The Haiku Foundation Forums

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slammed by salt and sun
the paint has no chance in this mexican prison

David Caruso


The paint's chances make this. Caruso effectively renders it unable to serve its functional and aesthetic purposes. In at least one reading, the chance the paint has been given infuses it with a living quality, and personifies it.

Egad, hasn't the poet broken a rule here?

No worries.

Paying any attention to that might have resulted in a less than compelling haiku. It adds layers of nuance. The poet still vividly depicts a moment with an image that makes good use of suggestion and implication; and it has an objective feel about it.

From that slam at the beginning to its end, it brings to mind the brutal and unforgiving conditions of the Mexican correctional system, which has received a bit of news coverage in recent years, but nothing is overstated. The two-line construction seems utterly perfect for conveying the tone, as well as the rapidity of the machine gun's firing, when reading the last line the way it stands.


Commentary by Paul Pfleuger, Jr
Roadrunner X:1 Copyright © 2010.


EDIT REASON: spacing and italics, emphasing the commentary is from Paul Pfleuger, Jr

Thank you Gabi.  :)

If you use this web url you can catch the beginning of the month where I was virtual poet-in-residence: http://tinyurl.com/CornellUniversityAlanSummers

warm regards,

Alan



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There are plans to make this pamphlet into an ebook.  Presently the pamphlet is only available if you attend a reading or talk by me in the U.K.

weblinks:
http://area17.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/in-between-season-haiku-pamphlet-will.html
http://area17.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/evening-of-haiku-with-tom-lowenstein.html
http://area17.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/special-guest-speaker-announced-for.html

There are a number of behind-the-scenes With Words projects that will be revealed later in 2013/early 2014.

warm regards,

Alan


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Quote from: Alan Summers on June 26, 2012, 10:30:29 AM
The In-Between Season is a new pamphlet featuring a few of my haiku.  It will be launched at An Evening of Haiku, and thereafter be available at readings, talks, and workshops.

Alan Summers
http://area17.blogspot.com

Illuminance

Certain Zen schools conceive of seated meditation as a practice intended for the obtaining of Buddhahood, others reject even this (apparently essential) finality: one must remain seated "just to remain seated." Is not the haiku (like the countless graphic gestures which mark modern and social Japanese life) also written "just to write"?
Roland Barthes, "Empire of Signs"

Rinko Kawauchi (Shiga, Japan, 1972)
Her unique approach to "drawing senses" and consistent motifs of every day details, as well as circulation of life and its transience has been admired by art lovers all over the world.
"Fotografia Europea" international festival.
Fotografia Europea 2013 - Cambiare

Kawauchi's work has frequently been lauded for its nuanced palette and offhand compositional mastery, as well as its ability to incite wonder via careful attention to tiny gestures and the incidental details of her everyday environment. In Illuminance, Kawauchi continues her exploration of the extraordinary in the mundane, drawn to the fundamental cycles of life and the seemingly inadvertent, fractal-like organization of the natural world into formal patterns.
Illuminance
Publishers: Aperture, USA / FOIL, Japan / kehrer verlag, Germany / Editions Xavier Barral, France / POSTCART, Italy



a photographer
reflected off picture glass
mends her spectacles

Alan Summers
Presence  (1998)



Haiku have often been said that they are the sum of two parts, and that the haiku, however brief, is greater than the sum of its parts, but really isn't the two parts of haiku, if that is its core feature, this bi-part verse, more like Bipartisanship where a political situation, usually in the context of a two-party system, finds opposing political parties obtaining common ground through compromise.   Where often I experience a dislike, or fear, abhorrence, pity around poetry by the public, they become engaged with haiku, even to the extent they will read a hundred haiku I've tied to trees and bushes on an art trail, or blutacked along book shelves in a large library, but I've witnessed few people read a single longer poem in, or as, an installation or displayed in a library?

Perhaps the reduced ego in haiku, and of the haiku poet if they are present, creates a cessation that we all crave?   In times of crisis, some people will turn to sex to embrace or challenge death not so much to escape it, so some will turn to haiku, even to the extent to reading a hundred haiku where they would struggle to read a single longer poem for two or three minutes.

