When the World Haiku Club
activated its first mailing list, Haikuforum, in December 1999, it quickly
became a bustling centre for learning about haiku and related forms of poetry.
Within two months, a lively interest in the renku form led to the first onlist
WHC renku seminar led by member, Paul MacNeil. Nine essay-lessons were
interspersed with discussion, workshop-style participation and the exercise of
building two traditional renku. Those members who did not actively take part in
writing watched and learned from the sidelines, often participating in
discussion.
The first and second installments
of the seminar lessons were published in World Haiku Review, Volume 2, Issue 1
March 2002, including a renku by Paul MacNeil and Ferris Gilli, "The
Fox Circles" (click to read poem below). Also in that
issue were the 8th and 9th installments: guest lectures by Ferris Gilli, "English
Grammar: Variety in Renku" (WHCessays), and Christopher Herold, "The
Alchemy of Live Renku" (Guest Speaker's Corner). We will be presenting
the complete series of lesson-essays including the renku composed during the
seminar in upcoming issues of World Haiku Review. Onward ho!
WHC Renku Seminar
Haikuforum Seminar on "Traditional" Renku
in English
Session 3: A Fox Circles, writing a shisan renku
Paul
MacNeil
Florida, US
Imagine this situation: You are seated at a table with a chess board and a box
of chess pieces. A man comes by and says, "Oh, chess -- can I play a game
with you?" Assenting, you start to put pieces on the board, but your new
companion has put his on the wrong squares, in the wrong order. You straighten
out that his pawns indeed go in the front row and switch the king and queen. You
offer him the first move, he lifts a bishop and places it in the center of the
board.
Or this at a duplicate bridge table: The game's director has matched you with
another partnerless player for the session. You are seated at the first table
and play begins. Your opponents ask what system you play -- you both reply,
"Just standard bridge." You then proceed to win the evening [hey, I
can dream can't I? -- it's my story].
In the first case, a game cannot
be played. One player knows no rules. In the second, two strangers can compete
because they do know a common tradition of the game. In these belabored bits of
fiction, lies a lesson about renku. Given a common understanding, a chess game
can happen with an infinite variety of plays; so too with bridge -- and renku.
In the first "installment", I made more than a dozen short declarative
sentences, one after the other. One was that renku is a game. It is. The next
was that renku is an art form. It can be. The game of linking a pair of verses
is over 1,000 years old in Japan. Basho and others of his time began to elevate
haikai no renga and its first verse hokku (haiku) to the levels of literature.
In my own theory of aesthetics, this is or can be Art, capital "A." It
is a game, but it generates words, spoken and written. A series of haiku-like
stanzas are composed by individuals mindful of their obeisance to each other and
tradition. Individual verses can be and are prized for originality and/or
brilliance. But this is a very non-western concept. There is no competition, no
"See me! I'm so clever! Top that!" mentality. The group, the resulting
Art, the form, are each to the point. The sharing of minds and a goal are
paramount. Renku links are channeled through the intellect, unlike haiku, but
arise in the same haiku-mind.
When it is my turn to provide the next stanza, I will ask myself what this renku
needs (attention to both rules and the flow of the work), and I will
simultaneously react to the stimulus of the preceding verse. It is the preceding
verse which is the universe for the creativity of the link and the subject of
the my next verse. Many, and I will posit to you that most, of the best renku
verses are haiku-like -- from personal experience of man and nature. Certainly
fiction is written and haiku-like truth is tailored to fit the renku's group
needs as well as the rules, but the better efforts can be an amalgam of
intellection and emotion.
Alexis Rotella has editorialized for better, more serious artistic effort in
English-language renku at the website:
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Olympus/6647/litter.html
A short excerpt from the Essay:
When we write haiku (or tanka
or any other form of poetry), we usually approach it with some degree of
reverence toward the form itself. In renga, however, we often lose our focus and
produce a bunch of simplistic meanderings that, if published, is a big waste of
paper (and in the long run, trees). -ar
Two others of my declarative
sentences were that renku is not anarchic linking, and renku is not serial
haiku.
Like the rules of chess or bridge, a renku form is known or adopted in advance.
