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Dear kuyu (haiku lover),

An honourable haiku master points out to his over-zealous pupil, painting haiku day and night, that this is unwholesome. The disciple answers: ‘I have to work even more, without loss of time. To become a master, I have a long way to go.’

‘How do you know,’ asks the master, ‘that mastership has taken a lead? Maybe it is just running behind you, while you are increasing the distance every day.’

 I don't write for eternity, because I have no pretense to write masterpieces.... Readers take haiku or leave them. I accept for once and for good, laughing as a garden gnome, that a haiku is, maybe, a knickknack. Nothing more... So, be your own prophet. Just follow your own haiku path, instead of trying to emulate an imposed model. Don't mimic the style of others. I don't know when and why I started writing haiku. Must there be any reason? Maybe because I was in search of an opportunity to combine poetry with a little bit more awareness of myself and the world? Maybe because I am inquisitive? I restart every day! My first modest haiku was written in May 1968; this attempt enriched my whole life. For the past few years, haiku writing is a daily activity with a lot of study and fun.

Reading and writing in close consideration with other kuyu teaches that we still need the 'beginners' mind.’ To be on the look-out for mistakes, new approaches, is wonderful. We develop modesty and the ability to put ourselves, our haiku, and the haiku rules in perspective. Geert in Wonderland? I adore the discipline of daily writing. I try to write in several languages (Dutch, English, French and modestly in German); each has its own rules and habits to make an original contribution to the haiku world. The swap over, admit the possibility of placing myself in question. It’s a pity that I don't understand Japanese...to read Shiki and other masters.

A haiku is a thimble that I try to fill up without spilling! Put briefly, haiku are objective, image-centred, and ‘one-breath’ poems, often brimming with childlike wonder. This quality merely camouflages its deeply rooted aesthetic principles. ‘Lifefulness,’ not beauty, is the real spirit of haiku. Haiku encompasses every aspect of our daily life, the creative state of mind behind prohibitive rules and conservatism. 

Certain habits have crept into Western-languages haiku. A lot of writers who try to adhere to a 5-7-5 form usually pad their haiku with words that add no meaning ('the warm summer sun', or 'cold ice' for example). Others write in a ‘telegram’ style, not the normal speech or writing...short is not always grammatically correct…a haiku is poetry, a poem. At least one dream precedes every book.

My book Hermits supplies playful reflections, written between 2004 and 2008. Are they haibun? Or columns? The intended purpose of this book makes no claim to be exhaustive. Neither is it a do-it-yourself course. It even misses, with pleasure, the sober objectiveness of an explaining dictionary. And yes, there is the ability to put things in perspective by self-mockery and outspoken observation, without drawing a bead on anyone. Every resemblance to actual persons or events is purely accidental. This book supplies on nearly every page a small verse of undersigned madcap. Time and readers must decide if these are haiku. Maybe they are no masterpieces, but they are in their imperfection genuine invitations to communicate. They bear witness of amorousness toward haiku.

A haiku (hy-koo), is a nutshell full of emotion, a small poem relative to the raindrops. Originating in Japan, haiku is the briefest of all poetic forms, one which encapsulates a single impression of a natural object or scene within a particular season. Traditionally, the haiku is a fixed poem of approximately seventeen onji (sound-units), most often arranged in arranged in three unrhymed lines of five, seven, and five syllables, with an integrated seasonal word called kigo. The form expresses much and suggests more in the fewest possible words. Arising in the sixteenth century, haiku flourished in the hands of Bashō; (1644–1694) and Buson (1715–1783). At first an opening stanza of a longer sequence (haikai), it became a separate form in the modern period under the influence of Masaoka Shiki (1867–1902). The haiku convention, whereby feelings are suggested by natural images rather than directly stated, has appealed to many Western poets since about 1900.

A haiku relies on brevity and simplicity to convey its poetical message, conveying a keenly perceived moment of heightened subjective awareness. Writing haiku can help to face the whole world without nostalgic harassments and sentimental burps—if you are neither a compulsive grumbler nor an old grouser.

No cramping of the past; the haiku happens here and now. The questions come to the surface while writing, thus you start looking for hints. Good advice never comes amiss. You want advice and operative suggestions? A few moments later you are bearing the inconveniences of compelling rules, severe regulations, and all sorts of imposed laws. It seems that you lose the scent because a lot of busybodies have admonished little fingers, sometimes in sing-song voices. They (re)commend all kinds of reliable and authoritative haiku writers, the sources of your future knowledge. Master Bashō said this; Buson said that! Big claptrap and drivel. Odds and ends, bits and pieces that will nail you down. The straitjacket of all sorts of regulations is waiting to make your head spin. So many points of view, with quotes and references, are confusing your mind.

Heaped up, all kinds of petty facts are aggravating, and maybe driving you bonkers. But don't be afraid of mental deterioration; we are only talking about seventeen syllables. Where is the reciprocal well-being between you and your haiku? You are fed up to the back teeth, counting the corny expressions, the cut-and-paste idioms, the enjambments. You skip the pages about interpunction, all along the lines. The pattern of the syllables... you don't give a damn. Still, you hesitate to abandon the rigid rules to find the intangible nature of the haiku.

Take off! Please, write your own stuff! A haiku is not world shattering. Not yet…. Funny, to write your own haiku. It makes your mind more liquid and flexible. The haiku: a four-star one means it’s against acidification! Not written to be weighed down with cramped commentary. Fiddling about verb-less haiku is redundant; what you don't tell is revealing. Present by absence...‘the haiku as magician.’ Temporarily, reviews and criticism give you a nasty shock; but you know eventually the simplicity will rise to the surface, and once it does, that’s the real expertise. Sometimes in seventeen-word chunks, in three lines and one heart. So long as it beats in kindness, so long you are observant…. Do you hear voices?

Haiku, literally meaning ‘playful verse,’ originated as the basis of a collectively written linked poem, the renga. Some believe metaphors should be completely avoided; others feel they are inherent. Some believe that haiku should be written in the present tense, should be from actual lived experience, should be concrete, should contain juxtaposition, shouldn’t rhyme, etc. None of these characteristics are necessary. Not even a touch of Zen. Once in a while it is very complicated to be uncomplicated!

For me, writing one haiku or tanka every day is a test of my creative endurance.

 The reflections above are published in HERMIT.  MAIL to purchase your copy.

LINKS

MEGAMALL JAPAN  haiku-tanka page, by Toyoko Shimada.

HAIKU REALITY Sasa Vazic.

DARUMA MUSEUM Japan

HAIKU IRELAND Ireland

WHIRLIGIG HAIKU MAGAZINE

INFO: MAX VERHART