Sailing 14: What kind of sword do you carry?

[Lorin]

ok, in terms of 'vigorous' or 'effective' language (I, too, prefer 'effective', especially in relation to Basho's 'sword' comments) we could say that the sounds of the words and the rhythm that asserts itself has as much to do with how the poems come to mean, how we infer meaning, as the sense of the words (the words' denotations & connotations).

In 'nonsense' poetry, the sounds and rhythms, along with syntax, are the major ways that we infer meaning. Who can say that 'The Jabberwocky' is not a vigorous poem or that the language is not vigorous?

"One two! One two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!"

"'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe."

Everything available comes into how a poem comes to mean or how we derive meaning from a poem, including register and dialect. Consider how expectations are upset & undermined if we read "for ol' lang syne" somewhere instead of the traditional "for auld lang syne". It leaps out as an odd cross-cultural mix, doesn't it? (I get the scent of moonshine rather than of a mellow single malt, just for a start.)

'Image' in poetry is not only visual image:  image involves as many of the senses as the writer has worked into it and in whatever combination. One obvious, but interesting thing about Jim Kacian's

the high fizz nerve the low boom blood dead silence

is that there is not one visual image in the whole thing. It means as much in complete darkness, or the very fact that there is not one visual image gives a sense of darkness to the poem, which certainly nudged my interpretation along the lines it went. We rely to an unusual extent on sound and rhythm here, though we need to know the meaning of the words.

(Translating haiku must be a nightmare! )

Peter's



mosquito she too
                       insisting insisting she
                       is is is is is


                                      — Peter Yovu

plays with sound and rhythm in English in a way which (playfully) enacts his claim about the mosquito 'insisting'. ("I zzzz therefore I am" ?)

Michael McClintock, in 'a little inn', has used sound more subtly to help create an ambivalent undertow to the visual image of a quaint and homey little inn.

I hope I don't come across as a mimsy borogove.

- Lorin

modified: unbolded 'Peter's'.

[Peter Yovu]

the high fizz nerve the low boom blood dead silence

and 

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

are surely effective in different ways, each using vigorous language, but differently. One is centrifugal, the other centripetal. One is jazz, the other folk.

One way Kacian's resists interpretation is: it is difficult to conjure a picture, or image, though one is, of course, free (or even bound) to do so. But it likely will frustrate our haiku "training", which in some instances prompts statements like: "I really like this because it reminds me of the time. . ." .

I probably need to get clearer on what I mean when I say "sound-image". It is not just that the sound itself (the music) conjures meaning (which may parallel or go counter to what the words signify), but that it exerts meaning even below the usual sense of "image", prior to it, maybe, as someone said, on the level of intuition. I may be off in this formulation. And maybe it is just to say something like: I don't know what it means, but I can feel it. Iain MacGilchrist in The Master and His Emissary makes a case for language having its roots in music. Perhaps I can come back with more of that later.

Could we say that "the high fizz" is an expressionistic poem? A definition:
a style of painting, music, or poetry in which the artist or writer seeks to express emotional experience rather than impressions of the external world.

Or could we say it is impressionistic: a literary or artistic style that seeks to capture a feeling or experience rather than to achieve accurate depiction. (Definitions quickly grabbed from my Mac's dictionary).

I think it has some of both, but in either case (or both) it does something relatively rare. Certainly a "standard" description of haiku would not lead one in either direction.

One way I look at the poem is that it has (consciously or unconsciously) taken, let's say, an "accurate depiction"  of  the "external world" and stripped it down to the wire—"close to the bone" or nerve, where it is all electricity, and can only register as some form of shock, or startling.

I would be curious if you know of other poems that work in a similar way.

[sandra]

Just to pick up on Lorin's side reference to translation of poems ... John Carley has penned an article on this very topic (at least, from Japanese to English) for the last issue of Haiku NewZ. It is archived here:

http://www.poetrysociety.org.nz/node/578

[sandra]

This from the 2010 anthology of The Heron's Nest:


the day begins
descendants of dinosaurs
darting, singing

- George Swede


I read this haiku, skipped to the next one, came back, read it again .... thought about it, moved on, came back ...

It's oddness finally claimed my full attention.

This poem seems to (cleverly) be part traditional and part something else, part something stripped back. A hybrid that surely shows its parent DNA but has also become an unpredictable colour.

