The Haiku Foundation Forums

CHERIE HUNTER DAY


The Sound of Silence

One need only to look at recent winners of the contemporary category of Haiku Now! Contest to notice that sound takes center stage in contemporary haiku. Perhaps even more powerful is the lack of sound. Take a look at the following two haiku. 

the river freezes...
silence is also
an answer
   Francine Banwarth  [2011 Haiku Now! First Place Winner]

nagasaki
in her belly, the sound
of unopened mail
   Don Baird [2013 Haiku Now! First Place/2013 Touchstone Award Winner]

The first haiku contains a scene common in winter. In bitter cold weather the surface of the river freezes. With this as a metaphor we are invited further into Banwarth's personal narrative. Relationships can also freeze. The poet is patient as she waits for a thaw.  Whether an attempt at reconciliation takes place is left to our imaginations. But the answer she expects doesn't come, and she is greeted with only silence. The death of a loved one creates a deep gulf of silence. She must be content that silence too is a valid answer. It speaks volumes in the human heart.

In the second haiku what is the sound of unopened mail? A logical answer would be there is no sound. But consider that the message has already been crafted and sent. It doesn't feel as passive as the first haiku. The message stalls without a receiver. It is similar to the philosophical question:  if a tree falls in the forest and no one is around, does it make a sound? That's not exactly silence. The ears aren't the intended target for this sound. Or maybe the media through which the message travels is not air but the ground of being. The power in this haiku comes in the way the words send the mind reeling through thoughts/feelings for a satisfying conclusion. This haiku sets fire to our imaginations. We wait for more input so we can respond. But the answer is already inside each of us. History is frozen for a second in that moment of impact on August 9, 1945, but it doesn't remain frozen. There is a sound to unopened mail. 

Tinkering with Words

Literary devices like rhyme, particularly end rhyme, and heavy metrics tend to overwhelm the short form. Haiku relies more on word choice (monosyllable or polysyllable words), different line lengths, cuts and shifts in subject matter, along with word repetition to provide cadence. Elizabeth Searle Lamb was a master of controlling the pace of words to enhance the word/pictures. Listen to the surge in the following haiku. 

the sound
of rain on the sound
of waves
   Elizabeth Searle Lamb [in this blaze of sun, From Here Press, 1975]

With so few words she manages to mimic the lapping of the waves. Nothing in the word choice is associated with what is named, the literary device known as onomatopoeia. For comparison consider this haiku. 

machine shop
the mechanic hums along
to a florescent lamp
   Alan S. Bridges [The Heron's Nest XV: 1, 2013]

The verb 'hums' sounds like a person or a lamp humming and is an example of onomatopoeia. 

mosquito she too
insisting insisting she
is is is is is
   Peter Yovu [Modern Haiku 35:1, 2004]

This is a 5-7-5 haiku. Even with three sets of repeated words, it feels effortless—'she' and 'insisting' appear twice and 'is' appears five times. The pace is slowed in the second line by the repetition of the three syllable word 'insisting.' And the pace is sped up double time with the single accented syllable repeated five times in the last line. It conveys urgency, the demand of life, of existence and ego. A single 'is' would not be considered onomatopoeia but the buzzing sound created by 'is is is is is' sounds like a mosquito and the re-experience becomes visceral.

Sound Country

Further out on the continuum of granularity are the individual sounds in language. Phonetics is an area of linguistics that focuses on the physiological production, acoustic properties, and auditory perceptions of the physical phenomena of speech. The subject is far more technical than this short discussion allows. For a poet it is interesting to note how these different sounds enhance the meaning of individual words and color the perception of nearby words. 

shore of the loch—
wavelets lapping
the fallen larch
   Martin Lucas [Snapshot 6, 1999]

The inclination when reading this haiku is to enunciate each word. The pace is slowed.  There is something lovely and sensual in the balance of the sibilant [sh] in shore, the velar stop of k sound of [ch] in loch, the fricative [v] in wavelets and [f] in fallen, layered with the liquid [l] sounds in:  loch, wavelets, lapping, fallen, and larch. The [l] sound creates flow and mimics the gentle movement of water. This haiku begs to be read out loud. 

Formation of consonant sounds depends on the degree of stricture (partial or complete stops made by teeth, lips, or tongue) or alternative airflow (passage of air through the nose). Vowel articulation relates to where the tongue is positioned relative to roof of the mouth and the opening of the jaw. Raised vowels such as (u) and (i) are formed high in the mouth and low vowel such as [a] is formed when the tongue is relative flat and low in the mouth. There are a number of variables to consider. Again, the science is very precise. But the mechanics of how sounds are made cuts across all languages. 

an ashen language in the drive-by of our bones
   Cherie Hunter Day [NOON 8: journal of the short poem, Jan. 2014]

How do the different sounds add enjoyment to this one-liner? The consonant sounds are: the sibilant [sh] of ashen and (s) in bones, the liquid [l]of language, the velar stop [g] in language, three plosives (d) (b) (d) in drive-by and bones, and three nasal [n] in an, ashen, and bones. The poem has a variety of sounds and a pleasing cadence of stressed and unstressed syllables that establish an even pace. For the vowels there are three [a] sounds in an, ashen, language followed by two different (i) sounds in in and drive followed by three (o) sounds in of, our, and bones. There is a vowel progression (a) to (i) to (o). I didn't set out to micromanage sounds when I wrote it. I picked word sounds that pleased my ear and had a good mouth feel. There is a physical component that accompanies the processing of this poem. As the subject matter becomes more speculative, sound choice becomes increasingly important.


Cherie Hunter Day

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PETER NEWTON


A Useful Beauty:
              Sound Construction in Haiku

Some poems require a good listen. They demand it. That's why orators of old spoke their verses to the assembled crowd. On a street corner or in amphitheaters. Even today, I remember speaking to a poet from Kashmir. He said, "In my country a good poet can fill a stadium." Now that'd be something.

But more to the point: what is the importance of sound in a haiku? This question answered a related question I had: why can't I ever pick out a greeting card quickly? It's the sound of them. Each one sounds like a poem. An attractive turn of phrase or some clever use of alliteration. It takes awhile to sort things out. How many times have you heard someone reading the words inside  each card out loud to help them choose which appeal to the ear.

Of course, haiku has often been mistaken for a kind of quasi-greeting card salutation instead of the thoughtful thing it really is. But hey, why flog a flea. The use of sound determines the skill of the poet (or Hallmark card writer). The difference in a well-sounded haiku is that the reader is transported through the nether regions of the brain where sound resides, echoing from the canyon walls where even a whisper can travel miles. Certain sounds can trigger multiple associations. Sound expands the poem beyond its physical dimensions.

Take, for example:

Silent Cliffs
       letting go
              our if   if    ifs

Or, here's a more subtle example:

                                         moss-muffled
                                         the woodland stream
                                         a whisper

The use of sound is as important as one's vocabulary as a poet. It's not how many words you use in a poem but their construction within it. Dovetailing versus a simpler butt joint. Both do the trick. One with more finesse. A useful beauty. That might well be the best way to describe the importance of sound in haiku. Not just sound for sound sake.

In the above poem I was after a scene both visual and auditory. Walls of soft green under a canopy of greater green. Also, I wanted to convey the sense of magic felt in this place. The secret sacred place of nature, often just a few steps from the trail. Sound helps economize the use of words. Hyphens are also useful as in "moss-muffled" that offers the wedge of soft fern growth where run-off make its way through the uneven terrain down to the river. There is an unbroken quiet here that I wanted to remain intact. No hard sounds to break the silence, woo-,  -eam,  whi-

Haiku are saved sound scraps dubbed, over-dubbed, mixed and re-.

In writing and revising any poem, especially haiku, I find it essential to read the words out loud. Even sing 'em if you want. It's one way to break it down. Something happens when the words hit the air. They either fly or fall flat. A poet who trains his ear to recognize the difference is bound to improve. And possibly make something memorable. Resonant is the word I believe. You gotta go with your gut. Listen to yourself. Each poem is a new language. Sound it out.

Peter Newton

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BILLIE WILSON



While memorable word-sound and rhythm are the heart of all poetry, the challenge for me in bringing them to haiku was the admonition to avoid poetics.  Before discovering haiku, I was drawn to sonnets so skillfully written it was easy to forget they were sonnets.  The first that comes to mind is Edna St. Vincent Millay's "What lips my lips have kissed, and where and why". www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/175894

The spareness of a well-written haiku can have an even deeper impact.  Just as the sonnet's strict format can vanish with the right words and rhythm, the haiku's tinyness can go unnoticed as it pulls a "wow" from our lips and plants itself in our memory.  Maybe not always word-for-word, and maybe we won't always recall the poet, but the poem imbeds itself, seemingly forever. And the ones that do that most often for me are the ones that nearly beg to be read aloud.

When the right word-sound and rhythm come effortlessly for me with the first draft, life is good.  One that comes to mind is:

pink lemonade—
the taffeta rustle
of cottonwoods

South by Southeast 10:2 (2003)

But many require tinkering before settling on the sound/rhythm combination that seems to best suit the subject matter and the moment.

Billie Wilson

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RICHARD GILBERT


On the sound


life is poetic, while i am not
darker shadows falling deeper among trees
reflect elegance and tragedy

as the Hasidim danced ecstasy
to be slaughtered in the Holocaust
their very regions, roads, names

wiped out. while waiting to do
something or die, the dream world opens
to offer a pearl

make a mental note: falling takes you
far past literalism, right through actuality
and gravity's rainbow

measures imaginal velocities of an outside
world, which clearly feels its moments
in leaf-bends towards sun, insects busy

embodied in heat or cold, and we enter
with tropisms craning, jostling nearer or
farther to what is success among flowers

the poetry is outside, where there is life
all ecosystems made through eons
of this spring as the bamboo invade

without cutting they'll surround and kill
the cypress, so I walk each day with a
270mm serrated blade, searching, clearing

poetry, when and where the world
comes by, roots with new surprise if
by subtlety rather than ascension.

that we need something. to behold, which
allows a poetic world to be, without compunction
towards oneself "to be" poetic: the world

is enough. in a few minutes of Sunday gazing
from a chair through a window plausibly
see or hear something of trees grown

undergrowth hovering raincloud or sunlight
shadow nothing more than what life is
there witnessed as a kind of speech

if indecipherable. poetry isn't languageless
perhaps it's the most crucial connection
possible to be made between human lives.

doubtless with the talents of builders
the distractions of entertainments and cares
experiments of science, absolutely distinct

from the old trees which grow. your child
listens to rocks in the nothing that returns
memories of shells heard of the sea

the disbelieving ear left with monograms
of singular sonar sewn into evident impossibility.
there is enough talk of lives

and where and what to eat, to tire
of solutions. we no longer grow with seasons
but construct them, if seasons comfort.

today a day in which deeper shadows
indicate death in their tragic knowledge
those ecstasies not my own.


May 11, 2014

Postscript.
The sound of memories erased.
The sound of all that's missing.
The sound of the "not" that is.

As usual, I find it hard to single out a few haiku, when I have a book with 275 -- all with interesting things happening with sound -- don't like to pick favorites. It's quite difficult separating sound from sense in any line/poem. What I turned to was a theme I'm concerned with. The sound that is missing, sound that's missed, lost sound, absent sound. I think of memory as sound, in this sense. I think of the erasures of sound. I think of the past as something like sound or sound or like a sound.

Richard Gilbert

EVE LUCKRING


I find this topic very timely since I've been thinking a lot about what it means for me to read, or perhaps it is more appropriate to say "perform", my poems for an audience. I like feeling the "presence" of a poem--its breath, pitch, tone, tempo, rhythm (the way it makes my feet and arms move as well as my diaphragm and tongue), the places it quiets, the way it vibrates in my chest, on my lips, in my ears, and flows through my whole body.  I like how the sound of a poem floats between me and the audience, and connects us physically. Often what appears on the page is more straightforward than how I "read" it.  Kind of like playing Bach, so much is in the interpretation.

There are many ways to interpret the sound of a poem from the page.  Lorine Niedecker, whose poems are quite musical, never read her poems aloud ( if I remember correctly, I think she did let Cid Corman make a recording once at the end of her life) because she felt that poems should be read silently, so that each reader could hear them in their own way. The British poet, Alice Oswald, on the other hand, doesn't like other people to read her poems aloud because she says they get the "tunes" wrong most of the time, typically reading her poems in an iambic pattern rather than the dactylic that she intends.  She recites her poems from memory to an almost incantatory effect. ( For a recent presentation:European Voices: A Reading and Conversation with British Poet Alice Oswald):    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2sv5gigOgo

Sound is extremely important to me, not only in my poetry, but for my video work as well.  And so, I really enjoyed the chance to immerse myself in the specific questions Peter posed for this FN.  That means this is really, really long. 
(You might want to just read the poems.)

Do you write haiku with the sound of words in mind?

John Cage, the 20th century American composer and poet, believed that there was no such thing as silence, only unintended sounds. (He had this epiphany after an experience in an anechoic chamber at Harvard.) If I am quiet enough, sounds "arrive" and then I try to "listen" for what other words these sounds call forth in tone and rhythm. Many times my head intervenes too much.

Do you revise according to sound and rhythm?

Yes, very much, although I am not always able to achieve something that works to my satisfaction.
In fact this has led me to writing sequences and longer poems because there is more to develop in terms of rhythm.

We speak of juxtaposing images in haiku. Do you know a haiku, yours or another's, which juxtaposes image and sound? A haiku whose sound and content are disjunctive?

Great question.  I think this is really difficult to pull off and so I can hardly think of any examples.
And it obviously depends on one's interpretation of both the meaning and how one might sound the poem out rhythmically.

A poem by Paul Pfleuger Jr.'s from a Zodiac, (Red Moon Press, 2013) comes to mind:

isms with our clothes on

This poem stands out to me for its use of disjunctive sound.
While I interpret it to speak about how categories and ideologies keep us in neat little boxes, proper in the appropriate attire, the sound of "isms" is so visceral a sound (and suggests jism in the raucousness of my mind) that the poem ends up evoking a rather raunchy feeling. The way I read the sound of this poem, the stress on the first syllable of "isms", vibrating "iz"into "mz", creates a harmonic overtone that closes the mouth and rolls through the next two unstressed syllables. This is then balanced symmetrically by the last words "clothes on", which I read as a spondee.  In contrast to the short "i" sounds of the first two syllables, the "o"s of the last three syllables open the mouth, with the final "n" closing things again.  The sound as a whole somehow makes me want to rip the clothes off the poem and free things back to their natural state before they became trapped and degraded.

Are sound and content two separate things? In what way yes. In what way no?

If a poem could be described as a bird in flight, sound is its wings.

