Is the Clock Ticking on Haiku?

[beagset]

Hi Don and All,
  what I like about Lorin's poem: one phenomena exists side by side with the other. In other words,
correspondence. It is image rhyme.

  dish rag thin
  day moon thin


paul

[Lorin]

 Thanks, Paul.

If a reader then went from there to suspect that, not only does a day moon look thin and a bit worn against the sky and the actual, literal dish rag is wearing thin (the correspondence between the two images, as you say)  but there also might be something about the dishwasher that could be wearing thin too (his/her patience with dishwashing, perhaps?) they wouldn't be far wrong.  ;)

(this is metonym, btw...when a thing represents the person it's associated with as well as having it's ordinary, literal meaning)

ploughing on
  through a storm of bulldust –
    the horned moon

- paper wasp,Summer 2010 , vol 16, no 1(March 2010)

I doubt that this ku would've been published anywhere but in Australia.  ;D

(bulldust has both a literal and a colloquial meaning)

http://media.photobucket.com/image/bulldust/JobMattijssen/Camping%20Dec2007-2/TrafficsignbulldustDSC01765_resize.jpg?o=11

- Lorin

[Larry Bole]

Dear Don,

You write: "Do we need more than kigo such as keywords, season reference and more to keep haiku alive and well for future generations?"

I don't know if anyone has mentioned this already, but my understanding is that "kigo" and "seasonal reference" are the same thing.

Larry Bole

[Lorin]

Dear Don,

You write: "Do we need more than kigo such as keywords, season reference and more to keep haiku alive and well for future generations?"

I don't know if anyone has mentioned this already, but my understanding is that "kigo" and "seasonal reference" are the same thing.

Larry Bole

Kigo and 'seasonal reference', in my understanding, were not originally the same thing in Japan, nor were they until relatively recently. The concept of kigo is bound up with official approval: eg a seasonal reference is not a kigo until it is included in an approved saijiki. This may not be all that relevant in Japan in modern times, since so many new kigo have been added in the past 100 years.

It is relevant to EL haiku, though, since EL haiku is not centred on a monoculture, such as Japan. Christmas, for example , is like a kigo in the sense that it indicates a cultural season for many groups throughout the English -speaking world (and elsewhere) on the same calendar date, but it is not an indicator of a point in the natural cycle of the seasons.

For example, this ku of mine includes reference to both the cultural 'season' and the natural season, but it does not have two kigo. The two references would clash in Japan, but they don't where I live:

silent night
the shrill counterpoint
of cicadas

- A Wattle Seedpod, PostPressed 2008; Haiku Calendar 2011 (Snapshot Press, 2010).

"Dolls' Festival", like all kigo, show both the cultural 'season' and the natural season that the festival occurs in, in Japan and it is listed (along with hundreds of other words including 'air conditioner') in the official saijiki.

In the English-speaking world, even in the various regions of the English-speaking world, there are no officially approved saijiki, to date. Who would be the body of experts appointed to approve the entries?

- Lorin

[chibi575]

Hi Lorin,

Why concern yourself with kigo if you're not writing haiku?

The kigo question is rather remote given the type of poems being written without it.  Mix-match, cut uncut... what does it matter if you're not writing haiku.  I think this is very freeing for modern poets that are writing a new form of lyrical poetry.  Sure, the poet may be aware of haiku and its component usage, but, really why bother?  I enjoy many of the poems created this way. (It may cross your mind that this is sarcastic, but, I assure you it is really the way I feel and it is not sarcasm).

I think we here as foundation members should be and are moving on to a wider and freer form.

I have presented my approach (if it ain't Japanese... it ain't haiku) but I do not and can not recommend it for every poet (I should not).  It is simply my approach.

If you want to look up another Denis' oppinion and approach, google anything on Denis M. Garrison.  His approach is similar (not identical) to mine.  It may be his is more flexible, a bit.

Write away!! Is what I say!

ciao... chibi

PS I recommend reading and writing.  A healthy harmony of both is best.

[AlanSummers]

Hi Dennis,

Glad to see a light but no less challenging viewpoint.  ;-)

Whatever poets label themselves as, and label their work as, we should embrace polite challenges from people like you, Viva Las Chiba! ;-)

I've enjoyed our sparring, and you have been both articulate and generous, thank you.

Alan

[chibi575]

That's Viva Las Chibi! to you Alan  ;D

Your generousity and enthusiasm is stellar!

