Hibiscus
- When Juxtaposition Fails: The Space Between
Greetings,
Hibiscus friends!
new-car
scent
an eagle pair perches
atop the cypress
The
form is good, and the concrete imagery is excellent; but the haiku is not quite
there yet. The thing that keeps it from resonating is an intangible element
related to juxtaposition that is hard to describe and sometimes harder to employ
in a haiku. Sometimes a haiku just hovers -- it is either perfectly fine, or
it's on the cusp between great and just a bit off. I'll try to explain. I hope
you'll bear with me while I repeat things you already know -- I will eventually
tie my comments together and get to the point.
First, let's forget about the eagles for a bit, while we look at these poems by
Anna Tambour (see acknowledgements at end of lesson):
faint
thunder
a snake sloughs its skin
in the creekbed
power blackout
frogs boom
in the billabong
In
each one, as with most effective juxtaposition, the two parts of the haiku are
completely independent of each other. That is, the thunder is an independent
image that on the surface APPEARS to be totally unrelated to the snake in the
creekbed. Neither part of the haiku is dependent on the other part to make sense
or have meaning. "Power blackout" and the rest of the verse are two
elements that are completely independent of each other. Each element makes
perfect sense all by itself, even if pulled away from the other element. This is
true of the two parts of each of those verses.
Now HERE is where the added resonance of those verses is created---in the space
BETWEEN the two parts. The faint thunder is a nice, traditional image, and the
snake sloughing its skin in the creekbed is a great image all by itself -- but
that is about all you can say about them on their own. BUT when those images are
juxtaposed -- placed next to each other -- if the juxtaposition is successful, a
relationship between them will be perceived by the intuitive reader. With a
really good haiku, this relationship will exist on more than one level.
So, what does thunder have to do with a snake in a creekbed? For one thing,
the creekbed is dry, which means it hasn't rained in a long time. But faint
thunder implies rain coming, or at least gives hope of rain. As the snake has a
new skin, if the blessed rain comes, so it will bring new growth. That is one
level of the relationship; there are other levels for the perceptive reader.
A power blackout is a familiar occurrence, but the idea of a blackout by itself
is not extraordinary. The sound of frogs is also a familiar thing and a
classical topic of haiku. Frog voices by themselves may be lovely or funny or
BIG. But unless they are juxtaposed with another element, we have nowhere to
look for a deeper meaning of the voices.
What if the first line of that poem were "Australia." So? Yes,
"billabong" is a word from Australia, and it's good to know that there
are frogs in the billabongs; but we have frogs here, in the creeks and ponds and
puddles too. What is particularly resonant about those billabong frogs (besides
the wonderful alliteration and lovely, round vowel sounds of "boom"
and "billabong"? Well . . . let's imagine ourselves in sudden darkness
. . . and now here come the frog voices, not simply calling or singing, but
booming! in the billabong. What a delicious, shivery mood is created with this
juxtaposition! Imagine that it's a moonless, pitch-black night, and the author
is suddenly without lights in the middle of a good book. Such an inconvenience
and quite startling for a human---but not for the frogs. While the author runs
around looking for candles, bumping into things, throwing out dead flashlight
batteries, those frogs are booming away in their billabong.
Back to the eagles:
new-car
scent
an eagle pair perches
atop the cypress
I
don't get a thing from that juxtaposition. I can imagine a new-car scent, and I
love the image of the eagle pair. But seeing them together makes me say,
"Huh?" The space between the parts is more like a cement wall, for me
anyway.
This, however, allows my gaze to follow Harry Gilli's focus and find the
resonance, because he offers a fillable space between the parts:
hole
in the fog -
an eagle pair perches
atop the cypress
When
put together, the elements become parts of a bigger picture, or parts of a small
"story." The space between the elements, that which is NOT said,
allows the reader to become the author's partner, by filling in the space, to
realize the bigger picture and perhaps gain insight. Readers have to fill in the
space to experience the discovery that goes BEYOND the immediate imagery; and
when they do, they get their own "Aha!"
It is not enough to simply juxtapose two seemingly unrelated images. When we've
written the main part of a haiku, we have to choose the other part well, or the
reader's response may reflect his or her puzzlement: "Huh?" The two
parts of a successful haiku are more meaningful when read as a whole than either
of the parts alone. Although the parts are independent and make sense on their
own, when juxtaposed in a haiku, they work together to bring insight, discovery,
or a sense of completion to the reader.
Happy spring!
Ferris (April 2002)
Acknowledgements:
Anna Tambour, "power blackout" The Heron's Nest III: 3; "faint
thunder" The Heron's Nest III: 5
Ferris Gilli, "hole in the fog" Haiku Light, 1999
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