R. H. Blyth on Shiki: Part 1

R. H. Blyth is the author, commentator, and translator of two separate sets of seminal publications on haiku: the 4 volume Haiku (V. 1 Eastern Culture, V. 2 Spring, V. 3 Summer and Autumn, V. 4 Autumn and Winter) and the 2 volume A History of Haiku. Blyth was one of the first to bring haiku to the West and is fairly conservative and traditional in his approach. His translations are sparse, the way I like them. Sometimes he elicits the hidden gem within: the principle of less is more comes to mind. At other times the results are flat, as if the very essence of the piece was simply untranslatable. His views betray a distinct bias (whose don't, eh?). His affinity for Zen has been cited as part of that bias but, in my estimation, we could do worse for a guide to both Japanese culture in general and haiku in particular.

The sets themselves are both lessons in all things haiku and a pleasure to peruse.

I have a soft spot for Blyth's great affection for western writers such as Wordsworth, Whitman, and Lawrence and his uncanny ability to slip them into the discussion in just the right spots. In some ways its hard to imagine comparing these relatively long-winded (in a good way) writers to the miniaturist art of haiku, though Lawrence's affinity early on with the Imagists certainly is a direct connection. But this is where Blyth excels. It is the essence he is after and the essence of these writers has a direct transcendent, almost transcendental, connection to the spirit of the East. Emerson, also, is never far from Blyth's ruminations. Typically, he may be translating a particular poem such as the following:

---A sliding door,
In the distance,
---At midnight.

Hōsai

And then throw in the offhand remark for the Western reader: "Emily Dickinson also felt the meaning of the shutting of a door, Stevenson too." That's it, just enough to make sure you are paying attention to the full resonant import of the tiny little gems he selects.

When it comes to Shiki, Blyth makes neither apologies or excuses. In A History of Haiku, Vol. 2, Blyth has three full chapters on Shiki: "Shiki: The Critic," "Shiki: On Furu-ike Ya," and "Shiki: The Haiku Poet." The second chapter is Shiki's critical appraisal of Basho's frog poem, which I'll be taking a look at sometime in the future. Today, I'd like to consider Blyth's take on Shiki the poet and present some of his translations. Here is his opening salvo:

Shiki, like all Japanese perhaps, is far better at creation than criticism. The Japanese have never produced a Coleridge, Hazlitt, or Lamb, but Wordsworth and Keats and Clare and Tennyson have their counterparts in Japan. Shiki has variety, if not depth. Though he is not emotional, he is not sentimental. There may be an excessive objectivity, but this means no pretense, no hypocrisy. As with Buson, whom he admired very much, he gives us pure poetry, which never fails to satisfy us and though it may not gain in depth with re-reading, we do not tire of him.

There is a razor sharp precision here, coupled with subtlies of distinction that I just marvel at. To put it succinctly, he nails it, big-time. He at once manages to show that Shiki's strength is simultaneously his weakness and who among us can deny that thought when applied to our own life's work? No depth a strength: you betcha! And let me tell you why, says Blyth.

This is beautiful, incisive criticism, reflecting a deep engagement with the work. I love the fact that he anchors this for the Western reader in artists more familiar to her/him. Blyth has such love of the romantics and their relation to Eastern ways reveals itself to his readers, complementing each tradition in a way that lifts them both up.

And, yes, I also love the fact that he mentions John Clare.

Before getting to some of the translations, here's a bit of insight, along with important background information on Shiki from his chapter on Shiki the critic:

Shiki, 1867-1902, is considered to be the restorer of haiku, which had been falling off since the time of Buson. Bashō walked his Way of Haiku; Buson his Way of Art; Issa, though he did not speak of it, his Way of Humanity. What had Shiki? He had no Way of any kind unless perhaps a Way of Beauty, like Keats, but ill-health and beauty do not go well together, and by the end of his short life he had got some humanity, but no religion, no pantheism, mysticism, or Zen.

One final critical note from Blyth is ironic in that he has already stated Shiki's importance in restoring haiku as an artistic medium in Japanese culture:

The effect of Shiki was to stimulate, but in over-praising Buson and under-praising Bashō he helped the continuous and never-ceasing tendency of haiku to become more artifical, rootless and, trivial.

Ouch. This may be a blow to Shiki, but notice the back hand is even more devastating: haiku, the medium on which Blyth wrote 6 groundbreaking books, is not immune to his intensely critical eye, as it should be.

All of this has helped me out immensely with my feelings toward all the Shiki poems I've been reading and remarking on over the last few weeks. In his chapter on Shiki the poet, Blyth translates 71 haiku, casually remarking that these are different than the 390 haiku he translated in his 4 volume masterwork. I've been reading those, but am having a hard time tracking them all down as the index to the paperback editions don't seem to correlate with the hardcovers (I have a mix of both) and so I have to go through page by page. Eventually, I'll sort it all out, but for now I've gone through these 71 and have marked 12 as grabbing me immediately. Here they are:

---A snow landscape
still hanging up in spring -
---the dust on it!

---The plan to steal melons
Forgotten too -
---Cooling in the evening.

Blyth's comment on this I love: " This is good because of its truthfulness, and consequently its truth to life; morality, like love, as Sydney Smith said, depends on the temperature."

---Oh, ears defiled
By sermons
---The hototogisu! (cuckoo)



--

---A boat finished,
The Rose of Sharon blooming,
---A fishing village.

