[Mike Todd]

Lee—

Haiku strike me as being easy to write but damnably hard to write well. I wonder why this is. I am sure it is something to do with the general difficulty of writing small poems: the smaller the harder. But there is something else to haiku. Perhaps what I am asking in a round about way is, what makes haiku haiku? Certainly the form is only a beginning.

Anyhow, here is one I wrote for the class. (I'm not the most prolific.)

coffin descending
through a hole in the hoar grass—
how bright the rowan berries!

[Mary Meriam]

Thanks, Lee, I like your haiku very much! You're teaching me how to read haiku - I've enjoyed all your lucid, helpful essays and notes that Steve C. posted. Here's a revision of one of mine:

live turtle
on the highway’s center strip
fucked

[Cally Conan-Davies]

Hello Lee! Thank you for being here. I bring three absolute beginner haiku and many questions. First question stems from the inherent weakness in my attempts: are there any specific techniques for practising and effecting successful transference between images?

dry leaves
skitter the concrete pond
skateboarders swoop


lap-swimming breaststroke
arms part pulling shadow-hearts
along tiled pool floor


orange nasturtiums
nudging through the paling fence ...
another way home

Cally




[This message has been edited by Cally Conan-Davies (edited October 15, 2008).]

[Roy Hamilton]

Mary, I like:

live turtle
on highway sixty nine
fucked

(I was watching the Ramones last night.)



[This message has been edited by Roy Hamilton (edited October 15, 2008).]

[Lee Gurga]

Originally posted by Roy Hamilton:
Hi Lee and welcome, I was hoping you'd give me some guidance on these:

Thank you for the welcome, Roy. Let us see if I can make some meaningful comments . . .

Lost—
The sun will rise
West wind joy

Most effective haiku are made up of two parts that interact imaginatively. It is more difficult to get the same kind of interaction with three parts--a three part haiku often feels disjointed and is harder for the reader to "put together."

Old man content
His wife prepares his meal
Delicate salmon

There is a little story here. The question is: why are we interested in the story? For me as a reader, it is not apparent why salmon brings content as opposed, say, shrimp or pizza. This poem, like most poems we read, "completes the circuit" for the reader. In my experience, the best haiku leave a gap and let the poem spark for the reader.

Autumn wind
Leans toward the fire
Spring leans back

This is a kind of fanciful haiku that can be fun to write, but is often more interesting for the poet than the reader.

November rain—
Harbinger of the eternal
Runny nose

I think this one works the best of this group.


Hippopotamus
Dreams of floating in the haze
Of the summer sun

Curiously, there is a Japanese haiku poet that has made a career of hippopotamus haiku. (I can't recall his name, but if anyone is interested, I can get it.)

[Chris Childers]

Hi Lee,

Do you know this one, by Richard Wilbur? I was wondering what you make of it as haiku.

Sleepless at Crown Point

All night, this headland
Lunges into the rumpling
Capework of the wind.

[Roy Hamilton]

Hi Lee,

Thank you so much for reading these. I hope this can be much more than just making you work! lol

Old man content
His wife prepares his meal
Delicate salmon

"There is a little story here. The question is: why are we interested in the story? For me as a reader, it is not apparent why salmon brings content as opposed, say, shrimp or pizza. This poem, like most poems we read, "completes the circuit" for the reader. In my experience, the best haiku leave a gap and let the poem spark for the reader."

I struggled with this more than any. The salmon is meant to express the inevitability of growing old together happily. Drawn up the river to their destiny. It was:

Old man sits content
As his wife prepares a meal
Salmon are running

Perhaps I'm demanding too much or not conveying my intent clearly enough.

Best, Roy

"Curiously, there is a Japanese haiku poet that has made a career of hippopotamus haiku. (I can't recall his name, but if anyone is interested, I can get it.)"

This, coupled with my inexplicable interest in Samurai swords convinces me that I must have become partly Japanese, at some point.



[This message has been edited by Roy Hamilton (edited October 15, 2008).]

