The Haiku Foundation Forums

yes, the Haiku Calendar is beautifully produced and just right to have handy on the desk.

I'm thrilled and honoured to have a haiku in there again this year!

Thanks for the mention, John, and congratulations to everyone with poems selected... Billie Wilson, who so kindly maintains the Registry here at THF for us all (and whom I'm in awe of), Alan Summers, Al Fogel and anyone else who might be popping in and reading here.

cheers,

Lorin

Quote from: sandra on April 04, 2011, 07:35:33 PM
the high fizz nerve the low boom blood dead silence

This poem would change from being, potentially, a mere collection of words arranged in a single line to, potentially, a poem if we could hear the poet read it (agreeing with everything Lorin has said, essentially).

For a start, it would not a be a string of seemingly unrelated words, but pairs/groups of words with pauses between. A sense may become apparent, for example, "blood-dead silence" or "blood, dead silence".

Is a poem still a poem if it cannot be understood? Is a haiku a haiku if it cannot be understood?

hmmmm...except that for me, this does work as a written poem, a poem read on the page, as it is given. I don't need to hear it performed. If it were performed, it would need to be performed several times, with different inflections of voice and different pauses, to convey the full meaning. And the form of the poem, as it is written, would be lost.

When I say "A poem's form is its body", I do mean the written poem.

- Lorin

Quote from: Peter Yovu on April 03, 2011, 04:49:28 PM
Thanks Al, for your help here. I hope you won't mind if once again I direct something you've said to further discussion.

So, here is my question to all: is it true for you that, as Al says,

"Meaning is foremost-- words are simply triggering points that either lead to "meaning" or fail to".

I have my thoughts on the matter, but I'd like to hold off, and for now offer a poem by Jim Kacian which can be found in the latest Roadrunner:

the high fizz nerve the low boom blood dead silence

Does this one-liner illustrate Al's point, call it into question, generally mess with it. . . ?

Meaning. To what extent is meaning inherent in words and to what extent is it assigned by the reader/ listener/ looker? I include 'looker' deliberately. When we listen to someone speaking, we not only have access to the tone of voice, but to body language. Take that perennial Australian expression:

"You bloody old bastard."

What's your response? No reader can assign meaning to this, with any hope of accuracy. Are you being insulted? Are you being treated affectionately? Are you being congratulated? Should you prepare for a punch in the face or a friendly slap on the back or arm around your shoulder?

When you have the visual, the body language, you have a much better chance of assigning meaning because you have a context. I saw the film, 'The King's Speech' recently. If you've seen it, visualise Geoffrey Rush sitting (horror of horrors! ;-) ) on the chair in the cathedral and delivering the line:

"I don't care how many royal arseholes have sat on this chair."

What is the meaning of the line in context? Does it have more than one meaning? (Yes, it does.)

A poem's form is its body. How would Jim Kacian's poem,

the high fizz nerve the low boom blood dead silence

work if it were written in 3 lines, or in a vertical column? Differently, and to me, not nearly as well. Though the sounds would be emphasized if it were given in a vertical column and the words would remain the same, the one-line form here enacts the meaning. What are we listening to? I'd say a machine that's monitoring signs of life until the end. "dead. . . silence" or "dead silence". The visual body of the poem enacts "flat-liner" (what would be seen on the machine) and confirms or determines the meaning we assign to the sounds and the silence.

"Everything about the form & content matters and makes it meaningful. . ." - Chris

- Lorin

modified: spello

modified: clarification in last sentence

Quote from: Peter Yovu on March 22, 2011, 03:37:51 PM

At the end of its leaf
the inchworm, feeling
for a foothold on the wind

mountain air
a caterpillar reaches
the twig's end


a comma attached to the tip of the flowering branch

The first, were it read only with the eyes and not with one's rhythmic and muscle systems, comes across as somewhat florid, "poetic", or more to the point as the "idea" of poetry. It "reaches" too hard for poignancy, as I see it, and as I feel it, it's very singsong, a series of anapests, da da DA  da da DA, which I suppose someone might say mimics the action of wind. The language to me is languorous, not vigorous or alive. It just makes me sleepy, but maybe others will find that movement appealing and right.

