The Haiku Foundation Forums

A reminder: the important thing about a Seashell Game, a concept borrowed from Basho, isn't so much who wins but the reasons that the judges give for their decisions--giving us insight into what constitutes a good haiku for them.

This match gives us the chance to judge and think about, side by side, two of the haiku that have generated the most discussion when I have presented them in workshops. One is by San Francisco poet Fay Aoyagi:

ants out of a hole--
when did I stop playing
the red toy piano?

And the other is by Colombian poet Umberto Senegal:

En el candil cadáveres   
de zancudos. Alguien solloza
en la habitación.

mosquito corpses in the lamp
someone sobbing
in the room

I presented and led a discussion of Fay's haiku at the Haiku North America Conference in Ottawa, August 7, 2009--at a session titled, "Reading the New Haiku." In a revised edition of this workshop, presented for the Southern California Haiku Study Group in Pasadina, July 17, 2010--Umberto Senegal's haiku joined the line-up, sparking lots of talk. Most recently, in the session, "Reading the New Haiku 3" at the Haiku Society of America South Regional Meeting in Hot Springs, Arkansas (November 6, 2010), once again these haiku were considered and explored. Since none of these discussions were recorded, they exist now only in the memories of participants. One nice thing about our Seashell Game is the fact that our ideas, feelings and associations generated by these two contemporary haiku will be preserved in writing.

So, between now and Feburary 6th, please VOTE for one haiku and (most importantly!) give your reasons for choosing it. And tell your friends to join in. The more voices, the more perspectives, the better.

I won't vote, but I certainly have my own ideas about these haiku. This time, I'll save my impressions for later in the discussion.

Have fun!

ants out of a hole--
when did I stop playing
the red toy piano?

Fay Aoyagi


En el candil cadáveres   
de zancudos. Alguien solloza
en la habitación.

mosquito corpses in the lamp
someone sobbing
in the room

In the lamp corpses
of mosquitos. Someone sobs
in the living room.

Umberto Senegal


Probably around the time William Carols Williams left the red wheelbarrow next to the chickens, Fay.

Personally I prefer Umberto Senegal's poem. I find it structurally interesting. And far more direct.

Sorry for not formally registering a vote in round one folks.

Best wishes, John

These two poems present a strong contrast in the "what", or more to the point the "how" of haiku. Aoyagi's gives  a great deal to think about—to puzzle over. Senegal's gives a great deal to feel. It is not that each is totally devoid of the what and how of the other, but sufficiently that I wonder if some readers will find this challenge somewhat diagnostic, revealing the 'kind" of haiku they prefer.

I'd like to say a few thing about each, if only to find out what I think/feel.

Some haiku create a tension by both inviting and resisting interpretation. A poem which is easily "grasped" will be easily manipulated, or made to serve our own purposes. A poem which evades our grasp, or allows itself to be grasped only to just as soon slip away, will maintain its own integrity and life. Seems to me this describes Aoyagi's poem, and in a different way, Senegal's as well.

The first line of Aoyagi's is both evocative and provocative: it's both concrete and abstract at once, depending on how you tilt your head. The word "hole" – its meaning, and even the sound of it-- is impossible to grasp—it is an absence. What is it an absence in?  The ground? A tree? The unconscious?
And yet "ants",  very present and real, emerge, and the poem then by a process of rapid association, "leaps" (see the discussion under David Grayson's "Mystery") to another place entirely, to an inwardness propelled by the question. Though the particulars are hers, they are not private. They are puzzling, but not exactly mysterious.

By inviting thought, the poet draws us into her world. Feeling may follow when we realize this. One interesting point: she says the red toy piano rather than my red toy piano. A great deal may be deduced—no—felt—by this choice. Thought gives way to feeling, to empathy, even if we are not quite clear what we are feeling.

Senegal's poem, is, I suppose, more direct. And yet, though it doesn't present a puzzle, it does present a mystery. (The latter begins with thought; the former begins with feeling).
I would say that Aoyagi's poem keeps a certain distance yet invites us to come closer into her reality. An observation—an event-- takes her, and us, into her personal history. Senegal's keeps a distance as well. It may or may not be strictly autobiographical. It originated, I'll surmise, with a feeling for which he found a powerful correlation. Something about this invites us deeper into ourselves. It may be as simple as the use of archetypes and feeling-words such as "corpse" and "sobbing"—the body responds to these before the mind does.

"...corpses in the lamp" is marvelous, and may give a clue, if one wishes to interpret, what the sobbing is for. All right, I won't be coy: if "lamp" is an archetype for mind—for rational mind—one might intuit that "someone" is feeling the pain of a life where reason has trumped feelings, saps the blood and makes corpses of them—until that pain finally breaks through in sobs. That sobbing may allow  "someone" (you or me) to break free from the "room"-- from whatever keeps us held in.

Thanks, David, for the challenge, but I cannot choose one over the other. A half vote for each.

ants out of a hole--
when did I stop playing
the red toy piano?

Fay Aoyagi


En el candil cadáveres   
de zancudos. Alguien solloza
en la habitación.

mosquito corpses in the lamp
someone sobbing
in the room

In the lamp corpses
of mosquitos. Someone sobs
in the living room.

Umberto Senegal

"A half vote for each. " - Peter

8) I'm tempted to do the same, Peter, but I don't want David tearing his hair out should too many of us follow suite.

Two poets observe small insects; the ants are alive and moving, the mosquitoes are 'corpses'. (I have read Fay A's haiku before, and also her explanation of it and others' interpretations: I have not read Umberto S's haiku before)

Both lots of insects are there, as a concrete image in each poem and both images can lead to metaphor - ants coming out of their hole (I do see a real ant-hole, such as I see all too often right outside my kitchen door in the brick paving which I set in sand decades ago) are live things emerging from 'the underworld', thus a 'leap' to Fay A's memory of a specific toy piano, 'buried' until now, and the question about time. How much time has passed between then and now? Other questions about hidden or forgotten incremental processes of change, to oneself, one's body and one's life are sure to follow if we reflect on this.

Umberto S's mosquito corpses in the lamp, such small and light-weight corpses, dried out so quickly by the warmth of the lamp. I see a plain funnel-type lamp glass, such as in a kerosene or tilly lamp. I wondered at first why we could see the mosquito corpses but only hear 'someone sobbing in the room', assuming that both 'lamp' and 'someone' were in the same room, but John's addition of 'living room' made me realise that the 'I ' of the poem, the poet/ observer, is probably out on the verandah...at any rate, not in the same room with the sobbing person. So there I am in the night, hearing someone sobbing in a room and gazing at mosquito corpses in the lamp. I do nothing, just sit there hearing and seeing. I don't try to find out who is sobbing, I don't go in and try to console the sobbing person. I might know very well who it is, in fact, but I might need to distance myself in more ways than just absenting myself from the room. (especially if I am a man of a certain generation) What has happened? One can speculate, prompted by the association of the perennial attraction insects have for lamp flames to use it as a metaphor for human love relationships. But I don't feel to make too much of that, because if it's there, it's only background. What is there in the night is evidence of many small deaths in the lamp glass and inconsolable sobbing from inside a room, and they are related because I witness both and because death and mourning are always related, and inevitable. So I sit there and am also encapsulated in something... the great sadness of the night.

Well, these two haiku work differently for me, as I've just found. 'ants out of a hole' works primarily for me via an intellectual approach, though it might imply feelings or emotions. I usually would prefer this sort of poem, because I'm not keen on the sentimentality with which feelings or emotions are so often conveyed (when they are) in EL haiku. But Umberto Senegal's haiku, quite unexpectedly, leads me into a state of feeling which goes beyond the personal or the sentimental. This is quite an achievement for such a short piece as a haiku!

So I vote for 'In the lamp corpses'.

One of these poems is translated and one not. Despite David's efforts, I worry my ignorance of Spanish might handicap Senegal in this match-up, and that makes comparison difficult for me.

Both poems are colored by melancholy.

Aoyagi's is kinetic, brimming with life, and contains a recognition of how age, if we are lucky enough to live so long, will sap and then take away our energies. Ants emerging from their nest is a sign of spring. The poet's done a wonderful job, imo, of noticing how the insects flow as a group and individually move with herky jerky movements evocative of the stop and start and slow and fast of a child's piano playing (I think also of the compositions of Erik Satie). When did I stop playing the toy piano? / when did I first recognize my mortality? / when did I become more interested in Kurosawa epics than disney romances?