Given haiku's brevity, there are clear limits to what can be developed in terms or sound and rhythm. But are there aspects of prosody which brevity can put to good use?

Well, there is hardly enough time/space in haiku for any metrical pattern to establish its music.

1.
I believe pauses (kire), or to use a musical term,"rests", play a key role in poems of brevity. 

Cherie Hunter Day demonstrates great versatility in how she uses everything from 5/7/5 to one-liners.
This 3/5/3 is an example of her masterful skill with highly structured sound using a notated cut:

starlings molt
to a new spangle—
wolf whistles                                            (Apology Moon, Red Moon Press, 2013)

The first two lines are strongly connected by their consonant sounds, and then we feel something new with those repetitive "w"s after the cut. The inversion of the syllabic structure of the first line in the third line, and the reversed order of the "o"s and short "i"s, (starlings molt/wolf whistles) create a remarkable mirroring effect supported by the "l" sounds . The word spangle in the second line acts as the fulcrum of the poem and sound-wise it jumps out joyously to announce the shift.

This one-liner does something different:

dawn crows the scuffle of nomenclature   ( Apology Moon, Red Moon Press, 2013)

First of all, the cut/s can be placed in different places, creating an indeterminate rhythm for the poem.  Depending on where I place the cut/s, I change the pitch and lilt with which I say the words "crows" and "scuffle".  I hear the hard scrabble of this poem more than I think it.  I want to read that last word, no-men-cla-ture, well enunciated, slowly, syllable by syllable, like a scolding teacher.

2.
I believe short poems can encourage a poet to use sound in how s/he collocates words.

For example, in the following poems, "hard house", "finned word/ minnows", "knife patrols", " crow wing", and "starlice" create a variety of playful and stunning effects:

coming out of
the hard house
the flowering dawn

and

in and out of meaning
         a finned word
                minnows

and


between our countries
a knife patrols,  sharpening
its only thought

and

crow wing over us
but starlice drinking,   drinking
unblack the sky

( all of the above by Peter Yovu from Sunrise, Red Moon Press, 2010)

Incidentally, Niedecker (who read haiku and wrote many, many short poems) does beautiful things with words like petalbent, adark, jellying, smoke dent ....


3.
Though we tend to think of it primarily in visual terms, organic-form haiku can do amazing things with sound to perform the meaning of a poem. There is a long history to this kind of thing (think of LeRoy Gorman's work, or marlene mountain's brilliant poem, "on this cold/ spring 1/ 2 night 3 4...") , but here I will focus on some poems by Roland Packer who uses syllabic play, rhythmic allusion, and spatial arrangements to create complexity out of brevity, sometimes extreme brevity.

cl a y                                                              (2012 Haiku Now! Innovative Category--Commended)

styx and bones the sound of a stone             (Frogpond 36:3)

latch of the newborn dawn                           (Frogpond 36:1)


                                                  rush
                                                  hour
                                                    a
                                                  pop
                                                 song's
                                             a t t i t u d e

                                          (Frogpond 37:1)

"icicle mind/wind"
see MH 44:1 for this poem's presentation which relies on layout for a shift from long to short vowel sounds and flip-flopped consonant sounds


m(id)night
                                     (MH 45:1)

It is fun to play with these aloud.


In Haiku: A Poet's Guide, Lee Gurga wrote (in 2003): ". . . the judicious use of aural devices in haiku can help focus the reader/listener's attention on the important aspects of the verse". This seems to give sound ("aural devices") a secondary importance, a "helping" role vis-a-vis what is "important" in haiku. How do you respond to this?

There are many poems I love where the sound seems to be in a supporting role rather than a primary role. However, when sound does not seem considered enough in a poem, it is difficult for me to engage.  Lately, I tend to respond most strongly to poems where the sound is primary, though I often struggle to achieve this in my own work. 

Martin Lucas, in his essay Haiku as Poetic Spell, has offered what appears to be a different approach: "That's what I mean by Poetic Spell. Words that chime; words that beat; words that flow. And once you've truly heard it, you won't forget it, because the words have power. They are not dead and scribbled on a page, they are spoken like a charm; and they aren't read, they're heard". How do you respond to this?

I think of reading Beowulf in high school and learning how to attune my ear to the music of the Old English so I could "understand" better.  The traditions of oral poetry are good reminders of this; their typically longer length allows time for their spell to be woven.  The bards of Hip-Hop have much to teach us about this. One of my favorites from Lauryn Hill, The Mystery of Iniquity:

http://rapgenius.com/Lauryn-hill-the-mystery-of-iniquity-lyrics


In terms of haiku, I think of

1.   as an and you and you and you alone in the sea     (Richard Gilbert: R'r 12.3)

With its lilting rhythm it works like the refrain of a folk song, undulating waves.

2.
       
       heart                     
       wood
       her echo
       lalia                                                               


opens her mouth to speak
the severed shoot grows
one finger, one leaf                                 


her perfect face
under the loam
a leaf in stone                   
                               (Mark Harris:  burl, Red Moon Press, 2012)


For me, the first here is a highly compacted poem that uses words "like a charm". The second and third produce exquisite flowing music with their rhythms based in iambic dimeter, slant rhyme, and the overall orchestration of consonant and vowel sounds.


3.  I find Susan Diridoni's poems extremely lyrical, luscious mouthfuls:


step back into the fragrance our histories mingling

the Yukon in her dry high air streaming

come fall with me languor's slant

the grain in his song tessellating night

vows jump their past-present membranes Eastertide

fogged into the familiar dying peripheral

                                          (all of the above from A New Resonance 8, Red Moon Press, 2013)

And to close, considering sound in relation to translation,
I also think of how well Jerome Rothenberg's translation work exemplifies this idea of words "spoken like a charm" (or sung like a charm).  For example, Shaking the Pumpkin: Traditional Poetry of the Indian North Americas ( Univ. of New Mexico Pre. Rev Sub edition (1991) and Writing Through: Translations and Variations (Wesleyan, 2004).


If I understand correctly, earlier writers of American haiku debated about how much "music" the language of haiku should allow. I wonder if this was due to early efforts at translation into English that added rhyme and forced syllable counts, emblematic of the vast differences to be navigated between the English and Japanese languages. Though we tend not to think of haiku as having the same strong "song" tradition of waka/tanka, when I listen to Japanese haiku it is crystal clear to me that sound is crucial.  For example, there is the common use of 5/75 phrasing inherent to the language, but also the fanfare of vowel sounds, the embrace of onomatopoeia, and the love of punning where double meaning is produced purely through sound.

Eve Luckring


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BRUCE ROSS



   In Japanese there is a built in rhythm of 5 and 7 unit sound phrases in most poetry. It has been suggested the rhythm so produced dates back to early spoken language as in proclamations. In Japan haiku are recited with a kind of gravity as in a No play. Attention has been drawn to the frequent use of onomatopoeia in Japanese haiku. The mandated vowel in each sound unit of Japanese adds to the built-in musical quality. Moreover, Basho in talking about renku linking suggested making links by smell, by which he meant all the senses, setting up a system of poetic connections that suggests by analogy notes and phrases in music.

   In English by comparison to Romance languages like French or Spanish, there are shorter syllables and fewer vowels. Thus the latter have more built-in sound values and thus come closer to Japanese than English as expressions of sound in haiku. In Japanese kanji (Chinese characters) there are also deep structures that contribute to a haiku's complexity.

   Susumu Takiguchi, editor of World Haiku Review, in his call for winter 2012 haiku submissions lists "good choice and order of words, good rhythm, and pictorial or musical feel" among the qualities of superior English haiku submissions. The "rhythm" and "musical feel" qualities offer haiku in English a chance of the melos (music) function of poetry. Figurative devises like alliteration, a well as other poetic devices, could overpower the small haiku form. Yet Japanese 5-7-5 sound units in poetry is essentially lyric, usually human feeling connected to nature.

   Poetry in English is reliant on accent and metrical foot, aside from free verse, so the haiku in English cannot easily rely on them in its short form. Basho's advise on linking, however, and Takiguchi's "rhythm" and "musical feel" offer analogies to outright musical expression and are useful in English haiku to contain the mental or lexical function of the words in a haiku. In a sense the poet's sensibility, their phrasing containing "rhythm"  and "musical feel," replaces the logical order of phrasing as language, however embedded with symbols, deep structure, or subtle metaphors.
   
   One of my haiku which placed in the 2012 66th Basho Festival, Iga City, Japan international haiku contest perhaps carries some of the lyric values mentioned here, as well as an internal rhyme in the second line:

old growth mountain
    I breathe deeply
           a cloud

I see this kind of lyricism in the haiku of Tom Tico, as in this from frogpond XXVI:1 (2003), 5, which contains clear rhyme in the third line:

after a haircut—
   light-headed
with spring wind

Such an understanding of sound in haiku in English is like hearing a silent melody in someone's expressed exuberant joy.

Bruce Ross

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DAVID G. LANOUE



Issa loved exploiting the sound properties of the Japanese language in haiku. In 1809, for example, he wrote,

鶯がさくさく歩く紅葉哉
uguisu ga saku-saku aruku momiji kana

the nightingale struts
crunch crunch...
red leaves

In addition to making use of the wonderfully alliterative and onomatopoeic phrase, "saku-saku," Issa exploits the assonance of the repeated vowel sound, "u," in seven of the first twelve sound units. In my translation, I make an attempt to imitate this consonant/vowel play with the words, "struts crunch crunch." In other cases, carrying over into English Issa's remarkable sound play has been more challenging, as in this undated verse.

夕月や鍋の中にて鳴田にし
yûzuki ya nabe no naka nite naku tanishi

evening moon--
pond snails singing
in the kettle

The alliteration in my translation ("snails singing") is pitifully inadequate to reflect Issa's tour de force repetition of the "n" sound times six. In a poem such as this one, Issa is clearly having fun with language's musical effects. He is a master at this and, for me, a master teacher.

Personally, I don't decide that a haiku of mine is finished until and unless I've said it out loud and approve its ear-feel. I strive to use sound, rhythm, and silences in all my compositions. As a reader, consequently, I favor haiku that sound good when read aloud. Concrete poems that derive their impact strictly by the ingenious visual patterns they create on the page move me far less. I find such works interesting, but I don't value them the way that I value haiku in which sound matches sense. That's just who am, not a criticism of concrete language poets. As I write these words, I'm sitting outside listening to a mockingbird gushing in a nearby tree. For me, and certainly for him, song (and I include haiku in this category) must be heard.

no heaven
no hell
just the whispering rushes

David G. Lanoue

ALLAN BURNS

A touchstone for the discussion of sound in haiku is Kenneth Yasuda's "Crystallization," the fourth chapter of his classic study Japanese Haiku: Its Essential Nature and History (1957). Among other things, Yasuda helps us to recall or realize just how important sound often is to classical haiku, as we can see and hear if we linger a bit over these examples, even if we don't know much or any Japanese:

kareeda ni karasu no tomarikeri aki no kure (Bashō)

haru no umi hinemosu notari-notari kana (Buson)

Robert Frost famously noted that "Poetry is what gets lost in translation," and so there is no truly adequate way of rendering these haiku in English. We can convey their sense but not the three-dimensional crystallization that makes them great poems. Much is lost when we present them as something like:

on a bare branch a crow has settled . . . autumn nightfall

the springtime sea all day long tossing and tossing

Frost's point should hold true for our haiku as well. They should operate on more than just the level of sense or meaning. They should draw upon the full aesthetic and expressive resources of language, like those of Bashō and Buson. They should be untranslatable.

I give a fair bit of attention to the sound and rhythm of various English-language haiku in my book Where the River Goes: The Nature Tradition in English-Language Haiku (Snapshot Press, 2013). I'll quote one passage (without the endnotes):

            Few haiku poets have attended so skillfully to sound as [Peggy Willis] Lyles did
            in her finely crafted poetry. She has noted that "Sound enhances meaning. Every
            nuance contributes to the total effect." The haiku "marsh lights/ the owl's cry dilates/
            our eyes" provides just one example, with its unifying long "i" sound, repeated no fewer
            than four times, resting in the soft bed of liquid /r/ and /l/ sounds. These sounds
            underscore the sensory information and convey the feeling on an equal basis, making
            for a memorable organic whole. Christopher Herold justly praises Lyles' work for its
            "marvelous rhythm and lilt." We see rhythm in action particularly in a haiku such as
            "thunderheads offshore," in which the last two lines ["the osprey coming early/ to its nest"]
            form a perfect iambic pentameter unit, the alternating unstressed and stressed syllables
            suggesting the steady wing beats of the approaching osprey.

Elsewhere in the book, I discuss sound and rhythm in the work of haiku poets such as Nick Virgilio, Robert Spiess, John Wills, Ruth Yarrow, Paul O. Williams, Wally Swist, vincent tripi, Paul Miller, Matthew Paul, John Barlow, Ferris Gilli, and others.

Since we were invited to do so, I'll close by looking at these elements in one haiku of my own:

coyote choir
we wake beneath
next season's stars

This haiku has four syllables in each line, two stressed and two unstressed, in iambic patterns (which tend to occur quite naturally in English). Horizontally, each line is dominated by an alliterative pair, the hard "c," "w," and "s," respectively. The third line also contains three instances of a related /z/ sound, even though in each case it's represented, as is typical in English, by an "s" rather than a "z." Vertically, the haiku is bound together by assonance based on the repetition of the long "e" sound, which first appears at the end of "coyote" and then recurs in "we," "beneath," and "season's," as well as by the /n/ sound in lines two and three and the near rhyme of "choir" and "stars."Attentive readers respond to the careful modulation of such sounds and rhythm whether they stop to analyze them or not, and even a poet often discovers such patterns only after the act of composition, during which what matters most is an intuitive sense of rightness. I think the sound of this haiku is just as important as its meaning and that it's one of the better examples of "crystallization" that I've yet achieved. I'll give Yasuda the last word:

                           In and around the words through which the haiku poet attempts
                           to form the world of his [or her] aesthetic experience, must flow
                           the feeling of the experience. It alone will control the election of
                           words, their order, sound, rhythm, and cadence. When all these
                           elements within a group of words are bound in and with the
                           emotion, the resulting haiku is a crystallization.

Allan Burns


**********


TOM D'EVELYN



The Sound of Silence in Haiku


The problem of sound and meaning in poetry is vexed with issues rooted in cognitive resources. As Samuel Johnson knew, the imagination tends to fuse experiences in ways that defeat analysis and leave us vulnerable to self-delusion. We can read a poem about horses and if it is convincing we may well feel it sounds like horses.

So this question of sound in haiku needs to be handled mindfully. Especially haiku: being so short on words, and often depending on subtle semantic connections between those words, this form may be more deluding in this regard than longer genres.