But it's good to have a haiku which demonstrates a strong sound and rhythmic structure, but one which works against it. One could ask whether or not the "sound-image" juxtaposes with the "visual" image in a useful way. Not for me.

These three are interesting to consider, not only in terms of sound, but image in the full sense.

The first takes longer to read, and longer to dwell on. At first, I responded to "a foothold on the wind" more or less as others have: "overly poetic". But the more I return to it, the more I see that it's not 'poetic' but a well-observed description. It's good, I think, in the way that the rhythm leaves one dangling, doesn't conclude but returns the reader (this reader, anyway) back to the beginning (the wind. . .at the end of its leaf. . .') Perhaps this inconclusiveness & circularity mightn't appeal to everyone, but I can't dismiss this haiku.

The second makes traditional use of 'cut' and more modern use of line breaks, giving us the reaching caterpillar as one image in L2 then the 'little surprise' of the difference sense of 'reaches' we have to accommodate in L3. This is a more 'modern' haiku, in that it plays with the inherent ambiguity of the word 'reaches' and also gives time for that reaching to gain length, both via the line-break.

The third overturns the tradition poetic devices of 'personification/ animation' ( can't recall the right technical word!) by having a comma replace the image of a natural thing (a comma puts me more in mind of a leech than an 'inchworm or caterpillar, btw) and therefore is subversive of expectations, entering further into a focus on the language itself. That comma is disruptive, and no doubt intentionally so,  in the sense that it directs the reader towards seeing the other images as words, rather than images or what the words signify.

Looking at these three ku in terms of 'body sense' or the visceral response only, I have to say that for me they affect me in descending order, with #1 the most visceral and #3 the least.

- Lorin

"Mind and body are connected by systems that predate human systems, and information used in world-building comes not only from what we consider rational thought. " - Mark

Definitely! Ever see a young cat, generations of whose forebears have lived in the city suburbs, do an all-fours vertical lift-off at the sight of nothing but a coiled garden hose? (Then they'll return to earth and approach the hose, cautiously, and do a good 'reality test', and it never happens again.) I have, with several individual cats (who never met), years apart. It happens only once per cat. I worked out that snake is 'hard-wired' into cats, somehow, a gift from their ancestors. (Australian cats, anyway)

Why should we be any different? (well, I prefer this sort of explanation to the 'Matrix' scenario  8) )

- Lorin

"('Body' in the instinctual sense that Lorin referred to, which may or may not be the same way you and Peter are referring to it?)." - Chris

"(I'm split pretty evenly on a Meyers-Briggs score) but am less in tune with this whole business of 'body' sensing, " - Chris

Hi Chris, the body senses, to me, are the five recognised senses plus a generalised 'body sense' which most likely is instinctive and seems connected to emotion, but surely it's no more or less instinctive than the five recognised senses? When we say a work "moves" us, doesn't it mean that we've responded to it in a way that has registered in our body in some way? That 'goosebumps' feeling or 'hairs standing up on the back of the neck' are two really obvious bodily reactions, but our response to the Michael McClintock poem (the 'little inn/swinging sign/evening chill' one that Peter quoted, eg) will depend on how the sounds work with or against the images and rhythm, as we allow it all to register.

Who knows, but the generalised "body sense/s" might simply be a pre-conscious or semi-conscious awareness of something that has registered? That the body (including the nervous system & brain) have perceived data but the conscious mind has not yet sorted and defined it? The everyday expressions we use to describe emotions seem bodily based; something "warms our heart", something "gives us the creeps", something is "a pain in the neck", a sound is "piercing", "soothing", "lulling".

Quote from: Peter Yovu on March 23, 2011, 06:49:30 AM

Al brings up an important point: " '. . .content is always first and foremost. . .'". I throw it out again to him and all of us: is this really true?

If it were the case, I imagine that the job of poetry translators would be a lot easier! Also, if we consider nonsense verse (and the delight it holds, & not just for children. . . consider Edward Lear, Lewis Carroll...'The Dong with the Luminous Nose' etc) we need to allow that it's not always so.

Content and the elements of form in a poem combine to make the whole and can't be separated. The quotation from Cummings that Al gives is clever in the way that the form undercuts (works against, to some extent) the prose sense of the words.

