Alex It was a wonderful gift to receive entries for my poetry giveaway this week! I hope they were enjoyable for you all to write, because they were incredibly fun to open and read. They all have deeply unique voices, but some of you were inspired by the same things; for example, spring was an unsurprisingly salient topic.
From Virginia, we have a touching contemplation of the faith that’s necessary now in more ways than one:
Snow covers rich soil
Have faith – warm sun comes again
There! A glimpse of green
And our giveaway winning haiku by Alex (a different Alex, I swear!), entitled “Spring,” is strikingly of the same mind:
Having warmer days
Snow is melting now it’s wet
Here comes green, oh yes!
There were also a few timely reflections on the Covid-19 situation.
From William, “Quarantine” doesn’t pull any punches in its wry assessment of our current predicament:
There’s nowhere to go
Inside, outside, what a bore
Let’s flatten the curve!
As well as a sillier–but poignant–offering called “Instacart” from Virginia:
A sudden message
“We have started your shopping”
A flood of relief
Followed by an ode to the many “Puzzle Masters” that have been cropping up:
How do they do it?
One picture made from chaos
Put here? Fits there? Sigh….
As I was talking to my mom about writing haiku on the phone the other day, she mentioned that once she started, they just kept coming to her! I think, for any creative, this is one of the joys of the craft–everything becomes subject to a special kind of scrutiny. (Or maybe it’s a curse . . . for the purposes of this post, let’s say it’s a joy for now.)
I’ve long loved haiku, because it forces such careful consideration of things we might otherwise take for granted. In high school, I adopted a book of Shinzo Maeda’s photography called A Tree, A Blade of Grass, from my grandfather’s library.
In the foreword of this gorgeous volume, the poet Kenkichi Kusumoto explains that, to him, “photography and haiku have the same origins.” He sees each of Maeda’s photos as its own haiku, “a complete and substantial work of art.”
Describing the process of haiku, Kusumoto says:
“In the world of haiku we always speak of “sketching” the subject well, and that is the basic theory in the creation of haiku. The purpose of this “sketching” is to observe the subject, to scrutinize and feel it until we are able to penetrate to its true nature . . . In order to do this, one must undergo the spiritual trial of a very long and intensive observation of the subject. Only after enduring this trial and filtering it through experience we can find the something which we need to make a single haiku poem.”
Since the time I read that passage, the word “distillation” and haiku have become synonymous in my mind.
But lest you be put off by the intensity of that description, one of the other virtues that I think makes haiku so powerful as an art form is their approachability.
I wouldn’t say that haiku lack depth–indeed, as we heard from Kusumoto above, in some ways I feel that haiku require far more consciousness than other forms of poetry. But while their brevity requires keenness and a strict inner-editor, it’s also freeing in many ways.
For those who may be intimidated by the act of either deciphering or constructing longer poems, haiku offer a quick entry to verse. You aren’t forced to sit there all day trying to read one–and you can plumb their depths (or not) to the degree of your own connection with their subjects.
Speaking of subjects, animals were another big favorite here. Leah gave us two joyful entries about different (but equally cute) animals:
Whiskers, lives in rivers
Playful and splashing flippers
River otters are cute
And,
Like having chicken
Long naps catch mice meow hiss
They’re a pet purr
Personally, I was moved by the vibrancy of Leah’s first poem–its sparkling imagery was strong enough that by the time you reach its no-nonsense conclusion, it’s impossible to contest. But she composed her second entry, charming and onomatopoeic, because her first had 6 syllables in the first and last lines.
In English, as you likely know, the general convention is that a haiku should have three lines, and follow a 5-7-5 syllabic pattern. And that “rule” can be a valuable tool for those who dislike the “loosey-gooseyness” of writing poetry.
But of course, many of the haiku we treasure don’t translate within that structure from their native Japanese–and interestingly, Japanese haiku were traditionally measured in “on,” which are phonetic units used for poetry.
“On” are similar to “morae” in English linguistics, and they measure syllable weight in terms of stress or timing. As an example, consider the word “Osaka;” to an English speaker, it has three syllables–but it has four on (o-o-sa-ka).
Many great writers and thinkers, like Jack Kerouac and Ezra Pound, have flouted the idea of the 5-7-5 structure–the “National Haiku Writing Month,” or “NaHaiWriMo” project, published what may as well be a manifesto about their belief that poets shouldn’t be limited by that requirement. And The Academy of American Poets has this point to make:
“As the form has evolved, many of its regular traits—including its famous syllabic pattern—have been routinely broken. However, the philosophy of haiku has been preserved: the focus on a brief moment in time; a use of provocative, colorful images; an ability to be read in one breath; and a sense of sudden enlightenment.”
Regardless of syllables, I think both of Leah’s poems are wonderfully creative. And it might be a weight off our shoulders to know that sometimes we can be forgiving with our syllables, so we may be more liberal with our artistry.
Indeed, the last poems I include here exemplify a form that has evolved beyond its roots in natural imagery to incorporate more “abstract” subject matter.
Nicholas’ haiku is a thoughtful extended-metaphor that might encourage us in these hard times:
no branch is too high
when there is more tree to climb
the brave never fall
From Andrew, two eloquent, peaceful (though perhaps a bit melancholy) haiku that invite reflection:
Gently, gently it rolls on.
Filling all the space between here and there,
With a message.
And,
We descend as a feather,
Though a leaden weight bourn down gently by sheer force of will.
Lastly, I leave you with this comforting, expansive piece by Danielle. I hope that you’ve enjoyed reading these poems–and if you’ve been inspired, perhaps you’ll sit down and craft one. I’d love to read them if you do!
Like a dog in sun
Consumed by the peace that swells
with each warming beam.
.
For further reading on Haiku:
https://www.britannica.com/art/haiku
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/learn/glossary-terms/haiku-or-hokku
https://iaforhaikuaward.org/what-is-a-haiku/
