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in a tent in the rain i become a climate

—Jim Kacian

(Per Diem ku for 7.22.11)


Some really cool things going on in this ku.

There is the "the impossibly true" (caused by its "multi-stops", see below): "the rain i become"; "i become a climate"

Is there not also a request?: "become a climate"?

And so some "misreading as meaning" occurs.

Part of this is caused by the one-line ku technique, coined by Jim: "multi-stops". It all depends where your mind stops, where it needs or wants to stop as it's read. And of course this ku also employs "speedrush", with all the words and images coming quickly, almost all at once, heightened by its minimalism.

There is intriguing repetition (3 "in"s; the 3rd more of a visual repetition than sound, like the first two), emphasizing the rain perhaps (its sound), or perhaps the new climate itself.

The keyword, "rain", invites to explore and create one's own associations, world, season. Specifying season would have been intrusive language-wise, and also close off the mystery, ambiguity and invitation it lends to the reader.

The ku has the physical and consciousness-imaginative feeling of Russian nesting dolls, a ku that takes us further and further, more and more inward, until we are inside the poet and a transformation (the poem's imaginative surprise element) occurs—a leap from "outer" (rain, tent) to "i". So, though i could be wrong, it seems there is some ""semantic register shift" going on here, a little jump inside (poet and reader), with something new created, though everything right up to the end weaves together rather seamlessly and plays off one another.

These and other things about it make it unique to the english language, and showcases how "English-language haiku" is a viable term which is intricately connected and indebted to Japanese haiku, yet uniquely its own thing in English poetry as well.

With regards to transformation, which seems like a vital theme of this ku, and something i find especially successful about this ku, i am reminded of Kaneko Tohta's transformation poem:

After a heated argument
I go out to the street
and become a motorcycle

(tr. by Makoto Ueda)

What other ku can you think of that have this transformation element?

What else is going on this ku?

Yutei's flock of cranes
are life-size and move so much
I become a crane

Jack Galmitz

After a heated argument
I go out to the street
and become a motorcycle

- Kaneko Tohta

Do you remember those toys, originated in Japan, called Transformers? My son had them. With this ku, I can't get beyond those toys. (My failing, most likely) The 'transformation' seems somehow artificial.

But with Jim's

in a tent in the rain i become a climate

I get a sense of recognition, & one which I wouldn't have had I not read this ku. The sense of 'how true!', though I'd not thought of it before. To me, that's important.

Is it really "impossibly true"? Perhaps, but only until one has read this ku. In a small tent, one-man or two-man, the rain outside only emphasizes the difference between outside & inside: inside is going to be warm and humid from one's breath and body heat. How can one separate oneself from the climate inside the tent, in reality, since inside the sealed  'skin' of the tent one is separate from the conditions outside and this micro-climate is completely made by one's own body in interaction with what air there is inside? "i become a climate" is true, unless one insists on considering 'I' as something not-body, separate from the physical, separate from one's breath and sweat and body heat.

I like your analogy of the Babushka dolls, Scott, but this ku goes inward only to gain an expansion, as you say, at the point of the "imaginative surprise" of a new awareness. From here, from the awareness that the micro-climate in the small tent is inseparable from "I", we might gain a glimpse into more that we are always inseparable from. The ku is not closed. (Though the tent is  8) ) The transformation is the transformation of awareness and it isn't a delusion.

But I can't honestly say that about the 'become a motorbike' haiku, which to me is more fanciful than truly imaginative. I just can't see that someone becomes a motorbike, though I can understand that someone can become like a motorbike in some ways (eg fuming, noisy etc).

Those Transformer toys were fun, though, and they led (in my son's case) to some rather stunning ideas about what humans might become in the future, what with the "Technological Singularity" looming.

- Lorin

Isn't Tohta's "become a motorcycle" a good example of metaphor?
It seems to me that it is and works well.
In NYC, and usually very late at night when people are sleeping and there is no traffic, suddenly the incredibly roaring noise of a young man on a motorcycle passes temporarily waking everyone.  It is an expression of "I exist regardless of being unrecognized."
Seems to me that used as a metaphor, "become a motorcycle" is rather original.

One of my recent mentored poems on THF:

pulling the drapes
the window becomes  
moonlight

expresses a similar theme: we become that which our soul preceives. For me, it's a spiritual revelation. After reading this passage by Avatar Meher Baba:


The Cosmos is Within You
Meher Baba

It does not require a large eye to see a large mountain. Though the eye is small, the soul which sees through it is greater and vaster than all the things which it perceives. In fact, it is so great that it includes all objects, however large or numerous, within itself. For it is not so much that you are within the cosmos as that the cosmos is within you.


...I realize that what I see outwardly is simply a reflection of my inner soul.

Al

Transformation versus transmutation... stoned if I know

the centricity of the pronoun, "i" or "I" and the observer and the act of "become" seems to depend on the point of view?

"become a climate"
"become a motorcycle"
"become a crane"

all these "transmutation"... but "become like a ..." are transformations 

So...  ???

In Jim's poem, the "Jim climate" within the tent is possible because the definition of "climate" can be applied to the physical person of Jim.  The "motorcycle" and "crane" perhaps too much a stretch and we may translate within the construction of our experiences the "like" if a transformation.  For the transmutation... well, you'll need a phylosopher's stone (where's Harry when you need him?).  The devil as always in the detail.

ciao... chibi

Chibi:
I think you are relying on attribution as related to a "real" that is just not outside of language.  We live in language, cannot remove ourselves from it, and attribution to what is mediated usually does require conventionally some language similarity, as you point out, but it does not stop there: I think we disagree on what is too distant to allow positing.
Let me tell you that in the Metro Museum of Art I stood before the three panel painting of Yutei's Flock of Cranes and had the deepest religious experience of my life.  Because of how had the cranes each moving differently, I suddenly found myself in the midst of the flock and I was actually there; Yutei had created the conditions whereby a human could realize they were a member of a greater community than the human one. So, too far of a stretch? Not for me.  Just not adequate to the religious vision and tactile experience I had, which has never been repeated by any attempt at reaching for such a state of being.

Please see following post.

For reasons that partially elude me, I struggle with the word "become". I find it, in general, a rather heavy-handed word, or perhaps I should say heavy-minded. It seems to take over any poem, especially any short poem, it occurs in. I will say that in Jim's poem, the speed and galloping rhythm help to de-emphasize it. It may also help that "climate", which we can understand  as both an inner and outer thing, is easy to intuit, as transformation. I think Lorin is saying something similar.  

I'm missing something though-- I'm looking for something, I will call it an image for now, which embodies the sense of now I experience myself as a climate or, now I am a climate. I miss the sense of what it may be like to feel in and as that state. I "become" stays in suspension in the head as an idea for me-- the climate of the mind-- a charming idea, but I want my bones to partake as well.

What an image can do, as I understand it, is present an intelligence which has its own life, which we may intuit, but never quite grasp all of. The delight of images is that while we may be the ones who "come up with" or "create" them in some sense, we don't exactly or fully know what we are coming up with-- in a way, you could say we don't quite know what will become of us in the encounter. About images one could say what Gibran said about children. They "are not your(s). . . . They are the (manifestations) of Life's longing for itself".

Maybe "i become a climate" (and, "in the rain i become") connects to this, or at least in Jim's poem it does this, and maybe I am responding to what I regard as the more facile use of the word I have come across elsewhere. My inclination, however, is to regard, even in Jim's poem, the word "become" as one of those which kind of hang out on the branches of a fruit tree, tempting, graspable, and temporarily satisfying,  but where what is needed is to journey into the roots.

I tend to agree with what Peter is saying.  I rarely, if ever, use the word "become," but choose an image that expresses it.  I have been playing with the haiku I posted here and generally ruled out "become." I just posted it that way to see how it worked.
Usually, I would have written something to this affect.

Yutei's flock of cranes
are life-size and move so much
I ruffle my wings

Yes, i see how the word "become" is not the most desirable. Or simply will not work or be agreeable. I suppose "turning into" also has its downside. They are, for lack of a better word, "easy" to toss in.

Certainly though, transformation can be implied in a number of other ways, through indirect language, as Jack shows in his revision.

Here a few, all by Fay Aoyagi, all excellent in my approximation, about transformation using "become":

(the failure to transform; equally, if not more, powerful):

New Year's Eve bath—
I failed to become
a swan


(the transformation of something highly personal, yet outside oneself):

cold rain—
my application
to become a crab 


(the imaginative subjective; an implied "I" somewhere in here?):

the hunter and the hunted
a black balloon becomes
a hole in the sky


And a marvelous ku by George Swede, intertextually playing with Virgilio's "lily" ku:

a face beseeching
before it becomes
a water lily

Don't mean to flip-flop, but Scott's most recent posting does legitimize, if that's the right word, the use of "become" in haiku of transformation.
I do have to add something that I felt 7 years ago; and, that was that Fay Aoyagi was parodying one of my earlier haiku in her "cold rain" haiku..
Mine from 2002:

Cold rain-
in the paper bag crabs
begin to clamber
(From the Effects of Light, AHA 2002).

If I recall, Robert Speiss at the time sort of chided the parody and said something to the effect of "come on now, let's not be childish."

Then again it could be my imagination.

we will have to ask her if her application was accepted. What ensued after can remain her secret.
I like both of your crab poems, parody or no.

As has been pointed out, Kacian's poem has multi-stops that inspire a variety of readings and evoke various responses. One, for me, is a shift that replaces the image of the author-in-a-tent-in-the-rain with the image of a climate that i see as an oblong roughly human-sized pinkish zone reduced to warm mist and atoms. A simple way of communicating the author's oneness with nature, and funny--the communion didn't happen on a mountaintop, but in a tent. Don't know if the rest of you read that as humorous, but in the context of that reading, the use of the word become becomes more fitting. Just my take.

in a tent in the rain i become a climate

For me, "become" is working very well here. Something I find both interesting and admirable is the way time is encapsulated here. Contrasting with the speed of reading the ku is the time it takes for a process to happen (the process of 'becoming something' ) One recognises (or I do...interpretation is ultimately personal and according to experience) that this kind of 'becoming' is common in the world...the same basic process as in butterfly or cicada metamorphosis. A natural process that happens over a certain amount of time.

No-one waves a magic wand and suddenly a caterpillar is a butterfly. Jim doesn't zip up the tent and immediately 'become a climate'. That might be 'impossibly true' or simply untrue.

In a way, the haiku itself, the words as they are set out on the page/screen, is like the sealed tent, which in turn is like a biological test tube or the alembic or retort of the alchemists of old. Within this sealed environment, a natural process happens and the process takes as long as it takes under the conditions needed for it to take place, whether that is a zillionth of a second (in some sub-atomic processes or the chemical/ electrical changes in our brain synapses) or a month or so (in the case of caterpillar to butterfly) or an hour or so (in the case of someone in a sealed tent in the rain)

The thing is, this haiku is entirely plausible because the 'ground work' ("in a tent in the rain") is done before the seemingly implausible "i become a climate". Yes, there is a shift (and maybe this is what Scott means by 'semantic shift of register' ? ) . . . it's something like the shift of view that happens if you look at a drop of blood then put it under a very powerful microscope and look again. What's transformed? One's awareness.

