Gerald Vizenor: favor of crows: New and Collected Haiku

favor of crows by Gerald Vizenor has plenty to celebrate and plenty to ponder. The poems here are largely quiet, occasionally listless, many are image-based and some are simply revelatory, in the sense that anything revelatory can be simple.

But wait: perhaps that listlessness is something else. 


       bright hollyhocks
teeter in the rush of trains
        flurry of faces


Like many fine haiku, these poems on the surface do not give up their essence easily. So, we see that if it is mind that struggles, lay aside mind and, as again with many fine haiku, something else appears: meaning opening up with the first rays of the sun.


            gusts of rain
trees turn away from the sea
            beach stories


Gerald Vizenor is a poet, critic, cultural theorist and academician, a leading Native American writer of the last half century and a member of the Chippewa Nation. He is a haiku scholar as well as haiku poet - his introduction, entitled "Haiku Scenes," displays his command of haiku history and haiku essence, and situates him in the Zen Buddhist / R. H. Blyth school of haiku theory and practice.


            red poppies 
trace the motion of the sun
        elders in the park


His linking of Native American culture and concepts to Japanese culture is at once informative and historical (Vizenor, as was true with many Americans, encountered the culture first hand during a tour of duty in WW II), and the relationship to nature and animism in both cultures makes for interesting, thought-provoking theory.


        china sunrise
tourists circle the statues
        cicada fugues


Ultimately, there is a balance of theory and feeling, the academic and the lyrical, and the truth is revealed in the poems themselves. His haiku are firmly nature based and season themed, with two contrasting elements stylistically prompting revelations both large and small, succinct and resonant, as in this poem.


    marsh marigolds
trembling in the rain
     faces on a bus


This haiku reminded me simultaneously of the classic haiku of the horse and the trembling flowers (a little help, anyone; I can't quite recall the poet or the poem exactly) and Pound's petals/faces/Metro poem.

The book is arranged seasonally, as are many traditional haiku collections. The autumn section is particularly strong, with the following poem recalling Bashō's famous autumn crow haiku (scroll down for multiple translations via this link):


          spider web
billows on a bare branch
            empty


Vizenor is at once subtle and almost understated, presenting us with images and contrast, and letting the reader take it from there. Like the finest haiku throughout time and across cultures.


         mountain snow
warblers search for apricots
           no regrets


We know the warblers have no regrets; how about you? 

Or perhaps the warblers do. What to make of these clever little sparrows?


       noisy sparrows
flutter over the birdbath
     clearing the snow


Sentience, learned behavior, coincidence?  Some things to ask ourselves as well as the sparrows.

Gerald Vizenor asks, and his answers are of the very best type; they are suggestive, they are lyrical, they are alive.

This is a book I anticipate revisiting again and again, as the seasons return again and again.  And, as with the seasons, one can anticipate a return of joy, each time different, each time the very same. Give it a try, from the library or the nearest bookstore, electronic or otherwise. 

It will reward you deeply. 


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Eigenfaces by Ylebru

the first cherry blossoms
soon scatter and stick...
people's faces

Issa
trans. by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

PS  Click to learn how to contribute to Wednesday Haiku  

Issa's Birthday Song

Well, David Giacalone and Rebecca Bush sent along notes to remind me that Monday, June 15th, is the day Issa's Birthday is celebrated so I can't let that pass unnoticed.

at my dinner tray
a sparrow chirps...
spring rain

paying no heed
to Buddha's birthday...
wildflowers

deutzia blossoms, too
on Buddha's birthday
report for duty

Issa
translations by David Lanoue

Whenever I think of Issa, inevitably my thoughts move to sparrows, a bird that he just adored and I have to say his is an admiration I share. The house sparrows in our maple tree in the back yard have been raising holy hell of late and I just love it. We planted the tree not long after moving into the house 10 years or so ago and now I realize how very easy it is, indeed, to change the world.

This is Issa's birthday song ...

A few days ago, I was trying to help someone find a poem s/he couldn't remember the author or title of, all s/he could remember was some sensory impressions and that it was either by William Carlos Williams or Richard Brautigan (specifically The Pill Versus the Springhill Mining Disaster). Here's her/his description:

the only thing I remember is that it may have had something to do with a storm or disaster, and it tasted red and ashy. It was rather short as well and the final line was rather final.

Also, s/he remembered that it had been on the left hand page side. I felt from the last line that it was more likely to be Brautigan than Williams, so I went off to look through the Brautigan. I skimmed through the left sided poems but nothing. Than I realized that s/he had read it in one of those Brautigan omnibus editions and I thought the pagination might be different, so I skimmed the right sided poems. Nothing.