(Ouch!  It hurts when you break eachothers arms patting eachother on the back, eh?)

[AlanSummers]

Hi Dennis,

I feel praise is needed when someone posts a challenging post that is polite, contains humor, and makes the reader look at themselves and their work in a new light.

Well done! ;-)

Alan

[Larry Bole]

Lorin, et al:

I stand corrected regarding 'kigo'. I just came across an essay by Richard Gilbert, "Kigo Versus Seasonal Reference in Haiku: Observations, Anecdotes and a Translation," in which he distinguishes between Japanese 'kigo' and Engish-language haiku (ELH) 'seasonal references'.

Gilbert points out that 'kigo' also has a cultural component for the Japanese, as well as a seasonal component, whereas 'seasonal references' don't necessarily have a cultural component for English-language haikuists.

I would, however, like to add that 'kigo' also has a 'literary tradition' component in addition to a cultural component for the Japanese. I base this opinion on a discussion of 'kigo' by Kooji Kawamoto in his book, "The Poetics of Japanese Verse: Images, Structure, Meter."

Here are some of Kawamoto's comments on 'kigo':

The use of old 'waka' words was therefore, not inconsistent with 'haikai's' effort to renovate traditional poetry. The reliance upon classical poetic diction does not mean that 'haiku' was a slave to long-standing conventions. On the contrary, the legitimacy of the 'haiku' as a full-fledged poetic genre was made possible by the existence of a poetic lexicon comprising thoroughly stereotyped expressions evolved over the course of a thousand-year old tradition. Within this tradition, the mere mention of a single word automatically translated into a specific complex of thoughts, emotions, and associations.

The class of words known as 'kigo' or seasonal words, provides the representative example of such poetic diction. .... However, it was not until after the maturing of 'renga' that ARTIFICIAL [emphasis mine] 'kigo' classifications systematically and inseparably yoked particular seasons to particular phenomenon---including those which are not (in reality) exclusive to a single season. In other words, it was through the discretionary rules of 'renga' that things like the moon, deer, and fog became inextricably linked to autumn.

... The justifications for these classifications derived from antecedent texts, particularly the dominant tendencies found in works that were widely regarded as superior poems. Here again, concern was not with reality, per se, but with a literary world---mostly poetic in nature---and the relative position of a word within a network of traditional literary expressions. It is true that large numbers of new 'kigo' were established during the age of 'haikai'. Yet even in these instances poets continued to apply the same fundamental crieteria. As a result, any newly established 'kigo' generally remained subject to strong regulating influences of the initial and therefore paradigmatic verses in which they first appeared---regardless of later changes in reality. [It is interesting to note here that, at least at the beginning of 'haikai', what was considered a 'kigo' was not set in stone---new 'kigo' could be added to the lists.]

[end of excerpt]


In my opinion, it's too bad that English-language poetry, from its beginnings in the British Isles, didn't develop a tradition in which poems, at least those that were about nature or used nature as image/metaphor, weren't classified by season and published in anthologies that way. There is also a bias in the English-language poetic tradition against using stereotyped phrases and expressions. So the best we can do in the English-language poetic tradition (of which ELH is, or should be, a part), in an effort to not totally disengage from the Japanese haiku tradition when writing ELH, is to use seasonal references in a way that hopefully gain resonance by repeated occurance in haiku of distinction, and also have resonance as those seasonal references may remind us of well-known poems in the English-language poetic tradition.

But it's obvious that 'seasonal references' will never have the same impact in ELH as 'kigo' has in Japanese haiku.

Larry Bole

[Larry Bole]

Dear Don,

Some random observations:

Sturgeon's Revelation (Sturgeon's Law) states that "90% of everything is crud." This probably applies to haiku as much as anything else. I suspect that most every writer of ELH has written their fair share of bland haiku, and that in any given era of haiku writing, Japanese or English, the number of bland haiku far outweighs the number of interesting haiku. And I recognize the difference between a haiku that may personally appeal to me, but objectively is not that interesting in relation to other haiku on the same topic.

Can one avoid repetition in haiku?  If one looks at the 10,000 or so haiku of Issa that David Lanoue has now translated online (I hope I have the number correct), one finds that often Issa would write a haiku, and then write one, two or more haiku that are pretty much the same as the first one, with only minor and often insignificant differences.

