WHCschools – Hibiscus Petals School

 Ferris Gilli, Instructor/Editor (US)

 2 – Hibiscus – When Juxtaposition Fails: The Space Between

Greetings, Hibiscus friends!

new-car scent
an eagle pair perches
atop the cypress

The form is good, and the concrete imagery is excellent; but the haiku is not quite there yet. The thing that keeps it from resonating is an intangible element related to juxtaposition that is hard to describe and sometimes harder to employ in a haiku. Sometimes a haiku just hovers — it is either perfectly fine, or it’s on the cusp between great and just a bit off. I’ll try to explain. I hope you’ll bear with me while I repeat things you already know — I will eventually tie my comments together and get to the point.

First, let’s forget about the eagles for a bit, while we look at these poems by Anna Tambour (see acknowledgements at end of lesson):

faint thunder
a snake sloughs its skin
in the creekbed

power blackout
frogs boom
in the billabong

In each one, as with most effective juxtaposition, the two parts of the haiku are completely independent of each other. That is, the thunder is an independent image that on the surface APPEARS to be totally unrelated to the snake in the creekbed. Neither part of the haiku is dependent on the other part to make sense or have meaning. “Power blackout” and the rest of the verse are two elements that are completely independent of each other. Each element makes perfect sense all by itself, even if pulled away from the other element. This is true of the two parts of each of those verses.

Now HERE is where the added resonance of those verses is created—in the space BETWEEN the two parts. The faint thunder is a nice, traditional image, and the snake sloughing its skin in the creekbed is a great image all by itself — but that is about all you can say about them on their own. BUT when those images are juxtaposed — placed next to each other — if the juxtaposition is successful, a relationship between them will be perceived by the intuitive reader. With a really good haiku, this relationship will exist on more than one level.

So, what does thunder have to do with a snake in a creekbed? For one thing,
the creekbed is dry, which means it hasn’t rained in a long time. But faint thunder implies rain coming, or at least gives hope of rain. As the snake has a new skin, if the blessed rain comes, so it will bring new growth. That is one level of the relationship; there are other levels for the perceptive reader.

A power blackout is a familiar occurrence, but the idea of a blackout by itself is not extraordinary. The sound of frogs is also a familiar thing and a classical topic of haiku. Frog voices by themselves may be lovely or funny or BIG. But unless they are juxtaposed with another element, we have nowhere to look for a deeper meaning of the voices.

What if the first line of that poem were “Australia.” So? Yes, “billabong” is a word from Australia, and it’s good to know that there are frogs in the billabongs; but we have frogs here, in the creeks and ponds and puddles too. What is particularly resonant about those billabong frogs (besides the wonderful alliteration and lovely, round vowel sounds of “boom” and “billabong”? Well . . . let’s imagine ourselves in sudden darkness . . . and now here come the frog voices, not simply calling or singing, but booming! in the billabong. What a delicious, shivery mood is created with this juxtaposition! Imagine that it’s a moonless, pitch-black night, and the author is suddenly without lights in the middle of a good book. Such an inconvenience and quite startling for a human—but not for the frogs. While the author runs around looking for candles, bumping into things, throwing out dead flashlight batteries, those frogs are booming away in their billabong.

Back to the eagles:

new-car scent
an eagle pair perches
atop the cypress

I don’t get a thing from that juxtaposition. I can imagine a new-car scent, and I love the image of the eagle pair. But seeing them together makes me say, “Huh?” The space between the parts is more like a cement wall, for me anyway.

This, however, allows my gaze to follow Harry Gilli’s focus and find the resonance, because he offers a fillable space between the parts:

hole in the fog -
an eagle pair perches
atop the cypress

When put together, the elements become parts of a bigger picture, or parts of a small “story.” The space between the elements, that which is NOT said, allows the reader to become the author’s partner, by filling in the space, to realize the bigger picture and perhaps gain insight. Readers have to fill in the space to experience the discovery that goes BEYOND the immediate imagery; and when they do, they get their own “Aha!”

