“Issa, Cup-Of-Tea”

(unfinished watercolor, Jane Kohut-Bartels, 2018, “Baby Owls”)

Kobayashi Issa, (1763-1827) A Haiku Poet with Enormous Heart

 

I have had “The Essential haiku: Versions of Basho, Buson, and Issa” for a few years and have only really gotten to Basho. But recently reading Issa, the world of haiku opened up in ways I didn’t expect.

What is remarkable about Issa’s poetry is the compassion for the lowest of creatures (insects, etc.), the deep interest in the commonalities of life, and a compassion for people.

Haiku can be a perplexing poetry form. Recently I have read a lot of bad haiku. I’ve written about this before. (I’ve also written bad haiku myself) It seems people throw together observations and call it haiku. It generally isn’t. There are ‘rules’ and structures for this poetry form, and it seems that many people who attempt haiku have no regard for even reading or researching some of these fundamentals. If they started with a reading and research of renga, they would get some background of haiku, or hokku, which is what haiku was first called.

Renga, or linked verse, is marvelous to read. One poet starts with a three line poem, another picks it up, and so on. They can go on for a hundred linked poems or more. Usually accompanied by sake.

What was remarkable of renga, and later of haiku…is the shifts and dissolves that remind one of early surrealist films. And there are some modernist poets, like Ezra Pound’s XXX Cantos, or even better, Wallace Stevens’s “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” that comes near to the renga spirit, this shifting and resolve.

But the Buddhist tradition embraced this shifting and resolve. Renga, and then haiku, have a way of embracing this life, this transitory nature of all things.

I came across a part of a 14^th century treatise on poetry: “Contemplate deeply the vicissitudes of the life of man and body, always keep in your heart the image of mujo (ephemerality) and when you go to the mountains or the sea, feel the pathos (aware) of the karma of sentient beings and non-sentient things. Give feeling to those things without a heart (mushintai no mono) and through your own heart express their beauty (yugen) in a delicate form.”(from “Basho and the Way of Poetry in the Japanese Religious Tradition”)

Again, haiku isn’t as simple as it seems. But it’s direct, forceful and of a keenness that satisfies.

People complain of the ‘oddness’ of haiku. Perhaps it is this ‘shifts and resolve’ embedded in the form. To me, Issa has less of this than Basho or Buson. There is a directness and compassion of Issa that deeply involves the heart and eyes.

My words will not convince anyone. But perhaps examples of Issa will.

Lady Nyo

–

Haiku of Issa: from The Essential Haiku, edited by Robert Hass

 

New Year’s Day—

Everything is in blossom!

I feel about average.

 

The snow is melting

And the village is flooded

With children.

 

Don’t worry, spiders,

I keep house

Casually.

 

Goes out,

Comes back—

The loves of a cat.

 

Children imitating cormorants

Are even more wonderful

Than cormorants.

 

O flea! Whatever you do,

Don’t jump.

That way is the river.

 

In this world

We walk on the roof of hell,

Gazing at flowers.

 

Don’t kill that fly!

Look—it’s wringing its hands

Wringing its feet.

 

I’m going out,

Flies, so relax,

Make love.

 

(approaching his village)

 

Don’t know about the people,

But all the scarecrows

Are crooked.

 

A huge frog and I,

Staring at each other,

Neither of us moves.

 

All the time I pray to Buddha

I keep on

Killing mosquitoes.

 

What good luck!

Bitten by

This year’s mosquitoes too.

 

The bedbug

Scatter as I clean,

Parents and children.

 

And my personal favorite…

 

Zealous flea,

You’re about to be a Buddha

By my hand.

–

 

Jane Kohut-Bartels

Copyrighted, 2018

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Basho on Poetry: Learn from the Pine”.

Basho On Poetry: Learn from the Pine

–
These are excerpts from a rather long document by Basho, considered to be the top haiku poet of the 17th century. I am presenting these thoughts of his because they ‘make clear and plain’ what Basho believes is the correct approach to haiku. Today, lots of poets are attempting haiku, and missing by a wide streak. This is sad, but also represents a lack of study, perhaps pure laziness, and as one poet said: “Every thing I learned about haiku, I learned from the internet.”
This is especially sad, but an honest statement from one poet. There are enough books on haiku out there, and by masters of haiku, too, to read and learn from. That is not to say that haiku is easy. It looks easy, but isn’t. At least attending to some of words of poets like Basho will give us a hint.

Perhaps these words will help in our forming our own haiku. I offer some of my own, but these were formed before I had read Basho. Perhaps readers will see the struggle to form haiku. Writing haiku is definitely a learning process that should take a long time of study and contemplation.

