Dark Wings of the Night: American Visionary and Tanka Poet, Jun Fujita

Jun Fujita (1888-1963) was born in a village near Hiroshima, Japan, and immigrated to Canada as a teenager. By 1915, he was in Chicago, where he worked for the Evening Post, known as the first Japanese-American photo-journalist. He was also an accomplished poet, arguably the first master of tanka poetry in English. He certainly was a master of the rhetoric of omission or, as he put it, "that fine and illusive mood, big enough to illuminate the infinity of the universe," which is a defining characteristic of tanka. And his Tanka: Poems in Exile, first English language collection of tanka, was published in 1923. The flip-flop ebook version can be found here.

The following is an excerpt about Fujita's view of tanka and his tanka:

... Jun Fujita, publishing in Poetry Magazine from 1919–1929, left behind a small body of tanka poetry and literary criticism. In 1922 he criticized Yone Noguchi, another Japanese North American, for adopting the “carcass” but not the “essence” of Japanese poetry.4 In discussing a poem about a waterfall, Fujita noted that Noguchi focused on the roar of the waterfall rather than its silence. Fujita stated, 

To feel and create this poetic silence, and through it to suggest the roar, the power, and the majesty of the fall without describing it, is the mission of Japanese poets.5

Fujita’s own work embodies his principles. 

While you pant deliriously, I awake 

To the bold moon, 

The somber hills, 

And myself. 

Jun Fujita 6

The five poetic phrases of tanka have been formatted as a quatrain, no doubt to meet Western expectations of what a poem is supposed to look like, but it is highly irregular: 11-4-4-3 syllables. If the first line is broken into two, the pattern becomes 8-3-4-4-3. Obviously, formal form, archaic poetic diction, and classical subjects are not what Fujita conceived tanka to be. Although Hartmann and Fujita are treating the same subject, love (or at least passion), Fujita’s approach is thoroughly modern... 

-- excerpted from To the Lighthouse: The Problem of Tanka : Definition and Differentiation by M. Kei

The following is a a curator talk about the life and times of Japanese-American photographer and tanka poet, Jun Fujita, recored by Chicago Access Network Television (CAN TV) on March 3, 2020: 

Jun Fujita: American Visionary

Selected Tanka:

Winter

Among the brittled grasses,

Frosting in the moon glare,

Tombstones are

Whiter tonight. 

Spring:

Milky night; 

Through slender trees in drowse

A petal --

Falling. 

Summer:

Midnight;

Over the lifeless sand plain,

The moon and I

Are Alone.  

Autumn:

On a country road

An old woman walks;

The autumn sun casts her shadow

Long and thin. 

I know it is not she,

Yet, I listen

To distant laughter,

Fleeting away.  

Dark Wings of the Night: Jane Reichhold's Haiku Techniques

(Editor's Note: Today marks the fifth anniversary of the passing of Jane Reichhold, who was my friend and most importantly, a wholehearted supporter of NeverEnding Story. One of her influential essays, "Haiku Techniques," helped me to better understand how to write effective haiku durning my first year of learning. With her permission granted eight years ago to republish her work on NeverEnding Story, I would like to share her words of wisdom on writing haiku and my haiku written for her:

two worlds meet

on this sandy beach

her farewell note

Chen-ou

In my early years of haiku writing, I easily accepted the prevalent credo being espoused on how to write haiku. This was, sometimes implied and occasionally expressed, as being: if the author's mind/heart was correctly aligned in the "proper" attitude, while experiencing a so-called "haiku moment", one merely had to report on the experience to have a darn-good haiku.

One reason for rejoicing in the acceptance of this view, was that it by-passed the old 5-7-5 barrier crisis. This was certainly a plus for the whole 70s haiku scene as there seemed a danger of the entire movement bogging down in fights, arguments and broken friendships.

Another advantage of this system of defining a haiku was that it bestowed near-religious honor on the author of a passable haiku. No one knew exactly why a particular haiku was 'good' but it was clear from the ku that the author had experienced a moment of enlightenment (or satori for the Zen inspired). If the moment was holy and the form fit in with the group's philosophy publishing the ku, the haiku was said to be an excellent one. This happened more often if the person judging the ku was a good friend of the haiku's author.

Another plus for this viewpoint was it allowed endless articles to be written for magazines on the Zen aspects of haiku writing, and even fuzzier articles of how to prepare for, find, recognize, and advertise one's haiku moments. Books were even compiled around this semi-religious idea.

However, many of us, recognized that "haiku moments" were very much like other flashes of inspiration which, when transported into other media, became paintings, stories, dreams or even new color schemes or recipes. And many others shared the frustration of having a truly life-altering moment of insight and then never being able to write a decent haiku that expressed the wonder and majesty of that moment. They would ask, what was wrong with me? Was I not spiritually prepared enough? Was I too common? Too inattentive? Too word-numb? Maybe too many of my Christian beliefs kept me from the Zen nirvana of haiku?

The truth is: probably all of the above can weaken one's ability to write good haiku. Ouch, that hurts. However, I felt rescued when I came across Aware – a haiku primer written by hand and illustrated by Betty Drevniok, who was at the time she wrote the book (early 80s I am guessing as it has no date in it), president of the Haiku Society of Canada. Among the many great tips for writing haiku (and obtaining the questionable Zenniness of Zen) I came away with her precept: "Write [haiku] in three short lines using the principle of comparison, contrast, or association." On page 39 she used an expression I had been missing in the discussion of haiku when she wrote: "This technique provides the pivot on which the reader's thought turns and expands." Technique! So there are tools one can use! I thought joyfully.

And I practiced her methods with glee and relative (to me) success and increased enjoyment. Suddenly I could figure out by myself what was wrong with a haiku that failed to jell as I thought it should. I could ask myself if there was a comparison, a contrast or an association between the images and if this relationship was clear and understandable for the reader.

Slowly, over the years, I found by reading the translations of the old Japanese masters and the haiku of my contemporaries whom I admired, that there were more factors than just these three on which one could build a haiku. However, there seemed a disinterest in others wanting to study these aspects which I call techniques. Perhaps this is because in the haiku scene there continues to be such a reverence for the haiku moment and such a dislike for what are called "desk haiku". The definition of a desk haiku is one written from an idea or from simply playing around with words. If you don't experience an event with all your senses it is not valid haiku material. A ku from your mind was half-dead and unreal. An experienced writer could only smile at such naiveté, but the label of "desk haiku" was the death-knell for a ku declared as such. This fear kept people new to the scene afraid to work with techniques or even the idea that techniques were needed when it came time to write down the elusive haiku moment.

At the risk of leading anyone into the quasi-sin of writing dreaded desk haiku, I would like to discuss and illustrate some of the haiku writing techniques which I have recognized and used. In order to avoid my seeming to accuse others of using techniques, the ku quoted are all my own.

