The Haiku Foundation Forums

Hi David,
              Re Ernest J.'s poem

overnight rain
a reflection by the runway
levitates

There might be some idiomatic variation between New Zealand (where Ernest J. Berry is from) English (and the similar Australian English) and your English (which is USA/Canadian English, I think?) that might lead to a misreading here, so I have to tell you that I don't see in this poem that it's night or that it's raining. It's more likely to be a clear morning. 'Overnight rain' means that it has rained overnight (during the night) so there are great puddles or sheets of water by/ beside the runway to reflect whatever is on the runway.

I like the humour in both the levitating reflection and the immanent or hoped-for resurrection of the car body. :)

- Lorin

Interesting discussion, Chen-ou and David.

Whilst I think I'm probably generally in accord with Robert Bly re the 'leap' in poetry, I don't think " blossoms on a wet, black bough" in Pound's 'Metro' poem is simply objective or "something that can be seen", So I find the comparison between that image and Bonnefoy's 'interior sea lighted by turning eagles,' unfair. In itself, yes, it is (just!) a clear, objective, unfanciful image that anyone may observe. Yet what happens in the 'gap' between the first line and this juxtaposed image? There is that gap, that intervening space which must be 'leaped' in order to read the poem. What is going on in this gap between an 'apparition of...faces' in the crowd at an underground railway station and 'petals on a wet , black bough'? A lot!  (I looked for your essay, Chen-ou, but I could only find haiku and tanka on your blogs -- no essays. Would you be able to give a link?)

David, it is not just that "Leaping, associative poetry is tricky to achieve because subconscious images may not be accessible to a reader." Subconscious images, being subconscious, are not available to the writer either. In the state between dream and waking, the mind codes such images in forms. We may code such images, or feelings, into forms either intuitively or intellectually (and poets probably use both modes... what was Pound's best student, T.S. Eliot, trying to tell us with his ideas about the 'objective correlative'?)

I don't find a conscious /subconscious, rational/ irrational, logical/ intuitive distinction between these two haiku:

body work—
the crucifix gleaming
on the mechanic's chest

D. Claire Gallagher

overnight rain
a reflection by the runway
levitates

Ernest J. Berry

What is the rational connection between 'body work' and what the 'crucifix' implies? The hoped for 'resurrection' of a motor vehicle, with a little help from the mechanic (for 'body work', in Australia there is a separate trade, so he'd be called a panel beater rather than a mechanic)  and the symbol of his Catholic faith? Yes, but what is rational about the 'resurrection' of a car? What is rational about the resurrection of Christ, for that matter? It is an article of belief.

The main difference I see between the two poems is that D. Claire Gallagher, by referring to the crucifixion, draws on the cultural understanding that, in the bible story and in the articles of belief of Christians, the death by crucifixion is followed by the resurrection. She is able to imply resurrection.

Ernest J. Berry's poem states that the reflection  'levitates'. (What's implied is that the view is from within a plane which has just achieved lift-off) But a levitating refection of a plane is no more intuitive or non-rational than a resurrected motor vehicle. In fact, if either of these poems leads to contemplation of the intuitive and irrational on the reader's part more than the other, I'd say it was D. Claire Gallagher's.

- Lorin

... and one for Chen-ou  8)

ever-moving mist. . .
another poet climbs
the Huang Shan                     



Simply Haiku, vol. 4 no.1, Spring (USA) 2006

- Lorin

"But science, while shedding light on many unknowns, at the same time offers new avenues of wonder about the nature of life and the universe." David

Yes, indeed, it does. Mystery and more mystery. 8)

Here's one of mine, selected by Scott Mason for the 2010 HSA members' annual, sharing the sun.

a bubble trail
through dark water. . .
platypus genome 

and another, earlier one:

a dream time
before theirs and mine . . .
Wollemi Pine

FreeXpresSion (Australia), March  2008       


- Lorin

原子心母ユニットバスで血を流す
genshi shinbo unitto basu de chi wo nagasu

Atom Heart Mother
in the prefab bathroom
spurts blood

(spurting blood, gushing blood, flushing blood?...down the toilet, after all many things have been flushed down the toilet as a means of disposal, actually and metaphorically)

...but until now discretion or timidity have prevented me mentioning that travesty of motherhood and birth, that ultimate lapse in good taste and very interesting case of a distorted Oedipal complex which inspired a pilot of a bomber plane to give it the name of his mother, "Enola Gay". And in case that wasn't clear enough to all concerned, the devastating cargo was named "Little Boy".

