The Haiku Foundation Forums

" I'm swimming in tragedy just now, along with all the 4m people that live in my country, but especially those who are dying, injured, grieving and frightened in Christchurch."

...and no doubt, there will be women giving birth in the midst of it all, too. I've been following the news of the Christchurch earthquake, Sandra. Pleased to know you're not among the dead or injured, but of course it's a great shock and ongoing stress for all of you.

best wishes,

- Lorin

ah, Peter, thanks for the enlightenment.

So we don't need to treat you as if you were a galactic overlord or the like, then?   ;D

I must say that combination of 'Global Moderator' combined with that alien-looking cat or alligator eye glinting at one from the left hand border was a tad intimidating.

Thanks for explaining!

- Lorin

hmmm...I think see what you mean as far as 'seashell game' goes, Gabi. Yes, I know it originated in a parlour game which paired shells, similar to some of the card games many of us played as kids. But I've heard that that Basho raised it to a level of critical comparison and a way of teaching. I haven't read his 'seashell games' writings, though. Not even sure if they've been translated.

So, is what you're saying something like, "Because these two poems, as translated, don't have precisely same stated kigo, they can't legitimately be compared in a traditional, Basho-style 'seashell game'?

- Lorin

Quote from: Gabi Greve on February 25, 2011, 06:50:54 PM


Well, the whole point of Japanese kigo is to state the season, not imply it thoughout the whole text.


Gabi
.

hmmm... my kigo education is far from complete, as you know, Gabi, but will you tell me how, for example "ants out of a hole" states the season? Or (I just did a quick & random scan through the wikipedia article, to save time) how "sea-devil stew" (ankō nabe) states the season?

To my mind, most of the kigo imply the season, including those two I mention above and the old faithfuls, "moon viewing" and "distant thunder".

What I'm inferring, though, is that you mean that once a word or phrase has officially become a kigo, , that is, listed in a saijiki, the game is to incorporate that word or phrase precisely as it's listed.

But can poetry be reduced to such a game? And if we regard haiku as poetry, then can we apply such strict parlour game rules to it?

- Lorin

Hi Grace,
             'guttering candle' in itself doesn't give a sense of any particular time of the year or season, though specifying such a thing as an Easter candle would give a kigo of the cultural kind, ( 'Easter candle ' just off the top of my head, since they're selling here in all the Italian and Greek shops right now in the lead up to Easter) Or a Christmas candle etc.

However, Easter candle would not give a seasonal reference, not in a world which includes both hemispheres,  anyway. It gives a calendar reference, a reference to the widely shared Christian Church calendar and Easter is celebrated in Brazil, Australia etc. at the same time as it is in Europe of North America. Therefore, as far as world EL haiku use goes, 'Easter candle' is better defined as a keyword or a reference to Christian culture than as a kigo.

You do have a kigo (Japanese seasonal word) in your haiku though : moth.  :)

You'll find it in most EL 'kigo' lists and at Gabi's data base here:

http://worldkigo2005.blogspot.com/2006/01/moth-ga.html

I think what Gabi means by "a compound" is that a word can become a kigo by being qualified or modified by another word or words, for example 'liquidamber leaf' can be any season apart from Winter (because liquidambers are deciduous) but 'red liquidamber leaf' implies Autumn', 'new liquidamber leaf' implies Spring etc. 'Moth', specified as "All Summer" in Japanese saijiki, can be placed in another season by modifying it: autumn moth. (the implications then are that it hasn't got much time left!)

- Lorin

Quote from: Gabi Greve on February 25, 2011, 02:21:05 AM
coming from the English, I have the following musings:

maple leaf (kaede no ha) ... that could be a green leaf in spring and summer and is not a kigo.
red maple leaf is a kigo, on the other hand.

So maybe the poet is observing a delivery in the garden or the veranda  of a home in summer?


red right hand ... I am looking forward to David explaining this !!


Gabi

Hi Gabi, ...true that 'maple leaf' alone does not show Autumn, but when one says 'a maple leaf has become a... red hand..., surely that shows that the leaf has become red , and this implies an Autumn leaf?
---
I forgot to say, in my post above, that I very much like the rhythm of this poem in English. It rolls more naturally and rhythmically off the tongue than the 'dew' poem.

- Lorin

Quote from: Peter Yovu on February 25, 2011, 10:21:28 AM


I now think it was useful that John and Gabi worked a little on the translation. I was impatient, at first, because I thought the thread could get sidetracked, and maybe because  I was rather taken up by some thoughts I had on the verb "to become", and didn't want to lose that.

Still, I'll go with what David has presented.