Such poems are memorable for the change they make in our awareness.

- Lorin

Cold rain-
in the paper bag crabs
begin to clamber
- Jack Galmitz (From the Effects of Light, AHA 2002).

cold rain—
my application
to become a crab

- Fay Aoyagi

It well could be that Fay's ku was inspired by yours, Jack, though to me it doesn't seem to be a parody but rather a humorous extension on a subjective level. . . "in this cold rain I'd rather be a crab in that paper bag than standing here getting soaked to the bone", sort of response, made 'poetic' by importing the idea of formal 'application' (such as an application to the relevant authorities to become a citizen of a new country) and applying it to the passing whim of wanting to be a crab.

Playful. . . the use of extended hyperbole? And like so many of Fay's haiku I've read, very 'Fay-centred'.

This is a difference I've been noticing between contemporary Japanese haiku and many current EL haiku.

Whilst the "I" in Jim's "in a tent in the rain" ku both 'becomes a climate' and disperses within that climate, the "I" in both haiku by Fay Aoyagi quoted here by Scott, like the "I" in the Kaneko Tohta haiku, is rock solid and placed dead centre in the poem.

Is this an aspect of Post-Modern poetics? I'm reminded of that quip of TS Eliot's (one who spoke for the Modernist poetics that he helped form)

" Poetry . . . is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things."

- 'Tradition and the Individual Talent', 1922

- Lorin

in a tent in the rain i become a climate

Such poems are memorable for the change they make in our awareness.- Lorin

I agree that all memorable haiku poems alter our perception of reality and further our awareness of the natural world. In Jims poem I am made aware that under certain conditions or circumstances (Lorin's "groundwork") I can become a climate because--in reality--I am the climate. "How to become what you already are" is the end result of an altered awareness precipitated by a memorable haiku. A memorable haiku is transformational and consciousness raising and (for me) Jim's ku certainly accomplishes both

Al

It works because it's true.

It works because it is real.

It works because it is external to the mind of the poet so is something the reader may (if we have had the "right" experience) share and recognise.

Best,
Sandra

(once a keen camper but now, alas, someone who likes a comfortable mattress and two pillows, not to mention a hot-water shower or bath)

in a tent in the rain i become a climate

I enjoy the changes of focus very much: tent to rain to I.  The repetitive word "in" is massively important in making this poem work, as well.  For me, I wonder if:

in the rain in a tent I become a climate might not have worked better ... but, then again, Jim doesn't write his poems without a great deal of thought; that is clear.  So, back to the order and why it is so ...

Don

I'm really not sure where to begin. There are so many excellent points to discuss!

On Tohta'a poem. I did not think of transformers at all, although I concede there might be a bit of that in there. I thought given the cultural connotations of motorbikes it is a statement of rebellion.
'I become a motorbike' is not only rebellious to our conventions of what is possible, but it might also offer some context to that heated argument that gets mentioned on the opening line.

Jim's poem, like most of his poems is wonderful and offers a multitude of readings. Although, I honestly don't feel it as implausible as Tohta's.

I think when we use the word become or turn into or change. It is a way for us to make something implausible plausible. We know that things turn into other things. Children turn into adults, seeds turn into plants, day turns into night. These are all concepts we are familiar with and so they make sense to us. But something like

"I got ready for work when day was night."

Makes no real sense, we think of day and night as being seperate and opposite to one another. But how many of you have got up for work ridiculously early, looked up at that dark sky and still felt like it was the middle of the night?       

I suppose what I am getting at, is that alot of the haiku quoted in the thread, do offer something which seems implausible, but presented in such a way that they do in fact seem quite plausible, due in large part to our understanding of gradual change.

warmest,
John



       
                 

Examining the word "become" in Jim's ku is intriguing because it asks us to either take a journey or to be there all at once (as posited in Peter's suggestion "I am a climate").  Seems to me much of the poetry is in the voyage (I liked the sensation of undergoing the change in Jim's and others*).

*"become" seems to work well in some of the other examples too:

Tohta's "become a motorcycle" vs. I am a motorcycle
Aoyagi's "I failed to become a swan" vs. I am not a swan
Swede's "before it becomes a water lily" vs. it is a water lily

i'd like to throw out a bunch more examples in this reply (my apologies if they are too many) that i think relate to transformation. Lorin used the word "metamorphosis" and perhaps i should have used that in the first place, as i like how it relates as an allusion with Franz Kafka's novella "The Metamorphosis"—a completely implausible tale, but, nevertheless, extremely emotional and a fantastical journey of relationships, family, social class, love, etc. Not that anyone is necessarily saying this, but haiku can do this too. The implausible is rich territory to explore with our ku. As said by someone or other, sometimes the fictional is far more real than the "true".

Two quick notes first before more examples of more metamorphoses.

i feel that Jack is right in that the Tohta ku is a metaphor, and i like John's association with "rebellion". Here is another translation of it that makes the metaphor/simile obvious:

After hateful words,
I roar off
like a motorcycle.

(tr. by Lucian Stryk)

Fay notes that her 'swan' ku in issue 28.2 (2005) of Frogpond was inspired in part by another poem, which i think gives her poem more depth, playing with both the vertical (past) and horizontal (present) axes simultaneously:

my wife on New Year's Eve
taking a bath
as though she is a swan

—Sumio Mori


New Year's bath—
I fail to become
a swan

—Fay Aoyagi


One poet i found again yesterday in looking for more examples who writes a lot about metamorphosis, or transfiguration (as Ueda notes), is Mitsuhashi Takajo. Her years are 1899-1972. Very much the 20th c poetess. Some examples:


climb this tree
and you'll be a she-devil—
red leaves in the sunset glow


up on a hydro pole
the electrician turns
into a cicada


the southerly wind
becoming a peacock
challenges death


the aged person
wanting to become a tree
embraces a tree

(all tr. by Makoto Ueda in his anthology *Far Beyond the Field*)

Other examples i found from this anthology:

turned into blossoms
or drops of dew?
this morning's snow

—Chiyojo


inhaling urban dust
and turning it into flesh
a carp-shaped banner

—Takeshita Shizunojo


having eaten a lizard
how carefully the cat
licks its own body!

—Hashimoto Takako


faces with no mask
turned into masked faces
around the fire

—Uda Kiyoko


white leek
turned into light beam
now being cut up

—Kuroda Momoko


Some examples of English-language ku i like:

white raven
being this . . .
and that

Robert F. Mainone

*One* reading of this one by Mainone could be transformation/metamorphosis. Other readings are certainly possible. But i like the possibility of the white raven being (changing into) this and that (snow, the tip of a mountain, a cloud, the poet's shadow, etc.... Of course it could very well be the unstated "I" that is being considered.


under a stainless steel
bridge
a country disappears

Jacob Kobina Ayiah Mensah

Here the change is not into something else that's tangible but into *nothingness*. And the intriguing question i return to in this one is "why?". i feel this is an extremely well done ku that is politically charged, showcasing the changes that have gone on in the world over the last two centuries, dealing with colonialism, imperialism, globalization, and reflecting on culture. i'm reminded of the novel *Things Fall Apart*. A powerful poem i think.


Others:


   ocean
+  forest
    horses

—Aram Saroyan (1968)



a fork in the
the road turning into a
a clock

—Peter Yovu


And a few more from *The Haiku Universe for the 21st Century* anthology that i think contain elements of metamorphosis/transformation:


More and more quickly
my lungs are turning blue—
a trip by sea

—Hōsaku Shinohara


Beat of a war drum
in autumn desolation
turns into
a contusion

—Shigenobu Takayanagi


The falling leaves—
rushing underground I notice
scales on my skin

—Mikajo Yagi


As a single drop
of moonlight
I am walking

—Shōshi Fujita


When the frozen butterfly
finally reaches its end:
a hundred towers

—Yasumasa Sōda


And one last one, by Bashō:

  A crow
has settled on a bare branch—
  autumn evening.

(from *Essential Haiku* by R. Hass)


on a bare branch
a crow has alighted . . .
autumn nghtfall

(tr. by Ueda)

But this might only work with/for the above translation, which i think it's possible to read as:

crow + bare branch = autumn evening

and, therefore, a transformation into a . . . climate?


Hiroaki Sato's version defeats this notion though:

On a dead branch crows remain perched at autumn's end



 

A fine assemblage of haiku of metamorphosis, Scott, and a great deal of work.
I have to ask, though, how did we step backwards to an aesthetical requirement that poetry of whatever kind had to satisfy the requirements of someone's view of a "reality"?
I briefly brought this up in a thread in mentoring on the gay day parade and showed how all the readings offered by our members were biased, limited by their prejudices, and were, in fact, just the antithesis of what poet had in mind.  Of course, no one picked it up...too dirty?
I mean I really am amazed that we are once again, even if we allow for transformation, becoming, however it is expressed, insisting on a groundwork in the "real."
I feel like I am kicking a dead horse because I must have mentioned Ferdinand de Saussure's "Course in General Linguistics" as being the bedrock of modernist thought on language and the arbitrariness and unmotivated nature of the sign=no word bears relationship to the world but to a system, self-contained, of signifiers and signifieds at least a dozen times.  There is no one to one correspondence of language to world (Wittgenstein, Derrida, Barthes, et al) and so expressing a "truth" through the fantastical or metaphoric in poetry is in its very nature. How about Kafka"s The Trial, since Scott mentioned Kafka; is that a plausible story situation?  Yet, isn't it "true"?

Briefly, our Western tradition is fraught with metamorphosis and books that utilize it as their center piece.  Consider Odysseus and his relationship with Circe, who turns half of his men into swine.  And, throughout this epic the very gods themselves are literary deus ex machina brought into the "real" to resolve problems.
Then, Ovid's Metamorphoses, which tells the stories of mythological figures who have undergone metamorphosis.
Or the Golden Ass of Apuleius, an allegory of a man possessed and transformed into a donkey and his journey and learning towards release and salvation.
Not to mention the transfiguration of Christ in the New Testament.

So, if we were to use in our haiku something akin to  the Japanese saijiki, wouldn't we have to include such seminal works mentioned in my last post, as well as all the best examples of becoming something else, transformation, mutation, metamorphosis, in English language literature.  Certainly, we wouldn't create something like a saijiki in our culture based on Japan's ancient compilations of its ancient works of waka, rengai, haiku. It would be cumbersome, to say  the least, and would require such a depth of historical/philosophical/linguistic knowledge as to be beyond most practitioners.  That's why the idea of seasonal reference is obsolete in our art, as it neither is saijiki based nor English literary history based. 
Certainly, though, we should be able to take away from our long literary tradition the poetic subject of metamorphosis or "to become," if the latter is not too offensive to anyone.