The Technique of Comparison -- In the words of Betty Drevniok: "In haiku the SOMETHING and the SOMETHING ELSE are set down together in clearly stated images. Together they complete and fulfill each other as ONE PARTICULAR EVENT." She rather leaves the reader to understand that the idea of comparison is showing how two different things are similar or share similar aspects.

a spring nap

downstream cherry trees

in bud

What is expressed, but not said, is the thought that buds on a tree can be compared to flowers taking a nap. One could also ask to what other images could cherry buds be compared? A long list of items can form in one's mind and be substituted for the first line. Or one can turn the idea around and ask what in the spring landscape can be compared to a nap without naming things that close their eyes to sleep. By changing either of these images one can come up with one's own haiku while getting a new appreciation and awareness of comparison.

The Technique of Contrast -- Now the job feels easier. All one has to do is to contrast images.

long hard rain

hanging in the willows

tender new leaves

The delight from this technique is the excitement that opposites creates. You have instant built-in interest in the most common haiku 'moment'. And yet most of the surprises of life are the contrasts, and therefore this technique is a major one for haiku.

The Technique of Association -- This can be thought of as "how different things relate or come together". The Zen of this technique is called "oneness" or showing how everything is part of everything else. You do not have to be a Buddhist to see this; simply being aware of what is, is illumination enough.

ancestors

the wild plum

blooms again

If this is too hard to see because you do not equate your ancestors with plum trees, perhaps it is easier to understand with:

moving into the sun

the pony takes with him

some mountain shadow

Does it help for me to explain how this ku came to be written? I was watching some ponies grazing early in the morning on a meadow that was still partially covered with the shadow of the mountain. As the grazing pony moved slowly into the sunshine, I happened to be focused on the shadow and actually saw some of the mountain's shadow follow the pony – to break off and become his shadow. It can also be thought that the pony eating the grass of the mountain becomes the mountain and vice versa. When the boundaries disappear between the things that separates them, it is truly a holy moment of insight and it is no wonder that haiku writers are educated to latch on to these miracles and to preserve them in ku.

The Technique of the Riddle -- this is probably one of the very oldest poetical techniques. It has been guessed that early spiritual knowledge was secretly preserved and passed along through riddles. Because poetry, as it is today, is the commercialization of religious prayers, incantations, and knowledge, it is no surprise that riddles still form a serious part of poetry's transmission of ideas.

One can ask: "what is still to be seen"

on all four sides

of the long gone shack

The answer is:

calla lilies

Or another one would be:

spirit bodies

waving from cacti

plastic bags

The 'trick' is to state the riddle in as puzzling terms as possible. What can one say that the reader cannot figure out the answer? The more intriguing the 'set-up' and the bigger surprise the answer is, the better the haiku seems to work. As in anything, you can overextend the joke and lose the reader completely. The answer has to make sense to work and it should be realistic. Here is a case against desk haiku. If one has seen plastic bags caught on cacti, it is simple and safe to come to the conclusion I did. If I had never seen such an incident, it could be it only happened in my imagination and in that scary territory one can lose a reader. So keep it true, keep it simple and keep it accurate and make it weird.

Oh, the old masters favorite trick with riddles was the one of: is that a flower falling or is it a butterfly? or is that snow on the plum or blossoms and the all-time favorite – am I a butterfly dreaming I am a man or a man dreaming I am a butterfly. Again, if you wish to experiment (the ku may or may not be a keeper) you can ask yourself the question: if I saw snow on a branch, what else could it be? Or seeing a butterfly going by you ask yourself what else besides a butterfly could that be?

The Technique of Sense-switching -- This is another old-time favorite of the Japanese haiku masters, but one they have used very little and with a great deal of discretion. It is simply to speak of the sensory aspect of a thing and then change to another sensory organ. Usually it involves hearing something one sees or vice versa or to switch between seeing and tasting.

home-grown lettuce

the taste of well-water

green

The Technique of Narrowing Focus -- This is something Buson used a lot because he, being an artist, was a very visual person. Basically what you do is to start with a wide-angle lens on the world in the first line, switch to a normal lens for the second line and zoom in for a close-up in the end. It sounds simple, but when he did it he was very effective. Read some of Buson's work to see when and how he did this.

the whole sky

in a wide field of flowers

one tulip

The Technique of Metaphor -- I can just hear those of you who have had some training in haiku, sucking in your breath in horror. There IS that ironclad rule that one does not use metaphor in haiku. Posh. Basho used it in his most famous "crow ku". What he was saying in other words (not haiku words) was that an autumn evening come down on one the way it feels when a crow lands on a bare branch. I never understood this hokku until one day I was in my tiny studio with the door open. I was standing so still I excited the resident crow's curiosity causing him to fly down suddenly to land about two feet from my cheek on the tiny nearly bare pine branch. I felt the rush of darkness coming close, as close as an autumn evening and as close as a big black crow. The thud of his big feet hitting the bare branch caused the tiny ripple of anxiety one has when it gets dark so early in the autumn. In that moment I felt I knew what Basho had experienced. It is extremely hard to find a haiku good enough to place up against Basho's rightly famous one, so I'll pass giving you an example of my ku. But this is a valid technique and one that can bring you many lovely and interesting haiku.

The Technique of Simile -- Usually in English you know a simile is coming when you spot the words "as" and "like". Occasionally one will find in a haiku the use of a simile with these words still wrapped around it, but the Japanese have proved to us that this is totally unnecessary. From them we have learned that it is enough to put two images in juxtaposition (next to each other) to let the reader figure out the "as" and "like" for him/herself. So basically the unspoken rule is that you can use simile (which the rule-sayers warn against) if you are smart enough to simply drop the "as" and "like". Besides, by doing this you give the reader some active part that makes him or her feel very smart when they discover the simile for him/herself.

a long journey

some cherry petals

begin to fall

The Technique of the Sketch or Shiki's Shasei -- Though this technique is often given Shiki's term shasei (sketch from life) or shajitsu (reality) it had been in use since the beginning of poetry in the Orient. The poetic principle is "to depict as is". The reason he took it up as a 'cause' and thus, made it famous, was his own rebellion against the many other techniques used in haiku. Shiki was, by nature it seemed, against whatever was the status quo. If poets had over-used any idea or method his personal goal was to point this out and suggest something else. (Which was followed until someone else got tired of it and suggested something new. This seems to be the way poetry styles go in and out of fashion.) Thus, Shiki hated word-plays, puns, riddles – all the things you are learning here! He favored the quiet simplicity of just stating what he saw without anything else having to happen in the ku. He found the greatest beauty in the common sight, simply said. And 99% of his haiku were written in his style. And many people still feel he was right. And there are some moments which are perhaps best said as simply as it is possible. Yet, he himself realized, after writing very many in this style in 1893, that used too much, even his new idea can become boring. So the method is an answer, but never the complete answer of how to write a haiku.

evening

waves come into the cove

one at a time

The Technique of Double entendre (or double meanings) -- Anyone who has read translations of Japanese poetry has seen how much poets delighted in saying one thing and meaning something else. Only insiders knew the secret language and got the jokes. In some cases the pun was to cover up a sexual reference by seeming to speaking of something commonplace. There are whole lists of words with double meanings: spring rain = sexual emissions and jade mountain = the Mound of Venus, just to give you an sampling. But we have them in English also, and haiku can use them in the very same way.

