Over on Periplum, David Lanoue has been presenting a series of "Seashell Games" which, as he says, originally "involved a beauty contest of two shells, viewed side-by-side. Basho extended this format to haiku, placing two haiku side-by-side and determining the winner. The important thing wasn't so much who won or lost, but rather the comments of the judge (Basho), who revealed his concepts about what constitutes a fine haiku". (Italics mine).
In the fourth installment, David provides comments Basho made about two poems he (Basho) judged: "The first poem suggests. . . that the poet is well versed. . . in the skill of giving birth to vigorous language.(Also mine). It ranks thousands of leagues above the second poem. Therefore, if invited to come and look at such a happy product, the writer of the [second] poem should withdraw his wooden sword and flee".
For good or ill, elements of Basho's poetics have been cited countless times in support of, or to criticize, current (English language) attempts at writing haiku. However, "the skill of giving birth to vigorous language" does not strike me as an element which one encounters with any regularity in discussions or criticism of English language haiku, or of translations. Some, I include myself, might add that while "plain language" is often seen, praised, and promoted, "vigorous language" is not. Do you agree with this?
To the extent that may be true, would you say, for example, that notions of haiku being "a wordless poem" contribute to a lack of vigor, or even to feelings that language itself somehow gets in the way?
I don't intend this to be a referendum on Basho's poetics, but as always, we'll find out which way the wind blows. Nonetheless, along with such poetic elements as "lightness" and "going to the pine to learn from the pine", how do you feel about including "the skill of giving birth to vigorous language" in your critical toolkit, and in your considerations of what constitutes a fine haiku? What kind of sword do you carry?
As with previous Sailings, I invite participants to give examples of poems which you feel exemplify, advance or challenge the subject we are exploring. And in this instance, I would also like to invite those who know Japanese to perhaps speak to ways in which Basho himself used "vigorous language".
And I encourage you to check out Periplum. The fourth Seashell Game gives Basho's full statement regarding the "winning" haiku and the haiku whose author evidently wielded a wooden sword.
"Vigorous" is a pretty vigorous word. I can't see Basho using it in a poem. The words and images he did use in most of the poems we're familiar with (old pond, bare branches, warrior's dreams) are plain indeed, but he certainly used them to vigorous effect.
Whatever he means by "vigorous use of language" it can't be about bejeweled language that draws undue attention to itself. His poetic language has a restrained vigor.
But maybe Basho isn't the best example of what you're looking for and getting at.
Hello, Peter,
I should know better than to jump in here with my little, non-intellectual brain, but here goes anyway.
Vigorous:
vital
robust
strong
active
having great energy
powerful in effect
dynamic
Isn't that what all good writing, regardless of genre, should be?
Isn't that what we aim for?
Plain-spokenness is a lot more vigorous than fancied-up language -- which means haiku should be among the most vigorous forms of poetry out there.
I'm all for vigorous language. Would any writer want his/her words to be wan, weak, lazy, lethargic, and powerless?
cat
PS, I'm a pacifist, but if I had a sword, it would be a dagger, as befits a lady. 8) ;D
Yes, I think it's useful to bring in what "vigorous" means, though I'm sure some will also have a feeling sense of it which is not easy to define. Speaking of which, I hope that readers will not feel these "Sailings" are only, or especially, intellectual exercises. One way to avoid that, should you choose, is simply to present a poem which for you exemplifies "vigorous language"-- or one which does not. In the past, typically, I had kicked things off with some examples, but I was wary in this instance of pre-determining a tone. So I remain hopeful that someone will bring in a poem or two for discussion.
So cat, can you show us how, for you, "plain-spokenness is. . . vigorous". . .?
And what are some other ways a haiku may use "vigorous language"?
At some point I'd like to offer a poem by Michael McClintock (not his very vigorous "poppy" poem) whose
insistent sounds may belie how we read it. A teaser, yes. . .
This concept comes to mind in a problem I was having with a bush...pretty plain language there. But this bush was so hard to describe and I was at a loss for a word to describe it's many passages created by the tangle of branches and the many hiding places for the birds all winter. (See how many words it takes to try to explain what that bush was!) One day on the way home it came to me:
bushmaze. Now there is no such word. But in one word it holds all the elements three lines of description took to explain.
I don't look for fancy words...I love the pot and rake and trowel... but I do love a word that holds the truth or the essence of something.
Here's a simple haiku from"paper moon" haiku "Writing for Self Discovery" Grades 9 and 10 put out by School of the Arts Rochester, New York. It's such a simple haiku:
early spring
the Sunday paper
freckled with snow
Brittany Robinson
This holds the essence of that early spring day... with the added humor of "freckled" like the little girl dashing for the paper in the light snow.
Quotecan you show us how, for you, "plain-spokenness is. . . vigorous". . .?
Though not a haiku, William Carlos Williams'
red wheelbarrow comes quickly to mind as a vigorous use of language using the plainest of words and images.
QuoteAnd in this instance, I would also like to invite those who know Japanese to perhaps speak to ways in which Basho himself used
"vigorous language".
Good morning from Japan !
My first question is this:
vigorous languageWhat did Basho really say? (in Japanese, I mean).
Could David provide a rendering of the original expression, please.)
I find this for "vigorous" in my online yahoo dict:
1 [形] 1 〈人・行為などが〉活力［活気］にあふれた，元気いっぱいの；精力的［積極的］な；〈人が〉じょうぶ［健康］な，たくましい
2 〈人・性格・文体などが〉迫力ある，強い，力強い
3 〈実施などが〉強力な，強制的な.
4 〈植物が〉よく育つ
http://dic.yahoo.co.jp/dsearch?enc=UTF-8&p=vigorous&dtype=1&dname=1na&stype=0&pagenum=1&index=078555000
Gabi
蚤虱 ( のみしらみ ) 馬の 尿 ( ばり ) する枕もと
nomi shirami uma no bari suru makuramoto
fleas and lice
and a horse pissing
next to my pillow
Matsuo Basho
(Tr. Gabi Greve)
certainly a vivid description of a night in a cheap lodging. But the words are all rather plain and simple.
for other translations and more haiku on pissing, check in here
http://wkdhaikutopics.blogspot.com/2007/12/pissing-shooben.html
Is that the kind of "vigorous language" you are thinking of?
Gabi
(just got off my makuramoto without all these attributes above :) )
.
There are a myriad haiku that strike me as vigorous use of plain language for one reason or another:
a box of nails
on the shelf of the shed
the cold
pig and i spring rain
as well as many gendai examples which are extreme in every way (and which don't float my sailboat):
twenty billion light years of perjury your blood type is "B"
I picture that one being screamed out at a poetry slam.
I guess this one of mine is pretty vigorous, my sword tends to come out in defense of the helpless.
what noise
does a piglet make?
when it's teeth are cut
with pliers
Oh my goodness, Peter,
There isn't enough space here to list all the haiku I love for their plain and vigorous language . . .
all the flowers cropped
they come so silently
the black-tailed deer
~Winona Baker
endless day --
a train whistle widens
in the cold air
~Raffael de Gruttola
twilit pasture --
voices of frogs fill
the forgotten bucket
~Ross Figgins
wet snow --
another color or two
on the sycamore bough
~William J. Higginson
Tea fragrance
from an empty cup . . .
the thin winter moon
~Peggy Willis Lyles
Simple, unadorned language, masterfully combined into concrete images of evocative sensory detail. Robust, dynamic, and vigorous!
cat
Poet left wrote
http://www.thehaikufoundation.org/forum_sm/periplum/the-seashell-game-round-4/
とりやげ婆が右の手也の紅葉哉
toriyagebaba ga migi no te nari no momiji kana
this red maple leaf (looks like) the right hand of a midwife
each word taken by itself is rather simple every-day language.
But they show us a fresh, "vigorous image".
How like it is to
A midwife's right hand--
Crimson maple leaf!
Tr. Ueda
By the way, Chibi san
toriyage baba : this is either a mis-spelling or an old version of toriage baba 取り上げ婆 ... tori ageru - taking out and lifting up .. what a midwife does with a newborn baby. baba here could refere to any woman of this profession, does not have to be an old one. But in the Edo period, most elderly woman tended to the younger ones, because they had more experience.
Gabi
early spring
the Sunday paper
freckled with snow
Britanny Robinson
If you were to ask me, personally, what it's like to feel vigorous, I suppose I would say it's a feeling of energy and aliveness in my body—a kind of vitality. So maybe it's in the "body" of a poem that we experience "vigorous language"— not so much the vocabulary, but the rhythms and sounds that propel it.
Does Merrill's example use this kind of language? I think so. I could probably devote a lot of words to describe why I think so, but maybe it will suffice to say that I find the rhythm compelling— or propelling. Here it is with the accented syllables uppercase:
EARly SPRING
the SUNday PAper
FRECKled with SNOW
There's something forceful about this, a series of trochees dynamically altered in the last line. I suspect the young person who wrote this had been reading a lot of poetry and took this kind of rhythm in, probably unconsciously—that is to say, into her body, where it was available to her when needed.
Another way the poem uses vigorous language is in the metaphor "freckled with snow". Some would argue that this is language calling attention to itself and should be eliminated. But how much would be lost without it, and anyway, even to say "spotted" or "flecked" or "speckled" with snow is to use a metaphor. "Freckled" seems just right for a youthful poem such as this, and I would say that it is vigorous in the sense that it breaks through the pavement of all the rules that get laid down. So that speaks to how word choice-- what and how words mean-- can bring aliveness to a poem. Sound and sense together.
.
http://www.thehaikufoundation.org/forum_sm/periplum/the-seashell-game-round-4/
Poet RIGHT:
no autumn reddening for me -
come look!
oak branch dew
(Tr. David Lanoue)
This haiku struck me because of the unusual use of language in line 3
in line 1, who is the ME ? the author in his garden ?
and then in line 3,
just three words dumped at the reader , bang bang bang ..., that is something quite unusual !
(for me that reads like an example of vigorous use of words).
Now I wonder about the Japanese and indeed, here things are quite different.
紅葉ぬと来て見よ樫の枝の露
momijinu to
kite miyo kashi no
eda no tsuyu
"I haven't crimsoned.
Come and look!" So says the dew
On an oak branch.
(Tr. Makoto Ueda)
Now things are different, the words are not used in unnatural language, but rather plain Japanese. (I am not talking about the image now, just the use of words as language).
The use of direct speach in not unusual in haiku, the fact that the dew is doing the talking might be something of a surprise.
So in the Japanese, indeed, I do not find the use of "vigorous language".
Translating is a difficult job. Should we stick to the original as much as possible?
Should we paraverse it to fit a certain purpose or point we are trying to make?
Should we give various possible versions, as Robin Gill usually does?
Greetings from a very frosty morning in Japan
Gabi
.
The idea that the words should not bring attention to themselves has many applications in various modes of writing. In haiku, it seems to have something to do with meditative experience; but of course that just opens another can of worms. And what about the concept of "voice": the lovely haiku by Lenard D. Moore in Frogpond 34 in memory of Peggy Willis Lyles ("autumn clouds -- / I read To Hear the Rain / for her voice" certain packs a range of ways words "stick out" from the surrounding reality. I think this haiku shows that haiku can carry several dimensions at once and still be haiku.
