酷我-北美枫

[ericcoliu]

Reading and Writing: Life on the Page




Debunking the “Haiku” Myth


jumping in
and washing off an old poem –
a frog

-- Written by Yosa Buson, one of haiku’s Great Three, who responded to Basho’s frog hokku decades later after his death.


Generally speaking, I think it is fair to claim that haiku, a modern term for the 20th century Japanese autonomous, 17-syllable hokku, is not only a principal verse form practiced in Japan, but also a well-established one in North America, one which has been being practiced in public schools to teach children to write poetry, or at least, to know how to count syllables. Therefore, it has become common knowledge that haiku is a “traditional Japanese verse form” made up three lines with five, seven, and five syllables. Unfortunately, this common knowledge is not accurate.

Hokku v.s. Haiku

To clarify these misused terms and misconceived ideas about haiku and hokku, first of all, we need go back in time to classical Japanese poetry. Renga, a linked-verse form with multiple, alternating stanzas and one of the predominant verse forms in the medieval period (1186-1600), were written in a kind of call-and-respond poetic dialogue among a dozen poets who would get together to compose elegant verses. Its opening verse, called hokku, was written by the most distinguished guest in a form of 17 sound-symbols (onji) arranged in a 5-7-5 pattern, and then was followed by a two-syllabic-unit 7-7 verse composed by another quest in response. The composition of a renga would continue as poets took turns to write linking verses, until there was a sequence of usually one hundred verses.

Renga flourished in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and was written to strict rules. More than a hundred year later, a variant form developed out of renga, called haikai no renga (hereafter haikai for short), became popular in the 17 century, during which one of the most important Japanese poets, Matsuo Basho (1644-94), was born. Basho merged haikai with a renewed poetic depth found in classical Japanese and Chinese poetries and the spiritual wisdom of Buddhism and Taoism, elevating haikai to the level of high art. With his continued effort to refine the poetic essence of haikai, hokku gradually took on increasing importance to haikai poets. In his day, hokku was still part of haikai, and never assumed an independent status.

Two centuries after Basho’s death, Japan was confronted by its decades-long struggle with how to keep a balanced relationship between retaining its cultural pasts and modernizing, mainly meaning Westernizing, its shaky present. A great and Western-minded poet Masao Shiki (1867-1902) launched a scathing attack on Basho in 'Chat on Basho,' claiming that “hokku is literature. Renga and haikai are not.” He made a great effort to establish hokku as a new form that stands by itself, and renamed it to haiku. When the West first got to know Basho and his poetry, the term haiku was anachronistically applied to his poetry. Moreover, Modern English Haiku, which had been deeply shaped by modern Japanese haiku poets, the Imagist movement, the 1960s Eastern Buddhist-laden counter-cultural movements, and, more importantly, the North American haiku movement, has been developing a different approach to Basho’s poetry and bearing little resemblance to the poetic essence (honi) of his haikai while has claimed its literary status as the loyal descent of Basho’s “haiku.”

A 17-syllable Verse Form?

Second, concerning syllable count, the notion that haiku has a structure of five, seven, and five syllables has been popularized by public school education and widely accepted by early haiku translators and poets. It is particularly common in public schools and poetry forums to write haiku in this form. But the English syllable is different from the Japanese equivalent. It is now known that about 12 -- not 17 – syllables in English are equivalent in length to the 17 onji.

As Cor Van Den Heuvel emphasizes in his The Haiku Anthology, the form of haiku that has continued most in favour by established poets is the otherwise free-form three liner, often written with the second line slightly longer than the first and third. The 17-English-syllables haiku “is now mostly written by schoolchildren as an exercise to learn how to count syllables, and by beginners who know little about the true essence of haiku.”

Due to its incisive brevity of haiku, writing a less-than-17-syllable English haiku is an important, but not divine, rule. If you read the bilingual translation of a haiku, you’ll find that the number of Japanese words is far less than that of English ones. The brevity of haiku is in fact possible because each poem is implicitly part of a massive, communally shared poem. This conception of haiku has never been developed in the Modern English Haiku movement because of its individualistic approach and disdain for the use of rhetoric devices, such as allusion, which is the major characteristic of Japanese haiku.

