A Room of My Own: A Tanka about the "3/5 Compromise"

written for Black History Month, which is celebrated  in North America in February


Emory President praised
the three-fifths compromise...
on the sun-tanned backs
of a row of black students
This is 5/5 outrageous

Note: "The 1787 three-fifths compromise allowed each slave to be counted as three-fifths of a person in determining how much Congressional power the Southern states would have."

Butterfly Dream: Ice Angel Haiku by Rebecca Drouilhet

English Original

Christmas morning …
an ice angel's wings
bending the light

Rebecca Drouilhet


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

聖誕早晨...
冰雕天使的翅膀
使陽光轉向

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

圣诞早晨...
冰雕天使的翅膀
使阳光转向


Bio Sketch

Rebecca Drouilhet is a fifty seven year old retired registered nurse.  She first encountered and fell in love with haiku poetry when her mother used  it as part of her curriculum.  She taught classes for the intellectually gifted. Rebecca enjoy reading and writing haiku, playing word games and spending time with her large family.

Note: Two variants of this haiku and my detailed analysis can be found in To the Lighthouse: Re-examining the Concept and Practice of Cutting

To the Lighthouse: These So-Called Déjà-ku ??

Michel Foucault has argued that the entire concept of artist or author as an original instigator of meaning is only a privileged moment of individualization in the history of art.

-- Linda Hutcheon, A Theory of Parody

[Basho’s] notion of the new lay not so much in the departure from or rejection of the perceived tradition as in the reworking of established practices and conventions, in creating new counterpoints to the past.

-- Haruo Shirane, Traces of Dreams

In less than six months, Frogpond published two articles 1 relating to "déjà-ku" 2 experiences that six prominent poets shared (see the poem texts below). 3

sickle moon

a boy whips the sea

with bull kelp

Christopher Herold

wind in my hair

a boy tames the sea

with bull kelp

Connie Donleycott

more darkness

more stars

moving on

Sandra Mooney-Ellerbeck

more darkness

more stars ...

autumn begins

John Stevenson

  

spring breeze

the dog runs

in its sleep

Jim Kacian

warm spring breeze

the old hound runs

in his sleep

George Swede

In his article titled "Bull Kelp," Christopher Herold emphasized that "there are myriad instances of poets tapping into the same sources of inspiration. Resulting poems may be nearly identical… [It's] simply poets attuning themselves to what's going on around them." 4 In his article titled "Two and Two," John Stevenson gave similar emphasis that "this phenomenon is all about paired experience and similar expressions… I would say that we independently hit upon a means of expressing a perception that many others must have shared." 5 Editor George Swede added a note to the article to share his own déjà-ku experience. In his reply to Swede's enquiry regarding the similarity between their haiku, Jim Kacian stressed that "[my haiku] was taken from life… given the same input and some similar ideas about form, it's not terribly surprising that we might arrive at much the same poem." 6

Although recognizing that there are differences between their haiku, both poets give little space in the articles to technical analysis of their poems. As he mentioned in the article, Stevenson at first wanted to withdraw his poem from publication. It's because "it's quite clear that [her haiku] was both written and published before mine and the natural thing to do would be to withdraw mine." 7 Later, he felt relieved when Sandra Mooney-Ellerbeck said she didn't want him to withdraw his haiku. 8 The Heron's Nest published his poem. However, we all know that it's more usual for the editor to withdraw the later poem due to lack of "originality or freshness." Most importantly, if the poet who wrote the later similar poem offers no sufficient reasons to prove that he wrote it by himself, he will run the risk of being criticized for using someone else's idea or imagery.

In her note to Herold, Connie Donleycott stated that "I had no way of knowing about the other poem, but, because the other poet's was published, I felt mine would come across as a copy." 9 Her fear of unknowingly writing similar haiku is not unusual–it's a common fear among haiku poets. Over the past year, I've had several lengthy discussions on déjà-ku with other poets. Throughout those discussions, the recurring words or phrases were "not the first," "similar or same," "not original or fresh," and "has been done." I was surprised by most of my fellow poets who considered the Western concept of originality timeless and universal, and who showed little interest in understanding the Japanese concept of originality or newness and its use of honkadori or allusion while at the same time praising the haiku, most of which are highly allusive, written by Japanese haiku masters. 10

Of those similar haiku mentioned above, Stevenson's is most "problematic." His first two lines are identical to Mooney-Ellerbeck's except with "…" at the end of line two. As he stressed in the article, "the nearly exact wording of our first two lines is, indeed, striking." 11 But, the most important thing about these two haiku is the differences, tonal and thematic, marked by their distinctly juxtaposed images. Reflecting upon the same phenomenon ("more darkness/ more stars"), Stevenson added "autumn begins" as the concluding line to signify a process of the decaying of life, which is initiated by Mother Nature. What he did with his haiku is not merely to add a seasonal reference, but to show the destructive force of nature; more importantly, in the connotative contexts of the opening image and of the compositional occasion, 12 this seasonal reference could be read to prefigure a tragic loss of life. Therefore, we as readers are fortunate to have an opportunity to read this beautifully-crafted and heartfelt poem, which is thematically and tonally different from its predecessor poem. Both poets use the same opening image, but if their haiku are read slowly and repeatedly, these differences will emerge.

The only and most important problem I have with these two articles and those discussions relating to déjà-ku is the unexamined concept of originality. Historically speaking, since the post-Enlightenment, the passion for uniqueness and originality has become the main criteria for art works. Poetry viewed as an "original expression of individual creativity is a recurring definition shared by many Romantic poets." 13 Individual imagination and creativity has been theorized to represent a high value in literary criticism (note: Jessica Millen's contextualized analysis of "Romantic Creativity and the Ideal of Originality"can be accessed at http://goo.gl/qQUnF). This view is well-explored in Forest Pyle's influential book, The Ideology of Imagination: Subject and Society in the Discourse of Romanticism. Today, high poetic value placed upon originality remains ingrained in the Western literary culture. This fear of unknowingly writing similar haiku or the reluctance or disuse of allusion proves that Thomas Mallon's remark still holds true: the poets live under the "fearful legacy of the Romantics." 14 …

Isn't it time for us as readers and writers of Japanese haiku to broaden our poetic horizons and consider deepening our poetry through re-examining our perception of originality? In closing, consider the remark by professor Haruo Shirane about Basho's view of haiku writing:

    [The] poet had to work along both axes: to work only in the present would result in poetry that was fleeting; to work just in the past, on the other hand, would be to fall out of touch with the fundamental nature of haikai, which was rooted in the everyday world. 32

-- An excerpt from my A Hundred Gourds essay, entitled "Read It Slowly, Repeatedly, and Communally"

One Man's Maple Moon: Confession Tanka by Neal Whitman

English Original

back and forth
a dredger in the harbor
clears the clogged channel
my sister's confession:
he hits her

Atlas Poetica, 11, Spring 2012

Neal Whitman


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

挖泥船
來回在海港清除
被堵塞的通道
我姐姐的自白：
他打她

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

挖泥船
来回在海港清除
被堵塞的通道
我姐姐的自白：
他打她


Bio Sketch

Neal Whitman of Pacific Grove, California, is a member of the Yuki Teikei Haiku Society, Haiku Poets of Northern California, Haiku Society of America, and Tanka Society of America. Over the past five years he has published over 400 haiku, haibun, and tanka and haiga with his wife, Elaine, who is a photographer.

Butterfly Dream: Soldier Haiku by Dick Whyte

English Original

where soldiers
once slept and died --
a spider's home

Ambrosia, Issue #3, 2009

Dick Whyte


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

曾經是士兵
睡覺和安息之處 --
如今是蜘蛛窩

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

曾经是士兵
睡觉和安息之处 --
如今是蜘蛛窝


Bio Sketch

Dick Whyte is an artist from Wellington, New Zealand, who works in a wide range of media (video, music, poetry, visual art, sculpture). He has been writing haiku (and related forms) for the past 6 years, and is the co-editor of Haiku News, a poetry journal dedicated haiku, tanka, senryu and kyoka that engages with sociopolitical issues and themes.