---All the hawker's cries
Became silent,
---Noon cicadas crying.

---Fluttering and dancing,
They are drawn into the vortex,
---The dancing leaves.

---Water birds,
And reeds withering,
---In the setting sun.

And Blyth's critical comment on this: "Such verses as these may be called almost too objective, too lacking in humanity. They are nature devoid of what even nature itself looks forward to, and appears in mankind."

---The beginning of autumn
The shell of the cicada
---Patters down.

---The evening bell tolls:
The sound of ripe persimmons
---Thudding in the temple garden.

Again, with Blyth's comment: "The sound of the bell is large, and that of all falling fruits slight, but Shiki's love of religion was small and his love of persmimmons great. They are therefore equal as spiritual sounds, representing as they do the transcendental and the material, the ideal and the real in human life."

---Passing autumn:
He comes to collect the money
---For tolling the bell.

---I going,
You remaining,-
---Two autumns.

---When the snail
Raises its face too,
---It looks like me.



Some of these haiku I've featured before but Blyth's translations make me see them in a new light, sometimes because of a particular word, or perhaps a better distillation of the ones chosen. I've read many translations of the first ("A snow landscape") but this is the first time it grabbed me beyond the image itself. Particular words that make these poems for me are "defiled," "vortex," "patters," and "thudding." The condensation of the famed haiku (and one of my favs) on two friends parting ("I going") to a mere 6 words is a marvel of condensation and poetry; those six words positively explode off the page for me with the pure power of deep-felt sorrow.

I would single out also two other poems for special attention, two I hadn't encountered before in all those other collections. I'm not sure if it's intentional, either by Shiki or Blyth, but the fact that autumn might be seen as a personification in "Passing autumn" I find incredibly resonant. It raises the level of an everyday human experience to that of the cyclical struggle of life and death, making it like a 3 line allegory or 3 line morality play. Even if this is not intentional (for Blyth at least I can't see how it couldn't be), the echoes of autumn as a symbol in Eastern work cannot be denied. For whom is the bell tolling, indeed?

Finally, the last poem ("When the snail") is truly transcendent for me and if you had handed it to me blind and said pick one of the 4 master haikuists as composer, I would not have hesitated to pick Issa. This work is sublime, yet it found its way into none of the other collections I've reported on in previous posts.

I'm looking forward, indeed, to those other 390 translations of Shiki in the 4 volume Blyth. Despite the pointed criticism, he has won me over to this master poet, not simply intellectually, but in a heartfelt, emotional way. Shiki was notoriously difficult to get to know, by all counts irascible and nasty at times. His illness certainly goes a long way to explaining why he was so hard to know, literally as well as via his work.

Thanks to Blyth, I feel I know him now and like him, indeed, very much. Not only that, but I know why.


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Normally, on Thursday I append some Lilliput poems from the archive for your perusal. I have to skip that this week as I've expended a great deal of energy on Shiki and, unfortunately, my paying gig beckons. Well, something to look forward to next week, eh?

So as not close on a negative note, here's a poem from one of the two brand new issues of Lilliput, #165, Dennis Maloney's fine translation of my favorite tanka poet, Yosano Akiko:

#244

I won't transform
My feeling into words
Or a poem but pour them
From heart to heart
This day, this moment.

Yosano Akiko
translated by Dennis Maloney

All the best,
Don

R. H. Blyth on Waka and Haiku

R. H. Blyth

Waka as an Eastern poetic form has largely become synonymous with the term tanka, which was originally a 5 line poem of 31 Japanese syllables (on or mora) dealing predominately with courtly love.  In his 4 volume masterwork, entitled simply Haiku, R. H. Blyth has a section in volume 1 which deals with the complex relationship between haiku and tanka (waka).

I am going to not so deftly attempt to sidestep the complexities and cut straight to the heart of things philosophically as Blyth presents them.

So many waka have titles, but haiku have none, because their real subject is unmentionable.

I am not going to gloss the master Blyth.  I am, on occasion, going to step aside, effectively to let sink in the depth of what he has to say.   This statement is one of those times.

Unmentionable, indeed.  Blyth continues:

Haiku are self-obliterating; they are the real "Songs without words.

Again with the stepping aside thing.

Like Ulysses, let's go sentence by sentence or, better, like Finnegans Wake, word by word, syllable by syllable.  Next:

In waka there is still a kind of poetic haze between us and the thing.  The music of the words and the cadence of the lines induce in us a certain state of mind which we designate "poetic", but in haiku the melody and rhythm remove the barriers of custom and prejudice between ourselves and the object.

Hmn.  Next paragraph:

When we say "object", this does not mean that it is necessarily a material thing.

Good thing, too, because I was beginning to wander a bit there ... on to the meat of the matter:

What we gain (with waka) in lyrical sweetness and historical allusions, we lose in scope and freedom of imagination (with haiku).  (Waka) is like an illustrated novel ...

The master, Blyth, turns to another master, Bashō, to bring his point home:

Bashō wanted our daily prose turned into poetry, the realization that the commonest events and actions of life may be done significantly, (and) the deeper use of language, both written and spoken.  We live, as Lawrence said, like the illustrated covers of magazines.  Comforts is our aim, and dissatisfaction is all we achieve.  The aim of haiku is to live twenty four hours a day, that is, to put meaning into every moment, a meaning that may be intense or diffuse, but never ceases.

