The Haiku Foundation Forums

Hi Gabi, I restored your comment on the blog post. You can see it now at: http://bit.ly/ut0zLn

Thanks for this post on a venerable topic, Don!   

H.F. Noyes, in the Introduction to Favorite Haiku, Volume 2, wrote:

". . . A clear indication of season suggests a shared background of color, scent and sound. The big world of season simply overwhelms our ordinary small-minded preoccupations."

For this reason, and for the sake of convention, I think season words will continue to play a significant role in English-language haiku.

Yet, for all of the talk about season words, some have reported that if you survey the haiku published in English-language haiku journals, most of the haiku don't use season words. Why would that be? Ignorance maybe, but I think it's also because season words go against the grain of modern literature in English.

Season words are nowhere near as important to English-language literature as kigo are to Japanese haiku. In his essay, Beyond the Haiku Moment, Haruo Shirane wrote:

"In Japan, the seasonal word triggers a series of cultural associations which have been developed, refined and carefully transmitted for over a thousand years and which are preserved, transformed and passed on from generation to generation through seasonal handbooks, which remain in wide use today. "

On the other hand, avoiding clichés is very important in modern English-language literature. George Orwell's first rule for writers is: "Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print." So much for autumn leaves!

When I first started reading haiku magazines, I used to think, "Why are they all using the same phrases like 'autumn moon' and 'winter chill'?" I think the effective use of subtle seasonal references might be enough to keep any haiku poet, radical or conservative--Japanese or otherwise--busy for a long time. 

While we're waiting for others to add to this thread, allow me to give a few impressions of my first HNA conference, HNA 1999 in Evanston, Illinois.

I met Francine Porad, A.C. Missias, Yu Chang, and Paul MacNeil right off the bat, in a little cafeteria in a dorm where we were all staying. It was good to meet them and many others who I had known only from their poems in the journals. You could start a conversation about haiku with almost anyone around you, at any time of the day or night. That would be maddening to some, I suppose, but that's what we came for.

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In the spirit of haiku conversation, I walked up to Tadashi Kondô, not knowing who he was, and said, 'Hi Tadashi, I've been writing haiku for about six months."

"Six months" . . . he said slowly, looking seriously puzzled as to why I would be telling him this.

So much for my career as a renku master's apprentice!

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We heard a seminal lecture by Haruo Shirane in which he debunked a number haiku myths, such as the near-equivalence of haiku and zen, an idea that is popular in the West. Others had made these points before, but because of his books, lectures, and essays, Shirane went on to make a significant impact on haiku in English. Or so it seems to me.

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We heard a really good open mic reading. No, that is not an oxymoron: it really was a good reading. I remember Ruth Yarrow in particular--how simple, direct, and clear her haiku sounded.

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After that first HNA conference, I felt that I was a part of a loose community of poets and scholars who were trying to see what could be accomplished with haiku in English. We didn't always understand each other, agree with each other, or even like each other, but we were all trying to understand and perhaps create these little poems.

Haiku North America is one of the largest gatherings of haiku poets in the United States and Canada. You might have seen the news item on our blog about the next Haiku North America 2011 conference in Rochester, New York from July 27-31. Please see that post for contact information and other particulars for HNA 2011.

If you have been to an HNA conference, please share your experiences so that others will know what they are like. Feel free to ask anything you want, of course! Although if you have a question about the particulars for HNA 2011, you'll probably get a better answer if you contact the organizers mentioned in the blog post above.

Gael, thanks for this thoughtful thread.

Like many people I'm in a haiku group. I wonder what would happen if, instead of jumping right into workshop mode, we started off the evening my reading some haiku aloud, without comment? We would go on to do the workshop; this would just be an initial encounter of a different kind.

Hi Chibi, happy holidays to you as well!

By "the proof is in the poems," I meant that the proof of an aesthetic is in the poems that are written according to that aesthetic. If someone thinks that criteria x, y. and z are critical to haiku, let's see the poems with x, y, and z skilfully employed. Otherwise we get bogged down in the descriptions of what were are going to do or ought to do in our poems, whenever we stop talking long enough to write them ;-)

"...we are talking about matters of taste." I meant that there are no objective criteria for determining whether a poem is or is not a haiku. My assumption is that "haiku" like all art is ultimately defined by artists, and artists like to disagree with one another. 

