Viral 5.6

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1. In response to your comments, Allan (Burns), I agree – and already know – that English-language haiku has many examples of “dark” subjects. But I do think there could be more, and with greater range, and that certain writers could do more in such areas than they do. My point was that beauty is not the real heart of haiku, whereas, to use Hackett’s term, “lifefulness” is. This lifefulness *includes* beauty, yet goes farther than that. Also, I’m not sure I agree when Alan Summers says that “most” haiku writers will “not avoid writing something because it is not pretty or beautiful.” That claim is demonstrably true for the most accomplished haiku poets, but haiku in general tends to veer toward the beautiful. There’s nothing wrong with beautiful subjects, but less experienced poets should not assume that haiku *isn’t* about what’s not beautiful.

   And I agree with Chris Patchel that yes, of course, beauty and art do go hand in hand (after all, what do we prefer to hang up on our walls?), and that writing for shock value is (in my words) often immature and superficial. I quite like your point, Chris, that subtlety is important. I believe we can still point at dark subjects with subtlety – we need not be both dark *and* blunt. Yet I also feel that we need not shy away from the violent, if that is necessary for a particular haiku. I guess the real point I’ve been trying to make is that haiku in Japan has more *range* than most haiku written in English.

   Scott, you say “in its execution and expression and images indirectly alluded to, there is beauty i think. there is balance.” That “beauty” is, I would say, either the balance or the lifefulness in the poem. So sure, there’s a layer of beauty in every poem, even ones with ugly or dark subjects. And speaking of balance, the trick with haiku, and in developing the extremes of one’s range, is to find a balance between the gratuitous and the genuine. It is just as hard to write effectively about the dark as well as the light, about what is ugly as well as what is beautiful.

2. Scott, That’s how I first read that poem, but the word “hacked” kept reminding me that there was more to it. Heaven only knows I’ve had to clean more fish than I care to remember….and I’ve often had to deal with something that I had just taken from the freezer and needed to cook in a hurry…but the words “hacked to pieces” would not be the kind of words I’d imagine I’d choose if I were to connote preparing food … to my sensibility they shake me awake to something much deeper… a certain cruelty.

3. i was just rereading some of Blyth’s *A History of Haiku: Volume 2* and came across two things that reminded me of this Viral and its poem.

   “Haiku need no virtue or vice, beauty or ugliness, right or wrong. ‘Seek ye first the Kingdom of Sensation, and all these things shall be added unto you.’ There is nothing improper in ornamenting one’s work by means of religion or philosophy or morality or romance or superstition, provided that there is something fundamental which it ornaments, the pure sensation. Or to put the matter in another way, all the ‘thoughts that wander through eternity,’ the ‘unheard melodies,’ the ‘eternal passions, eternal pain,’ the yearning and despair, the desire for immortality, the desire for death itself are pedagogues to lead us back to the infinitely meaningful touch and smell and taste and sound and sight” (xxxi-ii).

   what i return to, and find central, in regards to “the anglerfish frozen” is the huge knife (Death) required to hack the fish to pieces, since it is “frozen right down to its very bones” (conveying a life lived, a process experienced). if it is an ocean scene, then it is one where the poet is imagining the frozenness, feeling that state himself. he is using and manipulating the kigo and scenery to graft his own thoughts, imagination and feelings onto/into an image/thing. all of which conveys a kind of darkness, perhaps depression, a sense of loss; an “end.”

   the sound of that big knife coming down multiple times.

   if the scene is one of a kitchen, at home or in a restaurant, then i feel more of a sense of loss for freshness, as well as a longing for the ocean and its infinitude, “beauty” and constant motion—for a scene filled with a bit more airiness, freedom and openness.

   and yet, there is a sense of warmth that resonates after the poem’s final cut from reality (“pieces”). what will the fish be used for? surely for sustenance, for warmth, for life. even if there is only a bit more left.

   there is darkness and death, loss and longing, in this poem, but in its execution and expression and images indirectly alluded to, there is beauty i think. there is balance.

   late in Blyth’s volume 2 i came across this ku, which i immediately linked to Shūson’s:

   The snake is dying:
   Nearby,
   Children are talking.

   —Hōsha (p201)

   Blyth wrote of it: “The deep meaning of this verse lies in the absence of expressed or implied connection between the death of the snake and the conversation of the children.”

4. You know, I was thinking of this haiku last night and the thought came to me that the thing that seems to give this haiku its intensity is the violence of the last line… Am I mistaken in wondering if this haiku might be a statement against gratuitous violence?

