Haiku
| 2 › 2 › 4 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Bridging Cultural Gaps
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 MetroIn this haiku (poem) by a Western poet, the 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.
The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.
— Ezra Pound
A haiku is a shorthand-looking poem, traditionally with a seasonal reference, but not always. Instead of expressing what they want to, some try poetry. 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:
Resembling Poetry and Lyrics
I Wandered Lonely As a CloudHe says in effect: I wandered lonely and cloudily / Lo! yellow daffodils. The terse presentation is a haiku.
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 variant:
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
Man's FateSong lyrics approach haiku at times too.
Little fish,
Entering the coastal waters,
Are soon eaten 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
Desolation RowThe 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.
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
Tonight Will Be Fine
Undressing for me,
she's the soft naked lady love meant her to be
moving her body so brave and free.
— Leonard Cohen
 |
Literature
Encyclopaedia Britannica. Encyclopaedia Britannica 2007 Ultimate Reference Suite DVD. London: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2007.
Fergusson, Margaret, et al. The Norton Anthology of Poetry. 4th ed. New York: Norton, 1996.
Levenson, Michael, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Modernism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
 |
 |
 |
 |
USER'S GUIDE to abbreviations, the site's large bibliography, letter codes, dictionaries, site design and navigation, tips for searching the site and page referrals. [LINK]
DISCLAIMER: To help us out: [LINK]
© 1996–2007, Tormod Kinnes. All rights reserved. [E-MAIL]