Haiku often turns the weak subjectivity of waka into an objectivity which is a more subtle subjectivity, or rather a regin where "subjective" and "objective" lose their meaning and validity.

"Comforts is our aim, and dissatisfaction is all we achieve."

There is a very great deal on the plate here for the beginner (i.e. me); one should proceed very slowly, there is profundity in great abundance.  I will only say that for Bashō haiku was a spiritual Way, the practice of writing it and the practice of reading it.  The Way of Haiku, like the Way of the Warrior, the Way of Tea, the Way of Flowers etc.  Blyth is leading us here but ... like haiku itself, he is showing us not telling.

And then a little bombshell:

When we try to separate waka and haiku, we come across that law mentioned before, the law that the more the mind endeavours to distinguish two things the closer they insensibly become; the more we assert their unity, the more they separate.  Both waka and haiku are the activity of the spirit of man, and we must not exaggerate the differences between them.

And you thought we weren't talking about particles and waves, modern quantum physics, which has just but recently seemingly affirmed the ancient teachings of Eastern philosophers.   Oh, no, wait, we're talking about haiku - right?  Blyth puts all his cards on the table, throwing off yet another brilliant definition of haiku in the process:

Waka began as literature, haiku as a kind of sporting with words.  Bashō made it literature, and yet something beyond and above literature, a process of discovery rather than of creation, using words as means, not ends, as a chisel that removes the rock hiding the statue beneath.

Perfect, as is a haiku by Bashō Blyth used to illustrate this section:

        Sparrows
In the field of rape,
       With flower-viewing faces.

                    Bashō

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I ran into the following courtesy of one of my favorite blogs, Dr. Caligari's Cabinet, and it was just too, too good not to pass on.  America by Allen Ginsberg, music by Tom Waits.  Listen to it.  Listen to it again.

Listen again.

Here's what they should be teaching in the treadmills that pass for higher education in this country.  This is history.










"America, I'm putting my queer shoulder to the wheel."


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This week's feature poem is "Cannibal" by Sue De Kelver from Lilliput Review, #147 (which has been featured twice before - here and here), October 2005.  I've performed it live and it gets exactly the reaction you'd expect.

Cannibal
   When you've rent the flesh and sinew
    from my supple skeleton and you've
   sucked the last sweet drop of marrow
   leaving lonely, brittle bones
   will you save the jagged splinters
   to adorn your chieftain chest
   or scatter them like toothpicks
   over yesterday's dung.

   Sue De Kelver

evening--
he wipes horse dung off his hand
with a chrysanthemum

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

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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

R. H. Blyth: The Aim of Haiku

Original brass dies for 1860 version

Sometimes, it seems that R. H. Blyth is to modern American haiku as Sigmund Freud is to modern psychology: a bit of a dotty old granddad, overdressed in a woolen suit on a hot, humid day, crumbs of this and that all down his front, with a glint in his eye of philosophical shenanigans none too pleasing to the parents in attendance.

Of course, all the grand kids are jumping up and down in his lap like there's no tomorrow.

Perhaps the comparison to Freud seems a stretch, though for many, I suspect, it is spot on.  Tracing the root of all things to infantile sexuality and the heart of haiku to Zen is quaint, indeed, for many, but consider, at least in the case of Freud: we are all, famous, infamous, and other, products of our time.  Could there have been any other time in history aside from the later part of the 19th and early part of the 20th century (think: Victorian England, for example) when all might be traced back to our murderous instincts for ma and pa?

Though this all seems very antiquated, it got me to thinking about what Joseph Campbell observed concerning fundamentalists of all religious denominations.  He noted that all the trouble starts (i.e. the purges, the wars, the torturing, and the deaths) when the metaphoric scripture of any particular sect (he was thinking predominately of the 'desert religions') was taken literally.  Literally, there was a Virgin Birth, literally an ascent to Heaven, literally a parting of the seas etc.

If one turned to the dottering grandfather and didn't mistake the metaphor for the reality, one might recognize a little something other in that glint.

Mr. Blyth beats the drum loud and long for Zen and haiku and, to my ears, at least, it is a most pleasing sound.  One can no more divorce spirituality from the origin of haiku than one can from life itself.  Notice the particular use of the "S" word, as opposed to the "R" word.

Participating, as I have recently in a weekly book discussion group concerning volume one of Blyth's four volume work Haiku, all this was underscored for me emphatically.  What exasperated the group, some of whom were coming to haiku study for the first time, was the myriad contradictions one encounters from page to page and from chapter to chapter throughout.

Delightfully, exasperation transmuted into something like a humorous acceptance: it would seem the teacher was also a practitioner.  This was most definitely a case of do what I do, as well as what I say.  So, throughout, one encounters many, many definitions of haiku, as well as poetry in general, and Zen, and philosophy itself, some complementary, many contradictory, all informative, and some even enlightening. 

In the complementary area, comes the following two quotes, within 10 pages of each other, working toward defining the "aim of haiku."

Coming now to the general differences between waka and haiku, we may say once more that waka aim at beauty, a somewhat superficial beauty sometimes, that excludes all ugly things. The aim of haiku is not beauty; it is something much deeper and wider.  It is significance, a poetical significance, "a shock of mild surprises", that the poet receives when the haiku is born, and the reader when it is reborn in his mind.  (pages 113-114)

In his second take on the aim of haiku, Blyth takes off from a quote from Master Bashō:

Haikai has for its object the setting to rights of common parlance and ordinary language.

