Starry Night

Leaf 357 – Art Inspired

 

Vincent Van Gogh - The Starry Night (1889)

I remember reading somewhere once, a theory that the reason some of Van Gogh’s paintings are so vividly coloured may have been due to his habit of drinking absinthe – the enchanted and enchanting, psychotropic fluttering green fairy of Baz Luhrmann’s ‘Moulin Rouge!’  (2001). Van Gogh painted the scene from his bedroom window at the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence in June 1889, after a severe mental breakdown. The stylised nature and exaggerated elements of the painting have prompted all sorts of speculation: astronomical, psychological, theological, etc. However, Van Gogh himself told his brother, Theo, that he thought the painting was a failure.

 

 

Overhead –

the starry night’s

absinthe-tinted glow.

 

 

 

Hospital Horrorfest

Leaf 356 – Art Inspired

 

Following on from the excursion of Leaf 355 into the sub-genre of ‘Sci-Fi-Ku,’ this Leaf has taken a distinct wrong turn into another little-known, twilit backwater of the modern English haiku world – the fright fest of ‘Horror Senryu!’

Until I first stumbled upon this phenomenon on Bluesky, it was an aspect of modern haiku of which I was wholly unaware. And I have to confess, I am not a huge fan of horror films or novels per se. It’s not a genre I follow. But, like all hapless curious souls, I sometimes succumb to a morbid curiosity and can’t help wondering “what’s in the box?” – and so I take a quick peek, only to find my squeamish faintheart regretting it and beating a hasty retreat. But game for the challenge, I decided to see if I could pen a ‘horror senryu’ of my own. Taking my inspiration from an advert for a ‘Fright Fest’ horror film season which aired a few years ago on Film4, much to my surprise I found myself scribbling the following freaky Friday-ish linked verse. A series of horrific-haiku, cold-filtered from my single greatest fear (hospitals!), pooling itself like a fresh puddle of blood beneath the operating table. Read on with all due caution, especially if you are at all of a nervous disposition …

 

CLOSED WARD

 

A white lab coat

and surgical mask

– two smiling eyes.

 

A syringe held by a

latex gloved hand –

over the stirrup chair.

A lungful

of laughing gas –

to gag the hurt.

 

Waking up

woozy –

touched by the nurse.

Who closes the curtains

about the bed –

and tightens the straps.

 

She whispers –

it’s time for some

more medicine …

 

Photo Credit: Marianna Bukowski - Film4 FrightFest (2012)

Red Planet Rescue

Leaf 355 – Art Inspired

 

When I was very young I used to enjoy watching old, classic science fiction movies on television. It was all part and parcel with my early abiding fascination for astronomy and human space exploration, both of which have remained undiminished with me to the present day, serendipitously furnishing me with plenty of material for many haiku, as a fair number of the leaves already posted here on ‘Shinobazu Pond’ will clearly attest. But it wasn’t until I began posting my haiku on Bluesky that I discovered there was a distinct sub-genre of this kind of writing in contemporary English haiku – aptly and affectionately known as ‘Sci-Fi-ku.’ So in an attempt to emulate the seasoned experts piloting this fast, flourishing satellite orbiting the haiku home planet, I thought I would try to pen a poem or two about one of my most favourite sci-fi movies, ‘Robinson Crusoe on Mars’ (1964). Very quickly it expanded into the following linked verse renku.

 

 

MAROONED ON MARS

 

Monkey business

amid the wreckage,

salvaging smarts.

 

Boiling rocks to breathe

underground beneath

wandering fires.

 

A mind foggy with

phosphorus and sulphur –

Robinson Crusoe on Mars:

 

Breaking bonds to

rescue what’s left

of one’s humanity.

 

Solar horizons

expanding with

each orbit.

 

Electron bolts,

blasting red

scorched rock.

 

Stranded

beneath the stars,

encircling an inner sun.

 

Radio waves crackle,

returning

distant voices.

 

Escaping the thin

air of Mars –

Earthlight dawns anew.