eyes in secret places

deep in the purple middle

of an iris

The Technique of using Puns -- Again we can only learn from the master punsters – the Japanese. We have the very same things in English but we haiku writers may not be so well-versed as the Japanese are in using these because there have been periods of Western literary history where this skill has been looked down upon. And even though the hai of haiku means "joke, or fun, or unusual" there are still writers whose faces freeze into a frown when encountering a pun in three lines.

a sign

at the fork in the road

"fine dining"

The Technique of Word-plays -- Again, we have to admit the Japanese do this best. Their work is made easier by so many of their place names either having double meaning or many of their words being homonyms (sounding the same). Still (there is one meaning 'quiet' or 'continuation') we have so many words with multiple meaning there is no reason we cannot learn to explore our own language. A steady look at many of our cities' names could give new inspiration: Oak-land, Anchor Bay, Ox-ford, Cam-bridge and even our streets give us Meadowgate, First Street, and one I lived on – Ten Mile Cutoff.

moon set

now it's right – how it fits

Half Moon Bay

The Technique of Verb /Noun Exchange -- This is a very gentle way of doing word play and getting double duty out of words. In English we have many words which function as both verbs and nouns. By constructing the poem carefully, one can utilize both aspects of such words as leaves, spots, flowers, blossoms, sprouts, greens, fall, spring, circles and hundreds more. You can use this technique to say things that are not allowed in haiku. For instance, one would not be admired for saying that the willow tree strings raindrops, but one can get away with making it sound as if the strings of willow are really the spring rain manifested in raindrops. This is one of those cases where the reader has to decide which permissible stance the ku has taken.

spring rain

the willow strings

raindrops

The Technique of Close Linkage -- Basically this could come as a sub-topic to association but it also works with contrast and comparison so I like to give it its own rubric. In making any connection between the two parts of a haiku, the leap can be a small and even a well-known one. Usually beginners are easily impressed with close linkage and experiment first with this form. They understand it and feel comfortable using the technique.

winter cold

finding on a beach

an open knife

The Technique of Leap Linkage -- Then as a writer's skills increase, and as he or she reads many haiku (either their own or others) such 'easy' leaps quickly fade in excitement. Being human animals we seem destined to seek the next level of difficulty and find that thrilling. So the writer begins to attempt leaps that a reader new to haiku may not follow and therefore find the ku to espouse nonsense. The nice thing about this aspect, is when one begins to read haiku by a certain author, one will find some of the haiku simply leave the reader cold and untouched. Years later, returning to the same book, with many haiku experiences, the reader will discover the truth or poetry or beauty in a haiku that seemed dead and closed earlier. I think the important point in creating with this technique is that the writer is always totally aware of his or her 'truth'. Poets of the surrealistic often make leaps which simply seem impossible to follow (I am thinking of Paul Celan) where the reader simply has to go on faith that the author knew what he was writing about. This is rare in haiku. Usually, if you think about the ku long enough and deeply enough, one can find the author's truth. I know I have quickly read a link in a renga and thought the author was kidding me or had gone off the deep end. Sometimes it is days later when I will go, "Ah-ha!" and in that instant understand what the ku was truly about.

wildflowers

the early spring sunshine

in my hand

The Technique of Mixing It Up -- What I mean here is mixing up the action so the reader does not know if nature is doing the acting or if a human is doing it. As you know, haiku are praised for getting rid of authors, authors' opinions and authors' action. One way to sneak this in is to use the gerund (-ing added to a verb) combined with an action that seems sensible for both a human and for the nature/nature to do. Very often when I use a gerund in a haiku I am basically saying, "I am. . . " making an action but leaving unsaid the "I am". The Japanese language has allowed poets to use this tactic so long and so well that even their translators are barely aware of what is being done. It is a good way to combine humanity's action with nature in a way that minimizes the impact of the author but allows an interaction between humanity and nature.

end of winter

covering the first row

of lettuce seeds

The Technique of Sabi -- I almost hesitate to bring up this idea as a technique because the word sabi has gotten so many meanings over the innumerable years it has been in Japan, and now that it comes to the English language it is undergoing even new mutations. As fascinated as Westerners have become with the word, the Japanese have maintained for centuries that no one can really, truly comprehend what sabi really is and thus, they change its definition according to their moods. Bill Higginson, in The Haiku Handbook, calls sabi – "(patina/loneliness) Beauty with a sense of loneliness in time, akin to, but deeper than, nostalgia." Suzuki maintains that sabi is "loneliness" or "solitude" but that it can also be "miserable", "insignificant", and "pitiable", "asymmetry" and "poverty". Donald Keene sees sabi as "an understatement hinting at great depths". So you see, we are rather on our own with this! I have translated this as: sabi (SAH-BEE)- aged/loneliness - A quality of images used in poetry that expresses something aged or weathered with a hint of sadness because of being abandoned. A split-rail fence sagging with overgrown vines has sabi; a freshly painted picket fence does not." As a technique, one puts together images and verbs which create this desired atmosphere. Often in English this hallowed state is sought by using the word "old" and by writing of cemeteries and grandmas. These English tricks wear thin quickly.

rocky spring

lips taking a sip

from a stone mouth

or

coming home

flower

by flower

The Technique of Wabi -- the twin brother to sabi who has as many personas can be defined as "(WAH-BEE)-poverty- Beauty judged to be the result of living simply. Frayed and faded Levis have the wabi that bleached designer jeans can never achieve." Thus one can argue that the above haiku samples are really more wabi than sabi – and suddenly one understands the big debate. However, I offer one more ku that I think is more wabi than sabi because it offers a scene of austere beauty and poignancy.

parting fog

on wind barren meadows

birth of a lamb

The Technique of Yûgen -- another of these Japanese states of poetry which is usually defined as "mystery" and "unknowable depth". Somehow yûgen has avoided the controversy of the other two terms but since deciding which haiku exemplifies this quality is a judgmental decision, there is rarely consent over which ku has it and which one does not. In my glossary I am brave enough to propound: "One could say a woman's face half-hidden behind a fan has yûgen. The same face half-covered with pink goo while getting a facial, however, does not." But still haiku writers do use the atmosphere as defined by yûgen to make their ku be a good haiku by forcing their readers to think and to delve into the everyday sacredness of common things. (In a letter from Jeanne Emrich, she suggests one can obtain yûgen by having something disappear, or something appear suddenly out of nowhere, or by the use of night, fog, mist, empty streets, alleys, and houses. Using the sense-switching technique can create an air of mystery because of the information from the from the 'missing' sense.) Some English writers have tried to create yûgen by using the word "old" which became so overused there was an outcry against the adjective. Others tried to reach this state by writing about ghosts or 'spooky' subjects which did not impress the Japanese at all. Jeanne's suggestions seem, to me, to bring the writer closer to this goal.