Blyth comments:

This is one of those profound sayings which can and should be interpreted in a variety of ways. Bashō wanted our daily prose turned into poetry, the realization that the commonest events and actions of life may be done significantly, the deeper use of all language, written and spoken.  Our lives are slovenly, imitative. We live, as Lawrence said, like the illustrated covers of magazines.  Comfort is our aim, and dissatisfaction is all we achieve.  The aim of haiku is to live twenty four hours a day, that is, to put meaning into every moment, a meaning that may be intense or diffuse, but never ceases.  (page 119)

Significant, indeed; never mind that, for clarity, we might slip in 'reality TV' for 'the illustrated covers of magazines' for relevance.  For me, what is most important here is what Blyth specifically does not say, and in how he universalizes his point.  His first statement, re: significance above, is about process and, I believe, it goes right to the heart of the form that is haiku.  The second has a little more of that glint in his eye, also alluded to above. As such I find it magnanimously inclusive and not a bit exclusive at all.

Just a little further on, in another 'definition' of the haiku form, we get a bit of a hint at the fact that Blyth's own approach to his subject is analogous to how he perceives the form itself:

Waka began as literature, haiku as a kind of sporting with words.  Bashō made it literature, and yet something beyond and above literature, a process of discovery rather than creation, using words as means, not ends, as a chisel that removes the rock hiding the statue beneath. (page 121) 

Again that certain something is not said and, so, to, for me:

'Nuff said.

         People are few
Leaves also fall
        Now and then

          Issa
          trans. R. H. Blyth

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into the sunken hearth
they're swept...
red leaves

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

Photo by earl53

best,
Don

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Send a single haiku for the Wednesday Haiku feature. Here's how.

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Silent Flowers: R. H. Blyth Translations

Art by Nanae Ito

With a reading and poetry program last week and another reading and a poetry program this week, and the new issues in the oven getting ready to go out to contributors,  I've fallen a bit behind.  So, posted today is what I originally intended to put up on Friday and Issa's Sunday Service will return in its regular slot next week.   Meanwhile, all 77 songs to date can be found here in list form and here in jukebox form.

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Ah, Hallmark Editions books - small little hardcovers, with decorative dust jackets, that brought a world of sentiment alien to what is commonly thought of today when one says the word "Hallmark."   The little volume at hand is 55 pages long with some 140 plus haiku, all by masters of the form and translated by one of the first and finest of all haiku translators, R. H. Blyth.  There is a nifty intro that cites Wordsworth, one of Blyth's favorites - in fact, the intro may come from Blyth, there is no easy way to tell.  The overall selection was edited by Dorothy Price, who did a very fine job, indeed.

All for the remarkable price new of $2.50 back in the year 1967 (and 40 years later you can get copies for only a dollar more, including shipping), this little book packs a formidable punch.    The simply (in all senses of the word) stunning artwork is by Nanae Ito, in the traditional style.  I've mentioned this collection before, but only in regard to a handful of Issa translations.  I'd like to dip in a little more deeply now.

All 140 haiku were selected from Blyth's 4-volume masterwork, Haiku, from Hokuseido Press of Japan, unfortunately out of print and going for a pretty penny. The volumes are invaluable, no matter what you pay for them, and I don't often make rash statements when it comes to money.  This may seem puzzling on the surface, but the poems aren't half the beauty; Blyth's commentary is unsurpassed.  If you want to learn the origin of haiku, the spirit of haiku, the Way of Haiku, these volumes are your ticket there. 

From Silent Flowers, I've marked some 30 poems for further review.

     Silent flowers
speak also
     to that obedient ear within.

Onitsura

The first poem, from which the title derives, is unusual for a traditional haiku and all the more strong for that.  Silence is perfectly balanced by the ear within; only the inner ear may truly hear silence.   That the flowers themselves are given voice is lovely without being awkwardly anthropomorphic.  There is more of an almost synesthesiac quality if anything, suggesting one is "hearing" a smell or an vision.  Quite fine, since the philosophical implication is most important of all; the silent flowers, most often cherry blossoms in traditional haiku, are teaching us the ultimate lesson if we wish to hear.

     Just simply alive,
Both of us, I
     and the poppy.

Issa

There it is, folks - doesn't get plainer or simpler or truer or more beautiful than that.   After you read a poem like this, time to shut the book and get back to life.

     My eyes having seen all,
Came back to
     the chrysanthemums.

Isshō

That's not a typo - it is Isshō, not Issa, about whom I could find very little except that he was a poet of Kanazawa, who was warmly admired by Bashō.   This particular poem might be taken in two ways: in the moment and in a deeper philosophical sense.  In the moment, the poet returns to the chrysanthemums after literally looking about and seeing all.  Figuratively, there is a kind of resonance - having seen all in life, I return to the chrysanthemums because they are most worth seeing and may tell us all we need to know, as with both  Onitsura's and Issa's poems.   It is said that Bashō was so moved by the poet's death at a young age, he wrote the following uncharacteristically emotional poem for him:

On the Death of Isshō

Oh, grave-mound, move!
My wailing is the autumn wind.