But haiku has one distinguishing formal feature that makes a big difference in how it is heard: the cut. The cut is a pause in sound, as well as a pause in cognition. I like to hear the silence in haiku as it wells up from the cut.

The artist known as polona (Ljubijana, Slovenia) writes haiku that draw on this resource peculiar to haiku:

city lights
the names of the stars
i used to know

These names, being forgotten, cannot be spoken; in a sense, the mind has been emptied of the presences named by the names of the stars, a deeply rooted presence now blocked. Such presence had been available to poets for millenia. Now there is an interior silence, compounded, given the narrative, by shame. In place of the cognitive naming of stars, there are city lights. The city lights, and any noise associated with them (sirens?), rush into the cut between the two images.

I value this haiku for the same reasons I value a much longer lyric. It connects me to depths of historical and personal awareness that would otherwise escape me. It renders a judgment on experience as only a poem can.

Tom D'Evelyn


**********


PETER YOVU


A Word from My Childhood

I grew up in the '50's and '60's on Staten Island. There was, needless to say, a lot I didn't know. Or at least, a lot I didn't know I knew. For one thing, that we were poor.

We played a lot of pick up games. Precede the word ball with foot, soft, hard, kick, stoop, dodge and stick and you get the picture. The last of these was perhaps the cheapest enterprise. You only needed a cast off broomstick and a ten cent rubber ball to play. These balls were usually yellow or pink. They were, to repeat myself, cheap.

Cheap compared to a Spaulding. The word was written right on it. If you're not from New York, and maybe even if you are, you probably pronounce that something like SPOLL ding. That's not the way we pronounced it. We paid no attention to the name on the ball. Who reads a ball anyway? We pronounced it spawl DEEN. Because that's what it was.

Sometimes one of us was willing to cough up a whole quarter to buy one. They were pink, but not the lifeless chewed Bazooka bubble gum pink of the cheap balls. They were a kind of powder electric pink a kid could be proud of, though certainly none would of us would have said so. They had heft and were made of denser rubber. They snapped off the sidewalk when you bounced them.

Spaulding was not a word in my vocabulary. It has, as I say it now, a gray sound, a sound that trails off into a sneer. If you were to hit that name hard with a stick, it would split in half, its dull syllables skittering off like the two hemispheres of a ten cent ball to be left behind and forgotten.

But spawlDEEN has spit and awe in it, awe which gives way to emphatic excitement, the EE of anticipation, the glee we felt to hold one in our hands. It did not squeeze easily. I'd have to look, but it wouldn't surprise me to learn that a lot of my poems have awe sounds in them. Awe giving way to EE. 


A Few Thoughts about Sound

I think it may be that the delight, even the delightful disgust,  of how language sounds and is felt in the mouth and body directs what we have to say in ways the conscious mind cannot know. It may lead us to say this and not that. Which is going a little further than saying it determines how we say something.

What a poem means is what you say.
How it sounds is who you are.

Go to the pine to learn its sounds.
Go to your body to discover new ears.

A change of sound is a change of perception, like getting onto a different train

The eye has a direct pathway to the mind. The ear is more labyrinthine, like a rose, and leads to the heart.

Some sounds may get lost in the labyrinth of the ear. These are sounds that need to get their meaning across. They tend to get repeated in arguments. In a poem, lost sounds are more patient, they know from ancient experience that other sounds will soon call out to them, meet them, transform them, and continue the way.

Red alone on the canvas. Red with violet. With black.

The black of a black horse breathing. The black of a galloping black horse.

We tend to lap up the voluptuous. By cuddling up to a word like cuttlefish, we acknowledge kinship through the body of sound.

In a poem, a short poem like a haiku in which sounds are not easily muffled, we may slide along the floor with a spider, the diphthonic aye-ee our own inner cry, our fear that what is imaginatively true may be actually true; that we are, in part, spider.

Sound is the body language of a poem. It tells the truth, which sometimes is that a poem is not well-fed.

Sound reveals what you didn't know you wanted to reveal. It exceeds intention, or reveals its limits. It can even make fools of us.

Sense is an echo of sound.

What a poem says is known to the leaves. How it says it is taken up by the roots.

How can the word gray feel dull? It uses one long high pitched vowel. Like all the high pitched vowels, the diphthonic  A sound when sung or chanted creates a buzz in the head. That is not what one would think of gray. Or of rain.

We don't master sound. It masters us, though undoubtedly some honest work can result from resisting that.

Jane Hirshfield speaks of metaphor "ghosting past the logical mind". Sound and rhythm work
that way too, but with a more substantial ghost.

Poets are too often eager to get their meaning across and not allow the poem to mean something beyond them. Sound is both of and beyond us.

The music of language is always one moment ahead of meaning.

Using words like assonance, dissonance, alliteration and so on may be useful up to a point. I don't know of a name which speaks to how sounds relate to each other, how they transform and inform each other, how they emphasize and undermine and toy with meaning, how they synthesize being and doing . . .  unless that name is music. Better to say that each poem names it in its own way. Each poem is its own name, its own namelessness.

Some Quotes

     "But words are also biology. Except for a handful of poets and scholars, nobody has taken the time to consider the feeling of verbal sounds in the physical organism. Even today— despite all the public reciting of verse, the recordings, the classroom markings of prosody— the muscular sensation of words is virtually ignored by all but poets who know how much the body is engaged in a poem. [W]ords are physical events for the organism, even when experienced in silence . . .".
            Stanley Burnshaw, The Seamless Web

". . . [T]he only kind of meaning poetry can have requires that its words resume their full life: the full life being modified and made unique by the qualifications the words perform one upon the other in the poem".

                                                R.P. Blackmur, quoted ibid.


"[Merleau-Ponty] wrote at length of the gestural genesis of language, the way that communicative meaning is first incarnate in the gestures by which the body spontaneously expresses feelings and responds to changes in its affective environment".

"Active, living speech is just such a gesture, a vocal gesticulation wherein the meaning is inseparable from the sound, the shape, and the rhythm of the words. Communicative meaning is always, in its depths, affective . . . born of the body's native capacity to resonate with other bodies and with the landscape as a whole".

"We thus learn our native language not mentally but bodily. It is this direct, felt significance— the taste of a word or phrase, the way it influences or modulates the body— that provides the fertile, polyvalent source for all the more refined and rarefied meanings which that term may come to have for us".
                                                 David Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous        

"There is, [Merleau-Ponty] argues, an affective tonality, a mode of conveying meaning beneath the level of thought, beneath the level of the words themselves . . . which [is] much more like a melody— a 'singing of the world'— than fully translatable, conceptual thought".
                 James Edie, quoted ibid.


"When we sit down to write, we often imagine that thoughts are coming, or feelings are arriving. But actually what are arriving are syllables, each a marriage or affair of vowel and consonant. . .

But it is another thing to take part in their arriving— to put out a call for sound friendships, to decide to encourage certain ones. The we are awake by one more degree. To be awake as a writer is to take part in sound friendships and welcome them".

            Robert Bly, The Thousands

"The ghost of electricity howls in the bones of her face".
            Bob Dylan, "Visions of Johanna"


Some Poems

Here are a few poems which have qualities of sound and rhythm I would like to explore.


reaching for green pears
the pull
of an old scar
                           Peggy Willis Lyles


distant virga
the ranch dog's eyes
different colors
         Allan Burns


intact zero fighter
at the Smithsonian
cherry blossom rain
         Fay Aoyagi

the long a of gray
the long a of rain
the shortest day
                                   Adam Traynor


the high fizz nerve the low boom blood dead silence
         Jim Kacian

I'll start with a poem by John Stevenson and return with thoughts about the others later.


first things first forsythia
              

This poem plays with a familiar theme in Stevenson's poetry: the limits of mind. At least the limits of the mind which attempts to grasp and measure when confronted with mystery.

The poem is simple enough, speaking to the observable fact that a forsythia is a shrub whose flowers bloom early in the spring. You might say that the observer is pleased with this observation: it speaks to a degree of order, and being able to observe order is to partake of it.
All is well.

At another layer down, the sense of order is tested a bit, since the blooms appear before the leaves, not the typical progression of botanical growth. That fact resides in the poem like a  phantom question mark. The mind which likes to be certain about things is tested by the very things it relies on: facts.

Being tested by facts may only serve to spark the mind to further observation and thinking. Which is fine, and a basis for science. But something else is happening here, located in the
body of the poem.

To get to it, you have to take the poem in your mouth and play with it— speed it up, slow it down— mostly slow it down. "First things first!" The force of that expression, the certainty of it, the two stressed firsts bursting out of the mouth. It is as if being first has more importance than any thing. Order is the ticket. "First things first" is something bosses and parents get to say. The rest of us may swear under our breaths, retaliating with another forceful, felt if not heard, expression.

Spoken in a natural, conversational way, the change in pitch and rhythm from first things first to forsythia will probably be noted, but perhaps not on a conscious level. Spoken or simply mouthed more slowly, emphasizing the vowel sounds, brings out what for me is the key to this poem, which relates to the theme I mentioned: order giving way to mystery, or to the immeasurable.

It happens in feeling the change from the rather high pitched, vibratory er sounds transitioning into the unstressed, low-pitched or of forsythia: a sudden slowing down. That sound, close to aw, takes the reader/ listener to another place, which can be felt, if intoned a bit, in the chest. The effect, the shift from the repeated er sounds to the or sound, is one of letting go. It comes as much from the felicity of language as it does from the genius of the poet's ear.

The felicity may be noticed in multiple places, including the somewhat off-mirrored sounds FIRST things/forSYTHia, but also in how the emphatic T stopped sounds of firsT give over to the open final vowel of forsythia.

Peter Yovu

For Field Notes 6 panelists were asked to talk about the importance of sound and rhythm in haiku, or simply about what sound means to them as writers and readers of haiku. As always, they were
asked to offer examples of poems notable for these qualities.

Please note that panelists, prior to their work being posted, do not read each others' contributions. They are posted all at once and appear here, for the most part, in random order. No attempt is made to create a progression of thought. Nonetheless, because all are responding to the same subject and prompts, there will inevitably be unexpected and felicitous connections or contradictions.

This means that readers (and those of you who will wish to add your own voices) should not feel constrained, as you might in a typical forum discussion, to read this material all at once or in sequential order. Some entries are quite long. Take your time, read here and there as you would a magazine. Or in sequence if you wish.

Once comments begin to be posted, it may be somewhat different. This is a second of phase of Field Notes where discussion is encouraged. A couple of us will act as moderators, mainly to remind people to stay on topic, but it is our wish that any discussion will be primarily self-moderated.

Max Verhart

in January last I read in Brussels (Belgium) a paper with the title 'Haiku on the Fringe of Dutch Literature'. The last paragraph read thus:
     "(...) the title of this paper sums it up quite adequately: haiku is at best a tiny spot on the fringe of Dutch literature. But should we be sorry? No - because our goal should not be to give haiku a higher literary status. That status, if it ever happens, can be no more than a side product of what our real goal should be: to write tomorrow better haiku than we did today. To be more critical of the haiku we publish tomorrow then we were of the ones we published yesterday. That's the best we can do. Or stop writing haiku."

FN5 is devoted to criticism. Picking up on some things Michael Dylan Welch said about promoting ELH in the larger poetry community and the role criticism might play, the thread of discussion has followed the theme of "excellence" in haiku. To keep this moving, I asked panelists the following:

Say a few things about what excellence in haiku means to you. What elevates a haiku above
the average, or brings it down to marvelous earth? Or both.

Are you willing to provide an example or two of what you consider excellent?

Richard Gilbert has responded to this with an important (I believe) essay. Cherie Hunter Day has offered
up a poem by Philip Rowland which to her exemplifies excellence. I will add more responses as they come, and hope you will add yours. Here we go . . .

Richard Gilbert

Haiku and the perception of the unique

When talking about excellence in haiku, the larger context of what makes for excellence seems intrinsic to debates concerning art, and poetry, in general. From this wider perspective, it's possible to examine historical, aesthetic, philosophical, and cultural strands of evolving critique.

The main historical currents regarding excellence (in art, poetry, haiku) presuppose arguments (theory) related to critical judgment. To gloss the topic, in the US, poetic theory, from Imagism through the Beats, has swung through pendulum arcs between objective and subjective formulation. When excellence is critically objective, this implies that there are (provably) definitive elements of excellence apparent to the observer—un-reliant on and apart from subjective (personal) opinion. New Formalism is taken as a move in this direction. The violent reaction of more objective-oriented criticism toward Ginsberg's "Howl" reveals this polarity and a seminal moment in American poetry—perhaps the last time poetry can be said to have shaped the nation.

(Aside:) Of the 88 books selected by the Library of Congress in 2012 to define "Books that Shaped America," six are poetry collections. Of these, three remain bestselling, those by Whitman, Dickinson, Ginsberg. Two being 19th century poets, Ginsberg's "Howl and Other Poems" singularly tops the charts rivaling sales of Shakespeare's Collected Works for poetry collections in the 20th century, to date. (Cf. 'http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/books-that-shaped-america'.)

If objective critique were to be perfected and agreed upon, artworks could be judged (ranked) in terms of excellence according to defined criteria. Objective critical theory would be then quantifiable; thus the "formalism" in new formalism. For this critical approach, excellence can be defined, objectively (i.e., formally).

Of late, science has studied human beauty, and via large-scale research studies, arrived at certain formal measures of facial structure which are statistically (multiculturally) identified as evincing beauty (e.g. formal features such as left-right facial symmetry, eye spacing). As within the field of poetics, this approach reveals an intriguing agon (tension) between qualitative, subjective impression (phenomenology) and formal (scientistic) verity-- an issue fundamental to modernity.

Subjective criticism, on the other hand, is reliant upon "the person of taste." That is to say we presuppose a few masters of taste (as there are master chefs), who due to their knowledge and experience should deservedly be seen as arbiters of excellence. Perhaps our most notable literary critics ultimately follow this line, in that objective criticism has foundered in its comprehensive program.

Seen this way, there exists a conundrum: we seek to arrive at formal determinants of excellence, and fail (though one may stump for partial success). We seek to find a critical view (a person/ those critics) which might provide the proper schema--yet do not find satisfaction.

The subjective-objective conundrum is a Cartesian duality which never completely resolves itself. We rely on critics for (subjective) personal insight, yet may also rely on (objective) articulations of formal determinants -- neither alone quite suffices. As a result, idiosyncratic brews (admixtures of both types of approach) are formulated. Formulations such as these tend to be playful mutts. A majority of published criticism in haiku has been of this sort. For example,  a haiku critic who does not understand Japanese language and has not lived in Japan, or associated themselves with Japanese poetry offers up Japanese terms and presents Japanese culture—and often feudal culture as well — as objective verity -- as "haiku-objective" knowledge. This represents just one critical boner in haiku studies, so it's not surprising "haiku studies" outside of Japan Studies, are not found in the university. It was just a few years ago that Gary Snyder, well-aware of Japanese poetics and culture, in his Ehime Award Lecture stated that the term "haiku" should be limited in use to indicate Japanese-language-only haiku (I take issue, but also admit his rationale).