In his opening paragraph of ‘A Note on the Selection and Layout of the Poems’ to The Haiku Anthology, Cor van den Heuvel stresses that “If a haiku is a good one, it doesn’t matter if the subject has been used before. The writing of variations on certain subjects in haiku, sometimes using the same or similar phrases (or even changing a few words of a previous haiku), is one of the most interesting challenge the genre offers a poet and can result in refreshingly different ways of “seeing anew” for the reader. This is an aspect of traditional Japanese haiku which is hard for many Westerns, with their ideas of uniqueness and Romantic individualism, to accept. But some of the most original voices in haiku do not hesitate to dare seeming derivative if they see a way of reworking an “old” image.”

The Seasonal Word

Third, in Japanese haiku, the seasonal word is mandatory and its meaning is not literally descriptive, but based on “cultural associations which have been developed, refined and carefully transmitted for over a thousand years and which are preserved, transformed and passed on from generation to generation through seasonal handbooks, which remain in wide use today,” as Haruo Shirane stresses in the section entitled ‘Nature and Seasonal Words’ of his myth-debunking essay, entitled “Beyond the Haiku Moment: Basho, Buson and Modern Haiku Myths.” However, in English haiku, the seasonal word is not mandatory, and The Haiku Society of America definition of haiku does not mention the seasonal word. As Haruo Shirane explains in the above-mentioned essay, “the reason for this is that the connotations of seasonal words differ greatly from region to region in North America, not to mention other parts of the world, and generally are not tied to specific literary or cultural associations that would immediately be recognized by the reader.”

Kireji and Punctuation

Finally, though there is no punctuation in traditional Japanese hokku, its place is taken by kireji, one of two formal requirements of hokku which literally means the cutting word, such as ya, kana, keri, and the like, which have no translatable meaning. Kireji “cuts” the 17 syllable in two, often used by experienced poets as a literary device to form two contrasting parts of the poem to evoke the feelings in the reader.

Due to the use of kireji, Japanese hokku are printed in one line, and the Japanese reader is aware of the rhythm in the hokku. For non-Japanese haiku poets, they have therefore tried to give the effect of these kireji by the use of punctuation marks (mainly “:”, “…”,“!” ,“--“, and “,”), interjection, spaces, and even the layout of a poem,

In my view, the use or non-use of punctuation is one of the most conscious choices a poet can make to meet his/her aesthetical requirements by the verse form he/she employs and to reveal his/her poetic sensibilities. Functionally speaking, kireji are “like” the Japanese equivalent of punctuation marks. Aesthetically speaking, for anyone who is interested in the “poetic essence” of the Basho’s school, one must know that kireji are used to aesthetically express the poetic sentiments in the 17-syllable hokku, one of the important techniques as Kyoriku, one of the foremost disciples of Basho, had fiercely argued in his work.

The two images of which a haiku is constructed resonate with each other to create a mood, atmosphere or impression, and the link between them is not specified and thus is left to the reader to connect the link. As former President of the Haiku Society of America Lee Gurga claims, “the two-image haiku are the finest ones and the art of cutting is the primary technique of haiku."
_________________
Time is nothing but a disquiet of the soul

[[ericcoliu]]

Reading and Writing: Life on the Page




Debunking the “Haiku” Myth


jumping in
and washing off an old poem –
a frog

-- Written by Yosa Buson, one of haiku’s Great Three, who responded to Basho’s frog hokku decades later after his death.


Generally speaking, I think it is fair to claim that haiku, a modern term for the 20th century Japanese autonomous, 17-syllable hokku, is not only a principal verse form practiced in Japan, but also a well-established one in North America, one which has been being practiced in public schools to teach children to write poetry, or at least, to know how to count syllables. Therefore, it has become common knowledge that haiku is a “traditional Japanese verse form” made up three lines with five, seven, and five syllables. Unfortunately, this common knowledge is not accurate.

