Fumbling Forward

As I continue to fiddle with the final version of A Few Words on the Way, I think I'll post excerpts from each of the book's sections, so that anyone who may be curious can get a sample of whatever it is I'm up to. The first half of the book consists of a more or less traditional seasonal cycle, beginning of course with spring, so below are half a dozen bits from that part. I hope you like them.

This may also be a good place for a few words on haiku itself, and the approach I've taken to it in terms of form, content, and overall aesthetic. The genre as a whole is conversational, originating as it did in long verse exchanges between members of the Medieval Japanese literati, taking place sometimes over single evenings and sometimes over years—more on this facet in a later post. In terms of formal requirements, the most familiar is of course the 5-7-5 syllabic pattern. Other elements include a season word and a turn, that is, a word that evokes a specific season without naming it, and a point that functions as a pivot in terms of theme or imagery and thus gives a sense of inner motion. The imagery, drawing on the long traditions of both Japanese and Chinese poetry, tends to be nature-based and concrete, and the language terse with minimal grammatical indicators. The poem does not paint a picture of what was in the composer's mind at the time of composition, so much as cause an image to arise and then subside in motions of the reader's consciousness.

These words may sound strange, but they're philosophically precise, anchored as they are in both Zen and Taoist thought not only on mind but also on cosmology. In both of these thought worlds, all presence—all phenomena (or if you prefer, all being)—arises from, and subsides back into absence (or if you prefer, into non-being). But non-being is not an absolute lack as it tends to be in Western thought; rather, it's the productive potential both preceding and following any given instance of presence: at once source and destination. This applies equally to specific concrete phenomena, and at one extreme to the entire Cosmos and at the other extreme to consciousness itself, all without the need or even the place for a transcendent agency (or if you prefer, for a prime mover or first cause): a position that incidentally aligns pretty well with the current best empirical understanding of both Cosmos and consciousness. The fleetingness of the experience of the poem thus also evokes, in the philosophically informed reader, the fleetingness of both the mind that experiences it and the world in which the experience occurs. In other words, there is an art to reading haiku that is almost as subtle as the art of writing them: these are short poems, but not necessarily easy ones.

I hope this line of thought isn't too pedantic, but the truth is, I'm neither a writer nor a scholar. If we are what we do—and both the ruthless clarity and the ephemerality of that definition appeal to me—then I am a teacher and a father, neither of which I ever intended to be until I found myself doing them (this, too, is arising and subsiding). And as I'm a teacher of literature on the one hand, and on the other (again quite by accident) of several worldviews that remain uncommon in Western classrooms but some of which are present in this genre and these poems, it's probably natural that I spend a little time in that mode.

Regarding the haiku in English, there are two broad schools of thought, which I suppose we can call traditional and freestyle. The traditional approach is exactly what it sounds like, with practitioners generally sticking close to the formal and thematic requirements of Japanese haiku. Variations are not unheard of, but always occur against a backdrop of those assumed norms. But the norms are, of course, both culturally and linguistically specific, and various writers to various degrees have found that they could approach the heart of the genre more effectively by jettisoning some or even most of its formal elements. So a freestyle haiku will always be a very short poem, probably but not necessarily consisting of three lines, which will themselves be short but not confined to the 5-7-5 structure (usually, the lines are shorter). It may lack a season word, and may or may not have a turn. An excellent exemplar of this approach was Jack Kerouac. As for the poems here, they fall mainly into the traditional school as I find that the metrical constraints stimulate my brain in productive and pleasurable ways, so while I don't follow the classical approach strictly, most of the pieces in this collection will at least look the way most readers expect haiku to look. Subject matter and tone, though, will vary.

Also, I say “fuck” a lot.

From 'Part One: Within Seasons: Spring'

another snow day:

first day of spring my hairy

Canadian ass

 

blue sky and slow wind—

snowmen slouch in the backyard

emaciated

grey snow dirty streets

not spring so much as winter

terminally ill

over-stuffed river

crammed with four months' snow recedes:

log, carved heart, a name

clearcut under rain

shattered limbs grey roots bare rock—

flash of a blue jay

 

crab apple blossoms

locked in hard buds: cardinal

startles red from air