by John Hertz: National Poetry Month in the United States.
Between the clouds, shining;
It’s vegetable springtime,
Flowering cheerfully.
For a thousand years the highest form of Japanese literature was a 31-syllable poem, in five lines of 5-7-5-7-7 syllables. Originally it was called waka, “Japanese poem”; in those days Chinese poems – by Japanese – were regarded even more highly, like the use of Greek in the Roman Empire, or the use of Latin in England until at least the 18th Century. Eventually this form was called tanka, “short poem”.
That wasn’t short enough, so the Japanese dropped two lines, leaving the form we know as haiku (from a word meaning “unorthodox”) – even harder to write.
Anyone can string together 5-7-5 syllables. But haiku is to be a poem.
It should present a moment. It should show the meeting of the inner or subjective world, and the outer or objective world, to appear at the end of the first or second lines. Oh, and it should say or point to what season the moment is in.
Richard Wright (1908-1960) toward the end of his life wrote haiku.
In the falling snow
A laughing boy holds out his palms
Until they are white.
R. Wright, Haiku no. 31 (Y. Hakutani & R. Tener eds., rev. 2011)
One of the greatest haiku masters was Buson (1716-1784).
The evening breezes –
The water splashes against
A blue heron’s shins
(in Japanese yûkaze ya / mizu aosagi no / hagi o utsu; the notation û is for a long vowel, which some would write uu; tr. by the great Donald Keene 1922-2019, who called this haiku by Buson a tour de force; F. Bowers ed., The Classic Tradition of Haiku p. 54, 1996)
Hoping you are the same.
___________________
Bashô, The Narrow Road to Oku (1702; D. Keene tr. 1996)
Eleanor Arnason’s award-nominated short story “Knapsack Poems” is a response to a Bashô poem: saru kiku hito / sutego ni aki no / kaze ikani.
John Hertz replies by carrier pigeon:
Brother Becker, may the Force be with him, knows I am no foe to leaving things for the reader. But a little more may help.
One of Bashô’s works is Manuscript in My Knapsack (1709).
Another, Exposure in the Fields (1684), has the poem Becker (almost) quotes.
Donald Keene in World Within Walls (rev. 1999) discusses Exposure at pp. 80-83. He translates the poem and its preface (p. 82)
observing,
John’s response is what I wish I could have said and I thank him. And I thank the carrier pigeons.
Arnason’s response is beyond what I could imagine writing or even imagining. She got it exactly right. The best answer to a melancholy poem is a wonderfully weird science fiction story that is filled with poetry and joy.
Based on his novel Virtual Zen, I think Ray Faraday Nelson is also well acquainted with Bashô. Who else within our little community?
John Hertz responds by carrier pigeon:
Brother Nelson quotes and discusses a haiku by Sodô in Flag 22 https://efanzines.com/FLAG/FLAG-22.pdf. The translation is by H.G. Henderson (1889-1974), not cited but his hand can be seen.
In the second half of my Japan report “The Residence of the Wind” https://efanzines.com/Argentus/Ag08.pdf I tell of meeting a woman from the Bashô Museum, and going to the Sumida River where a hut like his is where his was. I’ll add:
Sumida River,
Standing where Bashô stood,
Looking. Same? Aha!