Hokku v.s. Haiku

To clarify these misused terms and misconceived ideas about haiku and hokku, first of all, we need go back in time to classical Japanese poetry. Renga, a linked-verse form with multiple, alternating stanzas and one of the predominant verse forms in the medieval period (1186-1600), were written in a kind of call-and-respond poetic dialogue among a dozen poets who would get together to compose elegant verses. Its opening verse, called hokku, was written by the most distinguished guest in a form of 17 sound-symbols (onji) arranged in a 5-7-5 pattern, and then was followed by a two-syllabic-unit 7-7 verse composed by another quest in response. The composition of a renga would continue as poets took turns to write linking verses, until there was a sequence of usually one hundred verses.

Renga flourished in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and was written to strict rules. More than a hundred year later, a variant form developed out of renga, called haikai no renga (hereafter haikai for short), became popular in the 17 century, during which one of the most important Japanese poets, Matsuo Basho (1644-94), was born. Basho merged haikai with a renewed poetic depth found in classical Japanese and Chinese poetries and the spiritual wisdom of Buddhism and Taoism, elevating haikai to the level of high art. With his continued effort to refine the poetic essence of haikai, hokku gradually took on increasing importance to haikai poets. In his day, hokku was still part of haikai, and never assumed an independent status.

Two centuries after Basho’s death, Japan was confronted by its decades-long struggle with how to keep a balanced relationship between retaining its cultural pasts and modernizing, mainly meaning Westernizing, its shaky present. A great and Western-minded poet Masao Shiki (1867-1902) launched a scathing attack on Basho in 'Chat on Basho,' claiming that “hokku is literature. Renga and haikai are not.” He made a great effort to establish hokku as a new form that stands by itself, and renamed it to haiku. When the West first got to know Basho and his poetry, the term haiku was anachronistically applied to his poetry. Moreover, Modern English Haiku, which had been deeply shaped by modern Japanese haiku poets, the Imagist movement, the 1960s Eastern Buddhist-laden counter-cultural movements, and, more importantly, the North American haiku movement, has been developing a different approach to Basho’s poetry and bearing little resemblance to the poetic essence (honi) of his haikai while has claimed its literary status as the loyal descent of Basho’s “haiku.”

A 17-syllable Verse Form?

Second, concerning syllable count, the notion that haiku has a structure of five, seven, and five syllables has been popularized by public school education and widely accepted by early haiku translators and poets. It is particularly common in public schools and poetry forums to write haiku in this form. But the English syllable is different from the Japanese equivalent. It is now known that about 12 -- not 17 – syllables in English are equivalent in length to the 17 onji.

As Cor Van Den Heuvel emphasizes in his The Haiku Anthology, the form of haiku that has continued most in favour by established poets is the otherwise free-form three liner, often written with the second line slightly longer than the first and third. The 17-English-syllables haiku “is now mostly written by schoolchildren as an exercise to learn how to count syllables, and by beginners who know little about the true essence of haiku.”

Due to its incisive brevity of haiku, writing a less-than-17-syllable English haiku is an important, but not divine, rule. If you read the bilingual translation of a haiku, you’ll find that the number of Japanese words is far less than that of English ones. The brevity of haiku is in fact possible because each poem is implicitly part of a massive, communally shared poem. This conception of haiku has never been developed in the Modern English Haiku movement because of its individualistic approach and disdain for the use of rhetoric devices, such as allusion, which is the major characteristic of Japanese haiku.

In his opening paragraph of ‘A Note on the Selection and Layout of the Poems’ to The Haiku Anthology, Cor van den Heuvel stresses that “If a haiku is a good one, it doesn’t matter if the subject has been used before. The writing of variations on certain subjects in haiku, sometimes using the same or similar phrases (or even changing a few words of a previous haiku), is one of the most interesting challenge the genre offers a poet and can result in refreshingly different ways of “seeing anew” for the reader. This is an aspect of traditional Japanese haiku which is hard for many Westerns, with their ideas of uniqueness and Romantic individualism, to accept. But some of the most original voices in haiku do not hesitate to dare seeming derivative if they see a way of reworking an “old” image.”

