The first poem is all image, all objective description. But what implications! We can imagine all sorts of sobering diagnoses that would cause John‘s doctor to remove his glasses. It doesn‘t take a genius to realize that the doctor is about to say something serious, but it does take a sensitive poet to stop there, to dwell in that weighty moment. But what really makes the poem fly is the unexpected shift in the third line. The unusual coldness for May tells us all we need to know about the seriousness of the diagnosis. Perhaps this third line is slightly subjective, requiring comparative knowledge on the poet‘s part to know that this May is colder than usual, but it works perfectly well given the intensity of the image that precedes it.


In contrast, the second poem adds a deliberately stronger touch of subjectivity. The poet is thinking about an idea while viewing the moon. The poem is overtly self-conscious, even if only slightly. Yet still something is implied—the moon‘s extreme beauty that makes it hard for anyone to turn away. That‘s the trick, I think. Even when the poet uses subjectivity, the poem must still leave something unsaid, something that creates that vacuum in the poem to draw the reader in.


I already mentioned Robert Frost‘s ―Dust of Snow‖ poem, but I might as well quote it so we can look more closely at its objective/subjective split. I recall Virginia Brady Young pointing out this aspect of the poem about twenty years ago.


The way a crow Shook down on me The dust of snow From a hemlock tree


Has given my heart A change of mood And saved some part Of a day I had rued.


The first half is essentially objective (except perhaps for ―The way‖), and the second half is subjective and intellectualized, offering explanation, rumination, conclusion. Nothing wrong with this, of course, but it does show the difference between the objective description that is highly prized in haiku and the subjective interpretation that is so common in mainstream Western poetry. But the subjective is very difficult to handle well in haiku. In my haiku workshops, I used to preach the gospel that haiku had to be objective. These days, though, I‘ve been saying that objectivity and subjectivity are aspects toc


o ro nt lin one‘s haiku, not that one should eliminate subjectivity.


Nevertheless, haiku beginners often have a hard time understanding the difference between objectivity and subjectivity in writing, not just in haiku. It clearly takes practice to understand, and experience to control.


In the context of Robert Frost‘s poem, I can‘t help but think of a Shiki poem, here in a translation by Stephen Addiss, fromH


a : A


a dust of snow— such stillness!


The word ―such‖ is a touch of subjectivity, but just right, at least in this translation. But what makes that subjectivity succeed is the strength of the objective description that fills the bulk of the poem.


59 iku n A hloy o aa s om On the mandarin duck‘s wings nto g f Jpnee Pe s(Shambhala, 2009):


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