In any case, I first became acutely aware of the objective-subjective conundrum reading "Egalitarian Typologies Versus the Perception of the Unique," by James Hillman (Eranos Lecture 4, Spring Pub., 1986), whose school of Archetypal Psychology is founded on the conception of psychological creativity (rather than pathology and/or the presupposition of a normative psychology). This small book of 59 pages contains examples from poets like Wallace Stevens, to help articulate its main points.

A typology is a schema, and presents itself as a formal basis for quality. Racism would be a non-egalitarian typology. An egalitarian typology, on the other hand, presents an equality of value among its "types" or groups. In personal and spiritual psychology some examples are Jungian typology (including personality types as determined by the "Myers-Briggs Type Indicator") and the enneagram (created by Oscar Ichazo). Familiar historical typologies include the 12 signs of astrology, the I Ching, Qabalah (Sephirothic tree), and geomantic and cosmological concepts (e.g. Fludd, alchemy) as well.

Last year, in my book of haiku criticism, "The Disjunctive Dragonfly: A New Approach to English-language Haiku" (recently reviewed by editor and Field Notes contributor Lorin Ford at 'http://www.ahundredgourds.com/ahg31/exposition06.html'), I proposed 24 "types" of techniques found in 275 haiku examples (presented in support). In composing this work I was aware of the problems inherent in objective critique. Nonetheless, if lacking any formal (objective) schema, one is left only with "persons of taste," and opinion. That is, endless and generally fruitless debate regarding questions of excellence and quality.

Hillman interests me because he poses a deeper polarity or dichotomy, regarding excellence: egalitarian typology versus the perception of the unique. It may be that any critic ("person of taste"), in advancing a rationale for excellence, unavoidably presents a schema as part and parcel of a logical, formal argument for quality. For haiku, one can speak of yugen, shibumi, karumi, wabi-sabi, etc. These terms, taken together, form an egalitarian typology. Critics will say that this or that haiku possesses more or less of one and another.

What does this mean, to say that "this haiku is excellent because it possesses yugen," or "this haiku is an excellent example of karumi"? Here the "person of taste" enters with their subjective judgment. We may agree conceptually with the definitional typology (those Japan-origin qualities), but can we agree on matters of taste? In fact, were we to agree as a community on a select group of haiku, say five per each representative Japanese-aesthetic category — we would then have achieved pure artistic totalitarianism. There is a real societal danger in combining egalitarian typologies with "persons of taste" who then dictate to the community – and one must either follow their pronouncements or exit (sometimes violently). In Japan, a study of Kyoshi's role as totalitarian dictator of Hototogisu is a case in point. One understands that in the history of haiku in North America, this has been a social issue, one that has involved the exclusion of talented haiku poets from publication, and by extension, the publication of many atrocious haiku -- all in the name of (purity of) taste. That is, "taste" was defined or grounded in judgment by "persons of taste" (predominantly or entirely male at the time; haiku journal editors and book publishers) who claimed proper knowledge of the Japanese form and therefore the English-language form of haiku. They were right and if you took exception, you were wrong. A documented case would be some decades of rejection of Marlene Mountain's thought, along with many of her haiku -- her work and thought are these days looked upon quite differently.

Hillman proposed an intriguing solution to the dichotomy of typology vs. the unique. He suggested a means of collapsing the duality, by shifting the basis of critical thought to "aesthetic arrest," an embodied experience (of an actual human being). Implicit here are kinesthetic truths, a kinesthetic phenomenology. Hillman talks about the "in gasp" -- the sudden indrawn breath, from which we get the word "in-spiration." We may not all agree on which experiences cause aesthetic arrest, but have probably all experienced this at one time or another.

From this perspective some interesting ideas can be drawn. The first is that a "person of taste" in defining excellence in a particular poem, or group of poems, may provide intellectual understanding, and at the same time not in any way move you, the art participant, the reader, towards aesthetic arrest. As well, a poem may in fact be intellectually excellent, and provide new motifs in art, which is grand -- yet you may not be especially moved by it. From the perspective of aesthetic arrest, there exist varieties, diversities of excellence, according to the diversity of persons, within poetic community -- from the point of view of each reader or person.

The experience of aesthetic arrest is a personal experience. So it would seem subjective. But on the other hand, the experience itself is likewise archetypal, universal, Hillman would argue. One may not know why precisely a given experience occurs in a given instance. Aesthetic arrest may begin through moments of "stopping," yet such an experience may also indicate a longer involvement in an artwork as an enriching contemplation, occurring over many years. Aesthetic arrest in this sense is not only that "moment" in which we in-spire, are arrested, it is also evolutional, subtle, complex -- interwoven into what we value in life, in art: aesthetic arrest as instigation, as subversion, seduction. As tantra, viral.

I muse that excellence must partly be related to taste, which itself is linked to aesthetic arrest (in both critics and readers). Aesthetic arrest, as savor, may likewise be evinced by the poetry of criticism. I was never so consciously arrested by the pleasure of the text, as and until I read "The Pleasure of the Text." The pleasure of Barthes has never truly left me. Aesthetic arrest may be instigated by study, generating a heightened, embodied sensitivity towards the work.

Yet this is not enough. Aesthetic arrest implies something genuine in our experience, and suggests that arts (artworks) have the ability to touch what is deep, in experiential value -- yet the aesthetic does not necessarily reside in the artwork, any more than it resides in Basho's "pine," or a beautiful sunset, or a lover's kiss. Aesthetic arrest cannot be "typed" or troped in this way. It's never about what's supposed to happen in engagement (or how a given poem is supposed to move you). Critics are fairly hated for their insistence in this regard. In fact, if an engagement is specified, arranged, predetermined, it's as likely to diminish aesthetic impact, or confuse it. "I will read this haiku to you, which is the best by Ms. X, and you should feel this from it and have such and so-and-so an experience" -- really won't cut it.

Is aesthetic arrest up to us? I think this is the crux: the perception of the unique. The point Hillman made which launched me into contemplations of how to critically articulate works involves the perception of the unique, as cultural value. The unique, Hillman argues, is something that is continually devalued, forgotten, discarded, in art, in criticism, even in conversation, in society. The perception of the unique is invisible. Is the repressed.

Most obviously, the problem is that one's perception of the unique cannot be easily shared (a talent for articulation in this regard must be assumed crucial, for the critic). And perceptions of the unique do not necessarily organize themselves either normatively or intellectually. Hillman argues that, nonetheless, the perception of the unique is at the core of aesthetic arrest, implying that this should be a central concern of criticism.

In my own work, I designed an egalitarian typology in order to present modes of technical similarity between groupings of example-haiku. Yet my (subversive) desire was to present haiku to which I respond aesthetically, am moved by -- that are arresting in some way. It's not too much to say that I love all the haiku I selected. Of course, it's laughable to say that I love them, merely. So the typology was useful.

That said, my love is not yours, nor should it be. Nevertheless, in each haiku presented I find an abundance of what is unique: both beyond compare and beyond comparison. This is something beautiful. And the more you give voice to it, the less unique it tends to become, in its arresting dimension. In psychology, one way to diminish the impact of a dream is to explain the story away, through interpretation. For this reason I generally avoid definition, or those modes of interpretation which extract meaning from the poem, essentially to its deficit, as a primary critical move. "This haiku means this or that." Stories (and poems) are often put to death when ostensibly resolved by meaning.

At this point I feel I've answered the first part of Peter's question, when he asks: "What elevates a haiku above the average, or brings it down to marvelous earth? Or both." (The answer must partly be your own, partly arrive from elsewhere, and partly relate to matters of intellectual and poetic engagement with formal verities, to the extent they exist, or you take them as existent values: an excellent haiku surprises, is in some manner genuinely aesthetically arresting, and appears as a unique "face" of perception, existentially and essentially, incomparable in some way.) Now, as to the last: "Are you willing to provide an example or two of what you consider excellent?" In The Disjunctive Dragonfly are 275 haiku, all of which (I feel) are excellent. It would be against principle to select out some small number -- this would defeat the concept of an egalitarian typology, altogether. So I don't feel I'm avoiding the question, or challenge, and would rather in turn challenge the reader to gather like-gems from sand all those works that move you, through their uniqueness.

The depth psychological move is to return in mind to those active dream figures, to treat them as alive, animate -- to open to those images (and poems, like dreams, are fictions, or halfway to such stars) -- in this way to become more receptive to their uniqueness, these unique faces of appearance, which stir or disturb. Unfortunately, critics like therapists tend to become too meaning-addicted. Though like love-making, interpretation can be done well.

When you walk around -- right now, in daily life -- how aware are you of the unique? This very single breath, your partner's face. A shadow, a tree. Aesthetic arrest can't be willed, yet for those into haiku, certain poems move us, deeply, and we experience -- what? Depth, emotion, presence, resonance are some of the terms in play.

What distinguishes haiku from other poetic forms most clearly relates to concision and "cutting," formal notions. In particular, the various ways a given haiku "cuts" relate directly to aesthetic sensibility -- the landscape of aesthetic arrest. What would a criticism look like, which begins with the perception of the unique, leading the reader further towards considerations of the unique, towards its greater valuation? This move would raise the valuation of the unique, rather than discarding its power via explanatory meaning, as we might discard the power of the poem, or dream.

Richard Gilbert, Valentine's Day
14 February 2014



Cherie Hunter Day

breeze a synonym for ash
            Philip Rowland

Five words.  Five words that propel thought beyond logic to a preconscious state of awareness—a momentary glimpse of wholeness.  It has lightning fast precision.  I remember reading this poem in R'r 11.1 (Feb. 2011) and instantly it became one of my favorite haiku. 

I'm familiar with Southern California wildfires.  One in 2007 forced us to evacuate our home because of immediate danger.  Thankfully our house was spared and when we returned there was an inch of ash that needed to be swept up.  Ash worked its way into everything—even under the gas cap flap on the car.  Because of the wind the ash was able to penetrate the void in and around things.  Breeze and ash are bound together in this give and take of definition.  Some breezes can only be observed when the ash is disturbed. 

A reader doesn't necessarily need to experience a major wildfire to appreciate this poem.  Think of an ash at the tip of an incense stick.  The slightest breeze both feeds the fire that produces the ash and disseminates the ash.  Air is both starting point and the end.  This toggle between microcosm and macrocosm gives power to these five words.  And its artistry doesn't diminish through a hundred readings.

If we consider the poem from an aural perspective, the music of vowels and consonants, this poem is a gem.  The movement from the long 'e' in 'breeze' through the staccato of 'syn.on.ym' to the open 'a' in 'ash' with the 'sh' at the very end is the trajectory of life.  The initial breath in 'breeze' carries though the small encounters in 'synonym' (like the rain pinging down obstacles in Eve Luckring's concrete haiku) to the final shush in 'ash.'  We feel the subtle echo of this music beyond words moving outward and inward.  It's primordial and pure poetry!  Thank you, Philip Rowland.

—Cherie Hunter Day

Penny Harter


One way to get haiku out of the "haiku ghetto" is for those of us who write all kinds of poetry (in my case free verse--or what some call lyric poems, prose poems, formal verse now and then, haiku and haiku sequences, haibun, the occasional tanka and/or tanka sequence, etc.), to put out books with multi-genres in them. Both my Recycling Starlight and my new book The Resonance Around Us, are combinations of genres, and they are in the mainstream because they contain "regular" poems as well as Japanese-related genres.

One problem I've run into by doing this, however, is that when I enter a contest, my books is the proverbial neither fish nor fowl. If I enter a haiku and related genres, judges ask is it a book of haiku or haibun (except for the online One Bowl which is all haibun)? Not exactly, though these genres are either sprinkled throughout or sectioned in the book. And if I enter a mainstream po-book contest, the book may be dismissed because it has haiku in it---many mainstream poets look upon haiku as not "real poetry", mostly because they haven't seen that many good haiku; they think of 5-7-5 treacle and/or spam-ku.

But that doesn't stop me from trying to integrate genres. It's all poetry, all on one continuum for me. And that may be the case for others of us who write in several genres, even fiction (and I've published a number of short stories over the years, too). I think it's a good way to get haiku out of the ghetto and into the hands of poets and poetry lovers in the mainstream.

Rebecca Lilly


I read with interest your thoughts on the absence of individual voice in haiku, and agree with your general observation that when a single good haiku is looked at by itself, out of context, it's not easy to discern who wrote it --it might conceivably have been written any number of good poets. However, I think this is, perhaps unfortunately, due more to the brevity of the form, rather than the 'no-self' philosophy behind it.

Unless haiku are linked, or are published together as a collection by a single poet, it can be very difficult to discern an individual voice. Most writers I know who don't care for haiku tell me it's because it doesn't allow for "digging," and thereby doesn't provide enough of an emotional or intellectual hook for the reader. I would say that while haiku delves, it offers a flash of insight, or momentary refreshment--sometimes quite a glorious one--but doesn't root around in the nitty-gritty, as that would require a longer form (either of poetry or prose). Again, it's the brevity of the single haiku that serves as both its strength, offering the power of concision when written well, and its limitation or inability in such a short space to tell a story or dredge up a chain of associations.

It occurred to me that it might be worth distinguishing between the individual voice (or distinctive style of a poet) and the personal nature of that voice (whether that voices aspires to the 'no-self' ideal and thereby tends to disappear into its subject, or whether it's deeply concerned with the personal self). A poet might have a distinctive and recognizable style, but a non-personal voice.

Errors noted have been corrected.

Peter Yovu



you
look up

from
planting

bulb's
into
fall's

new
spaces

In a poem, as in life, (in poem-as-life and life-as-poem) there is always more going on than any analysis can reveal. I find this to be true of the poem above. It is by John Martone, and appeared in the latest issue of Noon.

So what is the point of analysis? What is the point of criticism?

The words jar. They connote a taking, even a tearing apart. How can we talk about this? Is there an approach which may loosen up some of the negative associations one may have around criticism?

Though it is not generally spoken about in relation to haiku, I recall the origin of the word verse as: a turning, as the turning of a plow, or line of poetry.  The sense here, of course, is that a poem turns from line to line, each successive line giving a different but connected view, even if the connection is distant.

One "progresses" through the poem line by line until a whole is realized.That sense of wholeness will be more felt than anything else, the web of connections known to the body as the body knows its own wholeness through every part. Coming to this sense of wholeness, if indeed one does come to it, is the point at which one may say that one likes a poem, or does not. You could say that this is the body's own critical response. And for many this may be sufficient.

