[Lee Gurga]

I see nyctom has broken the seventeen syllable barrier. This gives me a chance to comment on what is all to familiar a problem with 17 syllable haiku in English: saying too much. In reference to your:

moonset, and morning
—late again—rushes to catch
the last train, workbound

I find it an interesting haiku really excellent till we get to the last half of the third line. (Though admittedly theres seems to be some problem with the subject of "rushes.) Then the poem is spoiled slightly, from the perspective of haiku aesthetics, by saying too much with "workbound," which is implied clearly enough with the phrase "late enough." Much better as a haiku, in the opinion of this humble editor, as:

moonset, and morning
—late again—rushes to catch
the last train

BTW, your "orion" reminds me of a well-known, prize-winning minimalist haiku (I believe it is by Jerry Kilbride):

mime
lifing
fog

Lee

[Hunter's Beau]

My experience with haiku/tanka/senryu is very limited indeed, having only tried my hand at one or two. From my experience at other boards, the haiku seems to be one of those forms that people either love or hate - doesn't seem to be any middle ground.

Anyway, I'll throw my only two attempts into the pot - I really have no idea if these work or not since any previous comments have been somewhat ambiguous - I suspect though, that with the human element in them, they tend more to senryu rather than haiku? Dunno.

Cricket chirps echo
in green fields of memory;
childhood starts anew.

Peaks, valleys, a bed
of opened flower petals;
I leave the lights on.

Many thanks to Lee for his time and thanks also for this great thread - I too, have learned much from it.

Regards,

HB

[Lee Gurga]

Thanks for the kind words, Curtis. I have been trying to share some of what makes haiku special to me without sounding too autocratic. I hope some of my love of haiku will rub off on some of you folks.

Lee

[Lee Gurga]

P.S. If you have questions or comments, either thread will do.

Lee

[Lee Gurga]

In reply to HB's question (and thanks much for the kind words), I think they are both clearly haiku. It is a common misunderstanding that haiku are "about" nature and senryu are "about" people. In fact, neither can avoid being about the human race. The difference is in the imagery and treatment. The most important are some aesthetic principles that have pervaded haiku for several centuries. (More on these below.) Senryu is dominated by wit, wordplay, irony, and a certain cruel glee in the shortcomings of others.

The lazy way for me to comment on haiku asethetics is to quote a bit on it from my book, Haiku: A Poet's Guide. (Not here to sell books--all the money goes to Modern Haiku anyway.) The poems quoted will show what haiku at its bes is not as well as what it is. Lee

Here goes (from the section "From Bashô to Barthes"):

Is there some preferred aesthetic for haiku, or is haiku pliable enough to serve as a vehicle for any cultural value system?

Before the time of Bashô, haiku was a kind of light verse that depended in large part on fancy, wit, and wordplay for its effect. The most famous poem of that era is surely Moritake’s:

a fallen blossom
returning to the branch?
Oh, a butterfly!

While this poem is not without merit, its effect is based upon a conceit rather than on insight. Bashô’s great revelation was to show that poetry of great depth and resonance could be realized within the brief form of haiku. Contrast the previous verse with this one by Bashô:

cooling cooling
feet treading the wall—
a midday nap trans. William J. Higginson

This is a poem of pure sensation, in which we can feel the heat of summer and the poet’s real joy in the simple pleasures of life. While some might find Moritake’s hokku more “poetic” than Bashô’s, his is a poem of the head, while Bashô’s is of the heart—and feet! Moritake’s cleverness seems rather forced in comparison.

By the seventeenth century a number of aesthetic principles had infused literature in Japan, and the application of these principles to haiku were a significant part of the “Bashô revolution” that continue to make haiku a viable literary form today. Among them are concepts associated with Zen arts, such as wabi, the aesthetic appreciation of loneliness, poverty, and simplicity, and sabi, the appreciation of the subdued elegance and loneliness of old, worn things.

Another important principle associated with classical Japanese haiku is hosomi (“slenderness”). Slenderness allows the poet to paint the scene, then disappear. Shibumi (“astringency”) gives haiku its tang—the flavor of persimmons rather than peaches. Haruo Shirane (Traces of Dreams, Stanford, 1998) names other aesthetic principles that lay at the heart of Bashô’s poetics: kôgo kizoku (“awakening to the high, returning to the low”), fûga no makoto (“poetic truth”), zôka zuijun (“following the creative”), butsuga ichinyo (“object and self as one”), fueki ryûkô (“the unchanging and changing”), and karumi (“lightness”). Haiku has also borrowed the aesthetic principles of aware (pronounced ah-wa-ray, a feeling of deep compassion or pathos) and yugen (graceful beauty suffused with aesthetic principles of mono no aware (“deep sensitivity to things”) and yugen (“ineffable mystery’) from classical Japanese poetry

