ethics, haiku, humor, language, music, oversimplify

Be Precise, But Keep It Real

Posted on 2018-02-092021-05-24 by Mellow Curmudgeon

I am big on precise language. Why am I so damn mellow about whether a poem is a haiku? The answer hints at bigger things (like reconciling polished theory with rough-hewn reality), but there will also be a few jokes.

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Yes, there are short poems that are not haiku. Limericks are not haiku. Googling «one word poem» yielded more hits than I expected (and infinitely more than I would like). U can read about one that made national news here. One word poems are not haiku. (As candidates for a one word poem about one word poetry, words like [prank] and [scam] come to mind.) On the other hand, trying to say exactly what is a haiku is a lot harder than it seems to many people. It is also a lot less important, and we should be thankful for small blessings.

A list of several common characteristics of haiku is a good starting point as a tentative definition. Such a list can be good for introducing people to haiku. Whether it should be carved in stone is another question.

Here is a plausible list of things one might say about a short poem in English, such that the poem “should” only be called a haiku if they are all true.

It does not rhyme.
It has 3 lines, with a total of 17 syllables distributed 5-7-5.
It includes some seasonal reference.
It includes a poignant relationship between nature and humanity.

I got this particular list from a thoughtful comment by Sue Ranscht on a post with a 3-5-3 haiku. Amicably and implicitly, the comment posed the question that starts this post. It deserves an amicable (but explicit) reply.

§1: How Do I List Thee?

Let me count the ways. Hmmm. Do I have enough fingers?

There is a downside to defining the word [haiku] in a way that excludes much of what the best haiku poets actually write and much of what the Haiku Society of America considers to be a haiku. What are we to call that stuff?

Jane Reichhold (1937-2016) was among the many eminent haiku poets who do not adhere to our 4-item list. She was also an advocate (so am I) of haiku with a characteristic that is not in that list: juxtaposing 2 contrasting images (rensô in Japanese). Rather than import yet another Japanese word into English, she wrote about “fragment and phrase” as parts of a haiku, in an insightful essay that was nicely formatted in a CDHK episode. The juxtaposition may seem incongruous at first, and much of the fun comes from realizing how it does make sense. Sometimes one part clarifies the other. Sometimes the fragment (the shorter part) is the punch line of a joke set up by the phrase, as in the essay’s clever classic

roasting_veg_chkn_800x575

Haiku © Jane Reichold superimposed on
Photo © Vladlena Azima | ShutterStock

Another criterion not in our 4-item list is interchangeability of lines 1 and 3. While Jane did not advocate interchangeability (neither do I), it matters to some people. Should we have a 6-item list? There is no need to consider here the whole multitude of criteria that are sometimes important to some people. There is no need to try wriggling out of the contradictions between some of these criteria. This section’s takeaway is simply that there is no single authoritative list. Do U find that conclusion stressful? Maybe a musical interlude will help.

§2: Musical Interlude

Back in 1800, Viennese concert-goers knew what a symphony was, with or w/o knowing much music theory. A symphony was an orchestral composition with 4 movements. Movement #1 might have a short slow introduction; otherwise, movements #1 and #4 were both at a brisk pace. Movement #2 was slower; movement #3 was a minuet at an intermediate pace. Performing the whole thing took a while, but well under an hour. And so on. That was before Beethoven began shredding the dictionary.

Did anybody abuse the new freedom by writing schlock that was long and loud? Of course. But some composers crafted some beautiful and enduring symphonies with great care and skill. Works like Dvořák’s From the New World are classics, tho in various ways they are not classical.

Saying that something is “a symphony” no longer says much about its length or layout. With no claim that they are all great symphonies, here are a few examples of the diversity.

We have symphonies with less than 4 movements (Hovhaness; Schubert). More movements were apparently intended for Schubert’s “unfinished” symphony, but it is deservedly popular as is.
We have a short strings-only symphony that does have 4 movements, but the 2 (not 1!) based on dance forms are not minuets (Britten).
We have humongous symphonies with vocal parts (Beethoven; Mahler).

And so on.

Maybe it would be nice if the word [symphony] had a more specific meaning, but we get by. When Prokofiev revisited the old layout from before 1800, he did not claim to be writing the first “real” symphony in decades. He just wrote his Classical Symphony. The title’s meaning is clear enough.

