Moon and Finger 15 – Shiki and Subjectivity

Comments (60)

1. Just came across this in Gilbert’s “Haiku Language Thought”:

   “In haiku, creative freedom through the space of mind is not immutable: new poetic articulations in each succeeding era are necessary to maintain the genre’s relevance. Basho addressed this in his crucial concept of fueki ryuko (“eternal truth” plus “trend, vogue, fashion”), often translated as “immutable mutability. One era is not the same as another; there is progression, and so, in order to properly articulate reality, the poet must necessarily inhabit their own era. I think progressive modern haiku are relevant in precisely this way.”

   1. Atarashimi was valued by The Master. The fresh, the new, the original. (It’s high on my list when looking for candidate verses for the anthology.)

      Shiki too sought renewal of haiku through fresh eyes, avoiding cliché, and incorporating modern things, urban scenes, and current experiences/perceptions.

      To the extent that they may differ, I think it’s that Bashõ’s orientation (Dao, Buddhism) was more spiritual than Shiki’s more rationalist and materialist approach.

2. @Adam Graham

   I have to create a new thread. We maxed out the 5 levels of nesting capacity 😅

   I think the fruitful fault line is not whether haiku exists within history, but what role history plays in determining poetic success. Perhaps we can salvage some glue from the metaphorical dead horse we have been beating — no actual animals were harmed in the making of this debate — and use it to hold together two points of clarification. 🙂

   I think your IF–THEN formulation helps clarify where we differ. If makoto is understood as an internal psychological reality connected to the external world through shasei and selective realism, then it follows that contemporary makoto should differ from Shiki’s because the relationship between subjectivity and the perceived world has changed historically.

   The first point where I would qualify this is the relationship between historical difference and subjective difference. I agree that subjectivity is historically situated. We do not encounter the world outside the linguistic, cultural, and conceptual conditions of our moment. My hesitation is with the further implication that this historical difference necessarily means that contemporary makoto must look “very different” from Shiki’s makoto. That claim seems to contain an assumption: that historical difference necessarily produces a corresponding degree of difference in subjective experience. That may sometimes be true, but it does not follow simply from the fact that subjectivity is historically situated. Historical variations can exist within a much larger field of continuity, where commonalities outweigh differences.

   The second point concerns the role of historicity in determining poetic success. Even if contemporary subjectivity differs from Shiki’s in significant ways, it does not necessarily follow that the degree to which a poem embodies its historical moment is what ultimately determines its poetic value.

   This is where I think the speech-act framework I have been developing may help clarify the distinction. As I have argued in our earlier discussions, I do not see literature as outside the domain of speech acts. A poem is also an act of language: it is produced in a situation, by someone, and addressed to someone. In that sense, literature and ordinary speech share a common linguistic foundation.

   Where I would resist flattening the distinction, however, is that sharing an essence does not mean sharing the same function. Different kinds of speech acts have different felicity conditions. A promise, a statement, a request, and a poem all involve language being used to do something, but the conditions that make them successful are not identical. This is what allows us to distinguish between them without claiming that they belong to separate domains.

   These modes can borrow from one another. Literature can retain elements of ordinary speech, and ordinary speech can sometimes become highly literary. But what makes haiku particularly unusual, I think, is that it structurally maintains both dimensions in constant relation and tension.

   Because haiku occupies this intermediate space, it has to satisfy two distinct sets of felicity conditions at once. It retains something of the immediacy and situatedness of an utterance while also functioning as an autonomous literary object. Its deceptive difficulty, and perhaps its high failure rate, may come precisely from this double demand.

   At the level of encounter, what we might call encounter-felicity, the situation behind the words must be reconstructable. The reader has to be able to infer a coherent perception, moment, or address behind the poem. It must feel as though there is a possible situation of seeing, experiencing, or speaking from which the poem emerges, even if the event itself is imagined rather than factually experienced.

   At the level of literature, what we might call literary-felicity, the poem has to satisfy another set of conditions: reader uptake, literariness, and meaningful form. The words must be received not merely as a report but as a poem, activating the conventions of the form. The arrangement itself must perform communicative work rather than simply transmit information.

   Perhaps these two tiers ultimately converge in a single deeper felicity condition: a haiku succeeds when the reader completes the cut.

   The poem creates a gap, and the reader’s act of inference completes it. Encounter-felicity provides what makes that completion possible: there must be a reconstructable and believable situation from which the reader can begin. Literary-felicity provides the form that invites and rewards the act of completion: the cut and the resonance between images create the space in which the reader participates.

   A haiku that fails either dimension leaves the reader with either nothing worth completing or nothing left to complete. A purely descriptive poem may provide a situation but leave no meaningful gap for the reader to enter. A purely conceptual or formally inventive poem may create a gap but provide no experiential ground from which the reader can cross it.

   This may actually help explain why so many haiku do not endure. Their disappearance does not necessarily demonstrate that they failed because they no longer participate in the construction of a later subjectivity. There may be many reasons why a poem ceases to generate a living encounter.

   One possibility is that one of these two dimensions of success was simply not sufficiently achieved. A poem may capture a moment of perception accurately but fail to transform that moment into a form that continues to invite participation. Conversely, it may possess formal or conceptual interest while lacking a sufficiently convincing experiential ground from which the reader can enter.

   Historical situatedness is only one possible factor in this process, and it does not always operate positively. The same particularity that gives a poem its immediacy and force within its original context can later become an obstacle to reception. A poem may become dated because the assumptions, references, or modes of perception that once animated it no longer generate a living encounter.

   But historical particularity can also become a source of meaning. Distance does not necessarily prevent communication; sometimes it allows a reader to encounter a way of experiencing the world that is not their own.

   Haiku’s focus on the seasons is perhaps illuminating here. The meanings attached to cherry blossoms, autumn moons, or the first snow are historically and culturally mediated; they are not simply natural facts. Yet their force does not come only from their historical specificity. They endure because they connect accumulated tradition with recurring forms of human experience.

   A reader does not need to inhabit Bashō’s historical world to encounter the force of an autumn moon or a spring evening. The tradition provides depth and resonance, but the encounter remains possible because the poem connects particular cultural meanings with forms of experience that remain communicable across historical difference.

   Historical situatedness therefore has no fixed relationship to poetic success. It can provide immediacy, depth, and specificity; it can also create distance or become a barrier. It influences the conditions of reception, but it does not determine the possibility of reception.

   There is also a paradox here: sometimes we encounter a work precisely as an expression of alterity, of a subjectivity or world that is not our own. If resonance with our existing subjectivity were the ultimate criterion of literary value, literature would become a mirror rather than an encounter.

   A work can remain meaningful not only because it confirms who we are, but because it allows us to encounter what we are not. Literature does not require identity between subjectivities; it requires the possibility of relation across difference.

   So I agree with much of what you say, particularly regarding ELH as a tradition. Your argument is a useful reminder that haiku does not exist outside history, and that ELH needs renewal through a more conscious engagement with the present rather than simply the preservation of inherited assumptions.

   Where I would differ is in moving from this broader historical argument to the level of the individual poem. Historical situatedness is an important dimension of a haiku and can be a powerful source of poetic energy. 

   But I would hesitate to make it the central criterion of poetic value. A poem can be deeply rooted in its historical moment and still fail as poetry. Conversely, a poem from another historical moment can succeed precisely because it creates a relation across historical difference.

   Another way of putting it is that history is one of the materials of poetry. It shapes what a poem can draw upon, but materials do not determine the success of the work. What matters is the transformation that takes place through the poem itself.

   1. One further thought occurs to me, which perhaps brings the question back to the nature of experience itself.

      One of haiku’s great strengths as a form is that it places very few limits on what can become poetic material. Any dimension of human experience can potentially become the ground of a haiku, and not every dimension of experience foregrounds historical difference in the same way.

      Of course, every experience is historically situated. The experience of losing a child in Issa’s time is not identical to the experience of losing a child today. The social structures, expectations, and meanings surrounding that loss have changed. But I am not convinced that these differences exhaust the experience itself. At a deeper level, Issa’s grief and the grief of a contemporary parent share far more than they differ.

      This is perhaps where the distinction between historical situatedness and poetic value becomes important. A poem does not need to reproduce the entire historical configuration from which an experience emerged in order to communicate something meaningful about that experience. It needs to preserve and transform a relation that another person can enter.

      Indeed, if historical difference were the primary measure of poetic authenticity, then the most fundamental experiences of human life would become increasingly inaccessible across time. Yet one of poetry’s remarkable capacities is precisely that it allows us to encounter experiences shaped by worlds different from our own while still recognizing something within them.

      Perhaps the question is therefore not whether experience is historically situated — it inevitably is — but whether history is the dimension of experience that a particular poem makes most central. Haiku’s openness as a form lies partly in the fact that it can discover poetic significance in many different dimensions of experience, some deeply historical, others closer to recurring structures of human perception and feeling.

      A further implication of this may concern the question of explicitly marking a poem as “metamodern” through formal choices. I can see how a contemporary sensibility might shape the way certain experiences are approached, and there may certainly be cases where that historical awareness becomes an important part of the poem’s meaning.

      But I am not sure that adding a metamodern dimension as a formal or conceptual marker would necessarily always deepen a poem. Unless that aspect of contemporary consciousness is directly connected to the experience being explored, it risks becoming an additional layer of framing rather than an intensification of the encounter itself.

      For example, in a poem about grief or loss, the question is not whether the poet is writing from a metamodern historical position, but whether that historical awareness changes the way loss is experienced, perceived, or communicated. If it does, then it becomes part of the poem’s material. If it does not, then foregrounding it may actually distance the reader from the experience rather than deepen it.

