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

Masaoka Shiki and the World When You Were Looking the Other Way

This past week at the library, I picked up and read Selected Poems by Masaoka Shiki. Shiki is one of the 4 cornerstone's of classic haiku (aka one of the 4 master poets), the others being Basho, Issa, and Buson. In the past, I've enjoyed Shiki's work in anthologies but had not run across a collection I was enticed by until this one, so I thought I'd give it a try. This collection is translated by the always fine purveyor of Eastern literature Burton Watson.

Shiki is the most recent of the big four haikuists, born in 1867 and dying in 1902. In his succinct introduction, Watson sketches out the life, the work, and its historical importance without ever deviating into the academic. As some folks may know, haiku (or hokku) was originally the first verse of the longer renga form. According to Watson, what Shiki did

"... first of all was to establish the haiku as completely separate from the renga, a poetic form fully capable of standing on its own. To emphasize this step he rejected the older term hokku, as well as haikai, another term by which the form was known in earlier times, and replaced them with the designation haiku.

It was thought that 17 syllables was to0 brief a form to be considered seriously, but Shiki maintained and went on to prove that its very brevity was its strength. Though haiku up to this time was generally thought to be the first verse of the linked renga form, of course Basho, Buson, and Issa had used it independently and helped establish its individual predominance. Shiki helped to codify its importance and almost single-handedly revived haiku, which has since become one of the world's most predominant forms. We have Shiki to thank for this reformation and the resultant burgeoning of haiku.

One of the things I found most appealing about Shiki's own work is that he, for the most part, rejected literary allusions, puns, and wordplay, as Watson points out. Some of the cultural difficulty that I experienced in the work of Basho falls away as a result and, so, in my view, the work overall connects more easily for modern, non-Japanese readers. This is not to say I like Shiki better than Basho per se, just that his work is on the whole more accessible.

Watson translates Shiki's work in three forms: haiku, tanka, and kanshi. Watson translates 144 of the over 20,000 haiku he wrote. I marked 16 down of special interest and found enough that grabbed me that I will seek out other collections (there must be others worth reading of the 19,800 plus that Watson didn't translate). 2 of the 33 tanka he translated were enjoyable and I didn't connect with any of the 4 kanshi, though they all had things to recommend them. Here's a brief selection from the 16 haiku.


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


A carp leaps up,
crinkling
the autumn moonlight

Poppies open,
and the same day
shatter in the wind

To ears
muddied with sermons,
a cuckoo

After I squashed
the spider -
lonely night chill

For me, who go,
for you, who stay behind -
two autumns

Year-end housecleaning -
gods and buddhas
sitting out on the grass

Working All Day and into the Night to Clear Out My Haiku Box

I checked
three thousand haiku
on two persimmons

Crickets -
in the corner of the garden
where we buried the dog

They've cut down the willow -
the kingfishers
don't come anymore

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


Also this week, there are lots of tidbits of interest, gathered from here and there. Here's a poem from Albert Huffstickler, from somewhere that no doubt would have bemused him.

As noted recently by Ron Silliman, The Outlaw Book of American Poetry is on google books almost in its entirety. In my capacity as a standard mucky-muck at my place of employment, I have to note that a ton of google book previews seem to contain nearly the entire book, with a few pages blocked here and there. Amazing, scary, and exhilaritating all at once. One way to kick that Robitussin jones, I guess.

At The Ultra-Mundane, a gentlemen by the name of R. Alan is reading In Watermelon Sugar by Richard Brautigan, chapter by chapter. I haven't gotten used to his voice, but here it is if you'd like to give it a try.

Here's an extended take on Thomas Hardy's early novel Under the Greenwood Tree that I put together for a post at my day job for those so inclined. Regular readers of The Hut will remember I briefly mentioned when I was reading this in a previous post.

Courtesy of Poetry and Poets in Rags here is a timely posting of "Let America Be America Again" by Langston Hughes at World Changing. Powerful as well as timely.

