Poem Review: High Five Haikus — Part 2
If you have read Part 1 of ‘High Five Haikus’, I am sure you want to taste more.
“Haiku is not a shriek, a howl, a sigh, or a yawn; rather, it is the deep breath of life.”
― Santoka Taneda, Mountain Tasting: Haiku and Journals of Santoka Taneda
Haiku is ‘soft’ and ‘subtle’. Brevity and meaning hold the twin keys. It is as simple as breath — the unconscious act of life that sustains us and keeps us conscious. Haikus are expressions of the conscience and the essence of life.
In Part 2, we present the third and fourth of the Haiku Master Pantheon — Shiki and Buson. Simple and evocative, their haikus have stirred many Japanese souls beyond their times and are revered for their timeless meaning.
Following this, we will explore five contemporary Haikus ( the high-five Haikus).
Here is the order then:
Classical Japanese Haikus:
Poem 1: ‘Depth of Snow’ by Masoaka Shiki
Poem 2: ‘Winter Wind’ by Yosa Bosan
Contemporary English Haikus:
Poem 3: ‘River Rocks’ by Gloria Kim Peeling
Poem 4: ‘Pigments and Rainbows’ by Elizabeth Urabe
Poem 5: ‘Morning Crimson’ by Richard Lacoursiere
Poem 6: ‘Summer Tears’ by Priya Patel
Poem 7: ‘Autumn Blaze’ by Rachael Rodgers ( yes, double treat)
This is our first time having a seven-header treat of classic and contemporary poetry cocktails. I am sure you will have a hic-hic haiku hangover.
We invite Priya to comment on select poems.
Priya Writes:
I love Haiku, and when I saw Ashok was doing a review post on my favorite poetic form, I knew I wanted in. Ashok being the great friend he is, offered to let me help him review a few. He is the expert on diving deep into the mindset of the poet and then swimming between the verses to somehow magically summarize what the poem is about and the poet’s intent. I have never been much of a swimmer; more of a skimmer in fact, gently picking up the shiny objects that stick out to me. I’m not exactly as talented in that area as Ashok is, but let’s give it a whirl.
Let us start with the third Haiku Master, Masoaka Shiki.
Masaoka Shiki
Masaoka Shiki (正岡 子規, October 14, 1867 — September 19, 1902), pen-name of Masaoka Noboru (正岡 升), was a Japanese poet, author, and literary critic in Meiji period Japan. Shiki is regarded as a major figure in the development of modern haiku poetry, credited with writing nearly 20,000 stanzas during his short life. He also wrote on the reform of tanka poetry.
Some consider Shiki to be one of the four great haiku masters, the others being Matsuo Bashō, Yosa Buson, and Kobayashi Issa.
Poem 1: Depth of Snow
いくたびも 雪の深さを 尋ねけり
Ikutabi mo/ Yuki no fukasa wo/ Tazune keri
<English>
Repeatedly,
How is the snow depth?
I asked. ~ Shiki
Commentary of Poem 1:
Masaoka Shiki had been ill in the bed of spinal caries from tuberculosis and died of it. He couldn’t see the snowy view of his garden and asked his mother or sister the amount. This backdrop explains the poem.
On one side of the window ( or the wall), which is too high for Shiki to see, is the snow — tranquil, peaceful, but piling. On the other side of the window is the curious and impatient Shiki, who wants to know the situation.
Repeatedly,
A sense of urgency, with or without purpose, along with a bit of frustration — the awareness that the snow is falling, yet the lack of knowledge on the quantum. We assume that the poet has something to do outside, or expecting something ( a purpose) — but with the background described, it may be just plain curiosity. Hence the repeated question.
How is the snow depth?
The question is about the quantum of snow. The poet cannot not only not see, but also not hear the fall of snow (snowfall is silent). This frustrates him, so he asks those who can see — who can move outside and feel the ‘depth’ of snow — the depth of snow is more important than the duration of snowfall, for the depth is the ultimate answer — for it affects a human decision. Shiki might want to go out (which we know he can’t) or he might be expecting somebody. The question, when repeatedly asked shows us the tip of the frustration that beholds the poet.
I asked.
Yes, he asked. The first-person engagement insists on the poet’s active engagement in the question. The question is asked with a sense of anticipation, but we are unsure if the answer came. Perhaps, it never did because the poet repeatedly asks.
“The snow falls soft and unfathomable, drawing the world down to a whitened hush, forcing us (as few things do) to pause long enough to take stock of everything that we miss in our crazed pursuit to gain everything that we can.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough
Unfathomable mystery — the snow fell, the question asked; the depth never known, the question never answered.
