.
So, if haiku as poetic spell seeks poems that are closer to magical utterance, and
not mere reportage, that’s wonderful. I would just say that poems fitting your so-called
“International Formula” typically try to avoid
reportage—or if that’s all they do, I would seldom be interested. I would call that
a failure, not a formula. And what is the role of personal taste in defining poetic
spell? That may ultimately be just a personal preference on the reader’s part, but
at least the writer can give it deeper thought.
I would also wonder how your thesis accounts for poems in the vein of karumi. Such
lightness is difficult to pull off—as I’ve said before, it’s like catching a soap
bubble without popping it. Some years ago Brian Tasker reviewed the second issue
of Tundra by decrying a particular set
of haiku—which nearly completely corresponded to the poems that were my favourites
in the issue. They were poems imbued with karumi, of not manhandling their subjects,
of being sensitive to the slightest change or nuance. And he missed them. I would
hope they are not among the formulaic utterances you “object to,” as you say. But
a good question to consider might be how a target of “poetic spell” accounts for
karumi, and the delicate sensitivity it requires. It wasn’t Bashō’s most advanced
aesthetic development for nothing. I do find one example of this, though you don’t
mention karumi, in the delightful “irrelevance” of the yellow hat. It comes at you
unexpectedly, unjustifiably, disarmingly, and ultimately, lightly. It just is, but
it’s far from being merely description. That’s magic.
I can’t say I’m persuaded into adopting a four-line camp for haiku, despite your
supportive words for Stephen Gill’s preference, which seems pretty directly influenced
by the four-line translations by Yuasa—now Gill’s colleague in Kyoto. To me the
four lines is a melding, to some degree, of Western poetics with haiku. Different,
sure. But mostly just his own personal style. I find that it damages rather than
energizes the haiku’s juxtapositional structure, at least some of the time. But
you make good points that it requires more work for both the writer and the reader.
If the model isn’t laudable for me, at least the effort is.
You conclude by saying what you want from haiku is not information content but closer
attention to how the content is formed and combined. Well and good, but you can’t
eschew content. Of course content still counts. But you can put its effect on steroids
by also considering form more deeply, and syntax and line breaks and sound. You
need bricks to build the house, whether it’s a Gaudi or merely tract-house gaudy.
Ultimately, this sort of magical spell has to come from an honest voice, an honest
place of self acceptance rather than trying to be acceptable, from a place of self-confidence,
to the point of not even feeling the need to assert oneself. One must guard against
naiveté, of course, because unknowing luck with fresh expression is typically just
lucky and happenstance, and no replacement for a deeper sense of knowing and understanding.
Choosing to write a certain way, or perhaps, an incapacity to write any particular
way but the way one writes, is a necessary step in arriving at one’s own voice rather
than a voice of being “acceptable.” True voice in haiku, and indeed all poetry,
doesn’t seek acceptability but self-acceptance.
Thank you for a stimulating essay.
Best wishes,
Michael
P.S. We’re busy gearing up for this year’s Seabeck haiku retreat in a few weeks,
with Paul Miller. The schedule is online at the Haiku Northwest website, but we
still have a few details to refine. Some day it’ll be your turn, I sincerely hope.
If you hadn’t already written and published it elsewhere, your essay on haiku as
poetic spell would have been perfect to add to the magical place of Seabeck. If
you’d like to see my photos of last year’s retreat (recently put online), please take a look.
From: Martin Lucas
To: Michael Dylan Welch
Sent: Sun, Sep 30, 2012 11:49 am
Subject: RE: Haiku as Poetic Spell
Michael
Thanks for your in-depth response to my essay. Some comments
in reply.
>>> Is it necessary to advance haiku?
A few other people have commented on this, pointing out that the Japanese have managed
well enough within the haiku constraints for 300 years, so why the sudden need to
“develop” it? Perhaps I should have said, “develop our understanding of the form”,
or better still, “of the potential of the form”. The haiku in Presence have made
huge strides over the 15+ years it’s been around, as we’ve all grown together as
a reading/writing community. On the other hand, from other angles development is
sometimes hard to discern, e.g., the 3rd edition of CVDH’s anthology is probably
poem-for-poem a step up from the 2nd edition, yet it’s somehow less exciting
as a read, and that’s probably because of this stylistic convergence that’s taken
place over time, with everyone more aware of what everyone else is writing, so fewer
writers are striking out in their own individual direction.