My raison d'etre however oblique is to communicate, and I feel more alive interacting with people new or wary of poetry.  My writing process is a painful one, even distasteful and something to be avoided, that I do not regularly seek the practice of creating my own poetry, and rarely enjoy, it's just a compulsion that is uncomfortable with me and if needs must, then I must write it. I'm a very quiet person yet I will stand up and communicate in person as I did for Antony Gormley's Fourth Plinth project in Trafalgar Square in London, now archived by the British Library for posterity.  Perversely I decided against reading my haiku, or talking about haiku, or creating a live renku session, and choose instead to communicate words for an hour direct with the public, from those who did not have a platform to communicate them.

British Library Fourth Plinth Alan Summers Archive:
http://www.webarchive.org.uk/wayback/archive/20100223124345/http://www.oneandother.co.uk/participants/Alan_S

BBC interview
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8176398.stm

But going back to haiku, and my painful process of writing this and any type of poetry, reminds me of this quote I used to end my piece entitled "Defying the enclosures of regularity" where Samuel Johnson talked of, back in 1751:  "Imagination, a licentious and vagrant faculty, unsusceptible of limitations and impatient of restraint, has always endeavoured to baffle the logician, to perplex the confines of distinction, and burst the enclosures of regularity."



counting down
to those waking dreams
my skill at handguns

Alan Summers
c.2.2. Anthology of short-verse
ed. Brendan Slater & Alan Summers
(Yet To Be Named Free Press 2013)


Haiku seems to defy its own enclosures, and also defy the enclosures people put upon themselves, or have put upon them by others, around poetry.   I guess I write haiku not so much to engage people with poetry, that's their affair, but to steer them away from their fear of this intensely searingly intimate writing that sometimes they feel only ridicules their own existence, and say hey! you can absorb poetry because each person is a poet, you needn't write it, or even read it, but you should never be denied the right of it.


am I the ghost
of a child who died before me?
autumn deepens

Alan Summers
Haiku Novine ISSN 1451-3889 (December 2012)



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re Where do your haiku begin?

What makes so many of us not only come to the haiku side of poetry, but push ourselves to write it well, setting aside, and regardless of, publication credits and peer groups?

warm regards,

Alan
http://www.thehaikufoundation.org/forum_sm/index.php?topic=5089.msg52592#msg52592

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Tray, and others, there's a new feature called Field Notes ripe for discussion.  30 of us have had our viewpoints on Where do your haiku begin? posted, and others have posted their views: http://www.thehaikufoundation.org/forum_sm/index.php?board=21.0

Peter Yovu has given some good points as to how viewers can engage in the discussion:
http://www.thehaikufoundation.org/forum_sm/index.php?topic=5088.0

warm regards,

Alan



http://www.thehaikufoundation.org/forum_sm/index.php?board=21.0

Quote from: tray on November 29, 2012, 12:18:12 PM
Right now, frankly I do not feel encouraged to start upon a subject for serious discussion. I will continue to watch the boards, and if someone else wants to start, I'll jump on board.

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行春や鳥啼魚の目は泪
Yuku haru ya tori naki uo no me wa namida
going spring: birds cry fish GEN(itive) eyes TOPIC tears

''Departing spring: birds cry and, in the eyes of fish, tears''

Hiroaki Sato's translation (Matsuo 1996 [1694]: 43 43) is more faithful to the Japanese text.

Spring is passing
as birds cry, the eyes of fish
fill with tears

rough trans. Alan Summers

tori naki (birds cry), could either be a literal expression or a metaphorical one (personification of birds). What is characteristic of this phrase is that the possibility of multiple interpretations is reinforced by the choice of a particular Chinese ideogram for naki (cry), 啼, instead of the ones more commonly used, 泣, and 鳴. Among the ideograms of more common use, the former,泣, means that humans shed tears, and the latter, 鳴, means that birds, animals, and insects cry aloud.

The meaning of these two ideograms is univocal as the radicals of each ideogram, particularly the left-hand radical of ''water'' for the former and the right-hand radical of ''bird'' for the latter, contribute to specifying, rather than broadening, the meaning. By contrast, Basho's choice of the Chinese ideogram,啼, for this poem seems to suggest that he deliberately used the etymological implication and the equivocal nature of this ideogram.

The ideogram, 啼, consists of two radicals. The left-hand radical, 口, etymologically means ''a mouth as a metonymy for voice,'' while the right-hand radical, 帝, means ''to wring something (usually wet).''

Thus, the ideogram itself can be seen as a blend of two inputs, corresponding to the two radicals. This blend produces a meaning of the ideogram as ''crying in a wrung voice (voice produced by wringing the throat).''

