Curtis,
Geez! Isn’t there a rule here about only one question per customer? I don’t mean by this to trivialize the importance of the issues you are raising, but if I have to respond to many more postings as deep as yours, I will have to quit my day job! As you will see, my answers get shorter as I run out of gas. Please forgive me for this. To respond . . .
First, let me agree with you in thinking that the many haiku (and the vast majority of poems presented as “haiku”) fail as poems. (But this is certainly not unique to haiku? This is certainly the era of the proliferation of the bad poem, eh?) There are many ways in which a poem can fail—perhaps we will get into some of them later. Please also recognize that there are ways in which the reader can fail the poem, too.
Yes, Kiyoko’s haiku is a superb one. One of the things that makes it superb is that the deeper one digs into it, the more one seems to find. I am also aware—as you now are—that Kiyoko recently died of the cancer for which she was being treated.
A technical point about the poem. In this poem, the second line acts as a “pivot” that connects the first and third lines in different ways. First we have “Chemotherapy
in a comfortable chair” and then we have “in a comfortable chair two hours of winter.” This is perhaps a legacy of haiku’s origin in linked verse in which two stanzas would work together to create meaning, then the second of these would combine with the following stanza to produce completely different associations.
As you suspect, the break between the two images can come at the end of the first or the second line—sometimes even in the middle of the second line. I consider it overly optimistic to believe that some connection can be found between any two images. Of course, this optimism is part of the basis of surreal haiku, though sometimes they seem to be deliberately constructed to confound any attempt to find meaning. And sometimes they probably are.
Not very adequate answer #1: Let me begin by saying that a serious answer to this question is way beyond me. I am just a haiku guy from a little farming community in central Illinois. That said, I believe there surely is some relationship between Imagist Symbolism, Surrealist Imagism, and even cinematic montage and haiku. If nothing else, these borrow—often consciously—the techniques of haiku or linked verse.
You may not be aware of this, but three images in three lines is normally considered a fault in haiku. The Japanese have some name for it which I can’t recall at present, but here we call it “shopping list” haiku. Almost always successful haiku have two, not three, images, as in Kiyoko’s haiku above. (Though, as we have seen, the two images “overlap” in her poem.)
Mole. Yes, one can arbitrarily construct haiku with any images one chooses, in whatever order one chooses, in order to make a point. But to my simple mind, the best haiku are not about making points, but sharing insights on the human condition. Or merely sharing the joy of existence with the reader. I don’t want to sound peevish, but If you find the feeling of satisfaction or achieved insight is too much the same from haiku to haiku, might I humbly suggest the range of haiku you have read may not be wide enough. Take Kiyoko’s above, and the following, each of which works for me quite well, and on a different part of the heart, if you will:
dark darker
too many stars
too far Gary Hotham
One breaker crashes . . .
as the next draws up, a lull—
and sandpiper cries. O. Southard
one carp
the color of a woman:
an evening of snow Ryan Underwood
after Christmas
a flock of sparrows
in the unsold trees Dee Evetts
valley sunrise
from the barn a small parade
of night-born lambs Melissa Dixon
second husband
painting the fence
the same green Carol Montgomery
Spring funeral
the widow’s family
dress for winter Ernest J. Berry
autumn equinox …
a small rake
beside the grave Michael Fessler
winter eve—
moonlight flooding the crater
of each acne scar Ken Hurm
spring rain
the bicycle thief
tracks mud. Mark Brooks
last slow dance
winter flies
couple on the bar LeRoy Gorman
small town Fourth
so much depends
on the fireflies Joann Klontz
balmy evening
the light of Caravaggio
on strangers’ faces Ebba Story
noonday heat:
at the exact center of myself
the aids patient weeping Robert Boldman
fog-bound road—
walking on the inside of
the inside world Caroline Gourlay
California poppies—
the faintest scent
of Woodstock Le Wild
As these haiku demonstrate, there is an art to reading haiku as well as to writing. And yes, haiku can be symbolic, but the best haiku are successful first at the literal level and add layers to that (as Kiyoko’s and many of these).
Answer #2: Yes, a back and forth associative process is often present in successful haiku. But this is something completely different from a third line that interprets a single image for the reader. A third line that is a PERCEPTION, as in Le Wild’s haiku, is worlds apart from a third line that is a CONCLUSION or CONCEIT.
You have probably already concluded—correctly—that I am not a big fan of “constructed” or “manufactured” haiku. I much prefer haiku like those quoted here, haiku that present an interesting, original, truthful perception.
Answer #3: Yes, of course what you point out is true as far as the similarities in “construction” between the sonnet and haiku. Other kinds of poems have this same “turn.” Tanka, to mention only one.
Sorry again not to have more to give in response to your fine posting.
Lee
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