The Haiku Foundation Forums

Well, maybe nibbled at a little.

I wonder: what do those who are "new" to haiku make of these two poems? Do they challenge what you understand haiku to be? Aoyagi seems to use the world as an entry point into her own life. Senegal is pretty explicit about emotion. How do you respond to that? I don't want to redirect the purpose of this thread, but to engage some who might be reluctant to say how they feel about these poems. Yes?

Lorin,

thanks, I'll check this out. I'm a big fan of All in the Mind, by the way. Natasha Mitchell spoke with Iain McGilchrist recently, as you may know.

Mark, I'm slowly (being a slow reader and generally slow) swimming into the depths of Iain Mc Gilchrist's The Master and his Emissary: The Divided Brain and the making of the Western World. I wonder if you know it? He touches, from several points of view including (especially) the neurological, on matters such as language, music, the body-- on how the Right Hemisphere is the relational, context-providing part of the brain, and the left operates primarily via re- presentation of parts. It takes the world in and seals it off as its own---- it does not have the ability to see the "whole". The LH is connected to "handedness"-- most of us are right handed-- it is what wants to "grasp" and use. I am still uncertain how this informs my own tendencies to, while enjoying wrapping a story-- a context?-- around a haiku,  to nonetheless feel it is limiting. I want to go to the place prior to story and language even-- to music and the body. I would probably have to say more about McGilchrist's ideas to make that more clear.

Both these poems, but especially Aoyagi's, have tugged at me since I made my comments above. Cid Corman has said about haiku that it is "a form of poetry... where each word is a matter of life and death". With this in mind, I look at the line "ants out of a hole"—each word a matter of life and death, "ants" no less significant than "hole". Something out of nothing. It strikes me on that very existential level, and the urge to make a story out of this, to imagine particular ants emerging from a particular opening, diminishes the power. Of course, I have numerous associations with "ants", some informed by the what follows in the poem, including the appearance of (musical) notes on a page, of creatures, as someone noted, associated with industry (not creatures generally associated with play). I also think of a colony of ants as an organism, the individual as cells, neurons let's say, in constant communication. Thoughts arising in the brain. Memories. But mostly, the thought that arises in my brain is the one central to philosophy: why is there something rather than nothing?

In what follows it is the word "the" which gets to me. It carries enormous weight, and if anyone knows another poem where the word "the" is so freighted, I would love to know it. I believe it is clear that the author does not expect the question she asks to be answered. Even if it could be, the answer would be meaningless. It seems to be how the mind works though: there tend to be questions below the ones we ask. like: when I did I stop regarding a beloved childhood object as mine, or even,  as me... when did Thou become it? The poem itself answers the question: it has arisen out of observation and memory, by a kind of playing, on a larger instrument, one with deeper notes.

I have found myself wondering: is this poetry or is it a psychological (and philosophical) provocation? I don't know if this question needs to be answered.

If the word "the" looms large in Aoyagi's poem, for me, the word "corpse" is, for different reasons, equally vast in Senegal's poem, and the word "cadaver" would not change my thoughts. It gives, by way of hyperbole bordering on the surrealistic, so miniscule a thing as a mosquito an emotional weight which might be comic were it not almost unbearable.

As images go, those in Aoyagi's poem are rather dry, thought provoking. Senegal's images are, by contrast, tidal. The former leads... to thought and memory; the latter pulls: at the heart, lungs, and throat. It is the very emotional gravity of the "mosquito corpses in the lamp"—the stillness of it—which finds its counterweight in the action of sobbing.

I'll just add this observation: where a great many haiku begin not so much with an image as a placemat on which to set an occasionally vivid dish, both Aoyagi's and Senegl's incorporate, or juxtapose if you will, two rich images: ants out of a hole/ a red toy piano; and, mosquito corpses in a lamp/ someone sobbing in a room. I guess I've made it clear how I feel about that.

These two poems present a strong contrast in the "what", or more to the point the "how" of haiku. Aoyagi's gives  a great deal to think about—to puzzle over. Senegal's gives a great deal to feel. It is not that each is totally devoid of the what and how of the other, but sufficiently that I wonder if some readers will find this challenge somewhat diagnostic, revealing the 'kind" of haiku they prefer.

I'd like to say a few thing about each, if only to find out what I think/feel.

Some haiku create a tension by both inviting and resisting interpretation. A poem which is easily "grasped" will be easily manipulated, or made to serve our own purposes. A poem which evades our grasp, or allows itself to be grasped only to just as soon slip away, will maintain its own integrity and life. Seems to me this describes Aoyagi's poem, and in a different way, Senegal's as well.

The first line of Aoyagi's is both evocative and provocative: it's both concrete and abstract at once, depending on how you tilt your head. The word "hole" – its meaning, and even the sound of it-- is impossible to grasp—it is an absence. What is it an absence in?  The ground? A tree? The unconscious?
And yet "ants",  very present and real, emerge, and the poem then by a process of rapid association, "leaps" (see the discussion under David Grayson's "Mystery") to another place entirely, to an inwardness propelled by the question. Though the particulars are hers, they are not private. They are puzzling, but not exactly mysterious.

By inviting thought, the poet draws us into her world. Feeling may follow when we realize this. One interesting point: she says the red toy piano rather than my red toy piano. A great deal may be deduced—no—felt—by this choice. Thought gives way to feeling, to empathy, even if we are not quite clear what we are feeling.

Senegal's poem, is, I suppose, more direct. And yet, though it doesn't present a puzzle, it does present a mystery. (The latter begins with thought; the former begins with feeling).
I would say that Aoyagi's poem keeps a certain distance yet invites us to come closer into her reality. An observation—an event-- takes her, and us, into her personal history. Senegal's keeps a distance as well. It may or may not be strictly autobiographical. It originated, I'll surmise, with a feeling for which he found a powerful correlation. Something about this invites us deeper into ourselves. It may be as simple as the use of archetypes and feeling-words such as "corpse" and "sobbing"—the body responds to these before the mind does.

"...corpses in the lamp" is marvelous, and may give a clue, if one wishes to interpret, what the sobbing is for. All right, I won't be coy: if "lamp" is an archetype for mind—for rational mind—one might intuit that "someone" is feeling the pain of a life where reason has trumped feelings, saps the blood and makes corpses of them—until that pain finally breaks through in sobs. That sobbing may allow  "someone" (you or me) to break free from the "room"-- from whatever keeps us held in.

Thanks, David, for the challenge, but I cannot choose one over the other. A half vote for each.

In posting a favorite poem:

                            Window reflection--
                        The baby sparrow sitting,
                            Listening to glass.

I mistakenly attributed it to Etheridge Knight. It was, in fact, written by Stephen Ziliak, whose piece,
"Haiku Economics", appears in the Jan '11 edition of Poetry. My apologies to him.

The poem to me skillfully balances, or merges, objective and subjective "realities". I feel, without hesitation, that something like sparrow-and-human consciousness come together here. And the play of sounds gives it all a beautiful body to happen in. And happen upon.

A favorite of mine is not one which was published in '10 but is new to me, as of a few days ago. It is by Etheridge Knight, reprinted in an article by Stephen Ziliak in the latest Poetry. He says, referring to the brevity of haiku: "This constraint, though severe, is more than offset by a boundless freedom to feel".
He then offers the poem

                            Window reflection--
                         The baby sparrow sitting,
                             Listening to glass