Senegal's is almost motionless, a meditation and foretelling. Has a loved one died? The implication is there, I think, for the reasons Lorin gave. Sometimes when a loved one dies the desire to bring them back vies with a desire to join them, which makes me think of the mosquitoes who joined those who went before them (most likely carrying the blood of humans in the house) one by one by one. Is Senegal (or the persona he's adopting) listening to the sobbing or is he the one sobbing? Who is the unspecified someone (alguien)? Anyone, everyone? My mother sobbing in the room would change the meaning, as would the choices of son, wife, brother. For me, his choice creates a remove that makes sense in the context of Latin American literature haunted by loss and disappearance. Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Ariel Dorfman come to mind. I'm sorry to say I'm not familiar with Columbian poets who might serve as better examples.

I will vote, but need more time to mull the choice over.

Hey, Peter Y., your close reading is enticing!

Umberto's haiku seems to present a narrative. As with a film that I turn on midway, there is plenty of the story [behind the haiku] that I do not know, but I do catch the mood--and to me it is decidedly Buddhist. The impermanence of all life--from tiny insects to humanity and beyond--is immanent. All forms of life are vulnerable to illness, suffering and death. Perhaps there is a macro/mircro lens on this scene: human suffering catching the ear, even as the papery corpses accumulate by the lamp. Life forms of all kinds are living and dying, largely without fanfare. Amazingly [Lorin, yes], this scene suddenly expands--wow!

In Fay's haiku, the ants emerging from a hole seem industrious--as if they are setting out to forage for food or territory. Wondering when she stopped playing the toy piano [amazing the toy piano's resurgence in contemporary music!], Fay may be asking herself when she put aside whimsical piano playing--the fanciful "as if-ness" of child's play--for the acquiring of skills that will prepare her for equivalent foraging. This self reflection may be a musing about the place of creativity in a person's life. Is more foraging [work] perhaps needed, or the exact opposite; to balance the predominance of work, must attention be given to the free toy[ing] that is so essential to the creative process? Possibly one of the of the many subtexts of this beguiling haiku.

I, too,would like to vote for both! But if I choose only 1, it will be the reflective musing of Fay's haiku.

Quote from: David Lanoue on January 24, 2011, 09:33:39 AM
A reminder: the important thing about a Seashell Game, a concept borrowed from Basho, isn't so much who wins but the reasons that the judges give for their decisions--giving us insight into what constitutes a good haiku for them.

This match gives us the chance to judge and think about, side by side, two of the haiku that have generated the most discussion when I have presented them in workshops. One is by San Francisco poet Fay Aoyagi:

ants out of a hole--
when did I stop playing
the red toy piano?

And the other is by Colombian poet Umberto Senegal:

En el candil cadáveres   
de zancudos. Alguien solloza
en la habitación.

mosquito corpses in the lamp
someone sobbing
in the room

I presented and led a discussion of Fay's haiku at the Haiku North America Conference in Ottawa, August 7, 2009--at a session titled, "Reading the New Haiku." In a revised edition of this workshop, presented for the Southern California Haiku Study Group in Pasadina, July 17, 2010--Umberto Senegal's haiku joined the line-up, sparking lots of talk. Most recently, in the session, "Reading the New Haiku 3" at the Haiku Society of America South Regional Meeting in Hot Springs, Arkansas (November 6, 2010), once again these haiku were considered and explored. Since none of these discussions were recorded, they exist now only in the memories of participants. One nice thing about our Seashell Game is the fact that our ideas, feelings and associations generated by these two contemporary haiku will be preserved in writing.

So, between now and Feburary 6th, please VOTE for one haiku and (most importantly!) give your reasons for choosing it. And tell your friends to join in. The more voices, the more perspectives, the better.

I won't vote, but I certainly have my own ideas about these haiku. This time, I'll save my impressions for later in the discussion.

Have fun!

I've tried not to read the replies of other voters and the following represents only original feelings (although some influence became inevitable as is my habit to move my scan bar down the page).

I vote for:

En el candil cadáveres   
de zancudos. Alguien solloza
en la habitación.

(Bable Fish translation: In the oil lamp corpses of mosquitos. Somebody sobs in the room.)

There are two Englished paraverses, yet, I like the Spanish.  I'm put off a bit by the punctuiation, though.

In the English paraverses presented in this forum I think it important to note "oil lamp" and "living room" (poetic license in "living room" as the Spanish "sala de estar".  These phrases have cultural layers that may add nuance to the reader.  In the case of "oil lamp" brought back camping trips and mosquito hums in many childhood adventures and places.  The ambiquity in Umberto Senegal's words, opens to interpretation many elements of scene and sense: oil smell (coal oil? a oil used in the old coal oil or kerosene), the yellowish color of the light from the mantled wick flame, the smell of "cremated" mosquito, the sobs in the "living" room...(and on and on). I think this a masterful poem, indeed!  The scene is opened to setting interpretations: romance or injury or murder or ... (and on and on).  All this could've been settled and somewhat resolved if the author had given more information as to circumstance, but, the poem expands exponentially without that information.  Perhaps, that the intent of the author?  Although, in the traditional haikuish vein, I feel, to honor that tradition, perhaps, a note of scene setting may have been easier on this reader's brain <<wink>>.

My vote is for the haiku by Mr. Senegal. Having been at the Hot Springs session, I have had ample time to mull over the haiku by Mr. Senegal. Actually, I had heard it many months before and from that moment, it has never been far from my thoughts. I know that seems like an overstatement, but it is true. What I love about this haiku is the evocation of both sight and sound, a haiku tradition dating back to at least Basho and his old pond, if not further. And like old pond, the sound seems to be distant from the image. In many ways, this poem reminds me of the film "Wavelength" by Michael Snow, which consists of a slowly zooming image on a picture while the sounds off camera hint at something else. Since the Hot Springs conference, I've realized that this could be a film, something like a moving haiga. Also, the mystery regarding the sobbing needs no explanation, just our acceptance of the moment.
If a Norwegian elk hound and an Andalusian dog procreated, the haiku by Fay Aoyagi would be the result.

To N. M. Sola: you lost me with that last comment about dogs. Care to explain?

QuoteI think it important to note "oil lamp" and "living room" (poetic license in "living room" as the Spanish "sala de estar".  These phrases have cultural layers that may add nuance to the reader

Yes, always a problem Dennis. The understanding of what consitutes a 'living room' changes according to social class in this country (Britain), and between north and south. I believe that in North America 'living room' it is closer to what the British call a Parlour or Sitting Room. I wondered at the difference between South American Spanish and European Spanish too: 'room' pure and simple is just as soon 'cuarto' on this side of the empty fish pond. Whilst I agree the 'habitacion' will also translate pure and simply as 'room' there is also the sense that this is the 'most generally inhabited part of a house' which, in my register of English, is 'living room'!

Best wishes, John

Dennis, I didn't think to try a googled translation, but I felt sure it was a kerosene lamp or the like...the sort with the clear glass that sits over the flame. Otherwise how would one see the mosquito corpses? And that's why I saw the poet/observer (who became myself once I began to feel my way into the poem) out on a verandah, or somewhere outside in the night. Thanks for that confirmation. So now I googled 'el candil' images, and sure enough:

http://mobemento.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/candil.jpg?w=500&h=375

...on the complete page, these words under it: "A la luz de un candil"

Thanks for the Fish!  :)

Melissa, your observation that ""habitacion" is the word most commonly used to refer to a hotel room in Spanish speaking Latin American countries." is interesting. It adds to the sense of distancing  operating in this haiku. So it could be an anonymous motel room, or one's own 'habitation' that one feels the need to objectify, to regard impersonally for some reason. This distancing is enhanced formally by the two separate statements being separated by a full stop (a period,for you) A distancing which becomes, ultimately, impossible. This is a huge strength of the poem, one that puts me in awe of this poet's mastery of his craft.