Real adepts (most in the West including me, are not such) might be able to meet
and simply proceed with no agreement, no rotation of players. But it should be
noted that Basho brought such a rotation to sessions that he mastered (and was
paid for). Renku can be written with a master with full approval, dictating the
type of verse needed next and imposing his/her will on the session. Renku can be
anarchy, each player doing his or her own thing as may happen on Internet lists,
or renku can be run as a democracy. I have written in a mastered session, played
with anarchists, and most often been a democrat. Each verse is approved by each
partner before progress is made to the next. This is how Ferris Gilli and I
wrote "A Fox Circles" that I shared with you in the last installment.
She and I helped each other at each step.
I invited Ferris to play after Thanksgiving (USA holiday) and to try to finish
before the busyness of Christmas would intervene. We agreed to write the
shortest of renku forms. Note: Rengay is a form of 6 haiku united by a common
theme. Even though a rengay uses two- and three-line haiku they are still haiku,
able to stand alone without the context of the whole. The shisan renku is 12
stanzas. The tradition from Japan that we have been taught is what guided Ferris
and me. Shisan is quite different from kasen (36) that Basho taught and wrote.
We'll come to kasen later in the seminar.
In this shisan method there are the usual alternations of three and two lines.
Easy to remember: an odd number is always three lines. This form will have six
"season" verses and six "no-season." It will have love, but
only mentioned in two sequential verses. As is usual in all renku, it starts in
the season the writers are in when they get together. Unlike other renku forms,
the shisan goes once through the seasons and ends in natural order. Our autumn,
then, ended in summer. Other renku forms always end in spring (more later). The
elements of "season" that have come to be of most interest in the
Japanese tradition are autumn and spring. These are the seasons of change, of
birth and death. Each is represented in most kasen by more verses than winter or
summer. In shisan, there are two spring, two autumn, and one each for winter and
summer. As previously mentioned, other traditional symbols for Japanese poetic
tradition are the moon and the blossom symbolizing the promise of spring
(usually in Japanese tradition the flowering of cherry or plum). A shisan has
one mention of a blossom and one of the moon (traditional kasen have two and
three, respectively).
So, Ferris and I started in autumn. Before beginning we knew several things. The
second verse would, by rule, also be autumn. And, we knew the last, #12, would
be the single summer stanza. That is all that was precisely known about the
verses. We had to get to a winter verse and two of spring sometime in #'s 3
through 11. We needed a moon verse in one of the season verses, and we needed a
flower verse in one of the season verses. There should be six verses of seasons
and six that are no-season. And -- ahhh, love too, sigh.
I know I said I'd not footnote, but some of these definitions and principles of
shisan are derived from a lecture and a shisan-writing workshop I participated
in at HNA '99 in Chicago. Both lecture and writing were presided over by yet
another master in English, William J. Higginson, and by professor Tadashi Kondo.
Dr. Kondo, a master in both languages, is a visiting professor at Harvard in
these very topics.
Before Ferris and I started, I worked out a rotation of two writers for the
shisan length, 12. The basic pattern of the hokku in three lines, followed by
alternation of two and three, ending with two had to be maintained. With only
two players, just taking turns will give all the three-liners to the first
player "A." So, some switching off is needed to even it out and make
it both fun and fair. Please see the website I have already praised to you by
Jane Reichhold, another master in English writing. She has worked out kasen
forms for two players -- and has the instances where a player goes twice in
succession to get off the odd or even pattern.
In the shisan, A Fox Circles [see the completed renku below], with Ferris
as "A," we had the pattern:
A, B, A, A, B, A, B, A, B, B, A,
B.
We each switched, or
"twisted," once. The whole shisan worked out this way:
1.) hokku, autumn
2.) autumn
3.) winter
4.) no season
5.) no season, love
6.) no season, love
7.) no season
8.) spring, blossom
9.) spring, moon
10.) no season
11.) no season
12.) summer
But as I have already said, what
would happen next with verses three through 11 was decided one at a time by the
player whose turn it was. We knew we had to get it all in, but not just when. A
lot of uncertainty and creativity was possible.
