jeromegagnonblog

Haiku Notes

Recently, I’ve been updating a batch of haiku and adding newer ones to the mix. The goal is to get them into publishable form, but the more immediate focus is just on relaxing and enjoying the process. There’s another factor at play, too, and that’s the benefit to be had from a regular practice that builds on itself. Time spent at the keyboard or easel (or engaged in any art form) is nurturing time for the psyche. I don’t think we can ever get too much of that.

Voices of Nature

With its de-emphasis on the “I” and emphasis on nature, traditional haiku often invite us to let go of our preoccupations, if only for a moment. The following haiku by Issa (1763-1827) is a good example of that:*

at home on a branch

racing downriver — a cricket

chirruping

This piece locates the reader in its environment with just two words, “branch” and “downriver.” Here, the cricket appears as a locus of experience, at home and singing from its perch as the world rushes by.     

One of Basho’s students, who later became a nun, Chigestsu (1632-1706) was also adept at conveying the voices of nature:*

songbird riffing

outside the window — pausing

from dishwashing

Here’s another domestic scene, this one from Ryokan (1758-1831):*

sounds of pot scrubbing 

mixed with the voices

of tree frogs

A good haiku offers more than an escape from our cares; it may also depict them as universal, as these lines by Chigetsu suggest:*

a murmur now,

cry of the katydid

grown old

Onitsura (1660-1738) manages to depict the music of silence in these three lines, no small feat:*

silent music

of blossoms, drifting

through air

This one, by Buson (1716-1784), isn’t exactly a voice, yet still evokes its subject:*

winter night —

the patter of rats, walking

across dishes  

A follower of Pure Land Buddhism, Issa suggests a kinship between nature and faith in the following haiku. There’s something about the call of geese overhead that commands attention and announces our “place in the family of things,” as Mary Oliver has put it:*

passing overhead,

a flock of wild geese, chanting

Amida Buddha’s name

Besides his well-known lines about the dreams of “lost warriors,” written in 1689 (and mentioned in my last post), Basho wrote another war-related haiku that year after visiting a shrine to the warrior Sanemori:*

how sorrowful —

under an old helmet,

cries of a cricket 

Is Basho’s sorrow for the cricket and/or Sanemori? Or is it for the folly of war, in general? This piece leaves much unsaid. What does it evoke for you? For more on this subject, see Basho’s classic Narrow Road to the Interior and Other Writings.

*versions by jg

Haiku Writing Prompt:

Find a comfortable and safe place in nature to relax for ten minutes or more. Begin by jotting down a list of any sounds you may hear, whether natural or mechanical. Select one and then add to this an appropriate kigo or seasonal word that connotes the time of year. (Some examples of words for summer that appear in kigo dictionaries are dandelion, sunflower, lightning, summer dew, ice water, firefly, and so on.) Practice shaping the words you selected into phrases that form a viable haiku, whether in a 5-7-5 syllable format or something close to that. Limit the number of syllables to 17, more or less. Then go back and look at your lines again, making any changes or additions that clarify or add depth.