I can't get youtube, (technological dummy that I am..I used to have it) but recall Billy Collins's "Introduction to Poetry"

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/introduction-to-poetry/

- Lorin

" (imo, individual perspective cannot be objective, but that might be a debate for a different thread)" - Mark

Briefly: I am grateful to read this here today. I know this to be true, too, but it's so good to have it confirmed twice in the one day.

(the first time was whilst reading something by the gentle and wise, down-to-earth Vietnamese Buddhist writer Thich Nnat Hanh this afternoon: "We should not be sure of any perceptions we have." This is not offered by him as a rationale for rampant subjectivity, though. . . far from it! It's a cue to a gentle reality check on the nature of our own perceptions and those of others)

And yes, the "body senses", that Peter has brought up: along with the 5 recognised senses (sight, touch, hearing, taste, smell) there is the 'body sense' (or senses) we know as 'apprehension', 'gut feeling', 'intuition' and the like. There is nothing 'mystical' about this. I live in a big, mostly arid country where the original people survived many changes of environment over a period of more than 100,000 years by using all of the human senses and rationality/logic as well. They did not write. Their primary art form was dance.

- Lorin

I'll try to catch up with other posts bit by bit, but:

pine tops
against deep twilight
a bob-white's call

- Peggy Willis Lyles

"The sound and rhythm of the poem move us, they have an impact on the body,. . ."

Yes, they do. Peggy Willis Lyles' work is that of an accomplished poet. To my mind, where this topic seems to be heading is timely as well as interesting. It's not new that poets have always used sound and rhythm to enact and embody the sense of their poems, but is it because haiku first came to us English-speakers in translation that certain vetoes and misunderstandings seemed to gain favour, such as "haiku do not use rhyme" ?

Possibly Kenneth Yasuda's translations of Japanese haiku into end-rhymed tercets, whilst attempting to adapt a feeling of Japanese rhyming technique, didn't help matters as, in English, the end-rhymed tercet is familiar as the 'jingle' (much used in advertising in the 1950s) In the jingle the sound dominates the sense, doesn't support, enact or expand it. In memory of long-suffering parents on long car trips with singing children, who took hours before finally crying out, "Enough!":

You'll wonder where the yellow went
When you brush your teeth
With Pepsodent!

- 1950s advertising jingle, Anon.

On a withered bough
A crow alone is perching
Autumn evening now

- translation of Basho by Kenneth Yasuda

Whilst extremely effective as a mnemonic device (as testified by the fact that both of these verses seem to be hard-wired into my memory whether I like it or not!), formulaic rhyme in such a short poem takes over and detracts from sense.

Peggy's use of assonance (a subtler form of rhyme)

pine tops
against deep twilight
a bob-white's call

adds tangible substance to sense; it doesn't take over, it deepens. Though I've not experienced a bob-white's call, I know other bird-calls at that time of day. A solitary call resounds and seems to give depth to the dark and deepening blue, where only tall things which are darker are distinct against the sky. The name of the bird stands out here, somehow blending with the call ( a common instance of one form of 'synaesthesia' that many of us experience) which is as much "against" the twilight as the pine-tops; a known, recognised call amidst much that is becoming indistinguishable.

I've loved this translation of Basho's poem since I first read it, and Peggy's poem puts me in mind of it:

The sea darkens
and the voices of wild ducks
are faintly white

It may be just good luck that there's that assonant echo between "wild" and "white" there in English. One wonders whether the sounds in the original Japanese support or extend the sense of the poem further.

- Lorin

Going back to McClintock's haiku:

"unsettles" - Peter

Peter has used this word twice, and it seems to me to capture the feeling I take from this poem - 'unsettling'. The quaint little inn is a picturesque image, perhaps even nostalgic. Yet working against that are those insistent, repetitive i sounds...

a little inn
with a swinging sign board
the evening chill     
             --M. McClintock

It's those small creaking sounds which resound in one's bones, and along with 'evening chill', make the image of the little inn feel a bit 'iffy', that enact a nagging intuition which undercuts the picturesque and comfortable. This ku is cinematic, in that the visual and the sound work against each other in a complex, quiet but disturbing way.

- Lorin

- Lorin

". . .Luciérnagas en las manos, the title of which I plan to render into English as "Fireflies in My Hands."  " - David.