It is not enough to simply juxtapose two seemingly unrelated images. When we’ve written the main part of a haiku, we have to choose the other part well, or the reader’s response may reflect his or her puzzlement: “Huh?” The two parts of a successful haiku are more meaningful when read as a whole than either of the parts alone. Although the parts are independent and make sense on their own, when juxtaposed in a haiku, they work together to bring insight, discovery, or a sense of completion to the reader.

Happy spring!

Ferris (April 2002)

Acknowledgements:

Anna Tambour, “power blackout” The Heron’s Nest III: 3; “faint thunder” The Heron’s Nest III: 5

Ferris Gilli, “hole in the fog” Haiku Light, 1999

CLUTTER & CREDIBILITY – Trust between Reader and Poet

CLUTTER CLUES

One thing that helps us in our efforts to write simple, focused, uncluttered haiku is trust in our readers’ intelligence and their accumulated knowledge. We can expect them to know that a body of water on a bright day reflects sunlight, drifting clouds, and other things; that lemons are normally yellow, healthy lawns are green, winter wind is cold, that even winter sunlight can sometimes be warm, dogs bark, cats purr, and so on.

What is wrong with this haiku (besides its being a single sentence and a
linear statement)?

warmed by the sun
kids pile hot woolen coats
next to playground toys

A successful haiku does not need to *explain* an action or effect to readers. Giving readers credit for knowing as much as I do about the effects of sun and exercise, even in winter, I can remove the clutter of unnecessary adjectives that are overloading the verse with excessive and redundant kigo. The poem needs sharper focus, and exchanging a more specific noun for the playground toys will help. The freed-up space can be used for a setting or another independent image—a separate topic to create juxtaposition and stronger resonance. I can accomplish this by looking back to find something else meaningful in my experience that can be included:

Christmas Day
a pile of shed coats
next to the jungle gym

I know you knew I would get around to juxtaposition sooner or later.

This version of another real experience does not show readers anything new:

nasty smell
rotten peaches
in a red bowl

IF there is a real need to inform readers of the cause (or explanation) of an occurrence, then both cause and effect should be in one part of the haiku as an independent image, with an entirely separate image in the other part. In that way, one can still achieve juxtaposition and resonance.

The rotten peaches explain the nasty smell. There is only one image (topic) or situation, that of the malodorous peaches in a red bowl. So there’s no depth to it. It’s only part of a haiku, not a whole one. And just how important is that red bowl? By drawing on my memory of that experience, I can introduce something more meaningful:

ex-lover’s phone call–
the cloying smell
of rotten peaches

Isn’t that more interesting? This next version wastes space and misses the opportunity for resonance:

in the kitchen
the moldy smell
of rotten peaches

If I remove “in the kitchen,” is the meaning of the haiku harmed? No. Since one might expect to find fruit in the kitchen, the location doesn’t bring anything to the haiku. That first line is only unnecessary information, taking up space that could be used for another independent image. Like this:

end of the affair
the moldy smell
of rotten peaches

This next one has the same flaw — the first line doesn’t carry its own weight:

after dinner
the drone of a wasp
above rotten peaches

There is very little there to evoke an emotional response from readers. Including this from the experience should have a more meaningful effect:

his latest lie–
the drone of a wasp
above rotten peaches

Now this:

bright sun
light fills
the peach orchard

It’s all the same thing, and cause and effect as well: the sun is bright, therefore (sun)light fills the orchard. “Sun” and “light” are redundant. It is a one-part haiku. It can even be written as a single scene, in one sentence:

Bright sun(light) fills the peach orchard.

I believe that the haiku, currently simply a linear statement, can be much improved by the addition of another, independent part. There was something else present during my experience that continues to be very meaningful for me:

Mama’s song
morning sun fills
the peach orchard

Adding another image or topic that is independent from the rest of the verse makes it more interesting, and invites readers to share the author’s insight and emotions or to make a discovery of their own.

