Another Monoku and Some Kigo

not so close, small skunk, running in the road


If you'd like to check out English language haiku currently being published in Japan, here's a link to a site that publishes one a day: Mainichi Daily News.
Scroll down the page, and after Features is their Daily Haiku Selection. Their guidelines state that they take haiku of any style, but that it "should have a seasonal element."

Years ago, when we lived in Indonesia, I volunteered at a college library and the two main sources of materials for Gadjah Mada University Library were gifts from Japan and the U.S. I came across this publication there and sent a few haiku via very snail mail (ship). A few months later I received a folded copy of this paper with my haiku.

I'd forgotten about this publication until the tragic earthquake and tsunami this year in March. Afterwards, I began searching for "firsthand" news of Fukushima and came upon this newspaper again.

In Japanese, a seasonal word is called a kigo. An emphasis on the seasons has always been important to Japanese poetry. As far back as the mid-8th century, the earliest Japanese poetry anthology was published. This collection called the Manyoshu included several sections that were organized by season. Some kigo (they can be phrases too, such as cherry blossoms) seem obviously connected to a particular season, for example, pumpkin. But for Japanese haiku writers, the moon evokes autumn because much longer nights allow people to follow the moon's phases more closely.

Just tonight I discovered a new Japanese term that's related to haiku--saijiki. It's a "collection of season words (kigo), references, and inspirations for haiku poets and so much more." This definition precedes the Alaska Haiku Society Saijiki which was started and is updated by Billie Wilson. Another cool link is: World Kigo Database Choose a county you have visited or long to and then treat yourself to some specific words that mark their seasons.

Because I also spent a few years in Alaska, I couldn't resist their list of kigo. One seasonal phrase for an Alaskan spring that is included is "first skunk cabbage." Because the world if full of connections, I just spotted a few of these plants in the Olympics in Washington State. However in summer, they are missing their bright yellow spathes in the center of each plant. Another spring Alaskan kigo (though not on this list) should be fiddlehead ferns which grow abundantly in the mountains above Alaska's capitol city in early spring. Steamed and coated with butter, they were a local favorite and made a good excuse for trumping around in the rain on top of old snow.

To close with another monoku:

how curled the fiddlehead fern in the awakening forest

Very Old Cedars

trying to decipher
the hieroglyphics of its bark --
300-year-old cedar














The red cedars in the Hoh Rain Forest, part of Olympic National Park in northwest Washington, are magnificent. Hike in four miles on the Hoh River Trail and you'll come to a stand of them, some linked together, and stretching toward the sky. Quite the arboreal cathedral.

Hunger

no hunger
like the hunger of a seagull
at the crab shack


Spent the morning reading Sam Hamill's The Essential Bashō (Shambhala Press, 1999). One particular haiku stood out because of its utter simplicity. Here it is in Japanese first.

Matsushima ya
ah Matsushima ya
Matsushima ya

Notice all the repetition. Here's it in English:

Pine Islands, ah!
Oh, Pine Islands, ah!
Pine Islands, ah!

Bashō once said he spent years trying to "learn how to listen as things speak for themselves." Hamill remarked that a poet could only get away with a poem like this once. But Bashō was so overwhelmed by the beauty of these two hundred plus islands, that words could not express what he saw when he first arrived. This haiku is his attempt to describe his wonder and awe at seeing this plenitude of islands, each with wind-bent pine trees pointing in different directions.

This haiku serves as a good lesson about the limits of vocabulary in recording our thoughts and feelings. It also teaches us how repetition can be more powerful than added description. And it provides a great lesson on taking risks.

Night Haiku

deep summer
only coolness is the grass
and distant stars


Walking back from the strange French flick at the Ryder on campus, I kept thinking of the conference program on the history of Canadian haiku. I had nearly skipped it because it was the last night, and I had developed a kind of hotel insomnia, but I decided to listen to the beginning before going back to the hotel to rest. However, Terry Ann Carter from Ottawa led such a wonderful program that I was sucked in.

Canadian haiku had its roots in World War II, in particular in the Japanese internment camps that we also had here in the states. Such an awful place for haiku to blossom, but blossom it did. But perhaps that's not strange--just as the people's lives were constricted, their words also were constrained and at the same time empowered by this tight small form.