It happens now and then that someone writes a haiku that is almost the same as a previously published haiku, without any knowledge of the previous one. I vaguely remember reading once that there is even a term for this in Japanese, although I can't remember what it is, and could be mistaken about that.

I recently wrote a haiku (kind of mediocre):

day after day
after day cherry blossoms
about to drop


This was written observing a stand-alone cherry tree in my city neighborhood, one on which the blossoms seemed to last forever or, at any rate, longer than one would expect.  And then I happened to be looking in Robin Gill's "Cherry Blossom Epiphany," and found these:

ippon no hikazu o tamesu sakura kana

counting the days
one tree stays in bloom:
it's cherry time!

Ginkou, 1778; trans. Gill

chiru made wa sono hi sono hi no sakura kana

until they drop
they are cherry blossoms
day after day

Shihan, 17c; trans. Gill


Oh well....

Maybe I can improve my haiku:

day after day
after day cherry blossoms
that should have fallen!

But as others have pointed out, one can notice a particular aspect of something that other people have seen but paid no attention to. Or find an interesting arrangement of words that are not quite the same as anyone else has used to describe a familiar scene or event.

Here is an example of two different haiku about cherry petals falling on food:

ki no moto ni shiru mo namasu mo sakura kana

Blossom Viewing

beneath a tree,
     both soup and fish salad:
          cherry blossoms!

Basho, trans. Barnhill


amenbo ni bettari tsukishi sakura kana

plastered
to the lollipop
cherry petals

Issa, 1824; trans. Gill


If I'm sitting with Basho picnicing under a cherry tree, I'm not sure I would want to eat the food so elegantly decorated by falling cherry petals. But l'm licking Issa's lollipop!  Yum! 

About Issa's haiku, Gill says:

I am no relativist. I prefer this to petals in dog bowls, on dog shit, bean paste, (itself identified with shit), garbage or avaricious faces. The 'ku', perhaps old Issa's last word on the subject, adds something the others lack. Cherry petals, to my mind at least, resemble little lips. Need more be said?

[end of excerpt]

We will never run out of interesting ways of saying things, if we cultivate what I call a haiku-mindset that, aware of what's been said before, strives to see things afresh. As Basho says in 'Oi no kobumi' (variously: Knapsack Notebook, Record of a Travel-worn Satchel, Notes in a Straw Satchel, etc.):

Nothing one sees is not a flower... (trans. Barnhill)

There is nothing you have in mind that cannot be turned into a flower...(trans. Ueda)

Anywhere a poet looks, there are flowers...(trans. Fumiko Yamamoto)


--Larry Bole

P.S. Regarding trying to say something new:

The Poets Agree to Be Quiet by the Swamp

They hold their hands over their mouths
And stare at the stretch of water.
What can be said has been said before:
Strokes of light like herons' legs in the cattails,
Mud underneath, frogs lying even deeper.
Therefore the poets may keep quiet.
But the corners of their mouths grin past their hands.
They stick their elbows out into the evening,
Stoop, and begin the ancient croaking.

--David Wagoner

[AlanSummers]

Hi Larry,

Yes, agreed, there's a lot of bland haiku, partly because writers don't stretch beyond a good draft into a finished haiku in my belief.  Many of us have been guilty. ;-)

re repetitions, there's various kinds, and it is traditional in Japanese haiku and pre-haiku to add allusions which is an altogether different thing of course.

One type of repetition was penned as deja-ku by Michael Dylan Welch:
http://sites.google.com/site/graceguts/essays/some-thoughts-on-deja-ku

all my best,

Alan

[Don Baird]

I want to take a second here and thank you all for your time, effort and comments.  You have created an incredibly interesting thread of which challenges minds and concepts for writing haiku in English.

I'm enjoying everyone's thoughts and participation very much.  Thank you!

best to you all,

Don

[Lorin]

Hi Lorin,

Why concern yourself with kigo if you're not writing haiku?

I have presented my approach (if it ain't Japanese... it ain't haiku)
ciao... chibi

Hi Dennis,
             My short answer is that I am writing haiku, EL haiku. Also I read haiku, both translations of Japanese haiku and EL haiku. Kigo is a fundamental issue. I believe that those of us who are writing and reading EL haiku need to know about kigo, to understand what it is and what it is not. My viewpoint regarding what is haiku and what is not is different to yours. Differences in outlook and opinion are to be expected in discussion between adults.

