Go to the Pine: The Making of a Haiku

Following Bashō’s advice to “go to the pine to learn about the pine,” this article is the third in a series using specific haiku to illustrate a discussion of the haiku-writing art. The first article spoke of the poet’s receptivity to the haiku moment, and the second explored the difference between mere perception and a deeper experience of the haiku moment. The author also defined “subject” as the external thing or event that provides the stimulus, and “subject matter,” which includes the poet’s uniquely personal response as well as the means used to communicate the experience of the moment to the reader. The means the poet uses to communicate were mentioned but not discussed; this is the chief concern in the present article.

by Patricia Neubauer

The English-language haiku form dictates but two demands: brevity and the use of concrete images.1 Brevity eliminates elaborate diction and excessive description, superfluous syntax, and any tendency toward narrative. Concrete imagery rules out conclusions and judgments, sermons and sentiments. But these two rules are not sufficient in themselves to produce a haiku. Since the haiku is primarily a poem—an expressive art form—the experience of the moment must be presented so that it evokes in the reader a response similar to that of the poet. Great care must be taken in choosing images, contrasts, and words to elicit the necessary associations, and to guide suggestibility regarding the poem’s theme. And, in the end, all must offer a concentrated meaningfulness—if wordless—and an aesthetically pleasing whole.

To accomplish this end, the poet can use a variety of subtle devices and effective techniques. It would be most convenient if one could simple list them, give an example for each, and be done with it. Each of these primary means—season word, imagery, juxtaposition and order of images, surprise, mystery, and allusion—are all potent, but the trouble is that these different means overlap in their functions. They can be used in various ways and in a variety of combinations.

Season Word

The use of season indication is the greatest boon to the haiku poet. One season word is worth four or five modifiers. It often sets the mood of the poem because the skilled reader associates certain physical and emotional states of being with particular seasons. In many cases, the season word serves as the reader’s chief clue to the below-the-surface meaning. Haiku poets supposedly eschew metaphor, yet the use of a seasonal reference frequently, of itself, converts the haiku as a whole into a metaphor.

Another autumn

the grey boulder

sinking deeper

Frank K. Robinson 2

The “season of mists and mellow fruitfulness” is perhaps the most beautiful and the most poignant of the year, but the days grow shorter, the cold winds come, and all too soon, the earth slides into the bitter darkness of winter. The autumn of life also abounds in riches and loveliness, but each year a fresh batch of leaves falls, and new rains cause the boulder to sink deeper and deeper into the earth until it has disappeared.

Year’s end—

an empty trolley car

rolling through the night

Matthew Louvière 3

The empty trolley rolling through the night presents an intriguing picture. But take away the season word, and the reader is unlikely to discover a satisfactory meaning in the haiku. It does occur to me that it might be done, but it would tend to be a rather abstract and metaphysical interpretation.

Imagery

The sine qua non of imagery is its appeal to the senses. Regardless of genre, it is imagery that compels the reader to share the poet’s experience most vividly. In general, the more senses appealed to, the richer the reader’s experience, yet there is a way in which the poet can, more or less, focus on one particular sense. This latter method seems to shorten and intensify the impression of the haiku moment.

country church . . .

the summer smell of cotton

freshly ironed

Peggy Willis Lyles 4

The reader might suspect that this moment came during an interval of prayer. When the eyes are closed, the sense of smell seems to be more acute.

First snow:

a nun in grey

feeding the pigeons

Eric Amann 5

A softly monochromatic picture in white and varying shades of grey. We spend a long time simply contemplating this peaceful tableau. In the next moment the nun may move her arm, and the pigeons may flutter, but it is the static, frozen visual impression that remains with us.

a Shaker room

   silence hanging

on the wooden pegs

Gary LeBel 6

The kitchen or workroom has been left as if the day’s work had been finished, although it is not the end of the day but the end of a generation. The Shakers are gone. Only silence and the articles of their craftsmanship remain.

By contrast, here is a haiku that offers multiple sense impressions:

a wind arises

   the willow’s glittering glaze

          jingles to the ground

Robert Spiess 7

We feel the force of the rising wind, see the glitter and the whipping of the willow wands. We stroke the smooth, cold surface of the ice that encases them, and we hear the sound of the ice breaking and falling to the snow.