Lady Nyo

–

BASHO:
Learn about the pines from the pine, and about bamboo from the bamboo.
Don’t follow in the footsteps of the old poets, seek what they sought.
The basis of art is change in the universe. What’s still has changeless form. Moving things change, and because we cannot put a stop to time, it continues unarrested. To stop a thing would be to halve a sight or sound in our heart. Cherry blossoms whirl, leaves fall, and the wind flits them both along the ground. We cannot arrest with our eyes or ears what lies in such things. Were we to gain mastery over them, we would find that the life of each thing had vanished without a trace.

Make the universe your companion, always bearing in mind the true nature of things—mountains and rivers, trees and grasses, and humanity—and enjoy the falling blossoms and the scattering leaves.
One should know that a hokku is made by combining things.
The secret of poetry lies in treading the middle path between the reality and the vacuity of the world.

One must first of all concentrate one’s thoughts on an object. Once the mind achieves a state of concentration and the space between oneself and the object had disappeared, the essential nature of the object can be perceived. Then express it immediately. If one ponders it, it will vanish from the mind.

Sabi is the color of the poem. It does not necessarily refer to the poem that describes a lonely scene. If a man goes to war wearing stout armor or to a party dressed up in gay clothes, and if this man happens to be an old man, there is something lonely about him. Sabi is something like that.

When you are composing a verse, quickly say what is in your mind; never hesitate a moment.

Composition must occur in an instant, like a swordsman leaping at his enemy.

Is there any good in saying everything?

In composing hokku, there are two ways: becoming and making. When a poet who has been assiduous in pursuit of his aim applies himself to an external object, the color of his mind naturally becomes a poem. In the case of the poet who has not done so, nothing in him will become a poem; he makes the poem through an act of personal will.

There are three elements in haikai: Its feeling can be called loneliness (sabi). This plays with refined dishes but contents itself with humble fare. Its total effect can be called elegance. This lives in figured silks and embroidered brocades but does not forget a person clad in woven straw. Its language can be called aesthetic madness. Language resides in untruth and ought to comport with truth. It is difficult to reside in truth and sport with untruth. These three elements do not exalt a humble person to heights. They put an exalted person in a low place.
The profit of haikai lies in making common speech right.

Haikai needs more homely images, such as a crow picking mud snails in a rice paddy.

In humanity, there can be something called a windswept spirit. A thin drapery torn and swept away by the stirring of the wind. Indeed, since beginning to write poetry, it (this windswept spirit…this dissatisfaction (my word) knows no other art than the art of writing poetry and therefore it hangs on to it more or less blindly.
Poetry is a fireplace in summer or a fan in winter.
How invincible is the power of poetry to reduce me (Basho) to a tattered beggar!

It is the poetic spirit called furabo that leads one to follow nature and become a friend with things of the seasons. Flowers, moon, insects, etc. For those who do not see the flower are no different from barbarians, and those who do not imagine the moon are akin to beasts. Leave barbarians and beasts behind and follow nature and return to nature.

The bones of haiku are plainness and oddness.
(From: Basho on Poetry.)

–
My (Lady Nyo’s) examples of early haiku.
–
Pale lavender sky
Balances the moon and sun
The scale shifts to night.
–
Under the dark moon
I awaited your return
Only shadows came.
–
A swirl of blossoms
Caught in the water’s current
Begins the season.
–
Jane Kohut-Bartels
Copyrighted, 2016-18

 

 

“Basho on Poetry: Learn from the Pine”

In rereading these words of Basho, I am struck to the core.  Oddness and plainness speaks to not only haiku but so much of poetry.  I struggled to learn Japanese aesthetics but I missed something fundamental.  I think Basho hits the nails on the heads.  There is so much ‘truth’ to what he says here that I want to understand and experience this honest approach to poetry, as Basho details below.  I keep reading it, over and over, and each time something else is revealed in his words.

These are excerpts from a rather long document by Basho, considered to be the top haiku poet of the 17th century. I am presenting these thoughts of his because they ‘make clear and plain’ what Basho believes is the correct approach to haiku. Today, lots of poets are attempting haiku, and missing by a wide streak. This is sad, but also represents a lack of study, perhaps pure laziness, and as one poet said: “Every thing I learned about haiku, I learned from the internet.”

This is especially sad, but an honest statement from one poet. There are enough books on haiku out there, and by masters of haiku, too, to read and learn from. That is not to say that haiku is easy. It looks easy, but isn’t. At least attending to some of words of poets like Basho will give us a hint.

Perhaps these words will help in our forming our own haiku. I offer some of my own, but these were formed before I had read Basho. Perhaps readers will see the struggle to form haiku. Writing haiku is definitely a learning process that should take a long time of study and contemplation.

