"Depth of the Journey"

No haiku tonight. Instead go out and look at that gorgeous January moon! Jupiter reigns also--a spot of gold in the southern sky. Venus was out early after sunset, clear and bright while Orion rules the east with his sword ready to combat any comet wanderers.

Journeying

Zen students speak of the "monkey mind." But when I consider haiku I think more of the vagabond mind, the mind that we utilize on journeys. By this I mean all the sensibilities we bring to exploring a new place or a place far from our everyday world--the way we observe deeply, learn, absorb, and open ourselves to each new moment. And you can do that reading haiku as well as writing it.

Harley King in his essay "The Art of Reading Haiku" advises, “We are given only the bare bones of a moment by the poet. It is our choice as to whether we stop with the skeleton or flesh out the meaning. Fleshing out the bare bones is the real work. Anyone can understand the skeleton but few can create the human. Fewer still can tell the life story of that human. A reader of haiku is like an archeologist who creates the history of a culture from a few bones and artifacts..."

King goes on to say, “Haiku does not express emotion from the inside out by displaying the mind of a character. Haiku builds the emotional thrust, makes the artistic statement from the outside in, from the physical world to the mind and heart of the reader. All things begin, end and return to the physical...."

Another important point that King makes is that "Haiku point the way and the reader must take the journey himself. The length and depth of the journey the reader travels depends entirely on the reader. The understanding of haiku depends on the skill of the reader in interpreting the road signs...Reading haiku is as much an art as writing it. The reader needs to pause and listen to the silences, to feel the spaces between the words, and to journey to the depths of the many multi-colored worlds."