The Essential Haiku

I recently decided to read The Essential Haiku: Versions of Basho, Buson, and Issa which is edited by Robert Hass. This book has been on my shelf for many years -- I wish I had read it that long ago because reading it has shown me what good haiku is!

Japanese haiku requires three elements:
1. two disparate ideas or things
2. words or punctuation or spacing that indicates the connection between the two
3. a  kigo- a word that indicates the season

Notice there is nothing that says humans cannot be present in haiku -- humans are, after all, a part of nature and they are present in some of my favorite haiku.

Also notice I didn't say anything about 5-7-5! That's because the English syllable is not the same as the Japanese on -- which is closer to being a phoneme than a syllable, but even that comparison is not exact. A typical Japanese haiku, when translated to English, actually averages closer to 12 English syllables. I am glad that Hass, in editing the book, did not insist on translation into 5-7-5. I have seen translations of that sort that were horribly strained, with the essence of the haiku lost.

So far I have read through the sections on Basho and Buson. Basho has been greatly honored in Japan as the originator of haiku as a high art form. Haiku had been in existence before Basho's time, but as part of a party game in which a poem would be started with a hokku, a verse of 17 on. Guests would write additional short verses that would extend the hokku into a longer poem. Basho made the hokku an independent poem, which was eventually renamed haiku.

As I have been reading, I have been turning corners down to mark my favorites. I decided this is a book I will keep, and doing so will make it more valuable to me. Oh, the horror of damaging a book! I had to overcome the guilt of doing so, but am glad I finally did so after so many years of trying to keep all my books in pristine condition. (Now, my autographed first edition Sword of Shannara and my hardcover, single-volume Lord of the Rings are another matter!)

A few favorites by Basho:

     The beginning of art --
a rice-planting song
     in the backcountry.
 
     His Holiness the Abbot
is shitting
     in the withered fields.

     A field of cotton --
as if the moon
     had flowered.

And one labeled as Basho's death poem:

     Sick on a journey,
my dreams wander
     the withered fields.

Buson wrote many haiku that I felt a response to. Some I found to be humorous, while upon reading others others I felt a sense of awareness awakened: the "aha" moment the best haiku inspire.

     Chrysanthemum growers --
you are the slaves
     of chrysanthemums!

     Listening to the plovers
while you, who loaned me this room,
     are sleeping.

     The old man
cutting barley --
     bent like a sickle

(Another English rule broken in the following haiku -- the season is mentioned by name.) 

     The end of spring --
 the poet is brooding
     about editors.

On his deathbed, Buson wrote:

     Winter warbler --
long ago in Wang Wei's
     hedge also.
                                 (Wang Wei was a poet who lived more than a century before Buson.)

And another he titled Early Spring:

     In the white plum blossoms
night to next day
     just turning.

Buson once told a student to "Use the commonplace to escape the commonplace."
That is truly what haiku does for me.