I love that haiku of Leonard's alluding to Peggy's voice... So much to think about on such good posts here. Thanks.
Hi Chris,
Chris said:Quote from: Chris Patchel on March 08, 2011, 04:58:37 PM
There are a myriad haiku that strike me as vigorous use of plain language for one reason or another:
SNIP
as well as many gendai examples which are extreme in every way (and which don't float my sailboat):
twenty billion light years of perjury your blood type is "B"
I picture that one being screamed out at a poetry slam.
Actually I've read this often, and probably haven't performed it as it doesn't need to be said loud. In fact the last time I read it out I would have looked very silly screaming it as it was at the Sign Poetry Festival, and I think the Signer would have also shown it didn't need "shouting" even in Deaf language.
But I have seen Death Metal bands sing lullabies, so I guess anything can be screamed to put a twist in things. I just don't think this haiku needs extra treatment. Perhaps it's just me, I seem to be the only Westerner to identify with this strongly (I also have a rare B blood type, so that helps <grin>)
Alan
The question of voice is certainly an interesting one, and may deserve it's own Sailing or appreciation on some other venue. It would be interesting for example to present a series of unidentified and lesser known poems by variety of well known writers and ask participants to match name to poem. I think there are relatively few haiku poets who have a readily identifiable "voice". What does this mean?
For now though, relating to the subject of vigorous language, I want to present a poem by Michael McClintock, and I apologize if I seem to be offering an end of chapter exercise.
a little inn
with a swinging sign-board
the evening chill
I have seen one or two responses to this which were at variance to mine. More later on that. So here is the question-- do you believe this poem demonstrates vigorous language? In what way? And, how do you feel the language contributes to how the poem "means"?
Quote from: Gabi Greve on March 09, 2011, 07:13:10 PM
.
Translating is a difficult job. Should we stick to the original as much as possible?
Should we paraverse it to fit a certain purpose or point we are trying to make?
Should we give various possible versions, as Robin Gill usually does?
Gabi
.
As a reader, I like to read a literal translation (or as close as possible to literal) along with the poem translation. I think it's probably impossible to translate a poem from one language to another and keep the literal meaning of the original, yet have it remain a poem. Jorge Luis Borges was well aware of this, worked with the one EL translator he felt understood his intentions best, and himself collaborated in
changing the EL translations if the effect in English wasn't what he wanted.
Basho et al are of course not in a position to do that! :)
What's most important, imo, is that the poem
remains a poem in the language into which it's translated. It follows that a poetry translator needs also to be a poet!
- Lorin
Quote from: Peter Yovu on March 12, 2011, 12:38:57 PM
For now though, relating to the subject of vigorous language, I want to present a poem by Michael McClintock, and I apologize if I seem to be offering an end of chapter exercise.
a little inn
with a swinging sign-board
the evening chill
I have seen one or two responses to this which were at variance to mine. More later on that. So here is the question-- do you believe this poem demonstrates vigorous language? In what way? And, how do you feel the language contributes to how the poem "means"?
Hi Peter,
'vigorous' is a word which brings up physical associations for me...energetic, healthy, etc. yet it can also apply to mental exertions. Verbs are the most 'vigorous' words, I think, but this seems out of context when speaking of haiku. It's interesting that whatever word 'vigorous' was in Japanese, Basho backed it up with that sword metaphor. What does a sword do? Cut. But a wooden sword is a plaything, it doesn't cut. One thing good haiku does, whether in Japanese in Basho's time or in English now is "cut to the chase". (That expression is from the language of film making, but is applicable to haiku, I think) So perhaps what Basho might've meant is that it's best to choose the words that get the job done best. I'd say that Basho's use of 'vigorous' in context of that 'seashell game' might mean a vigorous application of the writer's use of the tools of language. Something like Coleridge's "the best words in the best order".
What the "best words in the best order" would be would differ with different subjects, different moods, different insights, so is not prescriptive about what
kind of language (though plain & clear has the advantage) but it indicates that the language needs to be effective rather than decorative.
My sword ;D. . . as long as it's a metaphorical sword, if I had a choice, I'd choose a laser sword.
a little inn
with a swinging sign-board
the evening chill
I'd say that this haiku is an excellent example of effective use of language in poetry. That sign board can be heard as well as seen (the assonant repetition of the small i sounds seem to enact the small sounds of a swinging sign in the wind) The language is 'natural', by which I mean it seems clean & unforced, there is nothing 'chopped' about it nor are there any 'slack', any unnecessary or merely decorative words. McClintock has chosen "the best words in the best order".
Interpretation is another thing altogether. I believe that this haiku can be interpreted in a couple of ways at least. I might interpret the images as a sign of great relief and a welcoming promise of hospitality one day and in a Hitchcock-ian way another day. What the inn and its swinging sign mean is indeterminate, 'swinging', like that sign. We don't know for sure whether the inn is inhabited or not, open or closed. I think we can assume that it's in an out-of-the-way place and that there is a decision to be made. . . to approach the inn, or not to. The poem is effective because it succeeds in focusing the attention, so that the reader enters the poem and experiences the author's sense of "not knowing".
(that's my take on it, anyway ;) )
- Lorin
Hello, Lorin,
[You posted on another topic whilst I was typing this, so this goes back to your reply to Gabi san.]
Whenever I read a translation (from War and Peace or Madame Bovary right on over to haiku), I always wonder what the writer was really saying. Even a literal translation, it seems to me there are idioms and cultural touchstones and overtones that can be easily missed.
I never realized how difficult translation was until I tried translating my own haiku into French for the bilingual Haiku Canada members' anthology. Yikes!
cat
PS, I agree with everything you said re: Michael McClintock's haiku. "Language needs to be effective rather than decorative," right on!
Lorin's post was an excellent read, this is how I interpreted McClintock's haiku.
For me the first line clearly shows a little inn, now when I think about a little inn I think of it as being a rather modest or cheap establishment, (perhaps, because I live in a town full of b&b's.) but even though the inn is cheap to stay at we find ourselves outside, staring up at the swinging sign board, which indicates to me a kind of groaning noise (creating a sense of despair.)
I think it's also worth noting that there seems to be only one person outside the inn, which must logically bring in to play some sense of loneliness that is further intensified by the concluding evening chill.
So now not only do we have the physical ordeal of being outside in the cold when we would much rather be inside but also we have the longing for company and perhaps the warmth of a smile.
-John
For language full of vigour, we must not go past our Moderator on this board:
a case of bird skulls
my ears torn by such
little scissors
snow I know everywhere to touch you
broken stitches
geese
crying in the wind
- Peter Yovu, from his collection Sunrise (many others to choose from too).
not meaning to jump on the bandwagon, but I agree with Sandra alot of Peter's work is full of vigourous language. I think this one from the last issue of roadrunner is a good example
gored but out of these shattered ribs a bull
-John
A pen...
(come on poets... you should know which is mightier!)
Speaking of shouting and reading outloud...
A case (happens to have happened to my poem [apology for using an example of mine]) at HSA in Hot Springs 2010 Regional, during the kukai ranking of one poem each submitted by the attendees; and, as I did not know that the poems were to read outloud I wrote as best as I recall a poem with L3 being:
lip ice stick
Now, upon the speaker reading outloud a poem I had thought would be only read (but not outloud) an interesting and unexpected thing happened... the speaker had to re-read the poem several times outloud, giving a different emphasis to L3... this of course confused and confounded the audience (not through any fault of the readers efforts given this poem was not composed to be read aloud, neccessarily). I garnered one vote out of 21... being surprised I placed at all given the "performance".
As it turns out... no one except one person had heard of "lip ice" and given the vociferation of the speaker on each try... there were interpretations of which the basis emphasized "lip", "ice", and "stick" separately.
The fault, dear reader/listener is not in our sounds but in myself... I perhaps should have written, "lip-ice" but then would it have made any difference if the reader did not have the time and means to know that this phrase is considered regional? I doubt so, as, "lip-ice" is now commonly known as "lip balm" or "chapstick" (archaic) or "lip protectant sunscreen" (written in ad-speak).
A trivial example of the affect of reading outloud, granted, but, it really happened (as if that truly matters) in ESP or ESH or what-ever-the-genre will be called in literary record.
Yours in poetry (written not read outloud)
Chibi
PS... In a Japan (now every iota trembling after the 8.9, tsunami, and nuclear power plant partial meltdowns) all haiku have the potential of being read outloud, (homophonic puns and all). So in the final analysis a note should be attached to any poems with such vociferation peculiarities to assist the potential reader in oral delivery.
So I've been asking myself what vigorous language is, and how it serves haiku. A general response is-- language which, by various means including rhythm and the play of sounds, embodies the life inherent in what it conveys. A poem lives on two levels (and probably more)-- the level of sense, which is what its words signify, apprehended by the mind; and the level of sound, which is "understood" by the body, as another, but inseparable level of meaning.
I think McClintock's haiku beautifully illustrates this, and Lorin has already said much of what I have to say. The poem exists as a kind of indeterminacy-- any interpretation is likely to involve preference on the part of the reader-- but I believe the life of the poem and of its language will unsettle any preference and keep us in a moment which swings between two worlds-- in unknowing, as Lorin says, and uncertainty. Much of this is embodied in the short vowel sounds, and one could ask, how does my body respond to them prior to assigning meaning? There may be no rational response to this. Another way to ask it-- how is the life in me changed by the language of the poem?
"a little inn
with a swinging sign board
the evening chill"
--M. McClintock
"How is the life in me changed by the language of the poem?" You ask a great question and a hard one to answer. . .
I am reminded of life's ephemeral nature, caught as I am when I read this poem, for a moment, hanging in the swing of that breeze-blown sign, its implied creaking sound a music all its own. The song is sad to my ear because of its relentlessness--all those short little "i" sounds. Like a string of ifs.
The little inn is a quaint, inviting image in L1 to my mind
counter-balanced with the somewhat haunting feel of L3
that frames an opening for the reader to be wedged right there in the middle of the road, so to speak, caught off-balance as so often we are in life.
The language is vigorous in the poet's pursuit of this end, hammering home a short-lived enchantment. That's what my ear tells me.
--Peter Newton
Another question is whether or not you feel that the language of McClintock's poem creates its own image.
The answer for me is yes. Because for many of us the dominant sense is vision, and because we have a pretty good vocabulary available to describe what we see, it may be harder to talk about the effect of sound and rhythm in a poem as they are often more subtle. But I for one consider it important to try. Another difficulty is that sound is usually felt-- the body responds, but the mind, (the wish to want to see things) can get in the way. So the experience of a sound-image may elude us. But I would say that McClintock's haiku definitely presents a fairly complex sound-image which underscores, and juxtaposes, and perhaps unsettles the "visual" or descriptive images.
In a realized poem the sound may be more trustworthy than what the words "mean", if only because the body, which has a direct response to sound and rhythm, does not equivocate.
To me, if the haiku culture primarily encourages the value of images which are apprehended by the mind and not by the body, a great deal is lost, and may contribute to the confusion many have around whether or not a haiku is a poem. I am not saying that descriptive images cannot be felt by the body or will not affect the heart, but that trust in the actual body of the poem itself, in the very stuff and vigor of language, needs to be considered.