The first line of this haiku, the name of a British band's album, rendered in kanji where it would  normally be rendered in katakana, and the "quintessentially Japanese" prefabricated, all-in-one bathroom rendered in katakana, where one would've expected kanji; this odd switch that John noted seems to signal another switch within the field of the poem's discourse.

Surely "Enola Gay", the original, terrible Atom Heart Mother who 'gave birth' to The Bomb is the entity lurking in the underlayers of this haiku?

Or maybe closer to the surface:

"Enola Gay became the center of a controversy at the Smithsonian Institution, when the museum put its fuselage on public display on 28 June 1995, as part of an exhibit commemorating the 50th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.[18] The exhibit, The Crossroads: The End of World War II, the Atomic Bomb and the Cold War, was drafted by the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum staff, and arranged around the restored Enola Gay.[19][20]
See also: Debate over the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

...The exhibit brought to national attention many long-standing academic and political issues related to retrospective views of the bombings. As a result, after various failed attempts to revise the exhibit in order to meet the satisfaction of competing interest groups, the exhibit was canceled on 30 January 1995, although the fuselage did go on display.[22] On 2 July, three people were arrested for throwing ash and human blood on the aircraft's fuselage, following an earlier incident in which a protester had thrown red paint over the gallery's carpeting.[23] Martin O. Harwit, Director of the National Air and Space Museum, resigned over the controversy.[24][25]"  (underlining mine)

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

Apropos of nothing except coincidence, 2nd July was my father's birthday. There is a story of personal angst (his) connected to the war with Japan, off the Philippines in WW2, too. He was in the Australian Navy.


- Lorin

Quote from: colin stewart jones on January 19, 2011, 05:00:14 AM
hi lorin i remember seeing an Aussie film
about the man who sued God
based on that story

unfortunately it starred billy Connolly which has always gotta be bad casting

anyway i must strongly disagree with your other assertions


col :)

Hi Col, I vaguely remember seeing that film. It was a comedy, so Billy Connolly would've been good casting, imo. It had to be someone Irish, to carry it off. I guess it was a forgettable film, though.

I really don't want to get into argument or debate about religion, though. My dislike isn't for ordinary people of any faith, but for the system/s which authorize man (& it usually has been 'man') to pass off his own view/s of things as 'God's Law', 'God's Will' and 'God's Word'.

(... on U.S.A. paper money, along with the symbols you mention, I see the word 'God' quite legibly printed - 'In God We Trust'.)

- Lorin

Quote from: chibi575 on January 19, 2011, 07:00:40 AM
.
What
the bloody hell?!
Atom Heart Mother

I am enjoying this comment model of the whisper game!

word on - word off ... are you kidding me?  (all respects to Kesuke Miyagi sensei)

;D

What
the bloody hell?!
Atom Heart Mother

;D . . .indeed, Dennis. Though I might reverse it:

Atom Heart Mother
What
the bloody hell?!


( ...you'll have to translate the rest of your post for this little inhabitant of the Deeper South, though, she says, scratching her head.)

- Lorin

Quote from: John Carley on January 19, 2011, 06:19:12 AM
Hi Lorin - interesting variations. It can't be 'tears of blood' though. Here's a couple of dictionary entries (from differing word lists).

Best wishes, John

nagasu 【流す】– godan verb 「-す」; transitive verb
to drain;  to pour;  to spill;  to shed (blood, tears)

流す v. (Hira=ながす) drain, draw out; float; shed; ply

流す - it throws (?!)

ok, John, no 'tears of blood'  8)

'sheds bloody tears'? ... ahem, not very elegant.

- Lorin

...an aside, but since her 'Astro Boy' haiku has been quoted in relation to 'Atom Heart Mother', here's Fay Aoyagi's haiku which is featured as today's THF 'haiku of the day' in relation to 'In my luggage' :



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

In my luggage
depleted uranium
and the summer sea

Keiji Minato


August cicadas
could I carry an ocean
in one suitcase

-Fay Aoyagi

 Added to the question "Who or what is Atom Heart Mother?" is the second question, "What is happening in the unitto basu?"