5. Michael, Forgive me, I was not referring to your comments at all…I was reacting to the haiku itself. This haiku struck me as being so perfect an example of what haiku is (or seems to be to me) to be about getting to the “truth” (for want of a better word).

   In no way do I believe that haiku should only be about beauty or some esthetic quality twice removed from existance.

   In addition I have no opinion about the ritual at all since I have no understanding of these things. You just can’t read about ancient rites and understand the mindset. So I too was trying to understand how that fit with this haiku.

   Sometimes it seems strange to me how people read what I write. Not being a word person, I have yet to understand how that happens.

   My only thought about this haiku was how true it seemed to be about the poets existance. The point is that objects in this context seem to me to speak a great deal more about the poet and the fish…or at least to equate the two.

6. Just to play devil’s advocate I’ll note that beauty and art go hand in hand. However unpleasant the subject matter, or gritty the visuals, or discordant the notes, an artist’s rendering will have an inherent beauty which attracts even if it simultaneously repels. I think this is apparent in the many examples already given here, and any number of others we could site.

   This doesn’t negate Michael’s well-stated point, of course, which is that haiku/art needn’t and shouldn’t be confined to the pretty and pleasant. Yet having said that I’m tempted to argue that it isn’t overt harshness, shock, or even passion, but rather subtlety, that has long proven to be one of haiku’s strengths. Only I haven’t thought about it long enough to decide if this argument holds up and what the reasons are, or if it’s simply a personal aesthetic that I/we have come to appreciate. I don’t think, in my case anyway, that it can be chalked up to an aversion to hard truths/realities. It’s more a matter of what haiku does and doesn’t do effectively.

7. Fortunately most haiku writers will not avoid writing something because it is not pretty or beautiful. That viewpoint would be very limiting, and in my opinion not at all a ‘beautiful’ practice.

   high noon
   half a bandicoot
   the flies’ hum

   Alan Summers
   British Haiku Society Postal Workshops Anthology 2000

   scooter fall –
   a boy grasps his pain
   outside an art café

   Alan Summers
   Snapshots 9 ISSN 1461-0833 (2001)

   sewer rat
   breaking the water surface
   its shut eye

   Alan Summers
   The New Haiku Snapshot Press ISBN 1-903543-03-7 (2002)
   Haiku Spirit #16 Eire, (March 1999)

   sultry evening
   liquid from the take out bag
   runs near the victim

   Alan Summers
   World Haiku Review Vol 2: Issue 3 (November 2002)
   WHCvanguard – Hard or “Real” Haiku
   Vanguard Haiku Selected by Susumu Takiguchi

   street attack –
   I hold the young girl
   through her convulsions

   Alan Summers
   World Haiku Review Vol 2: Issue 3 (November 2002)
   WHCvanguard – Hard or “Real” Haiku
   Vanguard Haiku Selected by Susumu Takiguchi

   A later version: Short Stuff a journal of ‘short form’ poetry Ninth Issue Vol. 2, Issue 1 (January 2003)

   silk on skin
   yellow balloons for each
   boy she lost

   Alan Summers
   ekphrastic haiku
   Writing Events Bath inspired by Phil Bebbington’s photographs
   (January 2010)

8. I appreciate the general point you’re making, Michael, and it’s certainly one worth considering. But it’s also worth pointing out that across its history, ELH can show haiku that are “dark” and that register a consciousness of violence, suffering, and death. Just consider the oeuvre of Nick Virgilio, for starters, who often wrote of death and loss.

   Here’s a little “instant anthology” that shows ELH has never been *exclusively* concerned with “sweetness and light”:

   the sack of kittens
   sinking in the icy creek
   increases the cold
   (Nick Virgilio, Haiku West 1.1, 1967)

   red flipped out
   chicken lung
   in a cold white sink
   (Anita Virgil, A 2nd Flake, 1974)

   jan. 1
   the corpse of a crow whitens the snow
   (Bob Boldman, Walking with the River, 1980)

   overgrown pasture:
   the feathered talon of a dead owl
   clutching a weed stalk
   (Elizabeth Searle Lamb, 39 Blossoms, 1982)

   still trapped
   in tangled barbed wire
   antlers and bones
   (Charles B. Dickson, MH 17.2, 1986)

   frosty morning
   the lifeless tracery
   of a lacewing
   (Jim Kacian, Presents of Mind, 1996)

   The old grizzly
   left it behind
   moon in the salmon’s eye
   (vincent tripi, Still 2.4, 1998)

   turned earth
   the splayed ribcage
   of a March hare
   (John Barlow, Frogpond 30.3, 2007)

   wild flowers
   where native blood flowed
   Acoma Pueblo
   (Marian Olson, Desert Hours, 2007)

   white wind the eyes of the dead seal missing
   (Carolyn Hall, Roadrunner, 8.1, 2008)