Although the classic construction is dominant in my own haiku writing and teaching, I do not mean for you to think that I believe it is the exact structure we should use for every haiku we write forever and ever; however, it is very important that beginners understand why the classic construction is so often advocated, and to be able to write haiku in that form.

We have to start somewhere to solve a haiku problem, or to write a haiku from scratch. The classic construction is traditional, tried and true, with sound reasoning behind its success. Of course, every haiku “moment” is different, and we should choose the poem’s structure carefully. If we do choose the classic form, then we are likely to recognize the main part of our experience, and we’ll also get some independent elements in there, which will work toward creating a
meaningful, resonant haiku.

CREDIBILITY

When I say “credibility” here, I am not referring to the honesty of an author: Did he REALLY teach Pygmies how to skin an antelope? Is she REALLY developing a cold vaccine in her spare time? Instead, I am talking about semantics, construction, and how something that works in prose may not work for haiku purposes — in other words, may not be entirely credible. I’ll look for examples from my own files.

deserted beach
the girl jumps over
each little wave

Well, now. Deserted? I don’t think so. There’s that little girl, not to mention whoever observed and wrote the haiku. And does she really jump over each and every wave?

deserted beach
a herring gull hovers
over picnic trash

Umm, empty of humans maybe. Sure, someone may be looking at an empty beach through binoculars from a mile away. But “deserted” is such a strong word with definite connotations of abandonment and forsaking, perhaps it’s not the best adjective to use for a beach that is simply not populated with humans at the moment.

lonely night–
again she starts to empty
the empty trash can

If “she” is alone, who is there observing “her”? If this poem is about my experience being alone, not someone else’s experience, then in this instance, it would be better to write in first person. “Lonely  night–/again I start to empty/the empty trash can”

Enough talking trash. How about this:

daylight moon–
a coal miner hums Strauss
deep within the earth

While I find it perfectly plausible that a coal miner hums a waltz tune, I question the notion of his seeing the daylight moon at the same time he is deep inside the earth. Let’s say the author is not the coal miner, and is on the earth’s surface, looking at the moon. Can he/she really hear the humming that is way, way down in the coal mine?

On the other hand, this IS credible:

approaching storm
she stares in silence
at the fallen cake

Sure, this is an inside scene, but it’s certainly possible to be aware of changes in the weather while inside a building: windows, open doors, dropping or rising temperature, sounds of wind and thunder, etc.

More food for thought:

red plums
afraid of being swatted
the bees move aside

Now it looks like plums have emotions, and the author is a mind reader — not only of insects, but of fruit as well! This is the actual observation, and more plausible:

red plums
her steady hand slips
between the bees

(Ferris Gilli; The Heron’s Nest, Vol II: Nov 2000)

How about this?

gossiping at noon–
a small frog climbs
into the laundry tub

I don’t think so . . . unless it’s Kermit! This is a case in which the context of one line spills over into the next line, attaching itself to the subject and/or action of that line. This can occur IN SPITE OF PUNCTUATION indicating a break, as it does here. Adding punctuation does not always correct the problem. However, with a bit of rewriting, the flaw will come out in the wash:

back-fence gossip
a small frog climbs
into the laundry tub

Can you think of other examples that push the credibility boundaries? Sometimes haiku that are meant to be serious get a laugh because of the spill-over effect, or because the combination of two images or actions in the same haiku are just not believable; when this happens, the effectiveness of the real meaning of the poem is lost for the reader. Having once perceived a serious haiku to be hilarious or just not credible, it is often then difficult for the reader to ever take it seriously.

I propose an exercise in demonstrating what NOT to do when writing haiku. It will be fun and perhaps a source of learning to post some of our haiku that we now realize stretch credibility. As long as we keep in mind that we are demonstrating a technique that is TO BE AVOIDED, we can even make up examples, just for fun.