Mary Karr's Poet's Choice column this week has a very resonant poem on dying sparrows by Brenda Hillman entitled "Partita for Sparrows." I haven't connected as often with Karr as with her predecessors at the Poet's Choice column, but I'm warming to her and think she's found a diamond (or, at least, a shiny, tinsely thing to start a nest with) in the post-modern poetry rough with this one.

This week's sampling of poems from Lilliput Review comes from #68 (replete with the nifty title "Geomorphology for Poets" - what was I thinking, you may ask), from April 1995. Enjoy.

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Cabin

Sleet,
winter's intricate crystal calculus

Earl Grey tea. Good fire in the stove

Out-of-season fly
lights on poster of the Milky Way.

Mark Blaeuer

Tel Aviv

They are sitting next to each other
at the bus stop.
The old woman who in Germany
was 897876421
and the young girl with a blue butterfly
on her bare shoulder.

We are witnesses, my daughter and I.

Karen Alkalay-Gut

At the Hoh River

The river slides by like a column of bells.
Our marriage is now a week old.
You smile and ask me to guess
in which hand you hide the moon!

Scott King

from the mountaintop

if a monday evening
drive home from work
in traffic is no
place for a sudden
illumination
then,
fuck you,
neither is this place.

Andrew Urbanus

Senryu

----even -if all the others
are running, if you walk to heaven
----you'll still be there in time.

Harland Ristau

¶ and the homeless, the truly homeless
-are we
-who separate ourselves
-from the rest of it
-w/ walls

scarecrow

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The new issues, #'s 165 and 166, should begin shipping in about a week. Also, a new Modest Proposal Chapbook, #19, entitled The Turning Year: Japanese Nature Poems, translated by Dennis Maloney and Hide Oshiro from 100 Poems by 100 Poets, and a companion volume to Unending Night, will be forthcoming very soon.

best,
Don

Shiki and Camille Paglia Meet on a Bleak December Morning

Cover by Wayne Hogan

Over the last few weeks, I've been reading a wide variety of material, including a biography of Basho, Mary Oliver's Dream Work, and Sharon Olds' new book, One Secret Thing.

It has been a true lyrical cornucopia. Both the Oliver and Olds books are very good, indeed. I added the Oliver book to the list of Near Perfect Books of Poetry, which I never do lightly, at least when it comes to my own nominations. In some ways, the Olds' volume is the more powerful, but it lacks the overall consistency of Oliver's. One Secret Thing builds momentum to a very powerful set of poems about the passing of her mother that will stand with her finest work, no mean feat.

I'm about three quarters of the way through Matsuo Basho: The Master Haiku Poet by Makoto Ueda and it strikes a fine balance of biography and critical overview. I'll be getting back to it in depth in a future post.

Most problematic of all, however, was the gathering of Shiki poems. There is not much out there, folks, and what is out there is decidedly underwhelming. I have often wondered why Robert Haas' The Essential Haiku only included works by Basho, Issa, and Buson. I'm beginning to think I know why.

I'm at a loss to explain the paucity of translations of Shiki's work. He was steeped in and revered the Japanese cultural tradition. Something about his work must be less "universal" than Basho, Issa, and Buson. He was technically proficient, his poems seeming to be very painterly, very imagistic. I'm speculating here, at best; I've not seen much that engages these points but, suffice it to say, that I'm weaving together threads in an attempt to get a better picture. Somewhere I read that he was prolific (tens of thousands of poems) in his short life, yet he seems to have the least amount of works translated into English (and it seems, with exception of two or 3 volumes, to be the same two dozen poems or so translated over and over) of the big four haikuists.

So, to remedy this paucity of work, I decided to take a look around my fairly sizable collection of haiku anthologies and see what was what. A few I consulted had Shiki by yielded nothing new. Today I'm going to concentrate on three of the dozen or so I perused.

