The State of Haibun Art
World Haiku Club
Haibun Workshop & Double Haibun Contest (March 2002)
In March, WHChaibun was opened to
admit non-members to join with members for participation in the first WHC Haibun
Workshop. Led by Bruce Ross, member of WHC and editor of the books, "Journey
to the Interior, American Versions of Haibun, "Haiku Moment, An
Anthology of Contemporary North American Haiku" How to Haiku" the
anthology, the very successful event drew There were around 430 postings,
including announcements, submissions, revisions, and discussions. Entries from
Australia, Canada, India, Japan, The Netherlands, South Africa, the United
Kingdom, and the Unites States were posted. I hope everyone enjoyed their
participation and learned something more about haibun as I did.
Welcome to the World Haiku Club Haibun Workshop and Double Haibun Contest
[1. Urban 2. Nature]! I hope you will find the experience a fulfilling and
pleasant one.
The state of haibun art is in a surprising and exciting phase. Who would have
thought that the simple heartfelt diaries and journals kept by Japanese writers
along the centuries that produced such classics of world literature as Basho's Journey
to the Interior or Issa's My Spring, with their sensitive engagements
with the beauty and liveliness of the natural world and their heartfelt
narratives of the joy and pathos of the human condition, would result in the
twentieth and twenty first centuries in an international phenomenon, with fine
haibun, from a simple one paragraph nature sketch with an appended haiku to
lengthy fictional accounts in a post-modern style, issuing forth from the
British Isles, Europe, Central Europe, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, and the
United States.
In thinking about the actual practice of haibun as it is developing today, I
have chosen three key issues to discuss here. The first centers on the so-called
"poetic prose" of a haibun. Professor Haruo Shirane has elucidated in
his Traces of Dreams (1998) the "haikai imagination" that
determined haiku, haibun, haiga (drawings and haiku), and renga (linked verse)
beginning with the period in which Basho was living. Basically, this haikai
style was a response to the burgeoning new Japanese economy in the seventeenth
century. This style was less reliant solely upon literary associations and
conventions maintained over the centuries and more open to the perplexities and
enthusiasms of the new society. There was now a looser idiom in expressing
haiku, haibun, and renga, although Basho spearheaded a drive to raise the level
of that idiom as a counterforce to the more frivolous use of that style. These
forms basically became more grounded in the present tense reality and less in
literarily cultural associations, although they incorporated those associations
in a refreshingly direct mode of expression.
There had been paradigm shift in
sensibility from the aestheticism of the Court sensibility to a down-to-earth
openness toward nature and culture. The hallmark of this new sensibility, with
regard to haibun, was poetic prose, prose writing that adopted the values of
haiku, such as brevity, conciseness, and poetic phrasing, as well as the
stylistic values of the paradigm shift. So, to take a hint from this shift to
"poetic prose," we should in our own practice try to express
poetically a cultivated sensibility that shies away from plodding prose and the
flat presentation of an event but is honest to our emotions and to the events
that have moved us. In other words, follow your heart, but, as Ezra Pound
suggested: "Make it new!"
The second key issue centers on the haiku in a haibun. Haiku evolved as hokku
from the first "stanza" of the linked renga form. I have referred to
the importance of this aspect of haibun as "privileging the link"
between a haiku and the prose to which it is connected. Basho was a master of
hokku yet considered himself a better renga writer than hokku master. He spoke
about many ways to like verses through sensibility, citing "link by
fragrance" as a presiding metaphor of such linking. Thus, we might say, the
link between a haiku and the prose of its haibun is all-important because it
presents the sensibility underlying that haibun. If in your haibun prose your
emotions are let loose, your haiku focus your feeling and evoke your
sensibility. Again, in your own "privileging the link" follow your
heart in
your haiku and "make it new."
