15 Aug 22 – Haiku Womankind # 11

BREATHLESS AFTER 17 SYLLABLES
Book-length epic poems such as The Odyssey dazzle with their adventurous tales. Sonnets about love and idyllic fields of wildflowers tickle lovers’ fancies. The villanelle and the decima impress with their technical complexities. So, who needs a poem of just seventeen syllables? Anyone who wants a poem that can leave the listener breathless, dropping off the edge of reason into the bliss of found wisdom. If done with both simplicity yet intensity, attention to the natural world, to the marking seconds of our life, to depths of no-meaning in every hour, haiku can leave the reader, the listener, breathless, even awed. Yes. In just seventeen syllables.

Background
As early as the 7th century, Japanese narrative poetry that included short lyrical poems called "uta," or songs, were written as part of pre-Buddhist or early Shinto ceremonial rituals. Prayers, celebrations, formal eulogies, courting, planting, and harvesting were among the form’s earliest subjects. The most popular of these forms, waka, featured 31 phonetic units, or "on," broken into five lines by a 5-7-5-7-7 count. The waka became the most recognized poetic form of the period, and officials and court nobility gained recognition as word specialists for their ability to write waka.

Haiku arose in Japan in the thirteenth-century with roots as far back as the eighth. It first appeared as the opening phrase of renga, an oral poem, generally a hundred stanzas long, which was also composed syllabically. The much shorter haiku broke away from renga in the sixteenth century and was mastered a century later by the Japanese poet, Matsuo Basho.

Although the number of syllables can vary by +/- one, traditionally, haiku has 17 syllables, arranged in three lines of 5-7-5 syllables. Haiku grew out of another poetry form, tanka, which has 31 syllables of 5-7-5-7-7. 

Haiku is rooted in nature and the world of our senses. Describing a season was the original purpose of haiku, and to this day poets often focus on the natural world and how it changes throughout the year. Haiku poets convey their vivid impression, sensation and surprise of a specific fact of nature in a short verse. One or more seasonal words are a practical requisite.

Haiku is the most popular Eastern poetic form in the world, as well as the form most frequently utilized in the West. Haiku’s simple three-line, 17-syllable structure enables poets of all abilities to test their mettle, but it usually takes years – and the patience of a still eye – to master the form.

Haiku Written by Women – East and West
In “Women Haiku Poets Who Influenced Me,” Patricia Donegan & Yoshie Ishibashi wrote and translated many haiku with commentary (5-7-5 syllable count in the original Japanese; open-ended in translation). Donegan says, “I choose these four women haiku poets especially because they all had one important thing in common: they were/are an example of “living the Way of Haiku” in their everyday life — which is what, for me, sets haiku apart from other genres of literature — whether I’ve studied, taught or written haiku, I always approached & advocated it as an awareness practice for daily life.

Chiyo-ni (Kaga no Chiyo)
In the Edo era (1603 – 1867) when women barely had any rights, she embraced haiku as her path, studying with two of Bashō’s disciples, & becoming a famous haiku master, artist and Buddhist nun, following what Bashō called haikai no michi (the way of haiku). In fact, the haiku poet Shōin, who wrote the preface to her collection s (1764), said of her way of life:

Chiyo-ni’s style is pure like white jade, without ornament, without carving, natural. Both her life and her writing style are clear & pure. She lives simply as if with a stone for a pillow, and spring water to brush her teeth. She is like a small pine, embodying a female style that is subtle, fresh, and beautiful. Chiyo-ni knows the Way, is in harmony with Nature. One can better know the universe through each thing in phenomena, as in Chiyo-ni’s haiku, than through books.

And when visiting her museum & temple in her hometown of Matto city of Japan on several occasions, I felt as if enveloped in her living haiku spirit & lineage. As the years passed while doing further co-translations of her haiku, I gained an awakening insight into the depth & potential of haiku in general: the absolute kitchen-sink ordinariness of it, yet at the same time its luminous extraordinariness, co-emerging naturally when we are immersed in the present moment."

Here are examples of Chiyo’s haiku:
mikazuki ni hishihishi to mono no shizumarinu
at the crescent moon
the silence
enters the heart

nuimono ni hari no koboruru uzura kana
at her sewing
the needle drops —
the quail’s cry

beni saita kuchi mo wasururu shimizu kana
rouged lips
forgotten —
clear spring water

wakakusa ya kirema kirema ni mizu no iro
green grass —
between, between the blades
the color of the water

ha mo chiri mo hitotsu utena ya yuki no hana
green leaves or fallen leaves
become one —
in the flowering snow

oi no kokoro miru hi no nagaki botan kana
this old heart
looks all day long
at the peonies

Another poet chosen by Patricia Donegan & Yoshie Ishibashi in “Women Haiku Poets Who Influenced Me,” is Joyce Clement.

Birds Punctuate the Days 

semicolon
two mallards drifting
one dunks for a snail
 
ellipses
a mourning dove
lifts off
 
asterisk
a red-eyed vireo catches
the crane fly midair
 
comma
a down feather
bobs between waves
 
exclamation point
wren on the railing
takes notice
 
colon
mergansers paddle toward
morning trout swirl
 
question mark
the length of silence
after a loon’s call

 

Exploration 1: What are the advantages of a poem as short as the Haiku? Disadvantages?

Exploration 2: Can you feel the style, theme and tone differences between the American writer (Joyce Clement) and the Japanese writer (Chiyo-ni Kushu)? Are you able to find one of the haiku that leaves you breathless?

Exploration 3: Up for a gender-based challenge? Use some or all of today’s haiku, all written by women, and also search out several haiku written by men and compare/contrast them with today’s haiku all written by women. Granted, the sample size could be huge, but see if you can isolate just a few written by men, see if you can draw any conclusions about the similarities and differences between the two gender-based groups.