How to handle punctuation? Janet, I am afraid you'll be sorry you asked! Both these haiku beg for some punctuation at the end of the second line. But before we get to punctuation, both present an opportunity to address a more crucial issue for haiku.
In general, one must avoid having the third line as a "title" or "conclusion" derived from the first image. If it is merely a title, then it is usually a failed haiku. Sometimes,however, and I think this point pertains to these two haiku, what is really the context of the poem (which should be presented first) has been displaced to the third line for dramatic effect. IMHO, both poems would benefit from stitching the first and third lines, which considerably increases the resonance of each poem. This would give us:
cold parting
ibises trace a Vee
across pale skies
midday torpor
its pages still unread
a book falls open
The second is quite similar in mood to one of my own:
summer afternoon--
a pair of glasses resting
on an open book
Haiku generally "follow the order of perception." Putting the context in the third line is a common mistake for those beginning to explore haiku.
Punctuation depends on the relationship one would like to establish between the images of the poem. I have an idea of what I think would work best in your poem, but perhaps it is best to present some general thoughts (more than you ever wanted to consider!) on punctuation in haiku and let you decide for yourself. Today's lecture (sorry!): "Punctuation in haiku."
Lee
Japanese haiku usually contain a “cutting word,” a grammatical particle that causes the text to be divided into two parts, or adds emphasis to one part. Cutting words may have evolved in part because classical Japanese lacks punctuation; in English-language haiku, we often use punctuation where Japanese would use the cutting technique.
Punctuation can be a helpful aid to the reader, especially if assistance is needed to link two images or to clarify the syntactical relationship between words of the poem. The seminal work on punctuation in English-language haiku is a series of three short essays by Adrian Clarkson that appeared in the magazine Cicada in 1977, and much of the classification of the straightforward use of punctuation below is based on Clarkson’s analysis.
The em-dash (—)is the most commonly encountered mark in haiku. It is used in two ways. One is to show a sharp break in focus or an unexpected contrast. Here, the em-dash separates two images, yet invites comparison of the parts:
spring moon—
a cricket sits quietly
atop its cabbage Ross Figgins
Venus at dusk—
a thin slice of lemon
in my water glass Emiko Miyashita
In some cases, by extension, what precedes the dash is the setting or context of the haiku and what comes after is some action that takes place there—Kawamoto’s base and superposed part. The dash invites movement back and forth between the images, as in Jeanne Emrich’s poem:
first snow—
the Hawaiian visitor
sticks out her tongue
A pair of dashes can be used to create a parenthetical pause or a sense of space—and separation—as in the following:
the water strider
—from darkness to darkness—
briefly mars the moon Robert Spiess
The colon throws the action forward, directing the reader’s attention to what follows. It is often used when the second part of the poem points out a characteristic or attribute of the first, as in this haiku by Garry Gay:
Old retriever:
he opens one eye
at the tossed stick
Sometimes the characteristic is something unexpected:
a horse-drawn plow:
sunflowers stand
in the traces Gene Doty
In other cases, the colon directs attention outward, from a specific perception to a general condition of which we have been unaware.
a grasshopper
jumps into it:
summer dusk Michael McClintock
or
a blossom falling
after the wind has ceased:
evening calm H.F. Noyes
The semicolon balances two images, providing separation without emphasis:
Winter moon;
a beaver lodge in the marsh,
mounded with snow Robert Spiess
In order to help convey the haiku ideal of incompleteness most contemporary poets do not terminate their haiku with full stops, and they use periods otherwise only when the sense of form demands it. For example, periods may occasionally be used within a haiku to create an effect of closure, even repeatedly, as in my haiku:
his side of it.
her side of it.
winter silence
The deliberate omission of a period at the end is to suggest that the silence goes on. In any event, a period should usually not be used arbitrarily at the end of a haiku because it end-stops it in a way that works against the ideal of reverberation.
The ellipsis has several functions. It usually indicates that something is missing or has been omitted. In an imaginative extension of this function it is used in haiku, as Elizabeth Searle Lamb has done, to indicate the passage of time:
and after …
drifting toward sleep
spring peepers
Coming at the end of a haiku, the ellipsis can indicate a lingering thought or feeling or a moment of emotion as in Patricia J. Machmiller‘s poem:
young leaves: this feeling
of wanting to know what now
I can never know …
Commas, question marks, and exclamation marks are also used occasionally in haiku, usually functioning as they would in standard text. Most of the comma’s work in haiku is done with line breaks, so it is seldom seen.
In addition to indicating a simple interrogative, the question mark can be used in haiku to indicate a surprise of perception, suggesting a meditative state:
Steadily it snows …
Under the shadowy pines—
where are the shadows? O. Southard
Sometimes it is used to pose a question that is then answered in the haiku way:
where’s summer gone?
a scarecrow points
to an empty field Anna Holley
or to ask a rhetorical question:
hard rain
what cloud
could have held it? John Stevenson
A caution here: while a rhetorical question such as this might seem to be a natural way to expand the feeling of a haiku by making it more open ended, it is often simply a disguised form of commentary and must be used sparingly to avoid limiting the potential of the haiku.
The exclamation mark is used to indicate surprise or amazement, but it can easily become a crutch. The first translators of Japanese haiku, including Blyth, liberally sprinkled their renditions with exclamation points, and early English-language haiku poets also were fond of them. Writers today, however, favor a more reticent approach. They believe the element of surprise belongs in the words of poem and needs no billboarding. This haiku by Michael McClintock shows how the exclamation mark can be used effectively:
a poppy
a field of poppies!
the hills blowing with poppies!
To sum up, the trend in the modern haiku movement is to use only standard capitalization and as little punctuation as possible. In the final analysis, it is really not important what method a poet uses as long as these formatting devices are used to clarify the text and do not draw attention to themselves at the expense of the haiku essence.
(from Haiku: A Poet's Guide)
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