The third and final issue centers on the overall impact of a haibun. I have
called a haibun a "narrative of an epiphany." Haibun after all evolved
from nature sketches, diary entries, and travel journals and are narrative
records, however concise and contracted they become. We are moved by a person, a
place, a thing, or an experience. We are in effect changed by such an
occurrence, from an insight into humanity to what is termed the "aesthetic
sublime." The haibun, bearing in mind issues one and two, becomes a telling
of that experience. But, to emphasize, don't just tell a story. Let your tone,
figurative language, word choice, and phrasing help carry the emotion in your
narrative. If haibun is a "narrative of an epiphany," haiku, as I have
said elsewhere, is an epiphany. So sensibility selects, focuses, and justifies
your prose narrative and helps evoke the pinpointed breakthrough of your haiku.
Under the guidance of this sensibility your haibun prose and haibun haiku are
perfectly joined.
Enough of polemics. However, if you would like to discuss haibun further, I
would be happy to field your questions and comments, particularly the three
issues I have highlighted or the following examples, at:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/WHChaibun
(must be a registered member of this mailing list to view these pages)
Our Double Contest is limited to very short haibun: no more than three sentences
for each haibun. Obviously sensibility will be slightly more privileged over
narrative in such a short exercise, but not entirely. Take a look at Tom
Clausen's "In the Middle":
You can sit on a lawn or in a
field, or forest or by a stream; almost
anyplace and just sit there sensing whatever. The longer you sit the better for
settling out business of the mind and becoming open to the myriad senses of
sound, sight, smell and the way all manner of life is right there to
discover . . .
page by page . . .
she knows on each one
where Waldo is 1
This haibun is about reaching the
still point that meditation strives for. The focus and humor of the haibun comes
from the irony of the matter-of-fact discourse on the still point juxtaposed to
the almost silly example in the haiku. The adult author "in the
middle" and muddle of his life searching for a rational escape to peace of
mind is deconstructed by his child's simple, unpremeditated acts of discovery,
some of which are also "in the middle." His child becomes a guide to
the actual present tense the author is merely mentally pursuing. The wit of the
link makes this haibun work.
Here are two haibun that emphasize
sensibility at the turning point between seasons. The first, "Centering
Down," is by Evelyn Lang:
Late autumn once again, and here
on this sun-warmed granite doorstep, I bask-a favorite book for company, a mug
of tea warms my hands, fogs my reading glasses. Poems in the book memorized
anyway-just sink down to the center of warm . . .
sun on the pines--
and still I try to memorize
what words cannot say 2
The second, "Japanese
Lanterns," is by Larry Kimmel:
By my doorstep, so country common
a thing to see-Japanese lanterns. Some five of them, reduced to their skeletal
frame, more delicate than lace, caging small orange bulbs-bulbs burning bright
by the doorway this dim December afternoon, suggesting something still to be
occasioned.
snow flurries
stacking an arm load
of
firewood
3
Both haibun take place at the end
of autumn when the starkness of the landscape and the chill in the air pierces
one to the bone. Both counter that starkness and chill with physical and
aesthetic warmth (the tea and the logs; the sun on the pine, the poetry, the
Japanese lanterns). Both evoke their similar moods through a flow of sensibility
(notice the alliteration and cadenced phrasing in Kimmel, a writer of
traditional Western lyric poems). Yet there is an epiphany of some intangible
universal warmth, Lang's "what words cannot say" whose metaphor is the
"sun on the pines" and Kimmel's "something still to be
occasioned" whose metaphors are the lanterns and the flurries.
Our Double Haibun Contest addresses two themes. The first is nature, so nicely
evoked by Lang and Kimmel. Take a look at this haibun, "tink, tink,"
by Jim Kacian:
tink into my metal cup, and then I
drink at the source of this great river, finger held to the seepage from the
rock as if to stanch the flow, but cannot
the rhythm of the river
slightly faster
than my
heart
4
This haibun evokes the wonder of
nature. The author is looking for more than one source. There is the hike to the
literal source of the imposing river and the wonder of its simplicity. There is
also the interior search for the cosmic force, say the Tao, that underlies all
of nature and is perfectly expressed, as it is in the Tao Te Ching, by
the literal and metaphoric river. Kacian's haibun perfectly and simply evokes
the awe and surprisingly unadorned reality of this source in all nature and the
epiphany of melding with it.