Butterfly Dream: Lantern Haiku by Michael McClintock

English Original

to each other
in the dark --
waving lanterns

Second Prize, San Francisco International Haiku Competition 2009

Michael McClintock


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

在黑暗中
面對彼此 --
搖晃的燈籠

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

在黑暗中
面对彼此
摇晃的灯笼


Bio Sketch

Michael McClintock's lifework in haiku, tanka, and related literature spans over four decades. His many contributions to the field include six years as president of the Tanka Society of America (2004-2010) and contributing editor, essayist, and poet for dozens of journals, anthologies, landmark collections and critical studies. McClintock now lives in Clovis, California, where he works as an independent scholar, consultant for public libraries, and poet. Meals at Midnight [tanka], Sketches from the San Joaquin [haiku] and Streetlights: Poetry of Urban Life in Modern English Tanka, are some of his recent titles.

To the Lighthouse: Re-examining the Concept and Practice of Cutting

                                                                    heated haiku debate ...
                                                                    I peek through the gap
                                                                    in his argument 
                                                                    ( a senryu for "Eric Liu")

         
Re-examining the Concept of Cutting:

Evaluated in the historical and literary context, cutting words (kireji) “need not be as dramatic in effect as many non-Japanese poets have believed.” (Morris, p. 409). However, some kind or another of cutting (kire) or break has been the major aesthetic criterion that makes a hokku (pre-modern name for haiku) a hokku. The way cutting words were employed and the kinds of hokku they helped shape have changed a lot since the early days of haikai no renga (Morris, p.409)

According to his groundbreaking essay, entitled “Buson and Shiki” (pp. 409-14), Mark Morris points out three formulations about the use of cutting in the classic Japanese haiku tradition (editorial note: for more information, see To the Lighthouse: Three Formulations about the Use of Cutting). Unlike his poetic predecessors, Basho treated cutting words in terms of function and effect:

First, the cutting word is inserted in order to cut the verse. If the verse is already cut, it is not necessary to employ a word to cut it. For those poets who cannot distinguish between a cut and non-cut poem, earlier poets established cutting words. If one uses one of these words in a hokku, seven or eight times out of ten the hokku will be cut. The remaining two or three times, however, the hokku will not be cut even though it includes a cutting word. On the other hand, there are hokku that are cut even though they include no cutting words (NKBZ 51:478-79)”

For Basho, it was “the cutting effect rather than the cutting word itself that ultimately mattered.” (Shirane, p 104). According to Herbert Jonsson's study, in the haikai-related writings after Basho the actual use of cutting words became less important, whereas, the cut, whether it is marked by a cutting word or not, was the central issue (Jonsson, p. 43)

This view of cutting was re-articulated in “one of Buson's texts, the preface written for an ambitious study of cutting words, the Ya-kana-sho, by Ueda Akinari:

A Kireji is something which is not when it is, and is when it is not. There are poems with kireji that are not cut, and poems with no kireji that are cut. (Jonsson, p. 43)

Buson's main point here is the mere insertion of a cutting word doesn't by itself create a cut.

Armed with this view of the use of cutting, I think it’s fair to say that the mere use of a punctuation mark/line break/… doesn’t by itself create the cutting effect, and that most importantly, there are some haiku creating the cutting effects without using any sort of Western equivalents of Japanese cutting words.

Most English-speaking haiku poets understand a cut as a syntactic break through the use of punctuation. This view produces, comparatively speaking, weaker haiku (at best, “postcard” haiku or “aha” haiku). For me, a good haiku, evaluated in the historical and literary contexts of the English language haiku (with no abiding kigo tradition) and of modern poetry (with an emphasis on psychological depth and the poetic image), is an imagistic poem with a psychological bent, opening up an interpretative space for the reader to co-author the poem. This type of haiku can be easily found in the ones with psychological “ma” advocated by Professor Hasegawa Kai, who, in my view, has been articulating a new/the fourth view on the use of cutting/cutting words (editorial note: for more information, see  To the Lighthouse: Cutting through Time and Space )

Re-examining the Practice of Cutting

I haiku that create cutting effects

1)

the brightness

of the full moon

deepens the cold

Hiss of Leaves, T. D. Ingram,

The haiku above is the so-called one-sentence haiku. Ingram’s use of cutting (through the excellent choice of a verbal phrase) makes a successful shift from the physical/outer world (portrayed in a natural scene) to the mental/inner one (indicating the implied speaker’s state of mood). The contrasts between these two worlds are psychologically effective. The haiku reminds me of one of Basho’s:

over the evening sea

the wild ducks' cry

is faintly white

2)

eyes of the ancestors

the twinkle

in winter stars

NeverEnding Story, Rebecca Drouilhet

(authorial note: L1 refers to a North American Indian legend. The Inuit , formerly known as Eskimo, have a star legend that says the night sky is full of holes. After death the ancestors peer through the holes at the happenings on earth to keep an eye on the living.)

i) Armed with Extra-Textual Knowledge

L1, “eyes of the ancestors,” refers to the centuries-old story told above, setting a thematic context for the poem. On the surface Ls 2&3 refer to this old story above; However, read in the socio-politico-economic context of the fate/destiny of North American aboriginal peoples, the use of a seasonal reference (winter), which successfully makes a thematic shift with a psychological bent, adds emotional weight to the poem. Most importantly, the “twinkle” is now layered with multiple meanings. This haiku is timely, emotionally poignant, and sociopolitically conscious.

ii) Without Extra-Textual Knowledge.

For most readers who live in urbanized environments, L1 doesn’t seem to be realistic or truthful due to the impossibility of physically seeing the eyes of one’s ancestors. Therefore, the reader is encouraged to read L1 symbolically, such as the window into the ancestral world.

And structurally speaking, L2, the twinkle, is well-placed, creating image play (twinkling eyes vs twinkling stars). This shift (from human to natural/scenic) creates a psychological effect on the reader’s mind: the disruption of semantic expectation.

(editorial note: the Chinese people living in the rural areas today can still go to their ancestral temples to see the eyes of the ancestors whose portraits/photos on the walls)

II a haiku that creates no cutting effect

an ice angel's wings

bending the light

low winter sun

Rebecca Drouilhet

The opening image (Ls 1&2) is riveting, and I particularly like her verbal phrase (L2); however, the “juxtaposed” (?) L3 adds little to the poem. It’s because the sun is implied by the light in L2 and winter by ice in L1.

It doesn’t matter if Rebecca uses a punctuation mark (Western equivalent of a Japanese cutting word) as shown in the following revisions:

an ice angel's wings

bending the light… (or --, or :, …...)

low winter sun

Or

low winter sun… (or --, or :, …...)

an ice angel's wings

bending the light

It’s because there is no actual cutting effect demonstrated in her poem, such as a shift/twist/ break (semantic, thematic, perceptual, and psychological, …) that occurs in the poem.

However, if a new line like “Christmas morning…” is used as the first line, functioning as a context-setting line.

Christmas morning …

an ice angel's wings

bending the light

The revision is a well-crafted haiku that creates the cutting effect. It’s because there is a shift that occurs in Ls 2&3, and most importantly, the new opening line situates the haiku in a religio-cultural context that is richly textured. It adds at least one more layer of meaning to the poem, and works emotionally effectively on two levels, literal and metaphoric (it’s because the theologically effective collocation of “Christmas,” “ice angel”, and “bending the light” (editorial note: According to the NT, especially to “John, “8:12, “[Jesus is] the light of the world.”)