–
Lady Nyo

—

 

BASHO:
Learn about the pines from the pine, and about bamboo from the bamboo.
Don’t follow in the footsteps of the old poets, seek what they sought.
The basis of art is change in the universe. What’s still has changeless form. Moving things change, and because we cannot put a stop to time, it continues unarrested. To stop a thing would be to halve a sight or sound in our heart. Cherry blossoms whirl, leaves fall, and the wind flits them both along the ground. We cannot arrest with our eyes or ears what lies in such things. Were we to gain mastery over them, we would find that the life of each thing had vanished without a trace.

Make the universe your companion, always bearing in mind the true nature of things—mountains and rivers, trees and grasses, and humanity—and enjoy the falling blossoms and the scattering leaves.

One should know that a hokku is made by combining things.
The secret of poetry lies in treading the middle path between the reality and the vacuity of the world.

 

One must first of all concentrate one’s thoughts on an object. Once the mind achieves a state of concentration and the space between oneself and the object had disappeared, the essential nature of the object can be perceived. Then express it immediately. If one ponders it, it will vanish from the mind.

Sabi is the color of the poem. It does not necessarily refer to the poem that describes a lonely scene. If a man goes to war wearing stout armor or to a party dressed up in gay clothes, and if this man happens to be an old man, there is something lonely about him. Sabi is something like that.

When you are composing a verse, quickly say what is in your mind; never hesitate a moment.

Composition must occur in an instant, like a swordsman leaping at his enemy.
Is there any good in saying everything?

In composing hokku, there are two ways: becoming and making. When a poet who has been assiduous in pursuit of his aim applies himself to an external object, the color of his mind naturally becomes a poem. In the case of the poet who has not done so, nothing in him will become a poem; he makes the poem through an act of personal will.

There are three elements in haikai: Its feeling can be called loneliness (sabi). This plays with refined dishes but contents itself with humble fare. Its total effect can be called elegance. This lives in figured silks and embroidered brocades but does not forget a person clad in woven straw. Its language can be called aesthetic madness.

Language resides in untruth and ought to comport with truth. It is difficult to reside in truth and sport with untruth. These three elements do not exalt a humble person to heights. They put an exalted person in a low place.

The profit of haikai lies in making common speech right.

Haikai needs more homely images, such as a crow picking mud snails in a rice paddy.

In humanity, there can be something called a windswept spirit. A thin drapery torn and swept away by the stirring of the wind. Indeed, since beginning to write poetry, it (this windswept spirit…this dissatisfaction (my word) knows no other art than the art of writing poetry and therefore it hangs on to it more or less blindly.
Poetry is a fireplace in summer or a fan in winter.

How invincible is the power of poetry to reduce me (Basho) to a tattered beggar!
It is the poetic spirit called furabo that leads one to follow nature and become a friend with things of the seasons. Flowers, moon, insects, etc. For those who do not see the flower are no different from barbarians, and those who do not imagine the moon are akin to beasts. Leave barbarians and beasts behind and follow nature and return to nature.
The bones of haiku are plainness and oddness.
From: Basho on Poetry.

Lady Nyo’s examples of early haiku.
–
Pale lavender sky
Balances the moon and sun
The scale shifts to night.
–
Under the dark moon
I awaited your return
Only shadows came.
–
A swirl of blossoms
Caught in the water’s current
Begins the season.

Dogwoods blooming
The crucifixion appears
White moths in the night.

(this last haiku is my favorite…)

–
Jane Kohut-Bartels
Copyrighted, 2018

 

 

“The Kimono”, Chapter 27

THE MOON PEEKED THROUGH the distant trees below Gassan Mountain in the east. This low to the horizon its color was a dark coppery-pumpkin as it hovered in the evening sky. The rising moon caused the drunken men to pause in their good-humored noise. How many times had the full moon risen yet the beauty of its appearance, the miracle of its closeness, always produced awe? A servant came around the screen and whispered something to Lady Nyo. She, in turn, went to Mari and in a very low voice said that Lord Tetsu had requested her company. Lady Nyo fussed a bit with Mari’s face, patted rice powder over her features, combed out her hair and gathered it halfway down her back with a twist of red paper. From a small wooden box, she brought out a flask of scent and applied it between Mari’s breasts. With a nod and a sigh, she was finished and bowed to Mari with a small smile.

 

Mari followed a serving girl to the lake where she found Lord Tetsu. He gave a slight nod in greeting and turned, walking further down to a small stand of cherry trees. Here, there were no lanterns hanging from the branches. Only the brightness of the full moon and a small brazier gave light. Quilts had been placed for them on the ground. The servant disappeared, fading silently into the shadows surrounding the grove of cherries. Dragonflies dipped and swooped along the shoreline. The sound of the water lapping at the beach was amplified by the silence around them.

They were far enough away that they could not hear the others. The sky darkened and rose-tinted clouds appeared over the water. Lord Tetsu sipped his sake and said nothing. Mari didn’t want to break the beauty of the young night with conversation. It was enough to enjoy the silence and the moon reflecting in the water.

