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Dialogue With a Poet |
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MICHAEL
MCCLINTOCK
California, US |
Susumu Takiguchi, Editor
I. A Creative Chaos
ST: I call the present situation
surrounding haiku a "state of flux". However, this is not necessarily
meant in a bad sense, though there are lots of "bad bits" in it. In
other words, we find ourselves, curiously, in creative chaos -- arguably the
greatest chaos ever, considering the number of people, languages, cultures and
regional differences relating to haiku. As our starting point, might we
establish roughly where you stand in the increasingly complex axis of world
haiku co-ordinates in terms of different "schools of thought" -- or
the conservative versus the progressive, or formal versus free? Are you part of
the old guard or a leader of free thinkers?
MM: Poetry is seldom the result of
committee work. "Schools of thought" can be like prisons, I think. Not
good places to be. Too many walls, too few windows. Attempts to hijack taste and
subsume the individual poet's freedoms, to create "new fashion"
through talk and a form of consensual, committee-approved aesthetic purity --
however that may be defined, argued, sold, defended -- what are these things to
me? We can be tranquil in ourselves, or write out of chaos...I do both.
That being said, I am an attentive reader. What
others write, what others have written, is very important to me. I need their
news of the world, good or bad. This is how we learn, as children and as adults.
This is how cultures learn: they borrow, imitate, re-combine and find their way
through time, always standing on some level or layer of the foundations that
have preceded them. As individuals, we inevitably do the same. The state of flux
to which you allude, is part of an overwhelming historical process -- a human
process, involving human actions, choices, ideas, judgments.
But if we say we seek what Basho sought (and I
do say that for myself), then we must really mean it. We must seek in our time
what he sought in his. For me, this does not involve making a choice between
schools, or finding a comforting role to play. Rather, it involves
acknowledgement of the historical dimension -- culturally and in time --
determining for ourselves, how we wish to live, what we seek, what we write and
how we write it. It does not involve seeing what Basho saw, but seeing what we
look at and experience in our way, in our time -- as we seek what he sought. Our
poetry will reflect the degree of our success or failure, as judged by ourselves
(if we are able), and judged by others (as they most certainly will, one way or
the other), in our own time -- and, just maybe, in the future. We can sift
through the different points of view, schools and "thinking" about
haiku all we want, but at some point we need to make our own discoveries and
explorations and to write the poems. No "school" is going to do that
work or write our poems for us.
II. Evolutions
ST: In your explorations and your search
for such discoveries, what sort of process is working when you actually compose
a haiku? Do you start with your haiku principles, then choose and create its
theme, subject matter, style and form accordingly? Or, conversely, do you simply
write anything that responds to your sensibility at the time of its composition,
then worry about the principles afterwards? Or, don't you have any such system,
but instead, "just be"?
MM: I begin with the particular moment
and its objects, the feeling or emotion as best as I can recall these from
memory. Once I am "there," I work to find the language. This may take
minutes; frequently it takes days, weeks, months or years. Often, the language
is not found at all, in which case there is no poem, just a lot of notes. I keep
the notes. The "process," overall, I think, eludes precise
description; it may even be a little different each time, depending on the
subject matter or circumstance. It is hard to look over one's own shoulder and
comment too exactly; to do that may require a kind of detachment I don't
possess. I can't say I have any system, at all. But I do seem always to have an
intent.
I think the evolution of haiku techniques is
open-ended, not closed. New techniques and styles can and do emerge; I want to
be ready to incorporate and use them in my work when and where I can, evolving
my own style. Sometimes I might even need to force myself to experiment and
explore, in unfamiliar ways.
ST: If you are moved, not by feelings
suitable for haiku, but by feelings more in line with other forms of poetry such
as tanka or traditional English poetry, what do you do?
MM: I always follow the feelings,
thoughts and ideas, into the word tides -- the flows and currents -- wherever
they lead me. I follow along, pay attention and do my best to listen to the
sounds, shapes, and textures that I encounter, dredging for the right language.
Sometimes I find it, sometimes I don't. The feeling, thought or idea determines
the language wanted, and the shape the language needs to take. I seldom know
beforehand, though I may have a scent or notion. The result may be a haiku,
tanka or haibun. It may even end up as a letter to a friend -- or something
else! I seldom set out to write a haiku per se, unless it is already there in my
mind as haiku, in that language and shape -- as a habit of my own thought or way
of perceiving -- in which case I just write it down. That happens less
frequently. I write in many forms; I need them all. The form emerges from the
content; there is nothing formless in the world, I often think, but still we
must craft what we write. Otherwise, it remains a blob, a puzzlement, even to
ourselves.
This crafting comes last in the process for me.
"Process" is a word I dislike, by the way. It implies something more
linear, organized and "by-the-numbers," if you will, than I have ever
experienced in composition of any kind, much less in haiku or other poetry. It's
a word we borrow from science and industry, then try to apply to intangibles,
often resulting in preposterous fictions about how poetry gets written or how
art is made. These fictions become fashionable, and are soon found put up for
sale as a commodity at the local poetry workshop or seminar or retreat. Buyer,
beware. By "crafting," in this case, I mean applying everything in my
tool kit to the raw material of the poem; to shape it, hone it. To make its
words do what I want them to do, and say what I want them to say -- to my own
satisfaction. If someone else is happy with the result, then, perhaps something
has been achieved. After all, the purpose is to communicate, but it is not
always the result; and, of course, not always "for" and "to"
everyone.
