Christal
Cooper 1,183 Words
THE FRESH
JAR OF HAIKU
“I can't imagine how
many hundreds of peanut butter sandwiches I assembled and ate spiritlessly
until the day I noticed an euphoric scent floating up to me from the fresh new
jar. Haiku is a record of just that sort of awareness.”
Stephen Koritta
Book has blown open. . .
Again, the wind picks up
Where it left off.
From the “Talksho” by Stephen Koritta
Published haiku poet and musician Stephen Joseph Koritta, 39,
fell in love with poetry, particularly the haiku form, when he was a freshman
in high school.
“Haiku, as part of the
creative writing curriculum, tends to be less about historical context, the
subtle economy of phrase or careful use of imagery, than it is about fostering
of adherence to a form that at times makes it seem more like a frustrating word
game than a vital literature.
I recall such
instruction going by in a flash, intermingled with half-hearted forays into sonnets
and quatrains.
I came away a much
better counter of syllables but not much further along in my understanding of
just how haiku functions and what it requires.
That segment of my
haiku education has been independent and ongoing (since) I had its genesis in
my late teens.”
Koritta
considers haiku to be comfort food and therapeutic. He studied the great Haiku masters Matsuo
Basho, Yosa Buson, Kobayashi Issa, Beat-poet Jack Kerouac and haiku translators
Kenneth Rexroth and R.H. Blyth.
He also
studied art history, studio drawing, and graphic design at Southwestern
Illinois College, and managed to record his jazz-inspired CD Origami.
While
doing concerts for Origami, he met poets who encouraged him to not only
write haiku but to publish.
“Donna Biffar and Wayne Lanter, who were
circulating a poetry supplement called River
King, hosted campus literary functions.
It was at a function of theirs that I met
poet, P.F. Allen, and where “Talksho”
began to germinate.”
Publisher
and poet P.F Allen publishes first works of Midwestern poets through her
magazine The Moon Reader and through her publication company Snark
Publishing.
Allen
published Koritta’s first haiku, pertaining to 9/11, in The Moon
Reader. Allen sought Koritta out to
see if he would be interested in writing a chapbook on haiku. The end result was the chapbook “Talksho.”
“With that, I was
motivated to tame my tangle of phrases into chapters and forage through my
student portfolio for suitable illustrations.
“Talksho,” as a project,
was an accumulation of verses and artwork spanning the better of three years. I
had a hazy sort of notion of gathering them in print but pursued the matter
leisurely.”
The title “Talksho,” with a macron over the o, is more
than just the title of Koritta’s chapbook but also a dedication or homage to
his favorite poet, Matsuo Basho.
“What he said to his students, "Learn
about the pine from the pine" goes a long way to highlighting the backseat
one's ego must take to render a verse that is both heavy with meaning while at
the same time lighter than air.
Haiku isn't trying to be some poet’s
description of the sunset but the sunset itself. It draws comparisons without
resorting to simile.”
WHAT IS
HAIKU?
1. In the Western World,
Haiku is three lines with a 5-7-5 syllable pattern. However, most Haiku American writers find the
17-syllable count too many and narrow the form to three lines consisting of 12
to 13 syllables.
An example is
the 13 syllable haiku by Jack Kerouac :
“One
flower (3)
on the cliffside (4)
nodding at the canyon (6).”
2. In the traditional
Eastern World, Haiku is one line consisting of 17 syllables.
An example is Matsuo Basho’s “old pond”:
fu-ru-i-ke
ya (5)
ka-wa-zu
to-bi-ko-mu (7)
mi-zu no o-to (5)
3. Haiku is simply the Opening
Verse of a Linked Verse Poem form called Renga.
The most famous Renga poet is Sukioka Yoshitoshi.
4. Haiku contains a special
season word, the Kigo, which is representative of the season or
the natural world in which the Renga is set.
