Susumu Takiguchi, Editor
Nobody likes to be labelled or
stereo-typed and yet that is what we often do. Whenever the name of Cor van
den Heuvel is mentioned, most people would think of "the" anthology.
This is of course THE HAIKU
ANTHOLOGY - Haiku and Senryu in English, first published by
Doubleday in 1974 and its third edition, revised and expanded, which came
out in 1999 from W. W. Norton (paperback in 2000). van den
Heuvel is its editor and this anthology has become his
"trademark", as well as being widely regarded as a definitive
collection of American and Canadian haiku. The book is becoming an essential
reference book of haiku lovers in the world. However, van den Heuvel would
like to be known first and foremost as a poet, especially a haijin.
Very recently, a good news was
conveyed to van den Heuvel, which could give him another label but which he
could hardly complain about. The Ehime Culture Foundation announced in May 2002
that van den Heuvel was the co-recipient of the Masaoka Shiki International
Haiku Prize of Yen One million (approximately US$ 7, 500) for
2002 shared with Satya Bhushan Verma (India). It would be unthinkable that
the Foundation's selection committee did not take van den Heuvel's
own haiku poems into consideration in making this decision.
In late 1950s, van den
Heuvel was a reporter, after his three years in the United States Air Force
and graduating from the University of New Hampshire in 1957. It was during these
days that he began to try his hand at writing poems. Let us hear him talk about
a decisive moment:
One day, I picked up a
copy of the Evergreen Review featuring poems and prose of the "San
Francisco Renaissance." I was so impressed by the works of such writers as
Gary Snyder, Robert Duncan, Jack Spicer, and Jack Kerouac that I decided to
go west to see and hear this phenomenon for myself.
So, van
den Heuvel went to San Francisco in the spring
of 1958. He was to live for the next seven months in a small residential
hotel, just around the corner from Grant Avenue, which leads through Chinatown
into North Beach, the poetry center of the city. Soon, he was invited to attend
the regular poets' gatherings presided over by Robert Duncan and Jack Spicer,
then held in George Stanley's house on Telegraph Hill.
It was at one of these meetings
that he had his first encounter with haiku. Gary Snyder, just back from his
first stay in Japan, uttered the word haiku, and that became
the trigger point of van den Heuvel's odyssey of haiku literature.
Among my own favourite haiku by
him, let me share some with you:
in the mirrors on her dress
little pieces of my
self
The late Dame Iris Murdoch was a
friend of mine. When alive, she kept encouraging me to write a book on haiku,
which she said she would love to read. I have written to van den
Heuvel, saying that this haiku reminds me of Iris Murdoch and could well
have appeared in one of her novels.
end of the line
the conductor starts turning
the seats around
His is certainly not the kind of
haiku which have been written in Japan. It's van den Heuvel's haiku full stop.
However, I also wish to pay tribute to America that has brought forth van den
Heuvel, quite apart from his European ancestors.
the shadow in the folded
napkin
Much ink has been consumed to
comment on this famous one-line haiku. There are countless number of haiku about
"shadow(s)" but this one is one of the most striking. As an artist, I
use cloths for my still life paintings, much like Cezanne did, and
therefore have a special interest in observing everything about them: spread,
folded or kinked. I seek some dynamic or sculptural energy in them but here
it seems that van den Heuvel's folded napkin is a quiet, serene and static
entity, accentuated by the shadow not "of" but "in" it. In
terms of form, this is not a one-liner where three lines are folded into one. It
is more akin to Santoka or Hosai's poems. Considering all these points, it
is intriguing to know how his haiku has developed over time.
Cor van den Heuvel was born in
Biddeford, Maine, in 1931 and grew up in Maine and New Hampshire. Now
passed the age of koki (seventy years old, which is
called thus as it was an age rarely attained in ancient times), his
career in haiku has spanned nearly forty-five years. Apart from writing haiku,
has he developed his haiku theory? What are the true reasons in the final
analysis for having been "obsessed" with haiku for so long? In
his words:
The magic of haiku defies
analysis. In its very simplicity lies its greatest mystery: the mystery of clear
water and blue sky, of a petal's tint and a bird's song, of sunlight and
shadows.
