Cut On L3?

[Tristan B]

I just came across this article, http://betweenwit-wonder.blogspot.ca/ . Almost all primers and how-to about haiku states that the cut or kire is on L1 or L2. But here the authors states; "The Single Theme verse may or may not be a sentence, ending with an ellipsis, question mark or exclamation mark.

When an ellipsis is used as the cut marker at the end of 3L it can convey several possible meanings: something left unsaid, a thought trailing off, a sigh, a sense of awe or of wonder."
The link was originaly posted on an FB page. This is something new to me. Very interested to hear other poets take on this.

[AlanSummers]

Dear Tristan,

re:

I just came across this article, http://betweenwit-wonder.blogspot.ca/ . Almost all primers and how-to about haiku states that the cut or kire is on L1 or L2. But here the authors states; "The Single Theme verse may or may not be a sentence, ending with an ellipsis, question mark or exclamation mark.

When an ellipsis is used as the cut marker at the end of 3L it can convey several possible meanings: something left unsaid, a thought trailing off, a sigh, a sense of awe or of wonder."
The link was originaly posted on an FB page. This is something new to me. Very interested to hear other poets take on this.

I did see the blog entry, as well as a discussion on Facebook.

I have seen few cases of punctuation and pause markers at the end of the last line in Alphabet based haiku.   The Japanese language system(s) are different in their order where they can place a kireji at the end of the poem because the language is read in a different order of words.

We tend to suggest an incompleteness in our syntax or overall placing of words and phrases to suggest pauses, open-endedness etc...

But more than delighted if people leave examples of English-language haiku here that do use end punctuation such as ellipses.

warm regards,

Alan

[Tristan B]

Hi Alan,
Thanks for your reply. I just revisited the page, and a user was exactly asking the same thing as you. To provide an example from ELH. Here's the sample given on the blog:
hundreds of years
of the view of this garden
with fallen leaves . . .

(Basho Translation by Gabi Greve)

Reading through that FB thread, the author seems to be very defensive. I would have dismissed the article other than the author is an editor and a published poet. How she is viewed in the haiku world, I don't know. But I do know of another editor who thinks that he is the second coming of Basho. I'm digressing. Back to this Basho sample, I don't know what to make of it. There might be other versions. I've seen ellipses on L3 in ELH but that is after the cut has already been establish in L1 or L2. I would like to keep an open mind, but that article is another fog in the misty forest of haiku.

[AlanSummers]

Hi Tristan,

All I can do is recommend copious reading of haiku, and include articles, essays, and book reviews.   I constantly read throughout pretty much every day.

Japanese haikai tend to be three units of 5-on, 7-on and 5-on whereas English-language haiku is often two units (with varying syllable counts).  ELHaiku tend to work better either with punctuation markers (we don't have word-phrases like the Japanese, for punctuation) at the end of line one or two, and very rarely in the middle of line two.

But I'd love examples of English-language haiku practitioners where they go a different route.

warm regards,

Alan

Hi Alan,
Thanks for your reply. I just revisited the page, and a user was exactly asking the same thing as you. To provide an example from ELH. Here's the sample given on the blog:
hundreds of years
of the view of this garden
with fallen leaves . . .

(Basho Translation by Gabi Greve)

Reading through that FB thread, the author seems to be very defensive. I would have dismissed the article other than the author is an editor and a published poet. How she is viewed in the haiku world, I don't know. But I do know of another editor who thinks that he is the second coming of Basho. I'm digressing. Back to this Basho sample, I don't know what to make of it. There might be other versions. I've seen ellipses on L3 in ELH but that is after the cut has already been establish in L1 or L2. I would like to keep an open mind, but that article is another fog in the misty forest of haiku.

[Tristan B]

Hi Alan,
I found some some samples in the middle of L2, I have yet to see one at the end of L3.

the silence grows
teeth—a tree
with cracked windows

Scott Metz (R'r)

find me in the sounds
of sparkling brooks . . . young leaves
songs of forest birds

Robert Mainone (MH)

Hi Tristan,

All I can do is recommend copious reading of haiku, and include articles, essays, and book reviews.   I constantly read throughout pretty much every day.