One Canadian haiku writer Kaoru Ikeda kept a diary of the war years and formed a haiku group in the internment camp she lived in. Here's one she wrote about the view from her bunk:

wisteria flowers
but double-decker bed
is in my way

In the postwar years, one musician we are all familiar with also wrote haiku--Leonard Cohen. And Canada has a strong tradition of French language haiku as well.

Here's a nice one by one of Canada's most famous practitioners, George Swede. It describes both the closeness and the distance between our two countries:

passport check
my shadow waits
across the border

After the Haiku Conference, the Serenity of the Olympic Peninsula

mountain meadow
snow melt trickles past flowers-
frolic of fawns


I wrote this haiku on Olympic National Park's magnificent Hurricane Ridge where fawns were playing among the gorgeous flowers. Blooming were paintbrush, lupine, phlox, and several other varieties. You can drive almost all the way to this meadow, not that I am a fan of that. I prefer meadows you can hike too, and you can hike to this one also, but this year, the snowpack has extended into August and there are huge swathes of snow on the north slopes and in ravines. I attempted a five mile hike to a peak, but after a mile and half was stopped by a huge field of snow. Signs everywhere warned Leave No Trace, a philosophy I support. Since I had no poles, there was no way I could climb up the snow slopes though I could have slid down this one. However, I did not want to claw my way up off-trail.

The ranger said that the flowers were three weeks later than usual, but they were resplendent, so good timing for me. Also, I lucked upon an interesting animal altercation between a raven and a doe. They both wanted something on the snow--from where I stood, I could not see what it was--but guess who won the battle? Yep, the raven.

One event at the haiku conference (I will be sharing others in the next few weeks) was a memorial for haiku poets who died these last two years. (It's a biennial conference.) Marjorie Buettner from Wisconsin put together an excellent tribute to them featuring photos, images of their haiku and biographies of their lives. It was very moving. She also sang and played music. Because I am including a photo of lupine, here's a haiku by the late Mike Farley from Montana:

lupine
a darker blue
in the hoofprints




In a 2008 interview on the Tobacco Road Poet Blog, here's what Farley said about why he wrote haiku:

I write haiku for the sheer pleasure of it. I absolutely love reading good haiku and I've saved quite a long list of my favorites from other poets. Writing my own haiku, however, really good ones, is not easy for me. Juxtaposition and the images that can (and should) spring unspoken from between the lines is the key to the whole thing (for me anyway). It's so hard to do and so delightful when it happens.

Haiku North America conference--Seattletime

In Seattle for the biennial Haiku North America conference that ends today. Conferencing is intense and I seldom go to them, so that makes them even more so for me.

Plus I am one of those introvert- extroverts or extrovert-introverts. With periods of quiet and solitude, I can function in the world of men (and women), but without them I turn misanthropic or at least jittery as all heck.

The schedule was jam-packed. Add to that jet-lag and lack of sleep....

But attending was wonderful, I learned a lot and I will share this soon.

Here is an abbreviated tour of the conference:

-5-7-5 is an artificial construct not true to the spirit of haiku
-Japanese haiku is innovating and changing whereas North American is stuck in the same old patterns
-monoku is kool (one line haiku, examples soon)
-haiga is for those talented with brushwork who can write haiku (don't look at me)
-haiku poets like to argue

OK, the last is said in fun but certainly true. The conference had a big room full of books and other media on haiku, senryu, tanka, haibun--all the related literary arts. And quite wonderful readings of poets sharing their own work.

So here's my first monoku:

no hand can catch the wildness of the butterfly

Off to the wildness of the Olympic Peninsula. Be back late this week with some Pacific West haiku.

Wedding haiku

next to the cornfield
bride and groom exchange vows--
cicadas hum





Here's a couple of other "field" haiku that appeal to me. The first is by Seira; the second by Shiki.


lifting up their horns
the cattle look at people
on the summer moor -Seira

a hoe standing there
no-one to be seen,--
the heat! -Shiki


Shiki is one of my favorite haiku artists. He's considered one of Japan's four great classic haiku poets, and responsible for introducing the name of haiku for this form, and also in modernizing it. As you can see from this haiku, he has a real eye for the interplay of humans with nature, plus a humorous take on the world.
He was born in 1867 and had planned to become a politician. He studied at the Imperial University, but his love for literature pushed him toward writing. He chose Shiki for his pen name. At the age of 22, he developed TB and according to legend the "shiki" was a bird that coughed up blood when it sang. Shiki died fairly young in 1902, but he left behind many haiku and many essays about it.