Well, not really nothing, because, though I didn't find the poem, I got totally rejazzed on Mr. B. I had reread The Pill last year and though I'd enjoyed it, it hadn't quite been the overwhelming experience I expected. Seems I must have been in some kind of funky snit because this time round I was delighted, cajoled, appalled, and all choked up in a fine mix of emotional falderol.

He had me at one, as the au currant saying goes.

Here's one by Mr. B. that grabbed me and that you don't see all over the net everyday:

To England

There are no postage stamps that send letters
back to England three centuries ago,
no postage stamps that make letters
travel back until the grave hasn't been dug yet,
and John Donne stands looking out the window,
it is just beginning to rain this April morning,
and the birds are falling into the trees
like chess pieces into an unplayed game,
and John Donne sees the postman coming up the street,
the postman walks very carefully because his cane
is made of glass.

Richard Brautigan

For those who might be interested, here's a link to a post I did for the library about how I became a reader. It explains a couple of my, er, eccentricities.

Lilliput Review #24, today's selection from the archives, comes from the distant land of September 1991, and is a broadside issue by one of today's best small press poets, Charlie Mehrhoff. He brings it big-time in a way today's household names rarely even dream of. Here's a taste:

with the dawn of fire

with the music
of the stone hammer

with the birth
of the ancient drum
hear now
hear now

creation

prophet of the godless landscape

he sends his voice
into the cold stones
at the river's bottom
there to awaken
in the springtime
pieces
of broken ice

The Raven

said to her
are you into scarification
baby

will you wear the leather mask
will you make me forget
the day of my birth
the eyes of the idol
the child of god
of rain

the impact of the poet:

one soul falling
backward

& she wants the whole world
delivered in a second

simple.
i give her bells,
tell her to wait.

Charlie Mehrhoff

the Buddha pretends
to be born...
bells and drums

Issa
translated by David Lanoue

One final note: did you Stravinsky today? I did.



best,
Don

Undercover of the Night: Issa's Sunday Service, #41

Patti Smith & William S. Burroughs

Yesterday was the birthday of the Godfather of Outlaw Literature, William S. Burroughs. This week's feature on Issa's Sunday Service is a most unlikely song by The Rolling Stones: "Undercover of the Night." It seems especially unlikely to me in its ties to Burroughs. The Stones really shouldn't surprise in a career that spans so many years; the breadth of material they have composed is truly amazing. Though it seems inevitable, just in terms of sheer volume, that some songs would be LitRock (and this is their second appearance on ISS), I never imagined any reference to Uncle Bill. Jagger has been widely quoted as to the song's meaning and here's what he had to say:


"I'm not saying I nicked it, but this song was heavily influenced by William Burroughs' Cities Of The Red Night, a free-wheeling novel about political and sexual repression. It combines a number of different references to what was going down in Argentina and Chile. I think it's really good but it wasn't particularly successful at the time because songs that deal overtly with politics never are that successful, for some reason."(quote from Songfacts)


I guess it's honest to admit that I never imagined that I'd ever hear Jagger use the phrase "a free-wheeling novel about political and sexual repression." But, there you go. Cute and lots of brains, too. The lyrics follow:




Undercover of the Night

Hear the screams of Center 42
Loud enough to bust your brains out
The opposition's tongue is cut in two
Keep off the street 'cause you're in danger

One hundred thousand disparus
Lost in the jails in South America
Curl up baby
Curl up tight
Curl up baby
Keep it all out of sight
Undercover
Keep it all out of sight
Undercover of the night

The sex police are out there on the streets
Make sure the pass laws are not broken
The race militia has got itchy fingers
All the way from New York back to Africa

Cuddle up baby
Keep it all out of sight
Cuddle up baby
Sleep with all out of sight
Cuddle up baby
Keep it all out of sight
Undercover
Undercover
Undercover
Keep it all out of sight
Undercover of the night

All the young men they've been rounded up
And sent to camps back in the jungle
And people whisper people double-talk
And once proud fathers act so humble
All the young girls they have got the blues
They're heading on back to Center 42

undercover
all out of sight
undercover
all out of sight
Undercover
all out of sight
Undercover
all out of sight
Undercover of the night

Down in the bars the girls are painted blue
Done up in lace, done up in rubber
The John's are jerky little G.I. Joe's
On R&R from Cuba and Russia
The smell of sex, the smell of suicide
All these things I can't keep inside

Undercover
all out of sight
Undercover of the night

Undercover of the night
Undercover of the night

Undercover
Undercover
Undercover of the night

In further remembrance of Mr. B., what follows is an excerpt of an interview with him from the film The Life and Times of Allen Ginsberg in which he recounts his relationship with Ginsberg and Kerouac and the flowering of his own career.





