A Failed First Attempt

(Leaf 90) – Reflection

 

Joaquin Sorolla - Hall of the Ambassadors, Alhambra, Granada (1909)

This poem doesn’t work, sadly. It’s a good example of a failed first attempt. On the surface there is nothing outwardly wrong with it. Some people would say it doesn’t work because it has a title. I’ve seen some purists claim that haiku shouldn’t have, nor should they need, titles. If they do, then they’ve failed. I see the validity of this point, but (on some occasions) I reserve the right to disagree. Even some of the greatest haiku poets in Japan would add ‘prescripts’ (as Blyth sometimes describes them) to their poems when they felt it was necessary. Similarly, in some instances, a title gives a short poem some extra context which allows it to work better, without getting in the way of the wording or the expression contained in the poem itself. Here the inclusion of a title is vital, because – well, … perhaps it’s best if I explain after you’ve read it:

 

 

ALHAMBRA

 

Running in rivulets,

tinkling over stone

– disappearing out of sight.

 

 

My original intention and ambition in writing this poem was to capture something of the feeling, both visual and aural, of what it felt like wandering around the gorgeous, palatial gardens of the Alhambra at Granada, in Spain – which I visited a few years ago. It is a beautiful place. I’d wanted to visit the Alhambra for many, many years. And happily, it did not disappoint. It more than rose to my expectations, especially evoking for me all the musical echoes which I’d found imbued in Manuel de Falla’s sublime interpretation of the place; his ‘Noches en los jardines de España,’ or ‘Nights in the Gardens of Spain,’ which he composed between 1909-1915.

 

Idly ambling around the grounds, one can’t help but notice the sound of water everywhere. Augmenting the visual beauty of the gardens, the subtle and ingenious use of water seems to run throughout the place – seen and unseen. Hearing the gentle plash of water from fountains and streams helps to keep one feeling cool, even in the full sun of midday. And so, like de Falla before me, this is what I was attempting to capture in my short little haiku – but then having written it, and feeling it was a good poem, I found something quickly and somewhat unexpectedly changed. My poem had sprung a leak! – Stunned, I sat back and re-read it with genuine horror. In an instant, I very quickly saw the poem in a completely different light; because – without the title – it could (much more logically) be read as a senryu, instead of a haiku. A somewhat ribald and earthy senryu about a man, who, on leaving the pub at closing time after a heavy afternoon and evening “on the ale,” starts to make his way home, but swiftly finds he needs to duck into a back alley behind the local picture house or flea-pit cinema, in lieu of a public convenience, in order to relieve himself of his earlier over-imbibing!! … And, horror upon horrors, who’s to say the picture palace isn’t called ‘The Alhambra’ as well; many once were – so even the title, in this instance, is no real help in the end after all!!

If that particular reading doesn’t ruin the poem for you, then your sensibilities must be more resilient than mine. Instead, I’m going to right this one off to experience and call it “a flawed first attempt.” Consequently, the quest to encapsulate the real Alhambra – the one in Spain – and distil the magical essence of its gorgeous gardens into a haiku, for me at least, and for the time-being at any rate, remains, on-going, or – “a work in progress.”

 

So, as they say: watch this space …

 

The Alhambra, Keswick