The Seasonal Word

Third, in Japanese haiku, the seasonal word is mandatory and its meaning is not literally descriptive, but based on “cultural associations which have been developed, refined and carefully transmitted for over a thousand years and which are preserved, transformed and passed on from generation to generation through seasonal handbooks, which remain in wide use today,” as Haruo Shirane stresses in the section entitled ‘Nature and Seasonal Words’ of his myth-debunking essay, entitled “Beyond the Haiku Moment: Basho, Buson and Modern Haiku Myths.” However, in English haiku, the seasonal word is not mandatory, and The Haiku Society of America definition of haiku does not mention the seasonal word. As Haruo Shirane explains in the above-mentioned essay, “the reason for this is that the connotations of seasonal words differ greatly from region to region in North America, not to mention other parts of the world, and generally are not tied to specific literary or cultural associations that would immediately be recognized by the reader.”

Kireji and Punctuation

Finally, though there is no punctuation in traditional Japanese hokku, its place is taken by kireji, one of two formal requirements of hokku which literally means the cutting word, such as ya, kana, keri, and the like, which have no translatable meaning. Kireji “cuts” the 17 syllable in two, often used by experienced poets as a literary device to form two contrasting parts of the poem to evoke the feelings in the reader.

Due to the use of kireji, Japanese hokku are printed in one line, and the Japanese reader is aware of the rhythm in the hokku. For non-Japanese haiku poets, they have therefore tried to give the effect of these kireji by the use of punctuation marks (mainly “:”, “…”,“!” ,“--“, and “,”), interjection, spaces, and even the layout of a poem,

In my view, the use or non-use of punctuation is one of the most conscious choices a poet can make to meet his/her aesthetical requirements by the verse form he/she employs and to reveal his/her poetic sensibilities. Functionally speaking, kireji are “like” the Japanese equivalent of punctuation marks. Aesthetically speaking, for anyone who is interested in the “poetic essence” of the Basho’s school, one must know that kireji are used to aesthetically express the poetic sentiments in the 17-syllable hokku, one of the important techniques as Kyoriku, one of the foremost disciples of Basho, had fiercely argued in his work.

The two images of which a haiku is constructed resonate with each other to create a mood, atmosphere or impression, and the link between them is not specified and thus is left to the reader to connect the link. As former President of the Haiku Society of America Lee Gurga claims, “the two-image haiku are the finest ones and the art of cutting is the primary technique of haiku."
_________________
Time is nothing but a disquiet of the soul

[robarts]

[[robarts]]

[Champagne]

[[Champagne]]

[ericcoliu]

[[ericcoliu]]

[川生]

[[川生]]

[ericcoliu]

[[ericcoliu]]

[christine]

[[christine]]

[ericcoliu]

[[ericcoliu]]

[ericcoliu]

Further to my previous reply:

The two images of which a haiku is constructed resonate with each other to create a mood, atmosphere or impression, and the link between them is not specified and thus is left to the reader to connect the link. As former President of the Haiku Society of America Lee Gurga claims, “the two-image haiku are the finest ones and the art of cutting is the primary technique of haiku."

By the way, I’ve revised my piece significantly.
_________________
Time is nothing but a disquiet of the soul

[[ericcoliu]]

Further to my previous reply:

The two images of which a haiku is constructed resonate with each other to create a mood, atmosphere or impression, and the link between them is not specified and thus is left to the reader to connect the link. As former President of the Haiku Society of America Lee Gurga claims, “the two-image haiku are the finest ones and the art of cutting is the primary technique of haiku."

By the way, I’ve revised my piece significantly.
_________________
Time is nothing but a disquiet of the soul

[ericcoliu]

I've expanded my essay.
_________________
Time is nothing but a disquiet of the soul

[[ericcoliu]]

I've expanded my essay.
_________________
Time is nothing but a disquiet of the soul