Leaf 33 – Essays on Haiku
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| Illustration from 'Zen Mind, Beginners Mind' by Shunryu Suzuki (1970) |
R.H. Blyth writes: “Senryu
originated in the eighteenth century with Karai Hachiemon, 1718-90, whose
pen-name was Senryū. They are more cynical and less refined than haiku, but
what is more important, they lack the element of interpenetration which is the
religious aspect of all haiku. […] It is after all, to some extent, a personal
matter. If you emphasize the humour, it is senryu: if you look more at the poetry
it is a haiku.”* – I think the fine line distinguishing between haiku and senryu can
sometimes be a bit fuzzy, but I’d probably go along with that last sentence as good
basis for a definition. If a short poem has a wry, self-aware or knowing
quality, or if it provides a purely amusing diversion that awakens a smile,
then it could be called a senryu.
The fly,
rubbing its hands and feet
– a villainous plot?
In the contemporary tradition of
modern English language haikai the distinction between haiku and senryu is a
little different. Most modern practitioners, haiku poets and haiku journal editors
alike, tend to bracket short verse which is centred on nature as ‘haiku’, and
short verse which is centred on human life as ‘senryu.’ For me personally, I find
the distinction a little too blurry on the one hand, and a little too didactic
on the other. I think most people would agree that there is a good deal of
crossover between the two. Personally, I prefer Blyth’s definition. But in many
ways, it is all fairly arbitrary. Haiku and senryu both look to ‘zero in’ on
finding the universal in the everyday, the sublime in the mundane – essentially
the moment when something ineffable clicks in the mind perceiving. Perhaps one form
does so with a certain degree of profundity (haiku), while the other (senryu) does
so in a manner which is more askance and wry – yet both are self-reflective.
Looking inwards through looking out. But what is key to each is a sense of
originality, while knowing that no such originality exists. This is maybe more
in line with Blyth’s belief that at its core haiku is a ‘zen-like’ form of
poetics. How deep or superficial that ‘zen-like’ nature is very much depends on
three factors: the poet, the poem, and the reader. All three open themselves to
different avenues of perception and reception. What I write may not necessarily
be the same as what you read. And likewise, what I write may well be original
and unoriginal at the same time. Take the poem which I have presented above in
this leaf – a jokey haiku/senryu about a fly wringing its hands and feet. I
wrote it spontaneously, and it sat in one of my notebooks for many years in
splendid isolation, unread by anyone other than me. For all I knew it was 100%
original. But then one day while reading Blyth, proving once again that there
is never anything new under the sun, I came across a very similar poem written by
one of the great masters of Japanese haiku, Issa:
Do not kill the fly!
See how it wrings its hands,
Its feet!**
Blyth’s commentary suggests that
the humour in this verse relies on the fancifully improbable interpretation
that the fly is “rubbing its hands together in supplication for its life.”**
Whereas my verse suggests that the fly is doing so in the theatrical manner of
a vaudeville villain plotting some dastardly nefarious scheme. Both poems,
however, are doing exactly the same thing: projecting the human onto (non-human)
nature, associating two totally disassociated things through a humorous moment
of reflection. Similarly, my poem unwittingly connects me back to one of the
original practitioners of the artform which I am attempting to emulate – in essence
showing that at the heart of all things we are largely one and the same.
Consequently, there’s no need to
feel overly precious about our own artistic creations (a common enough tendency
in modern English haiku), or how rigidly our short poems need to be defined and
categorised, because we are all effectively toiling towards the same ends in
the same field. We might as well do our best to sing along together, and hope
to think of ourselves united – all working alongside each other as one. There
are echoes of sentiments, of themes, and of ideas which vibrate back and forth
between haiku and senryu, just the same as echo back and forth between individual
poets – because we each draw and drink and benefit from the same overflowing well-head,
the same abundant spring of poetry.
*R.H. Blyth, Haiku, Volume One:
Eastern Culture (Tokyo: The Hokuseido Press, 1981 [1949]), p. 198.
**R.H. Blyth, Haiku, Volume Three: Summer-Autumn (Tokyo: The Hokuseido Press, 1982 [1952]), pp. 794-795.