Juxtaposition of Images

After the indication of season, the next most-used technique seems to be the juxtaposition of images. Placing one image in close proximity to another—sometimes without immediately obvious connection, frequently without syntactical linking—can be used to enrich the expressiveness, clarify the meaning, and define the mood of the haiku.

as the story-teller begins,

the rain barrel

filling with stars

Alexis Rotella 8

Rotella has doubled the story-teller’s magic by means of the image contained in lines two and three. When the story begins with “once upon a time,” reality is suspended for the listener; a rain barrel full of stars becomes believable. The stars in the rain barrel are only reflected stars, and the story reflects the heart’s desire.

The next haiku is also tinged with magic-not the magic of enchantment, but the magic of gaiety and humor:

tail to trunk

the elephants walk—

children holding hands

Makiko 9

Because of their massive size and great strength, elephants are indeed terrifying creatures, but juxtaposition has reduced them for the moment to the size of children. (While the haiku is before you, take the time to notice the swaying, lumbering elephant rhythm of the first two lines. Notice also the alliteration in lines one and three.)

Order of Images

The order in which juxtaposed images are placed is also important. For example:

shabbat candles—

dimmed by the flames

her tattooed numbers

Linda Bornstein 10

An ordinary Sabbath dinner, yet it takes on a deeper significance than the observance of a particular Sabbath. The poet presents this moment only, but behind the candles’ flames flickers the memory of another kind of flame. Much of the haiku’s force would be lost if the second and third lines were to be reversed.

Surprise

The surprise of the unexpected also functions as a poetic device. To be successful, however, the image or action portrayed must be natural rather than outlandish.

wrapped in brown robes

        friar laughing

                 in snowstorm

Steve Dalachinsky 11

            pacing

the shore

            the ship’s cat

Raymond Roseliep 12

night cat

pulls its shadow

along the picket fence

Jennifer Brutschy 13

In the first example above, our mind’s eye at first creates the picture of a gentle Franciscan brother. Little do we expect to join him in the snow laughing with glee. In the second poem, it is not the ship’s cat we expect to see pacing the shore. In the third haiku, we listen in vain for the loud clickety-clack of a stick drawn along a picket fence, yet we see, with surprise, the undulation of the cat’s shadow against the fence.

Mystery

Since images in haiku are clearly perceived by the senses, one is not likely to expect the overtly mysterious. Yet certain haiku capture one’s fancy by creating a sense of mystery.

in the snow

around the carousel

tracks of a horse

vincent tripi 14

The poet has presented something that might have been seen: hoof prints around an unused carousel. No mystery here: earlier in the day, a rider left the park’s bridle path to have a look at the boarded-up carousel. The poet has not written a mystery—but he has opened the door to the possibility of mystery. The reader prefers to see the tracks of a carousel horse to those of a real horse. We are invited to step back into childhood when we pretended that the horses of the carousel were real. Tripi is playing with mystery; on the other hand, Louvière takes us into the mystery itself:

fog

someone leaves a lantern

someone goes

Matthew Louvière 15

This too is a faithful report of what has been seen; however, the fog obscures all but the lighted lantern and the fact that someone has come and someone has gone. Readers cannot see more than the poet has seen. They cannot identify the one who comes or the one who goes, and interpretations will depend upon whether or not the one who brings the lantern is seen as the same person who departs.

Allusion

When the poet refers, directly or obliquely, to something outside the poem, we call it allusion. Allusion allows the poet to communicate more than is said in the poem; however, allusion succeeds on the assumption that readers bring to their reading a fund of general knowledge. (If, for instance, the reader knows nothing of the German concentration camps of World War II, Linda Bornstein’s haiku quoted earlier is without meaning.)

I close Issa

to watch my children

play on the lawn

Mike Dillon 16

This is not a bland haiku about a man who closes a book to watch his children at play. It is about one who has been immersed in the sorrows of Issa. When he looks up at his children, he is engulfed by a wave of tenderness and love—and perhaps feels a small pang of fear, too, lest the objects of his love be lost.

Stopping to stare

at the beached whale—

a one-legged man

Dave Sutter 17

The juxtaposition of a beached whale and a one-legged man may seem odd until the reader recalls Moby Dick. We have no way of knowing whether the whale is alive or dead-the poet does not tell us. My whim is to inject a quirky bit of humor: possibly this man is another Ahab between voyages looking to replace his worn peg leg with another carved from a whale’s jawbone.