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


This week's poem comes from Lilliput Review #65 (February 1995). 6 other poems from this issue were featured in a previous post.

Procession

There is a
line of them
pecking at crumbs
that fall from
the hands of a
child who grows
old in their
eyes even as
they eat

Alan Catlin

And a poem from that lover of sparrows, Issa:





fledgling faces
peek out the nest...
sparrows

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

Rehn Kovacic & Susan Diridoni: Wednesday Haiku, #201

Photo by ~Coqui

Each tear
   an offering--
       hidden moon

Rehn Kovacic

Photo by Lucy Gutteridge

 

overfilled beak of the sparrow gathering still

Susan Diridoni

 Photo by Paul Cooper

what day then?
all the hut's sparrows
leave the nest

Issa
trans. by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

PS  Click to learn how to contribute to Wednesday Haiku  

Gerald Stern and Chicken Pie

I'm in love with Gerald Stern. It is unabashed, it is obsessive, it is irresponsible, and it is nigh on devotional, this love for Gerald Stern.

It all started a couple of years back when I ran across a couple of poems in the much maligned anthology, Good Poems, edited by Garrison Keillor. Keillor was attacked, pilloried, really, by no less a poet, one whom I greatly admire, than August Kleinazhler. He has since been defended
by another poetic luminary, Dana Gioia, which ended up creating the proverbial poetic tempest in a teapot that ended up in a vaguely clicheish flurry of exchanges. Points were scored on both sides and, god forbid, people were talking about poetry in a semi-heated fashion.

Little of this mattered to me. I enjoyed Keillor's anthology very much, but more importantly I'd fallen in love; and though the white hot passion I had for 6 months or so has cooled a bit, still, my devotion is true. Which leads to the recent publication of Stern's new Quarternote Chapbook, The Preacher.

I am at a loss to describe my love. Stern, on the surface, appears staid enough, surely nothing unsafe here. Yet he plays like a wild-haired, poetic clarinetist, suddenly deviating seriously from the charts. The metaphors, the allusions, the connections are sparks flying from downed wires; careful there, isn't that water, rushing nearby?

The Preacher takes its title and begins as a rift on the narrator from the opening lines of Ecclesiastes in the King James version of Bible (yup, the version is important; not only which one, but which particular King James version). Or perhaps it actually began with listening to another riff, this one by one of the very few people I'll let preach to me: Charles Mingus.

Eat that chicken, eat that chicken pie: oh, yeah.

Or maybe it all really began with the poet executing one of his signature moves, well-known to devotees, lovers and acolytes alike: hugging a tree. Though you might not end up rich if you got a dime for every time Stern alludes to this most lyrical of occupations, you still could get yourself a cup a joe, possibly even at one of the upscale clip joints passing for coffeehouses these days.

What's it about, you say? Who cares, says I, it's by the loved one. It's about everything. We dip our big toe in Dante's (or was that Milton's) fine Lake in Hell (Cocytus 32-4), discover many lamentable holes, very black, indeed, throughout the miserable existence of our heroic human race. Truman, Sharon, and Genghis Kahn (typo, variant spelling, or just plain sic?) all get their fiery comuppance, with Kant, Leonard Cohen and Lord Mingus all strolling in and out for perspective and three-part harmony.

The whole is structured on a poetic riff of a conversation with fellow versifier Peter Richards; this conversation is spoken, however, in the language of Tongues, one long familiar to the Preacher, Mr. Stern, and the composer of that famed autobiography, Beneath the Underdog.

All in all, the dialogue is free associative, manically passionate and, probably, in the key of B flat. As is well known, my attention tends to wander after 10 lines or so, but Stern's standard 30 to 50 or so line work usually keeps me riveted. This 23 page, book-length poem might have been expected to tax that haiku-like attention span yet it kept me in my seat and brought me back for more (after reading a library copy twice through, I bought my own copy).

By way of disclosure, Mr. Stern started life in Pittsburgh, where I've ended up. He's hit many of the world's high spots in his journey, notably NYC, Jersey and Philadelphia, all places I touched base with in the beginnings of my journey. So, there is a corruption of place, a sort of geography of influence in this post I felt I had to confess, along with my above heralded love. I've never met Mr. Stern, am not shilling for any one particular agenda or another except the reader's agenda, specifically this reader's agenda: mine. If you are unfamiliar with his work, if you like things a tad untidy, if you sing off key or, perhaps, don't mind doing the dishes in the morning, get a hold of a copy of Leaving Another Kingdom: the Selected Poems.

