The Haiku Foundation Forums

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

ah, so he did.  8)

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

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

etc

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

- Lorin

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

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

Best wishes, John

Thanks for bringing this up, John.

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

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

established essence
genuine purports

Reference : hon-i

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Travelling, sick
My dreams roam
On a withered moor.

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

- Lorin

 ;D

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

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

- Lorin

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

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

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

- Lorin

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

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

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

- Lorin

Peter, you may be interested in this:

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

- Lorin

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

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

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

- Lorin

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

So there were!  8)

Norwegian Elkhound Property laws:

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

- Lorin

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

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

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

Thanks for the Fish!  :)

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

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

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

- Lorin

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

Fay Aoyagi


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

mosquito corpses in the lamp
someone sobbing
in the room

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

Umberto Senegal

"A half vote for each. " - Peter

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

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

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

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

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

So I vote for 'In the lamp corpses'.

Hi Billie, well I bought & read 'Haiku Wars', hoping to get the dirt on the American 'haiku wars' that are mysteriously mentioned around the internet traps but which no-one will tell me about! After reading it, I remain as much in the dark as I was before. I guess you had to be there.

In the book, the owner of the stolen MS was male, Japanese and self-important, and (damningly?) wore a brown suit, which seems to show that his sartorial tastes, at least, were stuck in the 1970s. Yet the 1970s were an interesting time in poetry (if not in mens' clothing fashion). I don't know any male Japanese haiku writers who reside in America, as this unfortunate character seemed to do.

I liked the ferret, but I didn't much take to the wheelchair-bound thief, despite David's loading the dice in his favour. He reminded me of the war vets here who fly an Australian flag prominently from their motorized vehicles and try to run over old lady pedestrians in a busy street, that sense of aggressive entitlement.

;D I could probably write a spoof on his MS better (and get myself instantly blacklisted, I suppose). So I won't be trying for this one, but will be fascinated to read the results.

- Lorin

Hi Paul...I'd feel a lot more comfortable about it if credits for first publication were included. As it is, a haiku appears Per Diem, with the author's name, but no more. I don't think this sets a good example at all.

- Lorin

Hi Josie,
             Cat has said what I would've. The circumstances are clear. It's what happens in a workshopping forum and it's what happens in eg. university classrooms or tutorial groups. Go ahead and submit your haiku to journals, and also try several journals over a period of time (don't submit the same haiku to more than one journal at a time, though. Wait for notice of acceptance/non-acceptance, then you're free to submit the unaccepted haiku elsewhere)

Later, you'll be more confidant in making suggestions for revision of others' haiku, so what goes around comes around and it all balances out in the end.

I do understand the feelings behind your question, though. An editor suggested a change in one of mine, years ago now, and I had to be reassured that the haiku was still legitimately mine.

- Lorin

"Most individuals seem to systematically prefer standpoint-consistent information to standpoint-inconsistent information, here this poses a prbblem to some if read, though seems to make sense if spoken..."

chilly day
I pick another
for the soup

The problem is that 'chilli' and 'chilly' (and Chile) are homophones, so the switch in understanding that takes place when this is heard (and which the piece entirely relies on) doesn't quite work as a written piece.

If you chose a homophone which has the same spelling in both cases, such a piece might work better.

- Lorin

Hi Chen-ou,
                  Yes, Bly's idea of 'the leap' is probably different to what we mean in haiku generally, and I haven't read much of his poetry or essays on poetry (some of the poetry, though, along with 'Iron John' way back in the 60s or 70s) but I still think it's unfair to compare poems which use quite different approaches. As for 'readerly' and 'writerly' views, I don't find that such a distinction holds water. A writer must be a reader to begin with and is the first reader of whatever he/she writes.

"The only movement in American poetry which concentrated on the image was Imagism, in 1911-13. But 'Imagism' was largely 'Picturism.' An image and a picture differ in that the image, being the natural speech of the imagination, can not be drawn from or inserted back into the real world. It is an animal native to the imagination. Like Bonnefoy's 'interior sea lighted by turning eagles,' it cannot be seen in real life. A picture, on the other hand, is drawn from the objective 'real' world. 'Petals on a wet black bough' can actually be seen." - Robert Bly

What you'll notice here is that Bly confines his speculations to 'American poetry', and also that he includes Imagism in the category of 'American poetry' (which in fact it was not, being London-based and comprising English and Irish poets along with ex-pat American poets... the currently underrated D.H. Lawrence, for one) Whatever we may think of the actual poems of the relatively short-lived Imagist movement, the influence has been great and Robert Bly is one who has himself benefited from that influence. It's not right to dismiss Imagism as 'Picturism'.

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

I think that Bly gets carried away with his own metaphorical definition of 'image' in this passage. I'm reminded of how Coleridge tried to distinguish between 'imagination' and 'fantasy', and interestingly, but never did quite succeed.

"...the image, being the natural speech of the imagination, can not be drawn from or inserted back into the real world. It is an animal native to the imagination..."

What image is not drawn from or can't be inserted back into 'the real world'? "All metaphor, Malachi, stilts and all."

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/high-talk/

(Amazing how on the internet a typographical error will be repeated on every site one can find! There is no capital S to 'stalks' in Yeat's poem as printed in his Collected Poems)

I do like Bly's Driving toward the Lac Qui Parle River, and this is the first time I've read it, so thanks. I'm put in mind of Charles Simic's 'The obvious is difficult to prove...'

The sun pointed to one or two
Things that had survived
The long night intact.
The simplest things,

Difficult in their obviousness.
They made no noise.
It was the kind of day
People described as "perfect."

. . .

Just things as they are,
Unblinking, lying mute
In that bright light--
And the trees waiting for the night.

from 'The White Room' - Charles Simic

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15253

And I do very much like your explication of the two Bly poems that you've given here.

I don't think that "a poetics of leaping between the consciousness and the unconsciousness" is very useful way of expressing it, though, as it raises more problems than it solves.

ps I'm happy that your friend liked my 'Huang Shan' ku, too. I haven't actually been there, but have a beautiful book of photographs, Capital of Heaven, by Marc Riboud, with an introduction by Francois Cheng. If I recall rightly, the photographs were taken not long after the Chinese government opened the Huang Shan to the public again after long closure. There is an ancient stairway winding up the mountain. These photographic images are haunting. They are not snapshots, but taken with understanding.

BROKEN LAND --
MOUNTAINS, RIVERS ENDURE

Tu Fu, eighth century

- Lorin