      This returns to the larger question of poetic value. Historical awareness can become a source of poetic energy, but only when it is transformed through experience. A historical framework is not automatically meaningful simply because it belongs to the present moment; it becomes meaningful when it reveals something about the particular human situation the poem is trying to communicate.

      1. Now you are cooking. This is above my head, but my gut feeling is that the answer lies in what you are thinking. I see no reason why historical honesty needs to be belabored, or even openly expressed, in a haiku. If so, whether a haiku will stand the test of time depends on whether its writer makes it to. When I read Njal’s Saga, I can transport myself into Iceland of a thousand years ago and appreciate why and how those people did what they did. Same, when I was lucky enough to get to visit remote native settlements in Brazil. Haiku is a much smaller world, but I see no reason why it can’t be appreciated by a stranger if both the writer and the stranger are willing to make it happen.

   2. Orense, to work through your reply per points,

      First point: Your write, “That claim (makoto looking different] seems to contain an assumption: that historical difference necessarily produces a corresponding degree of difference in subjective experience. ” It is an assumption, yes. Because we can’t actually go into someone else’s subjectivity. But, all available evidence seems to suggest that different conceptual and material environments produce differences in subjective experience.

      Second point: Your write, “it does not necessarily follow that the degree to which a poem embodies its historical moment is what ultimately determines its poetic value.” I agree. A poem’s “value” can be determined by many factors, for example if haiku is seen as a conservative art then poems that are “conservative” and are “not of our time” will be valued (as, imo, the current haiku scene in North America is). As John notes there’s “no reason why historical honesty needs to be belabored, or even openly expressed, in a haiku.” A form of art can be generated to satisfy any raison d’être it wishes. But, if I build a Model-T car in my garage in 2026, I wouldn’t claim that that Model T is “of our time.” Peeps would probably call it a “throw back” or some such term. I think the same is for haiku. I think there are “throw back” haiku, a lot of them.

      I agree that “Different kinds of speech acts have different felicity conditions.” But I think those conditions are highly contingent upon a vast set of interactions of which the actual speech act is but one part, and a very minor one, and an effect rather than a cause. So something like a “novel” may come across as more X than an oral utterance within one context, while in another the oral utterance is more X than the novel.

      Which is to say the speech act is not the determinate item of what a speech act does. There are no stabilized categorials/functions of any variety of speech act. You write, “A promise, a statement, a request, and a poem all involve language being used to do something.” I think it’s the other way round, the “doing something (the set of all contingencies; “historical moment”) USES language.” The “something” generates an expression of itself (via a historical constructed set of subjectivities.) The function of the speech act is not generated by the logic of the speech act, it’s generated by the operation of the “something,” So, I would not see my pov as “flattening the distinction” rather I’m hyper-bumpifying the distinction.

      You write, “One possibility [of a haiku not being relevant] is that one of these two dimensions of success was simply not sufficiently achieved.” Yes, that could be a possibility, but that seems to be simply defining a quality or cause as to why the lost haiku are not relevant to how a contemporary subjectivity (yours) values haiku.

      I hold that there are speech acts (whether haiku, novels, comments about women and immigrants and men, etc.) that are more in line with our historic moment, and when a speech act is made that is not in line with that moment, it could, for example come across as disgusting; or it could be absolutely great! And the subjectivity that generates such speech acts is different because the “something that uses speech” (I,e, the historical constructed subjectivity) is different, and thus different speech acts.

      *
      In your Addendum you write,

      “At a deeper level, Issa’s grief and the grief of a contemporary parent share far more than they differ.” I don’t agree with this.

      In conclusion you write, “A historical framework is not automatically meaningful simply because it belongs to the present moment; it becomes meaningful when it reveals something about the particular human situation the poem is trying to communicate.” I don’t think I am talking toward ‘meaningfulness.’ Again, a statement considered racist or sexist to contemporary subjectivists (as a whole; i.e. historic moment), statements that 200 years ago would have been mainstream, can be stated by a person with absolute sincerity and be extraordinarily meaningful to the person saying it as well as to a variety of other subjectivities in the current moment. But, that doesn’t make it “of our time.” Such a racist or sexist (per today’s standards) is a subjectivity with “maximized fueki.”

      When Bashō discusses Fueki and Ryūkō, he’s discussing those terms ‘as they related to his historic moment.’ To his moment’s set of subjectivities. And the ‘balance’ reached between the two in HIS moment was relevant to HIS moment, but other moments may have different balances of these concepts (or they may not care what Bashō said about these concepts or anything) that are “of their times” and don’t behave in the same way as they did in Bashō’s time (this is what I meant by F & R being inside my approach).

      1. We can’t help but look upon a Model T and think, “This is a car not of our time.” (Even if the Model T was built in 2026). I hold the same can be applied to haiku. Even if a haiku is written in 2026.

         The same would be true if some weird time portal opened up and a future vehicle made of quirky, quantum buzz energy that was nowhere but everywhere simultaneously etc. We would look upon that oddity, and think “This weird thing is def not of our time.”

         1. Adam: concening the outdated Model T, an early original would set you back a quarter of a million dollars at auction, possibly out of reach for your average working haikuist.

            The classic ‘concours of elegance’ car rally at Hampton Court Palace last week was very well attended, with many a fine gentleman in a tweed cap driving an open-topped classic, often an expensive-looking blonde lady in the passenger seat.

            I guess that would be fueki, the unchanging.

            1. Keith, it would be individuals appreciating automobiles not “or our time,” with an understanding that those automobiles are relevant to the contemporary subjectivities of the folks there (sounds like some of the relevancy is economic status and mate selection). I would say I’m speaking more towards creators and makers.

3. “internal, psychological reality…an internal, rather than external, reality” says Ueda. This of course may be a focus some haiku poets are naturally inclined to, perhaps never having heard of Shiki’s makoto. It would be interesting to hear from a few brave souls as to whether or not this is a revelation to them, as: “oh, you can do *that*?” Or perhaps from those for whom this has been a natural progression.

   A purely subjective poem, one which does not rely on external reality, would be rare, I think, and veer strongly toward abstraction. Internal reality seems to need external correlatives, to use Eliot’s rather clinical word.

   Thinking about this business of shasei/makoto, for fun I have wondered about an analogy from photography and came up with this: shasei is represented by Paul Strand, and makoto by Minor White.

   1. Peter, I often use the phrase “real and present experience.” This is not the same as a photographic snapshot, or even an art photo or a perceptive street shot, but:

      real: grounded in some reality of the poet’s
      present: being considered in the present moment even if it is a memory belonging entirely to the past
      experience: as ‘experienced’ by the poet. That is where the poet’s subjectivity or internalisation enters into things.

      I know you are going to say that so it is too for the photogrpaher.

      Real can include what is perceived as real through media, or even dreams. Lately in re:Virals we had a verse by John Stevenson based on dreams. When I solicited his comment as the poet, he replied: “This poem is shasei applied to dreams.” I thought that was an excellent comment. I wrote: “…in a recent interview (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VhgA3PE3eQ) John revealed that for many years he has cultivated the habit of writing down his dreams on awakening. This has led to increased sensitivity and skill in recording them. I see that his dreamscape, thus, has become as much a perceived reality as his landscape when awake.

      And likewise, when a reader encounters a poem, particularly one such as haiku or short verses where construction or reconstruction has been deliberately left to the reader, the reader applies their own experiences as perceived by them, to the material in the verse. Hence our somewhat different readings of “I am pregnant / with the clown / of a snowy day”

      PS: fun though it is, I find that comparisons of poetry and photography break down rather easily on testing, primarily because we are dealing with words and can add to or modify a scene in all sorts of ways where a photographer is limited to what’s selected in the frame (plus, perhaps, processing in post). Whether a picture is worth a thousand words, or even as few as eight or nine words may say more than a picture, is highly debatable!

      1. Comparison only as far as it may be useful. Or illustrative.

         Here’s a quote from photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson, which I offer not to make a point, but because it may be interesting in regards to subjectivity:

         “I believe that, through the act of living, the discovery of oneself is made concurrently with the discovery of the world around us, which can mold us, but which can also be affected by us. A balance must be established between these two worlds—the one inside us and the one outside us. As the result of a constant reciprocal process, both these worlds come to form a single one. And it is this world that we must communicate.”

   2. Hi Peter,

      This will sound about as subjective as it can get,

      I stop for a shit
      and a small milk
      and a muffin
      (Self-published, 2025)

      but it might resonate with people who have done long distance driving. Like Toronto to Vancouver in three days.

4. I admit that I can’t understand makoto. Could it be a poetic adaptation of crossword puzzle? You start with a haiku, camouflage it according to a set of known rules, and challenge the readers to reconstruct the original from it?

   1. It might be that whoever is in control of the narrative directs the meaning of makoto.

      Here’s a few highly respected authors starting with Melissa Allen

      FUGA NO MAKOTO
      February 11 (Its Depth) 2011 

      Over 60 comments worth checking out as well:
      https://haikuproject.wordpress.com/2011/02/11/february-11-its-depth/#comments

      _________________________________

      first snow

      I no longer have a child
      
to measure its depth

      Melissa Allen
      World Haiku Review (January 2011)

      ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

      Back to Basho:

      “When Basho talks about fuga no makoto, this is normally interpreted as poetic sincerity. However, makoto also means truths, or true words, or true things. … In terms of poets, makoto is that which springs from their magokoro (true heart, or soul). Haiku is certainly capable of (local, particular) truths. Sometimes it is capable of universal truths and that is when great haiku poems are born.