§3: Back to Haiku

I wish those who advocate one of the narrower concepts of haiku would imitate Prokofiev. Speak of “classical” haiku or (better still) “traditional” haiku. Say which of the various traditions U have in mind. Want to make a discussion of a single tradition flow more smoothly by temporarily restricting the word [haiku] to that tradition? That might work, but it is hard to avoid any hint of permanently excluding other traditions in other discussions. Want to claim that working within your favored tradition tends to help people write good haiku? OK. I may well agree, unless U go on to claim that all haiku (or all good ones) are necessarily in that one tradition. Ain’t so.

Most of my own haiku (and many that I admire by others) do comply with at least 2 items in our 4-item list. Full compliance is common but far from universal. Want to be careful and focused when writing haiku? Pay serious attention to a list like this. But don’t let the tail wag the dog.

§4: Leery of Labels

The 6-item list briefly contemplated at the end of §1 is much like the 7-item list of rules that was actually used in a challenging CDHK episode. The main difference between the lists is in whether rhymes or words referencing the poet (like [I] or [dunno]) are forbidden. Neither is common in haiku; both do occur.

I responded to the challenge with a cheekily titled but fully compliant haiku (This Haiku Is Kosher), followed by one that breaks a few of the rules (Not Quite Kosher). Which rules? In the unlikely event that anybody cared, I could say. As it happens, my Not Quite Kosher is a wry lament (about crediting an image illustrating This Haiku Is Kosher). The title’s double meaning would be lost if it somehow specified which rules in the 7-item list were being broken.

zen-frog

Not Quite Kosher
|Zen frog bronze sculpture
|(credit lost, like casting wax).
|Dunno who to thank.

Suppose we want to discuss partial compliance with a list of rules in some detail. Would it be helpful to have a noun as a 1-word label to pin on my partially compliant haiku, so as to indicate exactly which rules it obeys? Not really. With 4 rules we would need 16 nouns. That would be burdensome. With 6 (or more) rules, we would need an absurd 64 (or more) nouns. Better to just say what happens with each rule, if there is any need to say it.

Maybe a single noun for obeying all the rules would still be helpful? No, it is better to just plop a convenient adjective (like [classical] or [compliant] or [kosher] or [traditional]) in front of good old [haiku]. Remembering which rules are relevant at the moment is enough of a cognitive load.

A cluttered vocabulary is not the only downside of a profusion of special nouns, one for full compliance with each of several lists of rules. People tend to confuse pinning a fancy label on something with understanding it. They also tend to assume that labels are mutually exclusive. When the recipients of labels are other people, the results can be nasty.

§5: Takeaway

Tho willing to break the 5-7-5 rule, I obey it more than might be expected of somebody who knows about its origin in a translation error. I am especially respectful of 5-7-5 when I write an aphoristic haiku (as a zingy summary of some nerdy philosophizing) rather than a moment-in-nature haiku. With a linebreak after the comma, this post’s title could be a 2-line aphoristic haiku. (Yes, there are 2-line haiku.) Maybe a 5-7-5 aphoristic haiku will reinforce the point.

Precision < Accuracy
|Speaking precisely
|is great, if we speak about
|what is really there.

haiku, history, humor, language, photography, tanka

Seedless 😀 — Needless 😬

Posted on 2017-09-212020-12-24 by Mellow Curmudgeon

With the usual (?) wryness, we consider how categorizing things is intrinsically simplistic but sometimes useful. Or not. We start simply (with a useful categorization of watermelons) and then go up (with a not-so-useful categorization of poems in haiku form).

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With what I hope is the usual wry humor, we consider how categorizing things is intrinsically simplistic but sometimes useful. Or not. We start simply and then go up, in importance as well as complexity.

1: Seedless 😀

I like watermelon but am far too old to like spitting out the seeds. Of course, I buy seedless watermelons. But what is that off-white speck on one of the chunks of watermelon in my bowl of fruit? A closer look at the chunk shows that it has lots of seeds. Did the supermarket cheat me? No, those seeds are small and soft and immature forever. They will be unnoticed on the way in and on the way out. I wish the body politic could so easily excrete a POTUS that is small and soft and immature forever.

As “may contain occasional seeds” on its produce label hints, a “seedless” watermelon may well have a few serious seeds. They are large and hard and nasty to eat. But they are also large enough and dark enough to be easily seen when on or near the surface of a chunk. I hardly ever let one slip past for an uninvited tour of my extensive collection of tooth crowns and fillings.

big-seed-slice_800x479

Putting watermelons into little bins with the labels [seedless] or [seeded] distorts the literal truth but is easy and useful for my purposes. Plant breeders would need more detail.

Categorization is not always so easy as when buying and selling watermelons.

