Coal

Essence of 'Ku

Mar 23, 11:54 Literature

‘ku

Haiku haiku hai
Ku haiku haiku haiku
Haiku haiku hai

-An ‘04 era haiku by Tristan Sandulak, originally posted on andcuriouser.com.

~~
Remember back in elementary, maybe even in junior high, when your teachers told you that ‘haiku’ was a Japanese form of poetry defined syllabically by the form 5-7-5? Mine did. They were lying.

I’ve been vaguely aware of this for some time, but that didn’t stop me from writing my 200-odd haikus in 5-7-5 form, many of which have appeared on the sidebar of andcuriouser.com.

In Jack Kerouac’s Dharma Bums, Japhy (real life poet Gary Snyder) says, “A real haiku’s gotta be as simple as porridge and yet make you see the real thing.” In his opinion, the greatest haiku is by the Chinese poet Shiki, and goes (in his translation)

The sparrow hops
along the veranda
with wet feet

To be fair to those underpaid, undereducated, and overstressed elementary school teachers just trying to get through the curriculum and get the students out to recess, the haiku in Chinese (or Japanese) is comprised of three descending lines of five characters, seven, and five respectively. Moreover, it is poorly suited to the English language in general. Ezra Pound is probably the best known twentieth century proponent of Asian poetry, and he promoted it, like a good imagist, on the grounds that the characters themselves often amplify the words they are intended to represent. Haiku in English doesn’t work that way, and there’s usually a lot more meaning in five Chinese characters than in five English syllables (or even five English words). This is due to the fact that Chinese has very little grammar – no tense modifiers, few conjunctions, and most importantly no prepositions.

All that is mildly informational. But the point I’m coming to is that I’ve decided to abandon my childhood haiku philosophy, in favour of the Gary Snyder/Ezra Pound version. The essence of haiku is not it’s structure. The essence is the image, amplified by the precision of the structure.

And now, an interactive challenge for my readers! Submit a haiku of your own, stating which haiku philosophy you are employing and why. Or, post one of each, with commentary. Or, just post a haiku for the hell of it.