When I'm feeling overwhelmed with the stress of work or with difficulties in a relationship, a haiku by Hokushi (1665-1718) reminds me that such difficulties are about being human, that life is composed of a series of burned huts and blooms on the hill:
ashes my burnt hut
but wonderful the cherry
blooming on my hill
~ Hokushi
Of course, when one's hut is burning, looking to the blooms isn't as easy as it sounds. Still, it helps to have Hokushi's haiku singing in my ear.
I became interested in haiku poetry while photographing and then building a website on the Kurimoto Japanese Garden, located near my home in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. I decided to provide a mix of Asian poetry and information on Japanese Gardens on the site. On the Internet I found my way to a number of Asian poetry websites, became enthralled with the poetic power of haiku, and started to read haiku poetry. It struck me that a haiku is much like a photograph—done well, it provides a snapshot of a moment in time. In the case of a photograph, a visual impression; of a haiku, a verbal impression.
While exploring, I found a number of Internet lists where current haiku poets [called haijin] share their work and where interested novices can find instruction. Soon, I was on my way to writing my own haiku. What could be easier, I thought, than writing a poem with 17 syllables or less! But, like producing quality photographs, I found it wasn't so easy to write a good haiku.
I did discover that composing haiku is more a process, a way of being in the world, than a quick route to a product. Both photography and haiku composition lead to an intense focusing on direct experience that is different from normal daily living. For example, normal practice when visiting a setting like the Kurimoto Garden seems to be to walk around, chat with a friend, enjoy the sunshine, that sort of thing—at least that's what I see most Kurimoto visitors doing.
In contrast, when engaged in the process of photography, I focus in, attempting to isolate forms and colors that strike my aesthetic sense. Looking through the lens, composing the frame, selecting the camera settings, imagining the print, all these provide a deeply relaxing contemplation of place. Time becomes frozen yet passes quickly. I spent 5 hours at Kurimoto, shot many rolls of film, and suddenly found myself in darkness. Where did the day go?
Similarly, I discovered that the process of haiku composition is not an activity that takes place exclusively at one's desk. Instead, on a walk in the woods or when visiting a coffee house, one learns to pay attention to events [some call them 'haiku moments'] that stand out. This spring, when the geese and ducks had just begun returning to Canada, I was deeply immersed in the silence of a nearby forest and heard a single sound—the call of a male mallard. I stood for a time listening in on his conversation with his mate. Louis Armstrong's voice came to mind. If you've ever heard Louie sing, "I'm in the mood for love," you understand the power of the Mallard's rasp as I experienced it on that quiet day. I began to compose a haiku in my mind, played with possible verses, continued my walk, caught a streamside glimpse of Mr. and Ms. Mallard, and when I returned home, wrote this haiku:
mid-day hush
the rasp of a mallard
calling his mate
~ Ray Rasmussen, The Heron's Nest
You may or may not like this haiku. But whether or not I produced a worthy haiku, I had a great walk, one that was enhanced by the practice of focusing my attention on the mallard's love talk, of paying attention to the stream of associations that flowed from that experience.
The Japanese haiku greats like Bashô [Matsuo Bashô, 1644-1694] were wandering monks. In his mid-30s, Bashô spent years traveling the Japanese countryside visiting Buddhist monasteries and holy places. The name Bashô (banana tree) is a sobriquet he adopted around 1681 after moving into a simple hut with a banana tree alongside. Influenced by Buddhist precepts, his haiku captured those fleeting, momentary sensations on the edge of perception to which we don't normally give our attention. Here's Bashô using his perceptions to describe life as a series of connected associations:
now the swinging bridge
is quieted with creepers
like our tendrilled life
~ Bashô
We urban dwellers spend our lives in workplaces, shopping malls, local parks, city streets and small towns, not in the countryside as Bashô did. But that doesn't mean that our everyday experiences don't contain haiku moments or that we can't write haiku based on those moments. An examination of the haiku found in journals like Simply Haiku informs us that such places are also the stuff from which good haiku can be composed, in which the haiku process can be engaged. Here are some examples of urban based haiku from a recent issue of Simply Haiku (Summer 2006, vol 4 no 2):
one to nothing
a full moon shines above
the centerfield scoreboard
~ Ed Markowski
recipes fall
from granny's book . . .
a chill wind
~ Sandra Simpson
first light...
fog settles
in the empty benches
~ Mark Smith
The haiku process encourages a more meditative focus: stopping, noticing, contemplating; in short, paying greater attention than we might otherwise. I've learned to take short notes based on impressions of places that I visit. Later, back at my desk, the composition of the haiku itself is an additional meditative experience involving remembering, re-experiencing, composing.
I had but 17 syllables in which to attempt a description of my 'haiku moment' in the forest with the mallards. As I continued my walk, and then later at my desk, I played with phrases, and did my best to eliminate the natural tendency to interpret with phrases like: 'a beautiful mallard,' 'his wonderful, raspy call,' 'the delicious afternoon silence,' 'the Louis Armstrong sexiness of the drake's call,' -- each of these phrases tells about rather than shows the moment. Instead, I attempted to present the moment in such a way that a person reading the poem might have an imagined or remembered experience akin to the immediacy of my own. It is this process of presenting as if there that creates the meditative focus of haiku.
As George Marsh puts it: "A . . . way in which the art of haiku is quite different from the poetry of the West is in its attitude to description. A haiku poet . . . refers, rather than describes. A simple naming will do, if it brings to mind the reader's memory of an experience." Marsh provides this example of a haiku by Koji:
Autumn sunset glow
on the playground
where no one plays
~ Koji, trans. Chiyoko/Marsh
On reading it, I am immediately transported to the special feelings I've had when I've viewed a playground empty of children. It's what one might call an archetypal symbol. Marsh writes: "The best haiku have metaphorical power, because the concrete observation which is the subject has wider resonance. In this sense the haiku poet is like a great photographer: the art is in the selection. One could photograph everything and anything, but only those images that catch a universal significance, that show some balance of forces, are worth publishing."
In sum, my own excursion into haiku suggests that it's the process itself that is most important—a process that is a meditative practice. Observing more closely, concentrating while composing, reading haiku, are all gifts handed from these early practitioners that can help us to cope more successfully with the stresses of modern life.
And, if I can also manage to write haiku that editors find worthy of publication and that others will read—yes, that adds a particular kind of pleasure. It's the sharing of deep experiences with other writers and readers that moves us beyond the mundane chit-chat pervading today's fast paced urban life.
Notes:
Bashô's haiku is taken from the website, An Introduction to Haiku:
http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Island/5022/
Information about Bashô is taken from Haiku for People & Encarta Poetry websites:
http://www.toyomasu.com/haiku/#basho
http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761568296_3/Poetry.html
Ray Rasmussen's Kurimoto Japanese Garden website is found here:
http://raysweb.net/japanesegardens
George Marsh, "Metaphor, simile and stylistic ornament", is on the In the Moonlight a Worm website:
http://www.haiku.insouthsea.co.uk/metaphor.htm
Ray Rasmussen is managing editor of contemporary haibun on line and haibun editor of the World Haiku Review. His haiku, haibun and haiga have been published in Simply Haiku, the World Haiku Review, Heron's Nest, Contemporary Haibun (print journal), contemporary haibun online, tiny words and Haiku Harvest. His web site is : http://raysweb.net/haiku/.
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