The first I looked at was the Dover The Classic Tradition of Haiku edited Fabuion Bowers. I'm a big fan of this modest little volume, primarily because Bowers culled his selections from multiple translators, including Burton Watson, Harold Henderson, Hiroaki Sato, Lafcadio Hearn, Makoto Ueda, R. H. Blyth, Sanford Goldstein, and William Higginson, among others. This volume contains 21 Shiki poems, of which I marked 4 as noteworthy. Of the four, three were new to me and one is probably for Shiki nearly as famous as the frog/water poem is for Basho:



I've turned my back
On Buddha
How cool the moon!

Translated by Alex Kerr

Men are disgusting.
They argue over
The price of orchids.

Translated by Alex Kerr

Tell them
I was a persimmon eater
who liked haiku

Translated by Alex Kerr

Buddha-death
the moonflower's face
the snake gourd's fart

Translated by Janine Beichman

The Kerr translation of the classic Shiki poem written as he contemplated his own demise is not as good as others I've read (i.e. "Remember me / as a persimmon eater / who loved haiku"). The other three are quite good; all four inject an element of the personal into the work that makes them all the more universal, an irony that would not be lost on William Faulkner.

The next collection I looked at was Classic Haiku: The Greatest Japanese Poetry From Basho, Buson, Issa, Shiki and Their Followers, edited by Tom Lowenstein. There are 38 poems by Shiki in this collection and I marked 5 for further review.



Wind in summer:
and all my unlined writing
paper's blowing off my desk.

This year I fell ill when
the peonies were in flower,
and got better with the chrysanthemums.

How cool it has become!
I've completely forgotten
that I'd planned to steal some melons.

A flash of lightning.
Between trees in the forest
I caught a glimpse of water.

How lonely I felt
on a cold, cold night
when I killed that spider.





I was familiar with all 5 of these haiku from different translations, yet something about these grabbed me. I don't remember any mention of stealing in previous versions of "How cool it has become" but I may just be mistaking it for one of Basho's melon poems.

The third book I looked at was Harold G. Henderson's An Introduction to Haiku, which contains a whole chapter, with appended poems, on Shiki. Henderson provides a biographical context for the poetry and gives an overall assessment of the work. There are a total of 44 haiku, of which I marked a dismal 3 as worth another look-see:



To ears
--defiled by sermons-
----a cuckoo.

Haiku! Reading through
--three thousand, I have here
----persimmons - two!

The Moor

Spring moor:
---for what do people go, for what
------do they return?




Two of these three were unfamiliar to me and that was pleasing. Yet overall from the 3 volumes it is really a minimal number of haiku: 12 poems out of 99. Still there are 12 poems I'm happy to be more familiar with now. I have some more anthologies to go through here, including the 4 volume R. H. Blyth classic work on haiku, so perhaps I'll have more to add in the future. The University of Virginia website contains over 80 of Janine Beichman's translations of Shiki's haiku and tankas. I hope to go through these sometime soon also. If you'd like to take a look at how technical translation can get and how many different translations of one single haiku there might be, check out "Of Persimmons and Bells," which analyzes Shiki's most famous poem from here till next Thursday (or the Thursday after). The poem is one of those that resonates with significance in Japanese culture and for the Japanophile but doesn't quite do it for a novice like myself. Frankly, all in all the analysis enters deeper waters than I dare tread.

Speaking of deep and fascinating waters, check out Camille Paglia's "Final Cut: the Selection Process for Break, Blow, Burn," in which she explains how she picked the poems for her popular book on great work. As always with Paglia, she manages to simultaneously trash people while praising them (and, of course, just plain trashes others). You get all of her bias and prejudice and yet she brings the big guns to the table and cannot be easily ignored. She has far too much to teach. I've read Break, Blow Burn (subtitled: "Camille Paglia Read Forty-Three of the Worlds Best Poems") and I'm happy that I did.

Regular readers of Lilliput Review and this blog are familiar with Dennis Maloney, who has co-edited with Robert Alexander a new volume on prose poetry, entitled The House of Your Dream: an International Collection of Prose Poetry. Here's a partial list of contributors that is quite formidable, indeed.