Well, Peter, what David has actually presented is:

Poet LEFT:

とりやげ婆が右の手也の紅葉哉
toriyagebaba ga migi no te nari no momiji kana

it's become a midwife's
red right hand...
maple leaf

Poet RIGHT:

紅葉ぬと来て見よ樫の枝の露
momijinu to kite miyo kashi no eda no tsuyu

no autumn reddening for me -
come look!
oak branch dew

---

Each English version of the poems is preceded by the Japanese and romanji poems. If the idea is that people are not to take the Japanese into account at all within discussions (both those with no Japanese and those with some) and not to ask questions then it would be clearer to have only the English versions.

The fact that the Japanese and romanji versions are given is an implicit invitation to those who have Japanese to include the Japanese versions in their consideration of the poems, and an implicit invitation to those, like myself, who do not have Japanese, to ask questions. I'm glad I did ask the question because, over the course of Gabi's, John's and David's responses, I learnt a little...enough to allow me to feel more comfortable in orienting myself to the English versions.

I truly regret that Gabi felt it necessary to delete her comments, since some of the conversation now stands without it's full context. I have a distaste for discussion threads with deleted comments, except when the comments are abusive or just plain off-topic, such as advertisements for oneself.

(two sentences deleted, Sunday, 27th Feb. AEST)

---

Goodness knows what Basho's thinking was when comparing these two, and I look forward to reading about it.

it's become a midwife's
red right hand...
maple leaf

... but I will vote now: this is my preferred poem of the two.

It goes beyond the striking image, the comparison of leaf shape and colour with a midwife's hand. A midwife's main job is to deliver babies, assist in birth; her 'right hand' (given that most are right handed, this is a norm, but I also think of the expression 'right hand man' and the sense of 'right hand' being that of one's strongest support) supports the baby's head, and yes, there is blood involved, especially with the afterbirth, the source of all nutrition for the baby up until birth, which the midwife also assists in 'delivering'. That blood is life-blood. Until our modern ages, the afterbirth was buried in the earth where it composted and again provided nutrition, this time for the soil organisms and the green things, the plant life. Or in the case of animals such as even domestic cats, eaten. (Even now, the best way to ensure a good, healthy and fruitful passionfruit vine is to bury an animal's liver beneath the roots of a new plant)

For new leaf buds to develop, old leaves must fall. A red maple leaf, soon to fall, prepares the way for a new birth, a new leaf. Further, it composts, providing nutrition for soil organisms and eventually the tree and the new leaves. The maple leaf, compared to the midwife's right hand, will assist the new leaf birth by falling, then continue to assist by providing nourishment for a new leaf. It actually goes further than a midwife.

Autumn, traditionally a time of a certain sadness about endings, aging, the immanence of cold Winter is incorporated into a meditation on the necessity of endings in the scheme of things in this poem, and the focus is of the 'endings are beginnings' kind, the continuous cycle of life.

---

no autumn reddening for me -
come look!
oak branch dew

To me, this is the inferior of the two poems.  It could be a poem written in answer to the first poem. It speaks of denial in the first line, and the author declares that there is a greater revelation in the sight of dew on an evergreen oak (btw, I did not know there were such things as evergreen oaks until this 'seashell game', so another thing learnt) 'Dew' is a major kigo for Autumn, and its significance is that of transience. I think especially of Issa's heartbreaking dew poem, written after the death of his child, "and yet...".

This world of dew
is only a world of dew. . .
and yet

- trans. Sam Hamill

Neither of these poems achieve the fullness of humanity in the Issa poem.  Poet RIGHT seems to revel in the transience of dew on an evergreen oak (is it something like, "Ha! I can show you something more brief in its transience than autumn leaves and show a contrast with an evergreen tree to boot. Top that!" ?)

Poet LEFT's finding of an identity between a maple leaf that has become red and a midwife's right hand goes further than a superficial (clever) comparison of colour and shape. It's an 'earth poem', aware of the processes by which one thing (midwife, midwife's hand or leaf) ages and dies and yet becomes something else, or really, has always been and continues to be part of something else, life itself and it's processes.

- Lorin

Interesting...what is the difference between momiji and momijinu? The -nu at the end of the second word must change the word, but from what to what?

- Lorin

ooops... ok, Dennis, I've looked at the translation you provided...'red-necked insect'. It's not clear to me who the translator for that one is.

;D 'redneck[ed] bug' takes it to a whole different place! Interesting variation, though. 8)

- Lorin

in the bar hotel
my Guardian Angel
makes a face

...shouldn't that be 'hotel bar'? What's a 'bar hotel'? (Am I about to be barred?  :-X )

- Lorin

"Or it could imply the sense "could I carry the ocean... I would. " - Peter

I think that's a stretch, Peter. It's an archaic usage and from what I've seen of Fay's writing in English, she's not up to archaic usages yet. Nor do I find anything koan-like in this ku. I agree with you that it should have a question mark at the end of L3.