2: Needless 😬

There are situations where useful categorization is hard. Friend or foe? Right or wrong? We must often proceed despite the knowledge that such tidy-looking categories are misleading.

Happily, some of the problematic contexts (where it is hard to decide which little bin “should” receive something we may feel an urge to categorize) are also contexts where putting things into little bins is a waste of time. Compare something to other things in the same big (and obviously appropriate) bin; do not fret about little bins and dubious claims that things in the same little bin are importantly alike in some ways.

For example, consider the problem of deciding whether a little bin labelled [haiku] or a little bin labelled [senryu] is where a short poem (written in English, not Japanese) belongs. The metaproblem of deciding whether this problem is meaningful is a step up from whether we should categorize watermelons but not so difficult (and steeped in nastiness) as deciding when (if ever) it is meaningful to put people into bins with labels like [black] or [white].

Imported into English from Japanese for good reasons long ago, the English word [haiku] does not mean exactly what the Japanese word [haiku] did mean in Edo Japan or does mean in modern Japan. Most words do not even have exact meanings. Different groups of speakers use the same word in different ways, with varying degrees of similarity.

To me and many other speakers of American English, any poem in haiku form is a haiku (tho not necessarily a good one). For now, we need not fret about what “the” haiku form requires or what is recommended (and often beneficial) but not required. Whether a poem is a haiku (or a quadrille or a sonnet or …) does not depend on its content. The poem’s form alone indicates whether it is a haiku. Tho common, this usage is not universal.

2.1: HSA Usage

For both [haiku] and [senryu] (as English words about poems in English, with several nods to Japanese usage), the Haiku Society of America adopted the definitions and notes quoted below in 2004. We consider [haiku] first.

HAIKU

Definition: A haiku is a short poem that uses imagistic language to convey the essence of an experience of nature or the season intuitively linked to the human condition.

Notes: Most haiku in English consist of three unrhymed lines of seventeen or fewer syllables, with the middle line longest, though today’s poets use a variety of line lengths and arrangements. In Japanese a typical haiku has seventeen “sounds” (on) arranged five, seven, and five. (Some translators of Japanese poetry have noted that about twelve syllables in English approximates the duration of seventeen Japanese on.) Traditional Japanese haiku include a “season word” (kigo), a word or phrase that helps identify the season of the experience recorded in the poem, and a “cutting word” (kireji), a sort of spoken punctuation that marks a pause or gives emphasis to one part of the poem. In English, season words are sometimes omitted, but the original focus on experience captured in clear images continues. The most common technique is juxtaposing two images or ideas (Japanese rensô). Punctuation, space, a line-break, or a grammatical break may substitute for a cutting word. Most haiku have no titles, and metaphors and similes are commonly avoided. (Haiku do sometimes have brief prefatory notes, usually specifying the setting or similar facts; metaphors and similes in the simple sense of these terms do sometimes occur, but not frequently. A discussion of what might be called “deep metaphor” or symbolism in haiku is beyond the range of a definition. Various kinds of “pseudohaiku” have also arisen in recent years; see the Notes to “senryu”, below, for a brief discussion.)

I applaud the way the HSA keeps the definition of haiku form very short and broad, then discusses some formal details lucidly in the notes. Apart from the ominous last sentence, the notes will be helpful to anybody puzzled by the multitude of formal considerations to which various people attach various degrees of importance. But I have 2 concerns about the definition.

Must I allude (however subtly) to the human condition whenever I celebrate an experience of nature? Must Basho’s frog carry some human baggage whenever it jumps into the old pond?
Form is lumped with content. The poems in haiku form that do celebrate nature (or the season) and do have another layer of meaning get the label [haiku], while the others get [poem in haiku form] or a clunkier phrase. Is a nice short word wanted? Yes. Does [senryu] do the job? No.

SENRYU

Definition: A senryu is a poem, structurally similar to haiku, that highlights the foibles of human nature, usually in a humorous or satiric way.

Notes: A senryu may or may not contain a season word or a grammatical break. Some Japanese senryu seem more like aphorisms, and some modern senryu in both Japanese and English avoid humor, becoming more like serious short poems in haiku form. There are also “borderline haiku/senryu”, which may seem like one or the other, depending on how the reader interprets them.

Many so-called “haiku” in English are really senryu. Others, such as “Spam-ku” and “headline haiku”, seem like recent additions to an old Japanese category, zappai, miscellaneous amusements in doggerel verse (usually written in 5-7-5) with little or no literary value. Some call the products of these recent fads “pseudohaiku” to make clear that they are not haiku at all.