Well, because of last week's holiday, there was no regular archival Thursday posting featuring samplings of a back issue of Lillie (you may have noticed, however, I've been posting daily for about a month or so, a little experiment to see how close to the edge I can get - I'm not sure how long this will continue, but Thursday will remain the regular weekly day for a generally long, leisurely post with poems, with news of interest and glib non sequitars popping up in between). This week's back issue is #64 from December 1994, with a delightful cover by Wayne Hogan, pictured above. Enjoy.



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Van Gogh

We, sane as sympathy,
integrate, liberate,
allocate and war.
In madman's color, you
may have changed the world
the only way it can be.

Betty Davis

Having a Cigarette with Frank O'Hara After Lunch

High above the Times Square of a young boy,
a billboard blows smoke through a
shared memory, where it settles,
lightly, scenting this page.

K. Shabee

Calculated Risk

Some poems never get written:
living them through was enough.

Kate Stewart

Open Mike

Lyric charlatans offer poetic
rhapsodies to their friends,
pat their hands together
and laugh with nervous
relief when a heckler
guilty of profane
candor, is flung
out the door
to complete his
poem in the street

William Harris III

Note

When I was far from you,
only one bird
flew across the mountainside,
skimming above trees and fog.
A crow,
its cry like a dropped rag.
One crow.
It was enough.

James Owens

The Meeting

Meeting you
on a crowded city street
after twenty years,
your face is almost unchanged,
blue eyes
still direct,
an easy smile,
deeper voice;
your slow compromise
with laughter.

William Beyer

Marriage

The small flock of bones in my hand
have settled to sleep on your breast,
chirping together as they sink back
through the hours of this long day,
back to the darkness around us and in us.

James Owens

night invocation

your tongue is a nightgown.
dress me in it, o blessed raven,
as i prepare for bed.
brush out my hair
with the strong ribs
of your feathers.
lend your words to me
that i may know what i hear
once sleep has come.

jen besemer

Clematis

Woven around itself,
the unpruned tendriled
tangle of split stems
supports
the skeletal trellis
which long ago
gave up
stilting this vine
that flowers
on old wood.

Janet Bernichon

Sappho to Erinna

Come. It's morning.
Let me brush the stars
from your hair.

Noelle Kocot

best,
Don

A Pluperfect Moon: A Little Treasury of Haiku, Part II

Note: Following last week's post, here is Part II on The Little Treasury of Haiku. As I write this note, it is looking like there will be a part 3 ... perhaps after a brief pause, eh? Meanwhile, let's plunge right in, shall we?

Master Buson seems to be waiting ... patiently.


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Now the swinging bridge
Is quieted with creepers . . .
Like our tendrilled life

Bashō

Another beautiful little Bashō poem; to more contemporary sensibilities, certainly the "Like" is unnecessary. We are all in the business of throwing everything overboard that is unnecessary, correct?  The traditional contrasting of diverse elements here reveals metaphor, which usually goes unstated or even is totally avoided in haiku.

The image is strong, though, particularly for modern man. When was the last time anyone thought about a rope bridge being muted by vegetation? And so our lives, you say?

And so our lives, indeed.

Watching, I wonder
What poet could put down his quill . . .
A pluperfect moon!

Onitsura

Now here is a conundrum wrapped up in a riddle. There will be no easy retrieving when pulling the string of the balloon of that pluperfect moon. What is the translator after here, is it analogous to something Onitsura wrote - is he speaking of the past and present moments simultaneously or some syntactical implication that is simply beyond my comprehension here?

This is the deep end of the haiku pool and now I'm thinking I shouldn't have been so flip about Master Suzuki in part I of this post.

White chrysanthemum . . .
Before the perfect flower
Scissors hesitate

Buson

This is another wonderful poem in a fine translation. However, when compared to R. H. Blyth, as noted in a previous post, we see the difference between fine and great:

The scissors hesitate
Before the white chysanthemums,
A moment.