Jack, I'm a bit confused, maybe  because I don't have your depth of understanding of linguistics. Is there any way you can make your concerns a bit more. . . concrete. I understand your question:

"I have to ask, though, how did we step backwards to an aesthetical requirement that poetry of whatever kind had to satisfy the requirements of someone's view of a "reality"?

I'm not sure that anyone has stepped back, or that anyone is setting up requirements for a view of reality-- but is that your concern? Is the concern around the nature of "plausibility", especially as it may relate to "transformation"?

As I have told you, I appreciate your contributions here, as on the old blog, but I think you sometimes present too much-- I don't know where to start, and I want to. 

Well, Peter, I'll do my best to express my concern here.
The question for me is one of attribution and plausibility and what requirements, if any, exist before a line of poetry can be said/read to mean (in the widest sense).
No reason to mention anyone by name, but quite a few comments on this thread suggested that what made Jim's poem "acceptable," and what distinguished it from other examples of haiku expressing becoming something else, which were deemed less than "acceptable," was its relationship to what was presumed by these readers to be "real," and by real they meant something akin to measurable, quantifiable, verifiable in the "real."
Certainly, in any attribution to what I consider outside of the country of language (existants, not existants), but which I take it is being regarded by some as the capital of language (that words don't just refer to but express the unmediated world), there must, at least by some minimal logic in language/consciousness, be some qualities that allow for the attribution.
This, however, still does not, at least for me, serve as a register of the "value" of the haiku and its attributions; for me, this is pure reification, objectification and commodification of the "real." It is presumptuous in the sense of proper as proprietary (very captilistic here).
So, we have a litany of haiku and texts from the Western tradition that used, in their different ways, metamophosis as central and therefore used attribution to the so-called implausible as a means to express "truth" without a 19th Century view of objective reality.

Scott, what a marvelous (literally) mini-anthology you've given here. Very enlivening. It would be wonderful to expand upon, add some commentary and/or correlates from other sources and create a little book called Haiku of Transformation or something.

As with Jack's posts, there's just about too much to handle here. I'll try to come back with some thoughts.
But for now I'll just say this: it may be possible that the soul, or psyche, carries the imprints of the evolution from egg to infant, all the ontogenetic changes. . .fish, reptile, mammal. . .

Okay, Jack, that's great. Let me think about it.

I'm glad I've made myself clear, Peter.
As you're considering a response, I'd also ask you to consider say surrealism in poetry (where it began), then to paintings and movies, and why the seemingly impossible, improbable, were expressed in surrealism as the more nearer to the "truth" of things and the mind.  Of course, the movement relied on an "unconscious," which modern psychiatry, not psychoanalysis, finds dubious (but the two disciplines never were very comfortable together) for its validation.  Yet unconscious or not, surely we know the mind, its experience of the world, is not on a rational track only, but multilevels are operating all the time in experience.
So, at least for me, I can see no greater validity in Jim's poem than in any of the many examples of poems provided by Scott.  To the contrary, some of the poems are stronger to me.

And, if I may, without being tiresome, just give an example.
How can Pablo Neruda say, as he does in "Carnal Apple..." :

Love is a war of lightning.

A predicative nominative usually "clarifies" the subject; okay, so love is a war, we can easily go that far although Neruda is using paradox to an extent, but we understand that love can be bitterly won, but what about a war "of lightning"?  Adjectival phrase modifying the type of war.  Far cry from realism, far cry from verifiable notions of the "real," yet surely very very very real, isn't it?

I mean attributions of the outlandish, identification with what lies "without" consciousness (as if anything resided outside of consciousness) is, in my mind, central to poetics.
So, Kohta's poem is intriguing, original, right on point!

While I'm waiting, and will probably fall asleep soon, let me offer this of my own, which I never sent out.

Traces of snow
facing
the morning moon

What I realized after writing it was that WE are what combines, that is what we are for, what is essentially human; there is no "real" relationship between the broken whispy patches of snow on the black tarred roof and the partially translucent morning moon; it is WE who make relationships. Thus, we are metaphors and metaphor makers. Thus, we can say in the green sky I found you hiding, or I am a tree/catching the first snow-flakes/of this evening.
The world is a human construct and figurative language, and rhetorical language, are its creators.
Perhaps, the difference in quality of a poem is the quality of the metaphors and how much they reveal our identity.

Jack, get some sleep, man. Maybe some others will post in the meantime.

i seemed to have subconsciously picked up where Richard Gilbert began:

"Notions of Metamorphosis in English"

http://www.iyume.com/metamorphosis/MetamorphosisinEnglishHaiku.html (http://www.iyume.com/metamorphosis/MetamorphosisinEnglishHaiku.html)

Quote from: Jack Galmitz on July 24, 2011, 03:02:23 PM
Briefly, our Western tradition is fraught with metamorphosis and books that utilize it as their center piece.  Consider Odysseus and his relationship with Circe, who turns half of his men into swine.  And, throughout this epic the very gods themselves are literary deus ex machina brought into the "real" to resolve problems.
Then, Ovid's Metamorphoses, which tells the stories of mythological figures who have undergone metamorphosis.
Or the Golden Ass of Apuleius, an allegory of a man possessed and transformed into a donkey and his journey and learning towards release and salvation.
Not to mention the transfiguration of Christ in the New Testament.

I'm sorry if I gave the impression that I'm an advocate of strict 'realism', Jack. Perhaps my expression isn't as good as it might be. I tried to show how one haiku ("in a tent in the rain...")was more successful and immediate for me than another ("I become a motorcycle").

Whilst I admit that my head spins when I try to absorb the various dialects of linguistics (I find the abstract difficult... too many signifiers and signifieds and I'm bushed! I am poor at maths, too)  I'm quite aware of metaphor as the great connector in the English language, am familiar (& love) the Greek myths and also Ovid's greatest work, 'Metamorphoses'...have also read Kafka and Neruda. And my favourite play is Shakespeare's last, 'The Tempest'. Also, being Australian and from the country, familiar with many of the Dreaming stories.

In fact, I love the myths of the world.

I like where this thread is going, too, and will continue to read all of the posts with interest and an eye to my further education...maybe even ask a question or two along the way for my own benefit.

"We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep."

The Tempest Act 4, scene 1, 148–158

- Lorin

I've been reminded of a pictorial example which uses the metaphor of 'instant' metamorphosis which appeared in many local (Australian) newspapers and magazines this century and which was designed to be (and was) immediately accessible to people who might not have read a page of poetry in their lives, let alone know the term metaphor.

The picture is of a dinner party, all seated around the table. Centre of picture is a man with the head of a very vicious-looking, snarling Doberman Pincer, fangs bared, spiked collar and all, and a woman seated next to him starting back in shock and horror. The impression is of instant transformation, and we do not mistake the man for an ancient Egyptian, jackal-headed god.

Most Australians would not need to read the text to understand that the man with the dog's head was about to "bite the woman's head off" (a metaphor in common speech) or that this sudden change was about to be attributed to loss of social poise due to his overdoing the alcoholic beverages. And some of us would recognize one source of this 'transformation into wolf man' metaphor in the C19 novel, "Dr Jeckyll and Mr Hyde" and werewolf themes. In common culture, we are used to people 'turning into' something else, metaphorically speaking. Circe's pigs are not as rare as we'd like them to be and many a Drongo is distinguishable from the actual bird only by his inability to fly and lack of literal feathers.

But which translation of Kohta's 'motorbike' haiku is closest to a true rendition of the original?

After hateful words,
I roar off
like a motorcycle.

(tr. by Lucian Stryk)

or

After a heated argument
I go out to the street
and become a motorcycle

(tr. by Makoto Ueda)

In any case, I admit that my preference for the Kacian 'in a tent in the rain...' is because I can imagine myself into it, it seems to invite me to be the 'I' who becomes a climate and allows me the basis for doing that, whereas Tohta's seems to be telling me something about himself. As does Fay Aoyagi's 'application to become a crab'. Though I find humour in both and can appreciate them to a certain extent, I find that I am 'audience' to these poems, rather than participant. To me they are 'quirky', individualistic, in a way that the Kacian ku is not.

(Maybe this is the result of having listened for too many years to 'confessional' performance poetry before I found a welcome change in many haiku?)

- Lorin

激論つくし街ゆきオートバイと化す

gekiron tsukushi michi-yuki ootobai to ka su

Kaneko Tohta, in 1961


gekiron 激論 a heated [hot] discussion [argument]　

After hateful words,
I roar off
like a motorcycle.

(tr. by Lucian Stryk)

or

After a heated argument
I go out to the street
and become a motorcycle

(tr. by Makoto Ueda)


ka su ... change into, turn into

michi-yuki ootobai to ka su . . . maybe

I (change into) the motorbike on the road

(? Implying they had their argument on the road, where a motorcycle was passing just that moment . . .)

other suggestions are welcome !

This seems about the haiku poets enthusiastically discussing the development of modern haiku until late into the night.

昭和３６年、「金子兜太句集」より。
この昭和30年代は俳句論の盛んな頃であった。「造型俳句論」を著し、また、この年には現代俳句協会が分裂し、俳人協会が発足している。連日連夜、激論が交わされていたことであろう。目覚めて、街を歩く時、オートバイと化
していると詠まれている。激論を尽くした爽快感を風の抵抗感を楽しむ、オートバイと化すとは、とても面白い。
風を切ってオートバイに乗っているようであり、そして、爆音を立ててオートバイ自身にもなった感じでしょう。激論を飛ばしたあと、意気盛んに、肩を揺すって歩く氏の姿が髣髴します。
http://www.shuu.org/newpage24.htm


Gabi

.

Thanks for the romanji text and translation, Gabi. Looks like Uedo's is closest.

Is tsukushi a kireji, then?

"This seems about the haiku poets enthusiastically discussing the development of modern haiku until late into the night." - Gabi

;D  8)

Funny, different people have different associations with motorbikes...'danger', 'rebellion' seem to be a couple that've been mentioned. Another, for some, is 'freedom' and another, 'independence'.

- Lorin

Fantastic discussions and posts by everyone.  This is one post to come back to time and time again.

I'm not a big fan of Lucien Stryk's translations, although I liked some he did of Basho's work.

To me, the motorcycle sound was going back to childhood and imitating the sounds of motorbikes (and cars).

Also it was possibly the sound of an adult being angry and frustrated and unintentionally making funny odd noises as if steam is being let out of a kettle or a pressure cooker.

I imagine Tohta Kaneko would hate this, but I find his haiku utterly adorable. ;-)

It's one I'll go back to time and time again and never be bored, and always finding more possibilities.

Alan

Quote from: Lorin on July 25, 2011, 05:10:42 AM
Thanks for the romanji text and translation, Gabi. Looks like Uedo's is closest.

Is tsukushi a kireji, then?