ST: Do you try to use what you regard as
"haiku language" (haigon in Japanese), or are you more flexible, using
any words or expressions, which are discarded by others as too
"poetic" or unsuitable for other reasons?
MM: I try to use language that works for
the purpose at hand. If it were possible to write without thinking, then we'd
all be authors of the first degree. We can only follow our own mind about such
things as word choices; we cannot be overly concerned about what choices others
would make, or make for us. They will write their own poems, and I will write
mine. And readers will read what they want to read, taking from the poem what
they can of what is there. Foremost, so it seems to me, the concrete content and
immediacy of a haiku needs a vocabulary of things, and that is what I am after.
Emotions, associations and ideas adhere to the words themselves, often expressed
through the arrangement and relationships of words one to another. Contrary to
some of those "schools of thought" alluded to earlier, I think haiku
is an emotional poetry, and that it contains and conveys ideas, substantiated
through imagery.
III. Days of Future Past
ST: You have been cited in the The
Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms as a "master of
contemporary English language haiku". Your haiku has been referred to as
sensuous, as is seen in the following haiku:
letting my tongue
deeper into the cool
ripe tomato
pub. The Haiku
Anthology 110
How has your own haiku style developed over the
years, and where do you see yourself going with it now and in the future?
MM: I feel that haiku and its related
literature, particularly haibun, will bear almost any weight we put on it. I
want to relate my material to American literature while capturing the present
gestalt as I see it, as I feel it, as I comprehend it, as I have found it. What
I see, others see, I have no doubt. The reverse is also true. And so, we share
and trade our perceptions of things and events. You might say that human beings
pool their ignorance, hoping, in this way, to find some truth. In fact, if one
person out of ten recognizes some of his or her own thoughts and feelings in
what I write, and finds them expressed or clarified there, that is all I need
for now and for the future; it is more than I need.
Change in our environments is constant. But,
the language used to put it down on paper also changes over time -- in its
specific gravity and color and substance -- to cope with the changes in
ourselves, our surroundings, the subject matter at hand -- or in the particular
interests that occupy us at the time. We, and to a relative degree, the language
we use, are in a flux at all times, perhaps necessarily so -- otherwise, we
might risk becoming mute and speechless.
ST: I sometimes feel that there are two
potential enemies to an aspiring haiku poet (by this I mean all haijin, whether
well-established or novice), in addition to many other stumbling blocks. One is
the desire to teach. The other is the desire to judge. Perhaps, a third enemy
would be the desire to edit. Have you got any secret weapons to defeat these
enemies, or at least keep them under control?
MM: Yes, humility in each endeavor! And
be on guard against temptations to divert your energies or distend your ego.
This editing and teaching you speak of can be seductive, and appear sweet. A
person needs to decide how much he really wants to do in those areas, and when
and where and why. Then, make the preparations, which, to be blunt, involve much
more than just having an opinion, or a few ideas about what to teach or how to
edit. It's surprising how often these preparations are overlooked.
Paramount for me, is to make the literature, to
do that work and to come as close to my artistic goals as I possibly can. The
rest, finally, is fluff. But other views are just as valid. For instance, to
teach, and teach well is a great thing. It is a matter of personal choice. So,
hopefully we make our choices, and not have them made for us by others.
Combining some amount of editing and teaching with writing poetry is common
enough, but for me, the end of that spear is writing the poetry. What I have to
teach is in the poetry, not in a lecture about theory, or written in chalk on a
blackboard. What editing I have done, and still do, I have enjoyed. Through it,
I have helped and have been helped by other haijin toward the main goal --
which, again, is writing the poetry.
IV. A Round Trip Ticket to the Present
ST: Until recently, you have been absent
from haiku journals for as long as twenty years. What made you decide to come
back to the haiku scene? Or more importantly, what was it that made you quit the
world of haiku, and what were you doing before quitting it?
MM: At the time I left the haiku scene,
I was wrapping up and ending Seer Ox magazine, a
journal devoted primarily to senryu, but which also included haiku, pointedly
written without a seasonal reference and grounded in the urban setting and
experience. Seer Ox Press, the related venture, was publishing haiku and senryu
collections by individual poets. This also ended. I'd just come back from a long
stay with John and Marlene (Mountain) Wills in Tennessee, and a visit to William
Higginson in Paterson, New Jersey, and Cor van den Heuvel, Alan Pizzarelli,
Anita Virgil, Virginia Young, Elizabeth Searle Lamb, and many others in the New
York City area. I gave a reading at Japan House and over Radio Pacifica, a
National Public Radio station in New York City, and had some work published in The
Village Voice. It was a very happy time, but also sad, as I knew I had
to put that world behind me.
I'd completed my graduate work in information
science at the University of Southern California (USC, Los Angeles). Now I
needed to go to work with that -- to make a livelihood or become a wandering
mendicant of some sort -- a romantic notion I actually had entertained, very
briefly. But that is all it was -- a notion, and a silly one, impractical, and
probably self-destructive. I don't think starvation helps one's poetry much, I
really don't; and I saw my choices in these extremes. I needed to support myself
and somehow keep the writing going at a survival level.
I was determined not to lose haiku, but I was
convinced I needed to step down from my immersion in it and its world, to step
away from the paths of publishing haijin. I knew it would be a long time away. I
had made haiku and other poetry part of my life by writing, reading and study.