Suddenly, Lord Tetsu made a soft exclamation and pointed to some rocks at a distance, farther down the beach. “There. Do you see kitsune? She has come for her own hanami.” Night was replacing dusk and the shoreline was dissolving into shadows. Mari could barely make out the small form of a fox. She darted back and forth, from rock to rock, rolling over those at the water’s edge and pouncing on something, probably a crayfish. A few moments later, the moon had risen a little higher and beamed across the water. Mari could see the russet coat of the fox. It had a tail that looked tipped in gold, illuminated by the moonlight.

“Kitsune has a long and gilded tail.

She comes at night down to the glistening lake

The moon rises to light her way.” 

Lord Tetsu’s voice was hardly more than a whisper. Mari was caught, spellbound by his words. How exact, how clever was his tanka, within a breath’s sighting of the fox! Mari knew she would have struggled with her thoughts, cast aside her impressions and lost the immediacy of the moment. With Lord Tetsu, it was as natural as breathing. She turned her head to look at him as the moon went dark with a flock of passing clouds. Lord Tetsu’s features were silhouetted against the shadows of the grove behind them.

 

How serene he appeared. Mari touched the silk of his sleeve. He looked down at her small white hand and smiled as the moon reappeared with its soft brilliance. The water was like a black mirror reflecting the moon, so still and calm. Lord Tetsu drew Mari close and stroked her hair. She could smell sake on his breath and the scent of sandalwood from his gown. Mari put her hand inside his kimono, on his chest, and felt the soft beating of his heart. With all the strangeness of her present world, with all that was unknown before her, this – the warmth of his skin, the scent of him – at least was real, with no unsettling magic. She’d had enough of magic and the superstitions that plagued this century and place. Mari shivered. Lord Tetsu chuckled and drew her closer.

“The moon is clear.

I escort a lovely girl

frightened by a fox. ”

Mari knew the verse to be Bashō’s, and a famous one at that. She also knew Lord Tetsu had changed the word “boy” to “girl”. Lord Tetsu loosened the string of his trousers and pulled aside his robes. He laid down on the quilt and pulled Mari over him, making her straddle his hips. Without a word, he pushed her carefully arranged kimonos up over her hips and off her shoulders. He held her breasts, now exposed to the moonlight, in his large hands and bent her to him. Only her obi kept her robes around her. It had been so long since they had made love, right before her miscarriage months ago. She groaned as desire flooded her, making her aroused. Lord Tetsu, his own desire evident, wasted little time. Pulling her arms around his neck, he held her to him like a vise, rocking Mari with his motion. Seeking her mouth, he finally kissed her as their coupling ended.


Later, Lord Tetsu wrapped them together in quilts. Mari slept, her head pillowed on his shoulder, the warmth of his body a further comfort. It was still spring, not near summer at all, and the nights were cold this close to Gassan Mountain.

 

Jane Kohut-Bartels

Copyrighted, 2018

Slipping in some photos of roses in the new front rose garden.  Tsuki stalking a chipmunk in last photo.  Mimi on the hunt.

 

Tanka: “Crows Laugh” , for Carpe Diem Haiku kai

(King of Wallpaper.com)

 

The prompt over at Carpe Diem Haiku Kai is based on Basho’s haiku on crows.

On a bare branch

A crow lands

Autumn dusk

—

Mine is a Tanka on crows.

=

I wander the fields

Barren soil covered with snow

Sharp wind pipes of Pan

A murder of crows huddle

Black laughing fruit crowd bare limbs

 

Jane Kohut-Bartels

Copyrighted, 2016

Basho on Poetry

 

–

If you are reading this from JP at Olive Garden, Please Don’t.  Don’t give these scoundrels any credit.  They post without permission and what is worse, the ‘revise’ poems that are already published. Copyright infringement, which they don’t care about. When I  complained, they blocked my comments.  They are Craven Cowards and the Bollywood girls, Kora and Henryetta are not poets. These two ‘girls’ dared to revise “Storm Drain Baby” and put my name to their destruction. They are obviously pimps for Jingle.  They are thieves and low lifers.   Jingle has been pariah for years with dedicated  poetry sites. They, and their miserable, second rate site has hounded and harassed decent poets for years.  If you care about poetry and have  integrity, don’t support them by reading there.

Lady Nyo

–

Basho On Poetry: Learn from the Pine

These are excerpts from a rather long document by Basho, considered to be the top haiku poet of the 17^th century. I am presenting these thoughts of his because they ‘make clear and plain’ what Basho believes is the correct approach to haiku. Today, lots of poets are attempting haiku, and missing by a wide streak. This is sad, but also represents a lack of study, perhaps pure laziness, and as one poet said: “Every thing I learned about haiku, I learned from the internet.”

