(Leaf 3) – Looking Back
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| Katsushika Hokusai - Boy Viewing Mount Fuji (1839) |
This is another essay I wrote
early on, while I was in my twenties, having first begun publishing haiku and
short verse in a small magazine titled, ‘still’ (UK, 1997-2001). I remember at
this time it seemed like there was plenty of navel-gazing and self-reflection going
on in the English language haiku ‘movement.’ There were a lot of questions batting
back and forth about ‘how valid’ was this endeavour? – People didn’t really use
phrases such as ‘cultural appropriation’ back then, but this was a large part
of that process of questioning and self-doubt. I remember my own doubts and tribulations
were actually centred upon the language aspect more than the ethos or the
appropriation aspect. The newest trend in those days among English language
haiku poets was a fairly united consensus in a collective assertion that haiku should
not be centred upon a five-seven-five syllable count, as was the
traditional characteristic of haiku in Japanese. The justification was that five-seven-five
in English was overly wordy compared to the same structure in Japanese.
Instead, English language haiku should aim itself more at brevity in order to
achieve authenticity and so thereby adhere closer to the spirit of the original
tradition in Japan. I always felt that there was something more to this,
something intangible or rather a deficiency which I was incapable of grasping or
mastering without any knowledge of the Japanese language. Since then, I have
taken formal classes studying Japanese – I have even attempted to write some
haiku in Japanese conforming to the five-seven-five structure – although I am
still far from fluent in Japanese. Even now, I continue to wrestle with these
thoughts and ideas in my own approach to writing haiku in English, but I do continue
to adhere to that idea that haiku in English need not follow the
five-seven-five structure, but rather should attempt to evoke the original
spirit of haiku through brevity and the use of caesura. As with my ‘On Haiku’ (c.2003)
essay (reproduced on this blog as ‘Leaf 1’), I am similarly reproducing this
second essay (largely) unchanged purely as another self-reflective starting
point. A means of looking back, in order to begin looking forwards. No doubt, I
may well develop my current thoughts and opinions on this topic in future posts
(or ‘Leaves’) here on Shinobazu Pond.
DEFINITIVE DEFINITIONS –
REFLECTIONS ON MODERN HAIKU (c.2004)
Personally – reading English
language haiku (i.e. – haiku written by contemporary poets from Western
backgrounds), generally sparks one of two distinct reactions in me. Sometimes
such poems will enliven and inspire me and it’s not long before I have a pencil
in my hand in place of the haiku magazine which I had been reading. More often than
not though, my reaction is one of acute ridiculousness which usually progresses
into the dispirited feeling that finds me resolving to abandon my own
pretensions in haiku. How can any non-Japanese really write true haiku? Can a
single word, set isolated and alone upon a page, appended by the poet’s
nominally-possessive assertion, amount to a legitimate expression? No. No –
might constitute a suitably concise and apt response. Yes. But equally – yes – (a most poetic opposite) could be supplied as
the definitive answer, and, just as sensibly, find itself the final word on the
matter.
What is the end though? What
resolution can be drawn? The defining of a “haiku movement” in English?
Necessarily, to find a serious sense of comprehension we need to refine a
cogent terminology. Set up guidelines. Hem the skirts of this particular poetic
parade. This would all be very well if the “movement” which we are trying to
pin weren’t itself so intent on breaking its own conventions!
Perhaps the current climate of
haiku in English is too changeable. No pithy epithets can possibly define it.
It seems not to want to conform, yet oddly it simultaneously appears to break
the strictures applied to it almost as though it were unaware of its own
creative anarchy. This characteristic wilful versus unconscious inconsistency
is its present dynamic. Like a river in its thundering torrent, it is moving
the unseen boundary markers of the fields it has overwhelmed, engulfing its own
natural landscape so that it can shape and then re-shape that landscape over
and over. This constant process of transformation is what, for me at least,
makes the current flow of English language haiku so captivating – it’s what
inspires me both to creativity and to despair. I would urge all poets taken by
this tide to jump off the rafts of rules and strictures being floated by anyone
who wants to still the waters! The time for critical reflection will come once
the waters have receded, once the deluge has dried into the salt crystals of
piquant memory – only then will it be possible to peel back the sediments which
will be left and accurately describe the formation of this landscape that is
currently being created in its first era of flux, an epoch already several
decades old and still showing no signs of slowing. We might well have to leave
off defining this Diluvian for quite some time yet, realistically it might not
even be up to ourselves at all.