Furthermore, because the left-hand radical of ''a mouth'' is ambiguous, implying both human and nonhuman agents, the ideogram can be seen as a blend of two lexical meanings: (1) for humans to shed tears and cry aloud in a ''wrung'' voice; to wail with pain; and (2) for birds, animals, and insects to cry aloud, to wail.

Hence, the blend ''birds cry'' displays a double image: birds crying aloud and humans shedding tears, in a ''wrung'' voice.

uo no me wa namida (there are tears in the eyes of fish) which is a novel extension of the conventional metaphor. Although the personification of fish appears frequently in folk tales and children's stories such as Urashima Taro, in which fish speak to human beings, play musical instruments, dance, and so on, we seem to have few linguistic manifestations of this metaphor in everyday idioms; for example, kono sakana wa indo-yoo made tabi ni deru (this fish takes a trip to the Indian Ocean). What fish do in the conventional metaphor is prototypically a physical action of some sort rather than a mental reaction.

uo no me wa namida is novel in that it extends the metaphor to emotions, namely the fish are crying in grief, shedding tears of sadness. It is a very vivid and creative image mapping of tears in the human eyes onto the eyes of the fish.

An analysis similar to the metaphor may apply here, too. Fish are depicted in general with no specification of number, size, shape, color, or name. As birds are a symbol for the sky, fish are a symbol for water in myth and folk belief.

Hence, uo no me wa namida could imply metonymically that the water world shows sadness.

Extract (except rough translation by Alan Summers) from Hiraga Masako (1999)

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Haiku & Western Poetry By Peggy Willis Lyles
http://www.poetrysociety.org.nz/node/354

All good poetry is selective, leaving much unsaid. As Yoko Sugawa tells us: "In order to say ten things a haiku presents only two". Those two, though, are so carefully selected, simply and clearly presented and so interwoven with rich textures of suggestion and association that the receptive reader, willing to enter the poem and do his part, has what he needs to find the other eight things and possibly even more!

Western poetry often introduces additional sense imagery through figurative language.

Why, then, are newcomers to haiku writing urged to avoid simile, metaphor, personification and other traditional tropes? There are many good answers, I think, but the most important is that haiku poets place high value on the creatures and things of this world just as they are, each unique in its essential nature and worthy of unobscured attention. Comparing one thing to another often seems to diminish both.

Consider Speculation 813 by Robert Spiess*: "Although simile occasionally occurs in Japanese masters' haiku, it is rather rare. Perhaps for us the main reason that good haiku seldom use simile is exemplified by the proverb 'Comparisons are odious'. Haiku is the comparison-less poetry of Suchness."

*Modern Haiku, Vol. XXXII, No 2, page 89.

For anyone who is interested in James Hackett's haiku work:
http://www.hacketthaiku.com/haiku.html

A Traveller's Haiku:
http://www.hacketthaiku.com/TH.html
http://www.hacketthaiku.com/TH2.html
http://www.hacketthaiku.com/TH3.html


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    I am cold, mother—
    an acetylene torch on the ground
    cries in the wind

    Fujio Akimoto [1]

Without a doubt, the last poem would be singled out by many American editors as a poor haiku. "Torches don't cry," the poet would be told. "You are personifying the torch." Despite numerous personifications in the poetry of Japanese master Issa, one of the rules of American haiku is that personification is not allowed. However, it is but a short step from a transformation of the self to the personification of the other. I don't see how only one can be allowed.


[1]
Modern Haiku Association (Gendai Haiku Kyōkai, eds.), The Haiku Universe for the 21st Century. Tokyo, Japan: Modern Haiku Association, 2008,  p. 51.

Haiku's American Frontier 
by Paul Miller
http://www.hsa-haiku.org/frogpond/2012-issue35-1/essay.html

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Christopher Herold said:
"The haiku is capable of taking us to a place of simplicity and thusness that cannot be even closely approached with the use of flowery Western poetic devices. For the most part I find that those devices, used as lavishly as we tend to use them, block our reaching to the very crux of an experience."