 

Crusoe, Mona and Friday –

each taking their turn

at finding a rescue.

Photo Credits: IMDb & Retrozap

Last Lights

Leaf 354 – Art Inspired

 

Anna Ancher - Evening Sun in the Artist's Studio (c.1913)

Inspired by a painting by Danish painter, Anna Ancher, titled ‘Evening Sun in the Artist’s Studio’ (c.1913), this poem was written last year when Autumn was settling in and the sun was rapidly withdrawing its warmth for the duration of the coming winter. It seemed to work well with another haiku which I’d written a few days earlier, marrying the poet’s realm with that of the painter – both sharing an affinity for colder, northern climes and the melancholy taints and tints of that seasonal shift, colouring the painter’s palette and shading the poet’s pencil.

 

 

Last lights –

losing

           warmth.

 

***

 

Tabletop –

feeling the early

autumn chill.

 

 

 

The first haiku was written and originally posted on Bluesky.

First Frost

Leaf 353 – Reflections

 

Originally written in response to a #whistpr prompt to write a poem using the word ‘weave’ on Bluesky, I suppose this poem reflects my archaeologist’s inner eye.

 

 

Daub fallen from wattle,

withies begin to unweave

– first frost of winter.

 

Photograph Credit: Orhan Pergel/Pexels

Mountain Temple

Leaf 352 – Reflections

 

This haiku was written about a trip to Mitake-san near Ome, in the mountains to the west of Tokyo (see also, Leaf 41). Mitake-san is actually the site of a Shintō shrine rather than a Buddhist temple, but the poem could easily be about Hiei-zan, near Kyoto, which I’ve also visited and is a similar mountain with many temples atop its high vantage. Mitake-san is particularly steep, its stone staircases and the paths and roadways leading up to the top take a real effort to climb, as well as care in descending. A steep funicular railway carries you the first part of the way (the same as at Hiei-zan). At the top there are some wonderful views, and the air feels fresher and cooler compared to the narrow river valley below. The distinctive, melodious sound of uguisu (a kind of bush warbler, known as the Japanese nightingale) can be heard calling amidst the gentle ripple of the leaves in the treetops. This haiku is unusual in that it was first composed and refined in English after reading a haiku by Buson, which begins with the first line of ‘Yamadera ya.’ I then did my best to translate my English haiku into a proper 5-7-5 structured haiku in Japanese. I’m not sure how well it works as a haiku in Japanese, but the sentiment it strives for is very much what I feel whenever I visit holy mountains in Japan, such as Mitake-san or Hiei-zan.

 

 

山寺や   天上の段   上り猶

 

やまでらや   てんじょうのだん   のぼりなお

 

Mountain temple –

steps higher than heaven,

climbing higher still.

Photographs by Tim Chamberlain 

Sun-Dappled Stones

Leaf 351 – Essays on Haiku

 

Shizu Okino - Tied Rocks

Whenever I want to find a calm point of focus in my mind I try to visualise a round, palm-sized pebble on the bed of a clear stream or brook. It’s a very specific, eidetic scene. One which is based on any number of different, but similar streams which I’ve seen flowing down countless rugged, rocky valleys along the Cornish coast. This naturalistic image of water and stone appeals to me and lends itself to my sense of inner calm because it simultaneously represents stasis and motion. It is both calm and refreshing. Permeable and impermeable. The pebble is solid, rounded and unmoved. The water is fresh and clear, and it passes all around the smooth rock, roiling and flowing fast – almost invisible, except for the sharp motes of sunlight which glint and flash golden from the surface down to the rocky, gravelly, sandy riverbed. I have tried to capture this mental image in the following haiku:

 

 

Pebbles shimmying

beneath

sun-dappled water.