By her childhood name

I call and call my sister—

and so do the cliffs

O. Mabson Southard 18

I’m not sure I stand on firm ground in using this haiku as an example of allusion. But I believe there is such a thing as “suggested allusion”-one so tenuous, so ethereal that it cannot be precisely identified. Although the situation is not parallel to the story of Echo, it leads me into the world of classical mythology, into the world of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. The story of Echo, the looking back of Orpheus, and the description of the earth’s first Golden Age tells of someone or something that has been lost, yet not lost-only transformed into another form. In this case, the lost one has been transformed in a haiku of luminous, haunting beauty.

     We have considered but seven of the most obvious devices used by haiku poets that enable them to share their experience and still stay within the imposed limits of brevity and concrete imagery. Recall Elizabeth Searle Lamb’s haiku:

shimmering beneath the glaze,

blue brush strokes

on the Chinese ginger jar

Elizabeth Searle Lamb 19

Think of this article (and the two before it) as having enjoyed the painted design on the jar, and as having looked beneath the glaze to examine only some of the brush strokes the potter-painter used to create the design. Perhaps you might consider the ginger jar as a whole: the inspired potter picking up the wet clay to throw on the wheel might be compared to the perception of the haiku moment; the jar formed and dried to the poet’s experience of the haiku moment; and the painting of a consonant or harmonious design on the surface of the jar to the final fashioning of a haiku that makes it possible to share one’s experience with others. At the very least, continue to hold the jar carefully in your hands, turning it about and marveling at its intricacies.

Notes

1 Of course, we have been given many other rules such as a haiku should be composed of three lines of 5-7-5 syllables, or that a haiku should not exceed 12 to 15 syllables. Some say that since the Japanese most often write their haiku in a single vertical line, we should try to approximate this by writing ours in a single horizontal line. Some say no verbs; others, no punctuation; and still others, no ego. Rules come; rules go. If they are of any help to make a better haiku, one should use them, but with the exception of the two basic rules of brevity and concrete images, most haiku poets write according to their own rules.

2 Hal Roth, ed. Wind Chimes. #21, p. 27.

3 Koko Katō, ed. Four Seasons Anthology. Nagoya, Japan: Kō Poetry Association, 1991, p. 142.

4 Linda Valentine, ed. Haiku Quarterly. Vol. 3, No. 1, Spring, 1991, p. 24.

5 Eric Amann. Cicada Voices: Selected Haiku of Eric Amann, 1966–1979. Battle Ground, Indiana: High/Coo Press, 1983, p. 26.

6 Robert Spiess, ed. Modern Haiku. Vol. XXII, No. 1, Winter-Spring, 1991, p. 25.

7 Eric Amann, ed. Cicada. Vol. III, No. 3.

8 Linda Valentine, ed. Haiku Quarterly. Vol. 2, No. 1, Spring, 1990, p. 3.

9 Linda Valentine, ed. Haiku Quarterly. Vol. 3, No. 2, Summer, 1991, p. 11.

10 Elizabeth Searle Lamb, ed. Frogpond. Vol. XIII, No. 2, May, 1990, p. 27.

11 Elizabeth Searle Lamb, ed. Frogpond. Vol. XI, No. 1, February, 1988, p. 19.

12 Cor van den Heuvel, ed. The Haiku Anthology. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1986, p. 185.

13 Vincent Tripi and Paul O. Williams, eds. Woodnotes. #7, Autumn, 1990, p. 15.

14 Winner of the 1991 Boston Haiku Contest, Boston Haiku Society, Boston, Massachusetts.

15 Linda Valentine, ed. Haiku Quarterly. Vol. 2, No. 4, Winter, 1990/91, p. 17.

16 Robert Spiess, ed. Modern Haiku. Vol. XX, No. 3, Autumn, 1989, p. 30.

17 Christopher Herold and Michael Dylan Welch, eds. Woodnotes. #13, Summer, 1992, p. 17.

18 Cor van den Heuvel, ed. The Haiku Anthology. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1986, p. 223.

19 Cor van den Heuvel, ed. The Haiku Anthology. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1986, p. 118.