[Chris Patchel]

Some interesting angles to consider 'high fizz' from, Peter. As for other examples I can think of poems, including some of my own, that tap more into gut feelings than the five senses. Or that describe things interior:

long night—
breathing until breathing
is just breathing
             
dawn
before there is any
tune in my head

(These two come to mind because I'm reading John Stevenson's Live Again).

But nothing occurs to me with the other similarities you described.

[hairy]

No examples come readily to mind, but being editor of a 1970s magazine
devoted to experimental poetry (primarily the "meta-poectic") I can vouch for the fact most of the experimental poets of that decade were concerned with "language transformation"- a radical redefinition of poetic possibilities and a return to the roots of civilization in order to show how much was lost in the conventions handed down from the  19th century. Ezra Pounds Cantos   comes to mind--probably as the major meta-poetic effort to establish some kind of dialetic between the forgotten (lost?) possibilities of the past and the unrealized language of the present. Confucus once said "make it new" whatever it is--a Provencal song...the configuration of birds on a prison-camp wire, etc.
I'm reminded of Gary Synder's oft quote(which I believe is relevant here): "each poem grows from an energy-mind-field-dance, and has its own inner grain. To let it grow, to let it speak for itself, is a large part of the work of the poet. A scary chaos fills the heart as spiritual breath--inspiration; and is breathed out into the thing-world as a poem. From there it must jump to the hearer's understanding. The wider the gap the more difficult; and the greater the delight when it crosses"--Gary Snyder.

Actually, renewals of poetry can come from any source. I remember reading an article called "New Words and Neologisms" by the psychiatrist David V Forest, includes a "thesaurus of coinages by a schizophrenic savant" with the following entry (which was defined by the patient): Stereotranslation:Solid change of language, solid changing of interpretation, word of overidolization. The most cherished words of English. Respected, cherished, lovable words, solid hard. Solid understanding. Cherishing, begetting. One word begets another, with similar meaning and opposite." WOW!  Hans Arp's "concrete art" comes to mind--"an elemental, natural, healthy art, which causes stars of peace, love and poetry to grow in the head and the heart." Much of what was once thought "insane" turns out to be the real data of primary consciousness that seeks a language, and after the arguments of linguists like Levi-Strauss we begin to learn that the "savage mind"is universal--buried beneath our cultural veils.

I'm rambling here, but I hope this sheds some light on the discussion at hand.

Al
 

[Peter Yovu]

Al, thanks very much for this. What you present could take this discussion in a number of directions, including the direction of the "shadow", which has been touched on elsewhere and no doubt will re-emerge at some point.

I wonder if you (and all/any) could say how Snyder's statement, which is new to me and very welcome, may apply to haiku, especially in light of the dance we are doing around and through and with "vigorous language".

Does haiku (in that word I wish to include the full spectrum of possibility, including, possibly, some wavelengths not currently apprehended by our "senses five" to borrow from Blake) grow from an "energy-mind-field-dance"?


I think this brings us "close to the bone", the place, perhaps, where as Art says: "the real data of primary consciousness. . . seeks a language".

It would be very easy here to slip into a conceptual swamp, but here goes...

To use the example of Jim's poem:

the high fizz nerve the low boom blood dead silence

could we say that this is language arising out of an "energy-mind-field dance", that it is language that "primary consciousness" has sought and found? That's asking a lot of it. Still...

What I've been thinking lately is that inherent in the DNA of haiku there are many layers, or levels. Some of these have been described, so my thought isn't new. Let's suppose that "sketches from life" is one level, somewhere near the surface, (which does not necessarily mean superficial, but without the pull of deeper levels even vaguely acting upon it, it probably will be-- and this is the state of much of what we see). Another deeper level would be-- what did Lee Gurga call it following Shiki?-- selective realism? followed by "truthfulness" which Gurga describes as "when a poet is able to use images of the exterior world to express his or her inner reality". This may seem an ultimate, but I don't believe so. There may be levels below, more primary. . .

I 'm not convinced that Jim's poem uses images from the outer world so much as it has substantially arisen from an interior state which has found the best language available to it, which inevitably will evoke conceptions of the outer world. And it may be that the language in this instance is more attuned to music than to meaning, at least in the usual sense of that word. In other words, it may be hovering pretty close to the bone, still pink. . .