"This seems about the haiku poets enthusiastically discussing the development of modern haiku until late into the night." - Gabi

;D  8)

Funny, different people have different associations with motorbikes...'danger', 'rebellion' seem to be a couple that've been mentioned. Another, for some, is 'freedom' and another, 'independence'.

- Lorin

Is tsukushi a kireji, then?

No, it is not a cut marker.
It is derived from tsukusu ...  to exhaust

http://dic.search.yahoo.co.jp/search?p=%E5%B0%BD%E3%81%8F%E3%81%99&aq=0&oq=%E3%81%A4%E3%81%8F%E3%81%99&r_dtype=all&ei=UTF-8

You can check the most common kireji here
http://haikutopics.blogspot.com/2006/06/kireji.html


I am still trying to find out if Tohta sensei used a motorbike at that time,　maybe to drive home from the haiku meeting after the heated discussion.

Gabi

.

ge.ki.ro.n tsu.ku.shi mi.chi-yu.ki o.o.to.ba.i to ka su (19-20 count)

This is not a traditional 5-7-5.  This is not haiku but something other?

I am wondering of this translation from what to English.  A short poem to a short poem.  Do the Japanese call it haiku or something else.  That begs the question if it is something else in Japanese do we as translators translate it into our English "haiku"?  Certainly then, it is a TRUE transformation!

???

Mr. Kohta served as the President of the Modern Haiku Association from 1983 to 2000; the traditional 5-7-5 requirement was abandoned by this and other gendai (modernist) haiku poets in Japan long, long ago.
It is haiku, not a short poem!
This is where Lorin's insightful remarks about a motorcycle representing "independence" would come in; I hadn't thought of it before.

Dear Jack,

I asked of traditional, but, I see your gendai point, thank you.  In Japan, some have and continue to argue/discuss this point.  If you think it finalized in the Japanese haiku community, I think you and Mr. Kohta were/are too optimistic.  Perhaps, this the reason to turn into a motorcycle?

Keep it 8)

You're quite right, Chibi.
But for us who right in free-verse, it is really a settled matter. Not that 5-7-5 is outlawed.  I find occassionally some of my haiku quite by accident are 5-7-5; I do not change them to suit the notion that that is not correct in English.
Actually, I think the traditional form in Japan easily outweighs the gendai free form.  But who cares?
Most Japanese would not consider what we do haiku at all.  That doesn't stop us from writing our own, somewhat, derivative form.

to ride on a motorcycle or any open air vehicle at high velocity is a speedrush. A miscalculation in steering or leaning, a pebble in the road, a blink of an eye at the wrong moment . . . if you want to live, attention to the operation at hand is vital. Put out of your mind such minor matters as syllable counts and nationalism and warring saijiki and cops and wolves. Go, Kaneko, go, but remember to write the haiku down later.

and to become a motorcycle, to be one, is to become armored. To do battle?

"There is no one to one correspondence of language to world (Wittgenstein, Derrida, Barthes, et al) and so expressing a "truth" through the fantastical or metaphoric in poetry is in its very nature." --Jack

yes, did squids fluoresce above Tohta's head as he worked in the bank all those years ago? And on a different day, did he get into an argument about haiku, go out into the street, climb onto a bike and roar away? Did he see a motorcycle go by? Did he become one? Does he remember? We are discussing an act of creation. The end result is the words, and the author himself may not know all their sources.

Indeed. I'm not questioning the act of creation is with words; of course, it is.  Then, we are left with the signifiers, the words, that relate to other words, and there is no centered consciousness or author anymore; it is the reader's text and all their associations, connotations, memories, dreams, reflections, much of which is unconscious.
But words, yes, they are our medium of existence.  That's why I like to look for the affect of the words, because I think you can best express something by choice of words rather than attempt to reflect any factual.  Writing off the subject, someone called it, was the best pursuit, if you wanted to express the subject.

Quote from: Mark Harris on July 25, 2011, 09:12:54 AM
to ride on a motorcycle or any open air vehicle at high velocity is a speedrush. A miscalculation in steering or leaning, a pebble in the road, a blink of an eye at the wrong moment . . . if you want to live, attention to the operation at hand is vital. Put out of your mind such minor matters as syllable counts and nationalism and warring saijiki and cops and wolves. Go, Kaneko, go, but remember to write the haiku down later.

I agree with you upto, "nationalism", this, is and never has been the issue, I feel, also, perhaps a certain discipline (in terms of the meaning of sensei "those that go before" might be a courteous concideration).  Although, I think your remarks in an a courteous spirit, I take issue in calling "cops" and "wolves" as a way of demonizing those of different opinions.

I understand the idea behind the word "free" applied to verse, but, there is always a cost and possible collateral damage.  To end in cliche': "There is no free lunch..."

I do quite agree, that if you do not care for a certain style not to embrace it is well within your rights.

keep it  8)

"Although, I think your remarks in an a courteous spirit, I take issue in calling "cops" and "wolves" as a way of demonizing those of different opinions." --Chibi

I did not mean to offend you, and take care never to demonize (as if i had that power) anyone. By cops I meant literally the police in Japan who arrested and harassed (not in a metaphorical way) gendai haiku poets. I used the word wolf in reference to the haiku magazine and to Tohta's haiku group, and my intention was to include Tohta (the political side of him) in my statement.

For what it's worth, I enjoy traditional and modern haiku, written in any language.

Dear Mark,

My apology, with your explanations I am eggfaced.   :-[

write on... keep it  8)

no, wash the egg off, please.

I thought irreverence might provide insight into a Tohta poem circa 1961. Opacity, and subsequent misunderstanding, was an unfortunate byproduct.

Quote from: Gabi Greve on July 25, 2011, 06:52:41 AM
Is tsukushi a kireji, then?

No, it is not a cut marker.
It is derived from tsukusu ...  to exhaust

http://dic.search.yahoo.co.jp/search?p=%E5%B0%BD%E3%81%8F%E3%81%99&aq=0&oq=%E3%81%A4%E3%81%8F%E3%81%99&r_dtype=all&ei=UTF-8

You can check the most common kireji here
http://haikutopics.blogspot.com/2006/06/kireji.html



I am still trying to find out if Tohta sensei used a motorbike at that time,　maybe to drive home from the haiku meeting after the heated discussion.

Gabi

.

Thanks Gabi... just intuitively (which is as often wrong as right) this (prose) sense occurs:

" having exhausted the topic of the heated argument"

I go out into the street
and become a motor bike

...which emits an identifiable motorbike sound through its exhaust pipe (& pollutes the air?)

In other words, could there be, lurking somewhere in this ku, the same pun on 'exhaust' in Japanese as there is in English?

With the word "exhausted [the topic of conversation]"  echoed by the implied sound coming from the exhaust pipe of a motorbike as it starts up and takes off?

If that's the case in the Japanese, then there's a piece of the puzzle entirely missing in the English translations.... tsukushi ( "derived from tsukusu ...  to exhaust") appears not to have found its way into the translations, anyway.

I know that Tohta (I think it was Tohta) used a sound pun in a dandelion...tanpoppo? ...haiku, that you explained somewhere.

- Lorin

modified: found I'd posted my comments within Gabi's quoted comments  ::) so corrected that, then added the 2nd last sentence to (hopefully) clarify what I mean by my guess. Then added the last sentence.

激論つくし街ゆきオートバイと化す

gekiron tsukushi michi-yuki ootobai to ka su

Kaneko Tohta, in 1961


In other words, could there be, lurking somewhere in this ku,
the same pun on 'exhaust' in Japanese as there is in English?

No, I do not think so.

tsukusu means to use something to its fullest, to do all that can be done with it,
but not in the sense of exhaust fumes of a motor bike.
It is used for example of a meal where one special ingredient is used in all preparations, like in the soup, fried, steamed, in salad and so on.

michi-yuki ootobai
The poem also does not say "I go out into the street"
but rather  "a motor bike passes on the street"

ka su
is a poetic short version of henka suru, when A changes into B.

Got to run.
Gabi

.

" tsukusu means to use something to its fullest, to do all that can be done with it," - Gabi

yes, so does 'exhaust' (verb)...to 'to exhaust the supply', 'to exhaust the potential' of something. Yet this is connected (in English) with 'exhaust' as used in relation to motor vehicles. The 'exhaust pipe' is what carries the remaining gases from exhausted fuel away from the engine. The remaining gasses and carbon left over from the exhausted fuel are called "the exhaust" (noun)

having exhausted the hot topic
I go out into the street --
a motorbike passes

;D well, I like it, anyway. The connection/ relationship between discussion topic and motorbike is implied, as is the relationship of the sound of a motorbike to the sound of people arguing a 'hot topic'. . . people sounding like motorbikes, a motorbike sounding like people expressing their views strongly.

gekiron tsukushi michi-yuki ootobai to ka su

After hateful words,
I roar off
like a motorcycle.

(tr. by Lucian Stryk)

or

After a heated argument
I go out to the street
and become a motorcycle

(tr. by Makoto Ueda)

I can't understand why tsukushi didn't make it into the translations. There has to be a reason.

- Lorin

" After a heated argument" --- heated:   the product of combustion?

"Definition: Combustion is a chemical reaction that occurs between a fuel and an oxidizing agent that produces energy, usually in the form of heat and light. 

Internal Combustion Engine:

"The internal combustion engine is an engine in which the combustion of a fuel (normally a fossil fuel) occurs with an oxidizer (usually air) in a combustion chamber. In an internal combustion engine, the expansion of the high-temperature and -pressure gases produced by combustion applies direct force to some component of the engine, such as pistons, turbine blades, or a nozzle. This force moves the component over a distance, generating useful mechanical energy.[1][2][3][4]"


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_combustion_engine

exhaust:

ex·haust Pronunciation (g-zôst)
v. ex·haust·ed, ex·haust·ing, ex·hausts
v.tr.
1. To wear out completely. See Synonyms at tire1.
2. To drain of resources or properties; deplete: tobacco crops that exhausted the soil. See Synonyms at deplete.
3. To use up completely: exhausted our funds before the month was out.
4. To treat completely; cover thoroughly: exhaust a topic.
5. To draw out the contents of; drain: exhaust a tank gradually.
6. To let out or draw off: exhaust vaporous wastes through a pipe.
v.intr.
To escape or pass out: Steam exhausts through this valve.
n.
1.
a. The escape or release of vaporous waste material, as from an engine.
b. The fumes or gases so released.
2. A duct or pipe through which waste material is emitted.
3. An apparatus for drawing out noxious air or waste material by means of a partial vacuum.
[Latin exhaurre, exhaust- : ex-, ex- + haurre, to draw.]

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/exhaust

In relation to the poem, the "I'' of the ku still has energy after exhausting the topic of the 'heated discussion', and goes out into the street only to recognise himself (metaphorically) in a motorbike, still having more 'fuel' for more combustion and therefore able to go a further distance?