Just a glimpse at his bio amazes
one at how extensive Cor van Heuvel's activities have been as an
architect of the development of haiku in North America. He has published eight
chapbooks of haiku, the first in 1961. His haiku and related works have appeared
in books and magazines in North and South America, Europe, Japan, and Australia.
He has talked about haiku on the Charlie Rose Show and many other American and
Japanese television programs. He has written about haiku for The New York Times
Book Review, Mainichi Shimbun, and Newsweek.
He is revered by many. Hiroaki
Sato, author of One Hundred Frogs: From Renga to Haiku to English and numerous
other books on haiku, in his column in the Japan Times called van den Heuvel a
"modern haiku master". The Haiku Society of America (HSA), besides
commending The Haiku Anthology, has given the poet three Merit Book Awards for
his own haiku. The World Haiku Club hailed him in the year 2000 as a great
achiever in helping the development of world haiku by conferring a
World Haiku Achievements Award at the World Haiku Festival 2000, held in
London and Oxford in August of that year. The announcement of his receiving
the award states:
Little needs to be said in praise of this
exceptional individual and his invaluable contribution to the dissemination and
understanding of haiku through his excellent editorship of The Haiku Anthology -
Haiku and Senryu in English, W. W. Norton & Company, New York, London,
Expanded Edition, 1999. The Anthology is now a standard reading, excellent
textbook and a Haiku bible.
van den Heuvel has also been a good leader and organiser.
A past president of the Haiku Society of America (HSA), he headed the panel of
judges for the 1987-88 Japan Air Lines English Haiku Contest -- which attracted
more than 40,000 entries -- and attended the Tokyo press conference to announce
the winners. In 1990, he was the United States representative to the
International Haiku Symposium in Matsuyama. In 2000 he was named Honorary
Curator of the American Haiku Archives at the State Library in Sacramento,
California.
How did van den
Heuvel acquire the knowledge and experience of haiku? And how was
his haiku career formed? In fact, he has not stopped learning about the
genre even now -- an eternal student! His study of haiku began after
encountering it in 1958 by first reading translations of the Japanese
haiku masters in books by R. H. Blyth, Harold G. Henderson, and Kenneth Yasuda.
By early 1959, he was back in New England from his stay in San
Francisco, writing his own haiku in a small cottage in Wells Beach, Maine.
That summer, he got a job reading his haiku, and translations of Japanese haiku
at the Cafe Zen in nearby Ogunquit. In the fall, he moved to Boston where he
gave readings of haiku and other poetry in "beat" coffee houses. He
was the "house poet" at the Salamander and later at the Alhambra,
where he read with a jazz trio.
The following summer
(1960), he read at nights in a bar in Provincetown, Massachusetts, while
working days on a fishing trawler. In the winter of 1960/61, he became part of
the poetry-reading scene -- along with such poets as Robert Kelly, Jackson Mac
Low and Diane Wakoski -- at the Tenth Street Coffee House in New York City, a
precursor of the now well-known Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church. He began
printing his haiku on a small handpress and carried copies of his first
chapbook, Sun in Skull, on a cross-country hitching and hiking trip from
Maine to Seattle that he took in the summer of 1961, selling them for a dollar
each or exchanging them for food. On the way, he hiked for a week in Glacier
National Park. While living in Seattle for several months, he went backpacking
in the Olympic Rain Forest.
For the rest of the sixties, van
den Heuvel lived in New York City continuing to write and publish his poetry
books under the Chant Press imprint, unaware of the growing number of other
poets writing haiku. He married, had a son, and divorced. While working at
Newsweek, in the editorial makeup department where the pages are composed for
printing, he went to night school at New York University, receiving an M.A. in
English Literature in 1968. What an industrious man he has been! (He would
work at Newsweek for more than 25 years.)
In 1971 van den Heuvel joined the
Haiku Society of America, and became friends with William J. Higginson, Anita
Virgil, Alan Pizzarelli and others in the group. He also met Harold G.
Henderson, whose Introduction to Haiku helped inspire the English-language haiku
movement. In 1972, van den Heuvel began assembling The Haiku Anthology,
which he dedicated to Henderson and R. H. Blyth on its publication in 1974.
While van den Heuvel was president
of the HSA in 1978, the society began publishing its magazine, Frogpond.