This is especially sad, but an honest statement from one poet. There are enough books on haiku out there, and by masters of haiku, too, to read and learn from. That is not to say that haiku is easy. It looks easy, but isn’t.  At least attending to some of words of poets like Basho will give us a hint.

Perhaps these words will help in our forming our own haiku. I offer some of my own, but these were formed before I had read Basho. Perhaps readers will see the struggle to form haiku. Writing haiku is definitely a learning process that should take a long time of study and contemplation.

Lady Nyo

BASHO:

Learn about the pines from the pine, and about bamboo from the bamboo.

Don’t follow in the footsteps of the old poets, seek what they sought.

The basis of art is change in the universe. What’s still has changeless form. Moving things change, and because we cannot put a stop to time, it continues unarrested. To stop a thing would be to halve a sight or sound in our heart. Cherry blossoms whirl, leaves fall, and the wind flits them both along the ground. We cannot arrest with our eyes or ears what lies in such things. Were we to gain mastery over them, we would find that the life of each thing had vanished without a trace.

 

Make the universe your companion, always bearing in mind the true nature of things—mountains and rivers, trees and grasses, and humanity—and enjoy the falling blossoms and the scattering leaves.

One should know that a hokku is made by combining things.

The secret of poetry lies in treading the middle path between the reality and the vacuity of the world.

One must first of all concentrate one’s thoughts on an object. Once the mind achieves a state of concentration and the space between oneself and the object had disappeared, the essential nature of the object can be perceived. Then express it immediately. If one ponders it, it will vanish from the mind.

Sabi is the color of the poem. It does not necessarily refer to the poem that describes a lonely scene. If a man goes to war wearing stout armor or to a party dressed up in gay clothes, and if this man happens to be an old man, there is something lonely about him. Sabi is something like that.

When you are composing a verse, quickly say what is in your mind; never hesitate a moment.

Composition must occur in an instant, like a swordsman leaping at his enemy.

Is there any good in saying everything?

In composing hokku, there are two ways: becoming and making. When a poet who has been assiduous in pursuit of his aim applies himself to an external object, the color of his mind naturally becomes a poem. In the case of the poet who has not done so, nothing in him will become a poem; he makes the poem through an act of personal will.

There are three elements in haikai: Its feeling can be called loneliness (sabi). This plays with refined dishes but contents itself with humble fare. Its total effect can be called elegance. This lives in figured silks and embroidered brocades but does not forget a person clad in woven straw. Its language can be called aesthetic madness. Language resides in untruth and ought to comport with truth. It is difficult to reside in truth and sport with untruth. These three elements do not exalt a humble person to heights. They put an exalted person in a low place.

The profit of haikai lies in making common speech right.

Haikai needs more homely images, such as a crow picking mud snails in a rice paddy.

In humanity, there can be something called a windswept spirit. A thin drapery torn and swept away by the stirring of the wind. Indeed, since beginning to write poetry, it (this windswept spirit…this dissatisfaction (my word) knows no other art than the art of writing poetry and therefore it hangs on to it more or less blindly.

Poetry is a fireplace in summer or a fan in winter.

How invincible is the power of poetry to reduce me (Basho) to a tattered beggar!

It is the poetic spirit called furabo that leads one to follow nature and become a friend with things of the seasons. Flowers, moon, insects, etc. For those who do not see the flower are no different from barbarians, and those who do not imagine the moon are akin to beasts. Leave barbarians and beasts behind and follow nature and return to nature.

The bones of haiku are plainness and oddness.

From: Basho on Poetry.

My (Lady Nyo’s) examples of early haiku.

–

Pale lavender sky

Balances the moon and sun

The scale shifts to night.

–

Under the dark moon

I awaited your return

Only shadows came.

–

A swirl of blossoms

Caught in the water’s current

Begins the season.

–

Jane Kohut-Bartels

Copyrighted, 2016

 

 

 

 

Kobayashi Issa, (1763-1827) A Haiku Poet with an Enormous Heart.

This will be the cover painting of the soon to be published (in July)

“Song of the Nightingale”.  Watercolor by the author.

–

I have had “The Essential haiku: Versions of Basho, Buson, and Issa” for a few years and have only really gotten to Basho. But recently reading Issa, (Issa means Cup-of-Tea), the world of haiku opened up in ways I didn’t expect. I have spent my Easter weekend delighting in Issa’s poetry, and it has begun to restore my battered humanity.

What is remarkable about Issa’s poetry is the compassion for the lowest of creatures (insects, etc.), the deep interest in the commonalities of life, compassion for humanity, and the celebration of the joyful celebration of the ordinary.