Mark, if I may offer a clue to N.M. Sola's comment involving the Andalusion dog  :) It's the title of the classic surrealist film, Un Chien Andalou/ The Andalusion Dog, a collaboration between Bunuel and Dali. (It has a scene with a match-cut between a razor blade and eye in it that I could never keep my eyes open to watch completely)

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

- Lorin

Quote from: Lorin on January 26, 2011, 04:26:49 PM
Mark, if I may offer a clue to N.M. Sola's comment involving the Andalusion dog  :) It's the title of the classic surrealist film, Un Chien Andalou/ The Andalusion Dog, a collaboration between Bunuel and Dali. (It has a scene with a match-cut between a razor blade and eye in it that I could never keep my eyes open to watch completely)
- Lorin

Thanks Lorin, I'm familiar with the classic surrealist film. I know what you mean about that scene--you must watch it sometime without shutting your eyes :)  There were ants involved, as I remember.

I thought N.M. Sola might be hinting at a further meaning. A misreading on my part, perhaps.

"There were ants involved, as I remember." - Mark

So there were!  8)

Norwegian Elkhound Property laws:

http://images6.cpcache.com/product/196292776v5_480x480_Front.jpg

- Lorin

QuoteThe "someone" distances the narrator/writer from the sobbing

Indeed. And there the question of translation raides its warty little head again because 'alguien' is arguably a little more generic than 'someone' meaning rather 'someone/anyone'.

For me mid line full stop (period) emphasises the rather harsh tone of the poem.

Best wishes, John

Quote from: Melissa Spurr on January 26, 2011, 05:20:06 PM
 The "someone" distances the narrator/writer from the sobbing.  The effect of this sobbing that emenates from a nameless, unseen entity is, I think, a sense of generalized sorrow that could encompass all the woes of the world.

I know, from information David posted on the blog, that Senegal practices Zen. Perhaps inspired by that knowledge, my mind has been wandering between his poem and images of Guanyin, a personification of compassion revered as a goddess or deity in many parts of the world and by people of different faiths. Tibetan Buddhists know her as the bodhisattva Tara. The Japanese know her as Kannon. Guanyin is the Chinese name, which comes from the Sanskrit, and I use it here because it's the one she/he is most frequently known by.

Guanyin means (roughly) "one who perceives the sound of suffering". I think we might have heard by now if Senegal's a bodhisattva :) and I'm certain he's not. However, he would be familiar with the ideal of compassion as manifested in Guanyin.

this from Wikipedia:
"In the Mahayana canon, the Heart Sutra is ascribed entirely to the bodhisattva Kuan Yin/Kwannon. This is unique, as most Mahayana Sutras are usually ascribed to Shakyamuni Buddha and the teachings, deeds or vows of the bodhisattvas are described by Shakyamuni Buddha. In the Heart Sutra, Guanyin/Avalokitesvara describes to the Arhat Sariputra the nature of reality and the essence of the Buddhist teachings. The famous Buddhist saying "Form is emptiness, emptiness is form" comes from this sutra."

Perhaps none of the above pertains to our discussion, but I think it adds insight to Senegal's haiku, and a way of perceiving that's elicited, in some of us, deep emotion.

Interesting, Mark, but I'm so glad this information came after I'd read the poem, otherwise it would've added that theoretical or doctrinal touch and I wouldn't have have been able to feel my way into it without overcoming that barrier.

If this information is pertinent, what the poem might show is that Kuan Yin is a human 'archetype', one which we can all experience within our own nature.

In any case, Senegal's poem is in a class far beyond the ordinary run of 'Zennier than Thou' haiku. The old EL haiku maxim of 'show, don't tell' is validated here.

- Lorin

Both these poems, but especially Aoyagi's, have tugged at me since I made my comments above. Cid Corman has said about haiku that it is "a form of poetry... where each word is a matter of life and death". With this in mind, I look at the line "ants out of a hole"—each word a matter of life and death, "ants" no less significant than "hole". Something out of nothing. It strikes me on that very existential level, and the urge to make a story out of this, to imagine particular ants emerging from a particular opening, diminishes the power. Of course, I have numerous associations with "ants", some informed by the what follows in the poem, including the appearance of (musical) notes on a page, of creatures, as someone noted, associated with industry (not creatures generally associated with play). I also think of a colony of ants as an organism, the individual as cells, neurons let's say, in constant communication. Thoughts arising in the brain. Memories. But mostly, the thought that arises in my brain is the one central to philosophy: why is there something rather than nothing?

In what follows it is the word "the" which gets to me. It carries enormous weight, and if anyone knows another poem where the word "the" is so freighted, I would love to know it. I believe it is clear that the author does not expect the question she asks to be answered. Even if it could be, the answer would be meaningless. It seems to be how the mind works though: there tend to be questions below the ones we ask. like: when I did I stop regarding a beloved childhood object as mine, or even,  as me... when did Thou become it? The poem itself answers the question: it has arisen out of observation and memory, by a kind of playing, on a larger instrument, one with deeper notes.

I have found myself wondering: is this poetry or is it a psychological (and philosophical) provocation? I don't know if this question needs to be answered.

If the word "the" looms large in Aoyagi's poem, for me, the word "corpse" is, for different reasons, equally vast in Senegal's poem, and the word "cadaver" would not change my thoughts. It gives, by way of hyperbole bordering on the surrealistic, so miniscule a thing as a mosquito an emotional weight which might be comic were it not almost unbearable.

As images go, those in Aoyagi's poem are rather dry, thought provoking. Senegal's images are, by contrast, tidal. The former leads... to thought and memory; the latter pulls: at the heart, lungs, and throat. It is the very emotional gravity of the "mosquito corpses in the lamp"—the stillness of it—which finds its counterweight in the action of sobbing.

I'll just add this observation: where a great many haiku begin not so much with an image as a placemat on which to set an occasionally vivid dish, both Aoyagi's and Senegl's incorporate, or juxtapose if you will, two rich images: ants out of a hole/ a red toy piano; and, mosquito corpses in a lamp/ someone sobbing in a room. I guess I've made it clear how I feel about that.

QuoteSome haiku create a tension by both inviting and resisting interpretation. A poem which is easily "grasped" will be easily manipulated, or made to serve our own purposes. A poem which evades our grasp, or allows itself to be grasped only to just as soon slip away, will maintain its own integrity and life. Seems to me this describes Aoyagi's poem, and in a different way, Senegal's as well. --Peter

QuoteInteresting, Mark, but I'm so glad this information came after I'd read the poem, otherwise it would've added that theoretical or doctrinal touch and I wouldn't have have been able to feel my way into it without overcoming that barrier. --Lorin

Lorin, I hope you'll take everything I say here with a grain of salt; I'm glad to see you have no trouble doing so. :) However, I believe haiku, as with poems of any genre, are more rewarding when considered in context (the pursuit of which occasionally takes me down strange roads, I'll admit).  

Quote"The poem itself answers the question: it has arisen out of observation and memory, by a kind of playing, on a larger instrument, one with deeper notes...I have found myself wondering: is this poetry or is it a psychological (and philosophical) provocation? I don't know if this question needs to be answered." --Peter

yes, and imo observation and memory are rooted in the sensual. Because many of us have had similar responses to similar experiences, Aoyagi allows us to arrive at our own emotional responses. I receive the emotion after a slight delay, followed by a wry recognition, followed by an unalloyed response. Am I provoked, or seduced, to arrive at that response? Her poem offers a different sort of seduction from Senegal's, and is less visceral, I agree, but for me they both lead to emotion.

Mark, I'm slowly (being a slow reader and generally slow) swimming into the depths of Iain Mc Gilchrist's The Master and his Emissary: The Divided Brain and the making of the Western World. I wonder if you know it? He touches, from several points of view including (especially) the neurological, on matters such as language, music, the body-- on how the Right Hemisphere is the relational, context-providing part of the brain, and the left operates primarily via re- presentation of parts. It takes the world in and seals it off as its own---- it does not have the ability to see the "whole". The LH is connected to "handedness"-- most of us are right handed-- it is what wants to "grasp" and use. I am still uncertain how this informs my own tendencies to, while enjoying wrapping a story-- a context?-- around a haiku,  to nonetheless feel it is limiting. I want to go to the place prior to story and language even-- to music and the body. I would probably have to say more about McGilchrist's ideas to make that more clear.

Peter, you may be interested in this:

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/mind/stories/s1137394.htm

- Lorin

Lorin,

thanks, I'll check this out. I'm a big fan of All in the Mind, by the way. Natasha Mitchell spoke with Iain McGilchrist recently, as you may know.