A powerful demonstration of Haiku. Phew. The tense human, the tranquil nature. the tranquil snow gets naughty with the winter wind on Yosa Buson’s quill, creating an opposite effect.
Yosa Buson
Yosa Buson or Yosa no Buson (与謝 蕪村) was a Japanese poet and painter of the Edo period. He lived from 1716 — January 17, 1784. Along with Matsuo Bashō and Kobayashi Issa, Buson is considered among the greatest poets of the Edo Period. He is also known for completing haiga as a style of art, working with haibun prose, and experimenting with a mixed Chinese-Japanese style of poetry. ( Wiki)
Poem 2: Winter Wind
木枯や鐘に小石を吹あてる
kogarashi ya/ kane ni koishi wo/ fukiateruThe winter wind
flings pebbles
at the temple bell ~ Buson~Merwin and Lento #763, p. 204
Commentary on Poem 2:
Winter is a moment of calm reflection. The pervading white landscape occupies all sights and holds a silent calm. Yet there are moments when winter howls in chilling, shiny, white waves, shaking our core. Or just an innocent childish prank to get our attention?
The winter wind
The winter wind is rare, but when it appears it sweeps the snow dunes, The snow crystals are tired after the long journey from the sky to the earth, and it is time to embrace the tranquil rest. Unaware of this, the wind persuades these crystals to move, and they roll reluctantly and fly furtively. The winter wind is an unexpected and disrupting visitor.
flings pebbles
The winter wind is mischievous and relentless, much like an unscrupulous urchin. It picks up and hurls not only tiny snow crystals but also larger round pebbles. The wind is strong—powerful enough to lift the pebbles with its invisible arms and then throw them at the beacon of human tranquility. It's an unrestful and whimsical nature at play.
at the temple bell
The silent temple bell is still and stoic, representing a restful human condition. The winter restricts human movement, and the temple seldom gets visitors. The prayers are quieter not to disturb the serene silence that prevails. The bell that rings during the prayer, and its reverberating sound invites people and brings an additional rhythm to the murmuring chants of the priests and the devotees.
When the wind flings stones at the temple, acting like the urchin that has no regard for the propriety and solemnness of the temple and the bell. It is not an unintended action — ‘fling’ indicates wanton action. The intention may be just to get attention or disrupt the tranquility, adding the sound to the intended silence. In a sense, the wind may just want to play, and in the process, it makes the bell an accomplice to its mysterious, maverick act.
A few words open a world of surmisable possibilities. That is the power of this Haiku. Juxtaposed with Poem 1, we realize that humans and nature can act differently, one calm, and another being unrestful.
When the winter winds can fling pebbles, they could turn into river rocks elsewhere, as the haikus switch language from Japanese to English, and classic to contemporary.
The Contemporary Five
Poem 3: River Rocks
Dreams singing with mom
Where river rocks wash clothes
As we dance and play~Gloria Kim Peeling
Commentary on Poem 3:
This Haiku evokes nostalgia at multiple levels. I recall my annual holidays when our cousins assembled in our childhood village in Kerala. Kerala is called ‘God’s own country’, rich in bountiful rivers and lush green vegetation due to the monsoons. My grandmother would shepherd us to the rivulets, bubbly and young, like our exuberance. We dipped and dabbled, caught fish in the small whirlpools with our towels, while my grandmother washed clothes on the river rocks.
Dreams singing with mom
Dreams! Mom sings beautiful little paeans and poetry. We couldn’t grasp those little words, yet we sang along zealously in melodious rhymes. We sang during the mornings and evenings, but I remember the ones that we sang along the banks of the creeks. The bubbly swirling waters added to our recitation of little songs in the shade of the trees and the rural quiet.
Where river rocks wash clothes
The little round rocks, creating those virtual steps for the zealous waters of the rivulet to stop, swirl, and rush, stand like those washerman rocks — where my mother washes clothes — soaking them in the flowing water, soaping them as long as the froth comes, and then dipping again to wash the soap off while crushing and beating the clothes against the rock to shake off the adamant dirt off the rocks create virtual steps for the enthusiastic waters of the rivulet to pause, swirl, and rush. These rocks resemble the ones used by the washerman, where my mother washes clothes. She soaks them in the flowing water, applies soap until the froth appears, and then rinses off the soap while vigorously scrubbing and beating the clothes against the rock to remove stubborn dirt.
As we dance and play
Childhood is blissful like the bubbly, swirling waters of the rivulet. It dances in the whirlpools and plays with the rocks, creating all bubbles and froth — the bliss and abandon spreads to us, as we dance and play with the rocks and water of the glee-filled rivulet.
Childhood memories could trigger colorful imaginations, in the form of pigments and rainbows.
Poem 4: Pigments and Rainbows
Breathing in pigments
of pure imagination…
I exhale rainbows.
