This is not haiku – extended version.
It was in the early 70’s that I first became interested in haiku, I think. At that time all the arts were much more mainstream than now. Poetry books were at the front of bookshops ,not hurried away with difficult ‘literature’. William Blake, Adrian Mitchell, “Voices of Albion”, together with “Illustrated Beatles Lyrics” and “Musrum”. Seminal black and white television, late night arts programmes- I remember staying up to watch Stomu Yamashta’s “Rain” –
One of my favorite books was a translation of Matsuo Basho’s “The Narrow Road to the Deep North” published by Penguin Classics. A lyrical, evocative journey through Japan, the text is narrative interspersed with haiku. This is a perfect way to record travel as the haiku act as photographs, giving memorable visual images. I do not know how literal the translation was, but it seemed to capture the right melancholy note.
A little later, I think, I came across R. H. Blyth’s three volumes of “Haiku” arranged in seasons with Japanese text and commentary. I still have these on my bookshelves, though I haven’t looked at them closely for years now. I don’ think I have ever seen them in bookshops again.
All poetry is extremely difficult to translate into another language. The biggest error is to attempt to impose an alien structure, like verse forms and rhymes. Then one cannot say the result is translation in any meaningful way – merely that the original has inspired the later version.
With haiku especially, translators often feel they need to stick to the commonest form of three lines with five, seven and five syllables. This is misguided. Even words for simple objects will have different numbers of syllables in Japanese and English, rules of grammar are different and common idioms are often unknown ourside of each culture. Add to this the fact that Japanese text largely uses Chinese ideograms (kanji), which carry not only syllabic sound meanings but also multiple layers of symbol and nuance, combined with a couple of native phonetic alphabetical systems for non-Chinese words or concepts and imported words (hiragana and katagana), and you can see that a simple syllable for syllable translation is an unrealistic ideal.
Basho’s most famous haiku about a frog and a pond has had the dubious honour of appearing in a book with one hundred different English translations! A rather tedious exercise after the first twenty or so, but it shows how difficult it is to pin down meaning and flavour.
“The old pond” (or should it be “an old pond” or “old pond” or “ancient pool”…)
“A frog jumps in”( “a” or “the” frog “leaps” with the concept of “suddenly”, ” unexpectedly”, surprise, shock etc)
“A deep resonance.” ( probably not literally accurate, but one I like as it carries the flavour, or “leap!” “splash!” etc.)
The brevity of haiku merely encapsulates an instant of perception. But that encapsulation can be savoured and expanded in a myriad of different ways.
Perhaps that is why Basho’s frog is so representative: there is something familiar, then there is something that breaks our complacency of understanding, and finally there is a sense of ongoing mystery, or beauty or emotion.
So the best, perhaps the only haiku, are perceptual revelations. An equivalent of satori, a moment of clear, naked being. A moment that breaks the flow of ordinary time and mind.
Whatever the form, a good poem inescapably inserts one person’s inner reality, their feeling or sense impressions, in the mind of another person regardless of time and space.
Putting pictures in other people’s minds. Teleportation of mood and sense.
Suddenly you are looking out of the eyes of the writer.
“Through a poet’s eyes
What colour is a haiku?
The colour of mind.”
One of the best British lyricists and songwriters is Donovan. His lyrics are deceptively simple, even naive and childish sometimes, but they often embody the spirit of haiku:
” first there is a mountain
Then there is no mountain
Then there is.
Lock upon my garden gate
A snail
Thats what it is.”
Anyone who has lived in the Highlands of Scotland will have witnessed the mists dissolving the hills, the plethora of snails after rain. Donovan sees, records and bejewels a single sense moment, taking time and turning it into eternal presence.
“small coincidence
To show you are still alive
Is what haiku is!”
From the mid seventies onwards I always kept a notepad with me for haiku. They are a million times better than a photograph, easy to recall and, if you have moulded them right, an endless delight and a surprise. On long meditation retreats, on journeys, on expeditions: Somerset, Orkney Islands, Turkey, India the narrative form of Basho I found perfect.
I say haiku. What I mean is not haiku. Here I have played with the strict verse form, but I am after the spirit of haiku, not the letter. The Japanese word “kami” means spirit. Like the word in English, it is a slippery word. It means entity, invisible presence, essence, deity, power – “kami” is the engine that fuels a sense of significance to a thing or a place. If a few of my none-haiku have “kami” then they have done their job and will effortlessly insert themselves into the hapless brain of the reader. If they stumble, they will expire and fade.
A few of my favorites ( mainly from the 1970s and 1980s):
Come in,
Come in,
Leaves of autumn.
The wind is cold!
Heather hillside.
My careless glance
Scattering rabbits.
Shooting star:
It came and went
Without a sound.
Black, white, black:
A crow’s wings-
Morning sun.
The freshness of dawn
Putting colour back
Into the cheeks of things.
My senses breakfast!
Pale winter sun.
One withered apple
On the old tree.
In the high meadow
A chestnut mare
Lifts up a foot,
Puts down a foot.
Sightseers,
Like petitioners
Awaiting an audience:
Mount Fuji hidden by cloud.
Aha! I dare say you’d enjoy http://chevrefeuillescarpediem.blogspot.nl/and bring a lot to it..”a million times better than a photo” great line.
Thanks, had a quick look, will dive deeper.
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“better than a photo.” Absolutely. The main reason I don’t use a lot of photos in my work.Using them doesn’t help me learn to write haiku. They become a serious crutch to the writer and a distraction to the reader.
Words must create the picture! Thanks for writing this article. I enjoyed it!
I tend to get most of the inspiration for a piece from a photograph, illustration, art in general-even abstract can give off an essence of itself to my sensibilities that trigures something. As for the distracting the reader, if the writer has done his or her art form credit enough the art can only enhance the visual image and many times can create another layer of meaning.>KB
Simon, would that more writers of ‘Haiku’ would read this instead of writing more of whatever it is they write. I think you are right in say that it is the essence of the Haiku that is more important than the form. I thonk that in western culture the Haiku is to be seen in shirt lined poetry that looks for that essence but not necessarily in the confines of 5-7-5, more expansive, to match our nature.>KB
A visual image, print or photograph could be seen as just another mind-jog, same as a comment or quote might be. Any sense impression could spark the required ‘haiku mind’. The source is less important than the transmission of recognition between minds.
Its quite traditional to put haiku, senryu etc. in the context of an ink painting etc.and that works perfectly.
Namaste…thank you for visiting and following my blog 🙂 how nice of you…I look forward to following yours…
Thanks for this, Simon – which I have just discovered, a year after the event.
Well, that’s the geologic joy of blog world!
[…] recent reading of This is not haiku – extended version has powerfully shifted my thinking. Not that I am ready, at this point, to abandon the old […]