But I would contend that looking deeply into a poem, examining it, and yes, analyzing it, serves to enlarge it— paradoxically, it serves to enlarge the whole. I'd like to explore how that might work.

If a poem is a series of "turns" working toward a sense of wholeness (a wholeness some of whose parts may only be intuited) then perhaps what is
required of the critic (or critical reader) is that he or she review (view again) the poem in a similar fashion, by turning it, looking at it from different perspectives. This approach regards a poem as, though composed of lines, not linear, but as something with contours and depth. As something alive.

Each part reveals the whole. Here one quickly enters into the realm of paradox, because each part reveals a different whole. Perhaps one could say that each part reveals the whole differently. This becomes the joy of reviewing any work of art. Without such re-view, the sense of wholeness
may settle, and the poem become an object, a fixed rather than a living thing. It would be akin to a sculpture which one cannot or does not walk around. And cannot touch.

I like to think that criticism can take this approach. It is an approach that does not lose sight of the whole. It is grounded in feeling, and is therefore an embodied approach.

The tendency with analysis is to lose sight of the whole. To lose the diamond for the facets. So I would say the best criticism regards analysis as a function that doesn't get too enamored of itself, that realizes that analysis is in service of something greater. This, on a more universal level, is the concern of Iain MacGilchrist who writes about the dangers of the left (analytical) hemisphere of the brain seizing control and taking precedence over the right hemisphere, that portion of the brain which deals with the totality of what is presented.

The totality of what is presented does not exclude the subjective. It strikes me that a good critic will be keenly aware of this. It is a phenomenological approach, basically. In his book The Spell of the Sensuous, David Abram
writes: " . . . the ambiguity of experience is already a part of any phenomenon that draws our attention. For whatever we perceive is necessarily entwined with our own subjectivity, already blended with the dynamism of life and sentience. The living pulse of subjective experience cannot finally be stripped from things that we study (in order to expose the pure unadulterated "objects") without the things themselves losing all existence for us".

The critic has the function of revealing windows. It is a wonderful experience to tell a dream to another, or to several people, and have one or all say what they have seen, often something one has not seen for oneself. In this process, usually the feeling associated with a dream remains present, and may be strengthened by looking at various elements.

But the critic also has the role of revealing where windows are foggy, or missing, or, when looked at closely, are not windows at all, but stenciled pictures on the wall. The critic is the one who senses that a poem has not done what it set out to do and is willing to re-view it to find out why. Or who sees that the poet took too much control over the language, or settled for an easy effect,
or . . . .


I have presented a rather idealized view of criticism. Briefly, I also want to say that there can be great value in criticism which is biased, partial, emotional, infuriating, uninformed, etc. If nothing else, such writing may serve to stir us into a response, if only to find out how we really feel about something, or even that we do feel something strongly. 

                                                              >>>><<<<<

So, does it help to look a poem like Martone's to get some idea of how it works? Only if doing so enlarges that sense that one may have (as I have) that this is, brief as it is, a work of art. My remarks may not do that, or do it well, but I am willing to try. And in any event, I welcome the possibility that there is someone reading the kinds of poem many of us are putting out who is capable of such enlargement. I welcome as well the possibility that there is someone capable of showing where what you and I are doing falls short, or where trends and habits are taking over, where art is being colonized by technique, among other things.


you
look up

from
planting

bulb's
into
fall's

new
spaces

Martone sets his poem down in a way which will be familiar to any who have experienced his work before. The vertical, one word (or two) to a line format emphasizes the moment to moment shifts that language and perception make. (Can one word be said to be a line? This is the first of several subversions— turnings from below— the poem enacts. It has the effect of slowing down time, and perhaps of allowing us to see that a part or  particle is in and of itself a whole).

The poem directs us downward, and yet the first two lines are "you/ look up", which I will venture to say creates a kind of perceptual eddy, a slight displacement. It's emphasized by the double space just following, after which we learn about that from which we (the poet and I) are looking up: from planting. We're on solid ground, and we have some idea now of what we're seeing.

But then the poem turns again, is subversive again. The expectation would be that some thing is being planted, a seed or bulb, but instead, what the poem is directing us toward is not the thing itself, but a quality or state the thing— the bulb— possesses. Again, as we go down slowly, word by word, we don't know what that is, and finding out is delayed by another turn, by something else, this time another category of thing: a season, a turning in time.

It is rather dizzying, as looking up at the sky can be after concentrated work in a garden, or on a poem.

Can a bulb and the fall, two very different but mutually involved entities, both "possess" the same thing? In this case, the poem tells us that what they possess (and are possessed by) are "new/ spaces". But looked at closely, what we see is that the bulb's "new space" is not exactly the same as the fall's new space, as the former is being planted into the later.

The poem seems to be saying that the act of planting (and the act of writing a poem) reveals or creates something new— it opens up a space which we were not previously aware of.

And it is— dare I say it— what close reading does: opens up a space where new meaning may be discovered, which even the writer may not have known.

And here, yes, it helps to look up, to take this poem's season back to the beginning and immerse ourselves in the clarifying sky, the vastness of which contains and goes beyond any new space we may have encountered on our journey.


****************


Francine Banwarth


It seems to me that first we have to deal with the word "criticism." In the best sense one evaluates, analyzes, interprets, that is, carefully studies and offers an insightful response, which can be based on historical, social, or other approaches. Taken by itself, however, the word "criticism" has a rather negative and more narrow connotation, and that is why in my personal experience, I find it difficult to express honest criticism when I feel a work has little merit.

I imagine we've all participated in workshops and critique sessions where the air becomes uncomfortable and the silence unbearable while everyone tries to figure out something nice to say about a particular haiku or haibun, for example. It is engaging and energizing to evaluate and discuss work that is worthy and promising or innovative and challenging, but even done in the kindest way, an honest, less-than-positive response is difficult to deliver and often difficult to receive. Without some form of creative criticism, however, we fail to grow as individuals or as writers and artists, so it seems essential that we learn to express and receive constructive literary criticism.

It seems to me also that criticism is dimensional. For example, a book review may be just that, a review of a collection on a level that is a personal response rather than a critical assessment. The reviewer may choose to focus on what he or she finds positive and rewarding and avoid areas that are more problematic. I believe we see this type of approach often in the haiku community and that it is an approach that can be valuable to authors and readers alike.

I find that some of the most insightful evaluations are often offered in the foreword to individual collections and anthologies and that they can serve as  models for study in the haiku genre. As far as critics go, we can be our own best critic. We can look at the work we produce from a detached viewpoint, that is, step into someone else's shoes and self-evaluate, if at all possible. If we practice that approach, we may gradually learn to offer, receive, and filter "criticism" with a mature and open mind. In that way, criticism itself is an art form.

**********


Paul Miller


The Haiku Community is a wonderful thing. In contrast to the larger poetry scene where haiku is often marginalized, if not outright dismissed, the Community is welcoming and encouraging—not to mention educationally beneficial. Without the Community I don't know if I would still be writing haiku—the genre/format/etc that seems to fit my poetic goals the best. I know I wouldn't have gotten any better. I have many friends in the Community that I enjoy seeing at meetings, conferences, casual get-togethers, and corresponding with over email. I enjoy discussing and sharing poems.

However, what makes the Community so wonderful is also its worst attribute. Since I have so many haiku friends, it can be hard to criticize their work. I've addressed this elsewhere, but to recap at thirty-thousand feet: haiku are often personal poems—about our daily interactions with the world—so it is hard not to hear criticism as criticism of the self, of the interaction, not the poem. Yet criticism is what we need. Without it we won't grow as poets.

In a larger poetry scene of a hundred thousand poets criticism is less of an issue. The Community being the size it is, I know I will undoubtedly interact with that person at some future point. This leads many reviewers to shower praise on the slightest of books. While this may be encouraging to the poet, it is not helpful to their development; and less helpful to a reader who might be thinking of spending their hard-earned cash on the book. With that in mind I have always tried to be honest but fair in my reviews. Years ago a prominent haiku poet objected to my calling another poet "one of our best," citing the fact that we were all doing the best we could. He was essentially arguing for "participant" trophies for all. But that does my poetry no good.

In my roles as editor I have seen the effects of criticism. In response to what I thought were honest and fair book reviews I have seen poets get angry, lash out, and sometimes cancel subscriptions. In declining to accept submitted poems I've been told I didn't know anything about haiku. Admittedly, as a writer, and because I'm human, I've had those interior reactions as well (well... not the canceling part). However, it is important to realize that none of us write brilliant poems all the time. I have been grateful (later) when editors rejected my lesser work (I probably didn't realize it was lesser when I submitted it because the latest discovery is always the brightest) and equally grateful when an editor offered a critique or suggestion. However, there are many ways to criticize someone. Interestingly, a quick Google search for a definition of "criticize" brought up these two definitions:

         1) indicate the faults of (someone or something) in a disapproving way
         2) form and express a sophisticated judgment of (a literary or artistic work)

Clearly we should aim for the second definition, and be open to it when it is directed at our own work. It doesn't mean we have to like someone's judgment of our haiku, or agree with it, but we should view every judgment as a learning opportunity. A fellow poet once pointed out a particular and reoccurring theme of my haiku—one I wasn't aware of. If they hadn't had the gumption to criticize my work I might never have realized that. 

The yoga studio I attend likes to call our workouts "practices", which might be a good way to think of our poetry. We are not masters; we are just poets on a path. In that light we might be open to "a sophisticated judgment."

Cherie Hunter Day


Criticism is rarely perceived as fair and warranted. It's difficult to get past severe judgment and unfavorable comments and remain open to the evaluation that might be helpful or positive. Criticism is so distasteful that one of the most popular workplace performance review strategies is the "feedback sandwich": sandwich criticism between two pieces of praise. Shaping behavior by positive feedback has been the mode in classroom teaching for many years. It used to be gold and silver stars next to names on poster board charts. That's a very visible reminder of who is helpful and compliant and who is uncooperative. More recently it's earning *bee*bucks, colored pieces of construction paper, handed out at the beginning of the day and subtracted for each infraction of the rules. This strategy can easily backfire. One morning in fourth grade my son handed his daily dole of *bee*bucks back in to the teacher and said, "Keep these." In effect, he told his teacher, "You'll have them all by the end of the day anyway." To him they were just pieces of colored paper, nothing real or substantial.

We are in the "everyone is a winner" age. View one episode of American Idol during the audition rounds and see how criticism works for some contestants and fails to bring expectations into line for others. Clinical researchers now think such reactions are related to the recipient's self-esteem. Abundant praise for people with low self-esteem leads them to choose safer goals and makes them less persistent and less motivated in the long run than those with better self-esteem. Criticism for those with inflated self-worth is completely disregarded, often with considerable hostility.

The submission process for writers is an indirect form of criticism. The journal editor either accepts or rejects the work. Very seldom do they comment or make suggestions. It's up to the author to determine the next course of action. They can either send the work to another journal, rewrite the piece, set it aside, or discard it as a last resort. The author can keep the process closed or open the process to workshop. Facebook is chock-a-block full of pages for posting material. I suspect that receiving all those "likes" works for some folks and backfires for others. It might, in fact, make some writers more passive and dependent on the opinions of others.

These difficulties with praise/criticism exist in haiku as well. It's rare, but I appreciate when editors take the time and effort to pen encouragements or make suggestions. Bob Spiess, Elizabeth Searle Lamb, and Peggy Willis Lyles were legendary for their kindness and support. I've also received notes and e-mails from readers and friends sharing how much a particular haiku meant to them and why. It's a genuine connection that sits outside the praise/criticism dichotomy. It's a thank you without the calculating aspect of the "feedback sandwich." I'm advocating more thank yous in the haiku community. If a haiku moves you, tell the poet, and tell them why. Crafting a thoughtful response not only increases goodwill, it sharpens analytical skills, which in the long run makes us better poets. 

*************


Peter Newton


I'd say criticism is alive and well in the haiku world. Seems like there's plenty of book reviews in the major and minor journals. They don't all just sing the praises from what I can tell. Though many do, deservedly. What strikes me is that many constructive and critical book reviews are written by editors who are poets with certain tastes and tendencies. Few reviews are completely objective. But we have come to trust the opinions of others. And these opinions offer valuable tools by which we can improve our own writing.

What I'd like to see more of as far as criticism goes in haiku circles is self-criticism. A tough thing to do. But, for example, there is a book recently out by Jean LeBlanc called The Haiku Aesthetic: Short Form Poetry as a Study in Craft (CyberWit.net, 2013)  which I believe addresses a necessary and underexplored area of discussion: The literary nuts and bolts, if you will, of the short form using some of the author's own poems as examples of both successes and failures. 

I like the attitude of a fellow poet who says: we're in this together. Who else but oneself to hold up as an example of what works and what doesn't work in making a poem. Poetry is an act of discovery. It is okay to admit that we all begin with a blank page. The novice and the Nobel laureate. Let's say to each other: Here are a few things I think I've figured out about the process of writing a haiku.

LeBlanc's book offers an inclusive approach consistent with the haiku spirit. We can each benefit from looking at our own work through a critical lens. But it not only takes time and space to gain the needed perspective but a willingness to point out one's own flaws as a writer. Doesn't mean their fatal personal flaws--just lapses in technique maybe or following the wrong voice at times. False starts. We all do it. Poems rarely fall from the sky fully formed. Most of us have to build the thing from the ground up and hope it withstands the wind, the rain, and the repeated scrutiny of our own ear.

We need a larger body of this kind of self-critical study in the Western haiku world, it seems to me. Yes, anthologies sell. Individual how-to books by prominent poets sell. But what is our commitment to improving the overall practice of the craft of poem making. "Skin in the game" is a phrase that comes to mind. I guess I need to get to work on my own self-critical essay: "Confessions of a Haiku Frankenstein: How I Failed as a Poet and Learned that Every Poem is a Process of Bringing Myself Back to Life." Or something like that.

*************


Tom D'Evelyn


Theory and Practice of HIE Criticism

Note: to justify these comments on "poetics" I need only point to the new issue of "Noon," Philip Rowland, ed: as I show below, a mindful reading of the poems in this journal actually produces the kind of thinking about form and selfhood I am doing here. We start with poems. Criticism is inseparable from close reading of texts. Texts are critical. Critical theory emerges in its own right from close attention to the practice of poets.

1. Close reading of classic, canonical poetic texts soon teaches the critic that texts (the word is rooted in the action of weaving, warp and woof) are produced as speech doubles on itself, folds, returns, thus commenting on itself. Shakespeare's "SHAKE-SPEARS SONNETS" (1609), among other things, is a radical criticism of the selves of the tradition of the sonnet. This is a critical commonplace; it SHOULD be commonplace in HIE criticism. 