- Lorin

gekiron tsukushi michi-yuki ootobai to ka su

gekiron ... geki ron

the RON is the argument, but the GEKI is only "heated" in my English translation, since it is an English expression, I think, to have a "heated argument".

the GEKI in Japanese is not about temperature. not a product of combustion.
http://dic.search.yahoo.co.jp/search?p=%E6%BF%80&aq=-1&oq=&r_dtype=all&ei=UTF-8

it is more in the vein of "vehement".

Gabi

Dear Lorin and Gabi

This is fascinating. :-)

I do wonder if Lorin is onto something though.

You can exhaust an argument as well.

What we need is an indepth Japanese English dictionary on modern slang and colliquisms and I wonder if such a thing truly exists?

Alan

Quote from: Gabi Greve on July 26, 2011, 02:18:52 AM
gekiron tsukushi michi-yuki ootobai to ka su

gekiron ... geki ron

the RON is the argument, but the GEKI is only "heated" in my English translation, since it is an English expression, I think, to have a "heated argument".

the GEKI in Japanese is not about temperature. not a product of combustion.
http://dic.search.yahoo.co.jp/search?p=%E6%BF%80&aq=-1&oq=&r_dtype=all&ei=UTF-8

it is more in the vein of "vehement".

Gabi

Quote from: Gabi Greve on July 26, 2011, 02:18:52 AM
gekiron tsukushi michi-yuki ootobai to ka su

gekiron ... geki ron

the RON is the argument, but the GEKI is only "heated" in my English translation, since it is an English expression, I think, to have a "heated argument".

the GEKI in Japanese is not about temperature. not a product of combustion.
http://dic.search.yahoo.co.jp/search?p=%E6%BF%80&aq=-1&oq=&r_dtype=all&ei=UTF-8

it is more in the vein of "vehement".

Gabi

gekiron tsukushi michi-yuki ootobai to ka su


" gekiron ... geki ron

the RON is the argument, but the GEKI is only "heated" in my English translation"

Yep, that fits , Gabi...but where is tsukushi in the translations?

heated argument exhausted
I go out into the street
and become a motorbike

(or "a motorbike passes" ?)

yours,
Sherlock Ford  8)

ps. in which case there would be an implied sense of "vented" , "venting" [one's emotional attachments to one's own position in the argument] as well. The argument (or the topic of it) is exhausted, but also one's emotions, in relation to it, have been 'exhausted' in the sense of 'safely carried away/ given an outlet', like the exhaust from an engine is carried away ( or 'vented') by the exhaust pipe.

vent 1 Pronunciation (vnt)
n.
1. A means of escape or release from confinement; an outlet: give vent to one's anger.
2. An opening permitting the escape of fumes, a liquid, a gas, or steam.

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/vent

It fits for me, anyway.

---
modified: added the ps.

Hi Sherlock,

gekiron tsukushi michi-yuki ootobai to ka su

Kaneko Tohta, in 1961


After hateful words,
I roar off
like a motorcycle.

(tr. by Lucian Stryk)

or

After a heated argument
I go out to the street
and become a motorcycle

(tr. by Makoto Ueda)

I guess both these translations use AFTER as translation for tsukushi .


Gabi
.

But 'after' doesn't carry the metaphorical connections with 'motorbike' that 'exhausted' /tsukushi does. So why would translators ignore tsukushi ( a rich word, in context) and replace it with a mere preposition (indicating place in time, and no more) in English?

- Lorin

please carry on with your exhaust studies. In the meantime, I hope you don't mind if I return to an earlier thread of thought. Scott Metz wrote:

Quote(the failure to transform; equally, if not more, powerful):

New Year's Eve bath—
I failed to become
a swan

        --Fay Aoyagi

which brings to mind a few other poems that explore expectation and perception. Are they about failed transformations? They are not transcendent. Yet, such moments of awareness and transition can change us.

dropping stone after stone
into the lake    I keep
reappearing

        --George Swede

summer festival—
my Astro Boy mask
has lost its power

        --Fay Aoyagi

After a strip search
old inmates, new inmates
in blue prison garb

        --Johnny Baranski

Mark, forgive me for bypassing your latest comments.

Just two poems, one of mine, the other by a Japanese woman whose name I cannot recall (because I do not keep books) about one subject and two approaches, one in keeping with a sketch from life, the other utilizing the fantastic to convey the emotion of the subject.  Which is better I cannot say. I do have to admit, though, to my great admiration for the woman's haiku (it remains one of the few I recall by heart).

A May night-
even after dark
the clouds are white

A May night-
without a ship I set sail
for the moon's shores
(J. Galmitz)


Is there something inherently decisive in choosing one style over another?
What do you think?  Do both styles achieve a similar end?

Mark, I feel that you have touched upon something that is imperative about mutations. Yes we can change what we are for periods of time, but whether this is acheived through the use of chemicals, environment, illness, or metaphor these transformations are usually fleeting or impossible to acheive. Sentiments which I feel are feel expressed in the poems you shared. Particularly Fay's.

Jack, I enjoyed both the poems you shared, and honestly I found yours to be more striking than the unnamed japanese woman's. Like I said I did enjoy her poem, but yours has more intrigue to it (well, at least it does to me) I found your middle line to be a wonderful expression of saying your not equiped or ready to make such a voyage but your going to go anyway, and if you end up on the moon's shores then so be it.

warmest,
John     

Jack, I like both poems you have presented here, though in my opinion, both suffer a bit by the use of qualifiers which serve as commentary and distract from the poems' essential beingness. I would prefer something like

A May night--
after dark
the clouds are white       (or possibly still white)

The word "still" retains a degree of commentary, but less so.  By using the word "even", I feel, the author is holding our hands a bit,  she doesn't seem willing to let the mystery of white clouds simply be.

Your poem is quite wonderful, and as with the first, perhaps I only quibble here. Nonetheless, I think something more daring than "without a ship" would work well here.

But I think you'll have defenders for both poems as they are, and perhaps they'll be right.

The subject of transformation is a huge one, and one which gets more subtle and involved the more I consider it. Certainly it is a core subject for haiku and poetry in general. 

I don't have much time to develop my thoughts right now, but it strikes me that it can be opened up by looking at different approaches or aspects, none of which will entirely exclude or stand apart from the others. Perhaps something like:

Poems that embody--

psychological transformation, which might be characterized as a change of state in the psyche, or mind. Maybe Tohta's "motorcycle" would be an example of this.

mythological transformation, characterized by physical, bodily change. Mikajo Yagi's:

The falling leaves--
rushing underground I notice
scales on my skin

is an example.

Then, and more difficult to characterize, we could add spiritual transformation. I would say that poems which hint at this would not lend themselves to easy interpretation or association. They just are, and work as direct transmission to our souls. Perhaps they come from the unity of heart and mind.  Of the poems Scott gave us, maybe Shoshi Fujita's approaches this:

As a single drop
of moonlight
I am walking

I feel the subject offers rich ground for exploration, for stepping right into the electric heart of poetry/haiku and maybe coming out transformed. And a bit shocked.

Yes, and in this case the Psychological Transformation apparently resulted in a physical activity/transformation as well - the emulation of a motorcycle and the recognition of the "likeness" from his angry actions - his roar! (hence, the poem)

It seems, Pyschological Transformation at its most rudimentary stage would be inactivity (the body not necessarily carrying out what the mind thinks).  The physical action as a result of the transformation becomes the activity - a living, action packed physical activity that can only be explained via a metaphor.    The metaphor is the tickle that leads the reader to ponder - encouraging her/him to engage imagination which in the end, fulfills the poem's requisition.

Physical Transformation:  how many times have we seen someone physically transform as a result of a Psycological Transformation? Are these two separate activities or one?  Is one a subcategory to the other and the metaphor a result?  Is this the formula: psychological transformation, physical transformation, imagination = metaphor? (in regards to this poem)

 

Peter and Don, you both raise very valuable points, worthy of long pondering, and I'm grateful to you.
I'm particularly pleased Peter with your definition of a poem as having an essential being and it raises the question of when does a modifier distract from it.  This would be worthy of a thread of its own.

In response to Don's post (and beyond) let me offer a favorite poem of mine. Scott Metz wrote it. I'll comment later.

a piece of
an old boat--a sense of
levitation

It's interesting to ponder the oriental thought of "becoming one with something";  "become one with the bow" ... "let the unexpected arise" etc..  In the case we're discussing here, we are not becoming one with anything but, rather, becoming the thing itself (activity, emulation, likeness).  The ancient phrase would no longer be "be one with ...".  Instead, it would be "I become the thing" ... in the beginning, psychologically without ignoring the possibility of the becoming to be physical as well.


... thought provoking.

You're right Don, it is thought provoking, but why? Could it be because instead of being one thing in particular we define ourselves in numerous ways, and since this is a natural state of our being it makes these types of pyschological and physical mutations all the more relevant to our human core.   

Quote...instead of being one thing in particular we define ourselves in numerous ways...
--John

I agree, and don't, in that I don't believe we have selves, or at least not individual, fixed selves




grammatical edit

Mark, I understand what you're saying, but I was talking more about the identities we create for ourselves and how they help us define our purpose and place. 

QuoteYes we can change what we are for periods of time, but whether this is acheived through the use of chemicals, environment, illness, or metaphor these transformations are usually fleeting or impossible to acheive. --John

John, if I understand myself as actually changing, all the time, my understanding of transformation poems might be different from yours.

That could be true, Mark, but I suppose that's why places like this are so wonderful because we get to see how others minds work and maybe we'll learn something in the exchange. Well, that's my hope anyway ;)   

yes, John, that is my hope as well.

a piece of
an old boat--a sense of
levitation

I'd say that this poem reflects a psychological transformation which manifests inwardly, as some kind of sensory change. It does not reflect physical change. I can't know in what way the author associates a piece of a boat with levitation, I only know that I was not aware that I did, or could, until I experienced it. That in itself is a transformation-- realization (discovery) is transformation. The form I believed I had has crossed over to a new form.

From this new place I see differently: I am a body of impossibly clear water reflecting only blue, and yet above me, the sky is the hull of an ancient boat, with one piece missing. Am I that piece?

Quote from: John McManus on July 27, 2011, 03:03:30 PM
Mark, I understand what you're saying, but I was talking more about the identities we create for ourselves and how they help us define our purpose and place. 

We do create 'identities' for ourselves, and adopt roles, neither of which reflect what or who we really experience as all of ourselves.

The terminology doesn't matter: we accept roles and adopt them and attribute them to others...mother, horse-rider, home-owner, cat-lover, gardener, student, Prime Minister (or "Mr President"), art lover, anarchist, Christian, Buddhist, housekeeper, poet, humanitarian, devil's advocate, etc etc

There are also common metaphors we use for ourselves or others: doormat, pig, sow, drongo, workhorse, fox, couch potato, sloth, tiger, chook, hen, rooster, chick, sheep, goats, iron man, petrol head, wolf, dog, bitch, beast, loan shark, bird brain... yes, 'swan' and 'ugly duckling', too  . . . it could go on & on, and most of the metaphorical names we could list are probably culturally specific.