Buson

Using just one more word than Beilenson, Blyth captures the same action and the action which immediately follows (or happens). In the former, the flower is not cut; in the later it is.

Did Beilenson fumble or Blyth interpolate? I have no idea, once again I am shamed before Dr. Suzuki.

But I do love that I have both of these to compare, propelling me ever closer to Master Buson.

Fireworks ended
And spectators gone away . . .
Ah, how vast and dark!

Shiki

Now here is a Shiki poem I can cozy up to. There is more than the art and the emptiness - though emptiness there is. The emptiness in this poem reverberates in a way I often find lacking in Shiki.

My volume had a glorious typo in this one: "firewords" for "fireworks."

Deepen, drop, and die
Many-hued chrysanthemum . . .
One black earth for all

Ryushi

The use by Beilenson of heavy alliteration - du, du, du - is most effective in this dark poem by Ryushi. Even if you read the d sounds lightly, it could be each petal detaching and falling off, one by one. Take your pick, the endgame is the same.

Plume of pampas grass
Trembling in every wind . . .
Hush, my lonely heart

Issa

Trembling is the word which links the two elements of this ku. Lonely is the word that breaks ours.

Winter rain deepens
Lichened letters on the grave . . .
And my old sadness.

Roka

Nature not only mirrors the poet's old grief, it deepens it literally, in the way water highlights etched letters on stone. This simple, natural act calls all back to mind, because old really is the most important word here. The grief, it is thought, had begun to fade like the letters but upon seeing the faded letters again, the pain too comes to the fore, and is as wrenching as ever. A perfect, if grief-laden, haiku moment.

From my tiny roof
Smooth . . . soft . . . still-white snow
Melts in melody

Issa

I like what this poem seems to be about, though I'm not so sure of the translation. The last line feels a bit forced, and not as clear as it could be. Still, a lovely winter subject, embodying a lovely, universal feeling.

Under my tree-roof
Slanting lines of April rain
Separate to drops

Bashō

Another type of roof, another fine weather poem; this time the poet, with an artist's eye, closely observes water's mercurial qualities. The picture is perfect; there is a sense that everything is exactly so.

Riverbank plum tree . . .
Do your reflected blossoms 
Really float away?

Buson

Buson the painter is sketching something with words that even he, perhaps, could not capture with a painter's brush. What is real, the poet seems to be asking himself, as he questions the plum tree, what is not?

The seashore temple . . .
Incoming rollers flow in time
To the holy flute

Buson

Another beauty by Buson, this time auditory instead of visual (though it is that, too, just not primarily). Because the temple is so near the sea, we glean that the sea is a source of all things i.e. music. The beat and rhythm of the rollers is the primal sound, the sound which cannot be said, the aum/om sound of all things, the sound all music is based on. The flute is holy, the temple is holy, the sea is holy.

Holy, holy, holy, holy . . .

Finally, for this post

Moonlight stillness
Lights the petals falling . . . falling . . .
On the silenced lute

Shiki

Stillness and silence and falling, falling. There is an ominous quality to Shiki's poem. It could simply be that all are asleep, hence the stillness and the silence, and yet the falling makes one wonder at that very silence and stillness.

Let's leave the mystery be, until part III, either next week or soon thereafter.

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This week's issue from the archives is Lilliput Review, #135, from January 2004.

in the snow
another
perfect yellow ensō

Ed Baker

pissing a perfect
circle...
a cold night

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

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Five Classic Cormorant Haiku

Photo by Frédéric Lemaréchal

In book 3 of R. H. Blyth's classic 4-volume Haiku, there are a number of sections on particular subjects, one being cormorant fishing. Cormorant fishing is a method, as depicted above, in which the bird has a snare attached to the base of its throat. When the cormorant catches a fish, it is unable to swallow it and the fisherman extracts it from the bird's throat. The the process is then repeated, over and over again.

This method of fishing, hundreds and hundreds of years old, inspired many haiku. And, as would be expected, most are in empathy with the plight of the bird.