The reasons why I concerned myself with kigo in my previous post are simple:

1. Larry had posed a question.
2. This is the 'In Depth Haiku: Free Discussion Area' forum (some of us refer to it as the 'adult's' discussion forum)

My question to you in response to yours is, "Why concern yourself with an 'In Depth' discussion forum if you're not interested in or capable of entering into discussion?"

- Lorin

[Lorin]

Lorin, et al:

I stand corrected regarding 'kigo'. I just came across an essay by Richard Gilbert, "Kigo Versus Seasonal Reference in Haiku: Observations, Anecdotes and a Translation," in which he distinguishes between Japanese 'kigo' and Engish-language haiku (ELH) 'seasonal references'.

Gilbert points out that 'kigo' also has a cultural component for the Japanese, as well as a seasonal component, whereas 'seasonal references' don't necessarily have a cultural component for English-language haikuists.

I would, however, like to add that 'kigo' also has a 'literary tradition' component in addition to a cultural component for the Japanese. I base this opinion on a discussion of 'kigo' by Kooji Kawamoto in his book, "The Poetics of Japanese Verse: Images, Structure, Meter."

Here are some of Kawamoto's comments on 'kigo':

Larry Bole

Hi Larry,
            The reply function has disappeared here, and only the quote function remains!

Yes, the literary origins and basis of kigo are what allows kigo to be so richly allusive.

I'm also interested in renga/ renku, in English, another good reason to know about kigo. I'd say that in general, the majority of us writing haiku in English have only a 'rough-and-ready' concept of kigo. (and that includes me, though I've been pondering it and trying to understand more about it over the years)

One thing I'd like to know more about is the ho'ni (hon'i?), the designated (based on prior literature) 'essential meaning/ tone' of kigo, but I've not been able to find much. I'd be grateful if you or anyone could point me towards any discussions about this in English.

It is possible that something like 'native' kigo will evolve in EL haiku and renku, over time, but in relation to international EL haiku and renku the difficulties involved are that the EL world is not a monoculture: within the broad area of English Lit. there are works from England, America, Australia, South Africa etc.  This doesn't make it impossible; it makes the issues difficult, but interesting.

- Lorin

[Lorin]

ah, found the 'reply' button... "hidden in broad daylight"  8) at the bottom of the page.

"Can one avoid repetition in haiku? " - Larry

...or even in poetry more generally?

I really enjoyed this poem that you posted, Larry:

'The Poets Agree to Be Quiet by the Swamp'

They hold their hands over their mouths
And stare at the stretch of water.
What can be said has been said before:
Strokes of light like herons' legs in the cattails,
Mud underneath, frogs lying even deeper.
Therefore the poets may keep quiet.
But the corners of their mouths grin past their hands.
They stick their elbows out into the evening,
Stoop, and begin the ancient croaking.

--David Wagoner

Love it! It's an excellent poem! ... but I can't help but recall this ku of mine:

lily pond:
  another poet
  clears his throat             

- 3Lights gallery, senryu, April 2009

Had I read the David Wagoner poem prior to writing that ku, I doubt very much that I would have written it at all, let alone submit it anywhere for publication.

Michael Dylan Welch, in his essay 'Selected Examples of Deja-ku', gives these three examples of haiku for consideration re the possibility  of 'cryptomnesia', reading a haiku then forgetting it, so unintentionally plagiarising:


hot summer night—

the click of the dog's toenails

on the kitchen floor

               Michael Cecilione


distant thunder—

the dog's toenails click

against the linoleum

               Gary Hotham

snowed in

the dog clicks

from room to room

               Roberta Beary

I'd read two of these haiku before I'd seen them in the context of MDW's, and one of them reminded me very much of the closing lines of a poem I'd been familiar with for a long time:

" . . .and I suppose, if there'd been such things as tape-recorders and I'd taped them
the birds would be nice enough to go back to, now that they're safely past
– but I don't think I'd bother returning the apples and cheese
I'd pinched from the family fridge, or try to explain
why I sneaked out before dawn, tip-toeing ( boots in hand) past
the outsize dogs on the verandah you could hear through the winter nights
prowling inside the house, their claws click-clacking on lino... "


from - 'A Footnote to Kendall', Bruce Dawe, from -Sometimes Gladness – 5th edition, 1997

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

MDW is calling for examples of similar haiku only, and we all can't be expected to have read every poem in English. But his focus does seem to imply that it's only 'deja-ku' in haiku that's of interest.

- Lorin