The same year, he and Professor Kazuo Sato, of the Museum of Haiku Literature in
Tokyo, worked with others to bring haiku poet Sumio Mori and critic Kenkichi
Yamamoto from Japan to speak in New York City. The HSA co-sponsored the event
with the Japan Society and Japan Air Lines. It may have been the first time such
important figures in Japanese haiku spoke publicly about haiku in the United
States. Considering the poor communications and exchange of people between Japan
and the rest of the world, this should be given a special praise as an early
effort to rectify the situation.
In 1982 van den Heuvel married
Leonia Leigh Larrecq, with whom he continues to live in New York City. He is
presently putting together a volume of his collected haiku, The
Ticket-Taker's Shadow, for publication. A book of his haibun, A Boy's
Seasons, which was serialized in Modern Haiku, is scheduled to be
published by Press Here (Foster City, California) in late 2002. He never stops.
* * *
Haiku by
Cor van den Heuvel, selected by himself
|
SAILING
|
sailing the Maine coast
from a lawn among the pines
a flag snaps in the wind |
|
| |
summer breeze
a ladder leans against
the half-painted house |
hazy heat-
at the small airfield
the windsock hangs limp |
|
| |
the sound of hoofbeats
fades a butterfly crosses
the bridle path |
sunset
a last bit of pink
on the watermelon rind |
|
| |
Indian summer
the wet sidewalk in front
of the open firehouse |
behind the curtain
the opera star carries her roses
through a dark forest |
|
| |
all my reflections
leaving the rest room
the face to face mirrors |
the carp in the tank
swim slowly back and forth
an empty fortune-cookie |
|
| |
rainy day a closed gas station |
a drop of water
floats by the canoe
on a curled leaf |
|
| |
in the pick-up
under the pines
pine needles |
fallen leaves
the Irish setter points to
a stand of staghorn sumac |
|
| |
fallen leaves
the Irish setter points to
a stand of staghorn sumac |
the rusted paperclip
has stained my old poem
wind in the eaves |
|
| |
fluffing
my own pillow
autumn rain |
neon puddles
in front of the waterfront bar
sound of a blues piano |
|
| |
watching the snowfall
from the bathroom window
the warm towels |
deep snow
one light
in the amusement park |
|
| |
on the bathroom hamper
morning sunlight fills the sails
of a toy boat |
in a wet board
under the cemetery faucet
the blossoming cherry tree |
|
| |
spring breeze
a cakebox sails across
the parking-lot puddle |
far off
a few gulls land in the marsh
summer afternoon |
|
| |
the toy boat sets out
a light breeze flutters
the slack sails
|
|
evening chill-
from a tidepool, water winds
to the sea
|
|
| |
small town morning
the cool shadows along
a back street
|
the toy boat sails
slowly into a sunlit cove
tiny fish pass below |
|
| |
summer night
the old gambler fondles
his cards |
a hallway
in the small resort hotel
the morning sea |
|
| |
after the shower
the cool wood of the table
under the pines |
at the trail's end
i thank my hiking stick and
leave it against a tree |
|
| |
sunset
the toy sailboat sails
along a far shore |
|
All haiku in "Sailing" Copyright © 2002 by Cor van den Heuvel
|
CURBSTONES
a haibun
Cor van den Heuvel
A cool warm March wind blows off
the East River and along a side street near New York City's South Street
Seaport. The morning sun is coming out again after a spell of grayness. The
light flows up the street, shines on the curbstone at my feet, flickers faint
shadows along its irregular surface, and suddenly awakens within me the
realization that I am once again in love.
Each spring I fall in love with
granite curbstones. These natural looking rough-cut stones with their slightly
rippled surfaces, their precise and monolithic solidities lining and defining a
street from here to infinity, have for me the mysterious presence of mountains,
the strange, halted stillness of great glacial deposits: at once stopped and
journeying-waiting millenniums, yet instantaneously moving through space with
their star, our star.