Am I making too much of this? Maybe it would be too much to claim that this poem fully achieves some kind of status as arising directly from "primary consciousness", but I do think it speaks to the possiblity, and at least allows us (or me anyway) to consider some of the hidden or mostly inactive genes in haiku DNA, and to wonder what the source of that is.

I would say that all this relates directly to "vigorous language" as language which derives more from something prior to but not excluding mind-- an "energy-mind-field-dance".

I'll be looking for more poems in this neighborhood, but I may need help.

Edit: the following added: I want to say that I realize that this kind of exploration drives some people crazy, perhaps because they feel it overburdens what ought to be a simple and enjoyable pursuit. That's okay with me, and understandable. This stuff can get theoretical, and while I can hear numerous doors slamming around me, my hope is that some doors are discovered that apparently were not available before.

[hairy]

Hello Peter:   

wonder if you (and all/any) could say how Snyder's statement, which is new to me and very welcome, may apply to haiku, especially in light of the dance we are doing around and through and with "vigorous language

Being new to haiku (only a few months into--and then mostly senryu) I really can't comment as to how it might apply to haiku in a palpable, concrete way.

But I will say that I believe that (in key ways) William Blake provides an early image of the meta-poet. He created an expanded visual-verbal language--in order to bring about a revolution in consciousness.

Have you heard of Charles Olsen and his "Field Composition?" Here's a quote (from the 1950s I believe):

"From the moment [a poet] ventures into FIELD COMPOSITION--puts himself in the open--he can go by no track other than the one the poem under hand declares for itself. Thus he has to behave, and be, instant by instant, aware of some several forces just now beginning to be examined. . . --Charles Olsen

Olsen's talk about  "open" as opposed to "closed verse" derived from his concern with the whole matter of getting at the roots of speech and returning poetry to the primary energies of mind and body. Similar to the "concretists" he saw the main obstacles to the renewal of language (and consciousness) as a language problem (linguistics?).

And poets like Gary Snyder--in their translations of tribal poetry (and in their own work which utilizes similar structures), capture (reclaim?) areas of our own consciousness which--in my opinion--resonates with the atavistic roots of language.

I hope I'm not being too theoretical here--and as I study and delve more deeply into the "haiku experience" I hope to present more palpable examples that would reflect and exemplify what I have been talking about. However--upon request--I can provide numerous examples of meta-poems from the 1970s--but they are quite long and probably not within the purview of this discussion.

Al 

[Lorin]

"From the moment [a poet] ventures into FIELD COMPOSITION--puts himself in the open--he can go by no track other than the one the poem under hand declares for itself. Thus he has to behave, and be, instant by instant, aware of some several forces just now beginning to be examined. . ."

--Charles Olsen

in cold hell, in thicket
the gingko group
picks blackberries

- Lorin

...just for fun ...sort of.  :)

Admiring as I am of Olsen and some of his ideas, I much prefer Denise Levertov as an essayist in the general B.M. school.

...and re Olsen and his influence in 'the good old days ', even here in the Antipodes:

"   shot
                 by yr own forces . . . " - Charles Buckmaster, 1950 - 1972


- Lorin

modified: B.M. added, for clarity

[Lorin]

...that from memory, this from text:

"
. . .

Interiors,
and their registration

Words, form
but the extension of
content

Style, est verbum

The word
is image, and the reverend reverse is
Eliot

Pound
is verse

- 'ABCs,' from The Distances - Charles Olsen

[Lorin]

"From the moment [a poet] ventures into FIELD COMPOSITION--puts himself in the open--he can go by no track other than the one the poem under hand declares for itself. Thus he has to behave, and be, instant by instant, aware of some several forces just now beginning to be examined. . ."

--Charles Olsen

in cold hell, in thicket
the gingko group
picks blackberries

- Lorin

...just for fun ...sort of.  :)

Admiring as I am of Olsen and some of his ideas, I much prefer Denise Levertov as an essayist in the general B.M. school.