Ferris set the hokku, a lovely haiku in three lines. The other verses are not
written as haiku, but are supposed to accentuate the flow of the work. Master
Basho taught that a haiku is "cut" and has an actual kireji, or in
some cases an understood kireji. After the hokku, the verses of renku are not
cut; in Japanese there is no sound beat(s) of any one of the 18 classic kireji.
So too in English. I have said already that these renku verses are haiku-like
but are not cut and are not free-standing out of the context of the renku.
yellow leaves--
the fox circles
a sunlit field
.................- fg
This hokku has images of autumn;
an interplay of color and action. Past the concreteness of the hokku, can also
be read a faint hint at another level. The fox is circling, perhaps preparing to
do something. The leaves are falling, perhaps as our words do in renku -- in the
renku we are embarking on, preparing to do. I thought of these things as I read
it. She may not have -- Ferris can chime in with her own ideas or opinion. In
shisan there is no notion of the "pages" of a kasen (Jane, again, has
a great section on the kasen's sections likened to a dinner party -- a
beginning, middle and end). The shisan is so brief it just progresses. My second
verse takes the action indoors, to humanity (as opposed to the hokku's
pure nature) expressed in the third person:
she tightens sterile lids
on jelly jars
....................... - pwm
Canning it is called, even though
glass jars are used. An autumn activity, preserving the harvest. The subject is SHIFTED
away from the preceding verse. It is LINKED to the previous in one
obvious way, the turning of both the fox and the lid on the jar, and perhaps in
a more subtle way to the colors of the sunlit field and fox, and to the feeling
of the bright jam or jelly colors in the clear jars as the kitchen light or
sunny window light hits it. This last, while possible to "see" is not
necessary for a reader -- I practice that a reader or partner has to at least
have a chance to find the link. And, of course either a master or, in the
democratic method, the partners will approve the linking method as being to
their taste before going on.
Next, for the 3rd verse, Ferris chose to go right to winter, and back outdoors
and to all-nature. She introduces the weather. Did you find the link when you
read [the renku]?
flurry by flurry
the hollow stump
fills with snow
.......................
- fg
It is the filling of the jars and
the stump. I note that they are each roughly round things, too. A writer may
create a link or several, and a partner may find others, so may a reader. This
is a part of the delight.
Ferris next went to a non-seasonal
verse, knowing that we needed six of them and had none so far.
from each mesa
the rhythm of Hopi chants
....................... - fg
Still outdoors, she adds the
element of people; the Hopi are a tribe of Native Americans in the SW of the
USA. And, she has added an element of sound. This is variety -- and variety is
to be prized. To link and shift. Variety, linking and shifting are essences of
the play. Did you find the link she used? The chants may be filling the air, the
sound, but mostly I found the rhythm of the flurries coming and coming again led
to the rhythm of the chanting. See too, how the two-liners have slightly less
information than the three's. Perhaps one element or action less. The two liners
often flow the fastest to the new subject, the new direction. Note how right at
this point we are hearing chants across perhaps a desert -- it may be night, we
can see the land from a great distance -- the mesas in panorama. How far we have
come from a kitchen just two verses back! A contemporary Japanese master,
Shinku Fukuda (in Western name order) said at the Yuki Teikei Renku website I
suggested to you:
http://www.adianta.com/poetry/r980107_001_c14.html
Shift from two before is the
golden rule of renku. Do not forget!!!
This shisan was not done
perfectly, I make no claim of that, especially my verses (pace Ferris). In #5 I
return to a female in the third person, but at least it is a profession
"barmaid" and not the general "she."
muscles ripple
the leopard spots
of a barmaid's dress
....................... - pwm
A barmaid is coming and going
bringing drinks, clearing. It is I who now start the "love" verses. A
sexual verse in this case. The poet leers (and yes I experienced it at an
airport lounge waiting for an arriving flight, ha!). The verse seems to be
indoors, and the linkage is from the flavor or as the Japanese say the
"scent" of the scene. The primitive to animal-ness and the muscles.
Such a link continues the mood from one verse to the next. There may or may not
be music at the bar -- the Hopi may be dancing -- all indefinite. Note now, how
different the first 5 verses are grammatically, too. One has no verb, they all
begin with different parts of speech. This is all intentional. Variety in all
things. Variety is king.