tied to the pier

the fishy smells

of empty boats

The Technique of the Paradox -- One of the aims of the playing with haiku is to confuse the reader just enough to attract interest. Using a paradox will engage interest and give the reader much to think about. Again, one cannot use nonsense but has to construct a true (connected to reality) paradox. It is not easy to come up with new ones or good ones, but when it happens, one should not be afraid of using it in a haiku.

climbing the temple hill

leg muscles tighten

in our throats

The Technique of The Improbable World -- This is very close to paradox but has a slight difference. Again, this is an old Japanese tool which is often used to make the poet sound simple and child-like. Often it demonstrates a distorted view of science – one we 'know' is not true, but always has the possibility of being true (as in quantum physics).

evening wind

colors of the day

blown away

or

waiting room

a patch of sunlight

wears out the chairs

The Technique of Humor -- This is the dangerous stuff. Because one has no way of judging another person's tolerance for wisecracks, jokes, slurs, bathroom and bedroom references, one should enter the territory of humor as if it is strewn with land-mines. And yet, if one is reading before a live audience nothing draws in the admiration and applause like some humorous haiku. Very often the humor of a haiku comes from the honest reactions of humankind. Choose your terms carefully, add to your situation with appropriate leaps, and may the haiku gods smile on you.

dried prune faces

guests when they hear

we have only a privy

The Above as Below Technique --Seeming to be a religious precept, yet this technique works to make the tiny haiku a well-rounded thought. Simply said: the first line and the third line exhibit a connectedness or a completeness. Some say one should be able to read the first line and the third line to find it makes a complete thought. Sometimes one does not know in which order to place the images in a haiku. When the images in the first and third lines have the strongest relationship, the haiku usually feels 'complete'. For exercise, take any haiku and switch the lines around to see how this factor works or try reading the haiku without the second line.

holding the day

between my hands

a clay pot

This ku is also using the riddle technique.

In searching for these examples, I found so many more of my haiku which did not fit into any of these categories, which tells me there are surely many more techniques which are in use but are waiting for discovery, definition and naming. I stop here, hoping I have given you enough to pique your interest in the quest and new ways of exploring the miracles of haiku.

(First published in Frogpond, 23:3, Autumn, 2000)

Dark Wings of the Night: Outhouse and Frog Haiku by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Legendary Beat Poet, painter, social activist, and publisher (co-founder of City Lights, first all-paperback bookstore in San Francisco in 1953), Lawrence Ferlinghetti passed away two days ago, at the age of 101. His 1958 collection, A Coney Island of the Mind, remains one of the most popular poetry books in the U.S, and in 2007, he expanded his sphere of poetic influence by advocating a new vision of poetry in the Post-9/11 Era, “Poetry as Insurgent Art:”

Be subversive, constantly questioning reality and the status quo. Strive to change the world in such a way that there’s no further need to be a dissident. Read between the lives, and write between the lines. Be committed to something outside yourself. Be passionate about it. But don’t destroy the world, unless you have something better to replace it.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti never published any haiku collections, but in his Kyoto Journal interview with Carl Freire, he talked about his first time haiku submission experience:

There was a very early American haiku magazine, and I can't remember who was the editor, the first one in this country who got onto the haiku horse. This was in the 60s, probably. He asked me for a haiku -- I sent him this:

Ancient frog 

In ancient outhouse 

Plop!

And he rejected it, he said that won't do, it's too vulgar, it's obscene...

  

Lawrence Ferlinghetti's "vulgar haiku" was later published in Poor Old Tired Horse, Issue 3

Sawmill Haiku

An ancient frog

in an ancient outhouse

Plop!

(FYI:  Poor Old Tired Horse was published by Ian Hamilton Finlay’s Wild Hawthorn Press and ran for 25 issues from 1961 to 1967)

To conclude today's memorial post for Lawrence Ferlinghetti, the following "vulgar/obscene haiku," written by his friend and Beat Poet Gary Snyder, could be read both as a sequel to his frog and outhouse haiku and a poetic response to the rejection reply from the editor, "the first one in this country who got onto the haiku horse."

 pissing

 watching

   a

waterfall

(FYI: For detailed analysis of Gary Snyder's "pissing haiku", see "To the Lighthouse: Word Choice, the Center of the Practice of Writing")

Chen-ou

Dark Wings of the Night: Tanka of Shuji Terayama by Kozue Uzawa

(First published in Simply Haiku, 5:3, Autumn 2007 and reprinted by kind permission of the author)

Do you know Shuji Terayama (or Terayama Shuji in the Japanese way)? He died more than 20 years ago at the age of 47. Many Japanese people remember him as an avant-garde playwright or as a songwriter of some hit songs in the 1960s. I heard him talk occasionally on the radio when I was young. I don't remember what he was talking about, but I do remember his heavily accented Japanese. He had an Aomori accent, and many people liked it. I didn't know at that time that he was a tanka poet when he was younger.

When I started writing tanka (in Japanese), I read Terayama's tanka for the first time and liked his modern, lyrical expressions. He is still one of my favorite Japanese tanka poets. I included some of Terayama's tanka in Ferris Wheel: 101 Modern and Contemporary Tanka (trans. with A. Fielden). By reading book reviews of Ferris Wheel, I noticed that many reviewers quoted Terayama's tanka. This encouraged me to translate some more tanka from Terayama's collections.

I read all the tanka he produced, but didn't know much about Terayama himself. It is well known that Terayama wrote many of his tanka as fiction, but I didn't know why and how he fictionalized his tanka. So, I read several books and articles about Terayama, including his mother's memoirs. What I found is that Terayama wrote many tanka as fiction in order to express his complex feelings of being "abandoned" by his mother using his extraordinary imagination.

He started writing haiku, tanka, and free verse when he was a junior high school student. He debuted to the tanka world winning a very prestigious tanka prize when he was only 18 years old. However, Terayama quit writing tanka at the age of 28 (in 1964) after publishing his third collection of tanka. By this time, he was already well known as an award-winning playwright, director, and essayist nationally and internationally.

For my translation project with Amelia Fielden, I selected about 200 tanka from his whole collection, and translated for publication. (Our manuscript has been accepted by the Hokuseido Press. The tentative title is "Kaleidoscope: Selected Tanka of Shuji Terayama".) As you will find in his tanka quoted below, he writes tanka as if it is a scene from a movie, stage play, or novel. He himself plays a role of a Korean boy, mixed blood boy, P.O.W., actress, factory worker, etc. His mother dies many times in his tanka.

His complex feelings of "being abandoned" by his mother, longing for his dead father and the siblings he did not have, and longing to be freed from reality are expressed in the form of fiction. Terayama's father, who was a policeman, died in the war when Terayama was nine. Terayama's mother started working in the US military base in Misawa, Aomori, in order to make a living, and when Terayama was in junior high, she left home and moved to Fukuoka, Kyushu, with her "boss" in order to work in the US base there. Terayama lived with his uncle until he moved to Tokyo to attend Waseda University. Many of his well-known tanka were written in his high school and university days.