      “Poetic truths, then, must be a criterion against which inferior and dubious haiku poems can be weeded out. Haiku is part of the haiku poet’s way of life. Haiku is partly what he or she is. If he or she is not truthful his or her haiku cannot be good poetry. In today’s climate where haiku values are confused, it is important for us to go back to such stringent criterion as poetic truths.”
      [italics by Melissa]

      Telling the truth. I’m working on it really hard now. It’s not as easy as it sounds.

      It’s not, of course, about the facts. Sometimes the facts interfere with it, actually. (There’s nothing factual about the haiku that starts this post, but I’m hoping it’s at least a little bit true.)

      So you kind of have to stumble around, trying to figure out what the truth is, exactly. But I think it’s worth it, in the end.

      Melissa Allen – owner Red Dragonfly
      https://haikuproject.wordpress.com/about/

      Editor/founder of Password: the journal of very short poetry
      https://veryshortpoetry.com/

      1. In contemporary haiku, makoto (誠 or 真) means poetic sincerity, truthfulness, and genuine feeling that springs straight from the writer’s heart rather than artificial cleverness.

         Let’s see what Robert Epstein says…

         In considering the poetry of his peers, Onitsura was greatly disturbed by the amount of frivolity, superficiality, and artificiality that characterized so much of what he read.

         Onitsura continues, emphasizing the importance of makoto as the faithful representation or true nature of each being in haiku poetry:

         In composing a poem, if the poet only concentrates on the ingenuity
         of form and words, the verse will lack makoto. One should pay no
         attention to the form and words but concentrate on the embodiment
         of profound meaning.

         Sincerity in Haiku: Insights by Robert Epstein
         https://charlottedigregorio.wordpress.com/2025/11/25/sincerity-in-haiku-insights-by-robert-epstein/

         1. David Cobb internationally respected, I was fortunate to serve with him on the British Haiku Society committee when he was BHS President, and I was General Secretary.

            English Haiku: A Composite View
            by David Cobb (1926-2020)

            My view today is that what really matters isn’t the source material or inspiration, but the degree to which the poem comes from a place of genuine feeling, not from tinkering around with ideas or ideals.

            This is related to the Japanese concept of makoto, often translated as ‘sincerity’, but for our purposes more usefully expressed as ‘the truth of the poet’s heart’.” In fact, some of the most inspirational Japanese haiku were imagined,

            e.g. Buson’s (1716-1784)

            this piercing cold –

            in the bedroom, I have stepped

            on my dead wife’s comb

            tr. Makoto Ueda

            https://nzhaiku.wordpress.com/essays-articles/english-haiku-a-composite-view/

            David Cobb:
            https://haikupedia.org/article-haikupedia/david-cobb/

            1. I’m not sure of the negative remarks about gendai haiku, whether Japanese or from outside of Japan. On its most basic level it deals with contemporary matters, rather than the classical era topics of the Agrarian Society and famous old battles.

               The industrial revolution with its factories, trains, its new and over-crowded towns and cities, and industrialised war and great internal migrations changed the sometimes too cosy world of haikai verse.

               Croatian War Haiku woke many of us up to ‘modern’ warfare when President Tito’s death led to the break up of the Yugoslavia he ruled over.

               a foot in the mud
               and under it
               an autumn oak leaf

               Vesna Skocir

               the doll’s eyes
               blown out by a mine
               replaced with sweets

               Mirko Vidovic

               Haiku Iz Rata: War Haiku, second edition. Marijan Čekolj, editor. Croatian Haiku Society, Samobor, Croatia, 1995, 80 pages, Croatian and English.

               .
               UK has been under threat though not invaded for a very long time, yet some of our own jet fighters fly low, one beat me to the ground. From young child to adult I’ve watched many documentaries, and films, about or around World Wars One & Two, and now this strange hybrid World War Three.

               war moon
               the flickering of humans
               at birdsong

               Alan Summers
               First Publication Credit: Asahi Shimbun (Japan 2015)
               the blood moon issue, Oct 2 for the eclipse of 9/28

               Anthology Credit: Heart Breaths: Book of Contemporary Haiku ed. Jean LeBlanc
               Article: Haiku: The Art of Implication over Explication (Living Haiku Anthology) 2015
               https://livinghaikuanthology.com/poets-on-haiku/defining-haiku/2901-haiku-the-art-of-implication-over-explication-by-alan-summers.html

               Interview:
               Meet… Alan Summers (Seashores Issue 9 November 2022)
               Interview by Gilles Fabre

               Features:
               World Haiku Series 2022 curated by Hideori Hiruta
               Akita International Haiku Network (Japan)

               World Haiku Series 2022 (2) Haiku by Alan Summers (England) 4th January 2023
               Hiruta Haiku, Haiku toward UNESCO, World Haiku Series 2023/01/04

               Commissioned Reading / Performance:
               International Page and Stage (Northern Ireland):
               “Short form Poets from around the world”
               in association with the New Zealand Poetry Society
               27th November 2022
               introduced by Gordon Hewitt, with Shelley Tracey, renowned poet originally from South Africa, now living in Northern Ireland

               READERS/FILM
               John Stevenson (Film)
               Marion Clarke
               Alan Summers
               Kit Nagamura (Film)
               Roberta Beary
               Sandra Simpson
               Jim Kacian (Film)

            2. No less real for arriving via Reuters online:

               between bulletins
               from the Bucha massacre
               ads for caviare

               All it needed was writing down. No one took it. Maybe I should have dressed it up in frogsong and shining purple egrets?

               caviare the glam egrets croak on a war bulletin
               ?

            3. Women Haiku Poets Who Influenced Me
               JUXTA Special
               by Patricia Donegan

               Edith Shiffert (1916 – 2017)

               “…another essential Japanese aesthetic is makoto (sincerity or truth): this is the heart-essence of her poetry. I know no other poet whose poetry, without being sentimental, brings tears to the eyes — a poetry that captures the poignancy of this life of impermanence, and a poetry above all that reflects a deep gratitude towards Nature & our small place in it. Perhaps it is because her poetry is a direct reflection of her life.”
               –Patricia Donegan

               no flower can stay

               yet humans grieve at dying —

               the red peony

               for this small beetle
               
a lifetime on one tree trunk

               everything is there

               journey almost done

               we sit relaxed side by side

               with an old white cat

               seen for eighty years
               
but still I feel awed & glad —

               white water lilies

               Edith Shiffert

               Teijo Nakamura (1900–1988),
               one of the greatest of the modern women haiku masters in Japan, known as one of the four ’T’’s (along with Takako Hashimoto, Tatsuko Hoshino and Takajo Mitsuhashi). 

               natsu no cho ya ware wa kyo machi kyo sarase

               summer butterfly —

               I wait for the moment

               & then let it go . . .

               kaji akari mata kagayakite ikki sugu

               firelight bright
               again, brighter still

               a bomber passing . . .

               This haiku was referring to the B-29 Tokyo bombings during WWII in which at least 100,000 civilians were killed, more than in Hiroshima.

               Elizabeth Searle Lamb (1917 – 2004)
               Elizabeth Searle Lamb, an editor who had published me, wrote this haiku that long influenced me and never went away – Alan Summers

               pausing
               half-way up the stair—
               white chrysanthemums

               even bricked up

               the window still

               reflecting light

               too early awake
               but this mockingbird
               this moon

               https://thehaikufoundation.org/juxta/juxta-5-1/juxta-special-women-mentoring-women/women-haiku-poets-who-influenced-me/

            4. After sitting through Planet Israel, and aware of Halabja, and the evils done to Kurds by the West past and present, and the Armenian mass murders almost done in one day, there is a lot of censorship out there.

               Keith Evetts
               re:
               No less real for arriving via Reuters online:

               between bulletins
               from the Bucha massacre
               ads for caviare

               All it needed was writing down. No one took it. Maybe I should have dressed it up in frogsong and shining purple egrets?

               Alan:
               A shame, but when you say no one, there are 200 outlets and counting for haiku. (smiles)

               Alan:
               frogsong and shining purple egrets how they burn brightly

               caviare the glam egrets croak on a war bulletin
               ?

         2. Robert included this haiku by Debbi:

            learning to eat
            around bruises
            winter apples

            ~ Debbi Antebi
            Editors’ Choices
            The Heron’s Nest (March 20218)
            Scott Mason made a commentary about it:
            https://theheronsnest.com/PDF-issues/The Heron’s Nest — Volume 20 (2018).pdf

            __________________________________________________________________
            Here’s my Heron’s Nest Readers’ Choice Awards 2018 commentary:
            ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

            This is an exceptional poem on all levels, never mind that it is a “brief-form” verse of seven words. Haruo Shirane, author of Traces of Dreams: Landscape, Cultural Memory, and the Poetry of Bashō (Stanford University Press, 1998) said “Whether or not it fits some definition of haiku is of little relevance in the larger picture. The fact is that it is superior poetry…”

            When I put in the ‘first line’ as per instructions for the Readers’ Choice Awards, I saw yet another insight into why this poem resonated so powerfully within me.

            “Learning to eat” is a fascinating process that I’ve been privy to “all over again” with the birth of a nephew now entering his eleventh year, and watching his process/progress over of all of that time. We are learning machines, although beyond childhood we sometimes forget to continue to be one, and we are, of course, always vulnerable when we open up to the world beyond ourselves.