Peter, I don't know the McGilchrist book. I have a special interest in cognitive neuroscience, though, and the title is intriguing. I'm aware of the way the hemispheres of the brain sometimes work together and sometimes don't (there are people who have had their brain hemispheres surgically separated, and the two halves of their bodies act with different intentions, essentially "at war" with each other). I know from your poems, and what you say about poems, your need to go beyond story to music and the body. Body is one experience we almost all share, close to universal, even though our understandings of that experience vary.

By context, I don't mean story. A poem without narrative will be informed in many ways by context. An example would be the way Scott Metz subverts narrative and assumed meaning by borrowing from different sources, which though recognizable, are changed.

QuoteI want to go to the place prior to story and language even-- to music and the body.

You are using language to get to a place prior to language. You are outside of yourself trying to get in? Can we escape language, once learned?

not fair to ask these questions, which might not be answerable. I pose them to show I understand, which I might not.

imo, Senegal's poem works on many levels. It is in its own way intellectual. That doesn't stop it from giving you a body punch.

En el candil cadáveres   
de zancudos. Alguien solloza
en la habitación.

Umberto Senegal

Some things to consider in reading this verse:

zancudo:

long-shanked; long-legged
wading; wader, wading bird

candil: olive-oil lamp; tine (of an antler)

cadaveres: corpse; cadaver
cadava:  burnt stump of furze

habitation: habitation; house; dwelling; room; biol. habitat




8- (9-10) – (5-7)

* my count depends on how one pronounces 'Alguien' and 'habitation.'




In the oil lamp corpses
of mosquitoes. Someone sobs
in the house.



* I would like to lengthen the verse in English but ... the problem with translating 'solloza' as either 'sobbing' or 'is sobbing' is that there is a construction for that.

* the problem with 'living room' is that the author could have specified and did not.


What I want to bring out here is the possibility that Umberto Senegal may be referring to an olive-oil lamp (which is what my old Spanish dictionary has for candil). In which case, if the lamp is sufficiently open, the mosquito bodies are floating.

I am voting for Senegal's verse – in Spanish.

Why I wonder the translations rewriting the verse sans punctuation?

The verse when read in Spanish has the sound of water. Every element of the haiku serves a purpose. Lineation, word choice, punctuation etc. It has duende.

Of course Fay's verse is very good too ....

Karen

To answer Karen's question, why no punctuation in my English translation?

The poet sent me a book-length manuscript and gave me permission to publish for the first time many of his recent haiku, along with my English translations, for a piece that came out last fall in Modern Haiku: "Umberto Senegal Revisited." MH Haiku 41.3 (Autumn 2010): 50-59. I agonized over the capital letters and punctuation that pervade his haiku (standard procedure in Latin America, though some poets have recently begun to buck this trend). In the end, I decided to re-make his haiku in the most contemporary style for haiku in English. One goal of a translator is to keep invisible those things that are invisible to readers in the original language. For Colombian readers the capital letters and punctuation are expected and thus, almost invisible; for most English readers they SCREAM and, I fear, get in the way of a direct experience of the poems. At least, that's what I felt then--and still feel.

Zancudo is the Colombian word for "mosquito." Habitación is indeed the word one uses when ordering a hotel room, just like it is in English. "I'd like a room, please." However, like in English, the word by itself, without a hotel context, means "room"--not "hotel room" and certainly not "house." Of course, if a reader wants to make it a hotel room in his or her imagination, the language allows for this. "Living room" is possible, but the poet doesn't specify this--once again, it's the reader's choice. The candil, yes, is a type of oil lamp. I left out the word "oil" in my translation because I felt that the rhythm and sound are better in English with just the word "lamp." I hoped that readers would figure out there must be some sort of flame involved--due to the corpses. Maybe this was a mistake.

The bottom line: This poem is a thousand times better in Spanish but (I think) quite evocative even in an imperfect English translation--as evidenced by the discussion so far.

"The candil, yes, is a type of oil lamp. I left out the word "oil" in my translation because I felt that the rhythm and sound are better in English with just the word "lamp." I hoped that readers would figure out there must be some sort of flame involved--due to the corpses. Maybe this was a mistake."- David

No mistake, David, and I think you made the right choice regarding the poem's rhythm in English. It's quite clear to anyone who has ever used an oil lamp (or kero lamp, or even gas lamp) It's the area within the glass 'funnel', at the bottom, that encircles the wick, where the mosquito corpses collect. With any other sort of lamp, we couldn't see them.  With a lamp glass that was closed at the top, like many electric lamp glasses, there'd also be nowhere for the mosquito corpses to collect.

As far as style goes, I'm not with 'the haiku police' who consider that a norm or a current fashion is a rule, and if a writer wants caps in his/her poem, then that's fine with me. It doesn't interfere with my reading. But that's probably because I don't consider what makes a haiku a haiku is a matter of style, nor even of strict form.

- Lorin

Drat. I wrote a long post and lost it.

All that remains ... these links:

http://www.tibetantreasures.com/tthtml/ttmerch/Shrine%20pages/butterlamps.html

http://orthodoxincense.com/vigillamps.html

I understand what you mean, Lorin, about the kerosene lamp and I have a couple of those. I have also used an open votive lamp as pictured above which is where I get the image of the 'floating' mosquitoes ....

Olive oil is rich in symbolism.  'Olive-oil lamp' is the translation for 'candil' given in the Spanish dictionary I pulled from my bookshelf. I did not see 'olive-oil' used in any of the online translations so, it may be an archaic usage.

I am not saying Senegal meant a votive lamp, or one using olive oil; he could have had a kerosene lamp in mind. But, it is an alternate reading... another layer.

The other translations/uses of 'zancudo' are of interest (to me) because of Senegal's use of fire and water.

The translations of 'habitacion' came from the same dictionary. I wondered why Senegal used 'habitacion' rather than the more common 'el cuarto' for 'room,' though for all I know -- and more importantly, don't know -- in Columbia, 'habitacion' may be the more common usage.

habitacion: habitation; house; dwelling; room; biol. habitat

'Habitacion' is the word the maid used for our hotel room in Seville. The image of a temporary dwelling place may or may not correlate to the idea of the body as the temporary dwelling of the soul.

Trying my hand at translating Senegal's haiku was an exercise. In retrospect, sharing my thoughts on this haiku may have been a mistake, one I will not compound by going into my theories on translation.

David, I apologize if I offended you. That was not my intent.

Best,

Karen

not something
I meant to have happen --
last leaf to fall

Karen Cesar
Blithe Spirit, Volume 20 Number 4

I wonder: what do those who are "new" to haiku make of these two poems? Do they challenge what you understand haiku to be? Aoyagi seems to use the world as an entry point into her own life. Senegal is pretty explicit about emotion. How do you respond to that? I don't want to redirect the purpose of this thread, but to engage some who might be reluctant to say how they feel about these poems. Yes?

Yes, Peter, I think it would be good to hear from people relatively new to haiku. I'd like to know what others make of these two haiku as well.

(I don't agree with you about 'explicit emotion' in the Senegal poem. Sure, we have 'someone sobbing', but that's not 'telling' the emotions conveyed by the poem itself. )

Come on, people, be brave and tell us how these poems work for you.  :) Nobody gets eaten!

- Lorin

Well, maybe nibbled at a little.

it would be irresponsible to promise not to

hang on, let me go check the code of conduct...

 ;D

It's a nibble or three from a few other fish in this pond that we want, Peter and Mark.

We promise!...it's catch & release.

- Lorin

QuoteIn the oil lamp corpses
of mosquitoes. Someone sobs
in the house.

* I would like to lengthen the verse in English but ... the problem with translating 'solloza' as either 'sobbing' or 'is sobbing' is that there is a construction for that.

* the problem with 'living room' is that the author could have specified and did not.

Hi all, I agree entirely with the criticism of my suggestion of 'living room'. It is a mistake on two counts: it is overly narrowing, and it suggests a pun which is not present in the source text.

I rather like the draft carried over in the quotation above. Perhaps oil lamp is overly specific - but even were that the case it would not distort my appreciation of the sense as much as living room.

Best wishes, John

I'm going to vote, and I appreciate that being "required" to do so has helped me stay focussed on these poems longer and perhaps more deeply than I might have otherwise. Neva wudda thunkit. My vote goes to Senegal's, because i find it the more realized, the more embodied poem. By this I mean it engages not only the head, but the heart and belly as well. Aoyagi's, though it ultimately has an undertow of feeling, nonetheless stays mostly in my head. The image "ants out of a hole" does not live for me in the way that "mosquito corpses in the lamp" does-- though the latter conjures a stillness, it is dynamic. I had more to say about Aoyagi's poem, but that may speak to its conceptual tone. A fully embodied, living image does not necessary invite being thought about, though it could. More likely, it invites simply being: staying with it. "Shut up and hold me".

