Untitled
What good luck!
Bitten by
This year's mosquitoes too.
Commentary
Thanks to Raj Bandyopadhyay for suggesting today’s poem
(trans. Robert Hass)
Today’s wry little haiku should strike a responsive chord in anyone who’s ever lived in a mosquito-infested place (i.e., everyone). I read the tone as being one of gently amused irony rather than acid sarcasm, reinforced by finding another of Issa’s haiku (trans. L. Stryk):
Swarms of mosquitoes
but without them
it's a little lonely.
embedded in a fascinating essay on Issa as entomologist (see links).
Needless to say, I loved the poem - indeed, the more I read it, the more impressed I am at how concise and expressive it manages to be (though haiku are often like that - they tend to grow on me, especially if they make a good initial impression).
Haiku translation raises a number of issues, some of which apply to any translation effort (you have all read ‘Le Ton Beau de Marot’, have you not?), but a few of which are unique to the ultracondensed form. One obvious one is whether to follow the letter or the spirit of the seventeen syllable constraint (and any serious writer of English haiku, I think, invariably chooses the former - seventeen syllables are simply a very different constraint in English and in Japanese). A less obvious decision (indeed, something I’d never even thought of on my own) is the three-line format. But why ‘decision’? Surely, one would think, poetry translation should preserve the line breaks of the original. Not so:
the three-line rule is not really a classical rule (in the Japanese sense). It is merely a Western invention to accommodate seventeen syllables.
– http://www.haikai.info/articles/swede.definition.html
Not to be confused with ‘true’ English haiku are senryu1, haiku-like poems which adhere to the literal structure of a haiku while ignoring the (numerous) poetic guidelines of the form. Porter’s “Japanese Jokes” [Poem #188] remains the best example of the genre I’ve seen.
— Martin
Links
Biography
http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Island/5022/issabio.html
A look at Issa’s poetic development:
http://www.ahapoetry.com/haiku.htm#issa
Issa as entomologist:
http://www.eeb.uconn.edu/grads/rdunn/issa.htm
English Haiku:
http://www.haikai.info/articles/swede.definition.html
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yes, I know this is not a complete definition of the form. However, ‘senryu’ is still the most appropriate word I’ve found to describe the vastly popular unconstrained 5/7/5 English poem. ↩
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From the Wondering Minstrels mailing list, 1999–2008.
Martin DeMello · 1 January 2003
Nope, the popularity of the haiku as an art form rests entirely on its own merits. With due respect, can you think of any form of art that has achieved an enduring (as opposed to flash-in-the-pan) popularity and critical acclaim purely out of political correctness? Personally I’m quite taken with haiku, and India has afaik never whupped Japan’s ass in any war :)
Or do you mean that people praise it because they don’t want to appear insensitive by denigrating a foreign form, whether or not they truly like it? There may be an element of overgenerosity towards translated literature, particularly poetry (indeed, I think I’ve spoken of this before), but nonetheless I believe most poetry that outlasts its generation has succeeded on its own merits.
Haiku (as opposed to senryu) are actually far more constrained than might appear at first glance. The ‘seventeen syllables’ is just the tip of a very large iceberg. Also, while any schoolkid can write a short poem, it’s hard to write a good short poem.
What I personally like about haiku is the concentration of the imagery, and the way in which each poem is a free-floating, perfectly self-contained entity. Also, given the almost crystalline rigidity of the form’s outer shell, the haiku manages to achieve a wonderful organicness. Furthermore, they don’t spoonfeed you - they make you think (something else I like about a lot of minimalist poetry). Reading a haiku is a far more active experience than reading, say, a narrative ballad a la Kipling - the reader has to supply a lot of context. I’d say this was related to the Zen koan, but I’m uncomfortably aware that I’m going out on a limb every time I talk about Zen, since all my knowledge of it is of the ‘popular’ sort.
Try writing a few senryu, incidentally. It’s surprising how much having to squeeze into a 5/7/5 form concentrates and sharpens your thought (though after a while you do come to appreciate that seventeen syllables are far roomier in English than is consonant with true minimalism).
Eudora, right? I’ve heard about that ‘feature’ - you ought to simply turn it off :)
martin
Frank O'Shea · 1 January 2003
With the greatest respect. Is all this haiku stuff just a bit of political correctness. “We” (whoever we are) whupped their ass in the War so let’s be nice to them now by pretending that we appreciate this twaddle. Twelve and thirteen-year old kids write this kind of thing at school and are persuaded by addled teachers afraid to stifle the poor little darlings’ creativity that it is poetry.
Anyway, that’s what I think, but would welcome correction, even of the political kind.
And now my email program gives me two chili symbols to indicate that I should tone down what I have written. I tell you, this political correctness is everywhere. What would it make of Phillip Larkin’s poem about his mom and dad?
Frank O’Shea
Kimbol Soques · 6 January 2003
By-the-by – “Japanese Jokes” appears to be archived at 198 :).
kimbol