"Fay's haiku reads to me as a wish for a suitcase to be able to contain the ocean so she can freely move from San Francisco to Japan." - Alan

Yes, but it only reads that way because we know so much about the author... my point precisely when I queried how the poem would be read if it was by an unknown 'Mary Smith'.

- Lorin

o, I think that there's quite a lot of metaphor in both Japanese haiku and EL haiku, Dennis, and that the whole point is that it's implied rather than explicit...'sneaked in'  ;D is one way of putting it, and fair enough. It's part of a writer's craft.

(dunno about 'piercing roar' through... the cicadas are going strong every evening here now that the weather is warming up again, and nobody could mistake that shrilling for an ocean sound, not from any distance)

- Lorin

alight
on a mountain wolf --
a rednecked bug

ok, thanks, I think I get the picture... Tohta's poem is about Tohta?

Yours is funny, Dennis.  :) A good parody, if it's on the right track...& I suspect that it is.

(ps...you don't need the 'proper grammar' in yours. I believe the expression is just 'redneck'?...'redneck bug', lose the '-ed' for authenticity/ plausibility. )

- Lorin

The first thing that occurs to me, Jim, is that this is a haiku where the famous/infamous '4th line', the author's name, strongly influences how we read the haiku. How would we read it if the author's name was Mary Smith or Bob Jones? Knowing that it's written by a Japanese immigrant to the USA adds more than is actually in the poem. Yet still, 'suitcase' would still suggest travel and for many people who live close to an ocean, 'ocean' carries the suggestion of 'home'.

'Ocean', to me, is a resonant keyword. My 'home' ocean is the Pacific, the one I grew up near and often out on (and feel quite protective about) , and others close to me are the Great Southern Ocean and the Indian Ocean, but all of the oceans are joined...there is really only one. We know, too, that life began in the ocean, it has been called 'mother'.

Whilst cicadas are quite familiar to me, right in my backyard, from late Spring (if it's a hot Spring) to mid-autumn, I have no associations whatsoever between cicadas and the ocean. The most common is the 'Greengrocer', with a triangular face mask, jewelled and enamled and beautifully veined wings. I have accidentally unearthed them in the 'grub' stage (and reburied them before birds arrived), watched them perform precise 'over the shoulder' surgery on themselves to saw a slit in the 'pupa case' , picked dry grass stems with the empty shell still clinging, but it's the sound that identifies cicadas for me...the loudest noise in the whole insect world, eardrum-piercing.

http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2001/02/17/2822486.htm

cicada husk. . .
also clinging
to a straw

- Stylus, July 2006

after bushfires the one cicada end of summer

- Presence #39, Sept. 2009


'August cicadas', of course, immediately signals 'Northern Hemisphere', late Summer. August was named after Augustus Caesar, Julian Caesar's grandson, but I doubt that that has any significance in this poem. A 'false inference' I could make here is the historical kerfuffle about the naming of August with the shrill voices of the senators being likened to cicadas, but it's irrelevant to this poem.

I have no problem with a suitcase full of ocean..impossible of course, literally... but not emotionally.

(We discussed Keiji Minato's

手荷物は劣化ウランと夏の海                 
tenimotsu wa rekka uran to natsu no umi

In my luggage                                         
depleted uranium                                     
and the summer sea     

on Periplum #1

http://www.thehaikufoundation.org/2009/05/17/periplum-1/

That's funny, I was certain that there was a lot more discussion of that poem...must be somewhere else. I distinctly remember saying that 'luggage' is literally 'that which one lugs around', a personal burden if it is 'hand luggage' as I was told it was in Keji's ku)

A reading that occurs to me which might draw 'cicadas' (of any late-Spring to early -Autumn month) and 'suitcase' together is that a cicada, finishing the pupa stage and emerging as an adult, has to 'unpack' itself from a 'case', which it then leaves behind. Here in this haiku, the question seems to be a reluctance to leave the 'case' behind and more whether something internal and important to one's sense of origin ( 'ocean') might be left behind in the process of the metamorphosis into the adult, winged stage.

August cicadas
could I carry an ocean
in one suitcase

- Lorin

Don has a very good point, Dennis. By posting your 'haiku memoirs' here, you are publishing it. You might want to publish it in print or on a website later, or even submit it in installments to a journal, and to complete it here would be to put your prospects of having it published elsewhere under threat.

There is quite a long tradition of publishing in installments. Dickens did that, for most if not all of his novels.
(My father-in-law did too...a work titled, 'How To Rob A Bank With A Ballpoint Pen', back in the late 60's   ::) but that's another story entirely. )

- Lorin