WHCschools – Hibiscus Petals: Nature Exercise

WHCschools Traditional Western Haiku School
Ferris Gilli, Hibiscus School Instructor

On May 2, 2001, Mrs. Gilli presented the following Nature Exercise:

Go out and sit on a log, stump, bench, swing, old tire, tree limb, big rock, or on the ground — whatever feels right to you. Then, doodle in a notebook what you experience.  Use all your senses, if you can.  Be quiet and alert.  See.  Hear.  Feel.  Smell.  Taste.  Touch.

Focus.  Look from the sky to the ground.  From the horizon to where you’re sitting.  What other creatures are there with you?  Does the squirrel eat the acorn or bury it?  Are those ants going in a straight line?  Is that a spider web between those tree limbs?  Is it new or torn?  What is in the web?  Does it move in a breeze, or is it perfectly still?  Listen for bird calls . . . can you name the birds?

Be very still and listen– there is never pure silence.

Are those faint sounds carried on the breeze man-made or from nature?  Is the breeze warm or cool?  Close your eyes and become part of your surroundings, let the air and sunshine (or rain) and fragrances move around you and “through” you.  Imagine that you are not human, and you don’t live in a human dwelling unless you are some kind of pet, or a creature that humans call “pest.”

What kind of creature are you?  Do you bask in the sun, or hide from it — sing in the rain, or seek shelter?  If a human approaches, what do you do?  Perhaps you’re so small, you’re hardly noticed.  Where do you look for food — might you become food for a predator?   Do you use camouflage or flaunt your colors?  What natural thing might you do that would make a human being stare in wonder?  Imagine that you suddenly need to hide.  Look around — where can you go, what can you do?  Is your heart racing?  Perhaps you’re now hiding in the shadows beneath a hydrangea bush.  Hello! Something else is there too, being still. You are both very quiet in your leafy shelter. What do you hear?

Now return to being human. Go to a tree and press your cheek and hands against it (go ahead and hug it if you like–squirrels and lizards do!), stroke the bark with your fingertips.  Focus.  Is it dry or moist or lichen-covered?  Rough or smooth?  Inhale its smell — is it dusty, does it smell sharply of sap or resin?  Can you peer behind a piece of bark like a woodpecker looking for bugs?  Focus.  Look straight up through the branches — can you see clear to the sky?  Look at the whole canopy.  Now look at one branch; now at only one leaf or needle.  Is there a hole in the leaf?  Does it look chewed?  Is there a drop of resin on the needle?  Do you know what it tastes like to bite into a green pine needle?  I do.

Be very still and listen to the tree.  What is its voice?  Listen.  A faint tapping, a tiny scratching . . . insects . . . wind . . . a bird.  Leaves rustling, or long green needles swishing, prickling your skin.  Perhaps a piece of bark moves slowly away from your hand on the tree — a snout beetle!

Go out and become absorbed in nature, and focus closer and closer, smaller and smaller; and then come back with your notes and write fresh haiku.  Of course, you don’t have to “get close” to the exact things I mentioned — you can try this anywhere — near or on water, in a field, in a barn, lying in the grass, on the beach, on the porch, in a chicken yard, at the zoo, whatever you feel drawn to.

If for some reason, you can’t go outside, turn this into an inside exercise.  Go into your favorite room and sit.  Focus.  What does the room smell like?  Furniture polish, dust, food, hamster droppings, baby powder?  Look in the corners for spider webs.   Maybe there are tiny insect husks, a spider’s leftovers.  If there is a closed window, what can you see through it?  Hear through it?  Feel through it?  Look at the floor and note whether it is shiny, dusty, or scuffed.  If it’s carpet, is it new, worn, faded, thick pile, threadbare?  Notice whether the pattern is bright, boring, colorful, monochrome, flowered, or geometric.  How does it feel to your bare feet?  “Feel” the room as if this is your first time in it; decide how it might look or “feel” to a stranger.