   Just ten quickly selected examples, all of which exhibit some affinities with Shūson’s haiku. One could obviously turn up many more with systematic investigation. From the latest MH (41.1), for instance, I was struck in this connection by:

   a last sun flash
   off the mahogany coffin
   as it sinks into earth
   (Mike Dillon)

   a bulimic model vomits her Halloween candy
   (Burnell Lippy)

9. Thanks for the clarification on the verb use, Gabi. That suggests that the translation may have had to choose just part of the possible meaning present in the original Japanese, since it seems to have omitted or minimized how the author is feeling chilled — although that is still somewhat implied in the translation, I think.

   Regardless of whether the fish is part of a ritual or not, though, my point is that the notion of hacking the fish to bits, or cutting it to pieces, is gritty, somewhat violent, and perhaps also dark. the tone of the translation certainly conveys this grittiness, and even violence. The point is that the subject is not “beautiful” — Japanese haiku is not just about cherry blossoms and bamboo.

   And thus, with this example in mind, perhaps we who write haiku in English can be challenged to write with a greater variety of subjects, to write about dark and light subjects, to write of death or in the consciousness of death (duende), and to question our habits regarding subject matter — that haiku need not always be about the beautiful. One does not need to know about the ritual you refer to get this point.

   Michael

10. “I used Kato Shuson’s poem as an example of something that’s deliberately not beautiful (and is even violent) ”

    Well, I still can not agree with this statement, or rather, agree with it when only reading the english translation with no further knowledge about the state of the ankoo in Japanese culture.

    Ankoo is not a fish like salmon or herring you buy frozen (the verb in this case would be kooru, not iteru) and cut for your dinner at home or watch our wife doing it.

    The Japanese describes how the fish is cut on a cold beach (by the way, I saw this on TV just yesterday and was reminded of this discussion … talk about co-incidence). iteru … is more a feeling of coldness, as the visitor gets when standing there watching the fish hanging there in line, waiting for its fate to be cut.
    The verb for the cutting does not feel as cruel as in the english version. It is just the verb used for cutting ankoo by local folks (and the TV anouncer) to describe the situation.
    Please take a look at the photo in my BLOG to see the fish freezing out there.

    I ventured a different translation too, to show how the author suffered with the fish during its ordeal

    this angler fish
    feeing chilled to the bone
    is (finally) cut to pieces

    http://washokufood.blogspot.com/2010/02/ankoo-anglerfish.html

    “A more useful topic of discussion would seem to be what subjects are appropriate for haiku,”

    Well, I said it before , any subject is apropriate for traditional Japanese haiku.

    Gabi

    .

11. Merrill, if you find Gabi’s information about the fish ritual to be useful or interesting to you, that’s great, but I think it’s off the topic of the poem, and the point I was making. Also, my point is not about beauty at all. It’s about how some haiku poets may think that haiku should be limited to the beautiful. I used Kato Shuson’s poem as an example of something that’s deliberately not beautiful (and is even violent) to show the extremes that haiku can take — in contrast to the narrower view some English-language haiku writers may have of the genre.

    Also, I’ve never said anything about the fish being prepared for dinner. What I’ve said is that the fish is frozen, as the poem says, so it cannot be a fresh fish that I presume is used in the ritual that Gabi describes. Thus the ritual seems to NOT be relevant to this poem and my discussion of it.

    A more useful topic of discussion would seem to be what subjects are appropriate for haiku, and if we have biases that preclude a certain range of topics. I think perhaps we do. We may CHOOSE to write about beautiful things only, but making that conscious choice if better than unthinkingly defaulting just to certain subjects or tones. Again, as Hackett wrote, “Lifefulness, not beauty, is the real quality of haiku.” This understanding is a crucial one for haiku, and facilitates the dark as well as the light.

    Michael

12. I think this poem is a perfect example of how haiku is about the individual and his place in the universe…his life…his destiny. It has nothing to do with beautiful…it is about the facts of life and the quality of life, and the real passing of life as the haiku poet is experiencing it.

    I’m glad to have all of Gabi’s information about the ritual…and I do believe it helps us to understand what the poet is likening his life to… But I truly can not imagine that this would just be about a fish being prepared for dinner. The intensity of the poem itself indicates that it is about larger things. Perhaps the ritual itself was about larger things too.