But I would not immerse myself in the material as before.
I am back because I am now able to do so
without any distractions. I think I saved about one out of every three dollars I
earned; I have purchased my freedom and I am ready to immerse myself again.
ST: You've said, "My absence from
the haiku scene does not mean I stopped writing." What have you been
writing, then?
MM: During that entire period, I wrote
haiku, tanka and other poetry; in parts, pieces, and in whole lots. I lacked the
time to give it the needed attention; to finish, to polish, to craft. Knowing
that I would not have that time for many years, I adopted a more relaxed
attitude, letting it accumulate without much critical involvement. While I think
it makes a marvelous record of that period in my life, much of it is useless
except as raw material, which needs to be re-worked, finished and culled. I mix
it into my current work, wherever I can use it, and hope to put the best of it
into new collections. A master's degree in information science has given me
opportunity and means to involve myself professionally in the study, collection,
preservation, and dissemination of literature -- as part of my personal
interests.
ST: Your following haiku received
Honorable Mention in the 1979 HSA Harold Henderson Award:
the room's smallness
fills with light
this morning of snow
To me this reads almost like a translation from
a Japanese haiku. "Smallness" reminds me of the "smallness"
of the back garden, for which Kyoshi had a penchant. "This morning of
snow" may be an odd expression in English, but it is perfectly natural to
my Japanese sensibility. Your focus is not on the snow, but on the light
generated which permeates a room, of which its "smallness" is suddenly
perceived. All such feelings are very Japanese (you may say it's American too,
but somehow huge American rooms of huge American houses filled with light
reflected by snow (in addition to huge lighting systems) do not seem, at least
to me, to be haiku-like.
V. Modern Exposures
What are your views about Japanese haiku? We
hear voices in the West that there is nothing more to learn from Japan, haiku in
English now being a well-established genre in its own right with its glorious
tradition already formed, and that it is about time it should be left alone
without interference from the Japanese. I lament those who say things of this
sort, not because I am Japanese, but because such an attitude should be avoided
for their own good, quite apart from being lacking slightly in modesty, if they
still call themselves haiku poets. What is your position in this?
MM: I think there are many areas of
conflict and friction ahead. English-language haiku and related literature will
insist on its own maturity and growth. As part of that development and striving,
it will need to distance itself from the haiku of Japan -- I think that is
inevitable, even necessary. But it need not be an inimical relationship at all,
hostile, or without a rich, valuable and continuing exchange. Overall, I'm sure
it won't be.
There has been so little exposure in the West
to the modern haiku of Japan. This was a big, big blind spot in R. H. Blyth's
work. The work of Ueda, Higginson and a very few others simply has not remedied
this huge gap in our understanding of haiku in Japan since the time of Shiki,
where history seems to end -- if you are to accept the present record as
complete. It is, of course, not complete. When you read about the amount of
haiku written in Japan since Shiki, by tens of thousands (among them many
hundreds of accomplished poets), and consider the dearth of translations, there
would be cause to wonder how anyone could possibly believe we have learned all
we can from the Japanese. How can we casually dismiss what we don't know, what
we have not seen, what we have had no access to and have not read? There is a
huge area of productive work ahead in order to correct this. Within this work
exists a great potential for valuable exchange between Japanese haiku and that
in the West.
You, yourself, have written a book about the
haiku of Takahama Kyoshi. Important resources are
appearing from recent ventures like Deep North Press; for example, Tsuru
by Yoshiko Yoshino and Einstein's Century: Akito
Arima's Haiku, both translated through the teamwork of Lee Gurga
and Emiko Miyashita. This is exciting, interesting, important work, and we need
more of it -- much, much more. Sono Uchida's first book of haiku in English, A
Simple Universe, while a small publication (only twenty-four poems), is
another example of the kind of important work ahead that will continue to enrich
dialogue between Japan and English-language haiku.
As for small rooms and tiny houses in the U.S.,
Susumu, I have lived in many of them! Believe me, such places are everywhere!
ST: You have kindly expressed your
approval of our haiku magazine, World Haiku Review, especially for:
"…its depth, breadth and openness to all
styles, the many points of view -- a most welcome production..."
Yes, the World Haiku Club is a broad church and
has, as one of its objectives, the elimination, or lessening of, factional
rivalries, which have not only bedeviled Japan's haiku world but have also
harmed haiku communities outside Japan. What is your advice on this score as
someone who has been writing and publishing haiku since the 1960's?
MM: Well, as I think I have intimated
elsewhere in this discussion, I prefer the broadest forum possible, but also
independence from any single point of view purporting to have the magic lantern
or Holy Grail in its keeping. At the same time, I think, generally, that
frictions and rivalries, which have existed and continue to exist, are natural,
to be expected and are healthy. They are part of the historical process and the
ferment of ideas; that ferment is a sign of health, though at times it can be
bruising, and frequently bitter. The alternative to conflict of this kind is,
perhaps, a sleepy vale where little happens and no one cares enough about
anything to make it matter -- that is a nightmare of another sort that I would
never wish to see.
VI. Intimations of a Poet
ST: Speaking of ferment of ideas,
Michael, you and your haiku have had influence on poets including Marlene
Mountain. In her 1975 essay "old face/mustache put
on . . ." Marlene wrote:
"Think of how many poppies (and haystacks,
etc.) Monet painted. Then Cézanne and Michael McClintock came along and made
Impressionism lasting like museum art.
a poppy . . .
a field of poppies!
the hills blowing with poppies!
