There! Did you hear that?
Hal
"To go is to go farther."
--Kenneth Koch
Halvard Johnson
================
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On Oct 13, 2006, at 7:47 PM, biloxi andersen wrote:
> Could someone who likes Haiku please explain to me what to be liked
> about?
>
> In general etiquette it is not advisable to criticise before you ask,
> however, in scholarship it's advisable to state what it is that you
> understand and don't before you ask someone to explain something to
> you (1. makes your question specific so you don't waste their time 2.
> often you find that you arrive at the answer by just doing this).
>
> I'd never enjoyed a single piece nor do I feel I could endure reading
> a collection of it.
>
> Here's what I don't like about it;
>
> Its rigid form. I believe each piece should invent (or reinvent) its
> poetic tools and form as needed rather than adhere to a rigid or even
> established one. This doesn't mean it should lack discipline, not at
> all, the opposite, but it means that I think language should be
> subservient to life rather than the other way round.
>
> Then, its single events are too mundane and sterile. Yes, I know
> that's perhaps the point in zen or it is so by design. However, here's
> my problem with it. I think there are enough pressing issues in life
> that deserve our poetic attention more than a frog jumping on a leaf
> or a thousand other single snapshots of such things. Again, it seems
> to me that content here is subservient to form.
>
> That said though, I understand that it is the point in zen that
> everything is equally important and equally worthwhile/deserving, even
> the most mundane. And I'm all for finding the profound in the mundane.
>
> And I could understand that its practice (haiku) could be a means for
> the poet to open his senses to nature, which he might've been blind
> to, or that we are too often liable to be blind to. And that such
> practice might be rewarding to the poet. That I totally understand.
> It's something that I like a lot about the visual arts and get from
> pracitising them. In this instance, the practice of art itself matters
> more than its products.
>
> But, come to read the 100th or 1000th pieces of haiku you've come
> across. It feels pointless to me. Ok, I know how many syllables, how
> many lines, what it's going to be about, why should I read yet another
> 100 or 1000 pieces of haiku, or even one more. Is it to admire the
> craft of language rather than the art of life? I'm talking here about
> reading haiku, not the rewards of writing it or the attention to life
> that might give.
>
> Now, I understand the point of monotony in religious practice, and I
> meditate a lot. Yet that doesn't persuade me.
>
> Also, I understand the point of economy or discipline in tools of
> craft, and use the simplest language when I write, a pencil and a4
> paper when i draw, and a cheap camera when I photograph, however, that
> still doesn't persuade me. And I understand the point of economy or
> discipline in tools of art, and use the simplest presentation of an
> issue, and yet, that still doesn't persuade me about Haiku.
>
> What am I missing out on?
>
> Thanks.
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> --
> Her Lust is Wiser is a book of verse by Biloxi Andersen and Ziad
> Noureddine. It is part of ongoing diaries.
> http://inkatthedevil.blogspot.com/
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