...and re Olsen and his influence in 'the good old days ', even here in the Antipodes:

" . . .
        shot
                 by yr own forces . . . " - Charles Buckmaster, 1950 - 1972


- Lorin

modified: B.M. added, for clarity
modified: ellipses before 'shot'

o, dear...sorry ...I stuffed this up by pressing 'quote'...then got rid of quote but don't know how to get rid of this superfluous post

[hairy]

Admiring as I am of Olsen and some of his ideas, I much prefer Denise Levertov as an essayist in the general B.M. school

As an essayist I tend to agree with Lorin; as to metapoets on the distaff side from the good ole' days I prefer Gertrude Stein & Laura Riding. Stein developed a new analytic syntax that brought to language process the multiplicity of perspectives on a single event which carried over into painting by Braque, Picasso and Juan Gris. Actually I consider her prose to be "metapoetry."
And related to her work is that of Laura Riding who tried to go "beyond the poetic as a literary category" and enter "the field of the general human ideal in speaking"; it was her conviction that she had pushed poetry to the breaking point by exposing the conflict "between the motive of humanly perfect word-use and that of artistically perfect word-use." ("I have written that which I believe breaks the spell of poetry"--Laura Riding). Ultimately she found truth and beauty to be irrenconcilable and actually gave up poetry after 1938--believing she had put art to the final litmus test, and it failed. 

I will end this with a passage from Robert Duncan--whose essays I also admired back in the 1960s-70s--more so than his actual poetry.

"...In one way or another to live in the swarm of human speech. This is not to seek perfection but to draw honey or poetry out of all things. After freud, we are aware that unwittingly we achieve our form. It is, whatever our mastery, the inevitable use we make of the speech that betrays to ourselves and to our hunters (our readers) the spore of what we are becoming. . . A longing grows to return to the open composition in which the accidents and imperfections of speech might awake intimations of human being"--Robert Duncan

Al

[hairy]

As a welcome relief--for those interested in viewing a bright young child (maybe 6 years old??) -in a meta-poetic spontaneous performance (note the basic rhythm and vigorous language--in this 10 minute outpouring) . And I concur: prob the reincarnation of the great scottish-American meta-poet Helen Adam!

A great vid! (I've watched it several times and remain awestruck)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Unl9JSmchwQ

[Peter Yovu]

I think we could have an interesting discussion in the Gertrude Stein-cubism-haiku "mindfield", and certainly there are now numerous examples of what could be called cubist haiku where several perspectives are presented simultaneously.

Personally, I would prefer to save that discussion for another Sailing-- though certainly any of us is free to get something going on other venues of the Forum.

Al writes about Charles Olsen's "concern with. . . returning poetry to the primary energies of mind and body", and of "poets like Gary Snyder. . . [who seek to] capture (reclaim) areas of. . . consciousness which. . . resonate with the atavistic roots of language".

I think this may relate to some things that Kaneko Tohta has spoken about, and which can be found in a new translation of a talk he gave which has been published by RMP under the title Poetic Composition on Living Things. One of the translators has this to say:

"A compelling aspect of Kaneko's usage (and Kaneko's poetics) when he refers to "words of the body" is that though he is referencing this cultural understanding of the body as a place of knowing, he is not. . . speaking of a transcendent or cultivated knowledge. Instead, he is alluding to something like an instinctual language, one that we are born with, one that our prehistoric ancestors knew and that we have a tendency to devalue or obscure in our modern lives. For Kaneko, the language known from the start by the body is inherently ara, wild. It is the natural language of any ikimono, any living thing".

It seems to me that Kaneko advocates something like "returning poetry to the primary energies of mind and body". This, though I may be bending it to my own purpose, seems to me to relate to what I feel is "vigorous Language".

I wish Kaneko had given some examples of haiku which he feels embody this aesthetic. He writes about Issa, and cites a couple of poems, but not in a way I truly find helpful. In any event, perhaps it can be said that wildness is what is lost in translation.

Is any of this useful? Is it worthwhile to examine this idea of "words of the body", or of "returning {haiku} to the primary energies of mind and body"?

A new question we can ask relative to haiku is: what is wildness? And: what is wild language? Another word Kaneko uses has been translated as "raw".

How would you like to proceed?


(minor edits)

[Jack Galmitz]

You might want to look at what Michael McClure was doing in the late 60s, writing mammalian poems with his own, invented, mammalian language: I think he preceded Gary Snyder in the idea of a wild language that was mammalian.
Personally, I don't know that any such thing existed; language philosphers long ago ruled out onomonopeia (sp?) as an origin of language.
Anyway, let me slip a poem here I wrote today:

The wind howls
I howl
it's just sound