Here's poem by Peggy Lyles which shows, I feel, an implicit trust in sound. The descriptive images I find rather unremarkable, but the sound-image carries the day (right into the night). Do you agree that the haiku uses vigorous, or living language:
pine tops
against deep twilight
a bob-white's call
Just to be clear, by sound-image I mean the actual sounds and rhythms the poem makes, not reference to sound, or descriptions of sound.
My sense of these conversations is that they are much like conversations in the "real" world: something is usually said which does not get immediate traction but may resurface later. I think this topic may indeed return to what now is clear as the use of unusual, or powerful individual words, words which may or may not "call attention to themselves". I'll step in as moderator now and say, let's come back to that at some point. I hope to continue a bit with the exploration of what for now I'm calling "sound-image", how the life or vigor of language itself, sound and rhythm, informs or is a factor in the totality of a poem. When I can, I'll bring in more examples-- but anyone can do this, of course.
Going back to McClintock's haiku:
"unsettles" - Peter
Peter has used this word twice, and it seems to me to capture the feeling I take from this poem - 'unsettling'. The quaint little inn is a picturesque image, perhaps even nostalgic. Yet working against that are those insistent, repetitive i sounds...
a little inn
with a swinging sign board
the evening chill
--M. McClintock
It's those small creaking sounds which resound in one's bones, and along with 'evening chill', make the image of the little inn feel a bit 'iffy', that enact a nagging intuition which undercuts the picturesque and comfortable. This ku is cinematic, in that the visual and the sound work against each other in a complex, quiet but disturbing way.
- Lorin
- Lorin
Couple of business items first. Just to be clear, I am the moderator of Sails. Over on Troutswirl, my view of my role was more along the lines of "host": I put out the chips, dip and beverages, and friends gathered for conversation. It may be a bit different on the Forum, but not too different I hope.
Also, we now have the ability to modify posts, which is great, because it allows for improvements in what we present, clarifications, corrections etc-- a drawback is that rewrites may go unread. It may be helpful, if you make substantial or important changes to a post, to write something at the bottom to indicate what you have done, thus signaling to readers that it may be a good thing to reread the post.
Perhaps more problematic is the "remove" function. I've used this myself on other threads, and remind myself now that it is sometimes best to write a response first on Word or whatever program one uses, save it, and sleep on it before posting. I believe all contributions are important, though it is going to happen, most assuredly, that one's heartfelt statement is not going to get the attention the poster believes it should. There might be any number of reasons for this, but it does not mean the statement won't be heard, or have an impact down the line. I would like to be able to tie everything together and keep everyone more or less "on the same page", but this is not really practicable. And anyway, I trust that this will, with all of our attention, happen nonetheless, somehow.
This form of "disembodied" communication does not mean that we out here, real people at the wheel of our keyboards almost anonymously driving along, are not vulnerable and subject to all the needs and wishes of flesh and blood people.
My hope is to have as coherent a conversation as we can, respectful, mindful and as embodied as possible.
If you have any concerns about any of this, please email me or send a message.
I'll be back at some point soon to say a few things about Peggy Lyle's poem, and be looking for your thoughts as well.
Modified: deleted redundant word and other minor changes.
How does one experience a haiku, or any poem? I've suggested that one way, via the structure and interplay of sounds and rhythm, is in and by the body itself, perhaps even before it is experienced in any other way.
pine tops
against deep twilight
a bob-white's call
Peggy Willis Lyle's haiku (and though I sadly wish that she were here to talk about it, I also wish to honor her memory and her work) is a good example of this, I feel. It seems to require one to read it out loud, which means to read it not with the eyes alone, through which we will experience it as image, but to read it with lips, tongue teeth. . . . Is it fair to say that this haiku is experienced by the mouth as well as by the imagination, the mind's eye? Let's suppose that Peggy's experience was immediate; it all happened at once and moved her. The sound and rhythm of the poem move us, they have an impact on the body, and what the body experiences is always immediate. Imagination, association and analysis are always mediated by the past. Well maybe not always.
I suspect that this will rub some sensibilities the wrong way, but if one can allow the possibility, what does it say about the poem, or rather, what does the poem itself, on this most basic level, impart? Again, there may not be a rational response to this. The "sound-image" the poem creates may not be describable in terms of the eyes; rather than say "Oh, yes, I see now", we can only say "I feel it to be true", or maybe, "it tastes right".
My sense is that the delight we have is some haiku is quite physical, and relates to the vigorousness, or life of the language. I wouldn't say that this idea should entirely wipe out the idea of haiku being "a wordless poem", but for me, the idea of a haiku being "a wordless poem" by no means negates the pleasure a reader may take in tasting words, or in being moved by the rhythms they create.
So what I would like to invite now, until other aspects of this subject emerge, is for all/any to submit haiku which have some of this sense I'm talking about, haiku where the life of the language delights,
(even in dark or "unsettling" ways, like McClintock's-- "a string of ifs").
Here's one by E. S. Lamb
a tiny dead bat,
spraddled on the sidewalk
in this blaze of sun
And how much would be lost if the author had decided not to use the wonderfully, soundfully odd "spraddled", or had to decided to go with a spare, conventional structure like:
blazing sun--
a tiny dead bat
on the sidewalk
Quote...where the life of the language delights... -Peter
dark darker—
too many stars
too farThis poem by Gary Hotham is a longtime favorite of mine, and I remain amazed that it manages to be so overtly poetic, with so much use of rhyme, repetition, alliteration, cadence (I love that each and every word is accented), without straying from its haiku restraints. It's a small ecstasy of language, emotion, experience.
dark darker—
too many stars
too far
Chris, yes, this is a great example of how the "body" of a haiku may have a direct impact on the reader at a very physical and emotional level. It feels like a primal utterance, a cry of anguish and longing, but also of awe. With a few small changes, it could be a line from King Lear or something.
So what does this poem say to those who feel subjectivity has no place in haiku? It is deeply subjective, and yet, because the feeling it evokes seems so connected to the "fact" of darkness, and so choiceless, the subjectivity does not seem to pull one away from the darkness, but to deepen it. Does this seem right?
At the end of its leaf
the inchworm, feeling
for a foothold on the wind
mountain air
a caterpillar reaches
the twig's end
These two poems, both written the same year, make for an interesting comparison in languaging a nearly identical scene and inspiration. The first one by Alan Wells, anthologized in RMA, is overtly poetic with far more descriptive language, longer form, alliteration, absence of a cut. The latter one, by an'ya, uses a few choice words (with 'reaches' doing double duty), makes strong use of internal comparison, and defers to the reader to picture the climax of the scene.
Both of these use language in ways that impact the reader, though I personally find one of the 'swords' more effective.
(Cross-posted with Peter's last remarks.)
At the end of its leaf
the inchworm, feeling
for a foothold on the wind
mountain air
a caterpillar reaches
the twig's end
Definitely make for an interesting comparison. Well, first gotta say that by my last count there were 1,219 caterpillar/inchworm-at-end-of twig/branch haiku, which kind of dulls me. Scott Metz' take is:
a comma attached to the tip of the flowering branch
which might give one pause,
Enough.
The first, were it read only with the eyes and not with one's rhythmic and muscle systems, comes across as somewhat florid, "poetic", or more to the point as the "idea" of poetry. It "reaches" too hard for poignancy, as I see it, and as I feel it, it's very singsong, a series of anapests, da da DA da da DA, which I suppose someone might say mimics the action of wind. The language to me is languorous, not vigorous or alive. It just makes me sleepy, but maybe others will find that movement appealing and right.
But it's good to have a haiku which demonstrates a strong sound and rhythmic structure, but one which works against it. One could ask whether or not the "sound-image" juxtaposes with the "visual" image in a useful way. Not for me.
this talk of creaking signboards, and inchworms reaching for footholds, and stars too far, makes me think of this by George Swede
again down at the river
the son who doesn't know
what to do
with its series of soft sounds that meander like a river, or a restless young man, or a father not sure how to help.
Quote...1,219 caterpillar/inchworm-at-end-of twig/branch haiku... -Peter
Yes, too many haiku about just about any subject we can name. I like John Stevenson's take in this one:
all those haiku
about the moon in the trees
the moon in the treesQuoteSo what does this poem say to those who feel subjectivity has no place in haiku? It is deeply subjective, and yet, because the feeling it evokes seems so connected to the "fact" of darkness, and so choiceless, the subjectivity does not seem to pull one away from the darkness, but to deepen it.
I can concur with that observation of the poem. The subjective experience is anchored in an objective one, which allows the reader to relate to both. I think there is room for a broad range of objective and subjective haiku approaches. Gary Hotham, for instance, usually writes in an a more objective style but didn't feel bound to it in this case. Form follows function, the function in the case of poetry being to elicit a certain shared response in the reader.
Chris,
I also think that John Stevenson haiku is amusing. The repetition in the second and third lines is characteristically understated.
Understanding haiku in terms of objective/subjective has limits that Peter's current sound-image lens sidesteps in, for me, intriguing ways. I agree with Peter that a poem, whether subjective or objective (imo, individual perspective cannot be objective, but that might be a debate for a different thread), also interfaces with the reader or listener in the way Peter claims, through our body's reaction to the body of the poem.
I've lately enjoyed many hours reading a couple of John Martone's recent books, scrittura povera and ksana. Here are two poems from ksana. Their language is, to me, vigorous.
quarter hick'ry shell
winter's last
eyelid—
plow-
share
shape
this
up-
earthed
but-
tress
root
Quoteimo, individual perspective cannot be objective, but that might be a debate for a different thread -Mark
Mark, little argument from me on that point. It's a literary device to present it at a remove.
The other part of your comment I'll have to take a second look at when my brain's not fried.
PS- I can't say I get what John Martone is up to with his line and word breaks (maybe someone can enlighten me), and the eyelid idea does little for me, but I do like how the words feel to say aloud.
I'll try to catch up with other posts bit by bit, but:
pine tops
against deep twilight
a bob-white's call
- Peggy Willis Lyles
"The sound and rhythm of the poem move us, they have an impact on the body,. . ."
Yes, they do. Peggy Willis Lyles' work is that of an accomplished poet. To my mind, where this topic seems to be heading is timely as well as interesting. It's not new that poets have always used sound and rhythm to enact and embody the sense of their poems, but is it because haiku first came to us English-speakers in translation that certain vetoes and misunderstandings seemed to gain favour, such as "haiku do not use rhyme" ?
Possibly Kenneth Yasuda's translations of Japanese haiku into end-rhymed tercets, whilst attempting to adapt a feeling of Japanese rhyming technique, didn't help matters as, in English, the end-rhymed tercet is familiar as the 'jingle' (much used in advertising in the 1950s) In the jingle the sound dominates the sense, doesn't support, enact or expand it. In memory of long-suffering parents on long car trips with singing children, who took hours before finally crying out, "Enough!":
You'll wonder where the yellow went
When you brush your teeth
With Pepsodent!
- 1950s advertising jingle, Anon.
On a withered bough
A crow alone is perching
Autumn evening now
- translation of Basho by Kenneth Yasuda
Whilst extremely effective as a mnemonic device (as testified by the fact that both of these verses seem to be hard-wired into my memory whether I like it or not!), formulaic rhyme in such a short poem takes over and detracts from sense.