Bashō 

     The scissors hesitate
Before the white chysanthemums,
     A moment.

Buson

This Buson poem I've talked about before, but I'm not sure if it was in the Blyth translation.  All these renderings seem damn near perfect, but this one is truly amazing.  The 1st line breaks at "hesitate" - which we do - the second ends with a comma - hesitating again - and the third, well, locks us firmly in that moment.  We know what comes next and I'm not talking about a blossom head falling to the ground.

I'm almost overwhelmed with how resonant these short renderings are.  There are two masters at work here at all times: poet and translator.

     To pluck it is a pity,
To leave it is a pity,
     Ah, this violet!

Naojo

Caught perfectly in the balance, the violet - and the human.   Each of these poems seems the final word - on all of poetry.

     They spoke no word.
The visitor, the host,
     And the white chrysanthemum.

Ryota

Oh, wait, it would seem no final word, no word at all, is needed.

     Striking the fly
I hit also
     A flowering plant.

Issa

     Simple trust:
Do not the petals flutter down,
     Just like that?

Issa

How could I have missed these two the first time I looked at Issa's work in this collection.  How wrong to strike the fly is seen in the result: two dead things.  And simple trust, what could be easier ... and harder?

     The long night;
The sound of water
     Says what I think

Gochiku

Here is a little mystery - what is the poet thinking, what is the water saying.  When we hear water, it says a lot of things to us.  What could it be, says the old person to the young person, what could it be?

----------------------

This week's sample poem comes from the Lillie archive comes from issue #124, March 2002.  

         Rainy winds...

    An orphan sycamore

Uses my grandmother's voice

               Patrick Sweeney

plum tree--
on my hut's unlucky side
blooming!

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

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R. H. Blyth & Chora: Late Summer, Early Fall

Art by Egon Schiele

       The change of clothes;
The crow is black,
      The heron white. 

Chora,                                        trans. by R. H. Blyth

While slowly perusing (by slowly, I mean over the last year or so) the third volume of R. H. Blyth's Haiku (Summer-Autumn), I ran across this poem by Chora, under the chapter title "Human Affairs."  Blyth, of course, always gives one pause in his astute, penetrating, and, sometimes, decidedly off-kilter observations. Here is what he said about this poem:

"Human beings are a feeble tribe, always changing. The crow remains as it is, the heron also. This haiku is somewhat epigrammatic; it is of intellectual content, but its meaning is expressed with such directness, simplicity, and concreteness that we welcome it as a lower but interesting use of the haiku form."

In some ways, most obviously tone, this seems a casual observation but it is hardly that. It is Blyth's style, coupled with his mastery of the subject, which makes the tone seemingly casual. 

And what makes him so eminently readable. 

What is negative in his assessment of Chora's haiku is the "intellectual content," which is directly to the point when discussing traditional haiku. Though he consigns it to a lower circle, in this case it is a lower circle of heaven and not hell. 

Certainly, the pros out weigh the cons.

The poem, from a human standpoint, nicely represents, if intellectually, the transition of seasons and, if I can take a hint from the volume 3 subtitle, the transition which we now in the Northern hemisphere are experiencing: late summer to early fall. I'm not quite sure it should be characterized as epigrammatic, unless strictly limiting it to meaning and not execution. Still, there are so many reasons to love Blyth. 

His selection of this haiku, for instance.

Plus that chapter title: Human affairs.  

And, oh, yes, a feeble tribe, indeed.

---------------

Photo by YST

growing feeble--
breaking off blossoms
with twisted mouth

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

David Lanoue notes of this Issa haiku that it is "A reflection on the aging process. Issa contorts his face with the effort of snapping off a little branch of blossoms." 

How right he is and how poignant the image, and the observation.

best,

Don

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Of This World: Issa's Life and Poems

In recent weekly posts, I've been strolling through my poetry shelves to find all manner of treasures hidden there. And, it would seem, the occasional clunker. The stroll has been alphabetical through the Asian anthology section, so the focus has been interesting and pointed. The clunker I ran across is entitled Chinese Love Poetry, a British Museum book with lovely illustrations. The less said about the 40 plus poems the better. I only marked two as outstanding, those being famous poems by Li Po and Wang Wei, the former being "Drinking Alone Under the Moon" and the later being Wang Wei's truly moving inquiry of a passing stranger (page down for English translation) as to whether a winter plum was in bloom back in his village. The art work is really beautiful, printed on high quality paper; unfortunately, it feels as though the poems were chosen to illustrate it rather than vice versa.

So, I've decided to punt and take a look at another oddish item I picked up at the library, entitled Of This World: A Poet's Life in Poetry (1968)by Richard Lewis (pdf), with photographs by Helen Buttfield. Why oddish, you might ask? First, Issa, whose poems are responsible for the primary content of the book, is not named on the cover, the title page, or the rear flap, where the author info resides. In addition, R. H. Blyth, whose translations are used throughout, appears only in micro font on the copyright page. What then is Mr. Lewis responsible for?

Lewis has divided the book into 4 parts, the poems having been arranged in a sort of impressionistic evocation of Issa's life. Each of the sections is proceeded by a brief prose accounting of Issa's life by Lewis, with the whole having an equally brief introduction. Throughout, the book is very nicely illustrated with the photographs of Helen Buttfield. Most pages contain a single poem or two, or a single photograph or two, with a handful containing 3 poems or a poem and a photograph. Interestingly, some bookstores and libraries have classified this as a childrens' item though nowhere is this said to be the stated intent. Children, however, might in fact be an ideal audience, with their openness to experience and imaginations capable of filling in the impressionistic gaps.