Here are 4 poems by classic masters, translated by Blyth:

Art by Katsukawa Shunsen

      Cormorants
and cormorant fishers, too,
      Parent and child.    

                    Issa

This is a signature Issa poem, focused as it is on the shared experience of bird and human: both are, potentially, parent and child. Issa, who considered himself an orphan from an early age, has compassion which knows no species line. Obviously, the plight of the cormorant is especially emotive for him.

Model from Vatican Museum

      Morning twilight;
In their basket, the cormorants
      Asleep, exhausted.    

                    Shiki

Shiki goes right to the heart of the matter, the birds' terrible plight: catch the fish, be unable to eat. Hence, the exhaustion - all effort, no reward. 

Statue, Eden Park, Cincinnati, OH

      The cormorant keeper
Grown old,
      Is not to be seen this year.  

                    Buson

Buson focuses on the elderly man he remembers seeing who is the keeper and trainer of cormorants. As with Issa's poem, we see the human, in important respects, shares the plight of the cormorant: life's ephemerality.

Frontispiece, Talks about Birds

       My soul
Dived in and out of the water
       With the cormorant    

                    Onitsura

Like Shiki, Onitsura identifies completely with the task of the cormorant and replicates what is a very real emotional experience for those who witness this type of fishing.

The one master missing is Bashō from this particular selection of Blyth translations. I found his translation of the follwoing a bit cumbersome, so here it is, translated by David Landis Barnhill instead:

Artwork by Keisai Eisen

so fascinating
        but then so sad:
               cormorant fishing boat  

          Bashō

Bashō  strikes a perfect balance of humanness - the fascination with this 'ingenious' method of fishing and, suddenly, the revelation of its implication, karmic and otherwise. The range of emotion from one mere moment to the next is, in itself, something of an analogy for the human experience.

One note - there are, and have been, different methods of cormorant 'fishing.' Another method does not involve a snare around the neck, but the bird (actually, a number are used at a time) is tethered to the boat, having been trained not to swallow.

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

Woodblock by Kunisada

the cormorants stare
at them hard...
cormorant fishermen

Issa
trans. by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

PS  Click to learn how to contribute to Wednesday Haiku

Masoka Shiki and the Cosmic Baseball Association

Following Thursday's post, I got an email from the intrepid Ed Baker, pointing out that Masoka Shiki was such a great fan of baseball that he was inducted into the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. Here's the link Ed sent along.

Which got me to thinking about a great site that's been around quite sometime: the Cosmic Baseball Association. I've linked here to the All-Time rosters page as the homepage has a little political flavor right now that might be confusing (though it is non-partisan) to start out with.

In fact, the whole site may seem a bit confusing, but I urge you to feel it first and think about it later. I recommend you just choose a team in the right hand column and follow the links try (try "Beats" first - actual team name: Dharma Beats). Once you get the flavor (and your mind starts drifting away like you were playing right field on a bright August afternoon with your ace on the mound), click back to the homepage and check out the links along the left hand side.

Finally, to put all this in proper perspective, Ed also sent along a link to an archive of Shiki's work from the University of Virginia that is well worth checking out.

Thanks, Ed, for stoking the cerebral furnace early on a Saturday morning ...


best,
Don

William Stafford: Where People Aren't

A book that I recently completed in my morning reading rotation is Things That Happen Where There Aren't Any People, a solid little William Stafford 38 page chapbook, put out by BOA Editions in 1980. 

Many of the poems in the book are about what the title suggests: things that happen without people. Stafford's deep interaction with nature comes out in any number of the poems included, such as the following:


Through the Junipers

   In the afternoon I wander away through
   the junipers. They scatter on low hills
   that open and close around me.
   If I go far enough, all sight or sound
   of people ends. I sit and look endless miles
   over waves of those hills.
   And then between sentences later when anyone
   asks me questions troubling to truth,
   my answers wander away and look back.
   There are these days, and there are these hills
   nobody thinks about, even in summer.
   And part of my life doesn’t have any home.