2. The question of "self" is inseparable from literary criticism. Poems unhinge language from normal use as a medium of reference to an object or objective state of affairs; references within poems are not solely determined by the referential use of language; rhythm, rhyme, all the devices of poetry, heavily qualify that objectivity, sometimes subverting it altogether in favor of a different ontology (e.g. Zen). There is an "implied author" in poetic uses of language which "sort of" doubles for the author; the concept of "persona," foregrounded by Ezra Pound, is widely accepted as one of the ways of discussing self in poetry. Haiku, with its roots in Zen meditation, often depersonalizes the speech-act as if the poem projects from a nothingness, or an emptiness, a "fertile void" or perhaps the dead void of popular nihilism.

3.  In a wider discussion of "selfhood," selves or identities can be seen as structured by what is called "non-identical return." That is, selves (identities) are shown as processes, continuities with gaps and leaps and deep structures which sponsor reflective moments of "non-identical return" in which the continuity of the subject is confirmed by something other, different, surprising. Transformation is always a possibility; religious ideas often help structure these moments (see below). This is very useful for literary criticism because poems always involve repetition (form is itself repetitive) and surprising "turns" that throw weird light on what is happening.  In Catherine Pickstock's Repetition and Identity (Oxford 2013), she writes, "the self must be a living, dynamic symbol, fusing sense and reference, fiction and history, able to traverse, prehend, and grieve, decipher and fulfill the allegories of nature."

4. Regarding HIE criticism, it seems to break down into two kinds, practical and more experimental. These kinds are determined by their occasions. Within the HIE culture, we see practical criticism practiced in many different venues: exemplary is the Facebook page Haiku Ink. "Experts" there "critique" the work submitted, often showing great sensitivity for the writer's intentions and degree of skill and literary sophistication. The norms brought to bear come from the "soup" of formal notions originating in traditions old and new: whatever serves the moment, that is, the "kindness" of the job to bring a more mindful awareness to the occasion. Since at this level of practice, the question of persona rarely comes up, the effort being to "say" something clearly, distinctly, and perhaps memorably, the question of self remains a question of the author's real self and what this self feels, what "it" wants to say. The idea of self in Emerson's "self-reliance" holds sway: "To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you is true for all men, -- that is genius. . . ."

5. A more experimental, analytical approach fits journals like "Noon" edited by Philip Rowland. This carefully curated journal presents haiku in the mix of other short forms. The general take-away is that the poems favored by the editor of "Noon" are aware/make us aware of the hybrid nature of form. These texts frequently surprise the reader with experimental weavings of this and that, references, points of view, tones.  Such a self-consciousness about form may raise questions about the "self" implied by the poem. Certainly the material in "Noon" acknowledges the possibilities of self as suggested by Pickstock: "the self must be a living, dynamic symbol, fusing sense and reference, fiction and history, able to traverse, prehend, and grieve, decipher and fulfill the allegories of nature." Compare this with the Emersonian self of "Self-Reliance"!

6. It would be cumbersome to note all the mixed kinds that appear in the current issue of "Noon." One may generalize and say that curation appears to favor styles that in their repetitions and returns do not wander too far from a clean diction, a spareness of syntax, which these poems share with a large number of modern American poems indebted to the early Imagist movement and various members of that family. The book, carefully edited by Rowland, opens with a suite of poems – well, a series – by Peter Yovu (disclosure: Peter edited this piece). In their diversity they suggest the range – the different kinds of poems – available to "Noon" readers, who do include haiku or ku or H (as I call it when pressed) among the poetic, or non-poetic, forms of literature. Yovu addresses a range of topics, including authentic speech ("the second story"), the politics of drones ("a drone"), poetic allusion ("so luscious"), and metamorphosis as unconscious self-exposure ("words furred"), in a variety of styles and shapes. The first and fourth touch on classic subjective themes: authenticity and blockage ("the second story/falls into the first   rubble/at the back of my throat") and the revelatory animal form ("words furred over my awkward animal toward you now"). This "singleton" (or one-line ku) makes a good case for the type. The unfolding of the syntax follows the sequence of events as well as the total context: intense diction in "furred over" (past tense); the invention of a verb, "fur over" corrected in the progress of the sentence as "over" becomes a preposition: "over my awkward animal" – which thematizes the "non-identical" aspect of the repetition of syntatic form. This depends on a nod to the traditional distinction between "animal" and something more "spiritual" in the human (which distinction is probably not worth bothering with except in irony as  here). The text explodes – as a good text should – with renewed energy as it returns "non-identically' (that is, surprisingly, creatively, critically),  to its repetition (its syntactic closure, "toward you now"). Try cutting "now" and you feel a perhaps widening of reference (Keats?). In any event, it is a very strong opening to a very compelling issue of "Noon." Yovu is a very careful, efficient, economical, even minimalist writer, if by "minimalist" we can include the sudden opening up of a view to the abyss as achieved in "words furred."

Rare in the poems included in this issue of "Noon" (with a few exceptions) are the lyric resonances one experiences in poetry influenced by the New Criticism – say the work of John Crowe Ransom, Robert Lowell, Elizabeth Bishop, Anthony Hecht, Richard Wilbur, Louise Bogan, and so on. An exception would be Anna Arov's exhilarating 'revision'? Please see the poem in situ.


revision

you advised when writing
I should take a step back
make it less personal
change settings
                  dates
the 'he' to 'she'
       so when touching you
I was touching her
             kissing her
then I lost the thread
and she was kissing me

I could feel her warmth

her fingers pulling my ear
and I was not in love with you
 
This could be placed within the sonnet tradition for its sense of dialogical situation, its drama, its irony, it's sexiness, like a less-naïve e.e.cummings than . . . what? Something new (feminist)?   

8. That said, there are texts here--less brilliant, perhaps, as poems, than Arov's jewel -- which taxonomy would place in the family of "lyric." A hybrid "ku-lyric" is poem by John Levy.  It's a "lyric" put through HIE-related extreme minimalist reduction: "minute hand / hour hand/ second hand/ armada." The repetition of the list of "hands" on the clock does not prepare us for the surprise of the "return" to the larger, more general, interruptive (even eschatological) concept brought forward by "armada." But the "leap" is justified the more you think about it; and so the poem becomes memorable, the depth of feeling quite personal (if not paranoid!). Upon closer inspection, the sequence of "hands" – minute, hour, second – yields an interesting complex "wave" structure: ordinary, bigger, then suddenly smaller, as if the heart were beating faster, time more urgent, time LESS along with the timelessness of "armada." Is there word play in the "arms" – as opposed to hands – of the besetting "armada" (etymology shows this as a distinct possibility); such wordplay is "technical" and "witty," which indexes the "self" of the poem.

9. Scott Metz's contribution at first glance fits easily into the general family of HIE: "the river entering the / sea a sheet of / paper." While the look-feel of this text (the lines ending in words that make the line-ending no ending) is experimental, the verbal event closely resembles that of many contemporary ku. The elegant visual aspect – the absorption of the energies of the river into the greater body of the ocean flattening and indeed dispersing its identity – leads the reader into potential metaphors such as "blank sheet of paper." Depending on one's mood as a writer, this could be depressing or thrilling! Here again the "self" is an ultimate subject of the poem. The analytic toughness of this poem – presenting a kind of critical moment to the reader's judgement –makes it exemplary of a certain potentiality within HIE.

Eve Luckring's love of risk sometimes leads to profitless obscurity (at least profitless for my small brain) but sometimes startles with the breath and cogence of the non-identical return. I'm thinking of

        a delta
     of refrains
          sun-scrubbed
                       salt
you who speak of clarity


Suffice it to say that it seems to be about non-identical return: "a delta of refrains" (returns) subjected to the primal elements of nature and mind (sun-scrubbed . . . salt) – that wave of tensions collapses into a climax of address: "you who speak of clarity." The old regime of Cartesian "clarity" is engulfed in the energy of this wave. Cartesian self becomes part of the soup of consciousness. Now that's really something!

11. It is not uncommon for a poem in "Noon" to directly confront the questions raised by criticism. Elizabeth Robinson's "On Terseness" situates itself in what critics call the aporia: the no-way through moment or "interruption" of repetition's identity. "Here's how I interrupted my story. / How I burnt my fingers on a match." The pun on match captures the "romance" of repetition and non-identical return; a "match" or double (return) can often lead to interruption. The poem moves into a mythic scene: "Underneath the great deluge" – the "deluge" being the great interruption and foretaste of the final "show-down." The final lines return to "mere" repetition as "surfeit" never to be absorbed, fleeing "within the bulk of itself." The use of "itself" there recapitulates the "I" of the poem in its not-self never to return?

12. I really should stop. But I will continue reading the poems of this issue of "Noon" and other periodicals  at tdevelyn.wordpress.com  This blog is called "Meridian: Remarks on Contemporary Poems" and is devoted to the practice of criticism in light of the theories adumbrated here. (Interested editors, please send review copies to me at PO Box 4177, Portsmouth, NH 03802, and of course I can work with digital texts.)

Richard Gilbert


1) Concerning haiku, how do you regard the current state of criticism? That is, criticism of individual poems and poets, of collections, anthologies etc., and also of the genre in general?

So little of it, so few places for it.


2) What more or different, if anything, would you like to see?

More thinking out of the box; open-mindedness. Fresh criticism that inspires poets and readers to compose freely, and read with newfound passion, interest, intensity; to witness critical ideas presented through new media as creative genre expressions; the THF forum, its various blogs and their comments, represent one example; criticism may also extend to poetry, video, documentary, biography; greater academic rigor.


3) As you see it, what role does the "haiku community" play in criticism? Would you like to see it play a different role? How so?

Blinds > mysterious mirrors. Words are also things, in a way. Substances, forms, shapes. Often half-hidden, yet revealing, even as they limit. It's thought that nouns may be the last parts of speech to evolve. Nouns seem the most concrete things, yet conceiving a symbolic-represented engram (word) for the thing is an exceptionally abstract act; a cognitive tour de force. Who speaks, and to what world, and for what cause, what reason, with what evidence, to what effect? Paz wrote that the poem is minimally "two." Audience, even as dream, is a noun, that is. Don't we struggle with invisibility, questions of home, past and future, societal eventualities, and increasingly, planetary ecology? Haiku community isn't unitary: diverse groups worldwide share this common interest.

One question is how haiku-critical exploration might enlarge its scope to reach beyond the genre, to speak to those interested in poetry, full stop. Will "haiku community" as such recede into mouse-holes of somnolence? To see things fresh, having something to push against: enervations inherent in "tradition."

3+ (Earlier written to Peter in a chatty letter): I've been musing lately that:
There are readers
There are poets
There are critics
There is community
There is sociality
There are group networks
There are group functions.

Among these, participants have differing needs, goals and expectations. For instance:

If you are fractured, do haiku represent:
Sanity, purity, healing, therapy?

If you are urgent, do haiku represent:
Social challenge, exploration, agon?

If you are tired, do haiku represent:
Freshness, re-invigoration, novelty?

If you are bored, do haiku represent:
Surprise, delight, reversal of expectation?

If you like language-interaction with consciousness, do haiku represent:
Novel language use, coinage, neologism, experiment?

If you like lineage and form, do haiku represent:
Continuity missing in culture, or in life at large?

If one is relatively socio-economically stable, do haiku represent:
A lifestyle choice, a set of values, mores, an ethical base?

Some of the above queries may fit for poetry in general, yet others seem more genre-specific. This itself is critically interesting, don't you think? As a community, visiting various groups and symposia, are we overwhelmingly white, middle-class, bourgeois? Or should that read "of the well-educated professional class ,and successful"? Would the average age of our community be somewhere north of 50? Should we take an interest in new poets who are 20—30 something? Where are they, where's the new talent? By all means let's invite them in. I sometimes think we are really going somewhere, but then have doubts.

Actually, my thoughts and planned campaign of a haiku sailing pilgrimage around Japan is a critical response (and performance art piece) relating directly to all of the above. I hope to reach a larger audience; to connect more expansively: haiku < > society.

4) Can you recall a review or any piece of critical writing which stands out for you as a model for what you might like to see more of?

Good criticism feeds mind and soul! Kermode, Perloff, Bloom, Benjamin, Vendler, others. Now and again, The London (and NYT, and LA) Review of Books—all have enriched my life. The essays and prose works of Octavio Paz, "Testaments Betrayed" by Kundera, many additional works.

***********


Alan Summers


"What really constitutes good writing in haiku as poetry?"


George Szirtes had this to say about haiku (22 January 2014


"Haiku form, in the 5-7-5 syllable sense, is one of those readily fitted for Twitter with its 140-character limit. I rarely thought to write haiku before going on Twitter, but once on there I experimented a good deal, writing about the form itself before going to write seriously in it. I do now and compose ever more frequently in series treating each haiku as a self-complete poem that then joins with others in some narrative or dramatic form. The writing of haiku has brought out something in my work, possibly a kind of plain-spokenness and a greater willingness to engage with the abstract. I save the absurd and the tangentially poetic for prose."

I've met George Szirtes on a few occasions, but we never discussed haiku.  He is also a fellow consultant on an online literary magazine which contained a substantial section on haiku including a short essay by myself.  Many poets choose to go the 575 route, perhaps because it feels lyrical, without the extreme brevity that regular haiku writers use.   The adaptation of the Japanese cutting technique called kire, in haiku, is not something that is easy for many poets to read into a verse, and understand, perhaps it's too alien? I wonder if there are two main camps, haiku as haiku and haiku as poetry.  Oddly I've rarely experienced difficulties with the general public understanding a haiku poem, but poets regularly writing outside the haiku market do appear to have some or great difficulty at times.

Why is this I wonder? I don't have any ready or clever answers.  I just know that haiku appears to be too sophisticated even for some poets regularly published in the best of literary journals.  I experiment with various approaches to haiku, and the puzzlement however open appears the same:  I feel that 575 haiku will always have a place in poet's hearts, where they need more words, and at least have the equivalent to a line of poetry. 

There are many people who only write haiku as tweets, and consider 140 characters just enough for a haiku, whereas for many here we could easily accommodate at least two haiku, and even start a third.   Perhaps it is a combination of the attempt to utilise the kireji cutting, making a tiny verse into two smaller verses surrounded by an acre of white space that bamboozles many, including experienced close readers, and poets?  

"What really constitutes good writing in haiku as poetry?"  Is it engaging in more communication outside the regular haiku groups that we haunt?   Does outreach, guest-readings, and talks, school, college and university visits, and performances help?   How many regular haiku writers visit educational establishments?