For this article, I selected some of Terayama's fiction tanka from our manuscript and wrote some notes.

submerging them

in the water

of a night-dark stream,

I wash my military shoes

from those captive days

(If we read this tanka without any knowledge about Terayama, we would think the author went to the war. The reality is that Terayama's father was sent to the war and never came back.)

being of mixed blood

I feel lonely

even if I win—

I walk along chewing

a hot grass stalk

(Terayama's parents were Japanese, but after his father died in the war, his mother started to work in the US military base in their hometown. She then moved to Fukuoka with her American "boss" to work in the US military base there. Terayama was an "orphan" in his junior and senior high school days. Terayama wrote many tanka in which an orphan or motherless child appears.)

striking a match

momentarily

I see the foggy ocean --

is there a motherland

I can dedicate myself to?

(The first 3 lines are based on Kakio Tomizawa's haiku. Using Kakio's haiku as a background, he re-created a very dramatic scene. It's like a scene from an old cinema. This technique is called honka-dori (writing a tanka using a phrase or an image from a well-known haiku or tanka). However, when this tanka was published, some people accused him of plagiarism.)

farewell

summer lights, and

my homeland Korea --

even from the roof

the sea is invisible

(Here, again, I have to mention that Terayama's parents and grandparents were Japanese. I think Terayama used Korean people's hard life in Japan in the 1950s and 60s as the background of this tanka in order to express his feeling of hopelessness and helplessness.)

come to buy a suit

with my salesman dad,

a little hesitantly

I'm watching

some seagulls

(As I mentioned earlier, Terayama's father, policeman, died in the war when he was nine. This tanka, with words like "salesman" and "seagulls", reminds us of some stage plays.)

failing even

to become an actress

I listen to

the sound of seagulls

shot in the winter marsh

(Many people might think that the third line should be "she listens to", but this translation is correct. Terayama is a failed actress here. This tanka reminds us of Chekhov's stage play, Seagull.)

in the end

there's no such thing as

exciting despair—

outside the factory,

pure green wheat

(According to the biography of Terayama, he has never worked in a factory although in this tanka it sounds like he is working in a factory. He plays a role of a factory worker to express his longing to be freed from his harsh reality.)

in the countryside

I abandoned my mother—

such a thing

is not

a bleeding memory

(Terayama had a feeling of "being abandoned" by his mother for a long time. This tanka expresses his feeling very ironically.)

going out to buy

a new Buddhist altar

my brother

and his bird

went missing

(When I read this tanka for the first time, I thought Terayama had a brother. Again, this is a fiction, but his longing for siblings he never had is expressed dramatically here.)

in order to sew up

the horizon

my sister hid

a silk needle

in the sewing box

(Terayama did not have a sister, either. Terayama's imaginary siblings often appear in his tanka.)

coming alone

to the sold rice field

on a winter night

I'm burying

my mother's scarlet comb

(When I read this tanka, an image of an ornamental classical Japanese comb used by high-class prostitutes in the Edo period, came to my mind. However, it is doubtful that his mother had such a classical Japanese comb. The scarlet comb in this tanka conveys a strong impact to the readers. It expresses Terayama's resentment toward his mother, and at the same time his longing for her.)

I gently comb

the turtledove

with my dead mother's

scarlet comb—

its down keeps falling out

(Terayama's mother is dead in this tanka, but she was alive when it was written. She died in 1991, eight years after her son's death in 1983.)

I introduced some of Terayama's "fiction" tanka here. I hope English tanka poets could expand their horizon by reading Terayama's tanka. We don't need to use "nature" in each tanka we write. We don't need to write biographical tanka all the time. We may be able to express our true emotion/feeling when we write tanka as fiction.

Note: To read more about  Terayama's tanka poetics, see my "To the Lighthouse" post, Shuji Terayama's Tanka Poetics, "Fiction of Possibility"

Dark Wings of the Night: Eric Amann and His Wordless Poem

The haiku is a point of intersection between man and nature... Haiku is not to be regarded primarily as a form of poetry, as is commonly assumed in the West, but as an expression of Zen in poetry, a living Way…It touches above all upon life itself.
-- Eric Amann, "The Wordless Poem: A Study of Zen in Haiku," 1969

Eric Amann, the most influential figure in the formative years of the haiku movement in Canada 1, founded the magazine Haiku in 1967 and was its editor for three years. Under his editorship Haiku immediately became one of the most important North American periodicals, publishing experimental as well as classical haiku. In 1977, he founded another new magazine Cicada, which changed and influenced the haiku world with a similar status. In the preface to the 1986 edition of The Haiku Anthology, Cor van den Heuvel wrote that “Haiku and Cicada [were] perhaps English language haiku's most influential magazines [and that they] are still unsurpassed for excellence in both content and design, though both have ceased publication.”  Throughout his career as a haiku editor and poet, Eric Amann adopted a Zen approach to reading and writing haiku, and his view of the relationship between Zen and haiku was fully articulated in his 1969 essay, "The Wordless Poem:A Study of Zen in Haiku," which outlined the role of Zen practices in haiku poetry. In this influential essay, he  emphasized that  haiku "deals entirely with the here-and-now 2, with nature, with intuition arising from immediate sense-experience, with the ordinary sights and sounds of this world....Haiku is not to be regarded primarily as a form of poetry, ... but as an expression of Zen in poetry, a living Way."

Selected Haiku

the circus tent

all folded up:

October mist

a night train passes:

pictures of the dead are trembling

on the mantelpiece

the names of the dead

sinking deeper and deeper

into red leaves

winter burial:

a stone angel points his hand

at the empty sky

snow falling

on the empty parking-lot:

Christmas Eve…

billboards

    wet

        in spring

           rain…

deep inside your mouth      no more questions no more answers

deep penetration       the bedside candle quivers lightly in the moonlit room


Notes:

1 The following is an announcement posted on Haiku Canada Review's homepage:

Sadly, physician and Haiku Canada co-founder, Dr. Eric Amann died on the 12th of March, 2016, after suffering a stroke. “There was no formal announcement of his death”, retired physician and early co-worker, Jacqueline Carleson, informed Haiku Canada. Carleson and Amann were in residency together at St. Paul’s Hospital, in Vancouver, in the early 80’s. On July 7th, 2016, friends gathered at Mount Pleasant Cemetery, Toronto, to honour the memory and acknowledge the accomplishments of Dr. Eric Amann. A small reception followed; his ashes were scattered in the forest designated area.

George Swede attended the Mount Pleasant gathering and will give an honourarium at the Haiku Canada weekend in Mississauga, May, 2017.

2 For a different view of haiku, see my "To the Lighthouse" post, titled Two-Axis Haiku -- See and Think beyond the "Haiku Moment.