If you have a pet, go near it and focus.  Does it watch you closely or ignore you?  Does it respond to your touch?  Try to get close enough to feel its breath on your hand or face.  Can you feel its heartbeat?  It’s ribs? Perhaps it’s a lizard or snake.  Have you ever felt a snake’s tongue flick against your skin?  I have.

There is a saying, “No matter where you go, there you are.”  Just be there, and observe with all your senses.  Make notes, write two or three sentences about each observation.  Then cut away all but the haiku.  Now is when you work at it carefully as a craft.  Pay attention to real content — including the experience of little things, little truths. You will very likely discover something new about an ordinary thing or event; or you will gain new insight from something familiar or from an everyday occurrence.  Remember to use focus; make every word count; eschew clutter and redundancy.  Be concise and very clear.  Avoid abstractions, don’t be vague.  Value juxtaposition.

Write so that your haiku speaks to your readers’ senses.  Make them smell the damp earth or burnt biscuits, hear the beetle clicking, or the stove ticking as it cools, see the dark rainbow in a grackle’s wing, dust motes in a shaft of sunlight, feel the warmth of the sunbeam that illuminates one bloom in a rose-patterned rug.

To complete the Nature Exercise, participants were asked to post up to four haiku using only eleven words or less.  During a feedback session, the instructor posted commentaries on at least one poem by each poet, giving poets the opportunity to respond with discussion and/or revised haiku.  Twenty-seven school members contributed a total of over eighty haiku.  Overall, the haiku present sharp focus and  concision.  The poets draw on their deep awareness of nature to bring immediacy and vivid imagery to their work.  This sampling of poems from the exercise demonstrates the authors’ respect for nature, their understanding of the essential qualities of haiku, and particularly the value of clear focus:

WHCschools Traditional Western Haiku School
Ferris Gilli, Instructor

Introduction: 

The Hibiscus School of Western traditional haiku, which has been active since January 2001, offers poets a solid grounding in the basic guidelines for writing English haiku.  The lessons consist of lectures by the instructor or a guest speaker, and may include exercises that involve haiku submissions from class members.  Through discussion and exercises, poets explore the reasoning behind the guidelines.  At regular intervals, students are encouraged to submit haiku in order to receive feedback and constructive criticism.  From time to time, respected and well-known guest speakers will offer special lectures or instruction, and these occasions may include class participation and kukai.

During the course of lessons, the Hibiscus School explores the following topics:

• Definition of haiku
• Essential qualities of haiku
• Things to avoid: “The Do Not’s of Haiku Writing”
• Breaking the “rules”
• Haiku construction
• Grammatical issues
• Issues of StyleThe essential qualities of haiku are listed in Lesson One:
• Focus
• Conciseness (clarity, brevity)
• Effective juxtaposition
• Resonance
• Immediacy
• Natural syntax
• Common language
• Balance of humanity and nature
• Sense of mood
• Sense of season; kigo
• Concrete imageryThe following is excerpted from the lecture in Lesson One:

Part I  Focus in Haiku

Lack of focus is a frequent problem for beginning haiku writers, and it’s only natural that it would be.  It is very frustrating trying to pack all the wonderful parts of a haiku moment into a tiny, three-line poem.

Imagine this:  It is a beautiful, sunny day, and I’m inside sewing on a button.  Suddenly there comes a loud boom that shakes the windows. Startled, I stab myself with the needle, as the cat bolts from the table to hide under the bed, knocking over my glass of tea in the process.  In the meantime the phone starts ringing, but I ignore it to go and look out the window at the blue sky.  Aha!  There is the vapor trail of the jet plane that made the sonic boom. And there is a butterfly, visiting my patio plants.  Then, BOOM! Another jet wrecks the silence, and there is the butterfly, gently drifting among the blooms.  Finally I answer the phone and am soon describing the events to my daughter, while the forgotten, spilt tea soaks into the carpet.