Have we gone so minimalist that it is impossible for the public - who are aware of 575 verse, and also possibly read some translation versions of classic haiku from Japan - to be allowed on the same page any more?   Are we in fact excluding the very people we wish to have included?

Before regular performance poetry events many page only poets grudgingly gave live readings, mumbling into their books, avoiding eye glance or eye lock, wary of those who even loved their work, and understood it or were prepared to.  Is there a danger that we risk those dark ages, despite a huge movement of people enjoying live poetry?

In Bristol (England, U.K.) I remember having to do crowd control for a poetry slam.  Bristol was the bigger scene, bigger than London, and poets were even interviewed by Jeremy Paxman on the BBC's Newsnight flagship program.   I've even had to move two haiku poets to the top floor of a bookstore for health and safety reasons, due to popularity, excitement, overcrowding, to continue their book signings.  So it can happen to haiku poets too.s

Poets should be communicators, surely?  Are we front line reporters coming back with what we've witnessed, or not?  Shouldn't we be both across the page and across the room at the party?   Something is missing, despite the recent surge of quality books around haiku that should appeal to the public.  Nowadays there is more to poetry than just good writing, but it helps, if only to start from there, and then engage, not as soldiers, but fellow communicators.   After all, the age of cellphone cameras, selfies, and constant social media interconnecting is upon us, and haiku has always embraced new media from Basho onwards.

It will be interesting to see the impact of the two recent books of Haiku in English: The First Hundred Years (W.W. Norton) and Where the River Goes (Snapshot Press) this year into next year, plus more big books on the way.

Next time I meet George Szirtes I will certainly touch on haiku, maybe even have a haiku book to hand.

Alan Summers, With Words

***************


Kristen Deming


  Someone wrote that "Thoughtful criticism itself is an art and a creative act."
The question of criticism led me to think more about the role and responsibilities of the poetry critic/reviewer.
  Literary criticism is about the reader: teaching him, guiding him, and putting the work being reviewed into some context or historical perspective. It is not about the critic himself or his ego.
   I admire those in the haiku community who step forward to write criticism and reviews. We rely on them to be honest without causing pain; to tell us what works and what doesn't work in a constructive way.
  In my opinion, haiku criticism/reviews have been excellent for the most part, and gently done. If there has been any hesitation in being more assertively critical, it might be worry about breaking the "wa" (harmony) of the haiku community. However, the open exchange of ideas is worth the risk.


************


George Swede


Scattering Amplitudes

Recent discussions here and elsewhere have attempted to provide explanations for the evolution of English-language haiku in the 21st century. They have been brave attempts to understand haiku that are often incomprehensible, at least in terms of established ideas about the form. Perhaps what we need are concepts from outside the realm of literary theory that can illuminate gendai or the new haiku.

I have found a recent discovery in physics that might help.  It is the amplituhedron,  "a jewel-like geometric object" that greatly simplifies calculations about how particles interact. It seems to make unnecessary two bedrock assumptions of physics, locality and unitarity (Natalie Wolchover, Quanta Magazine, 27Sep13):

"Locality is the notion that particles can interact only from adjoining positions in space and time. And unitarity holds that the probabilities of all possible outcomes of a quantum mechanical interaction must add up to one. The concepts are the central pillars of quantum field theory in its original form, but in certain situations involving gravity, both break down, suggesting neither is a fundamental aspect of nature".

Perhaps established ideas about the haiku are also not fundamental. Why not use the amplituhedron as a model for stimulating new and vital thoughts about what really is haiku's true nature.  But first, more from Wolchover:

"The amplituhedron looks like an intricate, multifaceted jewel in higher dimensions. Encoded in its volume are the most basic features of reality that can be calculated, "scattering amplitudes," which represent the likelihood that a certain set of particles will turn into certain other particles upon colliding".

Isn't the collision of images the primary techniques of gendai haiku poets.? And, the concept of "scattering amplitudes" might be useful for explaining what happens when images collide.

(https://www.simonsfoundation.org/quanta/20130917-a-jewel-at-the-heart-of-quantum-physics/ , accessed January 22, 2014)


**********


Mark Harris


Poets are often leery of literary critics. People who write haiku have a pronounced aversion to "critical thought" and other such wordings that emphasize intellect over what you might call heart. At the same time, people want their work to be read with as much care as they gave to the creation. 

To me, the sort of exploration and dialogue Peter encourages through Field Notes is inspiring. The ability to write critically about poems on a level that enlightens is rare. Few are so gifted. While that shouldn't stop the rest of us from thinking through and writing down our critical impulses, we might do well to pause and remember kindness.

A friend and I touched on this topic in an email exchange a few days ago. I wrote: 

         "It is difficult for me to write about poems, in part because I am leery
          about unbalancing the poet's words. You know, every sound and rest and
          letter is creating a whole that can be changed by what the critic hangs 
          onto, or bolsters, or tears down. Violence can be done. Maybe more
          insidious, the poem can be taken, made the critic's in a way. So, critical
          writing that is constructive must be wrought with attention and
          delicacy. You have a special talent for that--I am not up to it.

          When last year I tried to explicate to you a few of my own poems, I could
          not get the balance right, and kept adding information, sapping energy
          and mystery from the original until I regretted saying anything.
          Comedians know this--once you stop to explain a joke, it's no longer
          funny, the timing's shot and you might as well exit stage left."

There's the desire for silence, for leaving well enough alone. And yet, I often hear people talk about how they struggled to find just the right word to complete a haiku.  What makes that word "right"? There's the beginning of a conversation that may challenge our individual assumptions. The good critic can help us there.

After Seamus Heaney's death this past August, I turned to my copy of his Opened Ground: Selected Poems. The collection concludes with The Nobel Lecture [1995], which I'll quote here:

          "Without needing to be theoretically instructed, consciousness quickly
          realizes that it is the site of variously contending discourses. The child in
          the bedroom listening simultaneously to the domestic idiom of his Irish
          home and the official idioms of the British broadcaster while picking up
          from behind both the signals of some other distress, that child was
          already being schooled for the complexities of his adult predicament, a
          future where he would have to adjudicate among promptings variously
          ethical, aesthetical, moral, political, metrical, skeptical, cultural, topical,
          typical, post-colonial and, taken all together, simply impossible."

In my view, that's an apt observation of how we navigate our worlds, so full of various and conflicting signals—as in the voices of critics, for example.  Does it bother me that my own contending discourses are "impossible," taken all together? On the contrary, that's where I hope to begin.

**********

Don Baird

It is very difficult to write a critique whether it is in a genre of music, art, or poetry, et al.  Creative art categories often have rules; they are just as often ignored - the artist's creative force looking for a way out - to be set free.  A critic must understand the boundaries (if any) of the art form under his/her scrutiny before he/she can write even the first word.  Haiku style has become wildly varied while contentions continue as to what it is - are there boundaries - is their structure?  This atmosphere makes it nearly impossible to be a critic of haiku without sounding like a know-it-all-windbag of a pit-bull dog.

I imagine if a poet writes exactly the same style the critic enjoys, the poet will do well in the review.  However, if the critic is of a different sort than the poet, the poet just might find the review contentious - even hateful.

Critics are forgotten, however.  The poets and their work live forever.  Beethoven was hated by a critic at the beginning of his career.  Later, down the road, Beethoven won him over but not without taking a few beatings in the media.  Today, Beethoven is a hero and almost as well known as God.  In the meantime, his early critic goes unremembered - and will forever.

There are two things I suggest regarding critiques: 1) don't write them; 2) don't read them.  However, if you decide to write one, be understanding, be as creative as the person you are critiquing, enjoy the process, find the good, be kind, and be honest.  In case you decide to read a critique of your work, be brave.

Eve Luckring

Dear Reader,

Before I can answer some of Peter's questions directly, I believe it would help if I explained a bit about my relationship to criticism. This unfortunately makes the following a bit longer than I would like for an on-line forum.

I appreciate criticism that makes me think about an artwork/poem, or an artist's/poet's body of work, in a new way. Usually this is because the critic puts the object of discussion in context of something bigger:
–the histories that surround the work,
–the formal attributes of the work in relation to other poetry/art (of the past or present),
–the social/cultural context that the work intersects with
–the life experiences and artistic/philosophical inquiry of the artist/poet
A good critic has to be very well informed.

All of this said, I want the art/poetry being discussed to be the center of the discussion and not simply an "excuse" for the critic to position themselves in regards to a particular ideological platform.  In other words, the critic needs to have a strong investment in the work itself and how it contributes, or is poisonous, to the field being looked at. Why is this work worthy of our attention, whether we may "like" the work or not. Of course I think critics speak most passionately about work they love,  and choose mostly to write about issues that reflect their own deep-felt interests.  That is why we can learn from them even if we disagree with them.

I believe English-language haiku does not have nearly enough in-depth critical discourse; however, while putting this commentary together, I realize that there has been a good foundation laid for future development.

Honestly, I think only a very small percentage of the "haiku community" has interest in the type of more scholarly criticism I crave. This makes me sad because I feel this type of reflection and contemplation--thinking about how something works and the contexts that surround it-- can help deepen our relationship to what we do. It seems that many think of criticism as only an academic exercise (I do not equate scholarly with academic).

I prefer criticism that is written accessibly, without a lot of jargon, but I am also willing to learn new vocabulary and investigate reference material in order to better understand something I am unfamiliar with, if it seems relevant.

I believe good criticism challenges me to educate myself further, to ask questions about what I am doing in my own work, puts me in conversation with others about topics I hold dear to the heart, and, on a fundamental level, to interface with language and thought differently than in my creative work. I have always read visual art criticism and I also read literary criticism outside of the field of ELH.

Off the top of my head, ( I'm sure I am overlooking more examples ) some recent memorable criticism of ELH books and poems that I have read:

•Bill Higginson's book review of Fay Aoyagi's Chrysanthemum Love, (MH 35:2, 2004)
•Francine Banwarth's book reviews in Frogpond-- because of her refreshing approach, which traces her own process of discovery in the reading of poems.
•R'r's Scorpion Prize commentary, particularly Robert Grenier's--Scorpion Prize #22, R'r 11.1--so refreshing
•Jack Galmitz's Views, a group of essays which includes discussions of a whole body of work by a single poet--we need more of this.
•Phil Rowland's introduction to Lakes and Now Wolves, Scott Metz's collection.

I do not agree with everything said in these various writings but all have connected me deeply with the value of haiku .

It is actually other types of critical writing about ELH that I am most interested in--writing that moves beyond reviews of individual poems and books.

Though they concentrate more on Japanese poetry, Hiroaki Sato, Makoto Ueda, and Haruo Shirane all have offered us invaluable insights in some essays that address English-language haiku.

Below, I have made a brief list of the types of things (from recent publication) I would most especially welcome more of. Again, though I do not agree with everything put forth in the following essays, they offer many invaluable points of consideration.

•Peter Yovu's "Do Something Different" (Frogpond 31:1,2008) -- This essay was timely, looking at the formal potentials of haiku in a way that expanded upon what had come before it. Written with the specific audience of the journal in mind.

• Charlie Trumbull's, "Meaning in Haiku", (FP 35:3, 2012)-- another timely essay with the journal's readership in mind, very honestly and accessibly written.

•Ian Marshall's "Phenomenology and Haiku's Aesthetics of the Body: Or, Biking with Bashō and Merleau-Ponty"   (Frogpond Journal;Winter 2011, Vol. 34:1)--  Merleau-Ponty's philosophy is important to my own work and I am glad someone else recognizes its kinship to haiku.

•Jim Kacian's various essays about haiku, particularly "Haiku as Anti-story" (MH 42:1, 2011).

•Richard Gilbert's "Plausible deniability: Nature as Hypothesis in English‑language Haiku" contained in Poems of Consciousness-- I am deeply invested in teasing out haiku's relationship to "Nature" for myself, and so it was with curiosity and relief that I read this quirky, syncretic, philosophical questioning. I have been bugging Richard to develop it further.
And also The Disjunctive Dragonfly, the original essay and its recent expansion into a book.

• Jon Baldwin's "Qualities of Haiku (from Roland Barthes), ( MH 43:3, 2012)--I believe Baldwin has made another publication on Calmeo called "25 Ways of Looking at a Haiku", that is also based on the same, Barthes' recently translated, The Preparation of the Novel. I am a fan of Barthes in general and was pleased to learn more of what he had written about haiku.  Baldwin highlights well some of Bathes' more provocative interpretations about how haiku performs and supplies a nicely focused supplement to Empire of Signs.

•John Stevenson's "Haiku as Dimensional Object", (FP 36:3, 2013)--the creativity of this approach reminds me of Borges.

• Jane Reichold's Symbiotic Poetry-- I have not read this yet, but I am very curious. It is good to see haiku put in a larger context this way.

I'm sure there are other good examples, but this is long enough.


******************


Michael Dylan Welch


⫸Concerning haiku, how do you regard the current state of criticism? That is, criticism of individual poems and poets, of collections, anthologies etc., and also of the genre in general?

I think generally the state of criticism in haiku is okay, but not stellar. In years past (I think of the old Inkstone magazine), there were some reviewers who could be nasty and polemical, and I think they did that just to stir the pot. That's ultimately not what haiku needs, and comes across as whiny. Haiku needs deeper analysis and criticism. I remember one reviewer I had for Woodnotes who told me she always included something "negative" in each review "for balance." That appalled me. It seemed gratuitous, and was a shallow way to approach being balanced and well-reasoned (and the gratuitousness showed in her reviews, which I stopped commissioning for Woodnotes).

At the 30th anniversary Haiku Society of America retreat I organized in 1998, I remember something said by our featured guest speaker, Dana Gioia (famous for his "Can Poetry Matter" essay in The Atlantic, and later becoming chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, appointed by President Bush). In Dana's talk on "Perceptions of Haiku by Non-Haiku Poets," I remember him saying that the haiku community would do well do champion its best haiku poets and its best haiku books to non-haiku audiences. He quoted Nick Virgilio (not by coincidence--he's a fellow Italian), and said that Virgilio was a case in point, a poet worth promoting, and that we should find and promote other excellent haiku poets. So instead of writing a summary of the haiku poetics of leading haiku poets for Frogpond or Modern Haiku or the Haiku Foundation, how about writing such in-depth articles for leading non-haiku poetry journals? It would be harder to get published there, but that's exactly he point. We have to try harder, and aim higher. Dana's suggestion was that by promoting a few of our best haiku poets, we can generally raise the perception of haiku amid mainstream poetry. In addition, he said that unless a bad book of haiku is particularly prominent, why waste time reviewing bad or weak haiku books or saying negative things about them? That doesn't mean one should never review a bad book, but there's definitely something to be said about promoting what's good ahead of what's weak. This is not just an extension of what my mother always said: "If you can't say something nice, don't say it." Rather, it's a deliberate choice to celebrate what's excellent, perhaps even to the point of hiding (if that's the right word) what's not so good, at least in the context of mainstream poetry. I would tend to agree, as this sort of stance would help the haiku community get out of its own ghetto and to stop being so self-involved. But shucks, here I am telling this TO the haiku community, which is part of the problem.