No-one bats an eyelid if someone says, "She became his doormat" or "For all of the holidays, I was just a couch potato", or even thinks of literal or surrealistic transformation because the metaphors are understood (or cliched, if seen in literature) Still, even these common and cliched metaphors condense meaning.

New metaphors... such as " I become a motorbike"...we have to work out for ourselves in context.

- Lorin

I did manage for a while to move away from labels but the 'world' insists on them. ;-)

Oddly enough when I've occasionally held great 'power' in jobs it was when I least felt or wanted 'power' and merely used it as a conduit to enable others to be able to 'get on with their lives'.

When I used to meditate certainly my ego was under control, and it was a time I least needed to be a label.

strawberry preserve
for now this carbon unit
is just light

Not haiku, but something I'll play with. :-)

looks like the topics of Persona, Identity, and Masks are finding their way into play, and how they relate to transformation and metamorphosis.

Tsuboichi Nenten discusses this issue of Persona extensively with Richard Gilbert. The actual interview can be watched here: "The Poetic Self 2: 'Haigō' —Masaoka Shiki and Haiku Persona" http://gendaihaiku.com/tsubouchi/index.html (http://gendaihaiku.com/tsubouchi/index.html)

wherein he sez: ". . . having not only a usual self with a usual name; being not only an individual human being—but several personalities within a poet's psyche: this can make one's haiku much more interesting. And this is my philosophy."

& right before this sez: "This was once the traditional haiku poet's, so to say, 'way' (mode, path) of creation."

"Shiki used more than 100 names!"

". . . using only one's real name causes a poet to become isolated (alienated); tends to cause restriction, compositional limitation."

for me, this concept links to Haruo Shirane's statement that, "The joy and pleasure of haikai was that it was imaginary literature. . . . For Bashō, it was necessary to experience everyday life, to travel, to expose oneself to the world as much as possible, so that the poet could reveal the world as it was. But it could also be fictional, something born of the imagination. In fact, you had to use your imagination to compose haikai, since it was very much about the ability to move from one world to another. Bashō himself often rewrote his poetry: he would change the gender, the place, the time, the situation. The only thing that mattered was the effectiveness of the poetry, not whether it was faithful to the original experience" ("Beyond the Haiku Moment"; http://www.haikupoet.com/definitions/beyond_the_haiku_moment.html (http://www.haikupoet.com/definitions/beyond_the_haiku_moment.html)).

some examples of ku that have already been presented, and others, that perhaps link to this concept of identity/persona/mask and transformation/metamorphosis:


summer festival—
my Astro Boy mask
has lost its power

—Fay Aoyagi


faces with no mask
turned into masked faces
around the fire

—Uda Kiyoko


the raven has flown
away: flapping his wings
on the moor, the man

—Saito Sanki

which would also be interesting as this:

the raven's flown away flapping his wings on the moor the man


You and I:
either one of us
a spring dream

—Masako Tsuzawa


May storm
  if I become silent
I'll vanish

—Bin Akio


   the cool pillow—
stuffed with pale lives
   i've sloughed off

—William M. Ramsey


others?!

all this
time
slipping

in/
out of

focus
no

matter

no
    one

to see


        --john martone, scrittura povera

Smiling
behind the death mask,
this is God, too

Paul Pfleuger,Jr. Roadrunner, August 2008 Issue VIII:3




Use masks when you go
Down to the barrio place
And just cover your face

G. David Schwartz. Roadrunner, August 2008 Issue VIII:3

Halloween:
from behind each mask,
the creator peeks out

Galmitz

going in another direction (to get it into play) . . . Jack G brought up the long history of transformation/metamorphosis in Western culture (as does Richard Gilbert in his essay i mentioned previously): Ovid's Metamorphosis, Greek myths, the life, death and resurrection of Jesus

[an engaging ku about self, society, and Jesus]:

trying to scrape
the bar code
off of Jesus' face

—John Sandbach


; Kafka's "Metamorphosis". At some point it might be interesting and revealing to discuss "Magical Realism" (Borges, Garcia Marquez, Murakami, Nabokov?)—something i see as related to this topic and a possibly interesting angle to study haiku.

Richard notes in his essay: "a larvae spins a cocoon, emerging as a butterfly; coal becomes diamond; carbon dioxide, limestone. The hero transforms him or herself, confronting initiatory challenges through stages of life. Snakes shed skins, seed becomes flower, magicians transform flowers into pigeons. Computer-generated s/fx morph reality in cinema – metamorphosis is a given in dreams." 

There are, of course, the seasons themselves—their little changes and major swings.

It seems important to also note the concept of transformation and metamorphosis in Japanese culture and literature as well though. Some quotes from The Fantastic in Modern Japanese Literature: the subversion of modernity by Susan Jolliffe Napier:

"If form is taken as a determinant of identity, then it is hardly surprising that a cultural preoccupation with metamorphosis should surface at times of deep transition."

"But it is also true that the theme of metamorphosis has as deep roots in Japanese culture as it does in Western civilization. From the traditional setsura describing animals turning into humans, to the many depictions of the so-called transformer robots in contemporary science fiction comics and films, Japanese culture also shows a consistent fascination with transformation, in particular the crossing of boundaries between human and inhuman."

"The Shinto religion posits the kami nature in humans, animals, and inanimate things such as rocks and waterfalls."

"Buddhism has its notion of the karmic cycle suggesting potential bestiality in humans and humanity in animals" (reincarnation).

She also notes "the internal alternative self", "the internal alien", mentioning Natsume Soseki and his novel I am a Cat. A ku of transformation by him, tied to reincarnation:

into a man
as tiny as a violet
may i be reborn!

Japan, like nearly every culture, also has its shapeshifters: foxes, tanuki, the snow woman/fairy/queen. And they've made their way into haiku now and then:

the snow fairy suddenly changes
her heart
a bridge at dusk

—Junko Yamada

The fox   
changes himself into a young prince;   
the spring evening

—Buson (tr. by R.H. Blyth)

And, in relationship to reincarnation, self, and nature/the wild, Issa wrote and played with it:

when will it become

a cricket's nest?

my white hair


dewdrops forming—
when might I become

grass . . . or a tree?

Again, a wonderful assemblage of thoughts and examples of transformation in literature, Scott.
I wrote this one and sent it into a Japanese haiku contest (I forget which one; not important); I don't know if they dared touch it for fear of appearing offensive.

Japan's singing robot-
Americans keep writing
haiku of nature

Tokyo-
a robot officiates
a marriage ceremony

I'm going to quote from a book I've mentioned before-- Iain McGilchrist's The Master and His Emissary. He's writing about "imitation" as "an imaginative inhabiting of the other". He speaks of the earliest humans as having "a capacity for simile-- they could be "like" an animal-- but since (they did not have a capacity for metaphor)-- they could not 'become an animal'". (This is something, however, that we are capable of, as explained below).
He quotes Thomas Mann, who wrote that Napoleon "confounded himself mythically with Alexander. . .and later when. . . he declared, 'I am Charlemagne'. Be it noted he did not say 'My position is like. . . or I am as. . . Charlemagne' but simply 'I am he'. This is the mythical formula".

And he (McGilchrist) quotes "Bruno Snell, also speaking of the ancient world: 'The warrior and the lion are activated by one and the same force. . . a man who walks 'like a lion' betrays an actual kinship with the beast'. Homeric metaphors are 'not only symbols but the particular embodiments of universal vital forces'. They assign 'a role very similar to that of the beasts also to the natural elements. We have already met with the storm, the wave, the rock. . . above all they [metaphors/symbols] are regarded as the conductors of fundamental forces such as are alive also in man'".

McGilchrist goes on: basing the following thought on trackers' ability to "get inside" the animal they are tracking: " Perhaps, when we empathize, we actually become the object of our empathy, and share its life.

". . .in Japanese thought, 'human beings and every natural thing are one body in total' and there is a 'feeling of love for natural things just as if the natural things were the people themselves'.

"We already know from the discovery of mirror neurones that when we imitate something that we can see, it is as if we are experiencing it. . . . Mental representation, in the absence of direct visual or other stimulus-- in other words imagining-- brings into play some of the same neurones that are involved in direct perception. It is clear from this, even when we so much as imagine doing something, never mind actually imitate it, it is, at some level which is far from negligible, as if we are actually doing it ourselves. Imagining something, watching someone else do something, and doing it ourselves share important neural foundations.

"Imagination, then, is not a neutral projection of images on a screen. We need to be careful of our imagination, since what we imagine is in a sense what we are and who we become".

There is much here I am tempted to italicize. For now, I'll let it stand alone, but I hope it leads to some consideration that this business of "becoming" and "transformation" is more than a literary conceit, and that imagination is more real, and connected to the "real" world than we sometimes believe.

Inventions like tool use; art, math and even aspects of language may have been invented
"accidentally" in one place and then spread very quickly given the human brain's amazing
capacity for imitation learning and mind reading using mirror neurons. Perhaps any major
"innovation" happens because of a fortuitous coincidence of environmental circumstances —
usually at a single place and time. But given our species' remarkable propensity for miming,
such an invention would tend to spread very quickly through the population — once it emerged.
Mirror neurons obviously cannot be the only answer to all these riddles of evolution. After
all rhesus monkeys and apes have them, yet they lack the cultural sophistication of humans
(although it has recently been shown that chimps at least do have the rudiments of culture, even
in the wild). I would argue, though, that mirror neurons are necessary but not sufficient: their
emergence and further development in hominids was a decisive step. The reason is that once
you have a certain minimum amount of "imitation learning" and "culture" in place, this culture
can, in turn, exert the selection pressure for developing those additional mental traits that make
us human. And once this starts happening you have set in motion the autocatalytic process that
culminated in modern human consciousness. --V.S. Ramachandran, Mirror neurons and imitation
learning as the driving force behind "the great leap forward" in human evolution

Phantom limbs are a common experience for amputees, but we noticed something unusual in Humphrey. Imagine his amazement when he merely watches me stroke and tap a student volunteer's arm--and actually feels these tactile sensations in his phantom. When he watches the student fondle an ice cube, he feels the cold in his phantom fingers. When he watches her massage her own hand, he feels a "phantom massage" that reveals the painful cramp in his phantom hand! Where do his body, his phantom body, and a stranger's body meld in his mind? What or where is his real sense of self?
-- V.S. Ramachandran, The Tell-Tale Brain

this business of "becoming" and "transformation" is more than a literary conceit, and that imagination is more real, and connected to the "real" world than we sometimes believe. --Peter

offering these because things are slow around here the past few days, and my thoughts and Peter's have been wandering along similar lines. We can return to poems now, if you like.

So, can we say that there is some sort of "basis" for experiences of "becoming" and transformation? (Such things as "bases" will, I believe, always provide a standpoint and therefore, a partial perspective, and perhaps should not be regarded as solid, but as starting points for exploration).