He rarely disappoints.

Cover by Gyorgy Kostritski

This week, the tour of past issues of Lilliput arrives at #143, from June 2005. Enjoy.

Robins’s nest in the tangle

of climbing roses

Careful, bird! I, too,

have been pierced by the barbs

that kept out the wolves

Emily Rodgers– Ramos

Movement

I lean on the balcony rails

and breathe in the sun-spliced

winds of the west.

A cross glimmers on the front-range

mountains, blends with the light

of the sun. Hidden in the drain

shafts red-throated sparrows

trill to my steam heavy thoughts.

This morning, I try to bend

two waves of light into one.

Brian Dickson

Though I am departing for Mt. Inaba

I will return home at once,

-if I hear your voice

in the sigh of the wind

in the pines

Chunagon Yukihira

translated by Dennis Maloney & Hide Oshiro

on the phone

my daughter and I

watch different sunsets

Anne LB Davidson

the day departs

of course

without me

David Lindley

Till next time, 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.

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


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

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


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

Sometimes a Wild God by Coyopa

 Photo by Wolfgang Sauber

As is rather obvious from what goes on around here, I'm not much taken with the long poem. My miniscule attention span begins to waver after 10 lines or two stanzas, whichever comes first. So it is rather wonderful that the following long poem stormed the castle and swept away my soul. Of course, it came to me via a friend who 'knew' that it would do exactly that, said friend being the very fine tanka poet, Joy McCall. We were exchanging songs and poems and what not one gray Sunday morning (for me, midday, rather soggy for her across the pond) as we are wont to do. She had sent me a lovely Ronald Baatz poem in response to my posting of his poems here, and I sent along a copy of my favorite Robert Frost poem, Never Again Will Birds' Song Be the Same, and she sent this:





Sometimes a Wild God by Coyopa

Sometimes a wild god comes to the table.
He is awkward and does not know the ways
Of porcelain, of fork and mustard and silver.
His voice makes vinegar from wine.

When the wild god arrives at the door,
You will probably fear him.
He reminds you of something dark
That you might have dreamt,
Or the secret you do not wish to be shared.

He will not ring the doorbell;
Instead he scrapes with his fingers
Leaving blood on the paintwork,
Though primroses grow
In circles round his feet.

You do not want to let him in.
You are very busy.
It is late, or early, and besides…
You cannot look at him straight
Because he makes you want to cry.

The dog barks.
The wild god smiles,
Holds out his hand.
The dog licks his wounds
And leads him inside.

The wild god stands in your kitchen.
Ivy is taking over your sideboard;
Mistletoe has moved into the lampshades
And wrens have begun to sing
An old song in the mouth of your kettle.

‘I haven’t much,’ you say
And give him the worst of your food.
He sits at the table, bleeding.
He coughs up foxes.
There are otters in his eyes.

When your wife calls down,
You close the door and
Tell her it’s fine.
You will not let her see
The strange guest at your table.

The wild god asks for whiskey
And you pour a glass for him,
Then a glass for yourself.
Three snakes are beginning to nest
In your voicebox. You cough.

Oh, limitless space.
Oh, eternal mystery.
Oh, endless cycles of death and birth.
Oh, miracle of life.
Oh, the wondrous dance of it all.

You cough again,
Expectorate the snakes and
Water down the whiskey,
Wondering how you got so old
And where your passion went.

The wild god reaches into a bag
Made of moles and nightingale-skin.
He pulls out a two-reeded pipe,
Raises an eyebrow
And all the birds begin to sing.

The fox leaps into your eyes.
Otters rush from the darkness.
The snakes pour through your body.
Your dog howls and upstairs
Your wife both exhalts and weeps at once.

The wild god dances with your dog.
You dance with the sparrows.
A white stag pulls up a stool
And bellows hymns to enchantments.
A pelican leaps from chair to chair.

In the distance, warriors pour from their tombs.
Ancient gold grows like grass in the fields.
Everyone dreams the words to long-forgotten songs.
The hills echo and the grey stones ring
With laughter and madness and pain.

In the middle of the dance,
The house takes off from the ground.
Clouds climb through the windows;
Lightning pounds its fists on the table.
The moon leans in through the window.

The wild god points to your side.
You are bleeding heavily.
You have been bleeding for a long time,
Possibly since you were born.
There is a bear in the wound.

‘Why did you leave me to die?’
Asks the wild god and you say:
‘I was busy surviving.
The shops were all closed;
I didn’t know how. I’m sorry.’