These poems and David's challenge have led me to look at my own work, to see if my money is where my mouth is. The proof will be in putting out something alive.

.
ants out of a hole--

This is the translation for the Japanese kigo for mid-spring

ari ana o izu 蟻穴を出づ (ありあなをいづ)
ants coming out of the hole
. . . . ari ana o deru 蟻穴を出る（ありあなをでる）
ari izu 蟻出づ（ありいづ）ants coming out (again)

Finally it gets warmer and the ants come out again looking for food.
This kigo shows the joy of springtime.

I hope this helps the appreciation of the haiku by Fay.
Gabi



ants out of a hole--
when did I stop playing
the red toy piano?

Fay Aoyagi
.

Finally it gets warmer and the ants come out again looking for food.
This kigo shows the joy of springtime (//http:///%3EThis%20kigo%20shows%20the%20joy%20of%20springtime)

Hi Gabi, isn't the attribution of a specific sentiment more the domain of hon'i than kigo?

Best wishes, John

I had wondered if the line "ants (coming) out of a hole" is an established season-reference, that is to say, to be found in a saijiki? If so, it gives the poem a whole other context, which may be worth discussion. Will Gabi, or Fay, or someone please confirm this one way or another? Appreciated.

Yes Peter, as Gabi indicated, and as far as I know, ari ana o izu is a well established  (in saijiki) kigo for mid-spring. Higginson translates it as "ants emerge" in Haiku World : An International Poetry Almanac

brings to mind a poem by Hosai Ozaki
as translated by Hiroaki Sato:
( i don't have the kanji/hiragana for this poem, and though Ozaki was not tied to the use
of kigo, I feel the reference is strong ....)

I kill ants as I kill them they come out

for me those "ants out of a hole" are a  "fully embodied, living image" as you call it, but
our relationship to these things are not necessarily shared in English, as ELH does not have the rich
traditions of kigo culture that exist in Japan

Quote from: John Carley on January 31, 2011, 04:49:21 AM
Finally it gets warmer and the ants come out again looking for food.
This kigo shows the joy of springtime (//http:///%3EThis%20kigo%20shows%20the%20joy%20of%20springtime)

Hi Gabi, isn't the attribution of a specific sentiment more the domain of hon'i than kigo?

Best wishes, John

Thanks for bringing this up, John.

This hon'i business (as far as I understand it) is the obvious reason why I don't endorse the making of 'instant kigo' for the English language and prefer to use seasonal references or keywords. Here's a reference to it from Gabi's data base:

"This "basic meaning" of a kigo is usually called
hon-i, hon'i 本意 (ほんい)
in Japanese. This is also pronounced ほい ho-i. The basic meaning is something a haiku poet has to learn like a new vocabulary with each kigo.

established essence
genuine purports

Reference : hon-i

http://worldkigodatabase.blogspot.com/2006/12/kigo-use-in-haiku.html

(unfortunately the reference link leads to pages of advertisements from Honda dealers!)

So hon'i would be the primary 'dictionary definition' of a kigo, would it not? It would never be open to interpretation, never shift in meaning (in itself) & provide the solid ground for the reader, no matter how obscure or personal the rest of the haiku was.

Thus, 'ants of of a hole' would be read, by Japanese people, as making a reference to "the joy of Springtime", if that's the 'dictionary definition'. Whatever we non-acculturated, non-Japanese make of 'ants out of a hole', what Freudian references or the like, would be (as Richard Gilbert points out) "misreadings". (Though misreadings through which the reader might bring to the poem quite interesting readings)

I also note that Gabi states on this same page and elsewhere:

"You should not try to use Japanese kigo that do not fit your cultural background or region."

Yet that is, of course, exactly what happens with all of the various EL 'kigo' lists, so, for example, we get not only a 'withered moor' in Japan (moors on islands mainly surrounded by the Pacific?) but it turns up on the USA Yuki Teiki 'kigo' list as well. The source would've been:

Travelling, sick
My dreams roam
On a withered moor.

   * (Unknown translator)
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Matsuo_Basho

- Lorin

Quotepoem by Hosai Ozaki
as translated by Hiroaki Sato:
( i don't have the kanji/hiragana for this poem, and though Ozaki was not tied to the use
of kigo, I feel the reference is strong ....)

I kill ants as I kill them they come out

Hosai in Japanese reads

蟻を殺す殺すつぎから出てくる
ari o korosu korosu tsugi kara dete kuru



The kigo  蟻穴を出づ ありあなをいづ
仲春
蟻出づ（ありいづ）、蟻穴を出る（ありあなをでる） 
is listed in the Big Saijiki  (here in an online version, without the further explanations)
http://www.geocities.jp/tokihikok/masaji/haiku/kigo/haru/6doubutsu.html


Gabi

Aoyagi uses "ants out of a hole" for its power as image and idea, and she is also using it to tie her poem into a vast fabric of other poems, and literatures, and beyond that a shared cultural context. Not all of us share that cultural context. In a small way, we do, now that we've had this conversation.

From Haruo Shirane's Traces of Dreams:

Haikai was known for its freedom, its ability to explore the contemporary world, and for the broad expanse of languages and subcultures embodied in the horizontal axis, but ultimately haikai poets, including Basho, gravitated toward the vertical axis, to traditional poetic topics, which became not only the object of parody and comic inversion but also the arena of haikai recontextualization and refamiliarization, in which seasonal and topographical sites were given new, contemporary form. The traditional seasonal topics and their cultural associations, however, were not simply displaced; instead, as we shall see, they provided the horizon of expectations against which the haikai poem established its newness or implied difference. The brevity of the hokku is in fact possible because each poem is implicitly part of a massive, communally shared poem.

Quote
So hon'i would be the primary 'dictionary definition' of a kigo - Lorin

I guess that depends on who is writing the dictionary Lorin! But seriously, in marketing speak: hon'i adds value to kigo. It takes it on a step.

QuoteIn classical Japanese poetry, each poetic toponym and seasonal word has an established essence (hon'i), which determines not only what but also how landscape should be portrayed from Professor Peipei Qiu
The Author of Bashô and the Dao an interview by Robert D. Wilson http://simplyhaiku.com/SHv3n4/features/Peipei-Qiu_interview.html (http://simplyhaiku.com/SHv3n4/features/Peipei-Qiu_interview.html)

The key word here is how. You will find any number of references in ushin renga treatises and the like to the fact that a poet should always associate ideas through their poetic essence (hon'i) rather than through that which they actually percieve. Basho stood a lot of this on it's head - quite deliberately; the entire point of his frog is that it wasn't all about globeflowers, rilling streams and artistic singing.

So I'm wiith Ozaki - stamp on 'em!

Best wishes, John

"Basho stood a lot of this on it's head - quite deliberately; the entire point of his frog is that it wasn't all about globeflowers, rilling streams and artistic singing." - John

ah, so he did.  8)

But in doing so, was still playing off the convention, was in dialogue with the hon'i/ accepted 'poetic essence', which has to exist for there to be a point in anyone doing that.
Like Shakespeare, here? (sort of)

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.

etc

And Ozaki,  :D whose attitude to the ants is rather like that of Bruce Dawe in his poem 'A Footnote to Kendall' [allusion to Kendall's 'Bellbirds', ..." The silver-voiced bell birds, the darlings of daytime!"] which begins "Yes, I remember the little buggers..." and ends on "giant dogs... their claws click-clacking on the lino". In context of the ant hon'i, 'joys of Spring', Ozaki's ku is quite funny. He might even be alluding to all the haiku he has to read with the equivalent of 'Joy of Spring!' in them. (If so, I can certainly identify with the urge to stamp on the little buggers) Without the knowledge on the hon'i, the context it provides, the point is lost. And how many of us non-Japanese-speaking or reading, EL haiku readers and writers know the hon'i for either the translations from the Japanese that we read or the phrases on the EL kigo lists that are so often used?

- Lorin

" She has presented something rather challenging: a poem written in English for English speaking readers (most of whom, presumably, are not English speaking Japanese, as FA is) and yet which is founded in a cultural environment which I am outside of.  So how am I to respond?" - Peter

Indeed.