By the way, if Rebecca’s original haiku ends with ‘in lower winter sun,”

an ice angel's wings

bending the light

in lower winter sun

then it becomes a so-called Ichibutsu Shitate (one-scene/image/theme/object haiku), a "single-object poem, which [focuses] on a single topic and in which the [haiku flows] smoothly from start to finish, without leap or gap found in the "composition poem" (that reads a poem with two juxtaposed images/topics...; Traces of Dreams, p. 111)

References:

Mark Morris,"Buson and Shiki: Part One," Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, Vol. 44, No. 2 (Dec., 1984), pp. 381-425

Haruo Shirane, Traces of Dreams Traces of Dreams Landscape, Cultural Memory, and the Poetry of Basho, 1998

Herbert Jonsson, Haikai Poetics: Buson, Kitō and the Interpretation of Renku Poetry, Doctoral Thesis, Stockholm University, 2006

A Room of My Own: The Cruelest Month

occupied

with the blank space

when words fail...

on my attic window

April rain pattering

It was a writing class held at a Toronto branch library. The teacher discussed the four key elements of a story: setting, conflict, climax, and resolution.  Half jokingly, he said out loud,"That’s almost an acronym: sucker." He drew our attention to all sorts of sharp acronyms derived from his words of wisdom, and ended the class with a warning: be aware of clichés.

A loud voice from the back of the room, "the writer is a cliché-sucker who spills out a string of little gems." Silence descended over the room as if bats had just flown out of a cave in a big, snaking cloud. And the rain started to pour...

Butterfly Dream: Funeral Haiku by John McManus

English Original

all day rain
we argue over music
for the funeral

Presence, #45

John McManus


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

整天下雨
我們為喪禮音樂
而爭吵不休

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

整天下雨
我们为丧礼音乐
而争吵不休


Bio Sketch

John McManus is a poet from Carlisle, Cumbria, England. His haiku and senryu have appeared in various journals all over the world and is the current expositions editor for the online haikai journal A Hundred Gourds. He currently works as a support worker for people with mental health issues. In his spare time he enjoys watching films, sharing poetry with friends and spending time with his family.

One Man's Maple Moon: Sister Tanka by Ignatius Fay

English Original

five years old
emotionless
my sister
stays precisely two steps
behind our step-mother

Ignatius Fay


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

五歲大
面無表情
我的妹妹
站在我們的繼母
兩步之後

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

五岁大
面无表情
我的妹妹
站在我们的继母
两步之後


Bio sketch

Ignatius Fay is a retired invertebrate paleontologist. His poems have appeared in many of the most respected online and print journals, including The Heron’s Nest, Modern Haiku, Ars Poetica, Gusts, Chrysanthemum and Eucalypt. Books: Breccia (2012), a collaboration with fellow haiku poet, Irene Golas; Points In Between (2011), an anecdotal history of his first 23 years. He is the new editor of the Haiku Society of America Bulletin. Ignatius resides in Sudbury, Ontario, Canada.

Butterfly Dream: Music Haiku by Djurdja Vukelić-Rožić

English Original

concert under the stars --
a drop of sweat lost
in her décolletage

Lishanu, #2, 2011

Djurdja Vukelić-Rožić


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

星空下的演唱會 --
一滴汗水消失
在她的乳溝之間

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

星空下的演唱会 --
一滴汗水消失
在她的乳沟之间


Bio sketch

Djurdja Vukelić-Rožić was born in 1956 in Croatia, where she lives. She is the editor-in-chief of IRIS haiku magazine and deputy editor for haiku at Diogen Pro Cultura Magazine. She edited The Anthology of Croatian Haiku Poetry 1996-2007, An Unmown Sky.  Besides haiku, she publishes poetry, aphorisms, and humorous sketches. So far she has published 10 books and edited and translated into English a number of collections by poets from Europe. 

Butterfly Dream: Winter Stars Haiku by Rebecca Drouilhet

English Original

eyes of the ancestors
the twinkle
in winter stars

Rebecca Drouilhet


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

祖先的眼睛
冬日的星空
閃閃發光


Chinese Translation (Simplified)

祖先的眼睛
冬日的星空
闪闪发光



Bio Sketch

Rebecca Drouilhet is a fifty seven year old retired registered nurse.  She first encountered and fell in love with haiku poetry when her mother used  it as part of her curriculum.  She taught classes for the intellectually gifted. Rebecca enjoy reading and writing haiku, playing word games and spending time with her large family.

(authorial note: L1 refers to a North American Indian legend. The Inuit , formerly known as Eskimo, have a star legend that says the night sky is full of holes. After death the ancestors peer through the holes at the happenings on earth to keep an eye on the living.)

To the Lighthouse: Three Formulations about the Use of Cutting

According to his groundbreaking essay, entitled "Buson and Shiki" (pp. 409-14), Mark Morris points out three formulations about kireji (cutting words) in the classic Japanese haiku tradition (p. 411) Below are excerpts from the essay, Haruo Shirane’s Traces of Dreams Traces of Dreams: Landscape, Cultural Memory, and the Poetry of Basho, and my Haiku Reality essay, entitled "Haiku as Ideogrammatic Montage:A Linguistic-Cinematic Perspective." [editorial note: In his second videoed lecture on Basho’s famous frog haiku, "Haiku Cosmos 2: Cutting Through Time and Space ('kire' and 'ma')," Professor Hasegawa Kai articulates a new/the fourth view on the use of cutting. For more information, see To the Lighthouse: Cutting through Time and Space)

Type I Formulation: "Buson and Shiki," pp. 409-10

Early in the Tokugawa period, Teimon poets (those following the school of Matsunaga Teitoku) might form hokku by a simple combination of topic and predicate: in more detail, topic/subject-wa plus predicate-kana; an alternative pattern was topic/subject plus predicate-kana. By one count, some thirty percent of the hokku collected in the important early anthology the Enokoshu (1634) follow this pattern, basically that of a sentence rounded off, broken by the final emotive kireji kana." 45 (Note that the motive force of kana is institutionalized and formal, not lyrical. It is as anonymous as an English mark of punctuation -- if we had a mark that combined ! and ? we could come close to it.) In such hokku the kireji cuts in the sense of severing the initial poem of a linked verse sequence from those that follow.  …

Example: Traces of Dreams, pp. 101-2

…the following haiku from Puppy Collection:

falling snow –

hairs of the willow

turned white

-- Shigeyori

furu | yuki | wa | yanagi | no | kami | no | shiraga | kana

falling | snow | as-for | willow |’s | hair | ’s | white-hair | !

The cutting word not only separates the hoku into two parts, it establishes a visual correspondence (mitate) between the two images, implying that the latter represents the haikai essence of the former, a classical topic.