            I’ve had discussions with Debbi, and also when John Stevenson visited London, and each time I come to this haiku it brings something new. I also see “the seven ages of man,” and learning to deal with great misfortune. On one level it’s just a simple observation of eating an apple, or is it, as it explodes with metaphorical meaning within this particular reader.

            Here’s another apple haiku:

            青林檎噛むたび海が新しい　　
            茂里美絵

            aoringo kamu tabi umi ga atarashii
            Mie Mori

            Publication:
            Gendai Haiku, #719, July 2025 Issue,
            Gendai Haiku Kyokai, Tokyo, Japan

            every time I bite
            into a green apple
            the sea feels new

            English version: Alan Summers

            And yes, it’s deemed, shock horror, a gendai haiku!

            1. Thanks, Alan, for your many and good comments. I, too, value sincerity and have less love for cleverness. Sometimes, alas, I have trouble telling which is which.

   2. John, Alan, I don’t think the binary of “sincerity” v. “inauthenticity/cleverness” is a component of the essay per se. One can be extraordinarily sincere in a work of art, but it’s still comes across “not of our time” to readers, just as one can be extraordinarily sincere in a racist or sexist remark that equally is “not of our time.” Sincerity may not be the limits test.

      John, I don’t think Shiki’s makoto-haiku is camouflaging anything, in fact I think it’s quite the opposite. It’s revealing a working of the contemporary. It’s stripping enough of the artifice away from language, stripping “what Shiki and Bashō thought haiku was” away, i.e. stripping away enough of the mandates of past historic moments to allow the contemporary subjectivity to be revealed.

      1. Adam,
         I feel we need more examples of modern and/or contemporary haiku to go along with these comments and the presentation overall. There have been big jumps since the amazing Haiku Handbook by BIll Higginson and Penny Harter (classic era up to late 1980s) and the sometimes awkward 1990s and early 2000s.

         re:
         “One can be extraordinarily sincere in a work of art, but it’s still comes across “not of our time” to readers, just as one can be extraordinarily sincere in a racist or sexist remark that equally is “not of our time.” Sincerity may not be the limits test.”

         Can you give examples of “not of our time”

         It will also be worthwhile reading through #femku which was and still is ahead of its time:
         https://femkumag.wixsite.com/home

         1. Alan, some possible examples, which of course can be picked apart, but they work for me as a spectrum from a sense of subjectivity writing “toward the past” to those writing toward “our time”:

            Towards the Past:

            daffodils!
            the neighbor’s grandchild
            nestled in my lap

            Carolyn Hall, USA (femku #42)

            summer solstice
            passing around
            the jar of light

            (Jeff Holland, MH 57.2)

            Both are lovely images, lovely sketches of a moment in time. But they ‘seem’ to be able to have been written 25 years ago, 50 years ago, 100 years ago.

            Toward Our Time:

            hold your glass against the syllable rain

            (Cherie Hunter Day, republished MH 57.2)

            impossible clowns introducing the theory of chaos

            (Peter Newton, republished Haiku 21.2)

            There’s a sense that these could not have been written 25, 50, 100 years ago.

            ?

            1. There are many ways to write a haiku as we saw after Shiki’s with the warring of disciples, (men) and exciting new ways women opened up haiku.

               I like some haiku that are time stamps:

               ground zero into the new friend’s story

               Alan Summers
               Haiku 21.2 :
an anthology of contemporary English-language haiku
               ed. Lee Gurga and Scott Metz (Modern Haiku Press, 2025)
               “Examples of the best haiku being written in the second decade
               of the 21st century.”
               https://www.modernhaiku.org/mhbooks/Haiku21-2.html

               First Publication was:
               Masks 4 (Roadrunner 12.3 – December 2012) ed. Scott Metz
               Where I choose Fred Krink as my pen name as Masks is a fun anonymous section.

               Now of course since 911 there have been other ground zero events in other places, though first default might be New York?

               Perhaps it’s a joint time stamp and timeless.

               Bashō avoided the use of the place in his famous pro-battle hokku which has over time often become a symbol of warring pointlessness:

               夏草や兵どもが夢の跡

               Transliteration:

               natsu-gusa ya / tsuwamono-domo-ga / yume no ato

               summer grasses (:!) / strong ones’ / dreams’ site

               (romanised version with literal English-language translation)

               I’m constantly creating new tweaks:

               just summer grasses
               and remains of warriors
               dreaming dreams

               version: Alan Summers

               Apologies for using the word G**gle…
               https://area17.blogspot.com/2006/04/bashos-summer-grasses.html

               *

               uta-makura — places that almost any educated person is likely to know something about and that are definitely iconic

               hai-makura — places that are lifted into that aura by their mention in a well-known poem.

               In English poetry we have an example in Adlestrop, where the poet Edward Thomas wrote:

               Yes. I remember Adlestrop —
               
The name, because one afternoon

               Of heat the express-train drew up there

               Unwontedly.

               We’ve all been to Adlestrop metaphorically, at least once, I’m sure!

               *

               Kirkstone Pass
               a sheepdog gathers
               its part of the world

               Alan Summers
               Publication Credit: Muttering Thunder vol. 1, 2014 ed. Allan Burns

               far off Helvellyn snow the nouns of verbs 

               Alan Summers
               Publication Credit: Blithe Spirit 25.4 (November 2015)

               The Lake District might be moderately well-known in the USA, primarily recognised by avid travellers, hikers, and literature fans (The Romantics (Wordsworth etc…) and Beatrix Potter, rather than the public at large.

               It’s true that outside of a poetry collection around The Lake District (Cumbria UK) it wouldn’t be timeless to everyone else.

               And does everyone know of the Atlas mountains? A view from our budget hotel room, long window, balcony, transformed our stay into a luxury one:

               Atlas foothills…
               bees jostle pickers
               for saffron

               Alan Summers
               Haiku Foundation: Haiku Dialogue series: A Sense of Place: MOUNTAIN – hearing ed kjmunro

               Atlas Mountains
               the snow-capped peaks
               in every sunrise

               Alan Summers
               A Sense of Place: MOUNTAIN – sight ed. kjmunro (The Haiku Foundation)
               August 2018

               But should I stop time stamp / location haiku though?

               *

               Ah, Cherie Hunter Day, I had to write the FULL book review as it was clipped elsewhere, it appears unredacted in Pan Haiku Review issue one.

               hold your glass against the syllable rain

               Cherie Hunter Day, republished MH 57.2

               This instantly makes me think of that spontaneous delivery in Blade Runner by awesome human and actor Rutger Hauer.

               Also as an avid observer of rain, its many forms. and sounds, it feels timeless.

               Be you a “Nocturnal Rain Lover”
               people who specifically crave night-time rain and thunderstorms to help them sleep or relax.

               Or Pluviophile…

               Or someone navigating rain from horizontal rain coming at you fast and meaty or flash floods and aquaplaning, or like me opening the hotel window wide, or the car window wide.

5. SUBJECTIVITY OF A READER

   “Are these subjective views equally valid?”

   At an individual level they could be valid to the experience of that subjectivity. In the larger, cultural mode, only time will tell. But, each speech act your offering is evaluated and determined (a whole other can of worms on the HOW of this) by a culture (or a subculture: the haiku world) to sense how authentic it is to the perceived threshold of what, in this case, a haiku IS.

6. HAIKU or SHORT POEM

   From my p.o.v. we don’t borrow things from cultures. Cultures have a function to spread, so one culture ‘infects’ the individuals of another culture thereby spreading its norms. There are obviously soft and hard ways of this spread (travel/tourism/media/war/imperialism/etc; and obviously this problematizes the common trope of “appropriation”). If cultures generate/create individuals (subjectivities), then the “spread” of one culture’s norms to another, that “norm-item” that is spreading (e.g. haiku) is actually an sort of code that generates a subjectivity. The cultural level is the ground, not the individual.

   What makes a haiku a haiku rather than short poem? Any variety connection to “haiku”.

7. AUTHENTICITY

   “Does it matter?”

   Yes.

   Makoto haiku, as Shiki discusses them are not “entirely invented” in the sense that they are “made up” or “fake.” They have a tether to the shasei draft, they are attached to the “real” world (as the “real” world is understood by any given historic moment). The reply I wrote to Peter, pokes at an alternative ‘directionality’ from shasei > selective realism > makoto, to look something like:

   “made up” > shasei? > makoto

   or something, ha. (https://thehaikufoundation.org/moon-and-finger-15-shiki-and-subjectivity/#comment-169563)

   In general, I do think there are more “authentic” speech acts of a given historic moment than other speech acts. How we evaluate or determine this difference is its own can of worms.

   1. Involved with this discussion of “authenticity” in haiku are concepts like Hasegawa Kai’s “junk haiku,” Dimitar Anakiev’s “capitalistic haiku,” and Martin Lucas’ “International Formula” haiku, what the introduction to Haiku 2015 brackets as “comfort-oriented haiku” and “haiku of integrity.”

8. PIGEONHOLING

   The timeless quality of Bashō’s frog pond is not really “timeless.” It’s only relevant to those, in any given historic moment, including Bashō’s, for particular reasons/functions. There is plenty of art that was relevant to its time, but not now. And vice versa (produced by subjective outliers). What makes ‘frog pond’ relevant today (for some people) is that it’s a particular item in a vast cultural ‘database’ that constructs a contemporary subjectivity, and this item functions in particular ways for multiple persons in a sort of Overton window manner: for some, frog pond links up with other items in the ‘database’ to construct a subjective experience that understands haiku as Zen, and only Zen; while for others it constructs a subjectivity that sees it as Zen-and-Critique; while for others it constructs a subjectivity that understands haiku as only Critique; and the countless other ‘blends.’