[Stephen Collington]

Originally posted by Lee Gurga:
Curiously, there is a Japanese haiku poet that has made a career of hippopotamus haiku. (I can't recall his name, but if anyone is interested, I can get it.)

Hi Lee,

Thanks for joining us! I hope you're having fun.

Anyway, are you thinking of Tsubouchi Toshinori perhaps? (Pronunciation note for everyone, Ts, like the end of "its," Tsoo-boh-oo-chee, four syllables; last name first in Japanese.) Natsuishi Ban'ya has a translation of one of his more famous pieces in an online essay:

sakura chiru / anata mo kaba ni / narinasai

Cherry blossoms are falling--
you also must become
a hippopotamus

Actually, I'm not sure about Ban'ya's "must become" here; the Japanese "narinasai" is a medium-level polite way of saying "please become" (or "please turn into"). It's the sort of expression a Japanese woman might use to her husband--especially with "anata" for "you." (The Japanese use different words for "you" depending on whom they're addressing.) So I'd almost prefer something like

cherry blossoms falling --
honey, you too, hurry up
and become a hippo

But that may be coming on too strong, LOL!

Anyway, Ban'ya's essay is actually rather interesting, especially his comments on season words as "keywords of animism." So folks, if you've got a moment, you might want to check it out too, HERE .

Great fun!

Steve C.

*

Editing back: bad link!



[This message has been edited by Stephen Collington (edited October 15, 2008).]

[Lee Gurga]

Originally posted by Mike Todd:
[b]Lee—

Haiku strike me as being easy to write but damnably hard to write well. I wonder why this is. I am sure it is something to do with the general difficulty of writing small poems: the smaller the harder. But there is something else to haiku. Perhaps what I am asking in a round about way is, what makes haiku haiku? Certainly the form is only a beginning.

Many people think haiku should be easy because it is short, but, as you point out, the brevity is one of its major challenges. The next issue is the form (external and internal) and the aesthetic issues that must be faces. After all, one can write many, many kinds of short poems. What makes one a haiku and one not? Not an easy question, and one that I have spent more than half a lifetime trying to answer for myself. Some of the answers can be found in resources that Stephen kindly posted for us. One possible position is that anything in 17 syllables is a haiku. But this doesn't leave much of an adventure for a poet, does it? After all, if there is nothing more, a random word generator is more useful than a poet. The seasonal image is important, but not always necessary if you have some other element to add depth or interest to the poem. One might say that haiku offers a special approach to experiencing life and sharing that experience, but that is too general to be helpful advice for writing. So we fall back on some general descriptive rather than prescriptive, definition, which normally includes at least several of the following, but not always all at once (and sometimes others):
1. a short poem, normally between 10 and 17 syllables, but in practice a much wider range, between 1 and perhaps 20, depending on the content of the poem and the length of the syllables, e.g., "be" vs "through."
2. A seasonal or nature image which is connected to the heart of the poet's experience as opposed to something tacked on.
3. literal images rather than overtly figurative language.
4. an ideational or syntactic incompleteness that permits the reader to participate as co-creator of the experience
5. multiple images that permit some aesthetic or emotional tension for the reader to experience.


coffin descending
through a hole in the hoar grass—
how bright the rowan berries

Leonard Koren wrote, "The closer things get to non-existence the more evocative they become." So poems that contain images of death can be some of the most powerful. The rest is up to us--what can we add from our experience that gives the reader some new or moving perspective on that powerful transition? Probably the most important thing is the genuineness of our own experience and then communicating that experience to the reader.

[Lee Gurga]

Originally posted by Mary Meriam:
Thanks, Lee, I like your haiku very much! You're teaching me how to read haiku - I've enjoyed all your lucid, helpful essays and notes that Steve C. posted. Here's a revision of one of mine:

Thank you for your kind remarks--entirely undeserved, I am afraid.

live turtle
on the highway’s center strip
fucked

Now this is a little more direct, isn't it? Fucked, ideed! Much more interesting (and fun) to me as a reader than the original version.