E.R.Urabe
Commentary on Poem 4:
The human mind is the greatest manifestation of the Universe. The Universe manifests itself within, through its conscience. The mind and the realm are reflections of each other. We know this because we are alive, our conscience is alive, and we imagine. Poet Beth, our Tribute Poet of Ponder 2021, is back with a magnificent haiku that captures the vividness of the human imagination, which leads to creativity.
Breathing in pigments
Breathe is the essence of life. It is our existential interconnect with the Universe. But it is not a physical interaction alone, but a conduit of creation. A palette of emotions, thoughts, and experiences is born from breathing in pigments. Pigments are little pieces of color forming the magical spectrum of the visual palette ( imagine Beth’s artwork here) -representing various layers of art, life, and emotions, taken into our conscience to savor and make sense of.
of pure imagination…
The fertility of our conscience spawns imagination. Imagination is our ability to conceive. Creativity spawns out of imagination.
“If you don’t imagine, nothing ever happens at all.”
― John Green, Paper Towns
Without imagination, there is no human realm. The colors we see are imagined from our thoughts. The thoughts that bear the imagination are pure and untainted, for they are like the Universe, the creator (feeding our imagination through pigments), and the creation (through the manifestation of our mind). The purity of this imagination is soaked in a child-like bliss, felt and fostered with the preciousness of conception.
I exhale rainbows.
Rainbows are conceived by the intercourse between a ray of sunshine and a drop of rain — and of course, the imagination of human conscience. In a fertile mind, where there is a forever spring of thoughts, with summer sprays of rain and soft sunshine beams intersecting each other, one could exhale rainbows. The exhalation process lets out the inner elements of the human body and mind, and the meadows of the mind spawn rainbows, culminating in the world of creativity.
If colors are the culmination of the human mind, isn’t the morning crimson a natural progression too?
Poem 5: Morning Crimson
Morning paints with fire
As her fingers bleed crimson
Bailed hay reposed. ~ © Richard LacoursiereHaiku and photo by me (Rpal)
Commentary on Poem 5:
Summer is harsh, especially these days — the mornings are not mellow, but a fiery explosion of sunlight, spilling crimson in the eastern sky, announcing the arrival of a harsh summer day.
Morning paints with fire
Even harsh weather can feed an artist’s mind. The bright fiery mornings are something I don’t like. I like the grey, slow, wet mornings. Yet, I can imagine the poet’s penchant for the pen here — he is the one who clicked this brilliant fiery picture.
I almost feel that the poet conspired with the sun to capture this incredible picture and poem (Haiku). He placed a crimson paint can on the sun’s doorstep, and the sun kicked it across the sky, spraying the crimson paint on that dynamic celestial canvas. And it just happened that our poet was present, clicking his magical picture. How true that could be?
As her fingers bleed crimson
The morning’s fingers, soaked in the crimson paint (that I insist that the poet planted on the sun’s doorstep), splash the ‘bloody paint’ across the sky and look like they are bleeding crimson. The morning is caught here with blood in its hands.
Bailed hay reposed.
While there is contrived artistry in the sky (my interpretation, I remind you), the earth rests with the humans. The harvest season is done, and the fields turn to dried hays, turning into golden remnants of the past bountiful spring. The farmhands have plucked and bundled the hays into neat stacks, and have kept them in the corners of the fields.
The rested, reposted, and bailed hays, the result of the previous day's human toil on the farm soil, watch the crimson morning sky from the front row.
“Bright morning comes; the bloody-fingered dawn with zealous light sets seas of air ablaze and bends to earth another false beginning. My eyes open like cornflowers, stick, crusted with their own stale dew, then take that light.”
― Iain Banks, A Song of Stone
The heart of the poem is the fiery art of nature, claiming attention while the humans, for once, act in a restful manner. A reverse juxtaposition, of sorts, right?
Priya Writes:
This haiku is by my friend and fellow poet, Richard Lacoursiere, for whom I am an avid fan; especially his nature-based writing. He is one of the few who can draw me to a level where I can feel the elements of nature in his writing as if I were there and being swept away. This haiku does exactly that again.
Morning paints with fire
As her fingers bleed crimson
Bailed hay reposedRichard accompanied this haiku with one of his original photographs. You can just imagine how amazingly bright that photograph is.
Morning paints with fire — Even before seeing the photograph, I imagined a horizon bursting with a bright yellow background, and then giant paint cans splashing various shades of orange across the sky.
As her fingers bleed crimson — Richard creatively describes what I imagine, is the bleeding of bright red streaks across the horizon as the sun makes her way to the top; weaving visionary magical artwork in her trails.