Type II Formulation: "Buson and Shiki," pp. 410-11

…The more complex uses of kireji that come into prominence later on break down this linguistically confined structure of the sentence unit in favor of freer poetic play across the gap made by ya, other cutting-words, or syntactic breaks which cleave the poem in two …

Later in the seventeenth century when Danrin poets formulated their ideas about kireji, the discussion might be presented in terms of Yin-Yang metaphysics or simply in terms of a discrimination set up within a hokku between a "this" opposed to a "that." A work from 1680 put it in a refreshingly slangy way:

The kireji is that which clearly expresses a division of Yin and Yang. Yin and Yang mean the existence of an interesting confrontation within a poem (okashiku ikku no uchi ni arasoi aru o iu nari). For instance, something or other presented in a hokku is that?-no, it's not that but this, etc. 46

Eisenstein, circa 1929, would have replaced Yin with thesis and Yang with antithesis and cast the whole matter in the mold of his peculiar dialectic, but he would certainly have gone along with this Japanese poet's notion of arasoi, "confrontation." "By what, then, is montage characterized and, consequently, its cell -- the shot?" he asked himself in "The Cinematographic Principle and the Ideogram." "By collision. By the conflict of two pieces in opposition to each other. By conflict. By collision." And the phrases of hokku were, he insisted, "montage phrases," and hence they generated their meaning by a like dynamic process. 47

Example: Traces of Dreams, pp. 102-3:

The cutting word can also emphasizes contrast, …The following haiku, which Basho [editorial note: he used to be a Danrin practitioner] composed at Gichuji Temple (Kiso Yoshinaka’s grave) near Lake Biwa on the 15th of the Eighth Month of Genroku 3 (September 1690)…, is on the topic of harvest moon (meigetsu), which the classical poet praised for its refulgent aura.

bright harvest moon --

on the viewing stand

not one beautiful face

meigetsu | ya | za | ni |utsukushiki | kao | mo | nashi

harvest-moon | : | stand | at | beautiful | face | even | none

The speaker looks up at the harvest moon (meigetsu), which implicitly dazzles him, but when he looks down, he is disappointed by the undistinguished faces of the moon-viewers on the viewing stand. The cutting word, ya, which emphasizes the contrast between the two worlds, also suggests a correspondence that is implied by its very absence -- a beautiful face that would resonate with the beautiful moon

Type III Formulation: "Buson and Shiki," pp. 411

...

No survey of opinions about matters crucial to haikai is complete without a few comments from Bash6. The Sanzoshi (c. 1703), compiled by Bash6's disciple and hometown friend Hattori Doho attributes to the master a dynamic view of hokku effects similar to that of the Danrin poet cited above: "the savor of hokku is the feeling of going and coming back again." 48

Example: an excerpt from Traces of Dreams, pp. 107-8:

In Sanzoshi, Doho, Basho’s most talented and faithful disciple in Iga, argued that the hokku should have the “spirit of going and returning,” a movement similar to that found between a previous verse and an added verse in a linked verse sequence. … An example is:

in the mountain village

the New Year dancers are late --

plum blossoms

yamazato | wa | manzai | ososhi | ume | no | hana

mountain-village | as-for | dancers | late | plum | ‘s | flowers 24

The poet first states that in the mountain village the Manzai, the New Year dancers, are late and then comes back to reveal that the plum trees are already in bloom. This spirit of going and returning lies at the heart of the hokku. If the poem were very simply

in the mountain village

the New Year dancers are late --

It would have no more force that a single verse in a linked verse sequence (NKBZ 51:592)

To borrow Doho’s metaphor, the reader first “goes” to part A, explores its connotations, and then “returns” by another route to Part B, seeking to find a common path between A and B. The emotional and atmospheric flow moves first in one direction and then returns in a different direction, resulting in a mixing of the two currents.

[Editorial Note: The haiku above has been used as a model haiku for exploring /explaining Shomon’s view of haiku. In the subsection, entitled The Haikai Design, of Chapter 2, The Poetics of the Haiku, of The Poetics of Japanese Verse: Imagery, Structure, Meter, leading literary scholar and critic Koji Kawamoto gives a contextualized and in-depth analysis of this haiku (pp. 65-9)]

Brief Conclusion: "Buson and Shiki," pp. 411

...

Now this has none of the slam-bang of Eisenstein, yet all three of the formulations about kireji given above share a dynamic notion of artistic effects, one that conceives of meaning not as something given there "in" the text but as something actively generated in the reader or viewer through the artist's deployment of the bits and pieces (words, images, shots) of his medium.

Further Exploration: my Haiku Reality essay, "Haiku as Ideogrammatic Montage:A Linguistic-Cinematic Perspective"

Furthermore, Eisenstein likens montage to haiku, “the most laconic form of poetry.” 30 He describes haiku as the “concentrated impressionist sketch,” 31 in which minute details are highlighted by using minimal language. In the following haiku written by Japanese haiku masters:

A lonely crow

On leafless bough,

One autumn eve.

-- Basho

What a resplendent moon!

It casts the shadow of pine boughs

Upon the mats.

-- Kikaku

An evening breeze blows.

The water ripples

Against the blue heron’s legs.

-- Buson

It is early dawn.

The castle is surrounded

By the cries of wild ducks

-- Kyoroku 32

Eisenstein thinks that haiku is “little more than hieroglyphs transposed into phrases,” 33 and that each of these haiku is made up of montage phrases or shot lists. 34 The “simple combination of two or three details of a material kind yields a perfectly finished representation of another kind – [the] psychological.” 35 For him, “haiku… act simultaneously as linguistic signifiers and denotative images of ‘natural’ things.” 36 Structurally and consequentially speaking, he considers haiku as an extension of the ideogrammatic structure characterizing the Chinese and Japanese writing systems. He believes that a Japanese haiku master’s juxtaposing two or three separate images to create a new meaning parallels his crashing two or three conflicting shots with each other to produce a new filmic essence. The juxtaposition of contrasting images in haiku (or the collision of conflicting shots in cinema) may single out, highlight, and purify a particular quality. Take Basho’s ever-famous frog haiku for example:

an old pond...

a frog leaps in,

the sound of water

His juxtaposition of two contrasting images of "an old pond" and " a frog leaping into the pond" makes a larger meditative, lonely silence “heard” through the opposition of the water sound. 37 More importantly, juxtaposed images of some haiku engage the reader in more than one sense, as can be seen in the following ones by Basho:

Their fragrance

Is whiter than peach blossoms

The daffodils

Over the even sea

The wild ducks' cry

Is faintly white

It is whiter

Than the rocks of Ishiyama

The autumn wind

Onions lie

Washed in white

How chilly it is 38

A color is employed to suggest the quality of scent, a crying sound, a tactile sensation, or a temperature. 39 As in the case of the Kabuki theatre, Eisenstein argues that the montage effect of haiku results in the experience of synaesthesia or multisensory experience. 40 This characteristic helps him to develop the key principles of audiovisual montage and color-sound montage. 41

References:

Mark Morris,"Buson and Shiki: Part One," Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, Vol. 44, No. 2 (Dec., 1984), pp. 381-425

Haruo Shirane, Traces of Dreams Traces of Dreams Landscape, Cultural Memory, and the Poetry of Basho, 1998

Koji Kawamoto, The Poetics of the Haiku, of The Poetics of Japanese Verse:Imagery, Structure, Meter, 1991

Chen-ou Liu, "Haiku as Ideogrammatic Montage:A Linguistic-Cinematic Perspective," Haiku Reality, #5

A Room of My Own: Onion Haiku

written in response to Werner Reichhold's commentary
on the use of "cliches" in the Japanese and Western literary traditions.


his story traced back layer upon layer peeling an onion
(for Günter Grass)

One Man's Maple Moon: Story Tanka by Merle Connolly

English Original

the old man
his winter very close
needs time
to rearrange his story -
suitable for grandchildren

Ribbons, 8:2, Fall 2012

Merle Connolly


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

這位老人
人生冬天已近
需要時間
重新安排他的故事
以便適合他的孫子們

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

这位老人
人生冬天已近
需要时间
重新安排他的故事
以便适合他的孙子们


Bio sketch

An older contributor,  Merle Connolly enjoys writing tanka and finds it a very rewarding way of expressing thoughts in a few lines.  There is much to learn about the genre and its origin in Japan many years ago. Merle Connolly has had tanka published in Eucalypt, Grevillea & Wonga Vine, Take Five Vol. 4, Ribbons, Kokako, Moonbathing, Red Lights and Gusts.

One Man's Maple Moon: Dream Tanka by Asni Amin

English Original

autumn twilight
the choices I didn't make
the path I have taken ...
is it too late
to dream another dream?

Asni Amin


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

秋天黃昏
未做的選擇
已走的道路...
是否太晚
去做另一個夢?

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

秋天黄昏
未做的选择
已走的道路...
是否太晚
去做另一个梦?