The second theme is urban. Most of us live in cities and towns. Our lives are
filled up with what was once called the "human comedy." Now it is
often described as the "post-modern condition." Nonetheless human
nature is human nature, from Basho's kindness to the prostitutes in an inn so
long ago to our own encounters with friends, loved ones, and strangers. Here is
a decidedly modern haibun, "Stood Up," by John Stevenson:
Working with an improvisational
theatre company for the past ten years has trained me to be aware of my
surroundings and obliged me to accommodate spontaneity. While I can always count
on the other actors to be there in the course of a performance, before and
afterward is another matter.
dining alone
I rehearse
a conversation 5
Post-modern irony in relation to
the self sets the tone for this humorous take on being stood up. The author has
trained himself to act on the dramatic theory of what used to be
called "using what is at hand." But in this case, as reflected in the
concluding senryu, the practice probably isn't as much fun as the theory would
have suggested.
Here is another example of urban haibun, "Home," by Jim Kacian:
Every Thanksgiving I head north to
visit my mother in the town I grew up in. Like the town, she's thin and failing.
This will be the last time.
half-way home
I miss my turn-
the century oak now gone 6
This poignant haibun expresses the
love the author has for his mother. Without his mother, a central emotional
pillar of life will be gone. The haiku concretizes with moving pathos that
absence, loss, and disorientation.
1. Frogpond XXIV:3 (2001, p. 52). By permission of the author.
2. American Haibun & Haiga 1 (1999, p. 60). By permission of the author.
3. Modern Haiku XXXIII:1 (2002, p. 58). By permission of the author.
4. Modern Haiku XXXIII:1 (2002, p.54). By permission of the author.
5. Journeys, A Quarterly of English-Language Haibun 1 (2002, p.4). By
permission of the author.
6. American Haibun & Haiga 2 (2001, p. 64). By permission of the author.
Presumably these examples of haibun and my comments will help you craft and
focus your own haibun.
The ground rules of the World Haiku Club Double Haibun
Contest [were] (ended March 2002):
1.) No more than two haibun submissions, one in each category, nature and urban.
2.) No more than three sentences in each haibun.
3.) No more than one haiku in the nature haibun and no more than one haiku or
one senryu in the urban haibun.
4.) A title for each haibun.
5.) Your name, city and country of residence, and email address on each
haibun.
6.) Submissions due by Friday, March 15th 2002 at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/WHChaibun
7.) Winners of the Double Haibun Kukai (1st, 2nd, 3rd places in each category)
announced on Friday, March 22nd, 2002.
In preparation for the World Haiku Club Double Haibun Contest you might take a
look at my essay, "Narratives
of the Heart," in the "World Haiku Review" (August 2001) or
my anthology "Journey
to the Interior, American Versions of Haibun." You might also look at
recent issues of "American
Haibun & Haiga" and haiku journals like "Modern
Haiku," "Frogpond,"
"Journeys, A
Quarterly of English-Language Haibun," "World
Haiku Review" (online), and "Poetry
in the Light" (online).
Good luck to you all.
Bruce Ross
Biography
Bruce
Ross has edited "Haiku Moment: An Anthology of Contemporary North
American Haiku" (1993) and "Journey to the Interior, American Versions
of Haibun" (1998). He has published three collections of original haiku,
"thousands of wet stones" (1988), "among floating duckweed"
(1994), and "Silence: Collected Haiku" (1997). He authored "How
to Haiku, A Student's Guide to Haiku and Related Forms" (2001) and is
co-editor of the journal "American Haibun & Haiga". He is a past
president of the Haiku Society of America. His haiku, senryu, haibun,
collaborative renga, haiga, reviews, translations, and articles have appeared in
haiku journals worldwide. Holding a Ph.D. in English (poetics, critical theory),
Dr. Ross has taught writing at various colleges and universities, and lectured
internationally. He has published in poetics, literary theory, mythology, world
religion, and the arts in the scholarly journals of the U.S.A., the Netherlands,
and Great Britain. Bruce is currently teaching courses in haiku and haibun at
the University of Alberta during 2001-2002.