Peggy's use of assonance (a subtler form of rhyme)
pine tops
against deep twilight
a bob-white's call
adds tangible substance to sense; it doesn't take over, it deepens. Though I've not experienced a bob-white's call, I know other bird-calls at that time of day. A solitary call resounds and seems to give depth to the dark and deepening blue, where only tall things which are darker are distinct against the sky. The name of the bird stands out here, somehow blending with the call ( a common instance of one form of 'synaesthesia' that many of us experience) which is as much "against" the twilight as the pine-tops; a known, recognised call amidst much that is becoming indistinguishable.
I've loved this translation of Basho's poem since I first read it, and Peggy's poem puts me in mind of it:
The sea darkens
and the voices of wild ducks
are faintly white
It may be just good luck that there's that assonant echo between "wild" and "white" there in English. One wonders whether the sounds in the original Japanese support or extend the sense of the poem further.
- Lorin
" (imo, individual perspective cannot be objective, but that might be a debate for a different thread)" - Mark
Briefly: I am grateful to read this here today. I know this to be true, too, but it's so good to have it confirmed twice in the one day.
(the first time was whilst reading something by the gentle and wise, down-to-earth Vietnamese Buddhist writer Thich Nnat Hanh this afternoon: "We should not be sure of any perceptions we have." This is not offered by him as a rationale for rampant subjectivity, though. . . far from it! It's a cue to a gentle reality check on the nature of our own perceptions and those of others)
And yes, the "body senses", that Peter has brought up: along with the 5 recognised senses (sight, touch, hearing, taste, smell) there is the 'body sense' (or senses) we know as 'apprehension', 'gut feeling', 'intuition' and the like. There is nothing 'mystical' about this. I live in a big, mostly arid country where the original people survived many changes of environment over a period of more than 100,000 years by using all of the human senses and rationality/logic as well. They did not write. Their primary art form was dance.
- Lorin
Mark:
I too enjoy Martrone's structurally innovative indented line breaks that add a welcome vigor to the language and lineation. One of my favorites by John:
dragonfly
quicker than lake's
reflection
of course, "content" is always first & foremost, but if the poet can fuse "content" with creative lineation and actually have the line breaks vigorously mimic the movement of the "dragonfly"--the poem takes on an added dimension of enjoyment--for me.
Al
Al brings up an important point: " '. . .content is always first and foremost. . .'". I throw it out again to him and all of us: is this really true?
Peter:
Let me clarify--if I may--what I mean by "content".
For me, content is the overall "meaning" or a "feeling" that I receive after reading the haiku. Of course, the meaning can be greatly enhanced by a an innovative structure/form--provided it fuses with "content". Additionally, an innovative structure can--under certain conditions--become the pervasive "catalyst" or the "deciding factor" in determining the ultimate enjoyment of a haiku. But "vigorous words" or "innovative structural fusing" (ie concrete "language happenings"--to borrow a popular term from the 70s "concrete "new poetics") if lacking "content"--to me--in and of itself--does not result in a highly successful haiku. To borrow a popular e e cumings phrase
"since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you"
But certainly "vigorous language" combined with "meaning" (perhaps intellectually perceived) will trigger a bodily (emotionally visceral) reaction from me--culminating in the pleasurable enjoyment of the haiku.
Hopes this clarifies,
Al
Quotea poem...interfaces with the reader or listener in the way Peter claims, through our body's reaction to the body of the poem. -Mark
Each of us apprehends poetry/art with the head, heart, and body in varying combinations and degrees depending on how we're wired and what most interests us. ('Body' in the instinctual sense that Lorin referred to, which may or may not be the same way you and Peter are referring to it?). Part of what I look for in a good poem/painting/song/film is some kind of a balanced appeal to all three. I want to be sensually engaged, emotionally moved, and intellectually stirred in some way.
Billy Collins'
Introduction to Poetry is a fun reminder that I can often get too head oriented: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mX-dVTf8c8I
Quote" '. . .content is always first and foremost. . .'". I throw it out again to him and all of us: is this really true?
Again, what is first and foremost will be somewhat different for each person. But form and content are seamlessly inseparable in a successful poem. And obviously both need to be strong enough to hold their own. We don't want dry boned concepts or mere syntax that "will never wholly kiss you"
These head, heart, body categories are far from exhaustive. Another thing that is important to me is some connection on an experiential level. I want to learn something of who the author is by reading her/his work (even if it's fanciful fiction, the flying pope, say). Without that it's merely clever (look what I can do with words). But that maybe gets back to voice, for another thread perhaps.
PS- I think and feel art pretty strongly (I'm split pretty evenly on a Meyers-Briggs score) but am less in tune with this whole business of 'body' sensing, so this discussion has me grappling with that aspect a bit more. Haiku, of course, always challenges me to stay anchored to the physical-- the stuff of my environment, and my body, and of language.
"('Body' in the instinctual sense that Lorin referred to, which may or may not be the same way you and Peter are referring to it?)." - Chris
"(I'm split pretty evenly on a Meyers-Briggs score) but am less in tune with this whole business of 'body' sensing, " - Chris
Hi Chris, the body senses, to me, are the five recognised senses plus a generalised 'body sense' which most likely
is instinctive and seems connected to emotion, but surely it's no more or less instinctive than the five recognised senses? When we say a work "moves" us, doesn't it mean that we've responded to it in a way that has registered in our body in some way? That 'goosebumps' feeling or 'hairs standing up on the back of the neck' are two really obvious bodily reactions, but our response to the Michael McClintock poem (the 'little inn/swinging sign/evening chill' one that Peter quoted, eg) will depend on how the sounds work with or against the images and rhythm, as we allow it all to register.
Who knows, but the generalised "body sense/s" might simply be a pre-conscious or semi-conscious awareness of something that has registered? That the body (including the nervous system & brain) have perceived data but the conscious mind has not yet sorted and defined it? The everyday expressions we use to describe emotions seem bodily based; something "warms our heart", something "gives us the creeps", something is "a pain in the neck", a sound is "piercing", "soothing", "lulling".
Quote from: Peter Yovu on March 23, 2011, 06:49:30 AM
Al brings up an important point: " '. . .content is always first and foremost. . .'". I throw it out again to him and all of us: is this really true?
If it were the case, I imagine that the job of poetry translators would be a lot easier! Also, if we consider nonsense verse (and the delight it holds, & not just for children. . . consider Edward Lear, Lewis Carroll...'The Dong with the Luminous Nose' etc) we need to allow that it's not always so.
Content and the elements of form in a poem combine to make the whole and can't be separated. The quotation from Cummings that Al gives is clever in the way that the form undercuts (works against, to some extent) the prose sense of the words.
I can't get youtube, (technological dummy that I am..I used to have it) but recall Billy Collins's "Introduction to Poetry"
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/introduction-to-poetry/
- Lorin
Peter's idea is related, I think, to a notion expressed by Spinoza, who wrote that, "The human mind is the idea of the human body."
We don't simply receive sensory input, compute the information, and then perceive the "reality" around us. We are constantly building concepts of our worlds, models if you will, and they are never complete or finished. Mind and body are connected by systems that predate human systems, and information used in world-building comes not only from what we consider rational thought.
We can't be sure why we like what we like. Therefore, I think Peter is suggesting, we have to question the content of our content.
"Mind and body are connected by systems that predate human systems, and information used in world-building comes not only from what we consider rational thought. " - Mark
Definitely! Ever see a young cat, generations of whose forebears have lived in the city suburbs, do an all-fours vertical lift-off at the sight of nothing but a coiled garden hose? (Then they'll return to earth and approach the hose, cautiously, and do a good 'reality test', and it never happens again.) I have, with several individual cats (who never met), years apart. It happens only once per cat. I worked out that snake is 'hard-wired' into cats, somehow, a gift from their ancestors. (Australian cats, anyway)
Why should we be any different? (well, I prefer this sort of explanation to the 'Matrix' scenario 8) )
- Lorin
We're not any different.
At the end of the day we're all living things whom are dependent on experience and thought.
For me the power of a poem lies mostly within it's rhythms and resonance, content or subject is usually a secondary thought when I read a poem for the first time. I realise that opinion will not be shared by everyone and it all hinges on how people allow themselves to react to a poem.
My reasoning to allow a poem's rhythm to dictate my intial experience of it is that I view all language (spoken or written) to be a derivative from the 'inner rhythms' of our existence.
Quote from: Peter Yovu on March 22, 2011, 03:37:51 PM
At the end of its leaf
the inchworm, feeling
for a foothold on the wind
mountain air
a caterpillar reaches
the twig's end
a comma attached to the tip of the flowering branch
The first, were it read only with the eyes and not with one's rhythmic and muscle systems, comes across as somewhat florid, "poetic", or more to the point as the "idea" of poetry. It "reaches" too hard for poignancy, as I see it, and as I feel it, it's very singsong, a series of anapests, da da DA da da DA, which I suppose someone might say mimics the action of wind. The language to me is languorous, not vigorous or alive. It just makes me sleepy, but maybe others will find that movement appealing and right.
But it's good to have a haiku which demonstrates a strong sound and rhythmic structure, but one which works against it. One could ask whether or not the "sound-image" juxtaposes with the "visual" image in a useful way. Not for me.
These three are interesting to consider, not only in terms of sound, but image in the full sense.
The first takes longer to read, and longer to dwell on. At first, I responded to "a foothold on the wind" more or less as others have: "overly poetic". But the more I return to it, the more I see that it's not 'poetic' but a well-observed description. It's good, I think, in the way that the rhythm leaves one dangling, doesn't conclude but returns the reader (this reader, anyway) back to the beginning (the wind. . .at the end of its leaf. . .') Perhaps this inconclusiveness & circularity mightn't appeal to everyone, but I can't dismiss this haiku.
The second makes traditional use of 'cut' and more modern use of line breaks, giving us the reaching caterpillar as one image in L2 then the 'little surprise' of the difference sense of 'reaches' we have to accommodate in L3. This is a more 'modern' haiku, in that it plays with the inherent ambiguity of the word 'reaches' and also gives time for that reaching to gain length, both via the line-break.
The third overturns the tradition poetic devices of 'personification/ animation' ( can't recall the right technical word!) by having a comma replace the image of a natural thing (a comma puts me more in mind of a leech than an 'inchworm or caterpillar, btw) and therefore is subversive of expectations, entering further into a focus on the language itself. That comma is disruptive, and no doubt intentionally so, in the sense that it directs the reader towards seeing the other images as words, rather than images or what the words signify.
Looking at these three ku in terms of 'body sense' or the visceral response only, I have to say that for me they affect me in descending order, with #1 the most visceral and #3 the least.
- Lorin
"a comma attached to the tip of the flowering branch"
The way I view this interesting one-liner:
The "comma becomes the metamorphic "referent" that transforms what would otherwise be--as Lorin suggests--the most declaritive of the three (or least visceral). The coma works as a triggering point that enhances the visual. It reminds me somewhat of one of my favorite ku that uses a punctuation mark as a lead-in to the phrase--triggering a visual/visceral response from me.
winter gravestone
hyphen between dates
my father's life
--Thomas Martin
Like the "comma" in the one-liner, the "hyphen" above spurred my visual /visceral reaction--flooding my minds eye and entire being with my own father's life.
