Haiku, edited by Peter Washington

Currently, it is very difficult to find a complete 4 volume set of R. H. Blyth's historic Haiku for under $200 (though you might be able to cobble together individual volumes for less @ abebooks - and at the moment there is this bargain for a set in fine condition) and this is really a shame. This seminal work is like an in-depth, life-long seminar in the essence of haiku, with arguably the most qualified teacher that has ever lived. The set includes hundreds of haiku translated by Blyth and one might say it is the most comprehensive collection of haiku translated into English. In addition, but of equal importance, this 4-volume work contains the history, context, and, Blyth's revelatory running commentary on all things haiku.

If you need schooled in old school, as we would delicately put it here in Pittsburgh, this is it.

Which is the long way round to introducing the book Haiku, edited by Peter Washington, part of the familiar Everyman Library series of Pocket Poets. Here's why.

Haiku is divided into two sections: Japanese Haiku and Western Haiku. Section one takes up over 200 pages of the nearly 250 page book. The vast majority of the pages contain 3 haiku. The Japanese haiku section, containing approximately 600 poems, is translated in its entirety by R. H. Blyth, all the translations coming from his own monumental 4-volume study cited above.

So, the good news is that a huge chunk of Blyth's translations from the Japanese haiku masters is now contained in one available volume, for the whopping price of 12.50 brand new, with copies going for as low as 99 cents on amazon. That's some savings.

The bad news is no commentary. How bad is that news, really? Well, for me the commentary is better than the translations. Sacrilegious, you might ask? But I would hasten to add that the translations are among the most valuable there are, which gives you some idea of how I feel about the commentary.

I'll leave it there, as far as good and bad news is concerned. What I would say is this: the books shouldn't be compared, they are two different animals sharing one lineage. Still, it would be criminal not to note how very important the original source of these translations is.

From the Blyth translations, I marked down an incredible 81 poems I considered strong enough for an in-depth look. The shorter Western haiku section also had over 30 very impressive pieces. Here's a sampling of very superlative haiku, indeed, from the sections on Buddha-nature and the moon:



Simply trust:
Do not also the petals flutter down
Just like that?

Issa

The puppy that knows not
That autumn has come
Is a Buddha.

Issa

Has the tail of a horse
The Buddha-nature?
The autumn wind.

Shiki

Moon-gazing:
Looking at it, it clouds over;
Not looking, it becomes clear.

Chora

The thief
Left it behind -
The moon at the window.

Ryokan

Tonight's moon -
Unthinkable
That there was only one.

Ryota

The next section is on birds, and so much more:

The voice of the pheasant;
How I longed for
My dead parents.

Bashô

In one single cry,
The pheasant has swallowed
The broad field.

Yamei

The wild geese having gone,
The rice-field before the house
Seems far away.

Buson

Now that the eyes of the hawks
Are darkened in the dusk,
The quails are chirping.

Bashô

The wren is chirruping
But it grows dusk
Just the same.

Issa

Other sections include haiku in the following categories: Happiness, Birds, Creatures, Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter and the New Year. The Western Haiku selection is divided into Traditional and Modern styles. Interestingly, within the traditional section Washington includes some of Blyth's "found" haiku from Western masters, such as Wordsworth, Hopkins, Shelley, Housman etc. In addition, he includes some of his own found pieces, but unfortunately does not indicate which selections are his and which are Blyth's. In my reading of the original Blyth volumes, these found pieces are among some of the most delightful moments; there is a synchronicity, a delving into the well of the collective unconscious that at once dazzles, fascinates, and astounds. Here are a few samples:

Daffodils
With the Green World
They live in

John Keats

In the broad daylight
Thou are unseen
But yet I hear thy sheer delight.

Percy Shelley

I will touch
A hundred flowers
And pick not one.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

A violet
By a mossy stone
Half hidden from the eye.

William Wordsworth

The moonlight steeped
In silentness
The steady weathercock

Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

It is no coincidence that these selections favor the Romantics; along with Thoreau, Whitman and Emerson, they far out weigh all others. Nature, of course, is the connection; we flow from it and it flows back from us. The Romantics and 19th century Americans, with their tentative connections to Eastern philosophy, are as steeped in it as Coleridge's weathercock in moonlight. Though these poetic greats did not write in the form, they did write from the feeling, the essence.

If you are a casual haiku reader or if you have read haiku all your life, this is an essential volume.

Provided, of course, you don't already have Blyth's 4 volume masterpiece.

************************************************

This week's featured broadside is entitled The Plot by Albert Huffstickler and was published as #136 of Lilliput Review. The broadside was in the hopper awaiting publication at the time of Huff's death. It is comprised of 7 brief poems (or 7 stanzas of the same poem), a loose sequence, each of which addresses the question of the plot. You know which one. Here is the cover photo by Sue Mendelsohn, taken of the "Pronto Food Mart," just down the street from where Huff lived, very shortly after his death:

The broadside is tiny, 2.75 x 4.25, yet poignant and powerful. What follows is the text in its entirety. This is a neat, teeny little booklet to have, available for a measly buck or, as an online special, a simple SASE. Even better, here it is in its entirety, sans hard copy:

The Plot

It's about how
we lose ourselves
then find ourselves again
changed


It's about finding
the hidden language
which isn't a
language at all


It's about
those moments when
everything makes itself known
then hides itself again


It's about
how all language
is misdirection
and how
without language
we are lost


It's about that
condition lurking
behind the word Love
never revealing itself

It's about loss,
about searching for
what was lost,
not knowing what it was,
finding it,
not recognizing it,
losing it again,
the search continuing

It's how the days
weave themselves
into tapestries of time,
brilliant,
fading. . . .

Albert Huffstickler

From one ancient master to another:




blades of grass--
lost among the raindrops
autumn dew

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don