(publ. Haiku Magazine 5:1)
'Not only did McClintock show us form, he gave us
a concept to explore and expand. He gave it to me: 'a cloud/a sky of clouds/ the
something or other blowing with clouds'; 'a sunflower'; 'a raindrop'; 'a young
leaf.' Thanks Michael. Oh, I'll never put down such words and call them my
haiku. Like the hardware store, they're only there for the mind."
To be compared with one genius looks like a
good fortune. To be compared with two genii looks like a miracle. You must have
learnt haiku from someone. Who have been the most influential haiku writers in
your own development?
MM: I have learned most about haiku from
those who have written it, and who write it today -- and of course, from those
who have written about it. I came to haiku by way of the Imagists, the
American Transcendentalists (Emerson, Thoreau, et al), and the Romantic poets
and their predecessors (Cowper, Gray, John Clare) during my undergraduate work
at Occidental College. There, I had a double major in English literature and
Asian studies.
Though not named as such, the spirit of haiku
-- that essential mind and heart which informs the techniques and poetics of
haiku -- appeared to exist in the epiphanies and best moments of every
literature I studied. In fact, haiku seemed to be imbedded everywhere. I still
think so. (Maybe this perspective makes me a "pan-haikuist"?) I also
found this to be spirit in the work of John Wills, Anita Virgil, and many others
who were writing haiku at that time and writing today. All of whom have had
their influence and made their impression on me, particularly in areas of
subject matter: Wills' intimacy with his farm in Tennessee, Foster Jewell with
the American desert, the streets of Alan Pizzarelli's New Jersey, Anita Virgil's
wonderful insights into the exquisite beauty of ordinary objects and moments in
the household, the kitchen, the bathroom. Additionally, even poor poets can
instruct, don't you think? We need to understand failures as well as successes.
Even the important poets have some of each.
R. H. Blyth's Zen in English
Literature and Oriental Classics, Ezra Pound's
ABC's of Reading, and Alan Watts' The
Spirit of Zen are three books that changed my life and helped set the
course for my interests.
ST: Michael, you've been an Associate
Editor, as well as Contest Editor, of Haiku
Highlights and Other Short Poems, an early journal edited by Jean
Calkins. It was, as Jane Reichhold has written in Aha!Poetry,
a magazine which "introduced hundreds of readers and writers to haiku
publication". You are one of the pioneers of haiku's development in the
West. In those days, poets were trying to unravel and understand the essence of
"real haiku". May I ask you this inevitable, impossible, and sometimes
pointless question: How would you define haiku?
MM: Well, Susumu, if a definition were
really possible, we'd have nothing left to write, and no reason to try. In any
case, I have never known a poet to define poetry, other than in a poem -- and
then, only so far as the poem, itself, goes. Definitions aren't the poet's work.
Definitions are always approximations, always incomplete, and if used literally,
they can -- and do -- blind us to what is in front of us -- now, in the present.
By their nature, definitions are after the fact, retrospective and descriptive
of the pre-existing thing -- in this case, the poem. They are useful for
teaching, for sorting and categorizing, for comparing and contrasting, and for
conveying certain kinds of knowledge or information or understanding. The poet
might look for what seems useful among the many definitions of haiku that are
out there, but then, one needs to move on. Potentially, every newly written
haiku may change, by just a little, the definition we give the species.
VII. A Renaissance Man
ST: Jean Calkins later turned over the
editorship of Haiku Highlights to
Lorraine Ellis Harr, who changed the name of the magazine to Dragonfly.
As an editor, Ms Harr taught and mentored her own style of haiku, upholding the
traditional methods and values of Japanese haiku. She diligently worked to raise
English-language haiku standards to those set by the Japanese -- and those to
which she subscribed for her own poetry.
At that same time, there were those poets who
were striving for a different, more liberal approach to haiku: what Jane
Reichhold has described as a "totally American rebirth/reuse of the
haiku". Were you one of the latter mentioned poets, and what was your
vision for haiku during those years?
MM: I advocated what I called The
Liberated Haiku, which was directed specifically toward dismantling the
dominance of the 5-7-5 syllabic structure for English-language haiku -- together
with its claims to authority, historicity and derivation from Japanese models --
and desirability as the English-language norm. Indirectly, this effort would
work toward the establishment a healthier, more robust, less constrained
orientation to the "received tradition." The aim -- to toss out
imitation and authority; create our own haiku reflecting our own culture,
literature, experience and values. For me, that meant to truly assimilate those
aspects of haiku compatible to absorbing its fundamental orientations, while
adding our own perspectives; to make haiku "ours." In this way, haiku
could become a real vehicle for exploring our world, our time, our lives
(pedantic and tiresome addictions to the past and to tradition notwithstanding,
however badly they were misunderstood, misrepresented, or misapplied). The goal
was, perhaps, to return to purer sources -- those qualities that were the
original fountainheads and discoveries of what became "tradition" only
much later.