 

 

However, I’m not sure it successfully captures the essence which I was aiming to grasp. Sometimes the sentiments (in the married-forms of thoughts and feelings) don’t seem to merge or coalesce quite as easily as we intend. It can be hugely frustrating. There is that sense of certainty; a clarity of perception which somehow resists us and refuses to let itself be translated from pure feeling into words. This is why, as poets, we continue to wrestle with thoughts and themes, with images and words, revisiting verses we have written – revising and reshaping them – over and over again. It’s not so much an obsession, but rather an inexhaustible striving towards perfection. All art is a process of polishing. But in this particular instance, having already tried to capture this impression in my poem, I was taken aback to find the following, almost identical haiku written by Natsume Sōseki, one of my favourite Japanese writers, over a century before me:

 

The stones at the bottom

Seem to be moving;

Clear water.*

– Natsume Sōseki 

 

I think all haiku poets share in this experience of finding another poet who has had a similar experience or moment of inspiration which they have attempted to encapsulate, just as we have (see also, Leaf 33). It certainly is a deeply curious thing, to peer deep into this mirror. It is a moment of connection. But, in this particular instance, stumbling across Sōseki’s haiku – its discovery was immediately qualified by a passage of interpretation which I found along with it. In this passage, R.H. Blyth comments on Sōseki’s poem, saying: “This poem is a failure, for the poet has allowed his intellect to interfere with his imagination. Movement, simple movement, is perhaps the greatest mystery of the universe. This is the meaning of our deep interest in earthquakes, the stormy sea, horse-races, the clouds, streams, rivers, tobacco smoking. In the above verse, the stones of the bottom of the brook are moving. The water is so clear that the movement can be exactly and vividly seen. The intellect qualifies this with ‘seems to be moving’ but the imagination takes no notice of this. It loves movement for its own sake; whether the movement is in the mind or outside it, does not matter.”*

 

I have to confess I am completely baffled by this interpretation. It seems curious to me that Blyth, if I am reading him correctly, has completely missed the zen-like contradiction which is placed at the heart of Sōseki’s poem. It seems to me as though Blyth is muddling the ‘seems’ and ‘are’ in relation to the movement of the stones. I read Soseki’s poem and it strikes me that he is attempting to convey the same notion as I am in my poem. This notion is quite a simple point: the stones are not moving, but it looks like they are. The play of the clear water moving around them and the way the water refracts the light causes this illusion, and this is perhaps a very zen-like perception; i.e. – even when things are still and unchanging, they change and are changing. One only has to think of Heraclitus’s statement that it is impossible to step into the same river twice, or Keats’s notion of ‘negative capability.’ Contradictions abound in life, but the ability to accept those contradictions is what is most essential to maintaining our equanimity, our balance. It seems remarkable to me that Blyth missed this, if I have read him correctly. Especially given how acutely perceptive he usually is in other instances to the zen-like nature of haiku, and also how easily he relates it to similar sentiments as expressed by Western poets, such as Keats and Wordsworth.

 

Having made this observation though, I think Blyth might well be right all the same. I was not sure my poem worked as well as I had originally intended it, even before I had discovered Sōseki’s poem. I’m still not convinced mine works any better because of this coincidence. Perhaps both Sōseki and I each missed our mark?** – Maybe I will one day manage to rephrase and reframe this poem into something better; or perhaps it may simply have to remain as it is. Unmoved and unmoving amid the flow which continues to pass all around it, glinting and ungraspable to the last. Not quite a success, but not entirely a failed effort either. After all, haiku are simply words which come together albeit only briefly fixing a thought, a feeling, or a view – extending a moment which we hope others might share.

 

 

Shizu Okino - Cho Knot (Butterfly)

 

*R.H. Blyth, Haiku, Volume Three: Summer-Autumn (Tokyo: The Hokuseido Press, 1982 [1952]), p. 713.

**It’s interesting to note how few of Natsume Sōseki’s haiku Blyth includes in his canonical four volume work on haiku. One gets the feeling that Blyth perhaps didn’t rate the celebrated novelist’s efforts in the art of haiku very highly.

This poem was originally written and posted on Bluesky in response to a #dailyhaikuprompt - dapple.