Wabi, sabi, hosomi, and karumi are probably the principles that have had the most impact on making haiku what it is today. The wabi ideal of loneliness and poverty and of standing apart from the crowd, and the sabi appreciation for what is undervalued and time-worn have made it possible for haiku to be seen by some as a way of life or spiritual quest, the “way of haiku.” It is partly as a result of the application of these that haiku has come to be a “poetry of the overlooked.” Hosomi and karumi have helped mold haiku into a genre of poetry that is capable of great depth, but is at the same time capable of the restraint necessary to achieve this without overwhelming the reader. As Shirane points out, hosomi refers to a slenderness of mind as well as a slenderness of expression. It helps the poet approach an object with a delicacy that permits an egoless interpenetration with the object, allowing one to perceive its essence. Pure perception allied with restrained expression are the ideals upon which haiku is founded.
Since Bashô’s time, haiku has had its ups and downs. Perhaps the lowest point came in the mid-nineteenth century, when Bashô was worshiped as a god—literally—and haiku imitated the form but not the spirit of his work.

Shiki helped to revive haiku by criticizing Bashô in print—something that shocked the poetic establishment of the time. Shiki’s critical work, combined with the introduction of Western aesthetic theories and the Western concept of individualism, has considerably expanded the range of modern Japanese haiku. It has at the same time, unfortunately, led contemporary Japanese haiku away from the aesthetic depths that Bashô achieved. Today once again, wit is sometimes prized over insight, with haiku in danger of being supplanted by pseudohaiku or zappai. Contemporary Japanese haiku master Akito Arima has lamented that we now live “in the age of zappai.” In America we have the same dilemma: zappai is what is called “haiku” in most mass-market publications, from USA Today’s “daily haiku”—seventeen syllable witticisms—to The New Yorker’s “honku”—seventeen-syllable poems about honking car horns.
From traffic noise to Zen—this is the space filled by haiku today. R.H. Blyth as much as says that Zen is haiku and haiku is Zen. He understood that haiku at its best is more than a form and demands a unique artistic discipline to be understood and practiced. Whatever its status as literature, haiku requires a special state of mind, not necessarily Zen satori, but a mindset that impels poets to go outside of themselves to achieve an understanding of the “suchness” or essence of things.

[nyctom]

Dear Lee:

Thank you. Each of the haiku I posted, with the exception of the first, play with the conventions of haiku (too long, excessively minimal, no specific seasonal word, etc.). I was curious to see how far one could go towards stretching or bending the conventions before they can no longer be considered haiku--or, if you prefer, haiku-like.

The moonset piece is actually the ending of a free-verse poem I wrote years ago. But thank you for the suggestion on turning it into a haiku--I have no problem making the necessary cuts/edits in order to do so.

What I would be interested in is a discussion of form. In your suggestion for the moonset poem, you have truncated the last line (in terms of the 5-7-5 syllable pattern that is drilled into our American minds as schoolchildren). How much variation in that is 'allowable'? For instance, the leaves originally went:


rain-weight:
a leaf uncups
drops


Secondly, how much haiku do you see that doesn't specifically refer to nature or seasons which you find successful? Or would this all be considered heretical? I would be curious to know.

Thank you again.

nyctom

[This message has been edited by nyctom (edited May 03, 2004).]

[Janet Kenny]

I tried a couple of" two-three-two"stress poems. I'm not sure how to handle punctuation.
Janet


Across pale skies
ibises trace a Vee
cold parting


A book falls open
its pages still unread
midday torpor


[This message has been edited by Janet Kenny (edited May 03, 2004).]

[Lee Gurga]

Tom--

How far is it possible to go? Minimilist haiku--whether successful or not is up to the reader, of course--has gone as far as the single word. About 25 years ago, the word "tundra" in the middle of an otherwise empty page was presented as a haiku. (By Cor van den Heuvel, also of NYC, by the way.) Other single word "haiku" have been done since then, as you might expect. The limit is just where you suspect it might be: a blank page.

As far as more "reasonable"conventions are concerned, even the Japanese masters produced a significant number of hyper- or hypo-syllabic poems, so this practice of tinkering with the form goes back hundreds of years. Only people writing in English have somehow gotten the idea that 17 syllables is sacrosanct!

From my point of view, as an editor and as someone who has made a study of haiku, seeing a poem such as:

rain-weight:
a leaf uncups
drops

doesn't bother me in the least. Brevity, not a set number of syllables, is the essence of haiku form. You might also want to take a look at my postings on the "haiku form?" thread, as some also pertain to this issue.

My pleasure--thanks for asking.

Lee

[Robt_Ward]

Sun, rain
sun, light, cloud —
night freeze

[Lee Gurga]

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)