Al
Quotewinter gravestone
hyphen between dates
my father's life
I liked the first tombstone hyphen haiku I saw, but since then I've seen more of those than poems about caterpillars/inch-worms reaching, which makes me wonder why the editors haven't. It's not just that it's a common image like the moon, say, which can be used an infinite number of ways. The hyphen poems all say exactly the same thing.
I'll make a bit of a wild hypothesis: poems (haiku) which do not find the "body" they long to inhabit are doomed to repetition, lost souls wandering in ghost towns, latching onto tumbleweeds and scraps of newsprint. The haiku Al has shown us (and this is not a commentary on his experience, please) cannot last long in the body it has been given, which is a little pile of bones with no connective tissue. We tender hearted writers of haiku may be inclined to take it to our breasts to warm and nurture it and tell it encouraging stories, but it may be too late. It lacks vigor.
Is it a requirement for haiku or poetry in general that it arise out of living, vigorous language? Are there examples that indicate otherwise? Do even some barebones poems have some demonstrable linguistic spark?
Here are two of the sparest haiku I could find in C v d H: (Jack Cain and Larry Wiggin)—
an empty elevator
opens
closes
wind:
the long hairs
on my neck
Can we talk about these in terms of vigorous language, or its lack?
edit: the empty elevator to an empty elevator
an empty elevator
opens
closes
I'd like to direct my commentary on "an empty elevator" ku. (I believe I first encountered this with the first word being "an")
I experience this viscerally. I like the repetitive rhythm of this symmetrically-pattererned ku. And the layered imagery adds to my visual enjoyment.
The structure is almost like a filmic "splice" technique and the double jux (opens..closes)
is effective in my mind's eye visualizing the entire moving image. This poem reminds me of another favorite of mine--with similar structure and "splicing" technique
letting
the cat in
the fog in
==Vincent Tripi
To answer your quiry: yes, I find the language sparse but vigorous.
Peter, thanks for offering these. They are among my favorites.
Quote from: Peter Yovu on March 23, 2011, 06:49:30 AM
Al brings up an important point: " '. . .content is always first and foremost. . .'". I throw it out again to him and all of us: is this really true?
If I may further elaborate:
My definition of "vigorous language" is language (words) that stimulates the senses stronger than other words. But as I've mentioned in another post pertaining to this thread--the language must lead to meaningful "content" in order for me to appreciate the language that brought me to a successful ku. Language can be vigorous, words can combine with other words in various structural delineations--but the bottom line (for me): does it resonate with "meaning?" Meaning is foremost--words are simply triggering points that either lead to "meaning" or fail to. No word or words are "vigorous" in and of themselves. A quick example
a yamagucci flout
I rak into the pin
with moles in my brams
This sounds vigorous, appears to be a vigorous haiku of 3 lines, 17 syllables. But I just made this up (in dada fashion) . To me, it's meaningless and hence unsuccessful.
but look:
a shakuhachi flute
I step into the wind
with holes in my bones
--Peter Yovu
Same structure, same syllable count, but now this takes on great meaning for me because the vigorous language (words) have "meaning."
Al
Thanks Al, for your help here. I hope you won't mind if once again I direct something you've said to further discussion.
So, here is my question to all: is it true for you that, as Al says,
"Meaning is foremost-- words are simply triggering points that either lead to "meaning" or fail to".
I have my thoughts on the matter, but I'd like to hold off, and for now offer a poem by Jim Kacian which can be found in the latest Roadrunner:
the high fizz nerve the low boom blood dead silence
Does this one-liner illustrate Al's point, call it into question, generally mess with it. . . ?
On a separate matter, I have a request to make: if you know someone whom you believe might have something to add to this conversation, please contact them.
the high fizz nerve the low boom blood dead silence
vigorous language, yes, and I can feel the effect of an amplified boom box being turned off...or--metaphorically feel that a high-strung altercation/ argument resulting in a (perhaps strained?) unresolved silence..but these associations and perceptions by me were the result of the words being combined in such a way as to produce a meaningful haiku. If you change the words (maintaining the same structure and vigorous wording) but the words (however vigorous-sounding) have no generally-accepted "meaning"--just a jumble of nonsense--the poem would lose its efficacy for me. It might have meaning for some--some may even ascribe or invent "meaning"--but this (albeit dada or mentally delusionary) crowd would be a very small percentage, IMHO
As Peter suggests..I hope others will enter the fray--and let me know if I'm way out in left field here (perhaps I'M the one delusional??)..
Al
QuoteDoes this one-liner illustrate Al's point, call it into question, generally mess with it. . . ? -Peter
the high fizz nerve the low boom blood dead silence
Briefly (since I don't think I'm adding anything new), I don't disagree with anything Al is saying, or that Peter is suggesting (I think). 'Meaning' (which is also paramount to me in art and everything else) is conveyed both through the form & content. It's what art is all about. In Jim's poem all the words have dictionary meanings, as well as emotive connotations as standalone words and, more importantly, how they add up in combination. Much could be said about the sounds of the words chosen (fizz, boom) and their fitting relation to the experience they express. And there's the contrasts of high/low, dead/alive, noisy inner/ soundless outer. Everything about the form & content matters and makes it meaningful as a conveyor of the original experience, and as a hightened artistic experience.
*modified on a continuing basis :)
Quote from: Peter Yovu on April 03, 2011, 04:49:28 PM
Thanks Al, for your help here. I hope you won't mind if once again I direct something you've said to further discussion.
So, here is my question to all: is it true for you that, as Al says,
"Meaning is foremost-- words are simply triggering points that either lead to "meaning" or fail to".
I have my thoughts on the matter, but I'd like to hold off, and for now offer a poem by Jim Kacian which can be found in the latest Roadrunner:
the high fizz nerve the low boom blood dead silence
Does this one-liner illustrate Al's point, call it into question, generally mess with it. . . ?
Meaning. To what extent is meaning inherent in words and to what extent is it assigned by the reader/ listener/ looker? I include 'looker' deliberately. When we listen to someone speaking, we not only have access to the tone of voice, but to body language. Take that perennial Australian expression:
"You bloody old bastard."
What's your response? No reader can assign meaning to this, with any hope of accuracy. Are you being insulted? Are you being treated affectionately? Are you being congratulated? Should you prepare for a punch in the face or a friendly slap on the back or arm around your shoulder?
When you have the visual, the body language, you have a much better chance of assigning meaning because you have a context. I saw the film, 'The King's Speech' recently. If you've seen it, visualise Geoffrey Rush sitting (horror of horrors! ;-) ) on the chair in the cathedral and delivering the line:
"I don't care how many royal arseholes have sat on this chair."
What is the meaning of the line in context? Does it have more than one meaning? (Yes, it does.)
A poem's form is its body. How would Jim Kacian's poem,
the high fizz nerve the low boom blood dead silencework if it were written in 3 lines, or in a vertical column? Differently, and to me, not nearly as well. Though the sounds would be emphasized if it were given in a vertical column and the words would remain the same, the one-line form here enacts the meaning. What are we listening to? I'd say a machine that's monitoring signs of life until the end. "dead. . . silence" or "dead silence". The visual body of the poem enacts "flat-liner" (what would be seen on the machine) and confirms or determines the meaning we assign to the sounds and the silence.
"Everything about the form & content matters and makes it meaningful. . ." - Chris
- Lorin
modified: spello modified: clarification in last sentence
the high fizz nerve the low boom blood dead silence
This poem would change from being, potentially, a mere collection of words arranged in a single line to, potentially, a poem if we could hear the poet read it (agreeing with everything Lorin has said, essentially).
For a start, it would not a be a string of seemingly unrelated words, but pairs/groups of words with pauses between. A sense may become apparent, for example, "blood-dead silence" or "blood, dead silence".
Is a poem still a poem if it cannot be understood? Is a haiku a haiku if it cannot be understood?
Quote from: sandra on April 04, 2011, 07:35:33 PM
the high fizz nerve the low boom blood dead silence
This poem would change from being, potentially, a mere collection of words arranged in a single line to, potentially, a poem if we could hear the poet read it (agreeing with everything Lorin has said, essentially).
For a start, it would not a be a string of seemingly unrelated words, but pairs/groups of words with pauses between. A sense may become apparent, for example, "blood-dead silence" or "blood, dead silence".
Is a poem still a poem if it cannot be understood? Is a haiku a haiku if it cannot be understood?
hmmmm...except that for me, this
does work as a written poem, a poem read on the page, as it is given. I don't need to hear it performed. If it were performed, it would need to be performed several times, with different inflections of voice and different pauses, to convey the full meaning. And the form of the poem, as it is written, would be lost.
When I say "A poem's form is its body", I do mean the written poem.
- Lorin
My mistake Lorin, I got hung up on:
When you have the visual, the body language, you have a much better chance of assigning meaning because you have a context.
Which I took to mean hearing/seeing the poem read.
the high fizz nerve the low boom blood dead silence
How does this poem mean?
When I first read it, I had assigned it a meaning quite different from those offered here, and I'm sure each reader will have his/her own interpretation.
In her essay Broken English, Heather McHugh says: "We can't help, as readers (or as spectators, for that matter-- the science of moving pictures was predicated on this fact) putting together the separate frames into a coherent or continuous experience. For the mind is not only analytic but synthetic".
The poem goes by as a series of frames (which with each re-reading may be re-framed, and made to cohere in various ways). That is to say, we are likely to read it in such a way as to find an interpretation which suits us, mirrors us, startles us, soothes us. . . .
But if we insist on interpretation we may miss how the poem means. And this may mean going beyond, or below, what "we can't help" doing into a place of helplessness, of fundamentally not knowing.
Which does not mean it won't be felt.
This will put the poem beyond the reach of those who feel a haiku has to come from, shall I say, a witnessed event. (Whenever I read about this belief or stance in relation to haiku, I am disheartened, because I know I am not in the realm of art but of reportage, which may have its charms but is seldom transformative. Paradoxically, it may even be dishonest).
There is of course great vigor in Kacian's language here. If the poem directs us, ultimately, away from interpretation, where does that leave us? Does it leave us only with the experience of language? I don't think so.
But I am going to stop here, before saying why I don't think so, and hope that someone else will step in.
So, how does this poem mean?
I had an echocardiogram a couple of days ago, and the experience was similar to that of reading Jim's poem. Not in the way Lorin suggests. Every now and then the woman conducting the examination would switch from an image of my heart's interior to a screen that showed a visualization of the heartbeat along with a soundtrack. The main soundtrack was the boom-woosh of the heartbeat, but there were other tracks recording the slight shifts of my body, and the noise of my breath and lungs. Each soundtrack was accompanied by an animated visual of a different shape and color. Every now and then she would ask me to breath out and then hold my breath, and to hold very still. The sound of the heart itself, and the blood rushing through it, would be almost isolated. It had the same rhythm as jim's poem and seemed not to come from my body but from some tremendous ocean depth.
How much of what I saw and heard on the screen and the woman's face did I understand in the way she understood? Not much, probably, but for a few moments I completely lost myself. And I recognized that rhythm. Why am I telling this story? Not to offer an interpretation, but to try to answer how this poem means to me.
