Selected Examples of Déjà-ku

                one has to write a little about everything or everything

                about a little

                                —Anselm Hollo, “Ghost Dance” (in Near Miss Haiku, Yellow Press, 1990)

In the third edition of The Haiku Anthology (New York: W. W. Norton, 1999), Cor van den Heuvel offers the following comment: “The writing of variations on certain subjects in haiku, sometimes using the same or similar phrases (or even changing a few words of a previous haiku), is one of the most interesting challenges the genre offers a poet and can result in refreshingly different ways of ‘seeing anew’ for the reader. This is an aspect of traditional Japanese haiku which is hard for many Westerners, with their ideas of uniqueness and Romantic individualism, to accept.” The following are some examples of similar haiku (and senryu), all published except possibly for two, which I have dubbed déjà-ku. I have collected many more examples, by the hundreds, so these selections are just a sampling, but I hope they give a thorough taste of the issues of déjà-ku.

        Some of these poems may be “remembered” haiku (known as “cryptomnesia”), and some are parodies or allusions, or perhaps merely strong similarities, to varying degrees of excess. Most, however, seem to be independently written (I suspect that only one or two of them are deliberate plagiarisms, although several seem to be cases of cryptomnesia and thus may accidentally plagiarize). Which poems would you consider to be which sort of déjà-ku? Try assigning them to the categories of Remembered, Parodies, Allusions, or Similarities. I’ve deliberately left off publication information and have randomized the order of the earliest version of similar poems so as not to bias you in favour of any particular poems.

        More important to me than “who copied whom,” if that’s anyone’s fear, is the overall emotional and psychological impact of these occurrences. How should we, as haiku poets, react when we have written a poem that we think someone else has already written? And how should we react when it feels like someone else has written a poem remarkably similar to one of our own? These are not easy questions to answer, but because déjà-ku is an occupational hazard for every haiku writer, they are questions that must, at some point, be confronted by the conscientious poet.

Note: If you know of examples of déjà-ku (please include all relevant publication details), or if you have any other comments on these sample poems, please contact Michael Dylan Welch.

a bike in the grass     abandoned bike—

one wheel slowly turning— one upturned wheel

spring afternoon     revolving slowly

               Lee Gurga               Eric L. Houck Jr.

In shallow water Half of the minnows

     half of the minnows     within the sunlit shadow

          are only shadows           are not really there

               David Priebe               James W. Hackett

frigid morning: A bitter morning—

geese squat together     sparrows sitting together

without any heads           without any necks

               Wally Swist               James W. Hackett

painting painting more blue

only sky into the delphinium

the widow the widow

               Francine Porad                                                           Elizabeth St Jacques

  In the sand

my sandals One sandal print:

worn and summer

almost done and summer’s

  gone

               Marianne Bluger               Tomi Nishimura

pausing                                  bridge

on the bridge—both ways         at both ends

in mist mist

               Alexey Andreyev                                                        George Swede

summer breeze

the bridge goes

nowhere

               Jim Kacian

over the border Passport check:

their shadows my shadow waits

await them across the border

               (one of five unspecified renku writers)               George Swede

monastery overcast day

the all-white room my opal hoards

hoards the sunlight the sunlight

               Francine Porad               Mary C. Taylor

thorn bush thicket— Barely visible

remains of a split rail fence     beneath the morning glories—

hidden within         the chain-link fence

               Michael Ketchek               Tom Tico

cold morning— a bitter morning—

the man at the bus stop sparrows squatting together

swallowing his neck without necks

               Giovanni Malito               Helen C. Veale

        Year after year Scene after scene

on the monkey’s face     on Groucho’s face

        a monkey’s face.           a Groucho face

               Bashō (translated by Robert Hass)               Rich Krivcher

Late night in Chinatown whirling lazily

the ceiling fan’s blades in my spoon—

in my tea cup the ceiling fan

               Lynn Atkins               susan delaney mech

damp morning toll booth lit for Christmas—

cash for a journey from my hand to hers

warm from a machine warm change

               Dee Evetts               Michael Dylan Welch

The bridge toll-booth—

from the dark a hand collects

rain on the coins

               David E. LeCount

express line express checkout—

the customer behind me the fat woman counts

counting my items the thin man’s items

               Jeanne Cassler                                                            Michael Dylan Welch

hot summer night— distant thunder—

the click of the dog’s toenails the dog’s toenails click

on the kitchen floor against the linoleum

               Michael Cecilione               Gary Hotham

snowed in

the dog clicks

from room to room

               Roberta Beary

all alone in the burning house

the telephone rings       the telephone

once               rings once

               R. A. Stefanac               Michael Dylan Welch

entering the house the telephone

I hear deep in its quiet rings only once

ringing telephone             autumn rain

               Dion O’Donnel               Nick Avis

gone thirty years— found in the attic:

I rewind the pocket watch granddad’s pocket watch

just to hear it tick ticks once in my hand

               Jeanne Emrich               Michael Dylan Welch

broken clock— after his funeral

from the Goodwill bag my father’s watch still ticking

the sound of ticking in a dresser drawer

               Helen K. Davie               Adele Kenny

cool of the cave— sweeping snow

          I raise my hand from ancient petroglyphs

to the hand of the ancient one a hand to fit my own

               Jeanne Emrich               Ruth Yarrow

as night falls night

     so too falling

          does the snow snow

               John Preston III               Michael Dylan Welch

the updraft from a granite cliff

blowing his ashes letting wind take his ashes . . .

back to us some blow back to me

               Don McLeod               Margaret Molarsky

his ashes scattered ashes scattered—

what to do what’s to be done

with the box with the box?

               Paul Watsky               Merrill Ann Gonzales

cold moon a cricket

     inside the scarecrow lending the scarecrow

     crickets singing a voice

               Michael Cecilione               John Stevenson

a cricket chirps         Cricket

in a sleeve chirping

of the scarecrow         in a scarecrow’s belly.

               Chigetsi-ni (translated by Hiroaki Sato)               Issa (translated by Robert Hass)

fresh-mown hayfield   a farmer’s mown field—

meadowlark nest circles of grass remaining

unscathed   where meadowlarks brood

               David Gross               Robert Spiess

(both published in Modern Haiku under the heading “Two Haiku Written Independently”)

two lines in the water not speaking

not a word between my son and I

father and son on the sandstone bluff

               Randy M. Brooks                                                       Lee Gurga

graduation day—

my son & I side by side

knotting out ties

               Lee Gurga

old wok— old pond

onions falling into a frog jumps

sound of oil water sound

               Kenneth C. Leibman               Bashō

Titan  i

           c

           e titaniceberg

               Ernest J. Berry               R. A. Stefanac

washing windows Clear about

seeing myself everything

more clearly the window washer

               Dorothy McLaughlin               vincent tripi

tide pool two crabs claw

     a crab disappears       to claw in the tidepool

     under the moon the flashlight dims

               Christopher Herold               Michael Dylan Welch

a white swan makes a path       The water-fowl swims

through fallen cherry blossoms Parting with her breast

floating in the moat       The cherry petals.

               Kenneth Tanemura               Roka (translated by R. H. Blyth)

nearly dusk . . . dusk approaches . . .

the shadow of her tombstone her tombstone shadow

reaches his reaches towards his

               Charles Trumbull               Giovanni Malito

beneath the ice waterfall

the waterfall so many ways

still falling for the water to fall

               Jeanne Emrich               John Thompson

forgetting: forgetting—

she sets the table I set your place

for two at the table

               Valerie Broadhurst Woerdehoff               Joann Klontz

coming home

flower that dot on her wing

              by I follow the butterfly

                     flower                       flower     by     flower

               Jane Reichhold                                                            Selma Stefanile

hot night Hot summer night—

turning the pillow turning my pillow over

to the cool side to the cool side

               Cor van den Heuvel                                                   Sydney Bougy

Abandoned grain elevator; Holding the water

holding the snow     held by it—

held by it         the dark mud

               vincent tripi               William J. Higginson

July morning summer’s end

the slow muffled beat the quickening of hammers

of a carpenter towards dusk

               Paul MacNeil                                                               Dee Evetts

        Winter solitude—       winter solitude

in a world of one color in a world of one color

        the sound of wind.   the taste of peaches

               Bashō (translated by Robert Hass)               Wendy Smith

Old frog ground fog—

   up to his ears up to my ankles

      in moonlight in moonlight

               Robert Mainone               Jim Kacian

In his book Haiku in English (Tuttle, 1967), Harold G. Henderson presented two remarkably similar poems. The first, by D. Martin, was the third-place finisher in the 1964 Japan Air Lines haiku contest:

        Sandpipers chased by the sea

        Turned and chased

        The sea back again.

This, of course, is remarkably similar to the following poem by James W. Hackett, which was first published in 1963:

        the fleeing sandpipers

               turn about suddenly

                      and chase back the sea

Henderson calls this “a curious coincidence” and says that the two poems were written “quite independently.” To some readers, this might be considered a case of plagiarism, and it may well be, despite Henderson’s generous comments, but as we consider poems that are remarkably similar, let us likewise celebrate our commonality of experience, and be similarly generous in avoiding any rushes to judgment.