Oops! I was logged in as the admin during my reply to Gabi. Sorry Gabi, I did not mean to do that.

Thanks for your post, Gael. I am no expert, just someone who reads and writes haiku on occasion.  

You bring up a point that often gets lost in the back and forth of forum posts: the proof is in the poems.

If there are those who believe that haiku in English should be as Japanese as possible, they should form a group and publish their haiku in various venues. We already have groups who take other approaches. Of course we have the Yuki Teikei Haiku Society, but it would be good to see poems from other groups with a similar philosophy.

Once we start talking about poems instead of ideas I think we will be reminded of something: we are talking about matters of taste.

As a reader, I like to learn about all elements of Japanese haiku, including elements that cannot be translated, such as Japanese syntax, rhythms, literary references, and cultural associations. As a writer of haiku  in English, however, I am more interested in the elements of Japanese haiku that can be translated, such as seasonal  references, certain approaches to imagery, certain ways of expressing feeling,  a sense of "now," and the effect of surprise (based the Haiku Guide by Patricia Donegan and Kazuo Sato).

For example, when I read The  Essential Haiku, Versions of Basho, Buson, and Issa, edited by Robert Hass,  I see poems that are like nothing else in English, poems which probably could not have been born in English. Yet, there they are in English, inviting us into another world.

Is this world the world of Japanese haiku? Not really, that world cannot be reached unless you can study haiku in the original Japanese. But translations are the closest that most of us will ever get to that world. Whether this is close enough to give English-speakers the right to create haiku in English and call them haiku is a debate that will never be resolved until the River of Heaven falls into the sea. Poets will make up their own minds about this question.

What Japanese haiku traditions (including 20th century traditions) help you to write haiku in English?

QuoteQuote from Chibi: Dave, have we met?

Yes, Dennis, we met at Haiku North America 2007, in Winston-Salem. For that reason, and because you have gone out of your way to be polite to people on this board, I'm sorry if I offended you.

QuoteQuote from Chibi: It's a bit unsettling for you giving me a blind-side "compliment" asserting the idea of misnaming/re-naming is "... Confusing, a little irritating, but fine."

Here's a more complete version of what I said:

Quote
Quote from Dave: To make a big deal of this distinction now is contrary to standard usage and is therefore more confusing than accepting the status quo . . . unless your goal is to disrupt the status quo, which I assume chibi would like to do here! That's fine. Confusing, a little irritating, but fine.

I assume you started this thread to "disrupt" or challenge the status quo. That's right, isn't it?

As for the "irritating" remark . . . you've got me there. I confess that I am irritated by your assertion that haiku in languages other than Japanese should not be called haiku, or the suggestion that that a new name for such poems would make things clearer. I've seen the "haiku/hokku" hobby horse trotted out too many times, I'm afraid.

Let's just say that I agree with most haiku poets, scholars, and translators that I've read: the use of "haiku" for haiku-like poems in whatever language is less confusing than the alternatives.

QuoteI feel the "status quo" is simply wrong and misguided causing the deeper confusion we have today about "haiku".

I feel that your cure is worse than the disease. What you are calling confusion I would call creative ferment.

Quote
I will concede that what I say may be disruptive, but, I not only said it here, but, other places to with conviction.

Please see my remarks above.

It is good to state your views with conviction. I think that is what we are all trying to do.

In regard to the haiku/hokku distinction: it is real, but it is most useful in scholarly contexts. These remarks from David Landis Barnhill might explain why:

"During most of the twentieth century, Western scholars and translators used the term haiku for both modern haiku and premodern hokku. And haiku has thus generally come to be the generally accepted term in the West for both premodern and modern forms. In addition, Basho's hokku now function in modern culture (both in Japan and the West) the same way Shiki's haiku does, as independent verses."

David Landis Barnhill, Basho's Haiku (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2004), page 4.

In the books of translated haiku that I've read by Barnhill, Ueda, and others, the typical approach is to acknowledge the haiku/hokku distinction, then move on. To make a big deal of this distinction now is contrary to standard usage and is therefore more confusing than accepting the status quo . . .

. . . unless your goal is to disrupt the status quo, which I assume chibi would like to do here! That's fine. Confusing, a little irritating, but fine.