On Haiku: Part 1 Introduction

On the one ton temple bell

a moon-moth, folded into sleep,

sits still. 

-Buson

 

Intro
        I've always felt intrigued by haiku, though as a kid, my interest was primarily quizzical: "That's it?  Where's the rest?  What's the point?"  Still, the pseudo-haiku we learned to write in school were relatively easy to make—nowhere near as difficult as sonnets or even limericks, and shorter than most free verse—so I decided I liked them well enough.
        Yet, to better appreciate any work, one must understand it, and to understand it, one must study it: Just as the one who would savor music studies rhythm and harmony and the one who would respect cars studies engines and auto manufacturers, so the one who would admire literature should study forms of literature and their historical context.  Indeed, now after studying the genre of haiku and some of its history, I do see their point, find delight in their profound brevity, and furthermore, wish to share some of this understanding (though I still have much to learn to improve my own haiku).

     Immersed in haiku,
     We float upon profound thoughts,
     cooled off and serene.

A Digression on the Writing Process

         As I consider how to begin, I hear Julie Andrews singing in my mind, "Let's start at the very beginning—a very good place to start."  Starting with haiku's history would certainly make chronological sense.  Yet, the maxim "start from what you know" seems more applicable with such a potentially foreign topic.  Hence . . . 


Comparison
        The Western world has a tradition of epic poetry (stories told in verse at great length and in explicit detail, action often being equal to description) and of abstract love sonnets and metaphysical poetry.  This has conditioned us to expect poetry to contain stories or ideas with a beginning, rising action, climax, and conclusion.  In addition, despite modern poems of shorter length and free verse, we've carried on the idea that the words and form are as much a source of delight and evidence of skill as the imagery and subject.  Case in point—the subject of Coleridge's poem The Ancient Mariner, namely the misadventures of a superstitious sailor, would hardly interest me if it were not for the author's skillful rhyme, rhythm, and word choices.  Similarly, Poe's Raven with its morbid subject and dark imagery would find a much smaller audience if it were not for its entrancing rhythm. 
        In contrast, the best haiku condense an experience into a clear image—its most elegant, impressionistic essence.  Put another way, their subjects capture just one moment in time to express the "beauty in nature and depth of the human heart" (About.com).  Their form encourages readers to envision the scene more than to focus on the the language or to study the form.  Though the Japanese enjoy playing with their language just as we do in English, using homophones and idioms to produce puns, layered meaning, and so on, the haiku's words and form are primarily a vehicle carrying us up to the scene, where our minds must fill in the details.  From this brevity springs the profoundness or humor we find in the best haiku, as commented on by the famous haijin (haiku writer) Matsuo Bashou: "The haiku that reveals seventy to eighty percent of its subject is good. Those that reveal fifty to sixty percent, we never tire of" (qtd. in Wikipedia, "Haiku in English").

Form
        Traditionally, each Japanese-language haiku includes

• seventeen morae in three units (containing one joined phrase and one fragment) of five-seven-five, printed in a single vertical line,
• kigo, a word indicating the season in which the haiku was written, and
• kireji, a cutting word or verbal punctuation marker at the end of any of the three units to imply a contrast or comparison between two adjacent images, or to circle around to the beginning, joining the last and first units.

        These rules deserve a little more attention and clarification.  First, "mora" is the English linguistic term for one brief element of sound, which English-speakers often confuse with the syllable, but a syllable may actually have one or two morae.  (Only a few, rare languages have syllables with three morae.)  For instance, the word "cat" has one syllable, but two morae: "ca-t."  In contrast, the words "it" and "too" each have just one syllable and one mora.  However, the Japanese language uses characters instead of an alphabet: logographic kanji and moraic kana.  Japanese poetry, in consequence, counts morae rather than syllables.  Since morae are less familiar to English speakers, English haiku have been modified to count syllables, which can confuse the uninitiated who notice that romanized Japanese haiku don't seem to follow our syllable rule.  For instance, Issa wrote the haiku にっこにこ上きげん也二ッ星, "nikko-niko joukigen nari futatsu hoshi," which you may notice has the required seventeen morae but only fourteen syllables.  One translation reads as follows:
 

     beaming smiles
     in the best of moods . . .
     two stars

     -Issa, 1825 (haikuguy)

Note—The poem refers to the Tanabata festival on the seventh day of the seventh month.  Legend says that two celestial lovers, Orihime and Hikoboshi (represented by the stars Vega and Altair), are separated by Heaven's River (the Milky Way) and can only meet one night a year on Tanabata, provided it doesn't rain, at which time they cross the river to be together.

        Next, kigo (words for the season in which the poem is written) have been codified over the centuries, and most will come from a saijiki, a haiku dictionary that arranges words by New Years and the four seasons (the seasons being divided in the traditional manner with the solstices and equinoxes mid-season instead of the start of the season).  Within these five sections, words are usually split into seven categories including climate, sky phenomena, geography, events or holidays, daily human life, animals, and plants.  Words are marked as suitable for early, middle, late, or all season.  The entries also describe the kigo, list similar or related words, and provide haiku examples.  The descriptions are particularly valuable since skilled haijin (haiku writers) make use of the word's traditional emotional associations.  (Saijiki sources: ahapoetry, renku, and wikipedia.org.)