The Blyth translations are fine and highlight both his many strengthens and few weaknesses; in fact, the weaknesses are most likely those of this reader than a translator as fine and renowned as Blyth. In the coming weeks I hope to look at another volume that collects Blyth's translations, primarily from his monumental 4 volume classic, Haiku.

I think Blyth's translation of this, one of Issa's most famous and cherished poems, is the finest I've ever read and the best in this particular selection:

The world of dew
Is the world of dew,
And yet . . .
And yet . . .

Another outstanding poem is

-----The autumn wind;
The shadow of the mountain
-----Trembles.

In these eight words, Blyth captures the full mystery of existence I believe Issa was after with his poem. Here is another, even more mysterious, and as such, for me, equally appealing:

----Getting older,
the song of the earthworm also
----Dwindles every evening.

And, finally, the poem Lewis closes the volume with, and rightly so:

-----In the wintry grove,
Echoes
-----Of long, long ago.

There are many other fine poems, familiar and otherwise, 77 in total, a quite sizable amount. As to the implied intent in the subtitle, it was an interesting premise that is at least partially successful. Lewis's biographical summary is, though minimal, serviceable and Buttfield's photographs are quite lovely. The poems themselves are the real gold here; their author and translator should have, however, been accorded a degree of respect that goes beyond the actual text itself.

Without the poet, and his able translator, the book would not exist.

Mr. Lewis and Ms Buttfield went on to collaborate on another haiku book, The Way of Silence; The Prose and Poetry of Basho. For another take on the Issa volume, see this review.

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

click image for close-up

This week's featured broadside is entitled Shorties by Jack Collom and is issue #154 from November 2007 . The 8 page broadside features a mix of 19 poems, including found quotes and one hand-drawn poem, and one graphic anomaly - you have to see that one to "get it." In addition, the cover pictured above is beautifully hand-drawn by the poet himself. Here is a small selection of Shorties:

WISH: ----- I think.
LIE: ------- -Therefore,
DREAM: -- I am.

One syllable
of the word "human"
is not significant

-- Aristotle

garden
decides
picture

(A shortie at one point handed to Ted Berrigan
----------------for his opinion)

--------I'm willing to let my
--------desires settle
--------around you like birds

And Issa's last word:

seeing the inn's
inner garden, the lark
sings

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

Haiku: The Poetry of Nature

A few years back while in London, I purchased a beautiful little haiku book at the British Museum simply entitled The British Museum: Haiku.  You will see, however, that the title of this post is Haiku: The Poetry of Nature and you would be correct to wonder why.

The reason is simple: when the book was published here in the U.S. it was retitled.  In addition, it was given a new cover, as pictured above.  Here is the volume I purchased in London:

So, all you marketing wizards out there: what's up with this?  I've thought about it and it just breaks my brain and, frankly, for awhile caused me some considerable confusion.  Why confusion?   Well, while browsing at the library, I ran into the 1st copy pictured above and spent some lunch hours pouring over the poems and incredible illustrations from the British Museum collection.  I jotted down some notes to consult the copy I knew I had at home so I could pull together some things to share in this post.

The trouble was when I got home, it took awhile to find the book with a different title and different cover, amidst all the piles thereabouts.  When I found what I thought was the book (I wasn't sure because my notes only referred to poems and not editor etc.), I only knew I had the exact book when I read this distinctive and insightful opening sentence of the introduction:

One can know the main facts about Japanese haiku without having much feeling for them; and one can feel quite deeply about haiku without knowing many facts - intuition sometimes supplies important insights. 

A great opening for a decorative, gift-bookey looking item, with gorgeous British Museum reproductions.  Who'd a thunk it'd have a spine (sewn, too)?

In the acknowledgments by editor David Cobb it is noted that many of the translations are by R. H. Blyth, some of which Cobb and his partner, Sakaguchi Akiko, received permission from Hokuseido Press "to edit [them] to a more contemporary standard of layout and punctuation."  This carefully prepared statement says nothing about changing the words of Blyth's translations, which may be some consolation for traditionalists.  Blyth's indenting has been abandoned with all the poems left justified.  In addition to Blyth, 7 other translators are represented in the collection, including 5 poems rendered by Makoto Ueda, with the remainder translated by Cobb.   

Of the 71 poems presented, I noted 19 or so for further inspection.  Why the or so?  Sometimes, when I'm not sure, I simply put a question mark so I'll return to the poem to see what I think later.  In addition to the poems, every page has a facing classical artwork, some running over onto the poem page, taken from scrolls, wood block prints, and books. The paper is heavy, the binding sewn, as noted above, and the colors of the prints are fine.

Two poems on the same page, facing a triptych woodblock illustration entitled "A Picnic on the Beach" demonstrate the care and precision that went into this volume:

on the ebb tide beach
everything we pick up
is alive

Chiyo-ni

spring loneliness -
it falls short of the surf
this stone I toss

Suzuki Masajo

Both of these poems address the kinds of thoughts the ocean evokes.  The first has deeper philosophical implications; it reminds me of a wonderful Peggy Heinrich haiku I reprinted recently ("ebb tide / turning to look back / at my footprints"), both poems being reflections of past and possibly future things, in the present moment.  Not quite the "being there" of the Buddhist moment but it is being everywhere in the momet, if you will.

