Indeed, a distinction is worth making between the moment that a poem specifically focuses on and what the reader infers will happen later. As another example, consider the following:
sultry afternoon— I return again to the unsigned painting
Here, the ―moment‖ is the action of the persona returning to the painting. The action happens and then stops, and thus this moment is dynamic. We infer that the persona lingers in front of the painting, but the poem does not actually say that. In fact, the return may have been accidental, except for the clue that its being unsigned has something to do with why the person returned to the painting. It is thus important to differentiate between what the poem itself says (in this case, that the persona returns to an unsigned painting, presumably in a gallery) and what the reader infers (that the persona stays there for whatever reason, and why). Some poets will write of two moments that take place too far apart, or that couldn‘t be experienced in a
single location (such as indoors and outdoors). In these situations, typically two different observers are required for the poem to be experienced at a single moment in time, thus the poem loses authenticity, or at least the immediacy of one personal experience. A haiku nearly always works best with a first-person point of view, and its believability may suffer if it employs an omniscient or third-person point of view. For me, that nearly always goes too far with the ―moment‖ (and location) of the poem. Others may not be bothered by this, but perhaps they should be because it diffuses the poem‘s intensity. Here‘s a made-up example that I believe fails because of these problems (which, alas, I‘ve seen in too many published poems):
my finger presses the doorbell— her knitting laid aside on an antique end table
This poem strikes me as having a problem with perspective, taking, as it does, an omniscient point of view, or one viewpoint (outside the door) and then a second one (inside the house). This is generally best avoided in haiku, certainly by beginners, because both moments or scenes are unknowable from a single personal perspective, unless you can see through a window—although the poem would have to make that clear, which it doesn‘t. The reader is thus potentially confused as to which point of view in the poem he or she should identify with. At the very least, the poem would be stronger with just one point of view. In our normal experience, we are each just one person or the other in such a scenario, and can never have the experience of both people simultaneously in a single scenario. The poem also has the issue of cause and effect, which is usually too facile a way to describe events in haiku, and typically also requires two moments, which can again diffuse the intensity of a poem. Indeed, in this example, notice the problem of one event happening and then another (whether it‘s cause and effect or not), and how this diffuses the intensity that haiku is capable of. A worse situation would be when the two parts of the poem are separated by an even greater amount of time. One of my favourite examples of a sharp moment is in a poem by Christopher Herold:
dark dark night a leaf strikes the pavement stem first
This is exquisite. We see the leaf for the utterly briefest of discernible moments when it first touches the pavement. We know that an instant later the leaf will fall to the side and lie flat, but for a split second we focus on the moment when it first touches. The image suspends us there, and we revel in it. The image is barely perceived visually because of the low light, but what makes the poem even stronger is that perhaps it‘s not seen at all, but h
erd. Because we are told that it‘s a very dark night, perhaps the leaf can‘t be seen at all. So the a
poem is deepened even further, in that this subtle experience is perceived by ear, not by eye. When you add the biographical detail that the poet wears strong hearing aids in both ears (as a result of a former career as a rock musician), the sensitivity is deepened even further. So what sort of ―now‖ should a haiku have? It could be static or dynamic (these ―moments‖ could also be c ve). Both moments can be effective. The dynamic moment need not always be
referred to aspsiasveandati 97
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124 |
Page 125 |
Page 126 |
Page 127 |
Page 128 |
Page 129 |
Page 130