Hi David, . . . a thought which has struck me just now: if Fernando López Rodríguez is as environmentally aware as I begin to suspect he is, you might confer with him about how "Fireflies in Our Hands" might work as a title for the English translation of the book. One the one level, it's just a plural; more than one person has fireflies in their hands, so there's a shared wonder. On the other level, it's a fact that the
very existence of fireflies (and so much more) in many areas of the world is indeed in our hands. Fireflies wouldn't exist in most areas of Japan today if it weren't for both the extensive government and enthusiastic amateur breeding and release programs.

- Lorin

Quote from: Peter Yovu on March 12, 2011, 12:38:57 PM


For now though, relating to the subject of vigorous language, I want to present a poem by Michael McClintock, and I apologize if I seem to be offering an end of chapter exercise.

a little inn
with a swinging sign-board
the evening chill

I have seen one or two responses to this which were at variance to mine. More later on that. So here is the question-- do you believe this poem demonstrates vigorous language? In what way? And, how do you feel the language contributes to how the poem "means"?     

Hi Peter,
              'vigorous' is a word which brings up physical associations for me...energetic, healthy, etc. yet it can also apply to mental exertions. Verbs are the most 'vigorous' words, I think, but this seems out of context when speaking of haiku. It's interesting that whatever word 'vigorous' was in Japanese, Basho backed it up with that sword metaphor. What does a sword do? Cut. But a wooden sword is a plaything, it doesn't cut. One thing good haiku does, whether in Japanese in Basho's time or in English now is "cut to the chase". (That expression is from the language of film making, but is applicable to haiku, I think) So perhaps what Basho might've meant is that it's best to choose the words that get the job done best. I'd say that Basho's use of 'vigorous' in context of that 'seashell game' might mean a vigorous application of the writer's use of the tools of language. Something like Coleridge's "the best words in the best order".

What the "best words in the best order" would be would differ with different subjects, different moods, different insights, so is not prescriptive about what kind of language (though plain & clear has the advantage) but it indicates that the language needs to be effective rather than decorative.

My sword  ;D. . . as long as it's a metaphorical sword, if I had a choice, I'd choose a laser sword.

a little inn
with a swinging sign-board
the evening chill

I'd say that this haiku is an excellent example of effective use of language in poetry. That sign board can be heard as well as seen (the assonant repetition of the small i sounds seem to enact the small sounds of a swinging sign in the wind) The language is 'natural', by which I mean it seems clean & unforced, there is nothing 'chopped' about it nor are there any 'slack', any unnecessary or merely decorative words. McClintock has chosen "the best words in the best order".

Interpretation is another thing altogether. I believe that this haiku can be interpreted in a couple of ways at least. I might interpret the images as a sign of great relief and a welcoming promise of hospitality one day and in a Hitchcock-ian way another day. What the inn and its swinging sign mean is indeterminate, 'swinging', like that sign. We don't know for sure whether the inn is inhabited or not, open or closed. I think we can assume that it's in an out-of-the-way place and that there is a decision to be made. . . to approach the inn, or not to. The poem is effective because it succeeds in focusing the attention, so that the reader enters the poem and experiences the author's sense of "not knowing".

(that's my take on it, anyway  ;) )

- Lorin

Quote from: Gabi Greve on March 09, 2011, 07:13:10 PM
.

Translating is a difficult job. Should we stick to the original as much as possible?
Should we paraverse it to fit a certain purpose or point we are trying to make?
Should we give various possible versions, as Robin Gill usually does?

Gabi

.

As a reader, I like to read a literal translation (or as close as possible to literal) along with the poem translation. I think it's probably impossible to translate a poem from one language to another and keep the literal meaning of the original, yet have it remain a poem. Jorge Luis Borges was well aware of this, worked with the one EL translator he felt understood his intentions best, and himself collaborated in changing the EL translations if the effect in English wasn't what he wanted.

Basho et al are of course not in a position to do that!  :)

What's most important, imo,  is that the poem remains a poem in the language into which it's translated. It follows that a poetry translator needs also to be a poet!