The 2nd haiku treats another common feeling at land's end, the sense of loneliness and the feeling of being very small in the larger context of things.   I'd almost prefer the poem without the first line, though in either case it reminds one of the basic sadness that seems to underlie all things.

A little further in comes another poem which has a similar subject as Suzuki Masjo's:

alone in the spring -
hurling a javelin, and the
walking after it

Nomura Toshirō

Anyone who has played any competitive sport on their own knows this feeling.  There probably is nothing more solitary than hitting a baseball alone and chasing it, or throwing a ball up in the air continually with no one there to catch it but yourself.  The feeling reminds us very sharply what we are missing.

The theme of loneliness pervades the collection:

a summer shower -
a woman sits alone
gazing outside

Kikaku

The following is an unusual poem that pushes the limits of traditional haiku - I'm really not sure at all what the poet is after:

buckling in the heat
where the A-bomb burst
a marathon

Kaneko Tota

The whole poem rides on whatever it is that is buckling. Certainly the reader knows what the buckling is an allusion to. Is it a runner the narrator sees or the narrator herself who buckles? Is it an illusion, as heat shimmering off pavement, creating an appearance of buckling, recalling that other buckling? I'm at a loss but the mood is both mysterious and haunting.

It never fails to amaze me that I go from book to book, anthology to anthology, concerning haiku and still there is another "unread" Bashō poem:

the beginning of poetry:
the song of the rice-planters
in the province of Ōshū

Bashō

The reason for the quotes around unread is that I've read the complete Bashō via Jane Reichold and I don't recall this one.  Hardly surprising, I guess, since there are so many radically different renderings of classical poems but, still, you'd think I'd have even a tiny clue.  In any case, I really like this haiku for many reasons, not the least of which is that this thick-minded Westerner now senses the visceral reason for the many rice singing haiku of Issa.

Duh, my dad said!

Here's a couple of mosquito poems one each from Issa and Bashō, both translated very well by Mr. Cobb:

mosquitoes by day
the Buddha hides them all
behind his back

Issa

at my poor hovel
there's one thing I can offer -
skinny mosquitoes

Bashō

The first one I don't recognize at all, the second I believe to be a haiku that has been translated many different ways previously.  I like them both, the first making a big picture point, the second a little more personal.  The next poem by Bashō is one that almost everyone translates, but this simple, stripped down version by Blyth is
still the best:

the moon:
I wandered around the pond
all night long

Bashō

Longer versions of this poem tend to emphasize the moon's journeying as well as the narrator's all-night rambling - the implication is there in the simple version and anything additional is really superfluous.  The colon says it all, performing the function of the cutting word in the original Japanese and very clearly emphasizing the comparison conjured by the poem's dichotomy.  Just a perfect little poem with cosmic qualities that are at once lyrical and scientific.

grasshopper -
do not trample to pieces
the pearls of bright dew

Issa

Issa recounts in haiku lots of instances of saving grasshoppers, ants, and flies from being trampled so here is an ironical turn. Thinking on Issa's other two poems about dew recently highlighted in a post and how dew seems to represent the ephemeral nature of life, there is much resonance in this little piece, again masterfully translated by Blyth.

I can hear those 4 volumes of Blyth's calling me as I type.

bush-clover flowers -
they sway but do not drop
their beads of dew

Bashō

he says a word,
and I say a word - autumn
is deepening

Kyoshi

The first haiku reminds me of Issa's poem "as it falls / the peony lets drop the rain / of yesterday," or if stated in the proper order, Issa's should remind us of Bashō's. In one case the precipitation doesn't drop, in the other it does. Though these pieces are imagistic and beautiful in their own right, they also remind us of the interconnectedness of all things. Beyond that, Kyoshi's poem is deeply moving, rendered as it is by Makoto Ueda. In this case, everything hinges on the single word autumn, in its placement and its implications. There is almost a sense that the word said and repeated is "autumn," though admittedly that seems a stretch. Still, if that isn't the word(s), its meaning and implication is clearly what the topic of conversation is about.  A beautiful, stunning haiku, certainly.

low over the railroad
wild geese flying -
a moonlit night

Shiki

This is a poem about movement, about travel, and, I imagine, also about sound, perhaps as it fades into the distance.  There is a blending, perhaps, of the two sounds as they move away.  Mr. Blyth is a master translator and, like a master painter, sketches in a few brief brushstrokes a world entire.

Here's a Buson piece I've missed previously:

the beginning of autumn:
what is the fortune-teller
looking so surprised at?

Buson

Indeed.  We are right now at the beginning of autumn in the Northern hemisphere and we know what that means.  There is a fine humor here, though the macabre is not very deep below the surface.

no escaping it -
I must step on fallen leaves
to take this path

Suzuki Masajo

Some of the previous poems prepare the reader for the full implications of this poem.  Autumn is the season of ending, the season of dying, and we all must walk on fallen leaves to do what we are doing and arrive where we all arrive.  "No escaping it."

These 3 haiku follow one upon the other:

a sudden squall
and the bird by the water
is turning white

Buson

the angler -
his dreadful intensity
in the evening rain!