There is no way on earth to get all that into a haiku, nor should I attempt it.  If I do, the result will be a cluttered, jumbly mess which will effectively disguise the insight, the truth of my moment:

loud boom, stabbed by needle
startled cat spills tea incessant phone
peaceful butterfly long vapor trails

Wow, what a conflicting plethora of subjects and actions for readers to wade through, and a surfeit of descriptive words thrown in for good measure!

What is the central focus?

There is juxtaposition here all right, all in a tangle.  Where is the central juxtaposition? Haiku is a very small form, too brief for us to include a multitude of impressions, descriptions, and images.  We must focus on one main thing.  Too many images blur the focus. Two ways of focusing are from large to small, or small to large; wide to narrow, narrow to wide.  Often the setting is where the action occurs, or the setting may be an image that is bigger (not more important, but vaster) than another action in the moment– this will be the large element in the haiku.

So, this is carved out from that hodgepodge of ingredients I first offered:

sonic boom
a yellow butterfly
drifts among bluebells

Ferris Gilli  frogpond xxiii:2

An exercise involving student participation follows the lecture in Lesson One.  In the second lesson, the instructor offers her views on truth in haiku:

Truth is an essential element of haiku.  But just what kind of truth?  Shasei (the term from Masaoka Shiki) is sketching from life, or the direct, individual observation of the world around us. In other words, when I write haiku based on the notion of shasei, I write from my experience.  Another kind of truth also goes into the haiku. I witness a scene or situation and am struck by a truth there of the images and their interaction.  I write a haiku about it.  I have written the haiku based on my experience, and ideally, readers will find more than one layer of truth in the poem.

A poet does not have to know the word shasei to write from experience.  Most of us instinctively write haiku from experience.  We don’t have to be fluent in Japanese to be able to write haiku, but I firmly believe that everyone who is serious about learning to write it should study its history and how it came to the Western world.  I won’t be teaching history here, as there are others far more qualified than I whom you should seek for that.  There are many books and web sites that teach the history of haiku, and we are blessed to have Susumu’s school of traditional Japanese haiku right next door.

Some people believe that every single word should be an actual, literal part of a haiku moment.  But at least one of the old Masters believed that if he could experience it in his heart, in his dreams, in his mind, then it was real enough for haiku. There is no black-and-white rule for the means with which we bring experience and truth to haiku.  I believe that to write from experience does not mean that we must always present the exact images that we observe in a haiku moment.  It is more important that we share our insight or sudden realization in a way that connects emotionally with readers, than that we never change one hair of the factual images present in one moment.

Even when writing from experience, we may sometimes have to find the right settings for many of those haiku moments, or find the right images to juxtapose with them—and sometimes those settings or images were not present at the precise time of our discovery.  Just as we may carve away one or more images that were present at the time, in order to focus, we may also import an image from another memory into a haiku, to help us illuminate our truths.

To suggest that a haiku poet should write about truths instead of facts is putting it too simply and can be confusing.  When I say that I want to write the truth of the moment, I mean that I want to write MORE than just the facts, more than just a list of pretty or interesting images—I want to share with readers the truth that I discovered.  For example, in this haiku,

wartime grave–
scrubbing away lichen
to find the name

the facts (images) are these: there is an implied gravestone for a person who died during a war; there is lichen on the gravestone; the lichen has obscured the name on the gravestone; the author (or someone else) is scrubbing away the lichen; the person is doing this in order to be able to read the name beneath the lichen.  But just to write three lines of facts is not what haiku is about; haiku is about a deeper truth.

The deeper truths in this haiku are that life goes on; that nature is constant.  Everywhere we look, we can see life continuing, see the promise of life, even in a graveyard.  The grass grows, the birds sing, insects go about their business, seasons come and go in the graveyard.  And in this haiku, the living lichen covers the names of the dead, names that are carved in stone.  So we see that even such a lowly thing as a fungus can be a symbol of life.

The second lesson in the Hibiscus School presents a lecture on juxtaposition in haiku, with illustrative poems:

Part 2

Part 3