- Lorin

David, for what it's worth, I appreciate your going into why you chose "my hands" over the literal translation, "the hands". In English, to me, "the hands" in this context simply sounds wrong in English, though of course I'm used to hearing this from speakers of non-EL background. The other thing is that, in English, "the hands", without a given context, conjures up an image of hands that don't belong to anyone, hands disconnected from a body, symbolic or spirit hands like this:

http://www.ancient-symbols.com/images/irish-symbols/original/irish_claddagh.jpg

rather than an embodied hand like this:

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_SiI8xMJXktY/TTTbv3CIsgI/AAAAAAAABtU/0W4ykJgDGbM/s1600/Pope_RAT.jpg

--

Age forty-three.
For the first time
a violin in my arms.

"Arms" makes all the difference: the violin, held for the first time, is cradled. Do you recall holding a baby for the very first time? Male or female, we were a bit awkward about it in a good way, hardly daring to move with the knowledge that we are holding something very precious. To hold a violin for the first time must be like that.

In the finger that pointed it out
the other night's meteor
is eternal.

Again, this poet's sensibility is embodied. The body has memory, rather than memory being just an abstract, mental thing. (and this is true, as anyone who poked their finger into a fire when young will attest from experience)

The river's last drop
shines
in the fish's eye.

I'm not sure about the setting of this one, either. To me, though, "last drop" is "last drop" so I see a vanished river, through drought or through damming works. A fish will survive a little while in the mud. He might mean that it's the "last drop" of the river as far as the fish is concerned, though. Whichever way, the fish is of the river: no river, no fish, so this fish is the last of the river. Again, the embodied experience, and the dependence of body, and of identity, on environment. An obvious thing, perhaps, but often overlooked by 21st century people who live in an artificial environment which is dependent on electricity, petroleum oil and gas.

- Lorin

...and I must add, the comparison between David's English versions and Ueda's, is revealing, too.

How like it is to
A midwife's right hand--
Crimson maple leaf!

"I haven't crimsoned.
Come and look!" So says the dew
On an oak branch.

- Ueda


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

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

- David

To me, 'it's become a midwife's red right hand' is stronger than 'How like it is to
A midwife's right hand', as well as fulfilling the EL haiku norm of "showing, not telling", whilst "I haven't crimsoned" is painfully awkward and embarrassingly 'cute' in English, whatever it might be in Japanese.

The comparison shows, to me, that a translator needs to keep the contemporary audience as well as the target language (the language something is being translated into) in mind.

"crimsoned" ! We might've been able to get away with it in the C17.

- Lorin

Quote from: David Lanoue on February 28, 2011, 07:22:59 AM
Poet LEFT: "real" name Sanboku

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


Poet RIGHT: "real" name Dasoku

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

I put "real" in quotes since these were their made-up haiku names, just as "Basho" was.

Here's what Basho had to say about these two haiku, as translated by Makoto Ueda in Matsuo Basho (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1970) 149.

The first poem employs a unique conceit in dealing with the subject of colored leaves. The second is well said, but it shows the poet to be a man of queer tastes: he likes a colorless oak tree and has no liking for the world of colors. The first poem suggests, with its lines about a midwife's red right hand, that the poet is well versed both in the art of love and in the skill of giving birth to vigorous language. It ranks thousands of leagues above the second poem. Therefore, if invited to come and look at such a happy product, the writer of the oak poem should withdraw his wooden sword and flee.

What do you think of Basho's judgment--both its content and tone? Does it tell us anything about our view of haiku in the 21st century? Are we still playing the Seashell Game by the same rules--or have the rules of what constitutes a good haiku changed over the past 339 years?

Hi David,
              My apologies for coming back to this a bit late.

It's fascinating to read Basho's judgment! And interesting that, although phrased differently (and more succinctly and confidently) that Basho's conclusions are not unlike those of ours, who participated in this 'seashell game'.

Quite what to make of the tone I'm not certain, but I'll hazard a guess that it's a humorous tone and used in the context of a group of people who trust his judgment and are not too thin-skinned. One thing Basho had going for him that we don't, in ELH and on the internet, is a shared culture and a shared vernacular. I'll even hazard a guess that there are sexual innuendos and playful jibes in Basho's commentary that would have some contemporary blokes (unless they were in a group who knew each other well, where anything goes) furious about 'insults to their manhood'.

I can see that Basho might've well been much loved for his playful humour.  :D

- Lorin

- Lorin