Rupert Mallin wrote on Friday, September 10, 2004 9:06 PM
Subject: Re: more poems
>Was a Radio 4 play this week where haiku was used as a device, except the
narrator said they're composed of 15 syllables in three lines and I'm sure
it's 17 syllables - 5-7-5. Yet, I don't understand the literal
translation/transmutation from the ideogram into our phonetically driven
language. I understand the 'essence' of the discipline of the haiku but
cannot quite come to terms with the 'score' of it.
I'm no student of prosody but really like the idea of a word count over a
syllable count in breaking from the iamb.<
Oooh, this is a lovely territory, so many curves and ingangs of
understanding in it. One thing to start from: Japanese 'haiku'
+are+phonetically driven as well as having ideogrammatic features, unlike
Classical Chinese Japanese is polysyllabic and although in conventional
classification the language is 'isotonic' (avoiding here debates about the
nature of stress emphasis for convenience's sake) tempo, assonance and
consonance are very important and a transliteration of a Japanese poem into
the Anglo-Roman form of the Western alphabet will convey something of those
qualities, which isn't really the case with Chinese. But, too, classical
Japanese haiku existed as visual art-works too - in their calligraphy and in
accompanying visual imagery - Buson, the great 18th century haiku writer,
was also a major visual artist. Haiku, too, is one of a number of forms,
senryu, hokkai, tanka, renga and haibun are all part of the same complex
family, indeed, if memory serves, Basho wouldn't have recognised the term
'haiku', I seem to recall it only became widely current in Japan in the 19th
century. Add to that the links with meditational practices, the practice of
many classical 'haiku' writers of using different pen-names for different
styles (Basho is merely the best known pseudonym the writer used - it can be
translated as Mr Banana and was very much an indication of a comic style)
plus the importance of 'cutting' words and the famous/infamous 'season'
words. Nor was the haiku tradition as polysemic in tendency as Chinese
poetry. The 5-7-5 was a base line measure, just as the English iambic
pentameter, and the better poets played around with it. When people in the
West just string together a 5-7-5 and think by doing that they've made a
haiku they are most often sadly adrift. The particular properties of English
have to be taken into account for any chance of success. This isn't to say
that you can't use number count as a frame for English poetry, Trevor's
36-ers look very interesting - they are rhythmically alert, but it is to say
that merely mechanically counting is likely to produce something
rhythmically and verbally inert. Level accents threatens. One could use this
as a device for a purpose of course but that's a horses for courses matter.
It's interesting, for instance, to ponder the numerological nuances one can
attain.
All the Best
Dave
David Bircumshaw
Spectare's Web, A Chide's Alphabet
& Painting Without Numbers
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