Haiku can be a perplexing poetry form. Recently I have read a lot of bad haiku. I’ve written about this before. (I’ve also written bad haiku myself) It seems people throw together observations and call it haiku. It generally isn’t. There are ‘rules’ and structures for this poetry form, and it seems that many people who attempt haiku have no regard for even reading or researching some of these fundamentals. If they started with a reading and research of renga, they would get some background of haiku, or hokku, which is what haiku was first called.

Renga, or linked verse, is marvelous to read. One poet starts with a three line poem, another picks it up, and so on. They can go on for a hundred linked poems or more. Usually accompanied by sake.

What was remarkable of renga, and later of haiku…is the shifts and dissolves that remind one of early surrealist films. And there are some modernist poets, like Ezra Pound’s XXX Cantos, or even better, Wallace Stevens’s “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” that comes near to the renga spirit, this shifting and resolve.

But the Buddhist tradition embraced this shifting and resolve. Renga, and then haiku, have a way of embracing this life, this transitory nature of all things.

I came across a part of a 14^th century treatise on poetry: “Contemplate deeply the vicissitudes of the life of man and body, always keep in your heart the image of mujo (ephemerality) and when you go to the mountains or the sea, feel the pathos (aware) of the karma of sentient beings and non-sentient things. Give feeling to those things without a heart (mushintai no mono) and through your own heart express their beauty (yugen) in a delicate form.”(from “Basho and the Way of Poetry in the Japanese Religious Tradition”)

Again, haiku isn’t as simple as it seems. But it’s direct, forceful and of a keenness that satisfies.

People complain of the ‘oddness’ of haiku. Perhaps it is this ‘shifts and resolve’ embedded in the form. To me, Issa has less of this than Basho or Buson. There is a directness and compassion of Issa that deeply involves the heart and eyes.

My words will not convince anyone. But perhaps examples of Issa will.

Lady Nyo

–

Haiku of Issa: from The Essential Haiku, edited by Robert Hass

–

 

New Year’s Day—

Everything is in blossom!

I feel about average.

–

The snow is melting

And the village is flooded

With children.

–

Don’t worry, spiders,

I keep house

Casually.

–

Goes out,

Comes back—

The loves of a cat.

–

Children imitating cormorants

Are even more wonderful

Than cormorants.

–

O flea! Whatever you do,

Don’t jump.

That way is the river.

–

In this world

We walk on the roof of hell,

Gazing at flowers.

–

Don’t kill that fly!

Look—it’s wringing its hands

Wringing its feet.

–

I’m going out,

Flies, so relax,

Make love.

–

(approaching his village)

Don’t know about the people,

But all the scarecrows

Are crooked.

–

A huge frog and I,

Staring at each other,

Neither of us moves.

–

All the time I pray to Buddha

I keep on

Killing mosquitoes.

–

What good luck!

Bitten by

This year’s mosquitoes too.

–

The bedbug

Scatter as I clean,

Parents and children.

–

And my personal favorite…

Zealous flea,

You’re about to be a Buddha

By my hand.

–

A few of my own, struggling with the form.

–

Dogwoods are blooming.

The crucifixion appears

White moths in the night.

–

Tibetan earthworms

Bring a halt to all labor.

Here? Fat koi eat well.

–

Radishes are Up!

From such tiny seeds they grow

My stomach rumbles.

–

The morning glories

Twisting up the iron fence

paint random colors.

–

Sorrow floats like air

Strong winds blow throughout the night

Plague of death descends.

–

Pale lavender sky

Balances the moon and sun

The scale shifts to night.

–

Jane Kohut-Bartels

Copyrighted, 2013-2015

 

 

 

 

 

Random Haiku…..

A reader just raised the issue of why these haiku below seemed to be rather bitten with surrealism.  That was a great question!  There is a commonality between surrealists and haiku in many ways:  both (or should or do) delve beneath the surface of a thought, sentiment, etc…trying to get to a deeper level of explanation or reveal.  I believe it’s this concept of ‘yugen’ so prevalent in Japanese literature, especially poetry:  of course it depends upon context, but yugen means to me a distance, a deeper concept, something not proclaimed but hidden.  So many ways to go about this.  Pulling out something different and new and startling perhaps in your haiku.  I also think it is an ‘off-handed’ way of expression, and that can become difficult, but I believe it makes for better haiku.

But I think it also depends upon the measure and duration of study of Japanese culture and literature.  I’ve only done some serious study of this for the past 8 years, and this doesn’t do much more than scratch the surface.  I believe to really get comfortable with these forms, you have to study and immerse yourself for a lifetime.  And that is a great pleasure! 

But anyone who reads Basho/Issa/Buson will immediately see each poet’s ‘place’ in their work.  And the Buddhist influence is strong in their writings:  Nature is transitory, contingent and of course, suffers.  (we are part of that nature).The pure mysteriousness of Life!