I now realise, but only in retrospect, that I had a similar interesting experience in my one and only renku with a Japanese sabaki, done on an Australian internet site and with three Australians, one Kiwi, one American, one French person and one Indian person involved (and an English person coming in, too, at the end).  Pieces of the puzzle begin to fit. I've gone back and checked and there is, among the threads, a brief and unexplained reference to "kigo as code word". Now that I've caught the smell of hon'i for the first time, I begin to understand a little better.

So 'ants out of a hole', for Japanese people, references not only 'mid-Spring', but also 'the Joy of Spring' in kigo culture.

My personal associations with 'ants out of a hole' (especially when I find 'red' in the same haiku) are ' Terror of the Sting, Summer' rather than 'the Joy of Spring', since watching out for and navigating around bullants on the foreshore track to the beach was part of my childhood, and the music I'd be accompanying that memory with would be something bloody and Wagnerian. ( high noon/ a bullant at ten paces/ from my toes. . . they leap, and cling on as well! The pain is unforgettable. ) So overlaying my own experience/ memory with a 'Joy of Spring' interpretation would be rather like doing a hypnosis job on myself, overlaying real memories with false ones, actual experiences with ...OMG, Orwell's 1984 comes to mind!

But knowing what someone else (or a whole culture) associates with 'ants out of a hole' certainly helps in reading such a short poem as a haiku.

"Nonetheless, I do feel played with. Am I a red piano?" - Peter

If you, or we, were, you are no longer.  :) Perhaps we're red-detectives now.

I feel a loss, too... but it's mainly the loss of my naivety (again)

The whole issue is a caution against cultural insularity, on the part of any of the players.

- Lorin

Reading all the comments I'm pleased that Fay's haiku not only compares favourably with Umberto Senegal's poem, but shows us the power, depth, and uniqueness of Japanese kigo, and why it's such a useful tool.

I don't say "useful tool" lightly, as I know it's been called the soul of haiku, but to emphasise that although the haiku may be difficult to read along the vertical axis, it's a rewarding and purposeful process.

As much as I admire Umberto Senegal's haiku, my vote in a head to head such as this, is to Fay's haiku.

Alan

. . I had wondered if the line "ants (coming) out of a hole"
is an established season-reference, that is to say, to be found in a saijiki?
Peter

Dear Peter and all,
please feel free to check the WKD for kigo from Japan, it covers more than 6000 by now (and growing).
http://worldkigodatabase.blogspot.com/
here in ABC order

And if you find any kigo you would like more in-depth information about, feel free to ask me, please.
I can only add so much of the hon-i  meaning of each as I find the time.
Just listing them was a major task of about 5 years.

And it is much more rewarding for me to answer to the detailed needs of haiku readers and help them understand the background and cultural context of Japanese haiku.

Many of the Gendai Haiku that Fay introduces in her daily translations feature a kigo too.

Greetings from a cold morning in Japan.
Gabi

ADD:

Here is a link to a Japanese saijiki, with AEIOU alphabet, and explanations of the hon-i
http://kigosai.sub.jp/aiu.html

Sponsored by Hasegawa Kai

But running this through google translate will not be the answer ...  >:(

.

Quote from: Alan Summers on February 01, 2011, 06:46:43 PM
Reading all the comments I'm pleased that Fay's haiku not only compares favourably with Umberto Senegal's poem, but shows us the power, depth, and uniqueness of Japanese kigo, and why it's such a useful tool.

I don't say "useful tool" lightly, as I know it's been called the soul of haiku, but to emphasise that although the haiku may be difficult to read along the vertical axis, it's a rewarding and purposeful process.

As much as I admire Umberto Senegal's haiku, my vote in a head to head such as this, is to Fay's haiku.

Alan

Kigo is certainly the 'group soul' of Japanese haiku (or arguably so, anyway) but am I reading you right, Alan, that you mean that kigo and the associated hon'i (the part of kigo I suspected was there but have only very recently confirmed and begun to understand) is a "useful tool" for EL haiku? If so, could you please explain this view in more detail?

Or do you simply mean that knowing kigo and the associated hon'i is essential for anyone who wants to read Japanese haiku? I'd tend to agree with you there, since this haiku seems to fall into place quite easily as a perfectly traditional Japanese haiku once one understands the hon'i.

Yet, as Peter mentions, it was written in English (one assumes) as an EL haiku for EL haiku audience. Or maybe it wasn't.


- Lorin

QuoteShe has presented something rather challenging: a poem written in English for English speaking readers (most of whom, presumably, are not English speaking Japanese, as FA is) and yet which is founded in a cultural environment which I am outside of.  So how am I to respond? - Peter

QuoteThe whole issue is a caution against cultural insularity - Lorin

Yeah, or cultural misappropriation. The risk of parody here is pressing; I'm not sure how anyone who is not fluent in Bogush can claim intimate familiarity with Bogushetti iconography. Put another way: why is Borat funny?

But treading on eggshells aside, I'm not sure how hon'i squares with fuga no makoto.

Best wishes, John

Quote from: Lorin on February 01, 2011, 08:50:47 PM

Quote from: Alan Summers on February 01, 2011, 06:46:43 PM
Reading all the comments I'm pleased that Fay's haiku not only compares favourably with Umberto Senegal's poem, but shows us the power, depth, and uniqueness of Japanese kigo, and why it's such a useful tool.

I don't say "useful tool" lightly, as I know it's been called the soul of haiku, but to emphasise that although the haiku may be difficult to read along the vertical axis, it's a rewarding and purposeful process.

As much as I admire Umberto Senegal's haiku, my vote in a head to head such as this, is to Fay's haiku.

Alan

Kigo is certainly the 'group soul' of Japanese haiku (or arguably so, anyway) but am I reading you right, Alan, that you mean that kigo and the associated hon'i (the part of kigo I suspected was there but have only very recently confirmed and begun to understand) is a "useful tool" for EL haiku? If so, could you please explain this view in more detail?

Or do you simply mean that knowing kigo and the associated hon'i is essential for anyone who wants to read Japanese haiku? I'd tend to agree with you there, since this haiku seems to fall into place quite easily as a perfectly traditional Japanese haiku once one understands the hon'i.

Yet, as Peter mentions, it was written in English (one assumes) as an EL haiku for EL haiku audience. Or maybe it wasn't.


- Lorin

Yes, Fay would have written it in English first, unlike Dhugal who always writes in Japanese first. ;-)

re my statement, I was directing it towards kigo first and foremost in a generic manner. 

We in the West cannot duplicate kigo, but we can come up with respectful alternatives, as we do have a rich cultural history.  It might not go back as many thousands of years as Chinese culture, which the Japanese can utilise, but we have barely scraped the surface of what we can do in the West.

I would imagine that writers born in the Indian sub-continent probably have a better chance of creating near-kigo than we do because their culture goes further back than the West.

Alan

Hi Everyone,

"Love means never having to say you're sorry." - The Love Story.

"Love means having to say you're sorry every fifteen minutes." - John Lennon.

In this case, I agree with the first proclamation. I took no offence at any of the previous posts. This forum is a place for the free exchange of ideas - like I told Eve yesterday, it's like a high-level graduate seminar in contemporary haiku without the term paper requirement. Pure joy!

I promised to share my ideas about the two haiku. Here goes...

When I presented Fay's red piano haiku for discussion at HNA in Ottawa, she was sitting in the audience. After everyone else had reported their thoughts and feelings, I asked Fay to share her own. Her first point was a thing that a few of you have mentioned (I told you this seminar is high-level!): the season word (ants emerging in springtime) is important to how she feels about the scene. She went on to say that, for her, the out-of-tune plunking sound of the toy piano is central to "the" meaning to her - but she's not upset that no one else in that room, that afternoon, came up with this particular association. She said that she was happy to hear her poem live so many different lives in different minds. This is not only OK but what she aims at as an artist.

The haiku leaps from an external view of ants to an inward, childhood memory, presenting for our contemplation an emotionally charged artifact of half-remembered childhood. Fay's writing of the haiku (and our reading of it) is an unlocking of remembrance. Ants emerge one by one from their hole, hinting at an inner process of memories rising from the subconscious mind, suddenly unearthing the red toy piano. I love the surprise.

