A Moment in the Sun: When Is a Haiku?
The ―now‖ of haiku isn‘t quite as simple as many haiku poets think. Is it the original moment of experience? Is it the moment of inspiration when you are moved to write about an experience, regardless of when that experience happened? Is it the ―moment‖ that is captured w
i i thnthe poem, that may or may not have actually
happened, but that readers believe happened, or could have? Or is it the moment when the reader ―gets‖ the same experience upon reading the poem, upon realizing that he or she has had the same experience? It‘s easy to say ―all of the above.‖ And perhaps that‘s the fullest answer, but not every haiku poet believes that each of these possible ―moments‖ have equal value. Some believe that haiku must be about direct personal experience, and that you must not alter any of the facts. This perspective contrasts with Bashō and many other Japanese masters who routinely tweaked the facts for literary purposes (Bashō heavily revised and reordered elements of theO
ku no h omih os c i, and Buson‘s wife was very much alive when he wrote about the chill of stepping on
his ―dead wife‘s comb‖). Experience is frequently the best inspiration, but not the only possibility. For me, what matters is to make thep
oe mbelievable, withve ta really happened or not, or to what degree. Does the poem affect the reader a fit really happened? That is at
ri s, which is independent of whether the experience s i
least a notch more important than whether the experience really happened or not, which can‘t even be proved anyway. Haiku is poetry, after all, not diary entries. This poetic license includes shaping the ―now‖ of the poem to achieve the best literary effect, provided
that the poem still remains or feels authentic for the reader. Here‘s a poem of mine that many readers have resonated with over the years:
spring breeze— the pull of her hand as we near the pet store
I share this poem in my haiku workshops, and nearly everyone responds by saying that they picture a child. No child is mentioned in this poem, yet a child is just what I want readers to imagine. I think that happens because of specific edits to elements of the experience. What ―really‖ happened was that it was my girlfriend, in November, and she was eager to get to a coffee shop (in Palo Alto, California) because it was cold out. And so she pulled a little ahead of me, and it was the pull of her hand that arrested me, especially when it was usually me who walked faster than she did. She always used to call my fast walking a ―Disneyland walk,‖ as if I were always in a hurry to get the next ride or attraction, which made it unusual for her to be walking faster than me. In that small motion, I felt her eagerness, her urgency, and I wanted to record that. It felt more right to me to make it spring, which seemed closer to youthful enthusiasm. And to match the exuberance of spring, I made the destination a pet store instead of a coffee shop. These revisions all came quickly and intuitively. So I changed the ―now‖ of my poem, or at least parts of it. But what I changed was selected facts of the
original experience, in this case staying true to the core inspiration, the pull of the hand. What remains strong, I hope, is that moment when the persona in the poem (presumably me, the author, though not necessarily) feels the pull of ―her‖ hand. As readers comprehend this, they presumably recognize the experience from their own lives, and resonate with it. And hopefully the emotion of eagerness and perhaps even joy is heightened by its association with spring and the pet store. Even the breeze has a lightness to it that aids the feeling (I don‘t remember if that ―really‖ happened, but the point is that what really happened does not necessarily matter). I‘ve also found that the moments haiku depict come in two varieties, which I calls
ta canddy mi ti na c. A
―static‖ moment isn‘t really a moment at all, but a state of being. Something is described that exists in a particular way, and will continue to exist that way for an undetermined amount of time. Nothing changes. In these poems, it‘s the observer‘s realizing what he or she is seeing that becomes the ―moment,‖ the ―now‖ of the poem. Here are two examples:
after the quake the weathervane pointing to earth
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