In #6 Ferris pairs the love verse
as she must. In all types of renku, it is usual that no love verse is a single.
In shisan, two in a row are standard -- in kasen it may be two to four. And as
we shall see in kasen, love may be brought up twice in groups of two to four
verses.
nothing between us now
but the sheen of marbled silk
....................... - fg
Ferris's love stanza is another
"hot" verse. It links through clothing, but more subtly, as leering
from afar becomes close experience, and perhaps the rippling of either the silk
or the unmentioned bodies or the unmentioned verbs imaginable in her verse. This
is a long way from the penultimate verse of Hopi chants across a desert night.
Next session, I'll finish A Fox Circles and I hope to reply to any
questions or controversies I've raised so far.
- Paul (MacNeil)
Session 3: Tue Feb 8, 2000
Originally posted to WHChaikuforum as the third essay-lesson in the Haikuforum
Seminar on "Traditional Renku in English".
The Fox Circles
an autumn shisan renku
by Ferris Gilli and Paul MacNeil
via internet, December 1 -- 16, 1999
rev. Jan/'00
yellow leaves--
the fox circles
a sunlit field
.................- fg
she tightens sterile lids
on jelly jars
.................- pwm
flurry by flurry
the hollow stump
fills with snow
.................- fg
from each mesa
the rhythm of Hopi chants
.................- fg
muscles ripple
the leopard spots
of a barmaid's dress
.................- pwm
nothing between us now
but the sheen of marbled silk
.................- fg
sharp rocks
stick out of the trough
of a wave
.................- pwm
blackberry blooms
thicker than the thorns
.................- fg
spring mist rises
above the porch rail
with the moon
.................- pwm
incense follows a priest
down the aisle
.................- pwm
the machete's glint
hacking a narrow path
for the film crew
.................- fg
different drones
of Saturday lawnmowers
.................- pwm
Cut haiku/Kiriji
A question was posed about the following the term cut verse or kiriji...
Answer:
...Let me circle 'round it a bit.
For the works of Bashô, and a great deal of Japanese haiku, a cut haiku
is haiku.
It is part of the defining form and philosophy of what is haiku (and, what is
not). Bashô taught that usually a cutting word (in Japanese the kireji sometimes
translated as caesura) will be needed to separate the parts of the haiku
(Bashô referred to hokku). He pointed out that in a minority of
occasions a haiku is cut by the grammar or the wording and a cutting word isn't
needed. An even smaller fraction of verses are not cut even when a cutting sound
was used. In these cases, I would conclude that such verses were straight and
probably simple sentences that lacked the "things" or parts that a
kireji both separated AND joined.
I put it to you that it is in the space between, that space created by the break
or cut, that haiku are found.
In discussing renku, I was taking pains to indicate what is not haiku. The inner
verses of this linked style are mostly not haiku, i.e. they are not cut. The
hokku (first verse), by tradition, is.
Broaching discussions of: What is a haiku? What are the definitions of haiku? is
beyond the scope here and is part, indeed, of what Susumu-san is doing with us
all here at the haikuforum. That, and, I'm definitely not wearing enough armor!
Ha!
I would add this:
Bashô's pupil Kyoriku, writing four years after his master's death, quotes him
directly:
Ultimately, you should think of
the hokku as something that combines. Those who are good at combining or
bringing together two topics are superior poets.
I refer you to the essays and
discussions as below. They are all found at Mark Alan Osterhaus's Haiku
Index which I showed in the first installment (1 Feb) of the Seminar.
See also other definitions there
by the Russian haijin, Alexei Andreyev, and the American, Paul David Mena -- and
many others -- for definitions of haiku and indeed discussion of the cut
and the structure of haiku.
And do read:
HOW-TO HAIKU
Another Definition of Haiku - Jane Reichhold
Fragment and Phrase Theory -Jane Reichhold
John Barlow, editor of the British Journal, Snapshots, points out ...
Japanese haiku are partly
defined by their fragmentary nature, usually being composed of two parts of
varying length. These two parts have distinct images which when juxtaposed
create an emotional response from the reader. Many English language haiku are
composed similarly, revolving around two images which often sharply contrast or
complement each other. These two images are divided by a more or less natural
caesura, usually at the end of the first or second line.
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