So far we have:

* birth
* menstrual 'bleeding'
* miscarriage (spontaneous or induced)
* suicide (ritual or otherwise)

As well, we have the odd thing that John points out: Atom Heart Mother is rendered in kanji, though foreign words and titles are usually rendered in katakana, and the second phrase, giving us the place ( "quintessentially 'modern Japan' "- JEC) is rendered in katakana , usually reserved for 'foreign' words or texts translated into Japanese - a deliberate switch which is waving a big flag, but what is it signaling? Is this indicating that there is another switch happening in this haiku? Or simply that cultural boundaries are being blurred, which might point to 'Cyborg Manifesto'?

Could it be that Mark is right on-track with the 'Cyborg Manifesto'? (which I wasn't aware of until today)

"Haraway underlines the critical function of the cyborg concept, especially for feminist politics. The current dualistic thinking involves a "logic of dominance" because the parts of the dualisms are not equivalent. Thus, the logic produces hierarchies that legitimize men dominating women, whites dominating blacks, and humans dominating animals.

Instead, Haraway suggests that people should undermine these hierarchies by actively exploring and mobilizing the blurring of borders.[3]"  (underlining mine)

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

Despite our various interpretations and associations, the only certain thing in this haiku is that central unitto basu, which is given in katakana.

原子心母ユニットバスで血を流す
genshi shinbo unitto basu de chi wo nagasu

Atom Heart Mother
in the prefab bathroom
spurts blood

Atom Heart Mother
in the prefab bathroom
spurts of blood

Atom Heart Mother
in the prefab bathroom
gushes blood/ gushes of blood

Atom Heart Mother
in the prefab bathroom
tears of blood


- Lorin

Quote from: David Lanoue on January 15, 2011, 06:00:05 PM


If the blood spurting is a miscarriage, the poet might be saying something contradictory and disturbing about her own birth.

原子心母ユニットバスで血を流す
genshi shinbo unitto basu de chi wo nagasu

Atom Heart Mother
in the prefab bathroom
spurts blood

- David

Quote
David tells us that the poet refers to an album released on the day of her birth. Which suggests to me a circular identification with the atom heart mother of the first line and the fact of the blood loss. It occurs to me therefore that this is menstrual blood which is flowing.

So, to cultural identity angst add gender role identity angst.

Happy days! John

Quote


Atom Heart Mother
in the prefab bathroom
spurts blood

     Ami Tanaka


summer festival—
my Astro Boy mask
has lost its power

     Fay Aoyagi


Astro Boy, ... Ghost in the Shell, ( 'Ghost in the Machine'- Arthur Koestler an interesting but misogynous writer- Lorin) ,Cyborg feminism...Haraway uses the cyborg metaphor to explain how fundamental contradictions in feminist theory and identity should be conjoined, rather than resolved, similar to the fusion of machine and organism in cyborgs. ...The idea of the cyborg deconstructs binaries of control and lack of control over the body, object and subject, nature and culture, in ways that are useful in postmodern feminist thought. Haraway uses the metaphor of cyborg identity to expose ways that things considered natural, like human bodies, are not, but are constructed by our ideas about them. This has particular relevance to feminism, since Haraway believes women are often discussed or treated in ways that reduce them to bodies. (enter Lulubelle III, the cow on the album cover - Lorin) ... While inspecting the body of a "dead" gynoid, she speaks of humanity's desire to recreate themselves as robots being similar to the desire to procreate biologically.

"If the blood spurting is a miscarriage, the poet might be saying something contradictory and disturbing about her own birth." - David

Or about her (or her mother's or another woman's) decision not to give birth, to terminate a pregnacy?

What about an individual woman's angst about the prospect of becoming a mother? Which after all, doesn't end with the birth of a baby, but entails a very long time of commitment including financial commitment in a modern world where there is little, if any, community or extended family assistance. Let alone the very real negative change of social status that a woman endures once she becomes a 'single mother'? (No problems for Lulubelle, there) Or, if married, what if she has had as many children already as she and her husband are willing to raise? Add to this very highly populated cities and therefore the kind of cramped living space problems which make the claustrophobic unitto basu a logical solution.

"The Japanese population is rapidly aging, the effect of a post-war baby boom followed by a decrease in births in the latter part of the 20th century."

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

"Oral contraceptives have limited availability, but the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare of Japan announced that oral contraceptives will be approved by the end of year 2010.[1]"

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

...'spurts blood' or 'gushes blood' isn't associated with natural birth but it certainly is with miscarriage. An induced miscarriage (abortion) is looking quite likely, I'd say. Birth control doesn't always work. Angst indeed.

