Haiku
Labyrinth
Jane
Reichhold begins the foreword to Writing and Enjoying
Haiku with: Though the word enjoying
is the third word in the title of this book, for me enjoying
anything and everything is the primary function of our lives
(7). Reichhold has been an active member of the English-language
haiku community for decades. By focusing her discussion
of haiku on enjoyment, she gets us out of the pseudo-Zen
business that permeates some other books on the subject.
However, theres at least as much trouble afoot in Writing and Enjoying Haiku as in any other guide
to writing haiku published recently.
Consider,
for example, the first haiku she presents, by
her own hand (8):
silence
between words
stories
Aside
from the extreme brevity and short-long-short rhythm, one
has to look very hard to find any hint of haiku in this
poem. (a) It is a general statement. (b) It has nothing
to do with the seasonal cycle or nature outside of human
nature. (c) There is no concrete image. The definitions
or descriptions of haiku that I know of would exclude this
on any one of these grounds, much less all of them. Not
even Reichholds own online essay Another Attempt
to Define Haiku suggests that a poem may go this far
away from haiku ideals and remain a haiku (<http://www.
ahapoetry.com/haidefjr.htm>).
Reichhold
boldly goes where no one else would ever have thought to
go with simple factual material as well. After a lengthy
paragraph about the differences between haiku in Japanese
and haiku in other languages, she takes note of one particular
Japanese response to the situation:
Finally, in 2000, one of the largest haiku groups in Japanthe
Shiki Salon of Matsuyama Universityissued a manifesto
decreeing that non-Japanese haiku were not required to contain
a kigo or season word. (25)
Yes,
the latter half of the sentence is true, but no, not one
of the particulars mentioned in the first half of the sentence,
before the second dash, is factual. The sentence should
read:
Finally, at the Shimanamikaido 99 Haiku Convention
held in Matsuyama in September 1999, sponsored by the Ehime
Culture Foundation, a group of Japanese and international
haiku poets and scholars issued The Matsuyama Declaration,
saying among other things that non-Japanese haiku were not
required to contain a kigo or season word.
The
Matsuyama Declaration is available online, at
http://www.ecf.or.jp/shiki/1999/matsuyama-dec.html
[no longer available]
and
the site clearly states when, where, how, and at whose hands
it came into being. The Ehime (pronounced eh-hee-may)
Culture Foundation is a quasi-government agency of Ehime
prefecture (= state or province
in North American terms).
By
contrast, the group responsible for the Shiki Haiku Salon,
which was indeed hosted at that time on the Matsuyama University
Web site, consists of five to eight individuals who operate
a series of Web-based discussion groups. The most prominent
of these, the Shiki List (recently re-established
under the name NOBO), has involved a few hundred
English-speaking online participants worldwide. The Shiki
Haiku Salon never was a large haiku group in Japan.
The groups online activities continue, now hosted
at Ehime Universitys Web site,
http://haiku.cc.
ehime-u.ac.jp/
Reichholds
paragraphs frequently mix facts and misunderstandings in
a topsy-turvy weave that takes considerable work to clarify,
as in this passage on senryu (the asterisk indicates the
omission of Reichholds spurious pronunciation guide;
in five short, clipped syllables, the word is pronounced
something like ma-eh-coo-zoo-kay):
In
Japan, it is clear to anyone that a senryû is a haiku-like
verse that lacks a kigo or season word. Because the senryû
grew out of the practice of the maekuzuke [*]a game
of poetry in which bar patrons attempted to write a response
link to a poets hokku based on vulgarity and saloon
humorthe genre is yet today seen as much less a high
art than haiku. Haiku are signed with the authors
name; senryû are notfor obvious reasons. (40)
To
take up the first and last sentences together: Both haiku
and senryu appear routinely in popular weekly magazines
in Japan with authors names. Sections of senryu anthologies
from the earliest times have celebrated the seasons, as
in the following poem, translated by Makoto Ueda, from his
book Light Verse from the Floating World: An Anthology
of Premodern Japanese Senryu, where it appears in a
substantial chapter entitled Let Us Laugh with the
Seasons (Columbia University Press, 1999, 207):
asleep
on the ground
holding a spray of blossoms
an elegant drunkard
Also,
R.H. Blyths biggest book on the subject, Japanese
Life and Character in Senryu (Hokuseido, 1960), devotes
ten percent of its 600 pages to senryu by the seasons. In
fact, not very many years ago, a leading modern senryu poet,
Byakko Okuda, published a widely-distributed Senryû
saijiki (Sôgensha, rev. ed., 1987). This 1,000-page,
seasonally-organized book presents clear explanations of
seasonal phenomena and some 10,00015,000 senryu illustrating
them, just like a haiku saijiki. (One wonders how many seasonal
senryu it would take to dispel the myth that no senryu have
season words.) All of the poems in Senryû saijiki are signed with their authors full names (often
pen names, just as haiku poets often use pen names). So,
presence or absence of a season word does not define and
has never defined Japanese senryu, and most experienced
Japanese haiku poets know it. Anyway, Reichholds its
clear to anyone approach usually fails when used to
discover information about cultural phenomena; try asking
random people in a New York subway during rush hour what
is a limerick, and how is it different from a sonnet?
