Haiku revisited

I was recently in de Reyghere, the bookshop in the Markt, when my eye was caught by a slim The Narrow Road to the North and Other Travel Sketches, containing some of the writings of Matsuo Basho, a Japanese poet and diarist born near Kyoto in Japan in 1644. Reputedly the son of a samurai and confirmed as a scholar, he became both a wanderer and a teacher as well as a writer. He shared his reflections and truths obtained through meditation on his long walks. In his writing he was strongly influenced by the Zen sect of Buddhism. I think the book [published in 1966] was in a Reduced display which is probably why it caught my eye, but when I eventually opened it to read, I was charmed to discover that the Introduction by Nobuyuki Yuasa was entirely on Haiku, tracing an accessible history of its development and its form as well as telling the story of Matsuo himself. Matsuo Basho was one of the most famed traditional Japanese poets, one of a group known as The Great Four and their work remains as a model for today’s budding Haiku poets. Basho himself is still revered for his wisdom and for his writing.

A particular word can have a similar effect on the consciousness to a fragrance in its potency to trigger recall. I hadn’t thought of Haiku for years but memories flooded back of my using Haiku in the English language classroom to interest, even inspire, reluctant teenage poets!! But first, a word or two about Haiku.

What is a haiku? It is a three line, beautifully descriptive form of Japanese poetry, intended to be read in one breath. It does not rhyme but traditionally has five syllables in line one; seven syllables in line two and five in line three; punctuation and the use of capital letters is left to the writer. It can include repetition of words or sounds but it tries to feature an emotional or intuitive leap on the second and third lines where there may be a gap; something deliberately left out. The last line is often used to make an observation on the first two lines. Often, haiku subjects are based on a celebration of Nature or perhaps abstract subjects like happiness, although Basho insisted that the emotion of a haiku was not written but was only the emotion aroused in the reader. Modern haiku focus on simple yet sensory language, trying to create a brief moment in time and a sense of illumination, the structures can be looser and traditional rules ignored.

 Matsuo Basho
by Yosa Buson
1716-1764

This sounds complicated and though examples appear simple, Haiku IS more complex. My pupils enjoyed the basics simply because they could count syllables and it was, mostly, for them, the ingenious finding and grouping of words/syllables to fit the subject and the 5-7-5 structure, crucially [for them] without rhyme. In the hands of a Master, of course, it is much more. Interestingly in the little Basho book, many, many of the examples do not fit the exact traditional structure; many are of four lines length but this may well be because of the translation from Japanese to English. The actual word, Haiku, for instance, has two syllables in English but three in Japanese!

Two examples of Basho’s most famous poems are the ' silent pond' above and:

On a withered branch

A crow has alighted
Nightfall in Autumn.
                                   

 An early twentieth century haiku by Japanese 

poet, Natsume Soseki

Over the wintry forest

winds howl in rage

with no leaves to blow.

A modern Western haiku from The New Haiku edited by John Barlow and Martin Lewis:

empty cafe

he hangs a spoon

on the waitress’s nose. (Sounds as if they are getting friendly! AND no 5-7-5 here.)

And one of my inexpert attempts, just written:

Wait! I will show you

Warm brick wall with flowers wreathed.

My terrace; my pride!

Criticism of my effort above is undoubtedly centred on the rampant emotion in line 3. Oh dear. Basho's whole existence and practice exuded humility!

Part of the terrace in June