Japanese haikai tend to be three units of 5-on, 7-on and 5-on whereas English-language haiku is often two units (with varying syllable counts).  ELHaiku tend to work better either with punctuation markers (we don't have word-phrases like the Japanese, for punctuation) at the end of line one or two, and very rarely in the middle of line two.

But I'd love examples of English-language haiku practitioners where they go a different route.

warm regards,

Alan

[AlanSummers]

Hi Tristan,

Yes, still occasionally examples of cuts mid second line, and they were not uncommon back in the 1980s and 1990s.

The three parts of a haiku are more a Japanese cultural feature as their written and spoken language is in units of 5s and 7s i.e. 5-on and 7-on (sound units, not syllables as such) whereas English-language haiku is often in two sections, mostly a one-line section and a two-line section.

warm regards,

Alan

Hi Alan,
I found some some samples in the middle of L2, I have yet to see one at the end of L3.

the silence grows
teeth—a tree
with cracked windows

Scott Metz (R'r)

find me in the sounds
of sparkling brooks . . . young leaves
songs of forest birds

Robert Mainone (MH)

Hi Tristan,

All I can do is recommend copious reading of haiku, and include articles, essays, and book reviews.   I constantly read throughout pretty much every day.

Japanese haikai tend to be three units of 5-on, 7-on and 5-on whereas English-language haiku is often two units (with varying syllable counts).  ELHaiku tend to work better either with punctuation markers (we don't have word-phrases like the Japanese, for punctuation) at the end of line one or two, and very rarely in the middle of line two.

But I'd love examples of English-language haiku practitioners where they go a different route.

warm regards,

Alan

[Don Baird]

Hi Tristan,

A cut often used at the end of a Japanese haiku/hokku is kana, one of the many Japanese cut words. Read Basho poems to see it. I'll find a few when I have a moment.

In the meantime, explore cutting at the end of your poem.  It is unique and another way to go. Also, a haiku is considered cut from time and space automatically - sort of extracted from the moment at hand - pulled out from itself in a way:

teetering grass . . .
just moments ago
a dragofly

... could read,

—teetering grass ...
just moments ago
a dragonfly—

You see, kind of extracted from where it is to sudden awareness by the observer.  "It has always been there but now it has been noticed which neatly pulls it forward from its surroundings."

—oh snail!
you were there
yesterday—

This might be a way to show a few of the different cuts that the Japanese "know" are there (traditionally). This is something I have been pondering for awhile and came up with the thought of actually revealing the cut in front and at the end of the poem, both.  I included a few in my latest book, Haiku - the Interior and Exterior of Being - to be released this month.

Anyway, gotta run.  Enjoy!!!

Don

[Tristan B]

Thanks for replying Don. The samples you've given even without the em-dashes, I'm able to identify the cut within the poem.
—teetering grass ...
just moments ago
a dragonfly—
to me it reads, teetering grass/ just moments ago a butterfly. I see two images and the jux.
—oh snail!
you were there
yesterday—
reads to me, oh snail/ you were there yesterday, with the exclamation point working as the cut
the sample given on the blog:
hundreds of years
of the view of this garden
with fallen leaves . . .
reads like a sentence with ellipses, 'Hundred of years of the view of this garden with fallen leaves'...
I've been told that a haiku should not read like a sentence.

[Don Baird]

I agree - haiku that read like sentences seem to have less impact than the ones "cut" - in half. The idea of cutting was/is to split the poem in two so that an image, through comparison/juxtaposition/disjunction can arise in the reader's mind. Without a cut, it seems not to happen. However, a study of the Japanese tradition of cutting, using a kire-ji as the last word of a hokku/haiku is an interesting one, though not entirely translatable into haiku-in-English practices.

If you would like to know more about this kana practice, send Gabi a private IM and query her a bit (facebook). She has a solid background in the concept and might be of greater help than I (she speaks and writes Japanese, German, and English).   8)

blessings