Writing a haiku as a westerner demands you give up so many intuitive assumptions about the kind of language and expectations poetry fulfills. Gone is metre, metaphor and theorising. No more lengthy wonderings about the internal life of the mind, instead just a crystal clear moment captured in language that perfectly reflects something observed. How hard it is to abandon the likening of one moment to another, or the deliberate shoe-horning in of a thought not an observation, and how perfect it is when a haiku does work and an observation speaks volumes.
Some of my favourite haiku:
Thirty pence each:
a cup of tea,
and a singing bird
(Issa)
a cup of tea,
and a singing bird
(Issa)
Snail – baring
shoulders
to the moon
(Issa)
shoulders
to the moon
(Issa)
In the moonlight a worm
silently
drills through a chestnut
(Basho)
silently
drills through a chestnut
(Basho)
The skylark:
Its voice alone fell,
leaving nothing behind
(Ampu)
Its voice alone fell,
leaving nothing behind
(Ampu)
Each morning in spring
the birds and the toaster
doing their stuff
(Koji)
the birds and the toaster
doing their stuff
(Koji)
lend me your arms,
fast as thunderbolts,
for a pillow on my journey.
fast as thunderbolts,
for a pillow on my journey.
(Hendrik Doeff)
lily:
out of the water
out of itself
bass
picking bugs
off the moon
(Nick Virgilio)
Some of my own:
above the towers –
stars
pigeon breast
puffed out and pulsates;
full of desire
by the tower –
below the window –
a man
a boat leaves behind
quiet quivers
on quiet waters
against the bank –
little lappers
from a paddle
unripe grape
between my fingers;
resting on a bruise
No comments:
Post a Comment