The Old Taoist

Fukuda Kodojin (1865-1944) was known as the “Old Taoist” because he carried the old traditions of the sage-poet-painter into the modern age. He studied with a few haiku masters including Shiki who, although he was two years younger than Kodojin, was paving the way for haiku reform by way of “direct observation and natural language” (Stephen Addiss, “The Haiku of the Old Taoist,” Simply Haiku, September-October ’04).

Here is a haiku that shows simple, clear language as well as the theme of the old and the new:

A small boat
next to the battleship
casting for mullet

I like this one too:

Short summer night –
passing through the gate
two nuns


According to Addiss, Kodojin explored the “tradition of midnight visits to temples.” In this haiku, there is a strong image that requires, at least for me, the formula of proportions: “Short summer night” is to Zoka as “passing through the gate” is to the “two nuns.” Examining the first line, the kigo, we have to reflect on the symbolism of the topic “short summer night” in light of the universal Creative, Zoka. The temperature is changing and the days are getting shorter. Time is precious. Just let that sink in.

As for the base, there is ambiguity as well as a precisely-rendered image. We don’t really know if the nuns are arriving at the temple or leaving it. Are they going out to enjoy the night or are they going into the temple because of the night? The haiku deepens considerably when the interpretation is that they are so inspired by the brevity of the summer night that they want to be in the temple: Zoka is awakened in the nuns (and potentially the reader) by seasonal fullness and transcendence, which is portrayed by the image of them passing “through” the gate. The transition is as brief as the summer night. The use of “two” suggests communion and flow, oneness of mind, between the nuns.

So there are vertical structures of mind – between Zoka consciousness and the poet/reader – and horizontal, between the nuns and between poet and reader. This structure is very tight and boundlessly expressive.

This haiku is perfectly balanced. The “short summer night” inspires the nuns and instead of rushing out to enjoy the moment, they turn inward. Balance of consciousness through “acts of attention” (Ed Block, “Poetry, Attentiveness and Prayer” in New Blackfriars, March 2008) lets things be absorbed rather than superficially experienced. This way, the event becomes part of consciousness rather than a deflation of ecstatic momentum fueled with imbalance.

--Madeleine Findlay

Thoreau and Donovan Hohn

The essay by Donovan Hohn in the April Harper's (www.harpers.org/archive/2008/04/page/0059, but you must register to get into the website -- it's worth it!-- or better yet, buy a copy!) should be read by everybody interested in American haiku culture. Many haiku writers will of course deny that their poetry has any thing to do with the culture Hohn's memoir is about. That's a pity because in most cases such a refusal is just another way of marginalizing oneself as a poet, a failure to see oneself as part of a cultural moment (one may of course consciously resist the prevailing culture but one must be articulate in that culture to resist it successfully)--another trick of the prevailing default narcissism. Anyway: "We were 'forest Christians,' " he writes, "followers of that American brand of pantheism founded by Henry David Thoreau and John Muir." In the 90s, Hohn was deeply involved in identity politics; his readers will themselves identify, however fleetingly, with his case. As an essay-memoir, "Falling" is exemplary. Haiku, as currently understood, is a kind of creative non-fiction; it needs to be re-understood, but it's best to start with the givens.

Jim Kacian's review of Shaped Water (first edition) in Frogpond Winter 2008

Findlay, Madeleine Shaped Water: A Haiku Year (Single Island Press, 379 State Street, Portsmouth NH 03801, 2007). ISBN 978-1-4243-3366-0. 60 pp., 4.25” x 5.5” perfect softbound, letterpress, stitched in signatures with gloss dustjacket, $14.95 from the publisher, also at >.

If we as haiku poets believe anything at all it is that our small packages are indeed big things. We mouth truisms about giving a poem sufficient space to breath (as though the “breathing” wasn’t taking place in that oxygen-free zone we call mind) so the full drawn-out resonance of each poem will not bump up against the competing resonances in previous or subsequent poems. We know better, and we can be mildly ironic about our particular fetishism. All that being said, we still like it when our work is treated well, couched attractively, respected. Haiku may, as Blyth suggests, aim at significance, but given a chance to commingle with beauty, we’ll take some of that as well. Which brings us to this handsome little book: this is what we’d like for our next volume. Easy to hand, tactile, well-considered and -judged, this is a beautiful production in every regard. Haiku will live and die with its poetic products, but such a volume suggests that good companionship with the book arts certainly heightens the experience. As to the poems: the author is primarily of the “nature observer” school, with a slight tendency at times to draw conclusions or hypothesize. Overall, however, the poems are consonant with the book, beautiful, easy to hand, and attractive. We look forward to more such volumes from this press.

The Hem of Your Kimono

If only I could tie
The string of my kite
To the hem of your kimono

Chiyo-ni, trans Patricia Donegan


In one of Chiyo’s fluid (and erotic!) haiku, we can follow the syntax to locate the sections in this translation: lines 1 and 2 make a unit, then there's the prepositional phrase that completes the sentence.

Reading this haiku is like watching a figure emerge from the brush of a painter! Except that it’s a rare painting that becomes so upclose and personal—or is it?

As for the analogies informing the poem: The "hem" is to Zoka as the kite is to the poet: zoka consciousness "takes in" the hem the way a person "takes in" a kite -- with a "tie"; otherwise it will fly away in the (Spring) breeze.