Bio sketch

Asni Amin lives in Singapore and works as a librarian in a school.  She started writing tanka in 2012.  Some of her tanka has been published in Best of 5 Line Poems 2012 in January 2013.

Butterfly Dream: Empty Chairs Haiku by Jack Galmitz

English Original

in Bryant Park
2,753 empty chairs


not a breath of air

yards & lots

Jack Galmitz


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

在拜恩特公園

2753個空椅子


沒有一絲空氣

Chinese Translation (Simplified)  

在拜恩特公园
2753个空椅子


没有一丝空气


Bio Sketch

Jack Galmitz was born in NYC in 1951. He received a Ph.D in English from the University of Buffalo.  He is an Associate of the Haiku Foundation and Contributing Editor at Roadrunner Journal.  His most recent books are Views (Cyberwit.net,2012), a genre study of minimalist poetry, and Letters (Lulu Press, 2012), a book of poetry.  He lives in New York with his wife and stepson.

To the Lighthouse: Plagiarism or Honkadori (allusive variation)

                     poets of all ages contributed to one Great Poem perpetually in progress
                     -- Percy Bysshe Shelley
                 
                    cited in The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry by Harold Bloom


[About two and a half years ago,] I had long discussions with some haiku poets over the issue regarding "déjà-ku," a term invented by Michael Dylan Welch for “haiku that bear some relationship to other poems." 1 As Welch describes in his Simply Haiku article, these relationships can be good when showing a skillful use of allusion and homage, and not good in the cases of plagiarism and “cryptomnesia (remembering someone else's poem without realizing that one is remembering rather than creating it)" 2 Throughout our discussions, the recurring words or phrases were “not the first,” “similar/same,” “not original or fresh,” “has been done.” Some poets even lamented that poets who wrote déjà-ku had great difficulty in submitting them for publication. At some point, the discussions revolved around one key issue: “how similar is too similar?” [déjà-ku is not an academically recognized term but a name for a theory developed by Dylan Welch] In terms of language, structure, style, and theme, the following two haiku are the most problematic of all that we discussed for they are almost identical.

Yosa Buson’s haiku:

Japanese original:

tsurigane ni tomarite nemuru kochoo kana

English translation:

On the temple bell

has settled, and is fast asleep,

a butterfly.

Masaoka Shiki’s haiku:

Japanese original:

tsurigane ni tomarite hikaru hotaru kana

English translation:

On the temple bell

has settled, and is glittering,

a firefly. 3

Read in the context of Western literary criticism, 4 Shiki’s poem either reaches the limits of allusion, 5 or is simply condemned as derivative. However, read in the context of the Japanese poetic tradition, the cultural significance of kigo, and especially of honkadori, 6 a concept that is close to a loosely-defined Western equivalent of allusion, Shiki’s poem re-contextualizes Buson’s so as to create new meanings and perspectives.

The different evaluations of Shiki’s poem, one that was written in a later time and understood as reworking of an old image, result from the different understandings of the relationship of one’s creativity to originality/newness. In Edo culture, the ability to create the new through the old was a more preferred form of newness than the ability to be unique and individual. 7 This Japanese view of “newness” still pervades and is in sharp contrast with that of the West.

Veteran haiku poet and editor Cor van den Heuvel gives an incisive explanation about these perspective differences: “If a haiku is a good one, it doesn’t matter if the subject has been used before. The writing of variations on certain subjects in haiku, sometimes using the same or similar phrases (or even changing a few words of a previous haiku), is one of the most interesting challenges the genre offers a poet and can result in refreshingly different ways of ‘seeing anew’ for the reader. This is an aspect of traditional Japanese haiku which is hard for many Westerners, with their ideas of uniqueness and Romantic individualism, to accept. But some of the most original voices in haiku do not hesitate to dare seeming derivative if they see a way of reworking an ‘old’ image.” 8 (note: Jessica Millen's contextualized analysis of "Romantic Creativity and the Ideal of Originality" can be accessed at http://goo.gl/qQUnF)

In his haiku, Shiki used the same techniques that Buson did, but employed a related, yet dynamically, different image of a glittering firefly (a summer kigo), which stirs the tranquility of Buson’s deeply sleeping butterfly (a spring kigo). This slightly different emphasis conveyed a different feeling, and would be recognized by the informed reader at once and “appreciated as much if not more than a completely new idea. The virtuoso approach to literature, and to art as well, where the artist attempts to do essentially the same thing as his predecessors but in a slightly different way, is characteristic of Japan.” 9

Shiki’s use of honkadori brought to the reader’s mind an immediate identification with an earlier poem by Buson, for it conversed with and showed respect to the master and his work. Buson’s poem provided the horizon of poetic-cultural expectations/readings: “between the bell and the butterfly there are many layers of contrast -- size, color, solidity, mobility, lifespan -- which deepen the poem's meaning; there is also suspense -- the bell may start ringing at any minute, startling the butterfly.” 10 Against these expectations/readings, Shiki’s poem established its “newness” or implied difference. In doing so, poetry, as viewed by the Japanese, is communally written and shared. The concept of plagiarism is a modern one. “The brevity of the [haiku] is in fact possible because each poem is implicitly part of a massive, communally shared poem.” 11

For those who are well versed in Japanese haiku and Chinese Daoist (Wade-Giles: Taoist) literature, especially in the Zhuangzi (Wade-Giles: Chuang Tzu), 12 the butterfly imagery in Buson’s haiku is “not original or fresh,” rather it belongs to a massive, communally shared Japanese butterfly haiku based on Zhuangzi’s butterfly dream, a famous story recorded in the Zhuangzi:

“Once [Zhuangzi] dreamt he was a butterfly flitting and fluttering around, happy with himself and doing as he pleased. He didn't know he was [Zhuangzi.] Suddenly he woke up and there he was, solid and unmistakable [Zhuangzi]. But he didn't know if he was [Zhuangzi] who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he was [Zhuangzi.] Between [Zhuangzi] and a butterfly there must be some distinction! This is called the Transformation of Things.” 13

In the first haiku lexicon, Yama no I (Mountain Spring published in 1647), there is an explanatory passage under the entry titled Butterfly: “Butterfly. The scene of a butterfly alighting on rape blossoms, napping among flowers with no worries. Its appearance as it flutters its feathery wings, dancing like whirling snowflakes. Also the image is associated with [Zhuangzi’s] dream, suggesting that one hundred years pass as a gleam in a butterfly’s dream.” 14 To demonstrate how to use this butterfly imagery, the compiler Kigin gives the following example:

Scattering blossoms:

the dream of a butterfly –

one hundred years in a gleam 15

Since then, the penetration of Zhuangzi’s butterfly dream into themes and images has clearly been seen in Japanese haiku.

-- An excerpt from Waking from "Zhuangzi's Butterfly Dream -- Plagiarism or Honkadori"

first published in Simply Haiku, 8:2, Autumn 2010

hazy day moon...

waking with the weight

of memory

(for Zhuangzi)

朦朧曉月…

一覺醒來背負

沈重的記憶

note:

Individual imagination and creativity has been theorized to represent a high value in literary criticism. This view is well-explored in Forest Pyle's influential book, The Ideology of Imagination: Subject and Society in the Discourse of Romanticism. Today, high poetic value placed upon originality remains ingrained in the Western literary culture. This fear of unknowingly writing similar haiku or the reluctance or disuse of allusion proves that Thomas Mallon's remark still holds true: the poets live under the "fearful legacy of the Romantics." 14 Could those poets or editors who are constantly worried about "not being original or fresh" imagine that a poet deliberately using a direct quote as the first two lines of his haiku can achieve a great poem?