A quote from Haiku & Western Poetry By Peggy Willis Lyles:
http://www.poetrysociety.org.nz/node/354


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Personification and anthropomorphism in haiku:
http://www.thehaikufoundation.org/forum_sm/index.php?topic=4655.msg52804#new

A quote from In the moonlight a worm
Copyright © 1999 - 2013  CIS/Waning Moon Press

We try to avoid projecting human viewpoints into natural things. So as not to humanise (and so patronise) the things of Nature, the English haiku poet is wary of personification and anthropomorphism, even though their use is tolerated in ancient and even modern Japanese poetry. But only the ultra-purist would have difficulty with the level of anthropomorphism expressed in

Sweeping into the pan
the narrow line of dust
that defies its edge.

James W. Hackett


In Conclusion...

Many writers of haiku respect the Japanese artistic dictum, "Learn the rules and then throw away the rule book". Beginners have often found it beneficial to gain some mastery of 'strict' form before venturing into 'free' or 'organic' form.

The Basho scholar Makoto Ueda predicts the future development of haiku and senryu: "As more and more western poets write haiku or haiku-like poems in their languages, Basho's influence on them through the haiku form will become diluted, often to the extent that it will disappear from the poetry. That is what is expected; in fact, that is precisely what Basho wished for. He always encouraged his students to cultivate their individual talents rather than to follow him with blind faith."

Waning Moon Press thanks the British Haiku Society for permission to publish this paper on the web.

Copyright © 1999 - 2013  CIS/Waning Moon Press

The pathetic fallacy—a kind of metaphor or personification in which human actions, thoughts, or emotions are attributed to other than human beings—appears occasionally in humorous haiku, especially those written before Basho.

For example, from the old haikai-no-renga master Sokan:

te o tsuite                                   hands to floor
uta moshiaguru                           offering up a song
kawazu kana                               the frog . ..

Frogs traditionally "sing" in Japanese poetry, but here the "hands together" and "offering up" suggest an even closer parallel to human activity and motivation.

The Art of Haiku pages 125-6
The Haiku Handbook
http://www.amazon.com/Haiku-Handbook-Write-Share-Teach/dp/B00847O502/ref=sr_1_12?ie=UTF8&qid=1371746750&sr=8-12&keywords=The+Haiku+Handbook


extracts from:  
Literary Devices in English Haiku by Megan Arkenberg

Other literary devices, such as metaphor and personification, have a rich history in English-language poetry but are neglected—even discouraged—in modern English haiku. But to ignore these and other unusual haiku devices, such as allusion and visual poetry, is to ignore much of the form's history and literary potential.

Metaphor and personification have been most frequently argued against on the grounds that haiku are meant to be an objective record of things experienced, rather than an opportunity for the poet to display his or her technique. What this fails to take into account is that we do not all experience reality with perfect objectivity—everyone, haiku writers included, perceives certain experiences in illogical and improbable ways. This is particularly true for first impressions.

         heaped
    in the buttercup
        blue sky

    ~Carl Patrick, The Haiku Anthology

    strawberry
    another red tongue
    on mine

    ~Jane Reichhold, Writing and Enjoying Haiku

ersonification, the assigning of human traits to nonhuman things, seems less prevalent than metaphor in haiku. The most likely reason for this is personification's inherent lack of subtlety—it is difficult for the haiku's author to "vanish" when he or she has intentionally distorted the reader's vision. Well-done personification in haiku allows the poem to speak for itself; it comes from an instantaneous connection in the poet's mind, rather than deliberate ingenuity. 

    song birds
    at the train yard's edge
    two cars coupling

    ~Jeffrey Winke, Thirds

In combining the traits of human and nonhuman things, personification can emphasize the "oneness" of the world and promote a sense of compassion:

    don't swat the fly!
    see how he wrings his hands,
    wrings his feet!

    ~Issa

A step up from personification in forging a deliberate bond between writer and reader is the technique of allusion. Japanese poetry uses a device called honkadori, in which a modern poem references and builds on an older one through quotes or the names of famous places and characters. In modern English haiku, allusion can be as simple as mentioning the title or author of a famous work in order to build a similar atmosphere:

        A page of Shelley
    brightens and dims
          with passing clouds

    ~Rod Willmot, The Haiku Anthology

    reading Basho,
    the mournful strains
    of Coltrane's horn

    ~Charles Rossiter, Thirds

    lighting the path
    to Walden Pond--
      my bedside lamp

    ~Ebba Story, The Haiku Anthology

In this last example, the allusion also functions as a riddle; the last line shows that the speaker is not physically near Walden Pond, but reading Thoreau's work.

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