VIII. Speaking of Senryu
ST: You were also an Associate Editor of
Modern Haiku in the early 1970s. As you have
touched on earlier, you subsequently founded and edited your own magazine, Seer
Ox: American Senryu, introducing some of your liberal style. As I see
it, Japanese and Western senryu may be two different things. Through the World
Haiku Club, I've set up an experimental list, WHCsenryu,
to drop all the definitions of, and discussion about, senryu, which have been
reached in the West and to start exploring the possibility of discovering a form
that could be called senryu without having anything to do with haiku. The
comparison between haiku and senryu has been, in my opinion, the single most
damaging obsession for both haiku and senryu. haijinx
seems to be the first and, so far, the only attempt at correcting this trend,
apart from WHCsenryu itself. I understand that you are more relaxed and sanguine
about this situation, which I regard as a cul-de-sac, or slow poison for both
forms. Any opinion?
MM: Anyone interested in senryu needs to
read Alan Pizzarelli's collection Senryu Magazine,
published last year, parts of which were reprinted in an important New
York-based poetry magazine, Long Shot,
containing other contemporary poets like Amiri Baraka, Virgil Suarez, Nancy
Mercado, Alan Catlin, and many others. I reviewed Alan's book in Frogpond
(XXV:1, 2002. While I don't want to repeat that here, I have to mention it,
as it is at least a partial answer to your question. I think it's the single
most important collection of senryu published in English anywhere, by anyone. It
fully displays the potential for senryu in English. Alan demonstrates the
possible range of the genre through pun, lampoon, parody and sly nose-pulling
satire that is rich but never mean, farce, and completely idiotic, gross,
slapstick humor and sight-gags. Of course, most thoroughly satirized, is haiku
itself. We saw indications that Pizzarelli might go in this direction from the
earliest edition of Cor van den Heuvel's The
Haiku Anthology, back in 1974. Alan is the only haiku poet I know of who
has given this kind of time and effort to the senryu, and his achievement is
impressive. How influential it will really be is another matter.
Truly, I think senryu may never achieve a firm
hold in English, despite wonderful efforts like Pizzarelli's. The reason may be
that it is simply not needed in our culture. I see the same characteristic
energies, caustic wit and humor of Japanese senryu, healthy and alive throughout
the United States -- in the form of bumper stickers, printed on t-shirts, and --
I am not kidding here -- scrawled on public restroom walls. Not to mention the
one-line quips, jokes and biting humor we find in political cartoons in
newspapers and magazines, on late night television and in stand-up comedy. So,
where is the need for senryu? As a separate literary form of expression,
distinct from those things I have mentioned, could senryu do as good a job or
better? We shall see.
But I think you are right. I think publications
like haijinx, and groups like WHCsenryu
may find a niche or create one, of some sort. I speculate English-language
senryu will stay, for a very long time, an adjunct to haiku: a kind of sub-genre
that orbits haiku literature and the haiku community. Still, it will probably
not get too far beyond that community, due to the health and ubiquitous presence
of those other, competing forms of humor in the broader society. In contrast,
haiku has taken root because there is nothing quite like elsewhere in our
culture or literature, whether in form, focus or utterance.
ST: Thank you for pointing out so
clearly something I have long suspected: that the true reason why senryu in the
West is treated as a second-class citizen, an unwanted mistress or a second
fiddle to the over-praised haiku (which is more often than not worshiped as an
object of idolatry). Our WHCsenryu,
then, may be an ill-starred battlefield where we are fighting a sad, futile and
loosing battle, to put it in my "senryu prose".
It also explains why sincere efforts by some to
develop senryu in the West seem to go nowhere. Jane Reichhold once told us at
WHC [Haikuforum/Debating
Chamber 2000] to the effect that we would be much better off without senryu
altogether. I was flabbergasted, but she really knows her stuff, doesn't she?
Nonetheless, I still do think senryu is really an ugly duck in the West and that
its time will come.
IX. Going on About Haibun
ST: OK, OK, let's move on. Apart from
senryu, you have written in various other styles and genres. These include
haibun, tanka and other forms. Do you have a favourite and if so, which and why?
MM: Haibun is by far the most
interesting to me. I think its potential is enormous and hardly explored. There
need be few or any constraints at all, except that it be written as an aesthetic
whole, not a fragment. And that it include haiku as a part of that whole, not as
a mere attachment, afterthought, as something tacked on but otherwise unneeded.
Beyond that fundamental proposition, we should not encumber ourselves with any
assumptions about the content or style of delivery for English-language haibun.
That it must and will depart from being merely a tourist-occasion exercise in
travel writing is certain. The haibun is open to a huge range of expression:
from the surreal and dreamlike to straight discursive narrative -- even
journalism: from impressionistic writing to exposition and storytelling,
meditation and the personal diary -- an exploration of the wilderness of the
self.
Unusual effects can be achieved, to the say the
least, if compared to prose or poetry alone. In my opinion, haibun offers a kind
of synoptic clarity and hybrid vigor that cannot be matched. For me, it has been
a new dispensation, a new language of robust muscle. All my tools become useful.
Every subject is approachable and malleable. I think there is a possible
synthesis of prose and poetry in haibun that can be revolutionary, a watershed
in literature. Haibun may be as close something "new under the sun" as
history and literature ever offers.
And so, I am writing a lot of haibun. I am also
working as a consulting editor and contributor to Journeys:
A Quarterly of English-language Haibun, published by Hermitage West I
write a column called "Tanka Café" for the Tanka
Society of America Newsletter, and am editing and publishing "The
New American Imagist," a series of chaplets of contemporary poetry by
individual poets, also in association with Hermitage West.