Umberto's haiku also "leaps" (to use Robert Bly's term): from sight (the cadavers of mosquitoes in the cemetery of a lamp) to sound: someone sobbing in a room. I don't get the feeling that the sobbing person is grieving for the little deaths in the lamp. In my imagining, I see a triangulation of mosquito corpses, a sobbing person and the poet, who is also there, looking at the mosquitoes and hearing the sobbing. It is the poet's consciousness that brings together the two stimuli: the seen and the heard. Interestingly, he doesn't describe the sobbing person but instead chooses to focus on the dead mosquitoes in the lamp. Senegal is the author of a collection of atom-sized fiction titled Cuentos atómicos (2006). As in many of those stories, here he evokes a micro-drama, a mini-tragedy of pain, loss and unspoken suffering. He leaves the reader to meditate and conjure.

The imagination must choose, and mine chooses to picture this unspecified sobbing person in different ways. In one vision she is a grieving woman whose pain is so keen the poet cannot bear to look at her and so instead gazes at the dead mosquitoes in the lamp. It might even be his once-wife and literary partner who, after a messy divorce, burned ten years of his manuscripts. But this biographical detail flits into my mind only because I happen to know about it; it's not essential to the poem. In another vision, the sobbing person, though seeming to be external to the poet (after all, Senegal describes this individual as a third-person "someone") is the poet. In his contemplation of the tiny-sized deaths, the poet finds himself interrupted by the sound of sobs coming from the mouth of "someone": himself! I like imagining the scene in both ways and feel no need to pick one or the other. One of them hints at a story of a man and a woman; a husband and a wife, perhaps--rich with history and subtext. The other suggests the psychodrama of a personality coming unglued: a fragmenting of self such that the poet, detached and alienated from his own grief, notes its expression--the sobbing--with eerie objectivity.

I should mention: when we discussed this haiku in Pasadena and Hot Springs, people brought up the association of mosquitoes and tropical diseases such as yellow fever. Also, in both discussions, people imagined a corpse laid out for a wake (in the room) but the poet cannot bear to look, so his eyes remain fixed on the mosquitoe corpses-avoiding the human one. A rich brew of images and possibilities, this one...

Glad I don't have to vote!

I wrote what follows prior to reading David's statement.


Knowing, as I now do, that "ants coming out of a hole" is a kigo, I feel that I have no basis for "judging" Aoyagi's poem side by side with Senegal's. They are not on the same playing field, at least not for me. I could say, of course, that I prefer Senegal's because I feel it is more aligned with how I tend to view things—phenomenologically. I do not want to go to a reference guide to find out what "poetic essence"  is in operation. I could bypass that, I suppose, by assuming that despite all cultural connotation, Aoyagi was drawn to "ants out of a hole" for reasons that go deeper, to where, as I explored it earlier, the nature of "something emerging from nothing" is as much in play as any seasonal or cultural overlay. I suspect, however, that in a discussion with a haiku traditionalist raised in kigo culture, that would not wash.

Good questions have been raised. I find this kind of discussion somewhat disheartening though. I long for the day when haiku can be discussed without reference to things Japanese. Over on Troutswirl, under Essence # 6, Rod Willmot says something which I did find heartening, if perhaps a bit harsh. He is describing his discovery of haiku:

"Illumination!  I knew at once that I'd been blocked because the kinds of poetry I was used to reading and writing were irrelevant to what I'd been living. And I knew the solution was haiku. Let me emphasize that I never had any interest in things Japanese, that romantic enchantment that infects haiku circles across North America. Discovering haiku, for me, was like coming across an old tin can at a time of need. I need a drum—there's my drum!  I need a scoop—there's my scoop!  I need a knife, an amulet—there they are!  I've got no need for an old tin can from Japan, to be preserved and worshipped and imitated. When I was starting out this was so obvious I had no need to think it; but I did think it when I began to meet other haiku poets".

In psychology, the term rapprochement is used to describe the childhood phase (roughly between 14 and 24 months) when the child is beginning to move away from the mother, going farther and farther into the "world" and rejoicing that the mother is still there to go back to. I feel that there are many of us who are stuck in this rapprochement stage: making short forays into autonomy, but not yet able to break free from mother Japan.

To do this does not require rejection—though in some ways, it might. Nonetheless, I suspect that a period of separation—maybe a hundred years—would allow us to revisit questions like kigo with freshness. Or maybe I should speak for myself: I need a hundred years.

I've said this before, but if Japanese culture nourished the insights that gave birth to and inform haiku, I am grateful for it. But I am grateful for other things as well: for the insights of modern psychology that many poets, including haiku poets, have explored; for the insights of neurology and brain science, which I feel could be explored more; and for individual poets, artists and spiritual teachers who have gone beyond culture in ways which have enriched it.

QuoteGood questions have been raised. I find this kind of discussion somewhat disheartening though. I long for the day when haiku can be discussed without reference to things Japanese...I've said this before, but if Japanese culture nourished the insights that gave birth to and inform haiku, I am grateful for it. But I am grateful for other things as well: for the insights of modern psychology that many poets, including haiku poets, have explored; for the insights of neurology and brain science, which I feel could be explored more; and for individual poets, artists and spiritual teachers who have gone beyond culture in ways which have enriched it. --Peter

romanticizing Japanese culture? No interest here. Orientalizing? Distasteful. One the other hand, a lot of great ideas have been conceived by Japanese haiku poets (there are more of them than us). If we write haiku, and call it that, isn't it natural to be interested in those ideas? Do you control what goes in, and what comes out? For me, what goes in is used, one way or another.

I don't think I'm saying anything different. But let me be clear: I am by no means suggesting that anyone should not be interested in those ideas. I was pretty clear, I think, in saying that I am grateful for them; I didn't feel it necessary to say that  I intend to continue to be open to them.   

sorry. I'll continue to be open to your ideas.




   in a seed I don't know the answer


                                      Peter Yovu

Mark, so tell me, does saying "sorry" mean never having to say "I love you"? If so, well shucks.

In fact, a lot of my ideas have some degree of emotionality about them, if not reactivity. I think that is the case with what I have to say right now about kigo; maybe 80% is reaction based on my own stuff. It came out when I felt I had been barking up the wrong piano in looking at FA's poem. As i said, I felt "played with". But it's been quite valuable to me.

Is it time now to gather all the participants of this discussion and call for a group cyber-hug?

A cyber-hug is always a good idea. ;-)  We all have strong opinions, and as a temporary moderator for Matsuyama University's "interlude" during shiki-temp, I've seen how valuable it is to respect each other's differences.

I forget who said that Umberto's haiku is the one they'd vote for over Fay's haiku, but I see the Seashell Game as both a weakness and a strength when two different styles and cultures are brought to bear.

Fay's haiku isn't as easy to read perhaps as Umberto's, and where they come from, both in cultural background, and in their approach to these individual haiku, makes it hard to choose.

I like both, but learnt a lot over the discussion for Fay's haiku.

I also feel we are still having growing pains over haiku, and we don't have the luxury of having hundreds of years of writing, reading, and studying haikai literature (and Chinese literature) as the writers of Basho's time and before him.

But Umberto's haiku does show we have come an awful long way since the early 20th Century, and a long way since the Haiku Wars, and even the 1990s.

It would be great if someone could bring out a series of books that could compete with what R.H. Blyth attempted to do, but this time mostly non-Japanese, but with a volume or two (or three) on Japanese haiku (and hokku) since Basho, reaching right up to 2010 or 2011.

That would call for a huge grant, or someone with deep financial pockets and time on their hands of course. ;-)

Alan

QuoteIs it time now to gather all the participants of this discussion and call for a group cyber-hug? --Peter

QuoteA cyber-hug is always a good idea. ;-) --Alan

maybe Fay could play kumbaya for us...

isn't that a classic summer kigo from old Japan; hon-i --summer-camp love/togetherness?

You are sooo bad Mark, it's good. ;-)

Perhaps a THF video conference with us singing around the camp fire, before the venue sprinklers kick in, is a good idea. 

Good to see we can still utilise humor without the need of a senryu. ;-)

Alan

Quote from: Mark Harris on February 02, 2011, 12:02:28 PM

QuoteIs it time now to gather all the participants of this discussion and call for a group cyber-hug? --Peter

QuoteA cyber-hug is always a good idea. ;-) --Alan

maybe Fay could play kumbaya for us...

isn't that a classic summer kigo from old Japan; hon-i --summer-camp love/togetherness?

;D Mark!