In
the passage quoted above, Reichholds longish middle
sentence involves several misstatements of fact and a kind
of snobbery. To take it piece-by-piece: Because the
senryû grew out of the practice of the maekuzuke
okay
so far. [A] game of poetry in which bar patrons attempted
to write a response linkthe word attempted
seems gratuitous; indeed, the patrons of Edo-Era teahouses
did write response verses. One Japanese book in my collection
contains about 40,000 such verses from the Edo Era (Senryû
zappai shû, Nihon Meicho Zenshû Kankôkai,
1927).
Going
on, the sentence continues to a poets hokkunot
really; a hokku is the starting verse of a linked poem;
the challenge verse or maeku of maekuzuke was specifically
conceived of as a possible interior verse of a linked poem,
rather than as the first. The leaders of such games normally
wrote their maeku in two phrases of seven sounds
each, not the typical 575 form of a hokku. [B]ased
on vulgarity and saloon humoryes, what we now
call senryu were among the more common or vulgar
of haikai verses, but in the Edo Era all haikai verses were
considered common or vulgar in the
sense that they generally did not aspire to the high sentiments
and restricted diction and subject matter of the courtly
waka. Finally, Reichhold states the genre is yet today
seen as much less a high art than haikuyes,
by some snobbish haiku poets. In fact, however, the single
most prominent Japanese haiku poeta national celebrity
and president emeritus of the Modern Haiku Association,
Tohta Kanekohas often collaborated with other top
haiku and senryu poets to produce popular TV shows. I hardly
think Americans need to adopt the snobbish attitudes of
lesser Japanese haiku poets.
I
have taken apart this particular paragraph of Reichholds
book at length to illustrate the incredibly interwoven texture
of half-truths, biases, and ignorance that occurs here and
there throughout Writing and Enjoying Haiku. Here
are some other problems one comes across in the book, especially
noteworthy where Reichhold veers off her main topic into
advising readers about copyright and publishing. Speaking
of other people stealing an authors work, Reichhold
says Changing one word or inverting the line order
makes the poem new, and no longer yours (90). While
some participants in grammar school haiku contests may try
this, such deliberate plagiarisms soon come to light if
published, and are universally despised throughout the literary
world, not just the narrow niche of haiku. (In Japanese
haiku, poets may borrow a line or image from an earlier
poem, but this practice is not as simple as what Reichhold
describes.)
Reichhold discusses a number of alternative methods of sharing
haiku with others, but here again, she cant keep her
facts straight. For example, she notes that Australia
has adopted the practice from Japan of carving famous haiku
on large boulders (100). Actually, the town of Katikati,
New Zealand, boasts the riverside park where haiku grace
boulders along a haiku paththe only such
assemblage that I know of (I have a poem there myself);
in Japan, haiku are carved into haiku stonesoften
vertical posts or obelisks four to six feet tallnot
large or unfinished boulders.
In
talking about publishing, Reichhold describes the code that
uniquely identifies every trade book as an ISBNan
International System Book Number (95); correctly,
it is an International Standard Book Number, as the documents
assigning such numbers to each publisher clearly indicate.
Reichhold operates a fairly substantial small press herself,
and you would think she would at least pay more attention
to the everyday terms of her trade. What is worse is that
no editor at the publishing house caught this rather minor,
yet glaringand easily fixederror.
Another,
less obvious misstatement occurs when Reichhold discusses
the lengths of linked poems in Japanese: . . . it
is no wonder that [Bashô] devised a renga form using
only thirty-six links (125). In fact, as Donald Keene
observes, The [kasen] form . . . goes back to the
fifteenth century, but it first acquired importance in the
seventeenth century with such men as Saitô Tokugen
(15591647), who described the essentials of kasen
composition in Haikai shogaku-shô (1641) (World
Within Walls: Japanese Literature of the Pre-Modern Era
16001867, Secker & Warburg, 1976, 109). Note
that Tokugens work appeared three years before Bashô
was born. While the kasen form for linked poems certainly
typifies Bashôs works in the genre, he was its
perfecter, not its inventor.
Later,
in a brief section on The American Form of Rengay
(14849), after an erroneous and unneeded guide to
the words obvious pronunciation, Reichhold states
that the form was invented in the mid 1990s;
it was invented in 1992. She goes on to describe the form,
in rather confusing terms, as a sequence of six alternating
three- and two-line stanzas, 323232.
In fact, the sequence of stanzas in a two-person rengay
consists of lines arranged thus: 323323.