The following haiku is written by Katoh Shuuson (or Kato Shuson; 1905-1993), haiku poet and leader of the humanist school that seeks the truths of human existence through the poetic means of haiku, and who is "known for his scholarly and poetic appreciations of the great classic haijin, notably Matsuo Basho:" 15

    Japanese Original:

    hakutai-no kakaku shingari-ni neko-no ko-mo


    English Translation:

    the days and months travelers
    through a hundred generations
    kitten tags along

    Trans. by Dhugal J. Lindsay 16

For more information regarding my detailed analysis of Katoh Shuuson's haiku , see  To the Lighthouse: An Essay on Deja-Ku, Read It Slowly, Repeatedly, and Communally

Butterfly Dream: Mist Haiku by Angelo B. Ancheta

English Original

morning mist
texturing the canvas
of a dream

Haiku Reality, 9:16

Angelo B. Ancheta


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

清晨薄霧
梳理
夢想的畫布

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

清晨薄雾
梳理
梦想的画布


Bio Sketch

Angelo B. Ancheta lives in Rizal, Philippines. His haiku and other poems have appeared in various journals and anthologies both in print and online. He also writes fiction, some of which have won prizes in contests. He believes that writing complements object-oriented programming, which he does in daytime.

One Man's Maple Moon: Willow Tanka by Claire Everett

English Original

you say you know me
better than I know myself ...
still waters
the willow bends
to touch the sky

Multiverses, 1:1, 2012

Claire Everett


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

你說你比我
更加認識我自己 ...
靜止河水
楊柳彎腰
去輕觸天空

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

你说你比我
更加认识我自己 ...
静止河水
杨柳弯腰
去轻触天空


Bio Sketch

Claire Everett lives with her husband and children in North Yorkshire, England. Her poetry has been published in short form journals worldwide. She served on the editorial team for Take Five Best Contemporary Tanka, Volume 4, 2011 and in December of the same year she became Tanka Prose Editor for Haibun Today. Claire has just launched Skylark, a UK tanka journal dedicated to tanka in all its forms.

Butterfly Dream: Evening Drizzle Haiku by Christine L. Villa

English Original

evening drizzle
notes from his guitar
perfume the air

Haigaonline, 12:2, December 2011

Christine L. Villa


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

夜晚細雨
他的吉他旋律使得
滿室馨香

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

夜晚细雨
他的吉他旋律使得
满室馨香


Bio Sketch

Christine L. Villa is currently living with her husband in California. She loves writing for children, taking photographs, and making jewelry. Her haiku and haiga have been published in various international journals and e-books. You can read more of her works on her blog Blossom Rain.

A Room of My Own: Frog Pond Haiku

 written in response to Robert Aitken’s commentary on Basho's frog haiku


frog pond...
the weight of a shadow
on the lotus leaf

Note: For more information, see

1) Poetic Musings: Generic Analysis of Basho’s Frog Haiku (written from the perspective of kigo) or

2) To the Lighthouse: Cutting through Time and Space (written from the perspective of  kire (cutting))

Hot News: 唱不完的詩歌, Chinese Mirror Website Launched

On the 5th day of Chinese New Year Festival, it’s believed that the gods of prosperity come down from the heavens. Therefore, it’s the best day of the year to open new businesses.

Today, as promised, I launched a Chinese mirror website, 唱不完的詩歌: 中英雙語短詩網誌, putting NeverEnding Story on the literary map of “Cultural China,” which has been promoted by Tu Weiming, Research Professor and Senior Fellow of Asia Center at Harvard University, who authored "Cultural China: The Periphery as the Center," Daedalus, Vol. 134, No. 4, Fall, 2005, pp. 145-167.

And one more piece of good news. Poetry Daily, which is edited by TheJoyOTL, just became the fifth member in the list of e-papers that reprint the haiku and tanka published on NeverEnding Story. For more information, see Hot News: Haiku/Tanka Reprinted in Four E-Papers.

These two pieces of good news are my Valentine gifts to all poetry lovers.


New Year's sunlight
on 唱不完的詩歌
the scent of roses 
  
(note: 唱不完的詩歌 literally means reciting endless lines of poetry)

One Man's Maple Moon: Poet's Skin Tanka by Liam Wilkinson

English Original

sitting here
writing this
I dress
the thought of myself
in a better poet's skin

Liam Wilkinson


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

坐在這裡
撰寫這首詩
我穿戴自己
是位好詩人想法
的外衣

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

坐在这里
撰写这首诗
我穿戴自己
是位好诗人想法
的外衣


Bio Sketch

Liam Wilkinson lives in North Yorkshire, England. He has served as editor of a number of micropoetry journals and has seen his own poetry, art criticism and music reviews published widely. His website can be found at liamwilkinson.com.

Butterfly Dream: Red Rose Haiku by Tatjana Stefanović

English Original

Frosty night
A red rose looks at me
from the graphite

Ginyu, No. 40, 2008

Tatjana Stefanović


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

嚴寒的夜晚
墨條上的紅玫瑰
注視著我

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

严寒的夜晚
墨条上的红玫瑰
注视著我


Bio Sketch

Tatjana Stefanović is a lawyer by profession. She writes fairy-tales, haiku, and poetry (modern and for children). Her haiku have won many awards and have been included in numerous anthologies and journals, both nationally and internationally. Tatjana is a member of the Haiku Society of Serbia and Montenegro.

Butterfly Dream: Death News Haiku by Angie Werren

English Original

news of your death
when I open my eyes
green leaves

tinywords, issue 12.1

Angie Werren


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

你過世的消息
當我睜開眼睛時
一片綠葉

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

你过世的消息
当我睁开眼睛时
一片绿叶


Bio Sketch

Angie Werren lives and writes poetry in a small house in Ohio.  You can read more of her tiny poems on Feathers.

One Man's Maple Moon: Rip-Tide Tanka by Beverley George

English Original

rip-tide --
slowly I return
an occupied shell
to the surging sea
between us

Second Place, 2005 TSA International Tanka Contest

Beverley George


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

激流 --
慢慢地我將海貝
放回
在我倆之間
洶湧的大海

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

激流 --
慢慢地我将海贝
放回
在我俩之间
汹湧的大海


Bio Sketch

Beverley George is the past editor of Yellow Moon and the founder/editor of Eucalypt: a tanka journal 2006 - . In September 2009 she convened the 4th Haiku Pacific Rim Conference, in Terrigal, Australia. Beverley presented papers on haiku in Australia at the 3rd Haiku Pacific Rim conference in Matsuyama, Japan in 2007, and on Australian tanka at the 6th International Tanka Festival, Tokyo 2009. She was the president of the Australian Haiku Society 2006-2010.

Butterfly Dream: Hurricane Haiku by LeRoy Gorman

English Original 

hurricane near
she gets her nails done
the color of the sea

South by Southeast, 12:2, 2005

LeRoy Gorman



Chinese Translation (Traditional)

暴風雨逼近
她將指甲塗滿
海洋的顏色

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

暴风雨逼近
她将指甲塗满
海洋的颜色


Bio Sketch

LeRoy Gorman writes mostly minimalist and visual poetry.  His most recent book, fast enough to leave this world, is one of tanka published by Inkling Press, Edmonton.  More information on his writing can be found at the American Haiku Archives where he is the Honorary Curator for 2012-2013.

A Room of My Own: Year of the Snake Haiku

Chinese New Year's Eve ...
staring at the mirror
long before

tenth New Year
Chinese fried dough
... and black coffee

One Man’s Maple Moon: Butterfly Tanka by Joyce S. Greene

English Original

butterflies dance
with waving flowers --
housebound
I look outside and wonder
if the world is safe today

Eucalypt, 11, Dec. 2011

Joyce S. Greene


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

蝴蝶與花朵
一起共舞 --
在家不能外出
往窗外看, 心想
今日世界是否安全

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

蝴蝶与花朵
一起共舞 --
在家不能外出
往窗外看, 心想
今日世界是否安全


Bio Sketch

Joyce S. Greene lives with her husband in upstate New York, USA, and works as an accountant at an insurance company.  She began writing Japanese short form poetry in 2009.  A number of her poems have been published in tanka journals and in three tanka anthologies, Catzilla! and two volumes of Take Five: Best Contemporary Tanka, and one of her tanka was featured on the back cover of  Ribbons,  and, more recently, another was selected for the Ribbons Tanka Cafe Member's Choice Award.  In addition, one of her haiku tied for first place in the Haiku this Haiga competition sponsored by Haiga Online.

