POETIC LICENCE
You might think that writing a three-line poem would be easy. You could probably rattle off half a dozen in ten minutes, couldn’t you? Even easier if it contains only 17 syllables. Simple enough. But you’d be wrong. Haiku is a Japanese form that has much in common with Zen, and which requires such exactitude, such concentration, that the best haiku are honed to an exquisite delicacy of perception and expression rarely found elsewhere. Matsuo Bashõ, writing in the 17th century, is considered the master of this form. When I’m asked, as occasionally I am, why I don’t write a novel, my answer is invariably the same: ‘Because I don’t think I can.’ Where novelists tend to see the world through a telescope, observing the big picture and finding stories there, poets (or this one at least) squint into a microscope at the tiniest of details, finding inspiration there instead. These are entirely different ways of perceiving things.
I find it sad that in an increasingly frantic world of work (and unemployment) where ambition, motivation, drive and determination have become the defining watchwords of ‘success’, the idea of slowing down is anathema to many. No wonder that stress-related illnesses are so common.
But allowing ourselves to become quietly aware of our own feelings, trying to be fully conscious of each moment’s detail – what is sometimes called ‘mindfulness’ – is a valuable and healthy gift to have. And this is what haiku encourages – focus. No word, no syllable, may be wasted. The best haiku in English are written very much in the present tense. Concentrating on the immediacy, the ‘now’, of an experience is fundamental. There is no explicit message or meaning in the poem, but the juxtaposition of separate images, at least one of which should be derived from the world of nature, suggests something else, something beyond the images themselves. It’s the reader’s task to find or interpret it – or not, as the case may be! Here is Bashõ’s most famous haiku, first in transliteration then in English translation: Furu ike ya Kawaza tobikomu Mizu no oto
An old pond A frog jumps in The sound of water
And some contemporary haiku: Two leaning tombstones Took seventy years to touch ‒ Mist and peace dwell there.
Deep within the stream The huge fish lie motionless Facing the current. And my own effort from a visit to a local farm last week:
a lifelong career: three dogs dozing in warm sun warthogs strolling by James W. Hackett
Finally, just to show that writers of haiku can also have a sense of humour, here is one from early last century by Scott Alexander:
By an ancient pond A bullfrog sits on a rock: Waiting for Bashō. (Some of the contemporary haiku above may be found at http:// www.haikupoemsandpoets.com)