Bailed hay reposed- The final line is so perfect in this haiku; you almost have to close your eyes to capture his vision. Imagine a long, wide stretch of field with rows of scattered bailed hay. Now the creative part — to me, I picture these bailed hay stacks patiently waiting for the morning showstopping sunrise. They get settled and ready, every morning for front-row seats to nature’s daily artwork.
Richard writes a lot of poetry, but I’m particularly drawn to his fall and winter poems. This one, however, in just three short lines, has become a visual and sensory favorite.
If Priya wrote her review on Poem 5, it is only fitting that her poem appears next. The morning heat of the summer spit by the blazing sun and the waiting bailed hay only reflects the beautiful, brutal summer. But like all seasons, summer moves on, albeit shedding a few tears.
Poem 6: Summer Tears
raindrops kiss the leaves
frail branches shivering wet
Summer’s final tears
~ ©️ Priya Patel 9.26.24 🕉
Commentary on Poem 7:
This Haiku is a beautiful mix of tenderness, vulnerability, and seasonal change. In a sense, it is also so human. It also reflects the person I know, Priya.
When I asked for a Haiku, she churned three. She chose this as her favorite.
raindrops kiss the leaves
There is a little tenderness in the words when a leaf’s surface makes contact with the raindrop. The leaf is dry and thirsty in the summer’s heat. For the yearning leaf, the raindrops are manna from heaven, and the raindrops perhaps know that they will get the love they deserve — a love underscored by its need. The contact itself is soft, wet, and warm, much like a tender and loving kiss.
frail branches shivering wet
If the kiss of the leaves and the raindrops were born out of need, the branches tell a different story. The branches weakened from the withering summer heat, hold on to the leaves (who got their first kiss of love), as the supporting side kicks, scrawny brown and thin, shake on the contact of the raindrops. Summer and shivering? Perhaps, in relief or anticipation. Perhaps, too weak and excited ( like a malnutrition kid gobbling the food).
Summer’s final tears
While the leaves and branches go through their kiss and shiver acts, they don’t know that the rains mark the end of summer and the beginning of autumn. The pre-autumn ( or the summer’s last) rains indicate the change of season, but they indicate the lament of another season that passed by. Such acts of letting go happen in silence, often unnoticed, but for the poet, they pack a clutch of memories from the summer gone by.
Summer’s final tears are wiped out by the blazing heat of the firing autumn that sets in our next Haiku.
Poem 7: “Autumn Blaze” 🍁🍂🎃
Fiery Autumn blazes in;
wafting leaves as she breezes
through the ochre fields.🍁🍂🎃✨🌰🍁🎃✨🍂🍁🎃✨🍁🍂🎃✨
~Rachael Rodgers
Commentary on Poem 7:
From the morning crimson seen by the golden hays to the kissed green leaves of the late summer, the journey to the gold and yellow is captured beautifully in this Haiku. Autumn is the season of fiery yellow and ochre gold. Fiery
Fiery Autumn blazes in;
The young autumn blazes in at the fag-end of summer. The weather-beaten leaves turn yellow matching the onset of autumn. Like fire, autumn carries traces of heat from the summer, and the early days feel like the remnants of the hotter season.
wafting leaves as she breezes
The autumn breeze sweeps the neighborhood — the streets, the meadows, the forests, and the open lands, slowly whiffing and wafting past the mature leaves willing to give up on their lives to join the dance and descent to earth.
“Listen! The wind is rising, and the air is wild with leaves,
We have had our summer evenings, now for October eves!”
― Humbert Wolfe
There is something about the affair between the autumn breeze and the leaves — a unique courtship — the leaves get dressed in gold and copper, waiting for their date to sweep them off their feet.
through the ochre fields.
The autumn breeze flows through the ochre fields, kissing their bending and waving copper heads with carefree dalliance. The ochre leaves gleefully join the melee of the gold and copper floating in the breeze.
Autumn is the season of letting go with happiness, acceptance that there will be a loss, and hope that there is another year to look forward to. The following wintersare times for introspection, which we covered at the beginning of this review.
For now, as poignant as we feel about the fall, a subtle regret spreads in my heart, that the season of Haikus in Ponder 2024 is ending, as it must.
High Five Haikus — Part 2
How about a Haiku about a Haiku? Haiku, that seventeen words, nimble, short, and agile, yet more complete than its longer counterparts has invited poets from across cultures.
Words seven and ten
Like pearls hiding in oyster
Immortal like stars
~Ashok Subramanian
In these seventeen words, one can pack words with layered meanings like packing a pearl in an oyster. The resultant oeuvre is immortal like those distant shining stars in the night sky.
I thank all the classical and contemporary poets whose Haikus we had the pleasure to discern and savor.
~Ashok Subramanian © 2024