Butterfly Dream: Dream Haiku by Asni Amin

English Original

blue monarch ...
scent of a dream
on your wings                             

Asni Amin


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

藍色國王蝶 ...
夢的香味
仍在你的翅膀

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

蓝色国王蝶 ...
梦的香味
仍在你的翅膀


Bio Sketch

Asni Amin lives in Singapore and works as a librarian in a school.  She started writing haiku in 2012 and has her works published in Simply Haiku and various other ebooks on line.     

To the Lighthouse: Zhuangzi's Butterfly Dream

                                                                     falling off a dream I become a butterfly

                                                                     -- concluding haiku of my haibun, To Liv(e)


The title of the section name, Butterfly Dream, refers to one of the famous stories recorded in the Zhuangzi (pinyin) or Chuang Tzu (Wade-Giles):

“Once [Zhuangzi] dreamt he was a butterfly flitting and fluttering around, happy with himself and doing as he pleased. He didn't know he was [Zhuangzi.] Suddenly he woke up and there he was, solid and unmistakable [Zhuangzi]. But he didn't know if he was [Zhuangzi] who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he was [Zhuangzi.] Between [Zhuangzi] and a butterfly there must be some distinction! This is called the Transformation of Things.” 13

In the first haiku lexicon, Yama no I (Mountain Spring published in 1647), there is an explanatory passage under the entry titled Butterfly: “Butterfly. The scene of a butterfly alighting on rape blossoms, napping among flowers with no worries. Its appearance as it flutters its feathery wings, dancing like whirling snowflakes. Also the image is associated with [Zhuangzi’s] dream, suggesting that one hundred years pass as a gleam in a butterfly’s dream.” 14 To demonstrate how to use this butterfly imagery, the compiler Kigin gives the following example:

Scattering blossoms:

the dream of a butterfly –

one hundred years in a gleam 15

Since then, the penetration of Zhuangzi’s butterfly dream into themes and images has clearly been seen in Japanese haiku. Among these butterfly haiku, 16 the following was written by Basho and is often regarded as one of the most overtly allusive ones:

You are the butterfly

And I the dreaming heart

Of [Zhuangzi]. 17

Basho wrote a note about this occasional poem sent o his friend named Doi:

“You’re the butterfly, and I the dreaming heart of [Zhuangzi]. I don’t know if I’m Basho who dreamed with the heart-mind of [Zhuangzi] that I was a butterfly named Doi, or that winged Mr. Doi dreaming me is Basho.“ 18

While Zhuangzi played with the “transformation of things,” specifically with himself and a butterfly, Basho played with Doi, personalizing the Buddhist community (the sangha). 19

The following are two more butterfly haiku by Basho, which subtly allude to Zhuangzi’s butterfly dream:

not grown to a butterfly

this late in autumn

a caterpillar 20

At the denotative level, Basho saw a caterpillar on a late autumn day, lamenting that it has not matured into a butterfly. At the connotative level, Basho reflected on his own life, one which had not been through a transformative change. The poem echoes one of the key themes in Zhuangzi’s butterfly dream – the “transformation of things.”

butterflies flit...

that is all, amid the field

of sunlight 21

Because of Basho’s use of the flitting butterfly imagery, some Japanese Basho interpreters, such as Nobuo Hori, think that “the poem has something of a daydream in it, …harking back to [Zhuangzi’s] dream.” 22

And the most covertly allusive and regarded butterfly haiku is also written by Basho:

is that warbler

her soul? there sleeps

a graceful willow 23

Unlike any poet who saw “a willow hanging its branches as if in sleep and might compose a poem alluding to the butterfly in [Zhuangzi’s] dream,” 24 Basho replaced the butterfly with a warbler, subtly comparing the willow tree to Zhuangzi, and the warbler to his butterfly. Thus, he skillfully used this age-old allusion in haiku and was not used by it. This is a perfect example of showing his “haikai imagination” 25 creatively reworked an old image. Oshima Ryota claims that Basho “deserves to be called the [Zhuangzi] of haikai. 26

As Koji Kawamoto emphasizes in his essay dealing with the use and disuse of tradition in Basho’s haiku, “the key to [haiku’s] unabated vigor lies in Basho’s keen awareness of the utility of the past in undertaking an avant-garde enterprise, which he summed up in his famous adage “fueki ryuko,” 27 which literally means “the unchanging and the ever-changing.” This haikai poetic ideal was advocated during his trip through the northern region of Japan. He stressed that “haikai must constantly change (ryuko), find the new (atarashimi), shed its own past, even as it seeks qualities that transcend time.” 28 However, his notion of the new “lay not so much in the departure from or rejection of the perceived tradition as in the reworking of established practices and conventions, in creating new counterpoints to the past.” 29

-- Waking from "Zhuangzi's Butterfly Dream -- Plagiarism or Honkadori" by Chen-ou Liu

first published in Simply Haiku, 8:2, Autumn 2010

Butterfly Dream: Fence Haiku by Adelaide B. Shaw

English Original

the snow melted --
fences reappear
between neighbors

Heron’s Nest, XIII,  June 2011

Adelaide B. Shaw


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

積雪融化 --
圍欄重新出現
在鄰舍之間

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

积雪融化 --
围栏重新出现
在邻舍之间


Bio Sketch

Adelaide B. Shaw lives in Milbrook, NY with her husband. She has published short fiction, children’s poetry and stories, haiku, tanka, haibun and haiga. She has served as an editor and as a contest judge for Japanese style poetry. Her haiku blog is: www.adelaide-whitepetals.blogspot.com/ Her haiku collection, An Unknown Road, won a 2009 Merit Book Award sponsored by the Haiku Association of America.

One Man's Maple Moon: Spider's Thread Tanka by Keitha Keyes

English Original

holding tight
to a spider’s thread
I drift
from one tanka
to another

Gusts, 14,  fall/winter 2011

Keitha Keyes

Chinese Translation (Traditional)

緊握住
一條蜘蛛絲
我的心思
從一首短歌
飄移到另外一首

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

紧握住
一条蜘蛛丝
我的心思
从一首短歌
飘移到另外一首


Bio sketch

Keitha Keyes lives in Sydney but her heart is still in the Australian bush where she grew up. Keitha mostly writes haiku and tanka and related genres, revelling in the inspiration, friendship and generosity of these writing communities. Her work appears in Eucalypt, Kokako, Moonbathing, Simply Haiku, GUSTS, Ribbons, red lights, A Hundred Gourds, Take Five, Atlas Poetica, Lynx, FreeXpression, Evening Breeze, Windfall and several other anthologies.

A Room of My Own: Kaddish Haiku

 for Harvey Shapiro (January 27, 1924 - January 7, 2013), who was an admired American poet and former editor of The New York Times, and who suggested that Martin Luther King should write his famous “Letter from Birmingham Jail.”


in my sleep
a crow croaks Kaddish
... winter day moon

Note: Kaddish is a hymn of praises to God found in the Jewish prayer service. The central theme of the Kaddish is the magnification and sanctification of God's name... The term "Kaddish" is often used to refer specifically to "The Mourners' Kaddish", said as part of the mourning rituals in Judaism in all prayer services, as well as at funerals and memorials. -- an excerpt from the Wikipedia entry, Kaddish

Butterfly Dream: Counting Syllables Haiku by Don Wentworth

English Original

Stop counting syllables,
start counting the dead.