   But, in whatever way ‘frog pond’ remains relevant (and maybe one day its no longer relevant to anyone, like a majority of art created in history), its relevant because it blends in with all the other elements that generate a contemporary subjectivity (as a set, not as a single monolithic Subjectivity; though that is an interesting thought as well, hehehehe). It’s relevant TO the subjectivity in its generation/construction. (and some of the relevancy it has, depends upon what y’all did in the first two essays of the M & F series.)

9. Thank you for opening up this topic, Adam. It raises a few layman’s questions:

   Pigeonholing:
   Does it help to label as “makoto” haiku a particular category of haiku that are in some way distinct from all other haiku that are, or were, sincere, “true”, or “authentic”? Thereby now dismissing the others as “not makoto haiku” but in some way insincere, false or inauthentic? Let’s get Bashō’s frog out of its pond again. Was that a “makoto haiku” sincere, authentic and presenting poetic truth? Is it still such a haiku, or is it fixed in its 17thC times and has now become irrelevant or overtaken in our times, changed in all the ways you describe?

   Dilution of the distilled spirit:
   Differences between a “haiku” and a “short poem.” The latter phrase is in use in several journals accommodating breakout work. At what point, if any, do we stop talking about a verse being a haiku (borrowed from another culture), but instead being one of our own anglophone “short poems?” If anything goes, blue Alices and all, then why bother to call it “haiku?” Why do we attach any importance to the label “haiku,” why exactly do we feel a need for our short verses to be presented as haiku, and what determines their legitimacy as such? After all, we are here invoking an updated instance of Shiki to justify lines such as

   bite of the apple. And we never spoke again. Though, in the film
   (David Boyer, Bones: Journal for the Short Verse #25, April 2023)

   and:

   out of the wormhole tangled up in blue Alices
   (Lorin Ford, Presence, no. 76, July 2023)

   So presumably Shiki’s supposed benediction is seen as definitely worth having in justification? Why?

   Realism and surrealism:
   Developing a verse from a perceived reality via the poet’s accumulated experiential context (in which, creative techniques are a part of what has been absorbed)… where does the unreal or surreal fit in?

   Subjectivity of the reader:
   One literate reader reads a dislocated line of gibberish and decides that it’s bunkum. Another that it must be art because it doesn’t make sense. A third that it’s a great work because it hasn’t been done before, or it’s by a poet currently fashionable, or one of the reader’s clique. Are these subjective views equally valid?

   Bashō rehabilitated in the 21st century:

   my elegant art
   a rotting banana
   taped to a wall

   Authenticity
   Does it matter? If not, the work of a forger, an impersonator, someone who has borrowed or appropriated but not lived an experience, a rich banker writing as a homeless vagrant, or for that matter Claude, is as good as the original of an authentic artist drawing on lived experience.

   A verse that is entirely invented and purposefully unreal might work*. Maybe, if we’re arguing that the poet’s and the reader’s subjectivity are aligned with the same zeitgeist, the invented and unreal are part of that context too, and therefore will strike the same chord in both? And that if our contemporary world is senseless, our poetry can be, too.

   square moon someone else’s god
   —Cold Moon Journal 29 July 2022

   * “A verse born of pure imagination is either the most beautiful or the most clumsy. Yet the most beautiful are exceedingly rare.” —Shiki, Haikai Taiyō.

   1. Keith, I started new topic-threads above for these items :)

10. Thanks, Adam, for a thought-provoking article. I have several reactions to it.

    First, a question. Have I advanced from shasei to makoto? I don’t care. To me it is only the results that count. But I realize that to you scholars, who are working on theories of poetry, that kind of classification can be a useful tool. So, to add to your data base, here is my story:

    I showed my early efforts of writing haiku to Canadian poet Chris Faiers, and he hammered into my head that haiku should be short and not contain any words that aren’t needed. Aside from that I am mostly self-thought, except for a few books I have read and a collection of more than 10,000 of Issa’s haiku I found on the web.

    My first published haiku I planned very carefully, to conform to what I had read haiku should be like:

    A great tree once stood
    on that mossy stump —
    Now a squirrel
    (Haiku Canada Members’ Anthology 2009)

    By the following year I was more relaxed, and started to personalize some haiku:

    I carried
    the moon
    in a bucket
    (Mainichi, 2010)

    By 2015 I had freed myself of all preconceived restrictions. Rather than worrying about how a haiku should be written, I started asking it how it wanted to be written.

    Frankenstein Creek
    has drunk of
    snowmelt
    (Asahi Simbun, 2015)

    Since then I have been writing them in whichever way, including simple descriptions of things I had seen:

    Upside down bird
    up and down
    the ironwood
    (Asahi Shimbun, 2025)

    I don’t care if the reader sees the last haiku as shasei or makoto or makoto manufactured to look like shasei. What difference does it make? It just popped into my mind, ready made, when I was watching a nuthatch in the ironwood tree in front of my dining room window.

    My fundamental question regarding today’s topic is, is there any factual evidence to prove that makoto haiku are on a higher level than shasei haiku? Shiki may have preferred them, but isn’t that just an another arbitrary preference? And if that opinion has become entrenched in the ELH haiku community, that is no more proof of its superiority than the entrenchedness of many other beliefs, for instance that a good haiku cannot be in the form of a sentence.

    I also have trouble with believing that all of today’s haiku will be felt differently in the future. Some will, some won’t. Changes in one society through time are not fundamentally different from differences between societies in different corners of the world today. My guess is that haiku dealing with fundamental aspects of humanity will remain being appreciated, while those catering to passing moods will turn into gobbledygook to all but scholars.

    1. John, I would argue that every ELH haiku writer is working within sets of theory of some sort, whether they know it or nor. One of the benefits knowing it, and of giving those theories names, or of knowing the names, is that then there can be deliberate artistic choice rather than mere happenstance. It also give one the ability to have a sort of diagnostic or critique language. Like if haiku is approached with a set of theories dealing with the quality of image, one can critique (and thus improve a) haiku, with a statement like “The image is pedantically explained, ” rather than simply saying the “haiku is not working for some reason.” It’s the theories of image that allow one to discuss how images are operating in a haiku to produce a degree of perceived success. Which is to say I think “theory” is actually very important for writers as well as scholars . A master writer or artist is similar to a master mechanic, both a tinker and a theoretician.

       WRT, “My fundamental question regarding today’s topic is, is there any factual evidence to prove that makoto haiku are on a higher level than shasei haiku?” From what I’m picking up, the shasei of the three-tired system of Shiki was a sort of an apprentice-level technique, like an apprentice painter learning how to paint basic spheres and cubes manipulate light form a single source, then eventually two sources, etc. Or a mechanic working on a lawnmower engine before moving straight to EV engine.

       You mentioned that some of your haiku “popped into your mind, ready made.” Do you also write haiku that you have to tinker with it? If so, how do you discuss the tinkering, if even to yourself (serious question).

       1. Thanks, Adam. Interesting. But my mind doesn’t work that way. I agree that theory is important, but to me, personally, it is of no great interest, and totally out of place during creative writing. Same with painting. I used to be pretty good at that when I was young, and never paid any attention to what was supposed to be good in painting. Afterwards, though, I would sometimes look at the “eye paths” in my or somebody else’s paintings, and every time, if I intuitively liked that painting, its eye paths turned out to be good, and if I didn’t like it, there was something wrong with its eye paths, a dead end or whatever.

          And just because Shiki thought it was just an apprentice-level technique, doesn’t mean that I think that way. I know he was a great master, but a master’s opinion is still just an opinion.

          As to rewriting, most of the time I have to work on my haiku. Sometimes long and hard. Just a week or two ago I fixed a haiku I had written more than ten years ago and struggled many times to try to get it right. Until finally I saw a different comparison that worked beautifully – and guess what was all that I had to do? — to say what I was doing at the time of the event.

          1. John, no writer can work without theory, whether they can explicitly say what their set of theoretical approaches are or not. It sounds like, as least in the example of the ten-year-ago haiku, that a theoretical approach that helped you find a satisfactory haiku was described by you as “to say what I was doing at the time of the event.” That IS a theoretical approach.
             I would not, and do not approach haiku in the way you describe, I write haiku with a different set of theoretical approaches. I only include this note to demonstrate that you and I are using two different sets of theories of how to write haiku.

             Regarding, the apprentice-master divide: Yes, Shiki’s opinion is just that.

11. On one level, it would seem that Shiki’s formulation of the three stages is more or less a description of the process a writer may engage to improve a draft of a poem— to get it right. This may involve changing elements even to the point of the finished product having no resemblance to the original.

    I suppose this will be “subjective” in that in involves the writer’s choices; what he/she *feels* is right. But none of this may be evident to the reader. The resulting poem may show no evidence of an “internal, psychological reality.” Does this matter?

    It seems to me that a poem that truly “concentrate[s] on internal, psychological reality . . . an internal, rather than external, reality” is rare and difficult. What is easy is a purely “made up” poem, which while it comes from seemingly internal sources, may not be truly subjective or based on internal reality. It may be cobbled together from random elements that startle or amuse but do not connect to the depths that true imagination does, especially if imagination is seen as that which is in contact with what is real within the writer. It may be, however, that such poems are first drafts, so to speak, of something which may be more revelatory and real. I often feel this way about so-called “gendai” poems I come across.