Dark Wings of the Night: First Warm Day – H. Gene Murtha’s Bird Haiku by Jo McInerney

(First published in A Hundred Gourds, 5:3, June 2016 and reprinted by kind permission of the author)

Gene Murtha was a naturalist and time and again his poetry bears out this designation. Examining Murtha’s work, it is notable that many of his most remarkable haiku and tanka present the interaction between human beings and the natural world as represented by birds. Tracing Murtha’s treatment of the interplay between our species and many bird species about which he wrote gives a valuable insight into the depth, subtlety and variety of his work.

spring mist –

a mallard paddles

through our stillborn’s ashes 1

The above may well be the best-known of H. Gene Murtha’s haiku. A deeply moving, indeed devastating poem, it brings the natural world and human loss into abrupt conjunction, while seeming to find a certain comfort in the bird’s indifference. This is an early haiku of Murtha’s and would certainly have alerted readers to the potential of his work.

In the haiku which follows he subtly suggests an unexpected aspect of the relationship between a human observer and a wild creature, an egret.

snap of a twig

the egret’s neck

extends 2

The haiku opens with a sudden noise, ‘snap of a twig’, (note the short words, the plosive ‘p’ and the hard ‘t’) made the more startling by the absence of an article before ‘snap’. When line two introduces ‘the egret’, we anticipate its reaction to the sound. Our attention is drawn to its neck, giving an immediate sense of its vulnerability. The snapped twig and the bird’s long neck seem to equate in some discomforting way. There is the possibility, if not the probability, of harm to the bird. Its flight, in response to this threat, seems imminent. Line three comes as a surprise. The bird does not flee, it ‘extends’ its neck - the action reinforced by the word spacing, with ‘extends’ deeply indented. The reader and presumably the observer within the haiku are left wrong-footed. The reaction we are shown is not what we expect. The bird exhibits curiosity, not fear. Let’s focus for a moment on that implied observer within the haiku. He has been watching the bird. It is the object of his attention, here preceded by a definite, not an indefinite article. The observer seems more startled by that ‘snap of a twig’, a probable consequence of his footfall, than the bird is. He has apparently been watching the bird for some time, seeking, soundlessly, to get closer to it, his intentions benign. When the twig snaps, he does not raise a gun or even a camera. He simply continues watching. His surprise, and perhaps delight, are indicated by that single word in line three.

Restraint and the capacity to rein in human ego before the natural world are frequent characteristics of Murtha’s haiku. The following monoku demonstrates these qualities.

eastern bluebird even i've known love 3

The bluebird has become a cliché, symbolic of happiness or love, often unattainable. It can easily be referred to with a trite heavy-handedness. Murtha’s bluebird, however, while retaining some of the cultural significance with which the bird has been imbued is a real creature. Note the specificity of ‘eastern’. The speaker’s statement about an aspect of his emotional biography, ‘even I’ve known love’, might appear an attempt to use the image of the natural creature symbolically, in a manner similar to Eliot’s ‘objective correlative’, against which the writer’s personal comment or emotional state can then be juxtaposed. The potential hazards of this type of writing are arbitrariness and obscurity on the one hand and a hackneyed or laboured connection on the other. Murtha avoids both traps. The haiku invites at least two readings. The speaker seems to acknowledge his relative lack of worth in relation to the simple beauty of the bird. This is suggested in part by the lower case ‘i’. There is no vainglorious self-assertion here. If anything is to be marvelled at from the human vantage point, it is that, despite his comparative inadequacy, he has been loved. The haiku can also be read as a direct statement of the wonder felt at the sight of the bird. Interpreted in this light, the love he has ‘known’ is that he has felt for part of non-human creation, not that which he has been given by another human being. The quiet matter-of-factness and lack of mawkishness or self-pity are impressive.

The capacity to see one’s own mortality within a wider frame of reference is a feature of some of Murtha’s best poems. It is there in his haibun ‘Directions’ in the reference to impending spring. Written in a voice from beyond life, which gives explicit instructions for the dispersal of the speaker’s mortal remains, the prose section concludes:

 “It will be spring soon. Already, you can hear the chickadees.”4

The birds show the simple continuance of life. (For those who, like me, may not have heard these frequently-mentioned North American birds firsthand, this link will take you to several minutes of their song.

There is no bitterness, no regret, just acknowledgement of the relative inconsequence of a single human life – the natural world will go on and is to be celebrated.

However, Murtha’s bird poetry also reveals his consciousness of shared transience. The world of nature may not endure either.

brushing off sand

I walk what's left of

the pine dunes

my time here passes by

like the birds overhead 5

Everything here is shifting. Initially it is the sand, which is presumably being brushed from the speaker’s clothes. Perhaps he has lain down and it has stuck to his pants, his shirt, the palms of his hands. He, too, is in motion now, ‘walk[ing] what’s left of / the pine dunes’, the sand possibly slipping beneath his feet. The odd enjambment at the end of line two encourages the reader to wander just what has been reduced and is about to be cut off. Immediately it is ‘the pine dunes’. The tanka acknowledges this environmental degradation. There is a subtle sense of complicity; the speaker is also an agent of erosion, his very presence a small disruptive force. He is part of a shifting cycle of loss which includes all around him: ‘my time here passes by / like the birds overhead’. The concluding simile is quietly appalling; no mere figure of speech, it seems to embody the prospect of shared annihilation. The natural world is no longer a measure of life’s abundance. It, too, may pass. As with the haiku ‘eastern bluebird’, there is no simple split here between images from nature and human observation; the two are deftly interwoven and their interaction constant.

A sense of nature under duress is even more poignantly expressed in the following haiku, which once more focuses on the position of a bird, here threatened by what is possibly a naturally-occurring phenomenon.

summer haze –

a crow flaps free

of the asphalt 6

This is a haiku which reveals its grim meaning gradually. Line one is subtly paradoxical. In Japanese haiku there are particular words to refer to the ‘haze’ or ‘mist’ of spring and the ‘fog’ of autumn and winter – all with the potential of beauty. This is not what is alluded to here. This is a heat haze, created perhaps by petroleum fumes. Such beauty as it has is illusory. Line two shows a crow apparently flying freely; however, line three reveals this too is an illusion. It is freeing itself from the ensnarement of bitumen, perhaps from a natural tar pit, perhaps from a road surface, perhaps from a tar sands tailings pond. The ‘haze’ of line one now seems like the optical illusion of water apparently shimmering on a summer roadway. The dragging effort involved in the bird’s apparent escape is suggested by the alliteration, the repeated ‘f’s’ catching in the reader’s mouth as teeth make contact with bottom lip. The bird’s freedom may well be temporary.

First impressions mislead in this haiku. The crow is likely to have been soiled by the black sticky substance that had trapped it. Its contamination may be permanent, though not immediately apparent on its black, shining wings. Images of seabirds mired in oil slicks may come to the reader’s mind. This is another poem that ultimately treats a wild creature’s problematic survival with simple, unflinching directness.

Yet, Murtha’s position is not always that of an observer of despoliation and loss. He appears to write with such subtle power about destruction and degradation because his work recognises the value of what is endangered. His poetry is therefore as capable of enjoying the natural world as of chronicling the threats its denizens face.

