Posts Tagged haiku

(copyright © m.a.h. hinton)

After a dry winter here in the North Country, April brought the kind of moisture we have been needing. Whether it was wet enough to off-set the dry autumn and winter, I do not know. But I do know that lawns are green again, and in the shady areas of the little woods behind our neighborhood the ground is rich brown and muddy again.

The old saying came to mind often during National Poetry Month, “April showers bring May flower.” And so for the month of May, MontanaWriter will be featuring poems about flowers… and a few photos I have taken over the years of flowers and plants.

Emily Dickinson wrote a number of poems about flowers, of course. There are many I could have picked to feature here. Yet since “How Many Flowers  is the one that came first to mind, I will post it here.

I must have first read this poem sometime in my late teens in an Introduction to English Literature class or an American Literature survey class as an undergrad. I suppose I may even have read it earlier in an English text book in high school. It is that familiar to me.

But maybe it is merely her poetry that is familiar to me, her voice. It is as familiar a poetic voice as exists in the English language. The best description of Dickinson’s voice I have read comes from John Barr, President of the Poetry Foundation:

Every great poet writes in a voice that is unmistakably his or hers. When we hear the high, tragic diction of Homer or Yeats, or the urgent but colloquial voice of Dante, who speaks to us in The Inferno as if we saw him on the street just yesterday, or the boisterous, almost overly familiar diction of Walt Whitman, we don’t need to know the poet’s name to know who it is speaking. Emily Dickson’s voice is equally unmistakable. We hear it as if it is coming from the next room. It is a contemporary voice—quiet, contemplative, but also passionate. In fact, the voice is slyly provocative. It never plays into our expectations; rather, it uses the unexpected as a principal conversational tactic. The rhymes are there so we know it’s a poem, but they are there sparingly. The rhythms are there, as well, but they are not mechanical, like a metronome. Her poems wear form, but they wear it lightly. They suffer form, but are not beholden to it. ~ John Barr

Barr is right. In English, only Yeats and Whitman (and Frost, perhaps) are as instantly identifiable to our ears as Dickinson… and but neither Yeats nor Whitman is truly  beloved. They are admired, revered, respected, worshipped, studied… but not beloved. Only Frost, I think, is in the same category of Dickinson as being both instantly familiar and beloved.

Dickinson does the small poem better than anyone in English. It is a kind of American haiku. It is language and image and meaning and rhythm as compressed as they can be compressed.

On the first day of May, Dickinson seems like just the thing.

Enjoy!

How Many Flowers Fail in Wood
How many Flowers fail in Wood —
Or perish from the Hill —
Without the privilege to know
That they are Beautiful —

How many cast a nameless Pod
Upon the nearest Breeze —
Unconscious of the Scarlet Freight —
It bear to Other Eyes —

Listening with a pencil and my ear, these are the lines I marked:

How many Flowers fail in Wood —
Or perish from the Hill —
Without the privilege to know
That they are Beautiful —

As is always the case with a small poem, it is difficult to pick just a few lines to highlight. Yet I choose this first stanza for its familiarity, its tonal-definition, and its beauty. They are quintessential Dickinson lines: the alliteration of “flowers” and “fail”, and “that” and “they”; the vowel pairings of “how” and “flower”, and  ”fail” and “hill”; the complimentarianism of “perish” and “privilege”. All of that culminating in what seems to me to be the most Dickinsonian of all words, “Beautiful.”

(copyright © m.a.h. hinton)

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Matsuo Basho

With the tragedies in Japan this week, my mind has been on Matsuo Basho again. The beauty of his poems lies in his ability to encapsulate perfectly a single moment/thought.

Until this week I had never noticed how much his poems seem like prayers of praise and lamentation. Their humanity and beauty shine through even the roughest of translations.

How Admirable
How admirable!
to see lightning and not think
life is fleeting.

Moonlight slanting
Moonlight slanting
through the bamboo grove;
a cuckoo crying.

This old village
This old village–
not a single house
without persimmon trees.

Stillness
Stillness–
the cicada’s cry
drills into the rocks.

First Day of Spring
First day of spring–
I keep thinking about
the end of autumn.

Spring Rain
Spring rain
leaking through the roof
dripping from the wasps’ nest.