Past All Traps

Don Wentworth


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

停止數算音節，
開始計算死亡人數。

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

停止数算音节，
开始计算死亡人数。


Bio Sketch

Don Wentworth is a Pittsburgh-based poet whose work reflects his interest in the revelatory nature of brief, haiku-like moments in everyday life. His poetry has appeared in Modern Haiku, bottle rockets, bear creek haiku and Rolling Stone, as well as a number of anthologies. His first full-length collection, Past All Traps, was published in 2011 by Six Gallery Press and was shortlisted for the Haiku Foundation's 2011 Touchstone Distinguished Books Award.

(note: For more information on Don's writing and his book, please read  Christien Gholson's interview. "The interview is divided into two parts.  The first section focuses on Lilliput Review and Don’s editing process; the second section is about Don’s own writing and the writing of Past All Traps") 

Butterfly Dream: Restless Shadows Haiku by Saša Važić

English Original

restless shadows
on the wall -- my mother's
breath behind ...

Honorable Mention, 16th Mainichi Haiku Contest (2012)

Saša Važić


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

在牆壁上
無休止移動的影子－－我母親
的氣息在後

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

在墙壁上
无休止移动的影子－－我母亲
的气息在後


Bio sketch

Saša Važić is a freelance journalist, astrologer, translator, writer of prose and poetry, essays, and book reviews. Member of the Literary Translators of Serbia, Co-Owner, Co-Publisher and Co-Editor of Simply Haiku, Editor of bilingual Haiku Reality, member of the editorial board of Haiku Novine (Niš, Serbia), International Editor for moonset (Oregon, USA). Her haiku have been translated into 18 languages and included in numerous haiku magazines and anthologies. So far she has received 44 awards in the haiku contests, both nationally and internationally. She authored an e-book entitled muddy shoes candy heart, and translated 35 books of haiku poetry by Serbian and international authors into English. She also translated David G Lanoue’s novels, Haiku Guy and Laughing Buddha, into Serbian.

Butterfly Dream: Border Stones Haiku by Dimitar Anakiev

English Original

Summer funeral --
border stones of my village
sunk deep in the earth

At the Tombstone

Dimitar Anakiev

Chinese Translation (Traditional)

夏日喪禮－－
我村莊的邊界石頭
深陷泥層中

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

夏日丧礼－－
我村莊的边界石头
深陷泥层中


Bio sketch

Dimitar Anakiev (aka Kamesan 亀さん, b. 1960 in Belgrade) poet, writer and filmmaker, began to write and publish poetry at the age of 13, and began writing haiku in 1985. He is the “father“ of many Balkan haiku projects such as Haiku Novine (Serbia) and Prijatelj and Apokalipsa haiku edition (Slovenia). He is a co-founder of World Haiku Association and co-editor of Knots: An Anthology of Southeatern European Haiku Poetry. His awards include the European Award: The Medal of Franz Kafka, The Museum of Haiku Literature Award, Haiku Society of America annual Merit Book Award and prizes from Mainichi Daily News, Daily Yomiuri (both Tokyo) and Azami (Osaka). He has also won several film awards, including the National Slovenian Award for best documentary film.

Hot News: Haiku/Tanka Reprinted in Four E-Papers

Since its inception on Jan.1, 2013, NeverEnding Story has been well-received in the poetry communities it serves, and its haiku and tanka have been regularly reprinted in the following four e-papers:

1 Poetry and Poetry Lovers, edited by Sweepy (A D Joyce)

2 The Poetry Daily, edited by Govind Joshi

3 The Poetry Daily, edited by My Blogworld

4 The Poetry and Me Daily, edited by Poetry and Me

Below is a relevant excerpt from my Lynx interview with Jane Reichhold:

L: What do you feel we as haiku or tanka writers need to do to get these forms more accepted by the mainstream poetry world?

CL: In terms of defining what poetry is, there is an asymmetric power relationship between the mainstream poetry world and the haiku/tanka community. It’s difficult to change their perception of haiku/tanka in a top-down manner. In my view, the most effective way of reversing this unbalanced relationship is to adopt a bottom-up approach; that is to consolidate and expand our readership base through online publishing and social networking sites. If there are more people who love reading/writing haiku and tanka, the mainstream poetry world will eventually open their main gate to haiku and tanka poets. This approach to reversing the asymmetric power relationship has been demonstrated in the case of the power transfer from traditional media, such as news papers, TV, and books, to online and social media.

Most importantly, living in a hectic society, most people now only have a short attention span. If they are interested in reading something meaningful, I think short verse forms, such as haiku and tanka, will become more and more popular. I’ve been tweeting my published work for two years, and found more and more Twitter users use hashtags such as #poetry, #micropoetry, #haiku, #tanka, #gogyohka, #gpoem, #5lines,..etc, to indicate their tweets are short poems (For further information, see M. Kei, “The Topsy Turvy World of Micropoetry on Twitter,” Atlas Poetica, 9, Summer 2011)

One Man's Maple Moon: Crystal Glass Tanka by Keitha Keyes

English Original

a crystal glass
on a granite bench
no surprise
when it shatters …
still my sister dies too soon

Take Five: Best Contemporary Tanka, Vol. 3, 2010

Keitha Keyes


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

一個水晶杯
在花崗石長椅上
當它粉碎時
我並不感到意外 ...
我的妹妹仍然死得太早

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

一个水晶杯
在花岗石长椅上
当它粉碎时
我并不感到意外 ...
我的妹妹仍然死得太早


Bio Sketch

Keitha Keyes lives in Sydney but her heart is still in the Australian bush where she grew up. Keitha mostly writes haiku and tanka and related genres, revelling in the inspiration, friendship and generosity of these writing communities. Her work appears in Eucalypt, Kokako, Moonbathing, Simply Haiku, GUSTS, Ribbons, red lights, A Hundred Gourds, Take Five, Atlas Poetica, Lynx, FreeXpression, Evening Breeze, Windfall and several other anthologies.

Butterfly Dream: First Sunrise Haiku by Ignatius Fay

English Original

first sunrise ...
avoiding eye contact
with his gay brother

Haiku of Merit, World Haiku Review, Aug., 2010

Ignatius Fay


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

第一個日出 ...
避免與他的同性戀兄弟
眼目接觸

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

第一个日出 ...
避免与他的同性恋兄弟
眼目接触


Bio Sketch

Ignatius Fay is a retired invertebrate paleontologist. His poems have appeared in many of the most respected online and print journals, including The Heron’s Nest, Modern Haiku, Ars Poetica, Gusts, Chrysanthemum and Eucalypt. Books: Breccia (2012), a collaboration with fellow haiku poet, Irene Golas; Points In Between (2011), an anecdotal history of his first 23 years. He is the new editor of the Haiku Society of America Bulletin. Ignatius resides in Sudbury, Ontario, Canada

A Room of My Own: A Haiku about Gaza

Gaza at dawn
the shriek of a bullet
tearing the wind

Butterfly Dream: Star Haiku by Michael Dylan Welch

English Original

first star --
a seashell held
to my baby’s ear

Into the Open: Poems from Poets of the Sixth Skagit River Poetry Festival

Michael Dylan Welch


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

第一顆星 --
將一個海貝貼近
我嬰兒 的耳朵

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

第一颗星 --
将一个海贝贴近
我婴儿 的耳朵


Bio Sketch

Michael Dylan Welch is vice president of the Haiku Society of America, founder of the Tanka Society of America (2000), and cofounder of Haiku North America conference (1991) and the American Haiku Archives (1996). In 2010 he also started National Haiku Writing Month (NaHaiWriMo), which takes place every February, with an active Facebook page. His personal website is www.graceguts.com, which features hundreds of essays, reviews, reports, and other content, including examples of his published poetry.