ST: On Randy Brooks' Millikin University
Haiku Poets Profiles, you were
interviewed by student, Andria Neapolitan, who asked you what your
"muse" for writing might be. You replied in part:
"...Or maybe my muse, really, is memory. That
may seem contradictory, haiku being about the moment, the "here and
now." But everything we see and do passes instantly into memory: everything
we see and do is framed by our memories. Memory is a mystery - its mysteries are
my muse."
X. Variations on a Theme: The 'Nature' of
Haiku
ST: You also stated in the MU
article that you generally write from memory after the imagery and
feelings have had time to mull about and brew. Is this still your way of haiku?
MM: Yes! Everything we see or do passes
into memory even as we see and do it, or is lost. Memory frames all of our
perceptions, thoughts and feelings. Our total experience, conscious or
unconscious, exists within us as memory. The poem is an artifact created in
language out of remembered experience.
Time and our sense of time are so strange! I
often think the "present," as a dimension of time, does not exist, or
that it is purely fictional, except as an interstice between the future, which
is the inexhaustible source of time, and the past, which is where time
disappears. Our existence seems to be poised at that point, where the two
collide, and the future is changed to the past! This "present," where,
we exist straddles past and future, but is never one or the other! It seems to
me that a good haiku is timeless -- so when we speak of the "haiku
moment" there is also that apprehension of timelessness.
The great poems are as fresh today as when
first written, four hundred years ago or last year. That may be the magic of
literature, the power of all art -- in that we are allowed to experience a
meaningful sense of the eternal within the temporal. Perhaps that fundamental
insight of haiku tells us something very important about human life, something
of which we need to know and be reminded. Eternity haunts haiku. It is this
sense that we carry away from the quotidian inconsequence found in so much of
it.
ST: I hear that you plan to publish some
of your best works from your early years, and explore the themes that are found
in them by bringing them into your present. What themes have you found to be
recurrent in your works, both past and present? What do these tell you about
yourself, your environment and your poetry?
MM: For one, I am suspicious of
"nature" as written in much of the haiku written today. Rather, I am
suspicious of the actual depiction. It seems to be a highly sentimentalized and
sanitized nature. A nature that appears to want to coddle human sentiment.
Nature that acts on cue, like a puppet in silent little melodramas that are
banal and ridiculous. This is a nature that I'm skeptical of and which, I think,
is being selectively observed and highly choreographed much of the time.
Everything we observe in nature is not poetry,
contrary to what some appear to believe or think. Such is not the nature I know
or am familiar with -- a nature that is not always pretty or beautiful -- but
frequently ugly and horrifying. Where there is beauty found in nature, it is
frequently a terrible beauty. Those seem to be my themes, together with sadness,
loss, isolation, rare and inexplicable joy, the ironies and cruelties in this
thing we call beauty. Also, getting at that mystical "something" that
seems to exist in the forms and substance and motion of this creation in which
we live, that inherent meaning of things -- which seems to be itself immaterial
-- and which modern physics seems to tell us, in fact, is without substance.
What a mystery that is! And, of course, we have always sensed this
"it", at least as far as written history indicates. Physics seems
merely to validate what we have secretly known: this world and all the universe
in view is a kind of dream, yet no less "real" for being called a
dream. It's real enough, after all -- step in front of a truck and find out!
Stand in the rain. Jump in the creek. Grow tomatoes.
So, for me the important themes are the ageless
questions: what is this place, what are we doing here, where are we going? Why
do we suffer? Why, for that matter, is there joy in such a place of suffering,
turmoil, agony, death and destruction? What does the very presence of joy mean
to tell us, or its absence? Anything? And, if nothing, then why nothing? Is
beauty important? If so, where and in what do we find it? Should we seek it out
at all? Someone might say that beauty is a lie and poets who trade in it are
liars of the worst kind. What is the proof, either way? And what if there is no
proof forthcoming -- none at all?
Out of all of this, another theme emerges for
me: the theme of play. Over time, I have become more playful. Today I care far
less, about the things that really don't matter than I once did. When I was much
younger, I took many unimportant, foolish things very seriously indeed. Now,
what I intend to do is play in and with it all until I am dead. And the whole
time, I am sure, I will be asking and wondering how poetry -- specifically,
haiku poetry -- can best report what I find. I suspect there are no final
answers, only more questions, and only the writing of poems. We shall see. There
will be a lot of poetry, though.
I don't want to depart from nature, from either
its small or grand and awesome aspects, but more than ever, I have the desire to
write haiku firmly grounded in more ordinary experience and things of ordinary
life. Like the environment where I live, "the urban forest," as some
call it. And finding haiku subject matter more in ordinary life, home and in
town than in some splendid, natural wilderness, which is simply not where most
of us live, but only occasionally visit, and which we see and report on merely
as visitors (perhaps, too much). I was once devoted to it, but was always only a
visitor, in spite of the secrets it seemed to reveal to me. I am more interested
in writing haiku, haibun and other forms which reflect contemporary life as I
find it.
That is the direction my haiku and related work
has steadily taken since the mid-seventies, since editing Seer
Ox, and completing the collection, Maya (Seer
Ox Press, 1975). I do still try to write the vast landscape nature poem, perhaps
out of a longing for what I do not really possess and for which I make no
apologies. A recent poem about watching deer cross a high meadow into the clouds
was one of those, and though there is that old joy in the poem, I also find in
it a great deal of personal sadness, a sense of irretrievable loss.