Save me from kubaya, please, though. In the old people's home I end up in, we'll be doing group hugs or whatever to the classic Spring kigo, subterranean homesick blues; hon'i -- hon'i The Joy of Spring!

- Lorin

I'll be in the basement mixing up the medicine...

Quote from: Alan Summers on February 02, 2011, 08:42:17 AM

Quote from: Lorin on February 01, 2011, 08:50:47 PM

Quote from: Alan Summers on February 01, 2011, 06:46:43 PM
Reading all the comments I'm pleased that Fay's haiku not only compares favourably with Umberto Senegal's poem, but shows us the power, depth, and uniqueness of Japanese kigo, and why it's such a useful tool.

I don't say "useful tool" lightly, as I know it's been called the soul of haiku, but to emphasise that although the haiku may be difficult to read along the vertical axis, it's a rewarding and purposeful process.

As much as I admire Umberto Senegal's haiku, my vote in a head to head such as this, is to Fay's haiku.

Alan

Kigo is certainly the 'group soul' of Japanese haiku (or arguably so, anyway) but am I reading you right, Alan, that you mean that kigo and the associated hon'i (the part of kigo I suspected was there but have only very recently confirmed and begun to understand) is a "useful tool" for EL haiku? If so, could you please explain this view in more detail?

Or do you simply mean that knowing kigo and the associated hon'i is essential for anyone who wants to read Japanese haiku? I'd tend to agree with you there, since this haiku seems to fall into place quite easily as a perfectly traditional Japanese haiku once one understands the hon'i.

Yet, as Peter mentions, it was written in English (one assumes) as an EL haiku for EL haiku audience. Or maybe it wasn't.


- Lorin

Yes, Fay would have written it in English first, unlike Dhugal who always writes in Japanese first. ;-)

re my statement, I was directing it towards kigo first and foremost in a generic manner. 

We in the West cannot duplicate kigo, but we can come up with respectful alternatives, as we do have a rich cultural history.  It might not go back as many thousands of years as Chinese culture, which the Japanese can utilise, but we have barely scraped the surface of what we can do in the West.

I would imagine that writers born in the Indian sub-continent probably have a better chance of creating near-kigo than we do because their culture goes further back than the West.

Alan

Hi Alan,
I'm not sure that the term kigo can be used "in a generic manner". If we use kigo to mean both kigo (Japanese, by definition) and the developing references to seasons and nature in EL haiku, we rather obscure the very real differences. I don't believe that an authentic EL 'kigo culture' can be "created", certainly not by us and not by anyone in the near future. If it is to be, it will develop, through the literature, over many generations.

" Since our concern was speech, and speech impelled us
To purify the dialect of the tribe
And urge the mind to afterthought and forethought . . ."

- T.S. Eliot, 'Little Gidding', Four Quartets

- Lorin

- Lorin

Quote from: Mark Harris on February 02, 2011, 03:45:41 PM
I'll be in the basement mixing up the medicine...

;D  8)

- L

.
I long for the day when haiku can be discussed
without reference to things Japanese.
Peter

I guess that will be the day you give the poems a new name.  ;D

sushi will always be Japanese food to start with,
but how about the California roll ?

Gabi

how about the California roll?

Why Gabi, that's sweet, but I am a married man.

 Hey now, watch it with the California cracks.... :o
I eat California Haiku ;)...and for that matter, so does Fay!

having lived in CA for many years, I can tell you that californian sushi might be even more delicious than japanese sushi, roll or no roll :)

The California Roll is fun, but for travelling across country I'd have to have quite a variety of sashimi and sushi I'm afraid. ;-)


Hi Lorin (twice) ;-)

QuoteHi Alan,
I'm not sure that the term kigo can be used "in a generic manner". If we use kigo to mean both kigo (Japanese, by definition) and the developing references to seasons and nature in EL haiku, we rather obscure the very real differences.

I meant by kigo in its generic sense that I wasn't breaking it down into hon'i etc... Just saying kigo.  I'm keeping my With Words hat on, and making it accessible without dumbing it down.

I'm not even sure the Western experts in kigo can break it down to its component parts, and perhaps only a handful of Japanese experts can write about it, but probably have it in their blood of course. ;-)

QuoteI don't believe that an authentic EL 'kigo culture' can be "created", certainly not by us and not by anyone in the near future. If it is to be, it will develop, through the literature, over many generations.

I believe I covered that, and said the Indian Sub-Continent is more likely than us because of their much longer cultural background to pull from.

Quote

- Lorin

- Lorin

Is this like New York, New York, it's so fine they named it twice? <grin>

Alan

Quote from: Alan Summers on February 02, 2011, 05:18:16 PM

Quote

- Lorin

- Lorin

Is this like New York, New York, it's so fine they named it twice? <grin>

Alan

...just me & my shadow  :)

Quote from: John Carley on February 02, 2011, 06:26:54 AM

QuoteThe whole issue is a caution against cultural insularity - Lorin

Yeah, or cultural misappropriation. The risk of parody here is pressing; I'm not sure how anyone who is not fluent in Bogush can claim intimate familiarity with Bogushetti iconography. Put another way: why is Borat funny?

But treading on eggshells aside, I'm not sure how hon'i squares with fuga no makoto.

Best wishes, John

Yep, both cultural insularity and cultural misappropriation.

There seem to be so many takes on what fuga no makoto means, though. as I look around the web. It seems to be made to fit with hon'i by some, and seems to contradict it in the view of others. Very slippery! My head spins.

- Lorin

Pondering over the problems raised here I think we have this :

the author includes a kigo / an allusion

... now there are some possible reactions on the side of the reader

the reader knows the kigo / the allusion

the reader does not know the kigo / the allusion

the reader has a different kigo / allusion in mind


Since the reader is usually alone and has no further feedback he is left with his own knowledge of things.
In the case of haiku, he might check a kigo list, saijiki, database, haiku book ...

If you read "firefly" only as an animal, you get that much out of the Japanese haiku.
If you read "firefly" in the allusion to the  Genji/Heike, you get so much more out of the Japanese haiku.


If the poet wants to make sure the reader "gets" his kigo/allusion, he must provide a footnote with his haiku.
(I call this "haiku in context" and urge poets in international, cross-cultural settings to add some information for their haiku, to spare the reader the task of googeling.)


And as an addition to this, I added up all the hibernating animals getting in and out of holes in Japanese kigo  :)

http://worldkigo2005.blogspot.com/2011/02/hole-ana-and-hibernating-animals.html

Gabi

Quote from: Mark Harris on January 25, 2011, 08:55:00 PM
One of these poems is translated and one not. Despite David's efforts, I worry my ignorance of Spanish might handicap Senegal in this match-up, and that makes comparison difficult for me.

Senegal's is almost motionless, a meditation and foretelling. Has a loved one died? The implication is there, I think, for the reasons Lorin gave.

Someone will be coming on here, when the registration process is finished, with an interesting and important detail which might answer your question, here, Mark.  8)

- Lorin

What? Who? I wait with bated breath...

... t'wouldn't be fair if I told, would it?  :-X

- Lorin

Tantalus?

Quote from: Mark Harris on February 03, 2011, 07:55:49 PM

Tantalus?

Not sure if there are any Greeks in his family tree or not, Mark.  :) Ya never know, though.

- Lorin

En el candil cadáveres  
de zancudos. Alguien solloza
en la habitación.

"candil" is an "oil lamp" and they are still used, for some reason, at wakes all over Latin America.  My first language is Spanish.  

Sergio

Thank you, Sergio

Interesting information that appears to support some of our speculations. A story, or situation at least, becomes more central to my reading of the poem.

Thanks Sergio - that clarifies the reading so much.

Another question if you will: "Alguien solloza / en la habitación."

Which room is this?

Best wishes, John

And the winner is ... US!

We've all learned from another great exchange of perceptions and assumptions about contemporary world haiku. In terms of the voting, my score card has two votes for Fay's red toy piano haiku (SusanD and Alan) and six votes for Umberto Senegal's mosquito corpses haiku (John, Lorin, Chibi, NM Sola, Melissa and Karen). Peter voted for Umberto but then decide to withdraw his vote, unable to choose between the two. Mark also found himself in this situation.

It's still the day of the deadline (Feb. 6), so feel free to add more thoughts on these provocative haiku, if you have any. Otherwise, I'll see you in Round Three!

sorry David,

I said I'd vote, and haven't yet. Hard decision...I'll cast my vote for Fay's haiku.