Some granite curbstones have
smooth tops-not polished, but simply flat as if planed. These have an artificial
look and sunlight is washed out on them. On the more common, rough-hewn
curbstone the light is varied and soaks the stone with its magic, playing with
shadows and intensities. On rainy days small pools form here and there along its
top while the gutter stream flows below. The stone is closer to nature-wild and
alive.
waterfront bar
the cobblestones glow
in the night rain
I grew up among the granite
landscapes and seascapes of Maine and New Hampshire. From the mountains of New
Hampshire and from rocky, mist-shrouded islands off the Maine coast have come
the foundation stones of many of our towns and cities-for buildings and bridges,
for statues and memorials, for cobblestones and curbstones. Still seen on little
streets near the Boston and New York waterfronts are granite cobblestones many
of which were quarried from Maine islands. There is a stillness about them on
chilly, rainy days in spring or autumn that suggests such origins. Wet and
streaming like the rocky islands they were carved from, they call up a vision of
the Atlantic splashing up against lonely shores, the sun coming out to shine on
great, wet rocks gleaming amidst the desolate reaches of the rolling sea. For a
hundred or more years these cobblestones have been dusted and smeared with the
grime of the city and washed again and again with sunlight and rain. Worn smooth
like pebbles on a shore, they still have an unevenness that endears them to me.
Curbstones, with much of their
mass hidden in the earth below the pavement, rise above the street and show the
way. Though still beneath our feet, they can be guideposts to where and how we
direct our steps. Witnessing with a calm impassivity our rushing about from here
to there, they also stand as monuments to the peace and wisdom that come from
being still.
fallen leaves
the wind uncovers
a granite curbstone
When I was a boy, curbstones were
just right for sitting on, for looking at the passing of people, cars, and the
passing of the day itself, or for just gazing off into space. On rainy days I
would use them as banks from which to launch popsicle-stick ships into the
streams that flowed along the gutters. Adventure-bound, these boats often
disappeared between the iron bars of a drain, riding upon great waterfalling
waves into the darkness, to continue their voyages beneath the earth.
After the run-off of spring rain,
streaks of sandy dirt were often left behind in the gutters. Made up mostly of
sand spread on the streets during the winter, these deposits sometimes took the
wavy, rippled shape of the waters that had washed them into the gutter and that
had flowed over and around them. As I would sit dreaming on a curbstone it was
pleasant to shuffle my sneakered feet in this sand, making little designs with
it and feeling its softness against the hardness of the pavement. Putting my
hands down by my sides I could also feel the curbstone-the cool, smooth
roughness, the solid reality of the world holding me. In the afternoon I would
watch the stone's shadow move slowly from the curb's edge into the street along
with my own. The sun-warmed sand would slowly cool in the shade and I would
realize it was time to go home . . . before going, I pick up a handful of sand
and hold it in the fading sunlight, then let it run through my fingers back into
the shadows.
I am still drawn to granite
curbstones, and in all seasons of the year-in the heat of the summer, in the
coolness of the autumn rain, or in the cold winds of winter-but I am always
surprised by the love I feel for them on the first sunny day in spring.
morning sunlight
under the Brooklyn Bridge
a curbstone shadow
"Curbstones" Copyright
© 1992 by Cor van den Heuvel
sun in
skull, Chant Press, New York City, 1961 (haiku).
a bag of marbles (3 jazz chants),
Chant Press, 1962.
the window-washer's pail, Chant
Press, 1963 (haiku).
EO7, Chant Press, 1964 (haiku
sequence).
BANG! you're dead., Chant Press, 1966
(poems).
water in a stone depression, Chant
Press, 1969 (haiku).
dark, Chant Press, 1982 (haiku).
PUDDLES, Chant Press, 1990 (haibun).
The Geese Have Gone, King's Road
Press, Pointe Claire, Quebec, 1992 (haiku).
Play Ball, Red Moon Press,
Winchester, Virginia, 1999 (haiku).
.........As
Editor:
The Haiku Anthology, Doubleday
Anchor, New York City, 1974; Simon & Schuster, New York City, 1986; W. W.
Norton, New York City, 1999.
An Anthology of Haiku by People of the United States
and Canada, co-editor with several others, Japan Air Lines, New
York, 1988.
A Haiku Path, co-editor with several
others, The Haiku Society of America, 1994.
Wedge of Light, co-editor with Tom
Lynch and Michael Dylan Welch, Press Here, Foster City, California, 1999
(haibun).
Past Time, co-editor with Jim Kacian,
Red Moon Press, Winchester, Virginia, 1999 (haiku).
|
Back
| Next |
