old man in the wind ...
a clothesline blue shirt
hugging itself
Poetry conveys emotion by presenting the thing; things prize precision, emotion prizes reticence.
-- Wei Tai, Remarks on Poetry from the Hermitage that Overlooks the Han
The dominant style of haikai in the Genroku period was
the keiki (landscape) style, which "focused on the scenic presentation
of the external world, especially nature and the countryside" (Haruo Shirane, Traces of Dreams:Landscape, Cultural Memory, and the Poetry of Basho, p. 76). This
landscape style represented a return to a style of classical linked
verse that focused on "things as they appear" (ibid.). One
characteristic of the landscape style, particularly in Basho's haikai,
was that "it often infused the external landscape (kei) with human
emotion or sentiment (jo) -- a fusion influenced both by the medieval
waka tradition and by the Chinese poetry that came into fashion in the
1680s" (ibid.).In Remarks on Poetry from the Hermitage that Overlooks the Han,
the 11th century Chinese poet 魏泰 (Wei Tai) wrote, "詩者述事以寄情; 事貴詳,
情貴隱(Poetry conveys emotion by presenting the thing; things prize
precision, emotion prizes reticence)". In Haikai Juron (Haikai Ten Discussions),
Bsho's late disciple Shiko developed this notion of keijo, fusion of
scene (kei) and emotion (jo), into one of the central tenets of the
Basho style, using the famous frog haiku, written in 1686, as an example:
old pond ...
a frog jumps in
the sound of water
"Truly,
when it comes to what is called contemporary haikai, one sees the image
[sugata] of the frog in the old pond. Although it appears that the poem
possesses absolutely no emotion[jo], but Basho has managed to suggest
the emotion [fuzei] of quiet loneliness [sabishisa]. This is what is
called the overtones [yosei] of poetry... Sugata is an image that
suggests emotion without stating it...In the poetry of present, one sees
sugata with one's eyes and leaves the emotions outside the words" (ibid., p.
77) (For further discussion of Basho's frog haiku, see Poetic Musings: Generic Analysis of Basho’s Frog Haiku)
Selected Haiku:
Empty baseball field --
A robin,
Hops along the bench
Jack Kerouac
cold floor ...
stepping barefoot
on broken moonlight
Judt Shrode
face to face
with the wailing wall ...
an empty bench
Rita Odeh
damp morning
a gray yard
before the robin
Marion Clarke
acres of darkness
outside, inside
then a firefly
Angelee Deodhar
reading obituaries
the here and there
of fireflies
Ben Moeller-Gaa
low winter moon
just beyond the reach
of my chopsticks
Fay Aoyagi
harvest moon
the horizon between here
and hereafter
Lorin Ford
scattering his ashes
the moon
in bits and pieces
Sylvia Forges-Ryan
winter twilight
crossing the border
a child's shadow
Chen-ou Liu
Note:
Genroku period, in Japanese history, era from 1688 to 1704,
characterized by a rapidly expanding commercial economy and the
development of a vibrant urban culture centred in the cities of Kyōto,
Ōsaka, and Edo (Tokyo). The growth of the cities was a natural outcome
of a century of peaceful Tokugawa rule and its policies designed to
concentrate samurai in castle towns. Whereas Edo became the
administrative capital of the Tokugawa shogunate, Ōsaka served as the
country’s commercial hub, and rich Ōsaka merchants generally were the
ones who defined Genroku culture. Free of the rigid codes that
restricted samurai, townsmen could spend their leisure in the pursuit of
pleasure, while their profits created a cultural explosion... haiku
poetry was perfected by Matsuo Bashō...The Genroku period set the
standards for an urban culture that continued to flourish throughout the
Tokugawa period... excepted from "Genroku Period," Encyclopædia Britannica
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