    I don’t think that is true of Lorin Ford’s poem:

    out of the wormhole tangled up in blue Alice’s

    It clearly speaks of an “internal, psychological reality” one which I think many readers will understand in ways they hadn’t before.
    (And I will add here that a hallmark of true subjectivity and internal reality is that it surprises the writer as well as the reader.)

    Here’s another poem in this neighborhood, written by Hiroko Takahashi:

    I am pregnant
    with the clown
    of a snowy day

    1. Peter, absolutely beautiful sentiment expressed here, “…but do not connect to the depths that true imagination does, especially if imagination is seen as that which is in contact with what is real within the writer.”

       I think you articulated the difference between a “makoto” haiku and a “made up” haiku precisely. A Makoto-haiku has that connection to the original “sketch,” a connection to the “real.”

       Further, when you write, “…it may be, however, that such poems are first drafts, so to speak, of something which may be more revelatory and real. I often feel this way about so-called “gendai” poems I come across.”

       I think this is what I was trying to get at in my essay with the brief critique of Gurga’s concern. It may be that, while Shiki is suggesting starting outside (shasei) and moving to the inside (makoto), the “West” (or at least “master” ELH poets) is able to start inside (“made up,” which doesn’t have a corresponding step in Shiki’s three-tiered system) and move toward the outside, but only “toward,” never fully out, never fully to a “sketch from life.” But move toward the outside enough to touch or trace the “real.”

       1. Perhaps the admittedly attractive word “imagination” is too broad, as it can accommodate the “purely invented or made up” as well as —what I think or hope we are getting at here— insight, or poetic insight. And maybe not unrelated to that other attractive word: inspiration.

          Not to be confused with GMH’s “inscape” and “instress”, although, religion apart, those are also interesting concepts for a haikuist. As is GMH’s dismissive view of “Parnassian poetry” — verse however well-crafted that is devoid of inspiration.

          1. Yes imagination is often seen as synonymous with fantasy– making stuff up.

             I should have said I take my sense of Imagination from Coleridge, updated by Iain McGilchrist: the gist– fantasy is making stuff up from known elements; Imagination is creation. An analogy I have come across is– fantasy rearranges the furniture in a room; Imagination creates a room.

             For Blake, Imagination is seeing more deeply into things, what allows one to “see the world in a grain of sand:”

             Robert Bly, without using the word imagination, puts it this way: “There is an old occult saying: whoever wants to see the invisible has to penetrate more deeply into the visible.”

             1. “….fantasy rearranges the furniture in a room; Imagination creates a room.”

                Then there is a ‘something’ that presupposes a room could exit in the first place to create it and furnish it, and then rearrange the furniture. :)

                In the essay, I see “imagination” as what is describe by Peter as ‘fantasy.’ From the essay:

                “…the deliberate exercising of imagination, that is, the deliberate action of curating and crafting utterly fictious images, scenes, and subject matter. If imagination is to be understood to be the application and free-range play and configuration of concepts…”

12. “shasei and app dating”

    This started on a very bright early 5.30pm evening of Tuesday 8th September (the Autumn season just begins still lingering Summer), on a thought impulse, while waiting for my wife at a bar, and possible film club colleagues to join us.

    ________________
    hiding sunshine
    ––––––––––––––––

    1st throw of the shasei dice/rolodex.

    _________________
    bright sunny day
    bright day
    sunny day
    sun glare
    –––––––––––––––––

    PHRASE ATTEMPT:
    ––––––––––––––––
    I choose a table
    in the shade
    ––––––––––––––––

    REASONS TO BE IAN DURY:
    Above is all logical, for some of us.
    It’s just a prologue, more than the main act.
    Where to “to begin” in the main act or pull or pull from the overall play…

    I mentioned reasons…let’s play Ian:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-ofu4y2uYU

    ____________
    THE PROSE:
    ––––––––––––
    I’m to get the bar early before we move on to the film festival’s first showing at the local cinema, five or so minutes away: Handy for Karen, when she arrives, so as not to run out of spoons. I’m the first, need to nab a table, it’s still quiet. I revert to childhood shyness and choose a table up against the wall, out of the sun, which is really bright.

    All accurate so far, all Police Witness Statement style, reportage, no spin.

    I very rarely ‘do’ 1st stage shasei, or finish there, though it’s a good starting point.

    –––––––––––––––––––
    childhood shyness
    –––––––––––––––––––

    Still fact, as is “a table in the shade”.
    The shyness is personal, private, so could be said from the heart, but not poetic ‘heart-truth’.

    ––––––––––––––––––––
    a bar table
    for a group not here
    ––––––––––––––––––––

    ––––––––––––––––––––––––
    the bar table
    ingrained with shyness
    ––––––––––––––––––––––––

    THE SECOND ONE:
    It’s both fact, alcohol is used to lose shyness and inhibitions. Sometimes there’s a rush to hit the perfect spot to appear outgoing, outgoing, charismatic blah blah blah, although it’s poetically conveyed: It couldn’t go into a Witness Statement.

    The rush to get drunk, means spilt beer.

    Do we have a phrase:

    ––––––––––––––––––––––––
    the bar table
    ingrained with shyness
    ––––––––––––––––––––––––

    It conveys many social situations from early teens onward (adulthood, divorce, new single-hood etc…)

    A third line, strong juxtaposition, soft, or enlarging…

    Use a seasonal marker?

    later summer evening or afternoon
    early autumn evening or afternoon

    Both are bland, close to Witness Statement.

    Japan’s kigo are sometimes markers, sometimes a layered cake of emotion(s)

    e.g.
    cherry blossom, white mountain-ridge clouds (kumomina) fading into a summer night under the moon, falling leaves, the moon, first snow and so many more.

    There’s already a personal/psychological element to the phrase.

    A flat seasonal marker or attempt at a kigo. In real time it’s a start, as it’s Autumn, yesterday Tuesday 8th September. What else?

    doomscrolling

    A common all year round activity.

    sunlit corners
    climate doubt

    Not there yet.

    Beer is a Japanese Summer kigo, and through the phrase bar/ingrained hints at spilt beer perhaps we could grab Summer as it’s just turned.

    Do I veer right off looking for the last line to find…

    motes in the shade
    black bic glinting

    I’m now relieved to see my wife arrive after her health meeting.

    Still no pleasing line to follow the candidate phrase:

    ––––––––––––––––––––––––
    the bar table
    ingrained with shyness
    ––––––––––––––––––––––––

    Does it work, at least for this exercise though.

    film club premiere
    the lower sun slants
    across a bar table

    a dimming sun
    crosses (out) the table

    dimming sun
    meet up

    the sun lower
    on the calendar

    first on the calendar
    of the film festival

    ––––––––––––––––––––––
    autumn/fall signifier?
    early autumn/early fall
    –––––––––––––––––––––
    ––––––––––––––––––––––––
    the bar table
    ingrained with shyness
    early autumn
    ––––––––––––––––––––––––

    A hint of leaving younger adulthood, brashness, over-confidence…

    It veers away from the story and becomes a different tale.

    ––––––––––––––
    “the bar table”
    ––––––––––––––
    For earlier generations this might have been a prominent place, sometimes equal to the home, to the hearth:
    –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
    home/hearth–work–pub/bar–home–and repeat
    –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

    It’s no longer about being shy on one occasion like a first date, or mature later new first, or app date (app dating), it’s being first to arrive, waiting for friends, to feel less naked and vulnerable until they arrive. Vulnerability is there, it’s actual and not manipulated, therefore holds authenticity.

    ––––––––––––––––––––––––
    the bar table
    ingrained with shyness
    early autumn
    ––––––––––––––––––––––––

    ––––––––––––––––––––––––
    the bar table
    ingrained with shyness
    app date
    ––––––––––––––––––––––––

    Can a non-seasonal 3rd line be stronger than a classical era kigo.

    –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
    Does anyone keep tabs on regular/contemporary saijiki:
    –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
    What are the new kigo created in contemporary times (2000 onwards) that have stayed the test of Japanese saijiki and kiyose?

    ––––––––
    app date
    ––––––––

    An app date is all year round, is there a perceived seasonal peak:

    autumn or winter loneliness
    or
    spring/summer eagerness/new beginnings

    It’s more relevant as many generations rely on and initiate electronic devices and their various multitudinous apps.

    I’ve never tried a dating app or a booty call app, so do I throw caution to the wind with the haiku and manipulate it, from the original intent. If I was in my 20s 30s and painfully single would I succomb, rather than go analog.

    What do some of the younger generations do now, feel.

    Anyone for a different 3rd line shasei stage 2 or 3 or ‘beyond’
    What is the later stages for end of first quarter of 21st Century era.

    –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
    I look forward to other examples both already published, uncurated,
    or created to be first seen here. Is shasei fluid and meant to be…
    –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

    1. Dating app activity and user intent change significantly across different times of the year, driven by distinct seasonal trends like “cuffing season” and summer flings.

       ____________________________________
       Peak Seasons & Trends
       Cuffing Season (Late Fall to Winter):
       ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
       Activity surges as colder weather and holidays lead people to seek cozy, short-term, or long-term companionship. Major spikes happen on “Dating Sunday” (the first Sunday of the year) and right before Valentine’s Day.

       ________________________________
       Drafting Season (Early Autumn):
       ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
       Singles line up multiple dates in advance to test options before winter arrives.

       __________________________________
       Summer (Heatwaves & Benching):
       ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

       While some users look for a plus-one for outdoor events, others experience “benching,” where matches treat conversations like a sports draft rather than committing.

