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.
--
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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