Friday, January 18, 2013

To the Lighthouse: Is "War and Peace" a Haiku?

A few years ago, the editor of Modern Haiku, Charles Trumbull, discussing a particularly modern and abstract haiku, posed the question: how far can a haiku be stretched and still be called a haiku? This may sound like an overly theoretical question—one that academics might debate on a lonely Friday night—yet we call what we write “haiku.” Many of us belong to the Haiku Society of America, Haiku Poets of Northern California, Haiku North West, or some other “haiku” related organization, so clearly the term means something. And if it means something, then something else can clearly not be it…Defining American haiku is a slippery slope that ranges from the traditional Yuki Teikei (5-7-5, kigo, kireji) to “anything I call a haiku is a haiku”—the last being especially problematic in that it would require us to recognize War and Peace as a haiku if Tolstoy had so insisted.

-- Haiku's American Frontier by Paul Miller, Frogpond, 35.1, 2012

Hmm… what is a haiku? Before answering this important question, in my humble opinion, we as haiku practitioners should  honestly answer the following two questions regarding the most-read haiku by Basho:

The old pond;                                 
A frog jumps in --                         
The sound of the water.            

Q1: How can there be significant meaning in this 3-LINE POEM which merely describes a frog jumping into an old pond?

Q2: If I replace “frog” with any other amphibian creature or any creature that can dive into a pond, is it still considered to be great? ”

And your answers are...


frog pond at twilight...
a thought tugged at the corner
of my mind

6 comments:

  1. Ask Aitken Roshi! ("A Zen Wave: Basho's Haiku and Zen")

    ReplyDelete
  2. Dear Ji Bo:

    I'm familiar with Robert Aitken’s Buddhist-influenced interpretations of Basho’s haiku in his collection of essays.

    His interpretation of Basho's frog haiku cannot answer my second question. It's because he says little about the poetico-functional role of the frog.

    For more info., see my essay, The Ripples from a Splash: A Generic Analysis of Basho’s Frog Haiku, which was published in Magnapoets, #7,January 2011. It can be accessed at http://www.scribd.com/doc/61532574/The-Ripples-From-a-Splash

    Thanks for sharing your thought.

    Chen-ou



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  3. The full text of Robert Aitken’s interpretation of Basho's frog haiku can be found in "Matsuo Bashô: Frog Haiku (Thirty-one Translations and One Commentary)", http://www.bopsecrets.org/gateway/passages/basho-frog.htm

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  4. Some slippage here, Chen-ou. Through Q1, you're asking "What is a haiku?" But by the end of Q2, the implied question is "what makes a haiku great?" Really quite another matter.

    I believe in approaching questions of this sort In historical/narrative terms. If I say "War and Peace" is not a haiku, I'm saying it is not consistent with how the term has been used historically; it doesn't fit the story of haiku as it has evolved to this point. This does not rule out the theoretical possibility that at some point in the future, I might answer the question differently. Perhaps one day we'll recognize that all is haiku.

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  5. Bill, no slippage. What I asked is as follows:

    Q1: How can there be significant meaning in this "3-LINE POEM" which merely describes a frog jumping into an old pond?

    Q2: If I replace “frog” with any other amphibian creature or any creature that can dive into a pond, is it[3-line poem] still considered to be great? ”

    However, the first responser, Ji Bo, skipped my original questions and directly answered the implied questions below:

    Q1: How can there be significant meaning in this [haiku] which merely describes a frog jumping into an old pond?

    Q2: If I replace “frog” with any other amphibian creature or any creature that can dive into a pond, is it[haiku] still considered to be great? ”

    Chen-ou

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  6. Ji Bo, Bill, and My Blog Readers:

    I just posted my answers to the implied questions above (that treat Basho's 3-LINE POEM as a haiku), in today's post, Poetic Musings: A Generic Analysis of Basho’s Frog Haiku, which can be accessed at http://neverendingstoryhaikutanka.blogspot.ca/2013/01/poetic-musings-generic-analysis-of.html

    Any comments or suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

    ReplyDelete