       ____________________
       How Apps Respond
       ––––––––––––––––––––

       Tinder and Bumble report massive surges in swipe volume and revenue during January and February.
       Platforms frequently update features (like Bumble’s seasonal date guides or loosened messaging rules) to combat seasonal dating burnout and keep engagement high.

       BUMBLE:
       I’ll leave it to others to report back though this is interesting for current seasonal markers:

       Bumble experiences clear seasonal shifts in user activity and dating trends, with winter—specifically late November to mid-February—marking its busiest period for swiping and matching.

       Seasonal Trends and Behavior
       Cuffing Season:
       Fall through late winter drives an increased desire for cozy, committed, or companionable relationships during colder months.

       Dating Sunday:
       Occurring early in January, this is one of the biggest days of the year for single people to log on, update profiles, and start new chats.

       Holiday Travel Mode:
       Bumble encourages users to switch on Travel mode if they visit family or new cities during the holidays to line up dates ahead of time.

       Summer Flings:
       Warmer months shift focus toward casual, lighthearted outdoor activities, festivals, and temporary connections.

       Seasonal Date Inspiration
       Winter:
       Ice skating, cozy coffee dates, VR gaming, or virtual snow walks if matching long-distance.

       Spring:
       Farmers’ market strolls, backyard grilling, and outdoor museum scavenger hunts.

       Summer:
       Rooftop bars, beer gardens, local parks, and active outdoor sports like tennis or pickleball.

       Check out the official Bumble Seasonal Dating Ideas and Winter Dating Guides for more inspiration.

13. @ Adam On your question about whether ELH has a past-oriented raison d’être, I think haiku may actually be both the most traditional and the most radical of forms.

    It is radical because its brevity makes it approach the limits of language. By reducing language to its essential elements, it creates a space where what is not said becomes as important as what is said. The cut, ambiguity, and resonance between images all emerge from this extreme compression.

    But this radical premise also requires stabilizing mechanisms. The conventions of the form and the traditions that surround it make it possible for such extreme brevity to function in a reliable way. Tradition is not necessarily the opposite of experimentation in haiku; it is part of what allows haiku to keep exploring what language can do.

    The problem arises when tradition becomes conservatism and we confuse the means for the end. The conventions that enabled haiku’s radical possibilities can become ends in themselves, preserving the form while losing sight of the radical event that gave rise to it.

    1. I see the past is mentioned, and for those of who are getting older, there is a rich store of past events.

       Sunday 8th April 2018:
       “rêverie observation” is a new aspect of Slip-Realism but one where versions of memory from our earlier life or lives are captured. 
       rêverie observation©Alan Summers 2018-2020

       Slip-Realism – haiku about lives and incidents on the ‘peripheral’ -Unearthing the anonymous – parallel narratives – new ways of perceiving the real (after Néoréalisme & Nouveau realisme)
       https://area17.blogspot.com/2018/01/slip-realism-haiku-about-lives-and.html

       Slip Realism across the single line of haiku
       https://www.whiptailjournal.com/_files/ugd/61a9c9_68970067ed8f44808e990d97f73b88e6.pdf

       The Slip-Realism Perception Challenge (a commission by Sandra Simpson):
       https://nzhaiku.wordpress.com/essays-articles/the-slip-realism-perception-challenge/

14. There are lots of threads here I’d like to explore in follow-up comments. One question that occurs to me is whether this conception of subjectivity might ironically risk making subjectivity itself into a monolith. I agree that subjectivity has a historical component, but I wonder whether the variations between individuals within a given epoch might sometimes be greater than those between individuals across epochs. And poets, after all, are a self-selected group, potentially with a particularly distinctive relationship to subjectivity.

    This also raises a larger question for me: if subjectivity is radically different across epochs, and if authenticity depends to some extent on recognizing the particularity of one’s own historical situation, then how are we able to relate to past poets at all? We obviously do relate to them—not simply as historical artifacts, but as poets whose work can still speak to us. Does that not suggest that there are aspects of subjectivity that exceed historical particularity, or at least that subjectivity is capable of entering into relations with forms of subjectivity that are historically different from our own?

    More broadly, art—which I’ll use here as a name for poetry as well—is as prone to looking backwards as it is to looking forwards. The Renaissance, Gothic revival, and many other artistic movements demonstrate that artists can consciously reach into the past, recover earlier forms or sensibilities, and transform them in the present. So I wonder whether authenticity can be understood exclusively in terms of expressing the subjectivity of one’s own historical moment. A poet can deliberately depart from the dominant sensibility of their epoch—and perhaps poets are especially likely to do so.

    All this is not to say that I think your argument doesn’t track something real. I think it does. I just wonder whether it is partial rather than total.

    1. Could you open up the idea a little more of the notion of intra-epoch subjective v. inter-epoch subjectivity difference similarities. Also across a single lifetime? Maybe there’s like an Overton Window of possible subjective experience, that is a bit less temporally linear than at first blush?

       *

       I would agree that there are aspects of subjectivity that exceed historical particularity,” for example the ability of a “inner, psychological reality” to be culturally-generated seems to suggest an malleability or openness that is hardwired into the ‘coding’ of experience-production itself.

       The issue of “relating to past poets” has much to do I think with last week’s essay/discussion on simile v metaphor, something like the ‘past is like the present as both simile and metaphor,’ or ‘the past is manifested in particular ways AS present’ in such a way that the past and its art is a component of present subjectivities. The past is a component of the social forces that generate any given contemporary epoch’s subjectivities.

       And here I’m thinking of something like the past-oriented subjectivities of certain historical moments (in a culture as well an individual) versus, or in dynamic, with the present-oriented (and future-oriented) subjectivities of other historic moments, and how the social ‘machine’ uses past or present in its coding, and how this subjectivities generate experience in relation to perception of the past or present.

       And to this question is added forms of art and any modi operandi or raison d’être that become associated or embedded into any given form of art. E.g. something like “digital art” has an inherent present and/or future sense of its operations and raison d’être? Does ELH have a ‘;past-oriented’ raison d’être? An overwhelming number of haiku being written/published today would suggest that there is a certain conservatism of experience/subjectivity inherent in the form. Yet, obviously this is ironic when acknowledging the wacky, experimental, boundary pushing origins of haikai.

       1. I think what I’m getting at is that there may be different kinds of subjective proximity, and historical proximity is only one of them.

          A Black woman today might, in some respects, have more in common with Black women living generations ago than with a white woman living in her own time. Race and gender don’t operate independently here: even ideas about what women are like, or what qualities they’re expected to have, differ significantly along racial and cultural lines. I don’t mean historical differences disappear — just that “same epoch” doesn’t necessarily mean “more similar subjectivity.”

          This becomes even more interesting within a single lifetime as you note. We tend to speak of a person as one continuous subject moving through time, but I’m not sure that’s always how experience feels, or how we should understand it. We can change enormously, sometimes containing several conflicting ways of being, with different ones dominant at different points, even moment to moment. Early and late Shiki can genuinely feel like different poets, even belonging to the same historical subject.

          So the Overton Window might be worth thinking of as multidimensional — shaped not only by period, but by culture, gender, race, class, personal history, and the particular traditions a person inhabits. The interesting question isn’t only how the window shifts historically, but how differently positioned people occupy different parts of it, and how far they can move within or beyond it.

          My concern is with what happens when historical situatedness becomes a demand for authenticity. If an authentic poet must express the subjectivity of their particular moment, that can become its own tyranny. A woman may be shaped by her gender without wanting her subjectivity defined by it; more generally, people may not recognize themselves in the subject positions their time offers, and may resist, reject, or reach toward another culture, period, or tradition instead. Historical situatedness seems important as a condition of subjectivity, but not its destiny.

          I don’t think a poem has to participate in the subjectivity of its historical moment to be authentic. But I do think there can be an aesthetic privilege in doing so — engaging deeply with the particularities of one’s moment may give a poem dimensions of poeticity otherwise unavailable to it. But timelessness is also a poetic value; a poem can gain something by reaching beyond its moment. This brings us back, perhaps, to fūeki and ryūkō — the enduring and the changing. I wouldn’t want to make either a prerequisite for authenticity. They’re different possibilities of poetic value, and the most interesting poems may find their own balance between them.

          This is running long so I’ll answer the last ELH point in a separate comment🙂

          1. Orense, wrt to your, “If an authentic poet must express the subjectivity of their particular moment, that can become its own tyranny” and “I don’t think a poem has to participate in the subjectivity of its historical moment to be authentic.”

             This is very interesting. One’s subjectivity is created by one’s “historic moment” of which concepts/performances of gender, class, race, media, material reality, etc. are manifested at the individual level as a persons “personal history.” One cannot ‘step out’ of this subjectivity to approach it from an outside perspective, nor can one ‘step out’ of this subjectivity to write a poem (certainly one can go to therapy or do drugs, etc to move within a historical moment’s Overton Window of possible subjectives , but all of those tools are too OF the historic moment.)

             One can dress in old-timey clothes, or pull a Wes Anderson and re-create in tedious details some relic from the past (“The House on Utopia Parkway: Joseph Cornell’s Studio Re-Created”), or write haiku via a ‘perceived’ subjective experience of someone two centuries ago, but at some point such a performance crosses a threshold and becomes cringy. Where that threshold is is contingent upon innumerable factors, but the cringe threshold seems to be when the play-acting becomes taken as reality.

             Which is I think to say it’s not a matter that the poet “must express the subjectivity of their particular moment.” They’ll do that automatically. In my mind the “tyranny” comes in, as it does in all conservatism moments, when one “must” act in accordance to a past model of X. The “must” is reinforced through external forces (journals that only publish haiku in the present tense) and internally (psychological repression due to an internal discomfort of a bio male who writes from the voice and name of a “woman”).