ST: Would you share a number of your
haiku that illustrate styles, themes, changes and variances in your haiku style
since you began writing haiku?
MM: Gladly. Here is a selection:
MICHAEL McCLINTOCK:
A BRIEF SURVEY OF REPRESENTATIVE POEMS,
1968-2002
Written in the Period 1968-1978:
All of the poems in this first section may be
found in one or another of the three editions of The
Haiku Anthology, edited by Cor van den Heuvel, and are taken from the
original collections by Michael McClintock, presently out of print: Light
Run, Man With No Face and Maya.
summer morning . . .
pausing in my nakedness
at the window
Light Run
a small girl . . .
the shadows stroke
and stroke her
Maya
the merry-go-round
as it turns
shines into the trees
Maya
my bed
too narrow too short
for all the moon
Light Run
dead cat . . .
open-mouthed
to the pouring rain
Light Run
really can't you hear
: the moon in a pan
Man With No Face
pushing
inside . . . until
her teeth shine
Maya
twisting inland,
the sea fog takes awhile
in the apple trees
Light Run
overtaken
by a single cloud,
and letting it pass
Light Run
a broken window
reflects half the moon,
half of me
Light Run
I eat alone
& pass the salt
for myself
Man With No Face
hearing
cockroach feet;
the midnight snowfall
Light Run
boning
the codfish
complicating
my life
Man With No Face
a single tulip!
hopelessly,
I passed on
Maya
Written in the Period 1979-1996 :
Note: While I continued to write haiku during
this period, I did not seek to have the work published. These, and other poems
and materials written during this time, are now appearing regularly in haiku and
other journals.
the day's first bull
trots into the ring . . .
snow on the mountains
The Heron's Nest, November 2000
we argue and argue
about how it will fly,
patching the old kite
Acorn #5, Fall 2000
the candle
flares, darkening
the basilica
Tundra No. 2, 2001
crescent moon . . .
moths come touching
spikes of the iris
The Heron's Nest, March 2000
heat lightning . . .
all the way into Mexico
the mountains rise
The Heron's Nest, April 2000
sea mist
the scent of the night
it spent in the pines
The Heron's Nest: Volume II, Number 5:
May, 2000
leaving each shadow
as it was . . .
evening breeze
The Heron's Nest:
Volume III, Number 02: February, 2001
visiting graves . . .
we flicker as we walk
down shadowed rows
Raku Teapot Haiku, 2002
April morning . . .
a woman with an axe
walks to the chicken house
Raw Nervz Haiku, Vol. II:1, 2001
that kid
who stole my marbles,
buried today
Modern Haiku, XXX.2, Fall 2000
a warm evening,
warm even
in the eyes of fish
South by Southeast, 9:11, Spring 2002
in the haibun,
"Men and Women on a Pier"
the dry season
yet droplets
on the spider's jaws
Modern Haiku, XXXll:3, Fall 2001
lazy me,
autumn's leaves
stay unswept
Still, Issue Three, 2001
Written from 1997-Present:
approaching spring . . .
a fire made of letters
written overnight
The Heron's Nest, February 2002
raining . . .
the soft mouth
a flower opens
Acorn #7, Fall 2001
New Year's eve . . .
rhythm of a push broom
high in the stadium
The Heron's Nest, January 2002
after the fireworks
and crowds . . . the moon
and cricket
World Haiku Review, No. 2, 2001
all the spring day,
the deer cross the high meadow
and into the clouds
World Haiku Review, No. 3, 2002
tall sunflowers
having grown old
walking among them
Mainichi Daily News, Haiku in English (Japan),
June 2001
the fruitpickers
seem glum about it-
a record crop
Acorn #5, Fall 2000
hefting a plum -
I know by heart
my father's orchard
Frogpond, XXV:2, Summer 2002, as part of the
rengay "Lotus Eaters" by
Michael McClintock and Michael Dylan Welch.
a hollow tree
the beginning
of dusk
still, Issue One, 2001
Resources/References
ABC's of Reading, Ezra
Pound, New York, J. Laughlin, A New Directions Paperback, 1960.
A Simple Universe,
Sono Uchida: Press Here; Michael Dylan Welch, Ed.,
1995. www.asahi-net.or.jp/~fs5k-ktu/haiku/universe.html
www.asahi-net.or.jp/~fs5k-ktu/haiku/spring.html
Acorn, A.C. Missias,
Ed.; redfox press,P.O. Box 186, Philadelphia, PA, 19105 USA. home.earthlink.net/~missias/Acorn.html
Einstein's Century:
Akito Arima's Haiku, Lee Gurga and Emiko Miyashita, tr., Deep North Press.
haijinx, Mark
Brooks, Managing Ed.web@haijinx.com,
Temple, Texas, USA.web@haijinx.com www.haijinx.com
Haiku Highlights
and Other Short Poems, Kanono, New York (1965 -72).
Haiku Highlights/Dragonfly
Those Women Writing Haiku, Chapter 3 "Haiku Magazines in the USA,"
Jane Reichhold, Ed., ahabooks@mcn.org
Aha!Poetry, AHA Books, Gualala, California, USA. www.ahapoetry.com/twchp3.htm
Haiku Magazine
5:1 (1971).
HSA Harold Henderson Award,
Haiku Society of America, Howard Lee Kilby,
HSA Secretary, hkilby@hotmail.com, P.O.