I have (as of a week ago) finished “Song of the Nightingale” and Nick Nicholson will be formatting this book in late June for publication.  This question of surrealism comes up again and again in this new book in the form of ‘moon babies’, Tengus, etc.  There is much of surrealism  and magic in this book.  Sometimes we forget the deep influences in what we write and it takes a good question like this reader (in the comments of these poems) to draw you back to where you have been.

Lady Nyo….and thank you, Staviolatte!

One of my favorite poems of Issa  that seems to  be a bit surreal:

“The snow is melting

and the village is flooded

with children.”

—Issa

–

I’ve written very few haiku.  I find the form harder than tanka, though shorter. Of course there are ‘rules’ concerning haiku, as there are with tanka, but modern poets tend to ignore or dismiss these rules.  They are not short free verse, but I think in the beginning without study, most of us fall to this. 

There are haiku writers who have set standards centuries ago:  Basho, Issa, Bucan, to note some masters of the form.  My dear friend, Steve Isaak in California, does a good job on this form.

This spring I intend to do some study of these masters, and hopefully get my head around this poetry form correctly.

Lady Nyo

–

Sultry air disturbs

The sleep of husband and wife.

They pant without lust.

–

Dogwoods are blooming
The crucifixion appears
White moths in the night.

–

(Dogwoods are a Southern tree here in the South.  White blooms
having the form of the Christian Cross, with nail heads.  They bloom in the spring  right before Easter. They are a symbol of Christianity in Nature.)

–

Under the dark moon

I awaited your return

Only shadows came.

–

The moon, a ghostly

Sliver, sails on a jet sea

Wild dogs howl beneath.

–

A pale half moon drifts

Across a wintry sky.

Trees become monsters.

–

Fall’s crispness compels

Apples to tumble from trees.

Worms make the journey.

–

Ice blocks the rivers.

Look! A duck is frozen there.

Nature, no mercy.

–

Skeleton-trees wave

While the wind whips dead leaves

Wood smoke scents the air.

–

The moon, a ghostly

Sliver, sails on a jet sea

While dogs howl beneath.

–

A swirl of blossoms

Caught in the water’s current

Begins the season.

–

Jane Kohut-Bartels

Copyrighted, 2015

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More On The Bones Of Haiku…. Some New Haiku and Attempting Kigo.

“Nuthatches”, watercolor, 2006, Jane Kohut-Bartels

As I study these bones, I keep being drawn back to Robert Haas’s “The Essential Haiku” (versions of Basho/Buson/Issa.) Haas puts forth these three as ‘types’ of poet: Basho as the ascetic and seeker, Buson the artist, Issa the humanist. Perhaps their differences grow clearer as we read them, but right now it’s not too clear to me.

The insistence on time and place was crucial for writers of haiku. Seasonal reference was called kigo and a haiku was thought to be incomplete without it. Kigo could be many things, and changed with the seasons. A few examples: Mosquitoes were summer, cherry blossoms, rice seedlings spring, maple leaves stood in for fall and winter had numerous kigos like ‘north wind’, hoarfrost, smog (smoke over a village from hearth fires) fallen leaves, etc. The kigo was of a natural observation of seasons. Although this was codified, it also could be very individual in the work.

Quoting from Haas: “These references were conventional and widely available. They were the first way readers of the poems had of locating themselves in the haiku. Its traditional themes—deep autumn, a sudden summer shower, the images of rice seedlings and plum blossoms, of spring and summer migrants like the mountain cuckoo and the bush warbler, of the cormorant-fishermen in summer and the apprentices holiday in the spring—gave a powerful sense of the human place in the ritual and cyclical movements of the earth.”

And….

“The first level of a haiku was in its location of nature, its second was always some implicit Buddhist reflection on nature. One of the striking differences between Christian and Buddhist thought is that in the Christian sense of things, nature is fallen, and in the Buddhist sense it isn’t. At the core of Buddhist metaphysics are three ideas about natural things: that they are transient; that they are contingent; that they suffer.”

Better to sink down through the level of these poems to the particular level of human consciousness the poems reflect. Or, in my case, attempt.

Lady Nyo

Under the eaves, chimes
Weave celestial music.
My man yawns then farts.

(Implied is strong winds,(top and bottom…) which could be spring or fall, or perhaps any season. That the kigo isn’t determined or spelled out could also signal the death of this particular haiku.)

A dog comes snooping
Mother and father cardinals—
Intruder- Leave Now!

(this just happened last weekend where two baby cardinals were tipped from their nest and killed by my pointer pup. The parents made quite a fuss. So did I when I found the babies on the steps, dead. Cardinals breed in the spring, so the kigo is inferred here.)

Radishes are up!
From such tiny seed they grow.
Stomach rumbles.

