The Haiku Foundation Forums

I find it interesting that, right now, experimentalism seems to mean surrealism for a lot of poets.  It can mean much more, not that surrealism is a bad path to take (though, speaking for myself, I have found little surrealism that I like).

Two years ago I tried writing some haiku on the raven that would force me to do new things in my poems.  It was important for me to experiment with (1) metaphors and similes; (2) mythology; (3) breaks in unusual places, not just at the end of the first or second line; (4) literary allusions; and (5) political themes.  After a burst of a few weeks of writing a number of unsuccessful poems, I gave up on the raven.  I did find myself able to write on a wider range of subjects in a freer style, though, and several of the subsequent poems made their way into journals:

    Holding the sky
on its extended wings—
    the blue heron

(Frogpond - the allusion is to the end of Wallace Stevens's "Sunday Morning")

Once again Canada is passed over the Nobel Prize in literature:

      Flaring its red
against a cold, white sky—
     the dwarf maple

(Modern Haiku)

This is a fascinating discussion, and I have been enjoying reading the various replies. 

My own work is split nearly in half between writing from my experience and writing from my imagination.  One haiku that I've received some comment on is the following, probably because it has appeared online:

      An empty beach . . .
the moon lights a pathway
           to itself

It is completely imaginary.  I have never been on an empty beach at night (and, before I wrote it, I had never been on a beach at night).  I wrote it when I was feeling depressed and wanted to express a longing to escape the troubles of the world.

I later found that a friend of mine had quoted this haiku in a letter to show how someone could transcend their feelings (!) through an appreciation of natural beauty.  She told me that she liked the poem because of its transcendence.  I didn't have the heart to contradict her.  But she was surprised when I told her that it wasn't written with the scene before me.

And because no one has quoted it yet, here is Sir Philip Sidney's statement on truth in poetry:  "Now, for the poet, he nothing affirms, and therefore never lieth.  For, as I take it, to lie is to affirm that to be true which is false."

When in university, I began to read whatever I could about Japanese history and culture to get in touch with that part of my heritage (I am half-Japanese on my mother's side).  I read the chapter on haiku in Daisetz T. Suzuki's Zen and Japanese Culture and was hooked.  I began writing dozens of bad haiku influenced by Zen, or what I thought was Zen. 

I remember showing them to a girl who lived in the same residence.  She wrote hundreds of bad haiku influenced by Zen, which made her an authority of sorts.  But I didn't understand her haiku, she didn't understand mine, and that was that.

If a haibun won't work, you could also consider a short head note:  "This year in Louisiana there was a warm spell in December:"

The haiku itself is what's important.

Quote from: cat on December 28, 2010, 05:30:02 AM


I was interested to read that you continue to revise published work.  That must be acceptable in haiku?  I have wanted to do that on occasion, but had the nagging feeling that once a haiku was published, it was the way it would have to be forever.  While my chapbook was being edited, I was asked to change a few things, and I did, but I worried about offending the journal editor who originally published those haiku.  I would feel so much better to know that this is okay in haiku, where one word truly can make it a different poem.

Oh, btw, do you send a revised published poem out as a reprint, as a new poem, or as "an earlier version of this haiku was published in . . . "?

Hi Cat,

It's acceptable to keep revising a poem after publication.  You'll find "Poem X appeared in Journal Y in an earlier form" on the credit page of many poetry anthologies.  I can't imagine that any editor would take offence.

I've never sent out a revised haiku that had been published earlier.  They still count as published poems, even if revised.  When I've been approached by the editor of anthologies like the Red Moon series, they've been open to minor amendations.  In these cases, I gave them the choice of accepting the haiku as originally published or my revision.

Cat has been quite thorough in detailing her experiences.  I want to add a different perspective.

I never consider a poem to be done.  As Valery wrote, "A poem is never finished, only abandoned."

I will occasionally go through my published (even anthologized) work and change a word here, a phrase there, in case I have a chance to publish it again in the future.  I will send a haiku out only when I've seemed to exhaust my possibilities of improving it.

I think my approach is atypical.  I've had discussions about this with Michael Welch, who's published more haiku than I have by several orders of magnitude.  He finds that there's a moment when a haiku "clicks shut" for him.  Whenever I've felt this about something I've written, I will inevitably give it a thorough rewrite in another week or two.

I have completely abandoned haiku that change too drastically - in my experience I am either trying to fit too much into a single poem, or else I'm trying to manufacture something that isn't there.

QuoteAs a side note, the Japanese kigo are in the saijiki.  Even in Japan, it is not considered a kigo unless it is in their book.  I know of no book like that in the USA.

The book that you want is Haiku World by the late Harold Higginson, which is an international saijiki.  His book The Haiku Seasons discusses the (potential) importance of kigo in English-language haiku.

I find that I am very careful about using kigo in most of my haiku.  When I am being consciously experimental, however, I often do not use them.

Once a theme reaches a certain critical mass, it almost becomes an obligation for poets to try their hands at it.

I've tried having fun with the theme:

Fun-house mirror:
at last I see myself
for what I am

I don't think this haiku came off, though.

Another thought: in Buddhism a polished mirror is often used to symbolize a pure mind and reflections may symbolize the world of illusion.  Many early haiku poets in English who were influenced by Zen (or Japanese poets who were influenced by Zen) may have picked up on this and introduced these images into their own work.

A few notes to get you started:

Tanka is the older form.  It was, originally, gathered in court anthologies, and tanka makes up the earliest Japanese poetry that has survived. 

Tanka is often more personal than haiku, in the sense that tanka poets write more openly about their emotions and personal circumstances, at least in Japan.  A lot of tanka in English also use the first person.

Female poets have been prominent throughout the history of tanka.  Not only do The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu and the Pillow Book feature many famous tanka, but poets like Ono no Komachi and Akiko Yosano remain important in Japan.

Saigyo was a Zen poet who wrote tanka and had a tremendous influence on Basho.  Two of the Japanese poets I reread regularly in translation, Mokichi Saito and Ishikawa Takuboku, are among the most influential 20th century writers of tanka (along with the aforementioned Akiko Yosano and Shiki, among others).  They're both dark, moody poets and not to everyone's taste.

As you can tell, I'm interested in Japanese tanka primarily, though I'm sure there's a lot of fine work being produced in English, too.