13. Gabi, my question of you was about your comments regarding the fish being cut at the beach. I do not believe that applies to the poem. That’s because it is frozen. I don’t see how the poem can be interpreted as being at the beach at all.

    Also, my commentary was not about the beautiful in haiku, but about the value of things that are NOT “beautiful.”

    Michael

14. The death poem by Shuson is also dealing with the frozen earth

    Six feet of soil in
    the frost of earth becomes room
    enough for the dead.

    quoted from his obituary here
    http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-shuson-kato-1483946.html

    .

15. “Gabi, are you sure what you say applies to this particular poem?”

    Michael, I am glad you asked.

    There is a lot more to this haiku than I first thought.
    For example
    The saijiki tells us that the use of the passive verb form “buchikiraru” implies a kind of pitifull compassion and pain with the fate of the fish. The author feels like the fish itself.

    BUT

    “That, however, is beside the point I’m trying to make about the misperception some Westerners have about haiku being merely “beautiful. Michael”

    Since here you are concerned about BEAUTIFUL,
    Check my BLOG for more on this ankoo fish and even an old ritual ceremony of cutting it and also … sake with the bones immersed in it
    http://washokufood.blogspot.com/2010/02/ankoo-anglerfish.html

    As for the BEAUTIFUL, I think tradtional Japanese haiku tell us about

    the sunshine and the rain
    the roses and the thorns
    the life and the death in nature

    Let us see what the discussion here brings about for English Language Haiku and Modern Haiku.

    Gabi

16. Not knowing the tradition of hacking this fish, when fresh, on the beach, I imagined a restaurant or home kitchen. Hacking is necessary because the fish is frozen and probably slips around on the cutting board. It is a battle with a dead fish, a fish, when alive, might have given the fisherman a battle as well.

    I don’t see a dark side, but the karumi written about in the previous Viral.

    Adelaide

17. Beauty has been sentimentalized in modern culture. The violence of the phrase “hacked to pieces” partakes of the hyperbole of death (how else conceive of death but as very very other?). The two part structure of haiku allows for the key element in beauty — distance — to establish itself in the consciousness of the reader, who will see the extremity of the first phrase — frozen to the bones — as in itself hyperbolic, though not in the same register (the ambiguity of the phrase, see the conversation between Gabi and the presenter, does seem inherent in the figure of speech which can’t be taken literally, exactly, can it?). The poem balances immediacy (perhaps the sublime works here to continue to shock the conventional expectations of the reader) and the distance of the ultimate subject: annihilation of a given particular being. Didn’t Emily Dickinson write about the distance on the look of death? Personification aside, this haiku shares a bit of her world, don’t you think?

18. Gabi, are you sure what you say applies to this particular poem? The poem says that the fish is frozen to its bones, so I don’t imagine it’s still fresh on the beach. I think that’s the point of the poem, isn’t it, that it’s been in the deep freeze? I don’t see how the fish can be interpreted as being fresh on the beach at all.

    It also wouldn’t surprise me if Shuson was not writing a shasei poem from direct or immediate experience, but maybe he was. That, however, is beside the point I’m trying to make about the misperception some Westerners have about haiku being merely “beautiful.”

    Michael

19. Ok, I did my homework on the ankoo and its kigo …

    ankoo no tsurushigiri 鮟鱇の吊し切り（あんこうのつるしぎり）
    cutting an anglerfish while hanging it up

    The fish is hung up on a triangular stand, with a metal hook in his jaws, at the beach in winter and cut with a few skillful choppings. Then the “seven vital parts 鮟鱇の七つ道具” of the fish are chopped off until only the jaw and bones are left.
    This is often now used as a tourist attraction in Ibaraki, whith a tasting of the ankonabe soup right on the beach.

    The details are now here
    http://washokufood.blogspot.com/2010/02/ankoo-anglerfish.html

    In the haiku

    We might also see the author, just recovering from an illness, at the cold beach in the cold winter wind, he himself frozen to the bone.
    .

20. ankoo, a speciality of Ibaraki, where the fish is cut on the beach with great skill and then put into a hodgepodge, ankonabe, and the liver is a speciality too.

    This haiku shows the “shasei” of cutting the fish to pieces right at the beach …

    ankoo hodgepodge and soup are kigo
    http://washokufood.blogspot.com/2008/01/winter-food.html

    I will try and find some photos from the cutting at the beach later.
    Gabi
    (just finished lunch …).

    as for the DARK … this is a human judgement.
    But haiku as shasei just shows things as they are.

    .

    aaa, here is a photo from the “hacking to pieces”
    http://www.mito.ne.jp/~uosyu/ankou/ankou.html

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