I have little idea how or what Peter means :) but like Mark my experience of the poem is based on my experience (could it be otherwise?). I have tinnitus (ringing of the ear) which I only notice in 'dead silence.' It sounds like a high pitched electrical hum that varies in intensity (along with my heartbeat) depending on the level of noise and/or physical and mental exertion that preceded it. As after a workout, or a night out, when I arrive home and turn the car off. 'high fizz nerve' is no doubt something else but I can't help but read it as a similar bodily sensation.
" There is of course great vigor in Kacian's language here. If the poem directs us, ultimately, away from interpretation, where does that leave us? Does it leave us only with the experience of language? I don't think so.
But I am going to stop here, before saying why I don't think so, and hope that someone else will step in.
So, how does this poem mean?" - Peter
I'd like you to say why you don't think so, Peter. I've got quite confused by what you mean by "how does this poem mean".
I know this sounds like the old, circular, "Whaddaya mean, whadduz it mean?", but I'm truly stumped. It seems that there is something esoteric here that I've not been initiated into.
- Lorin
the high fizz nerve the low boom blood dead silence
Let me re-phrase:
For those of you for whom this poem works, how does it work? What is it doing?
possibly
the high (fizz nerve)
the low (boom blood)
silence (dead)
the high fizz (nerve)
the low boom (blood)
dead silence
the high fizz nerve
the low boom blood
dead silence
the high fizz
nerve
the low boom
blood dead silence
the high fizz nerve
the low boom blood dead
silence
the high
fizz . . .
nerve
the low
boom . . .
blood
dead silence
the high fizz = nerve
the low boom = blood
dead = silence
or silence = dead
the high...fizz (nerve)...the low...boom (blood)...dead silence
the high nerve--
fizz, boom
the low blood--
dead silence
the high fizz
the low boom
nerve blood dead
silence
the high fizz nerve
the low boom blood
dead silence . . .
the high fizz nerve the low boom blood dead silence
concrete, or could be read that way, without being visually concrete
(what is concrete? How direct is sight, or any sensation?)
a nerve, or blood, removed from its function is like a
lily out of the water
and silence removed from sound?
[corrected a few small oversights]
For me , it works emotionally--I can feel an emotional continuum from something very intensely high and continuing down the emotional spectrum to something low in intensity to eventually dead silence.
How does it work? By the arrangement of the words..none of Mark's re-structuring has the efficacy or impact that the one-liner in a continuous linear movement across the page has (for me).
Al
yes, interesting how the poem resisted being taken apart.
QuoteFor those of you for whom this poem works, how does it work? What is it doing? --Peter
Thinking aloud: It's a compression of three felt/heard images connected to experience in a 'now moment of awareness.'
It works via accumulating connections. The words with their corresponding look, sound, syntax, meaning, rhythm, all connecting to my senses and experience.
The words 'low boom blood' for instance have strong connotations separately and together. The repeated 'b' and 'o' sounds emphasize the bass beat of lifeblood. Pairing that with the agitated treble of 'high fizz nerve' heightens the sense of each, separately and simultaneously. Setting those active, forceful sensations against the dead, still silence intensifies the experience further still...
PS- 'vigorous language' provides great provocation for this discussion, and serves to stretch me, so I'm happy to go with it. But effective language is closer to the reality for me. The poem at hand does indeed use vigorous language to great advantage (the one line form works particularly well for this), while other haiku, the previous 'little inn' poem for example, achieve their ends by subtler means.
ok, in terms of 'vigorous' or 'effective' language (I, too, prefer 'effective', especially in relation to Basho's 'sword' comments) we could say that the sounds of the words and the rhythm that asserts itself has as much to do with how the poems come to mean, how we infer meaning, as the sense of the words (the words' denotations & connotations).
In 'nonsense' poetry, the sounds and rhythms, along with syntax, are the major ways that we infer meaning. Who can say that 'The Jabberwocky' is not a vigorous poem or that the language is not vigorous?
"One two! One two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!"
"'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe."
Everything available comes into how a poem comes to mean or how we derive meaning from a poem, including register and dialect. Consider how expectations are upset & undermined if we read "for ol' lang syne" somewhere instead of the traditional "for auld lang syne". It leaps out as an odd cross-cultural mix, doesn't it? (I get the scent of moonshine rather than of a mellow single malt, just for a start.)
'Image' in poetry is not only visual image: image involves as many of the senses as the writer has worked into it and in whatever combination. One obvious, but interesting thing about Jim Kacian's
the high fizz nerve the low boom blood dead silence
is that there is not one visual image in the whole thing. It means as much in complete darkness, or the very fact that there is not one visual image gives a sense of darkness to the poem, which certainly nudged my interpretation along the lines it went. We rely to an unusual extent on sound and rhythm here, though we need to know the meaning of the words.
(Translating haiku must be a nightmare! )
Peter's
mosquito she too
insisting insisting she
is is is is is
— Peter Yovu
plays with sound and rhythm in English in a way which (playfully) enacts his claim about the mosquito 'insisting'. ("I zzzz therefore I am" ?)
Michael McClintock, in 'a little inn', has used sound more subtly to help create an ambivalent undertow to the visual image of a quaint and homey little inn.
I hope I don't come across as a mimsy borogove.
- Lorin
modified: unbolded 'Peter's'.
the high fizz nerve the low boom blood dead silence
and
a little inn
with a swinging sign-board
the evening chill
are surely effective in different ways, each using vigorous language, but differently. One is centrifugal, the other centripetal. One is jazz, the other folk.
One way Kacian's resists interpretation is: it is difficult to conjure a picture, or image, though one is, of course, free (or even bound) to do so. But it likely will frustrate our haiku "training", which in some instances prompts statements like: "I really like this because it reminds me of the time. . ." .
I probably need to get clearer on what I mean when I say "sound-image". It is not just that the sound itself (the music) conjures meaning (which may parallel or go counter to what the words signify), but that it exerts meaning even below the usual sense of "image", prior to it, maybe, as someone said, on the level of intuition. I may be off in this formulation. And maybe it is just to say something like: I don't know what it means, but I can feel it. Iain MacGilchrist in The Master and His Emissary makes a case for language having its roots in music. Perhaps I can come back with more of that later.
Could we say that "the high fizz" is an expressionistic poem? A definition:
a style of painting, music, or poetry in which the artist or writer seeks to express emotional experience rather than impressions of the external world.
Or could we say it is impressionistic: a literary or artistic style that seeks to capture a feeling or experience rather than to achieve accurate depiction. (Definitions quickly grabbed from my Mac's dictionary).
I think it has some of both, but in either case (or both) it does something relatively rare. Certainly a "standard" description of haiku would not lead one in either direction.
One way I look at the poem is that it has (consciously or unconsciously) taken, let's say, an "accurate depiction" of the "external world" and stripped it down to the wire—"close to the bone" or nerve, where it is all electricity, and can only register as some form of shock, or startling.
I would be curious if you know of other poems that work in a similar way.
Just to pick up on Lorin's side reference to translation of poems ... John Carley has penned an article on this very topic (at least, from Japanese to English) for the last issue of Haiku NewZ. It is archived here:
http://www.poetrysociety.org.nz/node/578
This from the 2010 anthology of The Heron's Nest:
the day begins
descendants of dinosaurs
darting, singing
- George Swede
I read this haiku, skipped to the next one, came back, read it again .... thought about it, moved on, came back ...
It's oddness finally claimed my full attention.
This poem seems to (cleverly) be part traditional and part something else, part something stripped back. A hybrid that surely shows its parent DNA but has also become an unpredictable colour.
Some interesting angles to consider 'high fizz' from, Peter. As for other examples I can think of poems, including some of my own, that tap more into gut feelings than the five senses. Or that describe things interior:
long night—
breathing until breathing
is just breathing
dawn
before there is any
tune in my head
(These two come to mind because I'm reading John Stevenson's Live Again).
But nothing occurs to me with the other similarities you described.
No examples come readily to mind, but being editor of a 1970s magazine
devoted to experimental poetry (primarily the "meta-poectic") I can vouch for the fact most of the experimental poets of that decade were concerned with "language transformation"- a radical redefinition of poetic possibilities and a return to the roots of civilization in order to show how much was lost in the conventions handed down from the 19th century. Ezra Pounds Cantos comes to mind--probably as the major meta-poetic effort to establish some kind of dialetic between the forgotten (lost?) possibilities of the past and the unrealized language of the present. Confucus once said "make it new" whatever it is--a Provencal song...the configuration of birds on a prison-camp wire, etc.
I'm reminded of Gary Synder's oft quote(which I believe is relevant here): "each poem grows from an energy-mind-field-dance, and has its own inner grain. To let it grow, to let it speak for itself, is a large part of the work of the poet. A scary chaos fills the heart as spiritual breath--inspiration; and is breathed out into the thing-world as a poem. From there it must jump to the hearer's understanding. The wider the gap the more difficult; and the greater the delight when it crosses"--Gary Snyder.
Actually, renewals of poetry can come from any source. I remember reading an article called "New Words and Neologisms" by the psychiatrist David V Forest, includes a "thesaurus of coinages by a schizophrenic savant" with the following entry (which was defined by the patient): Stereotranslation:Solid change of language, solid changing of interpretation, word of overidolization. The most cherished words of English. Respected, cherished, lovable words, solid hard. Solid understanding. Cherishing, begetting. One word begets another, with similar meaning and opposite." WOW! Hans Arp's "concrete art" comes to mind--"an elemental, natural, healthy art, which causes stars of peace, love and poetry to grow in the head and the heart." Much of what was once thought "insane" turns out to be the real data of primary consciousness that seeks a language, and after the arguments of linguists like Levi-Strauss we begin to learn that the "savage mind"is universal--buried beneath our cultural veils.
I'm rambling here, but I hope this sheds some light on the discussion at hand.
Al
Al, thanks very much for this. What you present could take this discussion in a number of directions, including the direction of the "shadow", which has been touched on elsewhere and no doubt will re-emerge at some point.
I wonder if you (and all/any) could say how Snyder's statement, which is new to me and very welcome, may apply to haiku, especially in light of the dance we are doing around and through and with "vigorous language".
Does haiku (in that word I wish to include the full spectrum of possibility, including, possibly, some wavelengths not currently apprehended by our "senses five" to borrow from Blake) grow from an "energy-mind-field-dance"?
I think this brings us "close to the bone", the place, perhaps, where as Art says: "the real data of primary consciousness. . . seeks a language".
It would be very easy here to slip into a conceptual swamp, but here goes...
To use the example of Jim's poem:
the high fizz nerve the low boom blood dead silence
could we say that this is language arising out of an "energy-mind-field dance", that it is language that "primary consciousness" has sought and found? That's asking a lot of it. Still...
What I've been thinking lately is that inherent in the DNA of haiku there are many layers, or levels. Some of these have been described, so my thought isn't new. Let's suppose that "sketches from life" is one level, somewhere near the surface, (which does not necessarily mean superficial, but without the pull of deeper levels even vaguely acting upon it, it probably will be-- and this is the state of much of what we see). Another deeper level would be-- what did Lee Gurga call it following Shiki?-- selective realism? followed by "truthfulness" which Gurga describes as "when a poet is able to use images of the exterior world to express his or her inner reality". This may seem an ultimate, but I don't believe so. There may be levels below, more primary. . .