There is frequent wit and humour in his presentations of nature. The next is an attractive piece of appreciative fun.

when you think

you’ve heard it all —

brown thrasher 7

The broadly-focused, colloquial, first two lines are followed by a bird’s name. This is a bit of an in-joke, whose full appreciation relies on having heard the bird’s call. (Again, for those who, like me, have to rely on recordings, this link will take you to nearly four uninterrupted minutes of its song.)

There is a humorous disjunction between the common, almost disparaging, indeed almost scatological name the bird has been given and the bright, abundant medley it produces.

However, the haiku operates on a level beyond this. The phrase with which it opens is an everyday expression of world-weariness, albeit without the melodramatic component that often accompanies such an attitude. It implies ‘life has no more to reveal to me’ and whatever follows is frequently uttered in long-suffering tones. Murtha’s haiku is a genuine challenge to this view. Alerting us to the remarkable song of a large speckled bird; it allows readers the sly hope that the world has more to offer than we may have anticipated.

Wit, in Murtha’s haiku, often enables him to suggest that more is available to us than we first perceive. The following is a fine instance of humour with an unexpected dimension.

first warm day

a robin works

the infield 8

‘first warm day’ is a favourite fragment of Murtha’s. It is easy to see why. As an opening line, it has all the delight of new experience, of a sensation savoured for the first time. Yet there is more here: it implies warmth doubly welcome because it is a respite from what has come before. For the mature reader, this is spring sunshine following winter. Line two introduces the bird, a robin. A migratory bird which winters along the Pacific coast, it has returned to the Atlantic seaboard with the sun. (Murtha last lived in Wildwood, New Jersey, and was resident there when this haiku was written.) This robin ‘works’, presumably picks over the earth. That is what line three reveals to be the case, but with an engaging additional dimension. The robin is working ‘the infield’. We suddenly find ourselves on a baseball field, and near the middle of the action. In baseball parlance, for the pitching team, ‘working the infield’ means fielding near the centre, hoping to catch a mishit ball, unlike the robin, which is seeking to catch a bug. There is no cloying anthropomorphism here, just an amused recognition of parallel behaviour. But the scene has widened attractively, both bird and players are enjoying the sudden sunshine.

Perhaps the last feature to be noted about this haiku is that the bird is oblivious to the human activity. It has its own business to be about, which oddly takes us back to Murtha’s spring mist and the comfort to be derived from life that runs along a different, if related, path to our own, without any awareness of our concerns.

Gene Murtha’s bird poetry offers a valuable point of entry into his work, revealing the subtlety and range of his concerns and the variety of perspectives adopted. The clarity of his observations and the skill with which he gives form to them remain with the reader.

References:

All the poems discussed except "eastern bluebird" (from Biding Time) were first published in the specified editions of the journals named in the footnotes.

"spring mist," "snap of a twig," "Directions," "brushing off sand," "summer haze" and "when you think" can also be found in Murtha’s Biding Time: selected poems 2001-2013.

1. The Heron’s Nest, Volume IV, Number 11: November, 2002

2. The Heron’s Nest, Volume VI, Number 7: August, 2004

3. Biding Time: selected poems 2001-2013, page 4

4. Contemporary Haibun Online ,Vol 4, No 2: June, 2008

5. Ribbons, 2009 Summer issue (5.2)

6. Frogpond, vol. XXVII:1, 2004

7. The Heron’s Nest Volume, XI, Number 4: December, 2009

8. The Heron’s Nest, Volume XVII, Number 3: September, 2015

Dark Wings of the Night: Yatsuka Ishihara and His Theory of Introspective Shaping

A haiku should present the truth as if it were fiction

-- Yatsuka Ishihara, HSA-HI Chicago Conference, 1995

Everything exists within the mind to begin with. In haiku the subject is always "I," but the "I" is implied, not directly expressed. Whatever the subject, whether you, he, she, or it, it is always I.

-- Yatsuka Ishihara, Red Fuji, pp. 21-22

What I believe Ishihara means is that haiku should be more than inscriptions of natural scenes, that the best haiku will go beyond and in a humorous way exaggerate the literal truth.

-- Patrick Gallagher, “Tell About the Truth As If It Were False,” Haijinx, 2:1, Spring 2002

Yatsuka Ishihara (1919-1998) was a revered Japanese haiku master whose group's name is Aki (Autumn),  and he published over forty books of haiku, literary criticism, and essays. Highly regarded as a haiku lecture and contest judge, Yatsuka Ishihara was known for his haiku theory, "introspective shaping," which means "shaping the scenery of the human mind." At the HSA-HI Chicago Conference in 1995, he told aspiring poets that "a haiku should present the truth as if it were fiction." He then compared his "introspective shaping" theory with Shiki’s “shasei” (sketching from life) theory. In the theory of sketching from life, a haiku is intended to copy what is in the world/in front of the “egoless” observer/poet; in the theory of introspective shaping, the poet wears a pair of haiku glasses to look into his/her heart, where “the landscape of truth exists," and to bring human feeling and thought into his/her haiku. Yatsuka Ishihara’s most famous haiku below was carved into a kuhi (poem stone) in the same year.

pulling light

from the other world ...

the Milky Way

Selected Haiku:

from needles of frost

issue glittering voices

of a steely blue

burning leaves

the pulsing waves

felt this moment

burning withered chrysanthemums

I stirred up

the fires of Hades

Tatsuji dies

and afterwards the swing

somersaults

on the sailing ship

there is a face by Munch

the white night

faintly white

it sticks to my face

the autumn wind

Dark Wings of the Night: Kawahigashi Hekigodo and His New Trend Haiku

Kawahigashi Hekigodo (or Hekigoto) (Feb. 26, 1873 -- Feb.1, 1937) was born in Matsuyama city in Iyo province (present day Ehime prefecture) where Masaoka Shiki and his most influential disciple, Takahama Kyoshi, had lived as young boys. He became Kyosh's classmate at middle school and remained close to him throughout his life. Hekigodo was a well-traveled man with many talents. He visited Europe and North America in 1921, China and Mongolia in 1924, and wrote many travel sketches (Ueda, pp. 49, 61).

In the first few decades of the last century, Shiki's legacy was split into two factions: one led by Hekigodo, who "advocated haiku written in a free meter format," the other led by Kyoshi, who "defended the traditional diction of haiku with its fixed syllabic 5-7-5 pattern, season words, and fixed topical themes" (Cushman, p. 751). Hekigodo's main contribution to modern haiku was that "he extended, or tried to extend, the borders of haiku far beyond what had been thought possible or legitimate" (Ueda, p. 9). Basically speaking, he was restless and interested in artistic experiments. His two most controversial experiments were those on "haiku without a center of interest" and on "haiku in vers libre" (Ibid.).