Does it help an exploration of this theme in haiku? Does it open anything up? I wonder what you (you and I who are looking at this) have to say, especially from your own experience.

It's no secret that I believe that what appears to be the prevalent notion of haiku is extremely limited. I'm too lazy just now to characterize what I mean by "prevalent notion", but I suppose it's the kind of poem that appears regularly in The Red Moon Anthology and some journals. I don't think that Mikajo Yagi's

The falling leaves--
rushing underground I notice
scales on my skin

would make the cut, and yet for me, it is truer, more genuine and has more depth, more interiority and planes than many that do.

I don't know if it's possible to write like this without some trust in inner experience, (without some trust in the body), or if you wish, in one's empathic response to things like falling leaves. An average haiku poet will say something like

falling leaves/ I too am/ heading for the grave

Many would say that transitoriness is at the heart of haiku, and this is a profound thing. But I think we might include transformation as equally important, and probably just another way of saying the same thing. But if we look at it that way (I feel) something opens up, an acceptance and even excitement in the realization that inner, "psychological", mythical experience, etc., is a natural outflow from the heart of haiku.

For some, I may be stating (and repeating) the obvious-- but I do wonder how this plays out in your experience, as a reader, and as a writer. A related question is, what is it about haiku that makes it so well suited to exploring transformation?

Mark, I entered my last post without knowledge of yours. I agree that talking about actual poems is more interesting, and no doubt people glaze over somewhat with discourse, but I am convinced it adds something to looking at poems such as Tohta's "motorcycle".

What all this makes me think is something like "art needs no validation (by such things as brain research). Or, true art avoids validation".

I do think there has been a huge push to validate haiku. And though it is maybe a matter for another thread, I have come to see haiku as an outlaw art, which of course is an oxymoron.

But yes, please, let's bring on some poems. (I did present Scott's

a piece of
an old boat-- a sense of
levitation

as an example of transformative imagination . . .).

If we believe in the unconscious and as such in its timelessness, then we have the statis brought about by the co-existence of times, which is more a tension and transformation that goes back and forth and is painful to us to experience, as it is never resolved:

Carrying a whale
back to the ocean-
My father

(Galmitz)

Or, on the other hand, we have transformation that is sudden and bodily:

Down a wooded lane,
a woman walks alone-
I see a fire

(Galmitz)

And, I have to say I am grateful for the discussion Peter and Mark had regarding a basis, possible basis, for the imaginative transformation, metaphoric, in haiku ( and elsewhere). It is not at all digressive; it is remarkably important information and insights you two have provided.
And, please forgive my quoting myself (it's just that I have refrained from publishing my work in the ELH journals for nearly a decade and it kind of hurts to nary see a reference to my work-so understand, I am not advertising myself, merely existing with you).

Jack, I love that you are so generous and bold as to present some of your own work. I think I will do the same (after i've looked through some stuff) and perhaps add a commentary.

Personally, I would love to see more of this-- poems of transformation written by Scott, Lorin, Jack, Mark, Peter, Chibi, Eve-- all.

Thank you, Peter. I have to say I needed that invitation.  As I remarked earlier to Paul Pfleuger, Jr., another of our eminent modernists and transformationists, I feel "homeless."  And, I agree, I  would love to see some of those poets you mentioned share their works of metamorphosis with us!

One more, published in the most recent edition of Ginyu:

Quattro cento face-
the body a serpent
laying eggs

(Galmitz)

yes, Jack, thanks for existing with us through your poems, a valid way to participate in the conversation, and part of haikai tradition.

okay, here's one of mine that explores the different angle i've been trying without much success to elucidate.


moss in a fold of rock or round woman spring rain

Love it, Mark.  The softness, down of moss/woman's mound, folds, rococo-women, and spring rain certainly work extremely well together, joined/separate.

thanks, Jack, I'm not anywhere near as well-published as you. I'm amazed by the number of great poems you have to offer. Most of mine are unpublished, so I'm about out, but here's one more


burl bark grown into a wound a word

I think it's a perfect example of how we shift from the outside-burl bark-to the inside-a wound- and an idea-a word.  It's just the type of poetry I most admire; it doesn't "use" the world so much as a commodity form as perceive it for what it is, an internal experience/word.
It's first rate work, Mark.

thank you.

Perhaps you've (re)started a chain. More poems anyone?

Hi guys, here is one of mine that touches on transformation, or does it?

winter fog
the old man turns back
into a tree

homeless

I like the poem, John, but the first line (a traditional opening) makes it a bit too evident that this is a question of misperception, no?  We've all had the experience, say, of being up all night and misperceiving things. I think it might be better if it went something like this:

Up all night
the old man
turns back into a tree

Why?  Because the ambiguity of who was up all night makes it unclear as to whether this is over-tiredness that causes a misperception or whether there is an actual transformation of the old man back into his original form after a long night awake. I don't like substituting author's words, but it is just as an example that's all.

I've been greatly privileged to have seen some of Jack's recent work and hope he will post more here.

I'm also excited at the prospect of seeing more of Peter's work and from others.

This is a great thread and long may it continue.

Alan

Quote from: Peter Yovu on July 30, 2011, 10:01:08 AM
Jack, I love that you are so generous and bold as to present some of your own work. I think I will do the same (after i've looked through some stuff) and perhaps add a commentary.

Personally, I would love to see more of this-- poems of transformation written by Scott, Lorin, Jack, Mark, Peter, Chibi, Eve-- all.

Is it fair to say that "transformation" is the very nature of poetry? One could do an extensive riff on the meaning(s) and etymology of the word verse, one sense being "turning, turning of the plough", which surely implies transformation, as the changing of a field, but also of perspective as one ends one "line" and begins another.

A lot of the haiku one sees relies a good deal on observation of something in the poet's immediate environment (nothing wrong with that) and which wring small change by means of irony or a poignant twist. Here are two from RMA 2010 which appear opposite each other-- (Dorothy McLaughlin and Philip Miller):

morning tea
sunlight rests on the chair
we still call yours

my son
scolding his son
with my voice

There is some sort of transformation in each of these. But to me, they stay within the bounds of the known-- "yes, I know that feeling", but personally, I long for poems that go beyond that and toward the realm that I believe Lorin may have spoken of, where someone might say "I didn't know I had that feeling until you found a way to express it", or even beyond that to "I didn't know such a thing was possible; I could never see from the viewpoint of a lion until I became one".

Not all poems are going to derive from and prompt a sense of impossible or grand transformation, of course, and sometimes a little poignancy is all that's needed. But I get the feeling that most of us don't consider edging, as 
Brian Eno said, "into the impossible". Which to me means letting go, a little at least, of control.

Also on the same page as "morning tea" is Scott Metz poem:

most of
what is
right

in

a wild
flower

patch

My sense here is that, while the poem derives from observation, he is willing to let his observation be soaked up by language; he seems to trust that there may be meaning in his observation beyond what he knows or simply sees. He allows the language to transform his observation. Reading it, I don't only encounter a wildflower patch, but I encounter my own changing perspectives in relation to it, I encounter myself in that field, different than before I entered it.

I had meant to present a poem of mine here as well, but this has gotten long, so it will have to wait.

Beautiful Jack!
oh-oh ... modified: Kudos big to you John!  Apologies for mixing you up with Jack .. no smiley face for embarrassed ..... so i give my self the old eye-roll  ::)

winter fog
the old man turns back
into a tree - homeless

Reminds me much of some masters past who were will gifted in transformation and such.  A timeless quality yours, and hauntingly beautiful. Kudos big.  Basho wrote something once of a man disappearing into the fog on a bridge as he looked back, but it is lost to memory at the moment.  One from Buson though, that i do remember, reflects a similar artistry:

On the grasslands where the quail dwell
A sage's backpack too,
Vanishes among the stalks
Translation by Thomas McAuley

" I don't think that Mikajo Yagi's

The falling leaves--
rushing underground I notice
scales on my skin

would make the cut, and yet for me, it is truer, more genuine and has more depth, more interiority and planes than many that do." - Peter

This is a beaut! To me, though, it does (extremely well) what other seemingly 'ordinary' haiku do also: imply a transformation that's taking place, imply an underlying relationship (biological, in this case) which is a basis for transformation, suggest by creating the sense of a perceptive space/place that's between two 'realities' (for want of a better word) or 'worlds'... the literal and the mythical.

What happens next? Does the woman make an appointment with a dermatologist or does she find that she has turned into a snake? Does she catch a train home to the suburbs or does she begin to hibernate in a hole in the ground? Does she find that she's both woman and snake, like a Lamia?

But of course it's invalid to speculate which world is the 'real' one because at this time, the time of the poem, both worlds co-exist. This is the 'between-ness' that many good haiku (& other poems!) create for the reader to experience, some in small ways others more sweepingly.

I don't know what I can post of my own here in context. There are a couple that'll be published in journals later this year that might scrape in, but I can't post those.

I guess all I can do is share one which I believe carries a transformation, though a relatively quiet, even sedate, one and not a transformation of person:

afternoon tea –
each ant takes away
a granule of light           

- THN Volume XIII, Number 2: June, 2011.

That it is 'afternoon tea' time (between 3pm and 4pm) is essential.

Not quite what is wanted, though, I think, in the context of this thread. A couple of others might be closer, but have been accepted for publication later this year, so I can't yet post them.

- Lorin

I've only been able to skim this discussion, but
look forward to reading it more thoroughly later
when I am not utterly swamped.

It's great to hear your voice back in the mix, Scott.

Wanted to offer another terrific PerDiem poem (that just happens to be by Scott)
that seems appropriate here ( sorry no time to comment more,
but maybe others will??):   


the silence grows
teeth- a tree
with cracked windows

- Scott Metz

Asa-gao:
I would like to take credit for the poem you think I wrote, but the poem you quote was John McManus' and I critiqued it.
Also, I don't think he meant "homeless" to be part of the haiku: it was a reference, I believe, to what I had posted earlier about feeling homeless, that I had no place to call my own in the haiku-journal world.
If I am wrong, please let me know John.

I'll offer a poem from Sunrise.

word of his death
bees streaming out of a hole
in the dictionary

Transformation upon hearing devastating news. . . in terms of "becoming", something like:

hearing about his death
I become a dictionary
drained of meaning

The prose restatement, of course, doesn't carry other possibilities implied in the original.

You are spot-on Jack, I was reffering to what you were saying about being homeless, and thanks so much for your suggested edit. I'll certainly have a good think about it  ;)

The thing that strikes me about all the poems offered is that they're bold and carry alot of depth. They do remind me of my daily transformations, but they also offer a wonderful opportunity to peak into the inner realities of poets who write such poems.

warmest,
John         

Glad to hear from you, John. I thought I might have offended you.  And, anyway, you do have one admirer of your work who gave it big kudos.
Keep up the good work.
Jack

Quote from: Jack Galmitz on July 30, 2011, 05:26:51 PM
Asa-gao:
I would like to take credit for the poem you think I wrote, but the poem you quote was John McManus' and I critiqued it.
Also, I don't think he meant "homeless" to be part of the haiku: it was a reference, I believe, to what I had posted earlier about feeling homeless, that I had no place to call my own in the haiku-journal world.
If I am wrong, please let me know John.

