I spent a good two years or so immersing myself in haiku -- english
haiku of course, japanese not being on my resumé -- and while the
original priciples arose naturally from/into the japanese language in
the japanese cultural context & mindset, I think with an open mind
most of the basics can be reached even in english. I share your
distaste of english haiku so desperately trying to be japanese; it's
like hearing someone impersonate your accent badly (even though I
obviously cannot claim japanese poetry as my 'accent'; but even
non-french-speakers can distinguish between native & crappy french).
for me, the nature- & moment-connectedness felt natural to me, nature
being part of the finnish "sielunmaisema" ('mindset' is a close
translation; it's literally "soul-landscape") and with me having a
respect & delight in nature. I spent long months wailing over the
horror of the mangle that is '5-7-5' in english -- to think that haiku
could be shut up in a box labeled "trochaic
trimeter-tetrameter-trimeter"!!
>Sad that we have the feeling that languages as different as Japanese and
>English work in the same way to produce equivalent effects. They
>don't. That's why I believe that English language haiku is a
>misnomer.
that is sad. but once some education occurs, there's the realisation
that you can either proclaim writing haiku in english a futile
mockery, or you can respect the form & adopt it into the english
language & its poetics WHILE being mindful of the original principles.
"three lines about nature" is the one I hear almost as often as
'5-7-5' -- a babystep away from ignorance to be sure.
I do think, though, that the natural, respectful wonder & even the
moment-immersed humour of haiku is a wonderful asset to english
poetry. I realised after a while that the principles of haiku already
existed in my conception of my own poetry, & were perhaps futher
ingrained because of my excursion into the form. I haven't written
haiku for a long time; but I still have a sort of 'creative' essay I
started writing on it three years ago.
I have the same sort of distaste for denouncing adopted foreign forms
or ideas as incomprehensible as I do for the practically racist or
'paradigmist' simplification of those forms/ideas. "the culture this
came from is alien to us, we should therefore recognise our struggle
at meaning as fruitless."
hey, where one meaning is lost, another is born.
KS
On 31/03/2008, [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Sad to say but English language poetry written to emulate Japanese forms
> tends to sound chopped, truncated, minced into what I call "Zenglish."
> After studying the "stuff" in the original language I'm not happy to
> read most of the the so-called equivalent writing in English.
>
> Of course it's possible to write short, short poetry in English. A few
> of Herrick are about as close as English can come to what kana and Kanji
> can do so effortlessly. Sanuel Menashe has also done it once or twice.
>
> Most of the other stuff is, well--"stuff."
>
> Sad that we have the feeling that languages as different as Japanese and
> English work in the same way to produce equivalent effects. They
> don't. That's why I believe that English language haiku is a
> misnomer. Add to this the sense of ease and entitlement that allows us
> to misunderstand haiku (so easy that kids can enjoy writing it!), the
> cultural hang-over of post WWII Japan when the West was flooded with
> cheaply made goods from the islands, etc. etc., instant ramen noodles
> etc. etc., and we have a real
> problem with coming to grips with what is indeed a dazzling mode of
> expression in the original. Our cultural, Anglo-centric chauvanism
> keeps getting in the way.
>
> Of course we could probably substitute French, German, Spanish, for
> English in the above statement and still come pretty close to the truth.
>
> I was first introduced to the idea of "difficulty" and haiku writing
> when I arrived in Japan and began to talk with the Japanese about
> poetry. But wasn't haiku so simple that grade school teachers in
> America could coax tons of it from their charges? Hadn't I written my
> share of it when I was a child? Didn't every English "teacher" who
> found his or her way to Japan suddently breaking out in the stuff like
> rashes from too much msg in meals? You could see their Zenglish in the
> haiku column of the Mainichi Simbun with someone saying which was good
> and which was bad!
>
> When I started to study the language (and I must say even now I'm far
> from mastering it)--and sat with significat haijin who wrote, published,
> and won awards for their work in Japanese--only then did I understand
> what the Japanese were telling me. Haiku is hard as hell to write.
> Moreover, the use of Kanji makes the thought so compressed that finding
> an equivalent in English in the melding of form and content to even
> begin to give the feeling of the original is well-neigh impossible. The
> sense of "ease" and "anything I say is haiku is haiku" that so many
> seem to find in the act of writing this form is simply an illusion born
> of a misunderstanding--linguistic and cultural.
>
> Stuff indeed.
>
> Jess
>
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