(David and John, do you think 'gushes' might be a viable alternative to 'spurts'? )


- Lorin

Quote from: Mark Harris on January 16, 2011, 11:17:56 AM

Atom Heart Mother
in the prefab bathroom
spurts blood


this haiku has the power to turn us inward, doesn't it? Lorin's and Eve's perspectives on female experience, Don's comments on structure, and David's insights into his translation, are illuminating, and reminders that my personal entry into the poem was, at least in part, through something I have in common with the woman named in that long-ago newspaper headline. Should she be a part of our reading? The headline makes her sound futuristic, almost powerful, and yet weak from her illness at the same time. Sort of like postwar Japan.

You have a pacemaker, Mark? Surely not a nuclear-powered one, though? (Yes, this poem even drove me to read up about nuclear-powered pacemakers! In 2007, there were still 9 people in the USA who had them, and the pacemakers were still going strong)

Yes, in an effort to enter into and make sense of this haiku we apply all sorts of means. I even wonder what date the poem was written! It can get quite exhausting! In the end I keep returning to the random nature of the Pink Floyd album title, the random fact that Ami was born on the same day as the album release and that photograph of Lulubelle III on the (untitled) original cover.

http://www.discogs.com/viewimages?release=656366

. . .and admit that I have as much of a clue as to what this poem is about (if, as I speculated earlier, it is about anything) as Lulubelle III would have. Maybe in the end it's a post-modern poem, music is about music and language is about language and that's all there is. Random words can be placed together and seem to be significant, can generate many paths of speculation and association.

http://cgi.ebay.com/PINK-FLOYD-ATOM-HEART-MOTHER-JAPAN-CD-CP32-W-Obi-RARE_W0QQitemZ120450924224QQcategoryZ307QQcmdZViewItem

"If Japan did not exist, Barthes would have had to invent it -- not that Japan does exist in Empire of Signs, for Barthes is careful to point out that he is not analyzing the real Japan but rather one of his own devising. In this fictive Japan, there is no terrible innerness as in the West, no soul, no God, no fate, no ego, no grandeur, no metaphysics, no 'promotional fever' and finally no meaning. . . . For Barthes Japan is a test, a challenge to think the unthinkable, a place where meaning is finally banished."

- Edmund White, The New York Times Book Review (quoted here from the back cover blurb of Roland Barthes' Empire of Signs

"So what?", says Lulubelle III


- Lorin

"Insurance companies with "acts of God" clauses should be forced to prove God actually exists... #qldfloods

http://twitter.com/twe4ked

I'm with this bloke, even though I don't 'twitter'.

"However, as I argue in the introduction, most people in the West grew up within the Abrahamic tradition and so the hierarchical view remains in our outlook to some degree, whether we are aware of it or prefer it or not." -DavidGrayson

Yes, not only did most of us grow up within it (whether we were religious or not) the inherited hierarchical tradition is institutionalized in Western society. (see above re insurance companies/ acts of God) The USA even went further than many nations in having God on their paper money ('In God We Trust') Advertising can't get much more pervasive and subliminal than that!

Unity and hierarchy don't go together well. Unity can be represented by a circle; hierarchy as vertical pole with high and low positions notched on it.  Once Jehovah was promoted from being an ancient god of battle in a polytheistic culture to being the One God and the highest authority, it naturally followed that God's interpreters occupied the next rung down in the authority hierarchy. Too many destructive, cruel, repressive and exploitative things, over the course of history, has been done in God's name and by all three cultures 'of the Book', Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

Nevertheless, here is a haiku:

Christmas party-
mynahs watch over a nest
in the garage

- commended paper wasp Jack Stamm Award, 2006, published-the 7th pw Jack Stamm anthology, rusted hinge, 2006

(Indian mynahs are not native to Australia and are considered pests. Councils have issued edicts that nests and eggs should be sought and destroyed. The parents quite nervously watch over the nest after the chicks have hatched until they fledge. I couldn't help but recall the Christmas story when a friend actually showed me the mynahs and the nest at his Christmas party, in 2005.)