Thank you Jack - sorry John ... modified the posting.  Apologies .....

Homeless ... kind of worked as a post script.

Yutei's flock of cranes
are life-size and move so much
I become a crane

- Jack Galmitz


the silence grows
teeth- a tree
with cracked windows

- Scott Metz


The falling leaves--
rushing underground I notice
scales on my skin

- Mikajo Yagi


word of his death
bees streaming out of a hole
in the dictionary

- Peter Yovu


a selection of the poems offered on this thread. Some might find them too far removed from observation. Or too far from the implication of metaphor. Beyond the pale, as the English used to say. Are they against nature and against haiku rules, or against preference? What makes a haiku believable? I'm reminded of a Peter Yovu essay that four years ago appeared in a frogpond 31:1

"Perhaps all that is called for here is more openness and honesty about the role of imagination in our haiku, and giving ourselves permission to be "authentic" in ways that go beyond received notions of what that means. For some people it means experimenting with writing purely from the "imagination" and finding out what is real in it. The worst that can happen is that what you write will strike you as false, though the false, as you may have discovered, is often a cover-up for what's true, and a way station toward it."

人間になりたい海月ぷかりぽかり　　鎌倉佐弓

ningen ni naritai kurage pukari pokari

ningen ni naritai kurage pukari pokari

jellyfish with a wish
to be a human
bobbing, floating

Sayumi Kamakura

from "Haiku Shiki" ("Haiku Four Seasons," a monthly haiku magazine) ,  July  2010 Issue, Tokyo Shiki Shuppan, Tokyo

Tr. Fay Aoyagi
http://fayaoyagi.wordpress.com/2011/07/31/todays-haiku-july-31-2011/


naritai ... could also be translated as ... to become

the jellyfish wants to become a human

.

what we breathe
in human skin
and insect parts

                       Chris Gordon

A number of poems we've looked at are about transformation. We started with Jim Kacian's

in a tent in the rain I become a climate

which gives us an outside look at something experienced, not so much the experience itself. That said, I have a lot of praise for the poem. Other poems also, including Tohta's, tell us about the author's experience, tell us that he or she had an experience, but again, there is a sense of being outside. And I love Tohta's poem as well, and other poems of explicit "becoming".

But there are ways, and I believe Chris Gordon's poem may serve as an example, where transformation is what happens within and as the poem itself, and we are led by the internal force of it, to undergo a transformation. To experience it.  

Ambiguity is one way this may happen, a place in the poem where we are forced into uncertainty, a state in which we may experience, if only briefly, a sense of another reality. In Gordon's poem there are two simultaneous senses, and maybe more, but two are primary as I read it--

     what we breathe in:  human skin and insect parts

That is one reality, a somewhat familiar, if unpleasant one. The other is this one--

      what we breathe in human skin and insect parts

or, to be clear about this:

      there are things we breathe while we inhabit our human skin and our insect parts

This reality, which has entered through the door of ambiguity, is certainly less familiar, but because ambiguity and simultaneity act as wormholes into strangeness, we feel the truth of it-- or rather, we are less defended against the strangeness. If only briefly, until the rational mind says "yes, I inhabit my human skin, but not insect parts, forget it".

But what the poem enacts is the becoming something more than human, or perhaps something more human, if we accept that yes, we are also made in some way of insect parts. It is not a long shot from Issa's empathic haiku.

The poem works from the inside out, rather than from the outside in. Or it may be truer to say it works from the inside to a place deeper in, or different.

A poem like this gives me hope that what we call haiku is still alive.

Hi Peter, excellent example. I am a big fan of Chris ;)

How about this one from Scott that does something similar

the war awakens the face of an insect in the mirror

He makes no reference to himself or any other human presence, and yet when we reach the end of the poem we know instinctively that he is talking about himself as well as humans in the general sense of how war makes each of us ugly.

warmest,
John

A fine, solid reading, Peter, of Chris's poem and an exemplary poem of what you are naming haiku transformation from within.
Frankly, Chris Gordon is the unsung hero of haiku, with a range unequalled, in my view, by any other haiku poet.  And, to think he has stood alone, guiding this modernism, for 17 years, without fanfare or the search for praise says a great deal of his character.
His Chinese astronaut series, his crow series, his Everything stops here but the bus series, his invisible circus series, these alone are amongst the most ingenious, insightful, farcical, imaginative haiku we have in English. For me he stands out as perhaps the best haiku poet of our time.
The effectiveness of the poem you cite and others of Chris's depend upon his willingness to break lines differently than the expectations we bring usually to poetry; in the cited poem merely shifting the word "in" to begin the second line creates the ambiguity you discuss; he brings a brilliant sense of line to haiku, something rarely even envisioned by most of us.

Then, we have John Martone's simple/complex concrete poem that doesn't work so much by transformation, but by observation, something he is the master of:

vulture my other side

We have the creator, the lover, the family member, giver, etc. on one hand and the devourer of death flesh on the other; that is what we are; doesn't need transformation and it is "hardly" a metaphor, but more a concretization.

Perfect. Mark.
Of interest here is Martone's "the neolithic re(turn) in poetry. Have a read of it.

Ah. Jack

thanks, hadn't read that one. And posted on the web--his sense of humor. I like:

"The poem as medicine. And life today is nothing if not in need of healing."

and

"Finally even the best discussions of poetic language offer only an academic quantification of primal efficacy. We need a rebirth of awe."

whatever and whoever else transforms, first and last a poem is (sometimes becomes? when?) "an OBJECT bearing energy."


lapidary or chattery? fashionable we're not (I think) and while our thoughts here might not become objects, they carry energy

awe-men  to that!!

Agreed, Mark.  A most concise and expansive definition I've heard yet.

sorry for being a bit off the latest topics (Peter, your selection of Chris Gordon's ku is awesome—i really love that piece—and you're explication is as well). i contacted Hiroaki Sato concerning Kaneko Tohta's motorcycle ku and asked if he could provide another translation/version since only two could be found.

i sent him what Gabi Greve had posted on this thread.

Here is what he had to say, and many thanks to him for doing so:

"The transliteration is slightly off.

激論つくし街ゆきオートバイと化す

gekiron tsukushi machi-yuki ootobai to kasu.

The last 'kasu' should be treated as a verb. Also, properly 'ootobai' should be 'ōtobai.'

The ferocious argument exhausted I go through town transform myself into a motorcycle

Of course, options are many. For example, 'to kasu' being a bungo 文語, and this by nature an abbreviated locution, you may want to avoid the drawn-out expression 'transform myself into' and simply say 'become a motorcycle.'"

The ferocious argument exhausted I go through town become a motorcycle

Thanks a lot for the opinion of Sato sensei !

Gabi

worthy discussion!  Reminded me that i read somewhere that haiku *could* be translated to mean cripple - *faints*

Adore the motorcycle ku ♥

As it thunders
the ears of the forest
become leaves
                             -- Mario Benedetti

Wonder if anyone likes this per diem selection as much as I? It feels true, perhaps not merely logically, but mytho-/psycho-logically. I like the idea of writing a short poem which if posted on a bus or telephone pole would be appreciated even by people who had never heard the word haiku. This may be a poem like that.

I must admit I have missed a fair few of the per diem offerings, but I did spot this one and concur with you Peter that it does indeed have a wonderful mythic feel to it.

Do you or anyone else for that matter feel that there aren't enough haiku which touch upon myth?

warmest,
John


   

Quote from: Peter Yovu on August 02, 2011, 07:25:22 PM
what we breathe
in human skin
and insect parts

                       Chris Gordon

A number of poems we've looked at are about transformation. We started with Jim Kacian's

in a tent in the rain I become a climate

which gives us an outside look at something experienced, not so much the experience itself. That said, I have a lot of praise for the poem. Other poems also, including Tohta's, tell us about the author's experience, tell us that he or she had an experience, but again, there is a sense of being outside. And I love Tohta's poem as well, and other poems of explicit "becoming".

But there are ways, and I believe Chris Gordon's poem may serve as an example, where transformation is what happens within and as the poem itself, and we are led by the internal force of it, to undergo a transformation. To experience it.  

Ambiguity is one way this may happen, a place in the poem where we are forced into uncertainty, a state in which we may experience, if only briefly, a sense of another reality. In Gordon's poem there are two simultaneous senses, and maybe more, but two are primary as I read it--

     what we breathe in:  human skin and insect parts

That is one reality, a somewhat familiar, if unpleasant one. The other is this one--

      what we breathe in human skin and insect parts

or, to be clear about this:

      there are things we breathe while we inhabit our human skin and our insect parts

This reality, which has entered through the door of ambiguity, is certainly less familiar, but because ambiguity and simultaneity act as wormholes into strangeness, we feel the truth of it-- or rather, we are less defended against the strangeness. If only briefly, until the rational mind says "yes, I inhabit my human skin, but not insect parts, forget it".

But what the poem enacts is the becoming something more than human, or perhaps something more human, if we accept that yes, we are also made in some way of insect parts. It is not a long shot from Issa's empathic haiku.

The poem works from the inside out, rather than from the outside in. Or it may be truer to say it works from the inside to a place deeper in, or different.

A poem like this gives me hope that what we call haiku is still alive.

"In Gordon's poem there are two simultaneous senses, and maybe more, but two are primary as I read it--

      what we breathe in:  human skin and insect parts

That is one reality, a somewhat familiar, if unpleasant one. The other is this one--

       what we breathe in human skin and insect parts

or, to be clear about this:

       there are things we breathe while we inhabit our human skin and our insect parts

This reality, which has entered through the door of ambiguity, is certainly less familiar, but because ambiguity and simultaneity act as wormholes into strangeness, we feel the truth of it-- or rather, we are less defended against the strangeness. If only briefly, until the rational mind says "yes, I inhabit my human skin, but not insect parts, forget it". - Peter

Interesting, Peter. The first (& 'primary') reading I had (catching up a little on this thread this morning) is the one you haven't mentioned.

what we breathe (is) in human skin and insect parts

what we breathe
in human skin
and insect parts


Everything you've said here confirms my feeling that this is a ku that might be better rendered as a one-liner, if we are to find ambiguity. If line breaks are to be ignored by the reader, why have them?

If what you say is right, then isn't there a deliberate misdirection by the author?

- Lorin

The per diem today . . .

quietly
we become
audience
- Hilary Tann

is as close to Jim Kacian's extraordinary haiku* on transformation as I have seen lately. I love the idea of transformation, and wish there were more.

*in a tent in the rain i become a climate

—Jim Kacian

(Per Diem ku for 7.22.11)

*