5. Usually the three different
lines have a distinct grammatical break called the Kireji. The Kireji is usually placed at
the end of either the first five or the second five syllables. In Japanese there are actual Kireji
words. In English, the Kireji is
often replaced with commas, hyphens, ellipses, or implied breaks in the haiku.
HAIKU
TIMELINE
1200s
The Japanese short-form
poem, hokku, originated from the classical linked form called renga. There are two types of renga, the
short renga (tanrenga) and the long renga (chorenga).
Basho composed the
following in hokku in 1689:
ふうりゅうの初やおくの田植うた
ふうりゅうの初やおくの田植うた
fūryū no
hajime ya oku no taueuta
beginnings
of poetry—
the rice
planting songs
of the
Interior
(trans. Haruo Shirane)
The tanrenga has
a 5-7-5-5-5 structure. The first 5-7-5 of tanrenga is called choku (the
longer verse) to which answers the remaining 7-7 tanku (the
shorter verse).
The earliest surviving renga is in the Man'yōshū,
where Ōtomo no
Yakamochi and a Buddhist nun (尼 ama?) made and exchanged poems with sound unit counts
("on") of 5-7-5 and
7-7.[2] This two-verse style is called tan-renga (短連歌?,
"short renga").
The chorenga
consists of an alternating succession of choku and tanku. The first verse of a chorenga is choku
(5-7-5) that is also called hokku, the opening verse. The second is a tanku (7-7).
1400s
Yamazaki Sokan (1465 – 1553) and Arakida
Moritake (1473-1549) developed the haikai no renga, which is a
playful linked verse.
Late 1500s To Early
1600s
Haikai poet Matsunaga
Teitoku (1571-1653) founded the Teimon School. The Teimon School focused on
deliberate conversation that made haikai both popular and dependent on
wordplay.
1600s
Nishiyama Soin (1605 – 1682) founded
the Danrin School, which explored people’s daily life for other
sources of playfulness.
Late 1600s To Early
1700s
Matsuo Basho (1644 – 1694) and Ueshima Onitsura (1661-1738)
made haikai more popular and widely known.
1700s
The next famous style of
haikai to arise was that of Yosa Buson (1716-1783).
1781 – 1789
The Tenmei style
of haikai is developed and the Tenmei Era takes place.
Late 1700s To Early
1800s
Kobayashi Issa (1763 – 1827) takes an
individualistic approach to haikai, which includes revealing his sad
childhood and his devotion to Buddhism.
1800s
Masaoka Shiki (1867 –
1902) revised
the hokku poetry form into haiku by making the opening verse of haikai
no renga into an independent poem. Shiki
was the one who discarded the term hokku and called his revised
verse haiku. As a result, Shiki
became the first haiku poet.
1906
Paul-Louis Couchoud introduced hokku to
France. Early Imagist theoretician F.S.
Flint read Couchoud’s writings and shared those writings with poet Ezra
Pound.
1913
Pound, influenced by Couchoud’s
writings wrote “In A Station of the Metro”.
The apparition of these
faces in the
crowd;
Petals on a wet, black
bough.
1949 – 1952
Englishman R.H. Blyth
publishes his own four-volume work of haiku, which introduced haiku
to the post-war world.
1956
Haiku was first translated
into a western language, Spanish, by Mexican Poet and Nobel Prize Winner Octavia
Pas in the book, “Sendas du Oku.”
1957
Charles E Tuttle Company
publish Japanese-American scholar and translator Kenneth Yasuda’s “The
Japanese Haiku: Its Essential Nature,
History, and Possibilities.” Kenneth Yasuda’s translations
conform to a 5-7-5 syllable count in English with the first and third lined
end-rhymed.