Buson

the sea darkens -
the voices of the wild ducks
are faintly white

Bashō

The first and third poems are familiar but the placement of them together really underscores their difference as much as their similarity.  "A sudden squall" has Buson's painterly quality, while "the sea darkens" utilizes the technique of synesthesia I touched upon in a recent post on Issa, which adds a whole other dimension to the scene.  The intensity of the storm in "the angler" dovetails nicely with the fisherman's own intensity and conjures the picture rather than paints it, which would be Buson's usual approach.  All three together like this remind the reader of Japan's island culture and dependence upon the sea.

this one eye sightless
but on that side also
I polish my glasses.

Hino Sōjo

Curious about Hino Sōjō, I did some poking around and there wasn't much except the occasional poem here and there.  There is a Wikipedia article, but only in German.  Using the google translate function, you get this horrific piece of work:


      Google translation from German to English of Wikipedia article:

Hino Sojo was born in Ueno, Taito, Tokyo township.

During studies in law from Kyoto University, he called the common Haiku Society of the University and the third high school to life. In 1924 he graduated and became a clerk. As a haiku poet he was trained at the Takahama Kyoshi literary magazine edited by drew at the age of 21 years of attention, as written by him to Haiku on the first page of Hototogisu reached. 1929, at the age of 28, he was finally included in the fixed circle of the magazine.

In 1934 he published in the journal Haikukenkyū (俳 句 研究, GV "Haiku-research") the haiku Miyako Hoteru cycle, in which he first wedding night of two newly weds, described, and thus sent a shock wave through the world of haiku poetry. It acted Although this is a purely fictional story, but this gave rise to the so-called Miyako Hoteru dispute in which Kusatao Nakamura and Kubota Mantaro practiced sharp criticism Saisei Murō contrast, appeared as counsel.

1935 brought together the three journals Sojo somato from Tokyo, Osaka and from Seiryō Hiyodori from Kobe and founded the new journal KIKAN, of which he became.

He called for a modern form of haiku without words and broke so final season with the conservative Takahama Kyoshi, which excluded him in 1936 from among the Hototogisu.

1949, after the Second World War, Sojo went to Ikeda (Osaka) and founded the magazine Seigen.

29 January 1956 Hino Sojo died as a result of tuberculosis disease, by which he had been since 1946 on his sick bed. 

 

Besides emphasizing how horrible machine translation is (and providing the occasional howler), this translation does give up some intriguing details.   I am fascinated in his proposal of a poetic form of "haiku without words" (not only no finger, but no moon!). The first garbled sentence is very perplexing - if anybody's got a clue, I'd appreciate it.

The haiku itself, "the one eye sightless," has a quality which gives a glimpse into the quirks of human nature.  There is humor, sadness, and I think a sense of human resilience that makes this poem special.

Overall, this is a collection that may be visited again and again, with some fine translations and excellent art.  Though I don't link to amazon, there are quite a few copies available there for 46 cents and up.  I do link to abebooks and you will find excellent copies there for even less when you factor in the amazon shipping.   Very good and fine copies for $3.97 and $4.00 respectively, beating amazon out by 50 cents.

Definitely well worth the price ...

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This week's feature poem from the Lilliput archive comes from #133, October 2003.  Enjoy.

    Oxford Cemetery

You thought because
the trees moved
and the stones didn't
you understood
the meaning of the wind.

Louis Bourgeois

autumn wind--
Issa's heart and mind
stirring 

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue 

best,
Don

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R. H. Blyth: Still Complaining - A Friday Idyll

Photo by Derpunk

Much of what is read in the commentary of R. H. Blyth's classic volumes on haiku might be considered as a kind of haibun, so close is he to the original, and so lyrical is his critical prose. Take this example, in which I've placed Issa's poem after the commentary which it originally preceded (to heighten the similarity to haibun) , from volume 3 of Haiku:

Issa is not grumbling at the grumbler. This verse has a prescript, "Man's desires are infinite, but his life is not." To want, to desire, is human, is thus divine, is part of our nature, is part of our Buddha nature. It is how we desire that decides whether we are a Buddha or an a ordinary man. It is not the grumbling, but how we grumble; it is the peevishness, querulousness, petulance that is 

An expense of spirit in a waste of shame.

This verse, written when Issa was fifty seven, is his considered criticism of human life. What distinguishes man from the lower animals is the very thing that degrades him below them.

This cool breeze
Through the summer room,—
But still complaining

     Issa
     tr. R. H. Blyth

------------

Now, there is much to grumble about Blyth's commentary; I feel I can hear it now, so perhaps it is really coming from me and not some imaginary critic. Is being human thus, therefore, being divine? Yet, to be wrongheaded is not to be wrong. Is not this the very lesson imparted in the action taken, the thoughts penned?

Just read some D.H. Lawrence, whom Blyth greatly admired. Both perfected the art of being right via the act of being wrong. 

Something the Bard knew all about, desire that is (tricked up a bit). And then there is that other master. 

Or group of masters, but we are somehow beyond desire now, and returning through that wrong-headed back door.

This, this is truly human nature, truly Buddha nature.

-----------------------

Issa wrote some fine poems about breezes, as above.  Here are three, translated by David G. Lanoue:

in the spring breeze
already casting shadows...
irises

the cool breeze
meandering
arrives

saying my apology
to the sacred tree...
a cool breeze 

Photo by Seemann

best,

Don   

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