             Within this is the ground of haikai and all present-oriented art gestures. The “particularities of one’s moment” and “timelessness” (fūeki and ryūkō) are not at odds in experiencing one’s existence via one’s subjectivity (because there’s no other option). It’s when ryūkō (the changing) is denied as a part of the present the cringe enters, and not only cringe but, imo, psychological damage. One cannot pretend one is not living now.

             c.f. Borge’s “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote”

             1. When writing about my childhood, I am not living now, nor am I pretending.

                And vicariously through family anecdotes, the experience comes from only one direction, the past.

                Nostalgia could be just a genre.

             2. I think perhaps the word “participate” needs a small clarification. I agree that we inevitably participate in our historical moment in the sense that we are part of it; we cannot step outside the conditions that shape us.

                What I am questioning is whether authenticity requires participating in the dominant mode of subjectivity of that moment in the sense of adopting or aligning oneself with it. A historical period does not have a single subjectivity. It contains multiple ways of experiencing, responding to, and even resisting its own conditions.

                So my concern is not historical situatedness itself, but the possibility of treating the dominant expression of a historical moment as the only authentic one.

                Indeed, I agree with much of what you say. My reservation is more with the idea that there might be a measure of poetry—a particular mode of relation to one’s historical moment that becomes the standard of authenticity. Taken to its conclusion, this can create an aesthetic hierarchy, where some ways of writing become more “authentic” than others.

                This is where I find myself slightly resistant to the hierarchical element in Shiki’s stages of the haiku poet. I find much of Shiki’s thinking fascinating, but I am less comfortable with the idea of a progression toward a higher poetic achievement.

                Perhaps this is partly a difference in critical sensibility. I should clarify that I do not see your argument as equivalent to the kind of prescriptive aesthetic hierarchy found, in very different ways, in critics such as Ruskin or Blyth. In fact, I understand your argument as partly a reaction against what you perceive as an ELH that has become encrusted with inherited assumptions.

                I should perhaps add that I am not arguing against the idea that ELH should engage more consciously with its historical moment. That may be a valuable and necessary challenge to a tradition that has become overly attached to inherited models.

                My hesitation is with moving from the claim that a certain engagement can open new poetic possibilities to the claim that only poems engaging in that way can achieve authenticity or poetic value. The first is an invitation to exploration; the second risks becoming a new orthodoxy.

                The broader risk I see is that any corrective movement can face: that a valuable insight can become a new measure by which poetry is judged. For me, when I read Ruskin or Blyth, I sometimes feel I am learning as much about the critic’s own aesthetic values as about poetry itself. That can certainly be illuminating, but I am hesitant to turn those preferences into a universal ranking of poetic value.

                I tend to be more comfortable with the idea that poetry can have multiple forms of excellence and multiple ways of arriving at truth, rather than a single trajectory toward a more authentic or advanced poetry.

                The deeper question for me might be whether poetry is, at its core, not simply an expression of subjectivity but a transformation of it.

                A poem is a site where subjectivity is transmitted, negotiated, and sometimes transmuted. The poet does not simply place an already existing inner reality into words; the act of making the poem changes the relation between self and world. And the reader, encountering the poem, enters into another configuration of experience without simply becoming the poet.

                This may be why poets from other periods can still speak to us. The possibility of poetic communication across historical difference suggests not that subjectivities are identical, but that subjectivity itself is capable of relation and transformation.

             3. simonj, But it’s your “I” that’s writing about its childhood. And that “I” ‘s experience of itself is historically/socially contingent. The “past” is definitely a component of present subjective experiences.

             4. Orense, I agree that a historical moment produces a wide spectrum of subjectivities. Do all those subjectivities produce a bell-curve or a flat line? More than like something resembling a bell-curve with the “dominate” subjective experiences being in the center of the curve. But, at the same time the historic moment also produces its own outliers at the ends of the curve. I do not think art and artist should consciously work toward the center in some fashion, nor do I think the center should impose some artistic control on the outliers.

                However, I do think there is a “hierarchy” (though I would probably use a term such as “gradient”) towards acts and behaviors generated via subjectivity closer to or further from the center of the curve. For example, the speech act “Women don’t deserve the vote, and should not have jobs, only remaining at home to raise children.” In much of the “West” such a statement would be “less authentic” (to say the least, ha) to contemporary subjectivities than it was 200 years ago. There are certainly outlier subjectivities producing such speech acts today, but 200 years ago, such a speech act would be generated from a subjectivity closer to the the center of the curve.

                Haiku are speech acts. So, somehow they are involved in this gradient of authenticity? If so, how do make these evaluations?

             5. I think the speech act point is important. A haiku is a speech act structurally and functionally: it arises from a particular speaker, at a particular moment, within a particular relationship between poet, world, and reader. In that sense, it cannot escape historical conditions. The subjectivity from which a poem emerges is necessarily shaped by the concepts, experiences, and possibilities available within its moment.

                But a haiku is also literature. It is not only an utterance within its original situation; it is an artwork that enters into other situations of reception. It is accountable to its time, but it is also created with the possibility of speaking beyond it. The question therefore becomes not simply whether a poem expresses the conditions of its moment, but how that historically situated experience is transformed into something that can enter into relation with other subjectivities.

                This is perhaps where Bashō’s distinction between fūeki and ryūkō becomes relevant. The changing (ryūkō) is not only a matter of contemporary subject matter. It can include new concepts, new perceptions, and new formal possibilities. A tradition can become exhausted when inherited techniques no longer produce the same poetic event they once did. Formal choices themselves are historical: a device that was once fresh can become conventional through repetition.

                At the same time, Bashō does not seem to me to suggest that every poem must simply maximize ryūkō. Some haiku lean more toward the particularity of their moment; others reach more strongly toward what endures. The most powerful and enduring often bring the two together. Fūeki is not the absence of history, nor is it the preservation of old forms unchanged. It is the capacity of a poetic principle to continue generating meaning under changing conditions.

                This is where I wonder if I may have initially understood your argument too strongly, and I would be interested in your clarification.

                I read the progression of the argument somewhat as follows: subjectivity is historically situated; Shiki’s progression culminates in subjective makoto; therefore, a contemporary haiku must reflect the subjectivity of its historical moment in order to be fully authentic.

                But perhaps your emphasis is actually on subjectivity rather than historicity. Is the argument instead that Shiki’s movement beyond descriptive shasei asks poets to engage more deeply with their own internal reality, and because that internal reality is always historically situated, the resulting poems will inevitably bear the marks of their moment?

                In other words, is historical situatedness the goal, or is it the consequence of a deeper engagement with subjectivity?

                I ask because the stronger language toward the end of the essay, describing some contemporary shasei-seeming haiku as “anachronistic,” “contrived,” or expressions of “faux nostalgia,” made me wonder whether you are distinguishing between two different things: a necessary renewal of ELH as a tradition, and a criterion by which the poetic value of individual poems should be judged.

                Would you see those as separate questions?

             6. Orense,

                I don’t see speech acts and literature as separate. But, we’ve def beaten that horse, as they say :)

                You write, “[Haiku] is not only an utterance within its original situation; it is an artwork that enters into other situations of reception.” It COULD enter into other situations. But, most do not. The countless thousands (millions?) of haiku that are no longer relevant to me demonstrate that the fūeki and ryūkō is inside my argument.

                A work of art is only relevant to a particular historic moment because it helps inform the construction of subjectivities in that particular historic moment. If it doesn’t it’s not relevant.

                There are items of the past (fūeki) that are relevant to any given historic moment. It should be noted too that Bashō didn’t say EVERYTHING was fūeki, he too seemed to curate and delineate what counted, for his historic moment, as fūeki (i.e. waka “certified” subject matter/topics). I.e. there were some components of the past that were relevant and some not.

                Existing as a contemporary subjectivity does not mean “maximizing ryūkō.” If anything its the reverse, it means not artificially ‘maximizing fūeki.’

                Your flow of the argument is accurate, with one inclusion from this discussion: “subjectivity is historically situated; Shiki’s progression culminates in subjective makoto; therefore, a contemporary haiku must reflect the subjectivity [of which past items are constituent parts] of its historical moment in order to be fully authentic.”

                To your question(s): “[I]s historical situatedness the goal, or is it the consequence of a deeper engagement with subjectivity?”

                Historical situatedness is not a “goal” it’s an enviability, we can’t help but be situated as such. IF haiku is to be written from an “internal, psychology reality” (makoto) that has a connection to the “real world” (however any given historical moment perceives it) via shasei>selective realism process, THEN today’s makoto-haiku will look/read very differently from Shiki’s time in which the “objectivity” of the world behaved and was described vastly different that how that “objectivity” exists today (if at all). But, this is a particular IF-THEN argument. There are other IF-THEN’s that can be argued, for example: IF haiku is considered to be a conservative from of art that should re-create the past way of doing things, THEN haiku should look/read like something from centuries ago.

15. I have plenty of questions and observations because this is a rich topic. But first, thank you, Adam, for breaking the ice and being our very first guest editor. It’s a real pleasure to have you open this new chapter of Moon and Finger, and what a thoughtful essay to do it with. Shasei is such an influential thread in ELH—and, ironically, its influence may be proportional to how misunderstood it is. I really enjoyed your exploration of Shiki and subjectivity, and the questions it opens up around how we understand his poetics. We’re very grateful to you for taking this on!

    1. Thank you for the kind words, Orense. :)

    2. Echoed, Adam.

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