I 'm not convinced that Jim's poem uses images from the outer world so much as it has substantially arisen from an interior state which has found the best language available to it, which inevitably will evoke conceptions of the outer world. And it may be that the language in this instance is more attuned to music than to meaning, at least in the usual sense of that word. In other words, it may be hovering pretty close to the bone, still pink. . .
Am I making too much of this? Maybe it would be too much to claim that this poem fully achieves some kind of status as arising directly from "primary consciousness", but I do think it speaks to the possiblity, and at least allows us (or me anyway) to consider some of the hidden or mostly inactive genes in haiku DNA, and to wonder what the source of that is.
I would say that all this relates directly to "vigorous language" as language which derives more from something prior to but not excluding mind-- an "energy-mind-field-dance".
I'll be looking for more poems in this neighborhood, but I may need help.
Edit: the following added: I want to say that I realize that this kind of exploration drives some people crazy, perhaps because they feel it overburdens what ought to be a simple and enjoyable pursuit. That's okay with me, and understandable. This stuff can get theoretical, and while I can hear numerous doors slamming around me, my hope is that some doors are discovered that apparently were not available before.
Hello Peter:
wonder if you (and all/any) could say how Snyder's statement, which is new to me and very welcome, may apply to haiku, especially in light of the dance we are doing around and through and with "vigorous language
Being new to haiku (only a few months into--and then mostly senryu) I really can't comment as to how it might apply to haiku in a palpable, concrete way.
But I will say that I believe that (in key ways) William Blake provides an early image of the meta-poet. He created an expanded visual-verbal language--in order to bring about a revolution in consciousness.
Have you heard of Charles Olsen and his "Field Composition?" Here's a quote (from the 1950s I believe):
"From the moment [a poet] ventures into FIELD COMPOSITION--puts himself in the open--he can go by no track other than the one the poem under hand declares for itself. Thus he has to behave, and be, instant by instant, aware of some several forces just now beginning to be examined. . . --Charles Olsen
Olsen's talk about "open" as opposed to "closed verse" derived from his concern with the whole matter of getting at the roots of speech and returning poetry to the primary energies of mind and body. Similar to the "concretists" he saw the main obstacles to the renewal of language (and consciousness) as a language problem (linguistics?).
And poets like Gary Snyder--in their translations of tribal poetry (and in their own work which utilizes similar structures), capture (reclaim?) areas of our own consciousness which--in my opinion--resonates with the atavistic roots of language.
I hope I'm not being too theoretical here--and as I study and delve more deeply into the "haiku experience" I hope to present more palpable examples that would reflect and exemplify what I have been talking about. However--upon request--I can provide numerous examples of meta-poems from the 1970s--but they are quite long and probably not within the purview of this discussion.
Al
"From the moment [a poet] ventures into FIELD COMPOSITION--puts himself in the open--he can go by no track other than the one the poem under hand declares for itself. Thus he has to behave, and be, instant by instant, aware of some several forces just now beginning to be examined. . ."
--Charles Olsen
in cold hell, in thicket
the gingko group
picks blackberries
- Lorin
...just for fun ...sort of. :)
Admiring as I am of Olsen and some of his ideas, I much prefer Denise Levertov as an essayist in the general B.M. school.
...and re Olsen and his influence in 'the good old days ', even here in the Antipodes:
" shot
by yr own forces . . . " - Charles Buckmaster, 1950 - 1972
- Lorin
modified: B.M. added, for clarity
...that from memory, this from text:
"
. . .
Interiors,
and their registration
Words, form
but the extension of
content
Style, est verbum
The word
is image, and the reverend reverse is
Eliot
Pound
is verse
- 'ABCs,' from The Distances - Charles Olsen
"From the moment [a poet] ventures into FIELD COMPOSITION--puts himself in the open--he can go by no track other than the one the poem under hand declares for itself. Thus he has to behave, and be, instant by instant, aware of some several forces just now beginning to be examined. . ."
--Charles Olsen
in cold hell, in thicket
the gingko group
picks blackberries
- Lorin
...just for fun ...sort of. :)
Admiring as I am of Olsen and some of his ideas, I much prefer Denise Levertov as an essayist in the general B.M. school.
...and re Olsen and his influence in 'the good old days ', even here in the Antipodes:
" . . .
shot
by yr own forces . . . " - Charles Buckmaster, 1950 - 1972
- Lorin
modified: B.M. added, for clarity
modified: ellipses before 'shot'
o, dear...sorry ...I stuffed this up by pressing 'quote'...then got rid of quote but don't know how to get rid of this superfluous post
Admiring as I am of Olsen and some of his ideas, I much prefer Denise Levertov as an essayist in the general B.M. school
As an essayist I tend to agree with Lorin; as to metapoets on the distaff side from the good ole' days I prefer Gertrude Stein & Laura Riding. Stein developed a new analytic syntax that brought to language process the multiplicity of perspectives on a single event which carried over into painting by Braque, Picasso and Juan Gris. Actually I consider her prose to be "metapoetry."
And related to her work is that of Laura Riding who tried to go "beyond the poetic as a literary category" and enter "the field of the general human ideal in speaking"; it was her conviction that she had pushed poetry to the breaking point by exposing the conflict "between the motive of humanly perfect word-use and that of artistically perfect word-use." ("I have written that which I believe breaks the spell of poetry"--Laura Riding). Ultimately she found truth and beauty to be irrenconcilable and actually gave up poetry after 1938--believing she had put art to the final litmus test, and it failed.
I will end this with a passage from Robert Duncan--whose essays I also admired back in the 1960s-70s--more so than his actual poetry.
"...In one way or another to live in the swarm of human speech. This is not to seek perfection but to draw honey or poetry out of all things. After freud, we are aware that unwittingly we achieve our form. It is, whatever our mastery, the inevitable use we make of the speech that betrays to ourselves and to our hunters (our readers) the spore of what we are becoming. . . A longing grows to return to the open composition in which the accidents and imperfections of speech might awake intimations of human being"--Robert Duncan
Al
As a welcome relief--for those interested in viewing a bright young child (maybe 6 years old??) -in a meta-poetic spontaneous performance (note the basic rhythm and vigorous language--in this 10 minute outpouring) . And I concur: prob the reincarnation of the great scottish-American meta-poet Helen Adam!
A great vid! (I've watched it several times and remain awestruck)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Unl9JSmchwQ
I think we could have an interesting discussion in the Gertrude Stein-cubism-haiku "mindfield", and certainly there are now numerous examples of what could be called cubist haiku where several perspectives are presented simultaneously.
Personally, I would prefer to save that discussion for another Sailing-- though certainly any of us is free to get something going on other venues of the Forum.
Al writes about Charles Olsen's "concern with. . . returning poetry to the primary energies of mind and body", and of "poets like Gary Snyder. . . [who seek to] capture (reclaim) areas of. . . consciousness which. . . resonate with the atavistic roots of language".
I think this may relate to some things that Kaneko Tohta has spoken about, and which can be found in a new translation of a talk he gave which has been published by RMP under the title Poetic Composition on Living Things. One of the translators has this to say:
"A compelling aspect of Kaneko's usage (and Kaneko's poetics) when he refers to "words of the body" is that though he is referencing this cultural understanding of the body as a place of knowing, he is not. . . speaking of a transcendent or cultivated knowledge. Instead, he is alluding to something like an instinctual language, one that we are born with, one that our prehistoric ancestors knew and that we have a tendency to devalue or obscure in our modern lives. For Kaneko, the language known from the start by the body is inherently ara, wild. It is the natural language of any ikimono, any living thing".
It seems to me that Kaneko advocates something like "returning poetry to the primary energies of mind and body". This, though I may be bending it to my own purpose, seems to me to relate to what I feel is "vigorous Language".
I wish Kaneko had given some examples of haiku which he feels embody this aesthetic. He writes about Issa, and cites a couple of poems, but not in a way I truly find helpful. In any event, perhaps it can be said that wildness is what is lost in translation.
Is any of this useful? Is it worthwhile to examine this idea of "words of the body", or of "returning {haiku} to the primary energies of mind and body"?
A new question we can ask relative to haiku is: what is wildness? And: what is wild language? Another word Kaneko uses has been translated as "raw".
How would you like to proceed?
(minor edits)
You might want to look at what Michael McClure was doing in the late 60s, writing mammalian poems with his own, invented, mammalian language: I think he preceded Gary Snyder in the idea of a wild language that was mammalian.
Personally, I don't know that any such thing existed; language philosphers long ago ruled out onomonopeia (sp?) as an origin of language.
Anyway, let me slip a poem here I wrote today:
The wind howls
I howl
it's just sound
Beast language McClure CALLED IT.
As to an Ur Language, this implies a monogenesis of language in all people's and there is no one I believe who has found supportive evidence for this. Pretty much Ferdinand De Saussure holds pre-eminence in linguistic, philosophical circles with his notion that languages are arbitrary,unmotivated and developed each culturally; hence, the differences in signifiers and their sounds referring to signifieds.
But, good luck with wild language, as some sort of original, shared mammalian expression of biology. I mean Chomsky didn't even suggest this.
But, if it helps create good haiku go go go baby go.
And preceding sounds (language) were ... facial expressions, posture, the so-called body language.
Haiku as perfomance art?
In response to Jack's assertion that there has been no supportive evidence found for a single language of origin, a Kiwi researcher has just had a paper published in the journal Science detailing his work on the number of "sounds" languages contain and positing that all languages derive from the "click" languages of southern Africa. An article about the essay may be found here:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20384-evolutionary-babel-was-in-southern-africa.html
However, this theory is not new - there are articles from 2003 on the web (reputable sources) about the idea. It's his research that is new.
Perhaps, I should modify what I said earlier. There were and obviously are some who believe in monogenesis
However, most recent discoveries of anthropologists and paleontologists suggest the origins of humankind did not arise in a single place, but that there were various ancestries and places where it began.
As to one original language, there is no uniformity of belief regarding this and not strong enough evidence to suggest it. This is not to say that there were not and are not still those who have offered evidence and research and conclusions on the subject and still believe in an original language.
I am just playing the devil's advocate. The word vigorous, where we began, is Latin; I don't know what came before it.
I'm certainly no expert on the subject.
Kaneko, Tohta said that in his later writings he was looking for mass appeal and skill; he wanted to be understood, wanted his haiku to be liked, as he believed it was a folk art, and he believed that it had or should have its basis in the "real." He discusses the old pond and says Basho meant it as filthy, stagnant, insects flying over it: not as a philosophical starting point. He said it was invested with animinism. The reason perhaps Peter said Kaneko quoted Issa is because he preferred Issa to Basho and that was because Issa was really poor and Basho's poverty was an aesthetic that arose from the samurai class. Kaneko said haiku may have associations for each reader but should begin with the actual.
I would point out, Sandra, that the article you have cited itself clearly states thtat there is tension and conflict amongst linguists, philologists on this subject.
I agree that Peter's thinking (wanting?) resembles the mammalian poetics proposed by Michael McClure, who wrote, "I wanted to write a poem that could come to life and be a living Organism."