One inherent problem with reviewing is that we're a small community, so we pretty much know each other, sometimes very well. That fact has the potential to inhibit honest reviewing if one needs to be critical, or can make for overly supportive reviews. So many reviews are not really about the book in question at all, but more about the relationship of the reviewer to the writer, at least among haiku books. Consequently, we might do well to solicit reviews of haiku books by non-haiku poets. Such acts might risk a reviewer not knowing what to look for in haiku (season words, juxtaposition, and so on), but I think it's worth the risk -- the best poems often work without such extrinsic knowledge. We should trust more outside reviewers to find the truth, or the failings, of our haiku.

⫸What more or different, if anything, would you like to see?

⫸As you see it, what role does the "haiku community" play in criticism? Would you like to see it play a different role? How so?

⫸Can you recall a review or any piece of critical writing which stands out for you as a model for what you might like to see more of?

Forgive me for mentioning one of my own pieces, but one I'd like to see myself live up to with future reviews is my review of the "Unswept Path" anthology. See https://sites.google.com/site/graceguts/reviews/recognizing-influences-the-unswept-path. Reviews that place content in a larger context are the ones that I most often prefer to read.

Critical writing is not just book reviews, of course. There are key pieces of criticism that can change our way of thinking, like the writing of Haruo Shirane, for example, and some of the writing of Richard Gilbert, when you dig through it (yes, for example, let's once and for all put an end to the use of the word "onji"). I've particularly enjoyed particular essays by Paul Miller and Lee Gurga, and was proud to have published The Nick of Time: Essays on Haiku Aesthetics by the late Paul O. Williams, which contains many fine models for anyone to follow when writing critically, in terms of careful, fresh thinking mixed with clarity and accessibility without being needlessly complex. (I now have copies of the book available for sale again.) I also have a closet interest in using library and Internet resources to find academic papers and dissertations on haiku (Japanese, usually), and these often serve as objective models on analysis that are well worth emulating. I routinely discover gems of scholarship by excellent writers who write about haiku very well yet are nearly always completely removed from the English-language haiku scene. They're writing about Japanese haiku, of course, so they have no need to be involved with English-language haiku, or even be aware of it. But in contrast, I believe one of our best writers about haiku, Makoto Ueda, has benefitted by deliberately keeping his finger on the pulse of English-language haiku; he subscribed to Woodnotes, Frogpond, Modern Haiku and a few other journals, and you could see their influence in his translations (and he mentioned this in at least one of his books). Ultimately, criticism, whether by fellow poets or by non-poets, is a symbiosis with the poets. I believe life, art, and poetry, is best when it's a balance between the head and the heart. E. E. Cummings reminded us that "feeling is first," but he didn't say that feeling is all that matters. Analysis counts too, and that's why criticism is important for all arts, including haiku.


*************


Allan Burns


looking deeper
and deeper into it
the great beech

—John Wills


Haiku criticism at its best is that kind of looking directed at haiku itself.

The principal function of such criticism is to help readers see what's happening in haiku (both individual poems and the genre) more clearly so that they come into a deeper appreciation of its many subtleties. Criticism aims for both elucidation and evaluation so as to provide readers with a sense of orientation within the ongoing flood of production. It must combine keen perceptions with wide experience and should also remind us that reading haiku is itself an art. Henry James once described the critic as "the real helper of the artist, a torchbearing outrider, the interpreter, the brother." As James demonstrates, the best critics are often practitioners. But the history of literature also shows that good critics are even rarer than good artists.

I'll mention just a few examples of English-language haiku criticism (a field still very much in its infancy) that stand out for me.

A pioneering work and one unlikely ever to lose its significance is Harold G. Henderson's Haiku in English (Charles E. Tuttle, 1967). Henderson's writing was a model of lucid, generous, intelligent, flexible, and informed appreciation and discrimination. Early ELH was indeed lucky to have had him.

A significant and groundbreaking work in terms of examining the achievements of individual haiku poets is Barbara Ungar's Haiku in English (Stanford, 1978). (There are several books with this useful title!) It studies haiku and related genres by Amy Lowell, Jack Kerouac, and Michael McClintock and suggests what further work along these lines—which I believe will come in time—might be like.

Tom Lynch's essay "Intersecting Influences in American Haiku" (University of Nebraska, 2001) is an extremely valuable study of contemporary American haiku in relation to both classical Buddhist-influenced Japanese haiku and homegrown transcendentalism as initiated by Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman and transmitted through the work of the Imagists and the Beats. We could use more such studies that connect haiku to larger literary currents.

For its close readings of individual haiku, Martin Lucas's Stepping Stones (British Haiku Society, 2007), with a focus exclusively on British haiku, is a suggestive and insightful work.

Two ambitious and stimulating essays of fairly recent vintage that have examined and challenged prominent trends within haiku composition generally are Peter Yovu's "Do Something Different" (Frogpond 31.1, 2008) and Lucas's "Haiku as Poetic Spell" (Presence 41, 2010).

For compact histories of ELH (and by virtue of their emphases literary histories are also always works of criticism), there are Charlie Trumbull's "The American Haiku Movement" (Modern Haiku 36.3, 2005 and 37.1, 2006) and Jim Kacian's "An Overview of Haiku in English" (the afterword of Haiku in English—there's that title again!—W. W. Norton, 2013, edited by Jim, Phil Rowland, and me). We await the first book-length history of ELH.

Of course, these are just a few touchstones. I'm not trying to compile a bibliography.

I'll close by mentioning two works that I believe have done something quite rare by elucidating the sublime and transcendental potential of haiku art: Eric Amann's monograph The Wordless Poem (1969) and Robert Spiess's A Year's Speculation on Haiku (Modern Haiku Press, 1995).


**********


Bruce Ross

                                               
                                                        Haiku Criticism

Is it in the Japanese spirit to have haiku criticism? Yes. Each school has its own poetics that is expressed in their discussion of haiku. Is it in the spirit of the rest of the world to have haiku criticism? Yes and no. When honest, this latter criticism does or should connect with understanding what haiku is as a poem. Some of this latter criticism is a repetition of even the earliest, though valid, non-Japanese criticism. In Japan haiku criticism has tended to be impressionistic or, shall we say poetic, within the cultural and formal elements of haiku, perhaps related to how haiku has always been practiced in given haiku groups. In the worldwide justly so fascination with haiku, the most widely practiced poem, wild and wooly attempts at criticism have occurred. The individual haiku and lifework of a give haiku poet should be at the center of haiku criticism. Beyond that, attention to what stands out in a given haiku that makes it an engaging aesthetic experience should be a focal point of haiku criticism. All this should be predicated on an understanding of haiku form and its subject matter. In most adaptations of poetic form (changing the meter, rhyme, and idiom of a sonnet as with E. E. Cummings, for example), the basic qualities of that form are nonetheless present. With Shiki's working out the nature of modern haiku, the response to more radical approaches to such haiku (phrase length and number, psychological approaches, etc.) was, Do what you want but why call it haiku? So implicit in haiku criticism is an understanding of that question. Is such a question being addressed in contemporary haiku? Not really. Certain presentations of psychological idioms (some no more than a mental phrase), non-Basho-like "lightness" of simplistic representation, telegraph-like phrasing, lengthening of line lengths as "poems," and the like occur as winners of contests and are frequently published in major journals, often in a freewheeling way, as if an experiment is being carried out with the form at the expense of the form. As the modern call of free verse, form is never more than an extension of content, is baldly applied to haiku, something is lost and nothing is gained other than a too short poem. A look at what makes haiku unique, perhaps as a special form of metaphor or "absolute metaphor," if you will, should be part of that question asked two centuries ago.

Criticism is the subject under scrutiny for Field Notes 5. To get things started, we asked panelists to have a go at this difficult matter. They were up to it, and we hope you are too. Jump in.

Penny Harter


a spray of dogwood
in the antique vase—
grandmother's birthday   

[Published in tri-fold brochure, A Spray of Dogwood, for Haiku Canada conference, 2007.]


in each jar
of peach preserves
family stories

[Published in a little book Terry Ann Carter designed, but can't remember its title or year.]


so sweet, this
unripe plum warmed
by your hand

[Published on-line in NaHaiWriMo for February/March 2013]


        The Resonance Around Us

As we walk through this field, coarse grasses
vibrate around our ankles. Listen, we are already
in the sky, its rising glissando trembling in the
hollows of our bones—our bones that might be
wind chimes hanging from the trees, clattering
like a hard rain.

Tonight it will snow, each crystal a tuning fork
for the other, each of our upturned faces echoing
the quiet ticking flakes that home on us.

Even those things we deem silent—dead weeds
nodding by the barn, the piles the horses drop
as they drift through the pasture, steam rising
from each before it cools—even these
are singing in their spheres.

Listen, and you might hear the choir of atoms,
those unseen constellations that make flesh,
flickering on and o as they resonate with
the dead who float beside us, their substance
oscillating faster than we apprehend.

Just now some bird that knows the notes
of twilight opened its beak to offer a brief
harmony, and as the dark descends in solemn
chords, a chorus of plum clouds begins to hum
on Earth's horizon.
___________________________________




                                 Winter Stars

My neighbor fills her winter garden with oaktag cut-outs of red and
yellow stars—hangs them from her bird feeder or glues them atop the
planting sticks she's left in the dirt between withered blooms. Yesterday,
she knocked on my door, and I opened it to find her hands overflowing
with stars—each hole-punched and threaded with yarn—a new constellation
for these days of early dark.

'These are for you to hang places,' she said simply, knowing of my need
for joy this Christmas season. As we smiled and hugged one another, I
received them in my cupped hands. Now stars dangle from my doorknobs
and brighten shadowed corners—an unexpected gift of light.

moon splinters
on the river—the glint
of ice floes


***


Rebecca Lilly


blue asters
God grant me
the serenity

Christopher Patchel Turn, Turn


***


Mark Harris


I have two poems to offer you.

The first is by Peter Yovu.


calm sea
teaching my son
the dead man's float


Peter's poem harbors a foreboding, one shared by most parents, and yet it is also about teaching and touching (holding up), about love and letting go, a gift.

As for me, this poem of mine comes first to mind.


deep snow
           in a dream, I find
           her password in


***


Allan Burns


my dying gift . . .
the myriad leaves
of summer

John Wills, mountain (1993)


***


Richard Gilbert



A second gift is a Ted Talk on sustainability, by Tim Jackson (2010)
Tim Jackson: An economic reality check
http://www.ted.com/talks/tim_jackson_s_economic_reality_check.html

Here is some background information and his book to match:

"Prosperity Without Growth" by Tim Jackson
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosperity_Without_Growth
"Prosperity Without Growth (2009) is a book by author and economist Tim Jackson. It was originally released as a report by the Sustainable Development Commission (SDC). The study rapidly became the most downloaded report in the Commission's nine-year history when it was launched earlier in 2009. The report was later that year fully revised and published by Earthscan. By arguing that "prosperity – in any meaningful sense of the word - transcends material concerns", the book summarizes the evidence showing that, beyond a certain point, growth does not increase human well being. Prosperity without Growth
analyses the complex relationships between growth, environmental crises and social recession. It proposes a route to a sustainable economy, and argues for a redefinition of "prosperity" in light of the evidence on what really contributes to people's well being."

The book was described by Le Monde as "one of the most outstanding pieces of environmental economics literature in recent years" [5] and the sociologist Anthony Giddens referred to it as "a must-read for anyone concerned with issues of climate change and sustainability-- bold, original and comprehensive."

Prosperity without Growth has been translated into 14 languages.

What do you think? What does sustainability mean to you? What
definition do you think we should be aiming for?


***


Tom D'Evelyn



first snowfall—
the cat has not moved
from the window sill


A haiku is a gift for me. Literally. I must make room for it, it's a process of cleaning, emptying, preparing room. In a second sense, the structure of haiku gives form to the metaphysics of gift. The cut creates the transparency by which we see the things of the world as gratuitous, given, unnecessary finitudes, and all the more precious for that.



Michael McClintock



Who knows what hurts himself knows what hurts others is a kind of primitive wisdom that can be extracted, I think, from Peter Yovu's observation (above) about a poem: "Like love, it wounds. . . Wounding is its gift." Likewise, the brighter side is equally true: what comforts one comforts another.

each there
for the other ---
moon and pine

I have wondered, especially when depressed by purple elephants and other absurdities, if this poem of mine from about a decade ago may be little more than poetic treacle.  And yet it is this poem that, when I re-enter and contemplate its fundamental realization and simple image, brings me out of depression and opens my eyes again to the relationships --- seemingly boundless and infinite --- things have toward other things and to ourselves, in our consciousness and experience of the material universe, through our senses and cognitive faculties. It may not be much of a poem but it is my personal touchstone and seems to re-center me before the open gift of existence each time I might feel the box is closed, the door shut, and nihilism is the only philosophy left that makes a particle of sense.

The loving inter-dependence we witness in things, that "being there for the other," is found in this poem by John Wills:

spring flood . . .
a small toad riding
an oak twig

We share a lot with that toad, in that moment, do we not?  Men likewise grasp and ride twigs.  And consider, no less, the lowly twig, and the role it plays in the lives of creatures of all kinds everywhere it exists on the planet. Eliminate twigs from the picture of life on earth and you must take away almost everything else, too. Wills was an empath and could sense the toad mind, I think.

And here, again, in this poem by Wills, wherein he names it "beauty" and shows the gift of it for what it is, which we immediately recognize without explanation:

the beauty
of the summer flowers . . .
first day of autumn

The human being likes to over-think the simple and is, I suppose, generally wary of these "gifts" that are in fact all around us --- in plain sight as well as disguised or hidden in some surprising, unexpected context --- as in the poem above, where all those flowers are dying off.

I'll leave the last word in this seam of naturalist philosophy to the poet Issa and his famous translator, David G. Lanoue, found this morning in Issa's Untidy Hut [posted 18 Dec 2013 07:30 AM PST]:

nightingale--
even his shit
gets wrapped in paper

The absurdity in Issa's poem has within it a vision of the world wherein sadness and rage cannot overwhelm us.


***


Angelee Deodhar


Here are two I feel fit the season.
Both are from The Scent of Music edited by Marlene Buitelar.


failing eyesight-
we sing only the carols
we know by heart

Beverley George

silent night
the singing hands
of the deaf child

Jerry Kilbride