- Lorin

It has to be a miscarriage (whether spontaneous or induced)

All of the clues are in the association sequence:

Atom - has a nucleus: Heart - is inside the body structure, is a kind of nucleus: Mother - has a womb, another kind of nucleus: prefab bathroom - is a womb-like space-[what is inside this space?]: Mother, who has a womb is inside the womb-like space of the prefab bathroom, Mother is now a kind of nucleus [What is inside Mother's womb?]: and here the sequence project is aborted at an image of 'Mother spurting blood'.

Returning to an earlier speculation about cuts/kire:

Atom; Heart; Mother -cut- [Mother] in the prefab bathroom spurts blood

. . .but now with better understanding.

Don, I think something as literally descriptive as 'Mother ...spurts blood' is needed to distinguish what's happening from the regular monthly 'bleeding' or any other sort of bleeding. Also, it gives a more immediate sense of being an eye-witness to a shocking event, 'Mother spurting blood'. (and/or flushing it, given the location... there was a film I recall this image from, or was it a dream? never mind, I'm not sure)

What's still amazing me is the formality of the structure of this verse, the familiar game of a traditional Japanese association sequence hidden within the title of a Pink Floyd album (familiar to the Japanese, if we take Hoshinaga Fumio's word for it, and I think we should) which contrasts so sharply (and to me, oddly) with the subject. It is as if the miscarriage (which Ami Tanaka, conceivably, walked in on and witnessed as a child or young teenager, and if so, might've well experienced as traumatic) is contained in the formality of the verse structure.

I think that the context of the formal association game does hint at a childhood experience, in a way which is quite filmic. How often in the lead-up to a chilling moment in in a 'suspense' film there has been a superimposed soundtrack of children's voices chanting some innocent traditional rhyme.

Is the more important 'cut' here that of one between the structure and the content, I wonder? The 'containing' structure (based on association) verges on dissociation (psychological) in relation to the shockingly vivid image of 'Mother spurting blood' and I'd imagine this is not an accident, but part of the author's craft. Or, at the very least , there is dissonance between structure and context. (I'm not sure how to put this more precisely)

- Lorin

Quote from: Don Baird on January 14, 2011, 08:03:41 PM
A couple of thoughts:

atom heart mother bleeding in the prefab bathroom  or  atom heart mother in the prefab bathroom bleeding

I don't see any strong kire or in particular, a kireji, in the Japanese or English versions.  The poem seems to read as one continuous line with little to indicate much of a pause.  Is it possible that "spurts blood" may be a little large for the poem?  Is "bleeding" a possible translation?  

atom heart mother seems to be one section while bleeding in the prefab bathroom is a second section. But there is no true indicator of an official "break" that is apparent, at least to me.

Just thinking too much tonight and thought I'd share it's randomness... :)

all my best,

Don  

Hi Don,
         It's true that 'spurts blood' is strong in the poem. I don't know whether 'bleeding' is a possible translation (but someone will, I hope)

Not sure I should mention it because this is an American site and I know that certain goods for women are not forthrightly advertised in America and there seems to be some sort of taboo, but if it were just 'bleeding', there might be an ordinary explanation. Might it not be a fairly regular occurrence for a woman who was 'bleeding' heavily to go to the bathroom?

Mind you, this interpretation isn't out of the question with the poem as it is, with 'spurts blood', now that it occurs to me. If I was younger, it would've occurred to me immediately, I'm sure, as would've the further possibility of a miscarriage taking place.

There are many interpretations possible for this poem, it seems!

OMG... I think that's it, though: the traditional associative sequence, as explained by Hoshinaga Fumio in relation to his 'squid peppermint' haiku is not interrupted/ cut after all!

Atom - has a nucleus: Heart - is inside the body structure, is a kind of nucleus: Mother - has a womb, another kind of nucleus: prefab bathroom - is a womb-like space: where the nucleus of a mother's womb, the foetus, is being expelled.

I don't know if this makes sense to anyone else, but it seems to me not to be at all radical, but to follow the kinds of association links of which renku/ renga are made, as well as the traditional Japanese song that Hoshinaga Fumio mentions. So, do we have, in this haiku, what could be seen to be a condensed renku? (a modern one, since though Basho revitalized the renga to haikai-no-renga, I doubt that 'female' subjects such as miscarriage are traditional) but the particular techniques of association used for renku are something that Japanese people are so used to, are familiar with even through children's songs, that they come naturally.

I now have a lot more interest in and respect for this haiku! Excuse me whilst I recover.

O, dear...I think now that Carlos's 'decalf' was not a typo.


- Lorin