In other words, there are only two two-line stanzas, each
centered in its respective half of the whole poem. This
new pattern of stanza lengths and the thematic unity of
rengay set it apart from Japanese-style linked poems. Reichhold
also fails to name the forms inventor, Garry Gay.
Some
of the errors discussed above were spotted in random openings
of Writing and Enjoying Haiku, before I sat down
to read it through. They are not alone. Seeming technicalities
aside, one should ask how well Writing and Enjoying Haiku delivers on its prime objective, helping readers to enjoy
and write haiku. The fifty-page chapter entitled The
Guide to Haiku Writing has some good points. Reichhold
merrily debunks the tendencies of some authorities
to write lists of haiku rules or dos and donts
by promulgating her own lists of rules, which often pointedly
contradict each other. For example, in one list the first
six rules all deal with counting syllables,
and are mutually exclusive. Another list of nineteen items
provides some useful ideas about revising haiku. Reichholds
list-making gets away from her, however, with twenty-four
techniques for writing haiku, many of which
seem minor variations on one another, or which ignore the
time-honored vocabulary used to name and discuss such things.
She does not seem to understand the meanings of such words
as metaphor and simile, for example.
As for the haiku dotted here and theretoo infrequently
for my taste in such a bookthe main question seems
to be, as always, are these good haiku for beginners to
read and emulate? Despite the incredible miscue of the first
poem in the book, cited at the beginning of this review,
many of the poems here come off quite passably, both as
to their immediate purposes and as haiku qua haiku. Still,
some of the poems seem written to suit the need of the moment,
and suffer for it. For example,
long
hard rain
hanging in the willows
tender new leaves
This
poem exemplifies The Technique of Contrast,
which Reichhold explains thus: All one has to do is
contrast images (56). Unfortunately, while these images
contrast quite well on their own, Reichhold has not applied
item 9 from her own Checklist for Revising Haiku
to this poem: Is there any word that could be removed
without losing the sense of the verse? (74). What
is lost if we remove tender from the last line
of this poem? Nothing, except perhaps the extremely obvious
way the poem satisfies the condition that the images contrast,
with the words hard and tender in
opening and closing lines. I would argue that omitting tender
allows the actual tenderness of the new leaves
to grow more strongly in the readers mind, thereby
enhancing the contrast.
One
would hope that most of the instruction rises above such
obvious set-ups, and some does. Reichhold provides an unusual
comment on Bashôs old chestnut, the pond/frog
poem, as follows:
old
pond
a frog jumps into
the sound of water . . .
The
mind puzzle this haiku creates is how to separate the frog
from the water, the sound of water from the water, the frog
from the sound it will make entering the water, and the
sound from the old pond. It cannot be done because all these
factors are one, but the reader arrives at this truth through
the jolt of having the senses scrambled. (58)
It
would have been better had Reichhold identified logic, rather
than the senses, as being scrambled here, and unfortunately
she wrongly classifies this as an example of synesthesia
(taking one sensation as if perceived by a different sensory
mode, such as colors of music or sweet
pain). Her version of Bashôs poem, however,
comes far closer to the original than most translations,
and the mind puzzle certainly does exist in
the original, though it fails to show up in most of those
other translations.
Reichhold
is quite capable of the occasional striking and original
haiku, as here (60):
strawberry
another red tongue
on mine
Rather
confusingly, however, in a lengthy paragraph of pure rhetorical
invention, she identifies the technique in this poem as
similenot metaphor as would
be correct.
In
addition to the many annoying errors mentioned above, Reichholds
book has one major disadvantage: she wrote virtually all
the sample poems in it herself. Thus, a reader new to haiku
cannot discover how others solved various compositional
problems, or even judge whether her poems actually represent
the genre very well (like the one immediately above, her
best tend to be emotionally or erotically charged). A Japanese
haiku guide written this way would never see print, unless
perhaps self-published. (I am told in a personal communication
from the author that this was not Reichholds original
intention, but that the publisher talked her into it because
of time and space considerations. Perhaps these same considerations
discouraged fact-checking.)
Reichholds Writing and Enjoying Haiku also has one major advantage.
Much of the best material in the book appears, perhaps in
slightly different form, on her Web site, including her
various lists (see the pages indexed at <http://www.ahapoetry.com/haiku.htm>).
And she knowsunlike Coomler and Bruce Ross [see
my review of his book, How To Haiku, in MH 33.3]that
growing haiku readers and writers need a wide range of other
resources. To handle this, she refers readers to a special
section of her Web site devoted to augmenting the book,
saying Conventionally, in this part of the book, the
reader just finds long lists of more books to read.
I have compiled one of those listsabout forty pages
long. To save a few trees, that complete list has been put
on the Web (http://www.ahapoetry.com/aguide)
(156). This online resource guide not only lists an extensive
array of books without comment, but has a more helpful annotated
list of haiku resources on the Web. It is the best part
of the book. Aside from that, I cannot recommend this book
to those newly interested in haiku.
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