Listen to them:

The fox in your neck and
The snakes in your arms and
The wren and the sparrow and the deer…
The great un-nameable beasts
In your liver and your kidneys and your heart…

There is a symphony of howling.
A cacophony of dissent.
The wild god nods his head and
You wake on the floor holding a knife,
A bottle and a handful of black fur.

Your dog is asleep on the table.
Your wife is stirring, far above.
Your cheeks are wet with tears;
Your mouth aches from laughter or shouting.
A black bear is sitting by the fire.

Sometimes a wild god comes to the table.
He is awkward and does not know the ways
Of porcelain, of fork and mustard and silver.
His voice makes vinegar from wine
And brings the dead to life.




Tip o' the hat to Joy - an amazing piece of writing all around.

------------ 

Shinigami by Takehara Shunsen

the god of death
has passed me over...
autumn dusk

 Issa

 translated by David G. Lanoue 

best,
Don 

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Lillie poem archive

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

Go to the LitRock web site for a list of all 146 songs

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

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


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."


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


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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Issa: A Few Flies and I

I promised I would return to this remarkable little volume of Issa poems, A Few Flies and I, selected by the childrens' author Jean Merrill and Ronni Solbert. I previously featured four poems. Here's a handful more:

------At the morning exhibition
Of the Buddhist image,
------The sparrows also are on time.

-------The flying butterfly:
I feel myself
-------A creature of dust.

A thousand
Plovers
Rise
As one.

------Visiting the graves
The old dog
-------Leads the way

The deer
Are licking
The first frost
From one another's coats.

All the while
I pray to Buddha
I keep on killing
Mosquitoes.

As mentioned previously, the 3 line translations are by R. H. Blyth and the 4 liners by Nobuyuki Yuasa. It is very refreshing, indeed, to have two different approaches in one volume, not something that happens too often. Some volumes of Baudelaire do this, Dante also, but it really is lovely to have this approach with Master Issa. I've tried here to select poems not previously featured but when something is a favorite, my resistance is minimal.

Sometimes, you just have to cave.

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

This week's featured works are from a combination of #31 and #32 which, issued as a pair, were short and long-line issues respectively, plus two from #29 (February 1992). The countdown to #1 is beginning to feel like a free fall from a building or a very tall bridge.

Cafe Poem

--That little old lady has a purpose.
--She's a cartographer completing the map of her life.
--It's there on her face,
--as contained, as exact as the will that lies
--deep in that small, sunken breast.
--She looks around her, laughs.
--Another line forms,
--another move toward the completion she already envisions.
--There's nothing more for us here.
--Let's leave her to her work.

--Albert Huffstickler

Poem Up From Too Little Light

Was it a dark and
stormy night or just
a round shadow all
stuffed with sound
and too little light?

Wayne Hogan

From #29:

side street

(wind chimes)

porch of no one's
at home

backdrop of busy
street sounds

lone
hollow
chimes

-- ---yet
here is
-- ---that pulse to

Deborah Meadows

The further back in the run I go, now 17 years in the past, the more I encounter an earlier me, a novice editor, working toward something. Though still something of a novice today, I fancy now that I see a thread, even in this early work, of the direction thematically that the magazine was heading. For instance the first 3 poems revolved around sound (two about wind chimes, one about an ocarina), followed by two alluding to symphonies, the later symphony poem also introducing a flower motif that culminates in the last two poems of the issue, with two poems, one about breathing, the other mentioning Yogananda, sandwiched in between.

Now, through older eyes, the issue doesn't quite lift off, the whole not equal to the sum of its parts. Each poem, however, does its part and I enjoy the work, some of which is in styles that I don't necessarily gravitate toward any more. So this is a novice cutting his teeth, possibly at the expense of the poets. Let me finish this thought, however, with the poem that opened the issue, which says much more eloquently what I'm struggling with here:

last will and testament:

make a wind chime
from my bones,

hang it
where the poets speak.

let me be a part
of the conversation,

life.

charlie mehrhoff

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

to enlightened eyes
Buddha's bones?
dewdrops in the grass

Issa
David Lanoue

best,
Don

Eric Burke and Pat Nelson: Wednesday Haiku #41

Wednesday Haiku, #40 

Our children:
we cannot escape
political poems


        Eric Burke

Photo by smallwon

snow mound
the sparrow widens its stance
against the wind

                 Pat Nelson

Photo by Jimmy Palma Gil

introducing their children
to society...
strutting sparrows

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,

Don

PS Get 2 free issues. Get 2 more free issues

Lillie poem archive

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

Go to the LitRock web site for a list of all 124 songs

Subscribe to Lilliput Review