Bridging Cultural Gaps

Instead of expressing what they want to, some try poetry. Some find poetry fit to speak of what they observe, and to suggest a lot too. Poetry can also give rise to joy of being succinct and snappy, and paint with words, so to speak. As there are many painting styles, there are many poetry styles, and room for much experimentation too.

This page heads a series of haiku poems by famous haiku writers - Basho, Buson, Issa, and Shiki - they are all here along with others.

In a Station of the Metro
The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.
– Ezra Pound

In this haiku (poem) by a Western poet, the title is an integral part of the whole. Other Western poets too have sought to capture of the haiku tradition, if not its metre. Adaptations have resulted.

Haiku

A haiku is a shorthand-looking poem, traditionally with a seasonal reference, but not always. The word haiku (plural: haiku) comes from Japan. It is an unrhymed verse form and hokku is another name for it. Haiku poems have only three lines and may read very much like telegrams.

The haiku (hokku) was derived from the tanka poem. The haiku form first derived as its three opening lines. The content may contain allusions arrived at in another culture, that is, some words stand for (symbolise) something else, suggest something else, or refer to it.

In Japan, haiku gradually changed with time. Some knowledge of Japanese culture is good for appreciating these aspects and perhaps enhancing our appreciation of works in this genre, but is far from necessary. Being oneself is necessary. True appreciation stems from that, naturally. It can be enlarged by such as knowledge of the culture, but first things first.

Along with over a hundred haiku, there is brief mention of some details of the old craft and for forming its content. However, Japanese is a more syllabic language in construction than English, and there are not good enough reasons to make metre and syllables a strait-jacket for one's expression, I figure. Still, the terse suggestiveness of haiku has inspired Western artists, in part as Japanese woodcuts and paintings have inspired famous European painters from the 1800s and onward. Artists have approached and in some cases imitated the impromptu-looking, but calculated haiku style. It may resemble modernist poetry and lyrics in some of its facets. Some warm-up lines are next in line:

~ೞ⬯ೞ~

Resembling Poetry and Lyrics

I Wandered Lonely As a Cloud
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills
When all at once I saw a crowd
A host, of golden daffodils . . .
– William Wordsworth

Haiku-like:

Brightened Up Somewhat
I wandered lonely,
tearful, gloomy
Lo! yellow daffodils.
– Interpretation
Birds and Fishes
Millions of little fish come along the shore.
Coasting this granite edge of the continent
On their lawful occasions: but what a festival for the sea-fowl
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Man's fate and theirs.
– Robinson Jeffers

Haiku variant:

Man's Fate
Little fish
Entering the coastal waters
Soon feasted on by sea-birds.
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
11
He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For blackbirds.
– Wallace Stevens
Rivers and Mountains
The bird flew over and
Sat - there was nothing else to do
Do not mistake its silence for pride or strength
Or the waterfall for a harbor.
– John Ashberry
And One for My Dame
I sit at my desk
each night with no place to go,
opening the wrinkled maps of Milwaukee and Buffalo
– Anne Sexton
Aubade
Outside, a heavy frost–dark
footprints in the brittle
grass; a cat's.
– Richard Kenney

Song lyrics approach haiku at times too.

Desolation Row
Good Samaritan, he's dressing
He's getting ready for the show
He's going to the carnival tonight
On Desolation Row
– Bob Dylan
Summer in the City
Cool town, evening in the city
Dressed so fine and looking so pretty
Cool cat, looking for a kitty
– The Lovin' Spoonfuls

The lines above are either verbatim quotations, verses with parts left out as shown, and lines with some words left out with no signs whatever. Wordsworth's poem goes on. The lines of Jeffers are selected from inside his poem. The verse by Stevens is quoted verbatim; it is one of thirteen "pieces". A few lines from an Ashbury poem are quoted verbatim, as are the ones by Anne Sexton and Kenney, and Dylan. Our lines from a song by Cohen, on the other hand, are shortened here.

✑ On to Haiku of Basho