Stafford is the kind of poet who, on occasions such as this one, we seem to overhear talking to himself. He was a prolific poet, a serial writer if you will, and the more you read, the more you feel him working out the many different aspects of things he encounters. 

I could easily imagine him, on any given day, writing a very different last line for this poem. It is important to note, however, that this last line does not present empirical fact or even conjectural 'fact' - it presents feeling, how he felt after encountering nature without humans, and how he feels upon reentering the world of humans.

Reading this through some might think of Buddhism. Though this has some substance, I thought that Stafford, in his approach, represents a very Western (in this case, in both senses of the word) way of thinking, albeit a wilderness way of thinking. It reminded me of Somerset Maugham's character Larry Darrow from The Razor's Edge, who thinks that it is easy to be a monk on a mountain top, just try taking idealistic principles down into the world of people.

In case you forgot the post from 3 years ago (or weren't around these parts at that time), here's a scene with Bill Murray capturing the above sentiment from the excellent 1984 movie adaptation:




Because serendipity is the way of all things, I ran into the following haiku by Shiki in-between the next to last and last edit of this post and it seems, in its own way, to speak to the heart of the subject at hand:


      There is no trace
Of him who entered
      The summer grove

      Shiki
      trans. by R. W. Blyth

Photo by Tom Magliery

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Photo by Sander van der Wel

baby sparrow--
even when people come
opening his mouth

Issa
trans. by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

PS  Click to learn how to contribute to Wednesday Haiku

alter-world: old pajamas

What is it we ask of the modern short-form poet, the modern haiku poet? What do we want, what is necessary in a short poem?

What do we need?

To get close to an answer to any, or all, of these questions perhaps we should be asking most importantly: what do we ask of ourselves when it comes to poetry as readers and, for some, as poets?

Old Pajamas (aka Alan Segal) is an excellent poet working in short forms for whom form itself is mercurial, form is protean, form is content's shadow. Like contemporary masters Cid Corman, John Martone, and Charlie Mehrhoff, he knows where the lines are and chooses to dance over and amongst them.

For my two cents, Old Pajamas would be a candidate for inclusion in a second edition of Haiku in English, as would Ed Baker, another fine purveyor of 'shorties' as he is wont to call them on any given day, work don't fit any strict definition but is all heart and spirit and soul.

Is the pen name 'Old Pajamas' off-putting? Just think about the various pen-names of so many Japanese poets. Even the masters - Bashō's name means banana leaf or tree, Issa's cup-of-tea, Buson's midnight studio, and Shiki's cuckoo. 

As far as English goes, Old Pajamas sounds just fine to me. 

The new collection he sent along is a limited hardcover edition, 1 of 25 printed.The book is entitled alter-world and here are four of my favorites from it:

Photo by Hadi Fooladi

ah
the butterfly
not an actor

Photo by Amour Perdu

that you're in black
flower and scaly
while I'm paleness
blinking in the dark
is enough enough for us

Photo by flugflugfunmangel

in one cricket
the sound is weary

Photo by Seth Anderson

BLOWER MOTOR #4

mad with rust  / /  camellias in bloom




Regular readers of this blog will recognize this last poem (and photo) as having appeared previously on Wednesday Haiku. 

Looking at these four pieces superficially they seem to be all over the place, form-wise. Yet, there is a unifying element among them, one of the major components of traditional haiku.

All four are firmly ground in nature.

Now, arguments could certainly be had, one way or the other, as to which, if any, are haiku, and which are not. I have my opinions and I'll keep them (mostly) to myself. 

One thing I will say is that they are all haiku-like or, even more generally, fine brief poems.   

alter-world is not available to purchase, so there is no pitch here. However, you can find more of Alan's work, from alter-world and and other places, at old pajamas: from the dirt hut. It is definitely worth your while. There is also a more extensive review of an earlier collection, Drenched Through at Old Age, here.