1958
“An Introduction to
Haiku: An Anthology of Poems from Poets
from Basho to Shiki” by Harold G. Henderson is published. Henderson translated every hokku and haiku
into a rhymed tercet (a-b-a) where as the Japanese originals never used rhyme. Henderson recognized that the
seventeen syllables in English are longer than the seventeen syllables of a
traditional Japanese haiku. Henderson
chose to emphasize the order of events and images in the originals, rather
than counting syllables, which explains how English haikus have fewer syllables
than the traditional Japanese of 17.
Photograph
Description and Copyright Info
Photos 1, 3, 4, 16, 17, 19,
22,
Stephen
Koritta
Copyright
granted by Stephen Koritta
Photos 2, 18,
Jacket
cover of “Talksho”
Photo 5
The
best known Japanese haiku is Basho’s “old pond” transliterated into 17
hiragana.
Public Domain
Public Domain
Photo 6
fu-ru-i-ke
ya (5)
ka-wa-zu-to-bi-ko-mu
(7)
mi-zu
nu o-to (5)
Public
Domain
Photo 7
Translated
into English haiku.
Public Domain
Public Domain
Photos 8, 20, 21, 24, 28,
32
Matsuo
Basho
Public
Domain
Photo 9
Yosa
Buson
Public
Domain
Photo 10
Kobayashi
Issa
Public
Domain
Photos 11, 23,
Jack
Kerouac
Photograph
attributed to Tom Palumbo
Photograph
taken in 1956
CCASA
2.0 Generic License
Photo 12
Kenneth
Rexroth
Fair
Use Under the United States Copyright Law
Photos 13 and 41
R.H.
Blyth
Public Domian
Public Domian
Photo 14
Wayne
Lanter in Greece
Copyright granted by Wayne Lanter.
Copyright granted by Wayne Lanter.
Photo 15
Donna
Biffar
Copyright
granted by Donna Biffar
Photo 25.
Sukioka
Yoshitoshi, Sogi, October 1892. From the Thirty-six Ghosts
series. 9.25" x 14.25". The print depicts Sogi, priest and poet,
writing a couplet for a ghost.
Photo 26
Image
of the moon.
The
moon is associated with the Autumn season in Japanese poetry.
This
is an example of a “kigo” word in the “renga” is set.
Attributed
to NASA
Public
Domain
Photo 27
Image
of the seven most common Kigos.
Public
Domain
Photo 29a
Otomo
no “Chunagon” Yakamochi and nun wrote the tanrenga, which usually requires two
people: one writes the “tanku” and the
other responds with the “chocku”
Portrait attributed to Kano Tan’yu
Portrait attributed to Kano Tan’yu
1648.
Public
Domain.
Photo 29b
Yamazaki Sokan
Public Domain
Yamazaki Sokan
Public Domain
Photo 29c
Arakida Moritake
Public Domain
Arakida Moritake
Public Domain
Photo 30
Matsunaga
Teitoku
Public
Domain
Photo 31
Nishiyama
Soin
17th
Century
Public
Domain
Photo 32
Matsuo
Basho
Public
Domain
Photo 33
Ueshima
Onitsura
Public
Domain
Photo 34
Gravesite
of Yosa Buson
Photo
taken on July 11, 2014
Public
Domain
Photo 35
Kobayashi
Issa
Public
Domain
Photo 36
Masaoka
Shiki
Public
Domain
Photo 37
Paul-Louis
Couchoud
Public
Domain
Photo 38
F.S.
Flint
Public
Domain
Photo 39
Ezra
Pound in London on October 22, 1913.
Photograph
attributed to Alvin Langdon Coburn
Public
Domain
Photo 40
Ezra
Pound in June of 1918
Photograph
attributed to E.O. Hoppe
Public
Domain
Photo 42
Octavio
Paz
Public
Domain
Photo 43
Jacket
cover of “Sendas du oku.”
Photo 44
Jacket
cover of “The Japanese Haiku: Its Essential Nature, History, and
Possibilities.”
Photo 45
Jacket
cover of “An Introduction to Haiku: An Anthology of Poems from Poets from Basho
to Shiki”
