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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