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Photo by Mo

when will it become
a cricket's nest?
my white hair

Issa
trans. by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

PS  Click to learn how to contribute to Wednesday Haiku

The Pocket Haiku: Sam Hamill

 
Back in 2011 at the Haiku North America Conference in Seattle, poet Jerry Ball addressed a large roomful of haiku poets, practitioners, and scholars and set forth a challenge: he would present a series of quality haiku and we should determine the one element they all had in common. 

He read poem after poem after poem and the assembled audience puzzled over their commonality, themes, philosophy, subjects, bent, and allusiveness to no avail. Person after person suggested possible connections without any luck.

Turned out that Mr. Ball was at once having a bit of fun and demonstrating a valid, if decidedly unpopular concept: haiku written in English in the 5/7/5 form.

Form vs content: the eternal battle in haiku, in poetry generally, in philosophy, and, yes, in life.

Mr. Ball's demonstration, as intended, gave everyone in the room something to think about.

Sam Hamill is a well-known poet, translator and activist who has collected together in The Pocket Haiku some 200 plus of his translations of classic haiku that have long been revered by readers, fellow poets, and critics alike. As the name implies, the book is small: 3 x 4.75 inches. At this size it fits in nearly any pocket you might have, giving you the ability to carry with you the core canon of classic haiku without ever having to charge a battery or power up 'the source.'

One remarkable aspect of these translations is their general adherence to the 5/7/5 form as delineated above. There is much to be said for the work of translators such as Lucien Styrk and Robert Hass and their use of a much briefer approach in their translations, but there is absolutely nothing wrong with Hamill's approach. 

Here's a poem by Bashō, which I've probably read in any number of collections that I have no memory of. Hamill's translation is a resonant, singular work:

Come out to view
the truth of flowers blooming
in poverty 

This rendition resonates in an at once very modern and a very classical way. In this next poem, the deep truth of humanness is quietly revealed:

utter aloneness -
another great pleasure
in autumn twilight

Perhaps this is less than modern yet all the more true for that. One can feel the irony cut both ways: aloneness is thought of as alienation, yet aloneness is the very thing that may unite us all, the essence of who we are. The oneness of all things is writ large in this compact gem.

All the wonderful Issa ku are represented here. Personally, the one that is fresh and new in Mr. Hamill's rendition is:

Just to say the word
home, that one word alone
so pleasantly cool

The poet here is engaged in a full tilt sensory way. It is not often that sound and touch are the senses that connect in a synesthiesiac manner. In this poem, the connection is resonant in a deep, abiding way. 

A special delight of this collection is that, beyond the three classic haiku poets, there is a small collection of "Other Poets" of the classical school. Here, there are some less familiar gems, as in this anonymous haiku:

To learn how to die
watch cherry blossoms, observe
chrysanthemums

Here is the connection to nature, the Buddha's noble truth in action. And the deep truth of this poem, and the form itself, is easily confirmed when one thinks how the great haiku master, Shiki, spent his final years.

As I do with a great majority of books I read, I left the introduction to last. As a final example from this exemplary collection, I'll leave you with an Onitsura poem that I was happy to see Mr. Hamill chose to highlight in his intro:

True obedience:
silently the flower speaks
to the inner ear

 
This is a collection to go through again and again, as I've done and will continue to do. Whether at the bus stop, on lunch break, waiting on an appointment, concentrating full bore, I find the overall approach and execution, as in the works of Bashō and Issa, as instructive on many levels. 

For Bashō there was the Way of Haiku, for Issa Pure Land Buddhism. For Sam Hamill, in his capacity of translator in this volume, there is the task to communicate the essence and the resonance of classic haiku, its origin, its philosophy, its execution ... 

... and, its all-important universal message. And he has done just that.

This book belongs in the collection, and pocket, of every haiku aficionado. It can be purchased directly from the publisher, Shambhala, or your favorite independent bookseller. You won't regret it.


best,
Don

PS  Click to learn how to contribute to Wednesday Haiku