My own way of (attempting to) retain freshness in editing Presence is to not even
think of the poems I’m looking at as haiku. I have this personal belief that haiku
is purely a Japanese phenomenon, and what we write is a related offshoot that we
call haiku for want of a better name [see Martin’s essay “Haiku and Haiku” on the New Zealand Poetry Society website]. So, in English, for me, there’s really no
such thing as haiku. So all I ask when I read a magazine submission is, is this
interesting writing? If yes, the only secondary question is not “is it haiku?” or
“does it meet haiku definitions?” but “is it close enough to haiku that I can get
away with it in a so-called haiku magazine?”. If yes, it goes in, and if it then
fails someone’s definition test, at the same time it extends their perception of
what’s possible. #46 included Robert Davey’s
lost in the mist—
trees
fields
church
faith
The crucial component in making it interesting is that final leap into abstraction—and
this is exactly what would cause it to fail any rigorous definition-test. Doubtless
many of my readers wouldn’t know what to make of it, but one respected and experienced
judge rated it one of the best “haiku” in the issue.
>>> think more deeply about how something is said, and not just
what is said.
As far as this is concerned, although I think experiments with layout have a role
to play, I’m thinking much more of the music of the language, i.e., in traditional
poetic terms. Particularly relevant for me are: rhythm/emphasis; alliteration/assonance
etc.; creative (as opposed to accidental) ambiguity. If you look at Stuart’s sharpening
this night of stars distant dogs—there’s a superb emphasis on each of the five
stressed syllables, enhanced by the alliteration of the last two; the assonance
of sharpening/stars is very pleasing to the ear—there’s also a more subtle link
between this/distant, and this sets up a kind of (musical) shock with the ending
on dogs; and the one-line form introduces a minor but crucial element of ambiguity
which encourages the reader to think (what I call) synthetically rather than analytically,
i.e., the poem would be readily intelligible as a three-liner with an obvious break after
“stars”, but by eliminating this break, “distant” echoes back towards “stars” as
well as (obviously) forward to “dogs”. All of this means you’re very much not
reading a miniature three-line story with beginning, middle and end, you’re reading
a poem/incantation with no beginning and no end.
>>> I would also wonder how your thesis accounts for poems in the
vein of karumi.
The thesis isn’t intended to account for every possible haiku variant or potentiality,
merely to cast some light on previously neglected aspects. Karumi is a content-based
effect; I don’t think my form-based spell-effects have much of a bearing on it either
way. There will always be great potential in haiku for writing about subjects that
seem so minor and insignificant that other writers have just overlooked them. On
the other hand, I’m wary of importing Japanese terms into Western critiques, since
it’s easy to imagine we know what they mean, when we probably don’t. (Personally
I love the sabi effect, and I think I’ve got a firm enough handle on it, but really
I’d need a qualified Japanese to confirm that.)
>>> I can’t say I’m persuaded into adopting a four-line camp for
haiku, despite your supportive words for Stephen Gill’s preference, which seems
pretty directly influenced by the four-line translations by Yuasa. To me the four
lines is a melding, to some degree, of Western poetics with haiku.
That’s fine, I’m not trying to corral anyone into a camp, rather the opposite, I’m
pointing to the value of writers doing their own thing, and just asking for some
more appreciation of this, rather than the tut-tutting that goes on whenever anyone
tests the limits of their working model of haiku. You are right, of course, about
Yuasa’s influence on Stephen, but I don’t think that means that Stephen’s followed
him up an evolutionary cul-de-sac. You are also right about the melding of Western
poetics with haiku, but while I think it’s possible to stray too far in that direction,
it does at least improve your chances of writing something poetic rather than prosaic,
which is what Poetic Spell is advocating.
>>> you can’t eschew content.
Agreed! But a lot of writers seem to think that content is the be-all and end-all
and have never considered the role of form (by which I mean everything that isn’t
content, thinking more of the music of the language than of layout effects). Poetic
Spell attempts to redress the balance somewhat.
>>> We’re busy gearing up for this year’s Seabeck haiku retreat
in a few weeks. Some day it’ll be your turn, I sincerely
hope.
[The context for the preceding comment was that I had been trying for a couple
of years to have Martin be our featured guest at the Seabeck Haiku Getaway I
direct. Martin had previously indicated having problems obtaining a visa to
enter the United States. Alas, he was not able to solve his visa challenges
before he died in 2014. We had dearly hoped to play table tennis together—Seabeck had a table, and he was a keen competitive player.]
Well, there’s been a development since we last discussed the subject. My bird-tour
organizer friend Stuart M (no relation to Stuart Q) has persuaded me to test the
waters of the American borders by enrolling on his tour to Florida in January 2013.
I’ve successfully applied for a Visa Waiver online, so all should be OK. I’ll find
out. If Florida works, Seattle should too. So I could visit you possibly autumn
2013, or perhaps more realistically 2014. If you want to pencil me in, let me know.
Martin
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