Box 1260, Hot Springs, AR 71902-1260, USA. www.hsa-haiku.org/haiku-henderson.htm
Frogpond XXV:1,
2002: Haiku Society of America (HSA), Jim Kacian, Ed., redmoon@shentel.net
P.O. Box 2461, Winchester, VA 22604-1661, USA www.hsa-haiku.org/frogpond.htm
Journeys: A Quarterly
of English-language Haibun, published by Hermitage West, Features short
haibun under 250 words reflecting contemporary idioms
and life; not interested in imitations of Japanese models. Various editors;
consulting editor and contributor, Michael McClintock. $6 for 4 issues,
payable to "Hermitage West", P.O. Box 124, South Pasadena, CA
91031-0124, USA. Email submissions welcome (use subject line
"Journeys") HermitageWest@aol.com
Kyoshi-A Haiku Master,
Susumu Takiguichi: Oxford, Ami-Net International Press, 1997; Head
Office, The World Haiku Club,
Leys
Farm, Rousham Bicester, Oxfordshire OX25 4RA England.
Light Run,
Shiloh, 1971
Long Shot,
Vol.25, 2002; Long Shot, P.O. Box 6238 Hoboken, NJ 07030, USA. www.longshot.org/
Mainichi Daily
News,"Haiku in English", Kazuo Sato and Isamu Hashimoto,
Eds., mdn@mainichi.co.jp Haiku
Column," Editorial Dept., Mainichi Daily News, 1-1-1 Hitotsubashi, Chiyoda-ku,
Tokyo 100-8051, Japan. mdn.mainichi.co.jp/haiku/index.html
Man With No Face
Shelters Press, 1974
Maya, Selected
Poems", Seer Ox Press, August 1976
ISBN 0916064182
"Michael
McClintock" Millikin University Haiku Poets Profiles, Adria
Neopolitan www.millikin.edu/haiku/writerprofiles/Michael
McClintock.html
Modern Haiku,
Lee Gurga, Ed., PO Box 68 Lincoln, IL 62656 USA. www.modernhaiku.org/index.html
"old face/moustache
put on..."; Marlene Mountain, "hard to find" website
www.hardtofind.org/hardtofind/marlenemountain/essays/essay_oldface.html
Raku Teapot Haiku, John
Polozzolo & Layne Russell; John Polozzolo, HC 73 Box 728 Alton Bay, NH
03810, USA.
Raw Nervz Haiku, Dorothy
Howard;67 Court St., Aylmer, Quebec, J9H 4M1, Canada.
Seer Ox: American
Senryu, Michael McClintock, Ed. www.epiphanous.org/wha/eng/us/m.mcclintock.shtml
Senryu Magazine,
Alan Pizzarelli; River Willow Publications, 118 Schley St., Garfield, NJ 07026,
USA; 2001.
South by
Southeast, Stephen Addiss Ed.; saddiss@richmond.edu
SxSE, PO Box 93, 28 Westhampton Way, Richmond VA, 23173 USA
still, ai li chia,
Ed., still@into.demon.co.uk
1 Lambolle Place, Belsize Park, London NW3 4PD, England. www.into.demon.co.uk/home.htm
Tanka Society of
America Newsletter, Michael Dylan Welch, Ed. WelchM@aol.com
P.O. Box 4014, Foster City, CA 94404-0014 USA www.millikin.edu/haiku/global/tankasociety.html
The Bedford Glossary
of Critical and Literary Terms by Ross Murfin and Supryia M. Ray, Boston:
Bedford Books, A Division of St. Martin's Press, Inc., 1997.
The Haiku
Anthology, Cor van den Heuvel, Ed.: Doubleday/Anchor, 1974; Simon &
Schuster, 1986; and W. W. Norton, 1999.
The Heron's Nest,
Christopher Herold, Managing Ed., christopher@theheronsnest.com
; 816 Taft Street Port Townsend, WA 98368 USA www.theheronsnest.com/
The New American
Imagist, a series of chaplets of contemporary poetry by individual poets,
also in association with Hermitage West, P.O. Box 124 South Pasadena CA
91031-0124 USA HermitageWest@aol.com
The Spirit of Zen, Alan
Watts, Grove Press, Boston, Wisdom of the East series, 1969.
The Village Voice,
Village Voice Media, Inc. 36 Cooper Square, New York, NY 10003 USA www.villagevoice.com/
Those Women
Writing Haiku, Chapter 3 "Haiku Magazines in the USA," Aha!
Poetry, Aha!
Books, Guadalajara, California, USA., Jane Reichhold, Ed. jreichol@mcn.org
: Aha!Poetry www.ahapoetry.com/twchp3.htm
Tsuru (Crane),
Yoshiko Yoshino; Lee Gurga and Emiko Miyashita, tr., Deep North Press ,
Evanston, Ill. 2001.
Tundra, Michael
Dylan Welch, Ed.,
WelchM@aol.com P.O. Box 4014, Foster City,
CA 94404-0014 USA
World Haiku
Review, Susumu Takiguchi, Debra Woolard Bender, Eds.; The
World Haiku Club,
Head Office, The World Haiku Club,
Leys
Farm, Rousham Bicester, Oxfordshire OX25 4RA England. www.worldhaikuclub.org
Zen in English Literature
and Oriental Classics, R. H. Blyth, Hokuseido Press, Tokyo, 1948.
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