Right after the definition limits senryu to being about foibles, the notes rescind the limitation. Maybe an aphorism is a senryu? Maybe a serious short poem in haiku form, like the wistful classic

© Alexis Rotella
|Just friends: …
|he watches my gauze dress
|blowing on the line.

is a senryu? Maybe yet another poem in haiku form is something else, neither a haiku nor a senryu? Maybe we should rummage in a Japanese/English dictionary for words like [zappai]?

Maybe we should speak plain English.

Importing the Japanese word [haiku] into English gave a good name to a new kind of English poetry inspired by Japanese poetry; importing [senryu] helped discuss the history of Japanese poetry. But we already had plenty of words for saying that the mood of a poem is humorous or inspirational or philosophical or wistful. We still have them, along with plenty of words for saying what a poem is about and why we like or dislike it. We do not need special words for saying such things when the poem happens to be in haiku form. Barbarians like me are not the only ones who prefer to use [haiku] broadly. As Jane Reichold argued in 2010 with allegorical apples, [haiku] versus [senryu] is becoming a distinction w/o a difference.

2.2: Pushing the Envelope

That haiku forms are good for naturalistic subjects is beyond dispute. Some of my favorite haiku (among both those I have read and those I have written) are indeed naturalistic. But I also push the envelope of haiku subject matter and am far from alone in doing so. A classic by Alexis Rotella has already been mentioned. This section has more examples of pushing the envelope (not necessarily of being classics) and closes with a takeaway tanka.

2.2.1: Spike Gillespie

Page 104 of the 2003-01 issue of the magazine Smithsonian had a collection of humorous haiku ranging over the entire history of our little blue planet, with more detail from the 18-th century onward. An image of the whole page is available on the web. Back in 2003, I read the page in hard copy. The haiku were mostly amusing w/o being memorable, but I liked one dealing with the 20-th century so much that I memorized it spontaneously, w/o trying:

OK, it is not a great haiku. Excessive devotion to the 5-7-5 rule leads to awkward linebreaks. A tiny rewrite yields a better haiku:

Apart from the linebreaks, Spike nailed it!
|One World War follows another.
|Rosie rivets. Patton rolls.
|We win.

While Brits and Russkies could object to the Yank-centric viewpoint, the haiku is a remarkably concise and accurate poetic summary of major aspects of World War 2 and its roots in the bungled ending of World War 1. Neither war was a moment in nature. Neither war was a mere foible. While I needed Google to recover the author name and magazine date, the haiku itself just stuck, somewhere between my ears. Maybe such stickiness was part of charm of poetry in preliterate societies. Maybe it still is, even for those who are literate and online.

2.2.2: Mellow Curmudgeon

As there is already more than enough grimness in the real world, I usually dislike grim art. An envelope-pushing haiku by Poet Rummager is so good that (despite its grimness) I reblogged it with my own grim haiku. As with all my posts, the Comments section will remain open as long as my blog stays up. (I overrode the WordPress default.) Anybody who wants to criticize any of my haiku is welcome to comment, unless they want to quibble that my haiku is “really” a senryu or a pseudohaiku.

While I have not yet written a haiku about pizza, duct tape has been a subject. The table below links to some of my other posts with haiku on outside-the-box subjects. While some of my haiku are weird and/or knowingly silly, most do have a serious undercurrent about the human condition. So does this post.

becalmed sailors	\|	bereavement
Buddhism	\|	Genesis
Hildegard of Bingen	\|	history of biology
Jane Reichold	\|	music
Platonism	\|	quantum physics
sadness	\|	silliness
Taoism	\|	time travel

2.2.3: Takeaway Tanka

haiku, humor

Old Pond Revisited

Posted on 2017-04-092020-10-02 by Mellow Curmudgeon

We respond to a CDHK episode by revisiting Basho’s old pond to see if his famous frog honors the haiku/senryu distinction. It does not. With all due respect to the Haiku Society of America, neither do I.

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Before responding to the CDHK episode

Carpe Diem Universal Jane #14 Basho’s “Old Pond”

I want to display my favorite translations of Basho’s famous “Old Pond” haiku.

Basho’s haiku illustrates why I respectfully disagree with the Haiku Society of America’s definitions of the words [haiku] and [senryu]. So does my haiku in response to this episode. Yes, “haiku” (not “senryu”) is what I said.

Old Pond Revisited
|Basho’s frog can jump
|over lines drawn in the mud.
|Haiku? Senryu?