Zoka sees the hem of the kimono as full of energy and independence, perhaps as an emodiment of the spirit of the lovely “you” addressed by Chiyo.

Seeing the hem in light of zoka saves the poem from being merely sexy, though it is delightfully that: zoka as The Creative loves to see "things" in their act of being, and this hem must fly!

>

Commentary on a haiku by Jamie Edgecombe

remembering Basho
a scarecrow emerges
from my brush

-- Jamie Edgecombe



In this haiku, “Basho” is a symbol, a reference to a man, yes, but also a reference to what he means to the poet and, potentially, the reader of the poem. Edgecombe’s haiku – Edgecombe is a painter as well as a poet – reveals Basho as the name of a substance carried through meditation into a work of art.

The poem is grounded in actuality. “Scarecrow” is one of the historical Basho’s favorite images, so there’s an allusion and an homage to the poet in the image. But it’s also a specific image that carries with it narratives of boundaries – seasonal, organic, cultural. The haiku shows a modern poet participating in the symbolic world of his master poet through an image.

Of course none of this would matter were the haiku not well written, if the gap between the superposed line – remembering Basho – and the base where not a formal and persuasive acknowledgement of the master distinction between time and eternity, between particulars and Being as One. The sense of immediacy one gets from a good haiku is achieved here not by sentimental feeling but by juxtapositions of present/past, thing/art – several paradoxes – which, taken in by the reader, produce an experience of “flow” of consciousness which is parallel to the one mentioned in the poem. That is, the poem reveals through juxtaposition and paradox the “simplicity” of Way over against the complexity of the life of composition.

This distinction between complex, plural composition and the simple oneness of “nonbeing” (in one tradition) or Being (in another) is the “unwobbling pivot” of haiku and finds its equivalences in world cultures including Chinese, Japanese, Medieval Christian, and contemporary theology.

In the tension of its two-part form, the ideal haiku acknowledges the invisible behind the visible world of images, the unimaginable behind the floating world of existence. This secret architecture is the basis on which to evaluate haiku as a poetic form “equal” (sub specie aeternatis) to all comers — for example, Dante’s “comedy.”

Theory of course only prepares us to enjoy the gift of this contemporary haiku, which is quite expressive, lively, ardent -- human. The flow of the brush becomes not only an act of tradition but an act of eros: the poet participates through love in the life of the master. Reading the haiku is a pleasure because of the meditative integrity of the composition. A “moment” yes but also a process, a flow toward a transcendent horizon.

Finally, to return to the opening line (which we can now understand in terms of the whole), the act of “remembering” brings into being “consciousness” by which the ego transcends itself in the name of Basho. Indeed, the act of anamnesis (as Plato called it) is profoundly erotic and the essence of humanity.

Our Debut debuts!

Madeleine Findlay. Shaped Water: A Haiku Year (first edition)

a review by William J. Higginson at haikaipub.wordpress.com


Portsmouth, NH: Single Island Press, 2007. 4.25×5.5″ (11×14 cm), approx 64 unnumbered pages, $14.95 from the publisher, 379 State St., 03801.
With thanks to Tom D’Evelyn.

With Shaped Water, editor, publisher and author Madeleine Findlay inaugurates her and Tom D’Evelyn’s “small press” in fine style.

From a four-color wrapper to the letterpress-printed interior in sewn signatures of deep cream Ingres paper bound in “Turner Blue” boards embossed with the book’s title, this book is a class act. Its one-to-a-page haiku, elegantly set in Pastonchi monotype by Ed Rayher at Swamp Press, speak quietly to inner places engaged with the outer world.

Some of Findlay’s haiku seem simple in the extreme, as in this almost uncommentable occurrence:

blown
across the kitchen floor
dead leaves

. . . but, on the facing page, we see that more is at stake in these poems, where each word approaches silent, subtle gesture:

out in the cold wind
I walk into my shadow
my back warm

But I have jumped ahead into winter, so let’s back up to see what we might discover in spring, toward the front of the book:

across the counter

and through a crack in the wall

snakeskin

Sounds like my grandfather’s old shed out back, where I found such things after a snowbound winter finally melted away and his worn hands sought tools for work in the soil.

This is a carefully crafted book in every dimension, a “year” to set above any other I know in haiku lately. A wonderful debut book for both press and poet. I’ll not give away any more of these poems here, but recommend that you check them out yourself. The price is low for a book of such quality, and there are only 200 to be had in this limited edition. Check it out further on the publisher’s web site: http://www.haikumuse.com/.

Copyright © 2008 William J. Higginson. Reprinted by permission.

A Commentary

the bridge’s shadow
motionless on the river
bright January

-- Tom D'Evelyn



Connections are in disconnect, removed, abstracted and yet nourished by the shadow. The bridge as a symbol is cultivated on the water. This internalizes the message and makes one think of this distillation -- crossing, intentions and directions. "Motionless" is the way we feel this time of year as we wait insouciantly for spring. We are in suspended animation, putting things off and rationalizing -- buried in unfurnished hope. In contrast January is "bright" -- metallic -- often foiling the self-image of being curled in a cave. You have everything going here -- the river bringing change is flat -- supplicant to the structure crossing above it. The tension is in perfect suspension and the bridge -- the main character, the hero, the knight, keeps re-emerging. -- Madeleine Findlay