In 1910, Hekigodo started to advocate his idea of haiku without a center of interest, which was based on his belief that "a poem should come as close as possible to its subject matter, which is part of life or nature" (Ibid.). In his view, creating a center of interest would "inevitably have to distort [the] subject matter for the sake of that interest" (Ibid.). He insisted, "To do away with a center of interest and to discard the process of poetizing reality would help the poet to approach things and phenomena in nature as close as he can, without being sidetracked by man-made rules."

It was a logical step, then, for Hekigodo to discard one of the most important "man-made" rules about writing haiku: the 5-7-5 syllable pattern. By 1915 he had come to oppose a fixed form for the haiku, and his vers libre haiku "no longer had the familiar haiku shape, but tended to run on to prosaic lengths. He himself preferred to call them 'short poems' (tanshi)" (Keene, p. 112). He wrote in 1917: "Any arbitrary attempt to mold a poem into  the 5-7-5 syllable pattern would damage the freshness of impression and kill the vitality of language." As for the value of using the season word, his attitude is affirmative; in his view, "every poetic sentiment was imbedded in a season of the year" (Ibid.).  His idea of shinkeiko haiku ( "new trend" haiku)1, then, was a short vers libre usually with a season word.

Selected Haiku:

a fasting man

craves for water at midnight:

a flash of lightening

clawing the void

lies the corpse of a crab:

mountains of cloud

in the faint light of dawn

a tree blossoming in white,

the field sprinkled with dew

mountain roses bloom:

factory girls

at the windows

of a tenement house

after the riot --

such a perfect

moonlit night

spring cold:

a cloud without roots

over the paddy field

Note:  Below is a relevant excerpt from Joseph K. Yamagiwa's Japanese Literature of the Shōwa Period : A Guide to Japanese Reference and Research Materials, p. 26:

According to Hekigoto, it was necessary to devote oneself to objective imagery, but, in contrast to Shiki's impressionism, which almost any poet could imitate, Hekigoto's was one which was "rich in subjective taste." Hence, the poet is to "look at nature through the window of his own senses and perceptions," and his purpose is to express " a taste higher than for nature alone." For the Shinkeiko movement, Hekigoto took the following for a motto: "a dynamic representation depending on an awakened individuality." The tendency in Hekigoto was to progress from reality to symbolism, from declarative to more suggestive statements. It was Osuga Otsuji who first used the term shinkeiko to describe the new style. This came in an article published in the January-February, 1908, issue of Akane and entitled "Haikukai no shinkeiko" (New Tendencies in the World of Haiku)

References:

Donald Keene, Dawn to the West : Japanese Literature of the Modern Era, Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1984.
Joseph K. Yamagiwa, Japanese Literature of the Shōwa Period : A Guide to Japanese Reference and Research Materials, University of Michigan Press, 1959.

Makoto Ueda, Modern Japanese Haiku : An Anthology, University of Toronto Press, 1976.

Stephen Cushman (ed.),  The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, Fourth Edition, Princeton University Press, 2012.

Dark Wings of the Night: Brian Zimmer's View of Tanka and His Tanka

In memory of my friend, Brian Zimmer who passed away on November 5th.

                                                                                      by day

                                                                                      I carry you in my heart

                                                                                      by night

                                                                                      on indigo mala beads

                                                                                      I pray you in my hands

                                                                                      Gusts, 19, Spring/Summer 2014

                                                                                      Brian Zimmer

Below is excerpted from Brian Zimmer's "The Tanka Sequence & Tanka-Prose as Introduction to Tanka," which was first published in Skylark,1:1,  Summer 2013:

Despite efforts by English writers like Amy Lowell and the first Japanese-American tanka poet, Jun Fujita, it was the Beat Poets who provided the most successful introduction of Eastern poetic forms to the West. Their impetus stemmed largely from an interest in Eastern religion, particularly the Zen Buddhism of Japan. However, the Beat’s eye was trained mostly on haiku.

The slowly growing popularity of tanka may be regarded as a more or less indirect result of the Beat-inspired impulse. There was also a general interest in all things Japanese resulting from the post-war Occupation.

I believe there is no getting around the fact that the tanka’s brevity has worked against it where English readership is concerned. English tanka rarely enters into discussions of contemporary poetics except among its practitioners. Yet many who have come to appreciate the richness of the translated ancient texts and many beautiful examples of English tanka, remain bewildered by the lack of interest generated beyond its community.

Tanka requires learning a special set of reading skills. One must be willing to slow down and pay attention to every line, caesura, and image. This type of reading is essential to all poetry but more so for the concentrated English tanka. Read too quickly tanka can appear easy, sometimes banal, and often not very poetic. We in the tanka community hear the lyrical in the best example while those new to the genre often do not without consistent exposure. There is more than one reason for this but brevity takes a major place among them.

I am convinced the Tanka Sequence and Tanka-Prose are meaningful forms for introducing tanka in general to English readers. This has to do with the preeminence of the narrative poem in English. These two tanka forms possess the essential narrative “hook” that keeps the western reader interested.

The Tanka Sequence and Tanka-Prose both allow tanka to rise naturally from their narratives, but they do so differently and offer unique reading opportunities for the uninitiated.

The best examples of both genres always prompt reader return. Upon further reading, the tanka become more recognizably contextualized and intrinsic to the work, increasing the reader’s aesthetic pleasure. In this way, readers are trained how to read and enjoy tanka in a natural and familiar manner; the reader learns to slow down without stopping and is impelled to return and ruminate... (note: you can read the full text here, pp84-9.)

Selected Tanka:

blue eggs

beneath a hen

dream

of skies

cracked-open

Skylark, 1:2, Winter 2013

first to rise

under fading stars

the robin

rouses a choir

to sing-up the sun

Skylark, 1:2, Winter 2013

sometimes

when the sun burns hot

I find shade to write

five lines on the sea

to wash-up at your feet

Skylark, 1:2, Winter 2013

only memory

surrounds

their embrace

locked forever

in its youthful hour

Gusts, 14, Fall/Winter 2011

this hour

of clarity each day

before dawn

and the dark wing

casts its shadow

Gusts, 18, Fall/Winter 2013

the oracle spoken

from the prison of her chair

now empty decades:

the days drag by slowly

but how the years fly

Ash Moon Anthology:Poems on Aging in Modern English Tanka, 2008

the half-moon’s

fitful dreams

this sweltering night

on half

a sleeping pill

Lyrical Passion Poetry E-Zine

the habit

of his madness

boys follow

their raving father

to the harbour’s edge

Atlas Poetica, 3, Spring 2009

pine needles

gentle the forest floor

another boy

in a place we could

trust to be safe

Atlas Poetica, 3, Spring 2009

Note: On the morning of November 6th, shortly after I sent Brian his contributor's copy of One Man's Maple Moon: 66 Selected English-Chinese Bilingual Tanka, Volume One 2014, I received an email from our mutual friend, in which she told me, "Brian passed away last night..."  I was totally shocked by this shocking news ...

Brian was the first poet to submit his tanka below for my translation project, NeverEnding Story:

no abacus

for the task

ahead

where the mists part

I begin counting stars

Excellent Tanka, 7th International Tanka Festival Competition, 2012.