        Finally, as for kireji (a cutting word), classically-formed Japanese haiku use one of the eighteen traditional particles and suffixes.  We have no English equivalent for kireji aside, perhaps, from punctuation, which we don't verbalize.  Translated kireji may be left unmarked or represented by a dash or ellipses, or written as an exclamatory phrase, such as "How . . . !"   In Japanese, Wikipedia writes that kireji "is said to supply structural support to the verse. When placed at the end of a verse, it provides a dignified ending, concluding the verse with a heightened sense of closure," or as the entry writes later, it "draws the reader back to the beginning, initiating a circular pattern."  However, "used in the middle of a verse, it briefly cuts the stream of thought, indicating that the verse consists of two thoughts half independent of each other.  In such a position, it indicates a pause, both rhythmically and grammatically, and may lend an emotional flavour to the phrase preceding it," which may also create "an implicit comparison, equation, or contrast between the two separate elements" ("Kireji").

History
        Haiku's form was set when it was still a part of its predecessor: renga, a genre of collaborative, linked verse (which itself sprung from the genre waka, now called tanka).  Japanese poets are first recorded gathering for this poetry game in the middle of the fourteenth century.  In the game, three to fifteen poets take turns adding stanzas of alternating 17 and 14 morae.  Renga variations have different rules for the poem's length and different schemes proscribing which stanzas should make seasonal references or not.  Each stanza shifts images and situations but still builds on the imagery in the previous so that the whole (if one understands all the references and subtle linkages) reads as a multi-layered, loosely-connected montage, implying what happened between stanzas.  In the game's early years, stanzas were often vulgar, but as time passed, vulgarity was supplanted by artisticness, which elevated the genre within Japanese culture.
        Should you like to see an explained example of a traditional Japanese renku, visit simplyhaiku.com, this linked article in jstor, or this page from Renku Home.  For more modern English versions, see the Haiku Society of America or the blog a wrung sponge.
        The opening verse of the renga sequence, called the hokku, sets the tone for the whole poem, and the privilege of composing it is typically given to the highest-ranking guest, who uses it to flatter the good taste of the game's host.  Thus, writing the hokku requires a fair amount of creativity and skill.  By the 17th century, poets were already using hokku alone, still in the implied context of the renga but without the rest of the collaborative poem.  Such standalone hokku were retroactively renamed haiku two centuries later.
        Renga master Matsuo Bashou (1644–1694) was foremost among those who emphasized hokku within renku, his main form of renga, and then popularized standalone haiku amid prose.  Bashou wrote his most-quoted poem in 1686, written below in romanized Japanese and followed by one of many translations (bopsecrets.org):

     Furu ike ya kawazu tobikomu mizu no oto 

     old pond . . .

     a frog leaps in
     water’s sound

     -Translated by William J. Higginson

        A couple generations later, Yosa Buson (1716–1783) revived haiku and renku, promoting and imitating Bashou's detached and relatively lofty, objective style: 

     In the moonlight,
     The color and scent of the wisteria
     Seems far away.

     A summer river being crossed
     how pleasing
     with sandals in my hands! 

     (yourdictionary)

Buson was also a master at haiga, pairing paintings with haiku or poetical prose.  (See three of Buson's self-painted haiga below from lilliputreveiw's blogspot, japonia.org, and Wikipedia.)

 
        Later, the prolific Kobayashi Nobuyuki (1763–1827), who went by the pen name Issa ("cup of tea"), took a more subjective, emotional approach to haiku, often writing out of the bleakness of his own tragic life:

     Everything I touch

     with tenderness, alas,

     pricks like a bramble.

     (Wikipedia)

Issa's immediacy increased haiku's audience base despite how he addressed baser subjects than classical masters like Bashou and Buson would have considered suitable:

     hatsu yuki ya furi ni mo kakurenu inu no kuso

     the first snowfall
     doesn't hide it . . .
     dog poop

     akegata ya nebuka akari no nagashimoto

     dawn—
     the glint of leeks
     in the sink

     (simplyhaiku)

        The next notable change to haiku came in the late 19th century when Masaoka Shiki (1867–1902) came along and helped reform and modernize the genre.  It was he who formally separated these standalone hokku from renku and renamed them "haiku."  One of his poems lies below:

     In the coolness

     of the empty sixth-month sky . . .

     the cuckoo’s cry.

     (yourdictionary)

        In the early 19th century, haiku had already begun to spread to Western countries, but most Westerners dismissed it, not understanding its form, history, or value.  Nowadays, haiku is an accepted form of poetry in most nations around the world, though its form has been adapted as necessary to suit other languages (more on this in a later post).  Modern Japanese-language haiku may or may not follow the traditional form, but they and several types of renga are still relatively popular in Japan and growing in popularity in the Western world.

P.S. Off-topic lament—I completely lost what I'd written (a sizable amount) in Part 2.  To make matters worse, since I'd separated it from this section and focused on refining this one, I hadn't looked at it recently enough to remember more than half of my intended content.  I felt like crying when I realized it . . .