Cold Night
Cold night: the wild duck,
sick, falls from the sky
and sleeps awhile.

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The long dark night is ending

For baseball fans, can there be any words sweeter than these: “pitchers and catcher report”?

Spring training means hope and the end of darkness. It means that long afternoons and warm nights will come again. It means that even this, the longest and coldest  winters in memory, will soon pass. Baseball is about to begin!

In honor of the unofficial end of winter and the beginning of spring– in Florida and Arizona at least–  MontanaWriter is pleased to feature a number of baseball haiku.

Baseball and haiku are a perfect match. Both are deceptively simple… yet for anyone who has tried their hand at baseball or writing haiku it is quickly clear that they are both difficult undertakings. Both are games of numbers. Both require patience, attention, and a mindfulness. And both are rooted in the pastoral. And most of all, both are enjoyable.

Today’s baseball haikus were written by baseball aficionado, Jared Linsly. Jerry is a regular reader and commenter to MontanaWriter and our  “go-to guy” for all things baseball.

Enjoy!

Selected Baseball Haiku, by Jared Linsly

Mid-February
Pitchers, catchers report now
Life reverts to youth

Rejuvenation!
Winter’s melancholy gone
Spring Training is here!

Ball strikes bat and glove
Grills and grass release their scents
Pastime lures faithful

Crowd noise from bleachers
Swells as hurler makes his stretch
Lingering suspense

Ball hurtling home
Batter coils expectantly
Explosion unleashed

Enough of Winter!
Beisbol numero uno!
Hot Stove burns brightly

Two-Thousand-Ten gone
Twins need to bolster mound corps
Spring Training impends

New season is nigh
White Sox have tossed the gauntlet
Twins need clutch offense

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Haiku of Matsuo Basho on Autumn

Matsuo Basho was the most famous poet of his day (1644-1694). He is considered the greatest master of the haiku form. His haikus may be the most well-known and most-translated.

For those of us who do not read Japanese, we can only read him in translation. The subtle differences in translating his small poems from Japanese creates amazing variations when they are published in English. You can find the same poem translated many, many different ways, depending ultimately on the translators ear and own writing skills. I have seen some translations of Basho and other haiku poets that I especially like by poet Robert Hass. If Hass’ translations are accurate I cannot say. I can only say that I like the result.

Here are a few poems by Basho that seem apropos to winter and the New Year. I do not know the translators on these, though I suspect that Hass could have done one or two of them.

Enjoy!

First Snow
First snow
falling
on the half-finished bridge.

First Winter Rain
First winter rain–
even the monkey
seems to want a raincoat.

A Monk Sips Morning Tea
A monk sips morning tea,
it’s quiet,
the chrysanthemum’s flowering.

Awake At Night
Awake at night–
the sound of the water jar
cracking in the cold.

Basho’s Death Poem
Sick on my journey,
only my dreams will wander
these desolate moors

On New Year’s Day
On New Year’s Day
each thought a loneliness
as winter dusk descends

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from One Hundred Famous Views of Edo

I have often thought that the small poem is more difficult to write than the longer one. It is a matter of compressing meaning, emotion, and metaphor into a smaller and smaller space without losing what matters most… and without the whole thing blowing up. Most of the time when I read small poems I am reminded of the old expression: 100 pounds of manure in a 50 pound bag.

Haiku is the most familiar small poetic form. It is one of the first forms we are taught and one of the easiest to understand. Three lines with syllables numbered as follows:
5
7
5

What could be easier. Right? Until you spend a little time trying your hand at them again. When you do, the difficulty becomes apparent – the 50 pound sack quickly overflows.

For awhile now I have been looking at haiku and other small poetic forms and trying my hand again at them. Trying to shake the rust off… to stir things up.

There are a few good websites that highlight the small poem. My current favorite features one haiku or small poem a day. It is called TinyWords. Take a look.

In the meantime from the “for what it’s worth department,” I am including two Montana haiku’s I have recently written.

Enjoy!

I.
cottonwoods shimmer
mountains greet the climbing sky
a heron fishes

~  ~  ~

II.
The Missouri turns
toward the rising sun. Heron
turns to greet the day.

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