I recently helped install a retrospective on the art of Kurt Schwitters, best known for his collages, and also a painter, sculptor, poet, magazine publisher, and performance and installation artist. Part of the display is a parabolic speaker beneath which you can listen to Schwitters perform his sound poem, Ursonate. He called the poem his primeval sonata. It can be found on the web in various places.
"Elements of poetry are letters, syllables, words, sentences. Poetry arises from the interaction of those elements. Meaning is important only if it employed as one such factor. I play off sense against nonsense. I prefer nonsense, but that is a purely personal matter." --Kurt Schwitters, 1920
So I've mentioned some ideas, like Kaneko's "words of the body" (by which he means, I believe, the mind-body as a whole), and Al's formulation from Olsen-- "returning poetry to the primary energies of mind and body", and I've alluded to Eve Luckring's poem discussed elsewhere: words/ still pink/ close to the bone
And I brought in, prior to all that, Jim Kacian's poem from Roadrunner:
the high fizz nerve the low boom blood dead silence
These are possibly difficult ideas to work with, not well represented (or presented) by actual haiku or discussions about haiku in the English language world, and for all I know, not much discussed in Japan.
And all this was intended to be in the context of "vigorous language", something which Basho apparently praised, though perhaps he conceived it differently than language arising from the "primary energies of mind and body".
I don't believe "primary" means the same thing as "primitive" exactly, though I suspect Kaneko might like the latter for its shock value. I think, in fact, it relates to an original impulse around haiku toward raw, immediate perception and the challenge of finding language sufficiently vigorous, or sufficiently alive to meet or even magnify the raw aliveness of Being. Words still pink, or raw, close to the bone, close to the Zero, close to the Enso, the swiftly brushed, never perfect, always perfect circle of ink, circle of incorporation, embodiment. And emptiness.
Another poem which may relate to this discussion is this by Scott Metz:
the blood rushing through my blowhole winter stars
Like Kacian's, this poem has a propulsion, a kinetic force that may strike us on a physical level before it does on a mental, imagistic level. It may derive from an imagination of an "outer" event, a harpooned whale, for example, or it may be using an outer event to express inner reality. (I'n not sure what outer event would convey an inner reality in Kacian's poem, which puts it in another zone entirely, which, I suppose it is evident, interests me).
And though I am reluctant to bring in a translation, here is Kaneko's poem discussed elsewhere:
A wolf;
one firefly clinging to it
which may work (in translation) more as a vigorous image full of "primary energy" than as an example of vigorous language. And that, I realize, may take us into another discussion.
I wrote this prior to seeing Mark's post.
In terms of poetry, whether one universal language can be traced back to some original tribe or country--altho important from an historical standpoint--pales in significance when it comes to the actual translations themselves.
I believe it was George Quasha who coined "metatranslation" which results from fertilizing ones own poetic idiom with resources available only (or perhaps mainly) in another poet's work from another language. Actually, "translation" doesn't have to be from a foreign language because in reality all poetry in translation brings to the poet's language what was previously unsayable. Blake's poem Milton translates John Milton into a new and revolutionary language and consciousness; Ezra Pound reclaims lost sources of English in his translation of Seafarer and in his adaptation of those resources to his own purposes in The Cantos . Metatranslation offers new insight and possibilities within the Mother Tongue--"new" because not really noticed before. In some cases the translator's job is simple, because the work being translated has such clear powers that a literal version results in metapoetry; in other cases the translator's job requires an act of language very close to the original in its degree of inventiveness: a structuring of one's own language according to the principles of another. The tribal poetries by Rothenberg come to mind--for which I would like to quote at length from his preface (1970) to his tribal translations of American Indian Poetry.I believe it has relevance to the discussion at hand
"Primitive" Means Complex
"That there are no primitive languages is an axiom of contemporary linguistics where it turns its attention to the remote languages of the world. There are no half-formed languages, no underdeveloped languages. Everywhere a development has taken place into structures of great complexity. People who have failed to achieve the wheel will not have failed to invent and develop a highly wrought grammar. Hunters and gatherers innocent of all agriculture will have vocabularies that distinguish the things of their world down to the finest details. The language of snow among the Eskimos is awesome. The aspect system of Hopi verbs can, by a flick of the tongue, make the most subtle kinds of distinction between different types of motion
Primitive and Modern: Intersections and Analogues.
(1): The poem carried by
the voice: a pre-literate situation written poem as score
of poetry composed to be spoken, public readings
chanted or, more accurately,sung;
poets'theaters
jazz poetry
60s folk-rock etc.
Blake's multi-images
(2): a highly developed process of symbolisme
image-thinking: concrete or non-causal surrealism
thought in contrast to the simplification of
Aristotelian logic, etc,. with its "objective deep-image
categories" & rules of non-contradiction;
modern poetry (having had and outlived random poetry
the experience of rationalism) enters a composition by field etc
post-logical phase
(3): a "minimal" art of maximal involvement; concrete poetry
compound elements, each clearly articulated,
& with plenty of room for fill-in (gaps in
sequence,etc.);
(4): an "intermedia" situation, as further denial
of the categories: the poet's techniques aren't happenings
limited to verbal maneuvers but operate also total theater
through song, non-verbal sound, visual signs,
& the varied activities of the ritual event: here
the "poem"=the work of the "poet" in whatever poets as film-makers etc
medium, or (where we're able to grasp it) the
totality of the work;
(5): the animal-body-rootedness of "primitive" beast language
poetry: recognition of a "psysical" basis for
the poem within a man's body—or as an act line & breath
of body and mind together, breath &/or spirit; projective verse etc
in many cases too the direct and open handling
of sexual imagery & (in the "events") of sexual sexual revolution
activities as key factors of creation of the sacred;
(6): the poet as shaman, or primitive shaman as Rimbaud's voyant
poet and seer thru control of the means just stated: Rilke's angel
an open "visionary" situation prior to all system-making Lorca's duende
("priesthood") in which the man creates thru
dream (image)& word (song), "that Reaon may have beat poetry
ideas to build on"(W. Blake) psychedelic see-in's, etc
individual neo shamanisms, etc
works directly influenced by the
"other" poetry or by analogies
to "primitive art": ideas of negritude
tribalism, wilderness, etc.
What's more, the translations themselves may create new forms and shapes-of-
poems with their own energies and interest—another intersection that can't be overlooked."
--Jerome Rothenberg
" "That there are no primitive languages is an axiom of contemporary linguistics where it turns its attention to the remote languages of the world. There are no half-formed languages, no underdeveloped languages. Everywhere a development has taken place into structures of great complexity." - Jerome Rotheburg.
Nicely put by Jerome Rotheburg.
I would add to his examples in 1. story, in the oral 'story-teller' sense and to his 6. the traditional holders/ keepers of specific parts of story/the Dreaming, the telling of which, it is believed, prevents the world from falling back to a state of 'the uncreated', 'non-being'. This makes sense to me on several levels.
This is culture, and language and culture are inseparable. In that sense, language is not 'wild' but the very basis of culture and the means of its continuity, as is dance, also, in traditional societies such as the many , interconnected indigenous peoples of Australia, who did not use a written language but continued a culture for (most likely) over 60,000 years. Language is both the creation and the re-creation of the world, the world we perceive, down to the last detail.
No word for mountain, no mountain anymore. And no green turtle anymore and the word and dance for green turtle fall from experience and gradually, from human memory as anything but an abstraction. World and word are of interdependent origin.
- Lorin
So, maybe this is as good a time as any to ask all and any if this discussion has been useful to you. Has it opened any doors, put an extra bolt on doors already bolted, changed a few thoughts, dipped a few thoughts in salt water. . .?
I'm curious to hear any comments.
Here is the first stanza of a poem by May Swenson. I'll withhold the title, which names its "subject". I offer it as an example of vigorous language, and also because it strikes me as wonderfully haiku. So what is the "subject"?
Yellow telephones
in a row in the garden
are ringing,
shrill with light.
Also here is the last stanza of Auden's "The Fall of Rome", which I offer for similar reasons. Clive James ends an essay in the current Poetry magazine with this quatrain, and says ". . . I'm still trying to figure out just how the propulsive energy that drives a line of poetry joins up with the binding energy that holds a poem together".
Altogether elsewhere, vast
Herds of reindeer move across
Miles and miles of golden moss,
Silently and very fast.
Altogether elsewhere, vast
Herds of reindeer move across
Miles and miles of golden moss,
Silently and very fast.
I am tempted to parapharse
altogether elsewhere, vast
the huge tsunami move across
miles and miles of coastal land
silently and very fast
But I would never consider this a haiku . . .
Gabi from Japan
Yellow telephones
in a row in the garden
are ringing,
shrill with light.
- May Swenson
The subject is probably daffodils, planted in a row, unless the garden is owned by Dali, perhaps.
Though I find "ringing/ shrill with light" clear, beautiful and vigorous the rest doesn't appeal to me. Far from being 'vigorous language', I find the first two lines, which establish the subject, 'cute' and quirky, at a remove from the life-giving qualities of language.
(Sorry if I'm stepping on anyone's toes in giving my opinion here. I'm sure there will be many who feel otherwise.)
Auden is, to me, a great poet, but extracts don't do justice to his discursive style. However, I'll try an extract:
One circumlocution as used as any
Depends, it seems, upon the joke of rhyme
For the pure joy; else why should so many
Poems which make us cry direct us to
Ourselves at our least apt, least kind, least true,
Where a blank I loves blankly a blank You?
- from 'One Circumlocution', W.H. Auden
This is clearly not an image-based poem, but the use of common language, the language of discourse, here, at the same time as rhyming is something he is a master of, and shows one aspect of 'vigorous language', imo.
Also, from the much-anthologized 'Musee Des Beaux Arts', the very first line-and-a- bit packs a most vigorous punch which is supported by the rest of the poem and returned to:
About suffering they were never wrong
The Old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
. . .
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/mus-eacute-e-des-beaux-arts/
- Lorin
...returning, because through the day Auden has been playing on my mind.
I wonder to what extent context (the context of the rest of the poem) has to do with 'vigorous' language?
I've been thinking, how can an abstract word like 'idea' be an example of language that really packs a punch? The 'undertow' that we were talking about re Michael McClintocks 'little inn' ku happens for me often in Auden's work. I can't find it on the web, but the poem I have in mind is
Surgical Ward
They are and suffer; that is all they do;
A bandage hides the place where each is living,
His knowledge of the world restricted to
The treatment that the instruments are giving.
And lie apart like epochs from each other
- Truth in their sense is how much they can bear;
It is not talk like ours, but groans they smother -
And are remote as plants; we stand elsewhere.
For who when healthy can become a foot?
Even a scratch we can't recall when cured,
But are boist'rous in a moment and believe
In the common world of the uninjured, and cannot
Imagine isolation. Only happiness is shared,
And anger, and the idea of love.
- W.H. Auden.
Everything in the poem here, for me, works toward that devastating finale, 'the idea of love', which gives the lie, on one level, to 'we stand elsewhere'.
- Lorin
Though this Sailing (and each of the 13 previous) is not and cannot be "finished", I would like to thank all participants for their contributions. I think this kind of exploration is quite difficult-- for one thing, we get into difficult, often subtle subject matter, if only because it is the nature and intention of this particular board (is that the right word?) to go beyond the familiar and toward Possibility.