Snow falls on meadows
Crows pick at last harvest seeds
Spring still far away

Cherry red toenails
Peek out from the warm blanket.
Deep snow cools ardor.

White makeup drips
The hard heat and mosquitos
Make maiko languid.

A swirl of blossoms
Caught in the water’s current
Begins the season.

Falls crispness compels
Apples to tumble from trees.
Worms make the journey.

I chase one red leaf
Across dry and brittle grass
Juice of summer gone.

The garden spiders
Fold their black spindly legs,
Die, all work now done.

A mourning dove cries
It is such a mournful sound
Perhaps a fierce owl
Has made it a widower?
Oh! It breaks my heart, his cry.

…a new (sorta…) tanka.

Jane Kohut-Bartels
Copyrighted, 2013

Kobayashi Issa, (1763-1827) A Haiku Poet with Enormous Heart

sky in the NorthEast, Jane Kohut-Bartels, June 25, 2012

I have had “The Essential Haiku: Versions of Basho, Buson, and Issa” for a few years and have only really read to Basho. But recently reading Issa, (Issa means Cup-of-Tea), the world of haiku opened up in ways I didn’t expect.

What is remarkable about Issa’s poetry is the compassion for the lowest of creatures (insects, etc.), the deep interest in the commonalities of life, compassion for humanity, and the joyful celebration of the ordinary.

Haiku can be a perplexing poetry form. Recently I have read a lot of bad haiku. I’ve written about this before. (I’ve also written bad haiku myself) It seems people throw together observations and call it haiku. It generally isn’t. There are ‘rules’ and structures for this poetry form, and it seems that many people who attempt haiku have no regard for even reading or researching some of these fundamentals. If they started with a reading and research of renga, they would get some background of haiku, or hokku, which is what haiku was first called.

Renga, or linked verse, is marvelous to read. One poet starts with a three line poem, another picks it up, and so on. They can go on for a hundred linked poems or more. Usually accompanied by sake.

What was remarkable of renga, and later of haiku…is the shifts and dissolves that remind one of early surrealist films. And there are some modernist poets, like Ezra Pound’s XXX Cantos, or even better, Wallace Stevens’s “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” that comes near to the renga spirit, this shifting and resolve.
But the Buddhist tradition embraced this shifting and resolve. Renga, and then haiku, have a way of embracing this life, this transitory nature of all things.

I came across a part of a 14th century treatise on poetry:

“Contemplate deeply the vicissitudes of the life of man and body, always keep in your heart the image of mujo (ephemerality) and when you go to the mountains or the sea, feel the pathos (aware) of the karma of sentient beings and non-sentient things. Give feeling to those things without a heart (mushintai no mono) and through your own heart express their beauty (yugen) in a delicate form.”(from “Basho and the Way of Poetry in the Japanese Religious Tradition”)

Again, haiku isn’t as simple as it seems. But it’s direct, forceful and of a keenness that satisfies.

People complain of the ‘oddness’ of haiku. Perhaps it is this ‘shifts and resolve’ embedded in the form. To me, Issa has less of this than Basho or Buson. There is a directness and compassion of Issa that deeply involves the heart and eyes.

And a deep sense of the absurb and a great sense of humor in Issa.

My words will not convince anyone. But perhaps examples of Issa will.

Lady Nyo

Haiku of Issa: from The Essential Haiku, edited by Robert Hass

New Year’s Day—
Everything is in blossom!
I feel about average.

The snow is melting
And the village is flooded
With children.

Don’t worry, spiders,
I keep house
Casually.

Goes out,
Comes back—
The loves of a cat.

Children imitating cormorants
Are even more wonderful
Than cormorants.

O flea! Whatever you do,
Don’t jump;
That way is the river.

In this world
We walk on the roof of hell,
Gazing at flowers.

Don’t kill that fly!
Look—it’s wringing its hands
Wringing its feet.

I’m going out,
Flies, so relax,
Make love.

(approaching his village)

Don’t know about the people,
But all the scarecrows
Are crooked.

A huge frog and I,
Staring at each other,
Neither of us moves.

All the time I pray to Buddha
I keep on
Killing mosquitoes.

What good luck!
Bitten by
This year’s mosquitoes too.

The bedbug
Scatter as I clean,
Parents and children.

And my personal favorite…

Zealous flea,
You’re about to be a Buddha
By my hand.

some of my own, struggling with the form.

Dogwoods are blooming
The crucifixion appears
White moths in the night

A frog with moon eyes
Sits staring in the path.
Is he stone or flesh?

Billowing spring winds
Blow pollen in crevices
The water floats green.

The moon howls tonight.
Perhaps the dogs entice it.
Chickens are restless.

A fox on the prowl
This bitter cold spring night.
Dried grasses rustle.

Jane Kohut-Bartels
Copyrighted, 2013