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Requiem
for a Poet - Robert Gibson |
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Robert
Gibson (1923-2003)
No beginning, no end
DW Bender
Florida, USA |
waning moon
a dream i should have had
when i was young
Robert
Gibson, USA
Haiku of Merit (in tribute)
The First Hoshino Takashi Award 2003
Robert (Bob)
Gibson, a fine haiku poet and member of WHC passed away of a heart attack in the
month of September this year at his home in Centralia, Washington.
In a moving onlist
tribute, Susumu Takiguchi, WHC's Chairman ranked his friend as "one of the
best haiku poets the West has ever produced". He added, "Robert was an
eminent scholar as well as a poet and had a wry sense of humour as well as
incredible closeness once he accept one as his friend. He will be sorely
missed".
smoky inuit fire
"a man can do anything
if he knows the way"
Robert Gibson
[Posted to WHChaikuforum
Tue Apr 29, 2003, 12:09 pm]
Born in 1923, on
his great-grandfather's farm near Lamar, Missouri, USA Bob would experience a
nomadic and unusually diverse life over the course of his 80 years. Due to his
father's job with the Treasury Department, his family moved yearly. His
grandfather disliked the idea of his grandson growing up in large cities, and so
arranged that Robert would spend his summers and some winters on an Ojibwa
Indian reservation in Northwest Minnesota. At Lake Winnibogoshish, he learned to
speak in the Ojibwa (Chippewa) language and live as an adopted member of that
Native American tribe, until in 1935. Bob sometimes talked onlist about his
life. Concerning those formative years, he once told us that although he was not
born an Ojibwa, he came to think of himself as Ojibwa and of his Ojibwa mother
as his real mother.
On the same onlist thread which
concerned translation, he mentioned:
Sometimes I talk to myself in
Ojibwa and cannot translate my own thoughts into Indo-European.
Bob's family moved
to Utah, where he graduated from high school. He eventually joined the Army Air
Corps and served as a pilot for four years during World War II. He told us that,
during this time, he kept his Ojibwa mother's "medicine bundle" under
his shirt. After the war, he traveled to the mountains of Nepal and studied Judo
in Japan for two years, earning the Nindan rank. He would later teach Japanese
Judo and Juditso. Following his university studies where he earned his degrees
in anthropology, he returned to Japan for two years, studying Zen Buddhism in
Kyoto. His work in the study of human behavior for the World Health Organization
took him to North Africa and Central America. And his keen skills as a
photographer put him in charge of photography for the Polaris Missile Project.
In San Francisco, he earned his M.A. in Clinical Psychology, afterward teaching
on the college level for a few years. His Ph.D. was earned in Boulder, Colorado.
Each summer for 28 years, he carried out anthropological research in British
Columbia with the Babine Carrier Indians. Upon retirement, Bob continued with
his black and white photography and his poetry. In addition to haiku,
Robert wrote tanka on love, war and death and other short poems.
The World Haiku
Club celebrated his excellence as a haiku poet in the
World Haiku Review's inaugural issue, May 2001, with the premier feature of:
"This Is Your Haiku Life" by Susumu Takigiuchi, who intimated to us
that Bob had been attracted to haiku by its simplicity, and the strength of its
power through implication. We have reprinted this article in this issue for our
requiem tribute to him.
Also in
2001, for HNA's Haiku and Beyond, Composer
Richard St. Clair conducted a contemporary ensemble featuring his own
compositions inspired by haiku from Robert Gibson's book, Children of the
Sparrow. The musical setting took place at Boston Conservatory.
An active
participant on WHChaikuforum, his sense of humor, friendliness and maturity
helped to make the atmosphere one of true community. Bob often expressed his
personal views on haiku, and while he wrote haiku from a traditionalist
perspective, he strongly eschewed haiku taboos, those conventions which have
become unspoken and sometimes overly-constrictive "rules". During a
lengthy forum discussion on taboo in haiku, he expressed a concern about the
potential and existent danger of Western editors in creating what he coined an
"American Haiku Machine" which "grinds out the standardized
manufactured haiku" which "destroy an authentic experience."
After his post had roused the members attention, even some alarm, Bob posted a
two-part onlist essay to express his views on the subject called Haiku machines
and haiku taboos which appears in this issue's essay feature of "Karakuchi-ronso"
Bob was a
man of integrity and sincerity who applied his values and principals
to his work. On the WHChaikuforum, a
discussion on television and other secondary sources for haiku and senryu had
ensued. While he felt that poets
could certainly write from inspiration such as photos, television and news
reports, the source should be indicated in the haiku itself, or in an
accompanying footnote. And he was a truly genuine person, himself. In one of his
first posts to the list, speaking of the human ego vs. human animal:
Be who you is,
'cause if you are who you ain't then you ain't who you is!
There are some
proponents, often practitioners of a personal or Zen Buddhist derived school of
haiku-thought, who feel that the author's presence— "self" or
"ego"— especially through personal pronouns, should not
"interfere" in a haiku poem. In the same line of thought, some
consider haiku to be spontaneous "as is" poems which shouldn't be
edited by its author, polished or changed in any way after it appears in the
written word. In contrast, Bob, a long-time Zen Buddhist, often composed haiku
in the first person, at times making abstract propositions or judgmental
observations within a concrete setting, revealing the author in his haiku, such
as in the phrase, "always just so", the first line of his successful
one-subject haiku awarded Honorable Mention in the Temple Suruga-Baika Literary
Festival:
always just so
the shadow
of the rising hawk
All without ado or
fuss, but with depth of observation and response to the world around and within
him. Bob would post various trial versions of some of his haiku-in-progress,
crafting his words to get the written version of his experience
"right".
Not realizing the
imminence of Robert's passing, several list members at WHChaikuforum had begun
writing a series of death haiku and tanka in the autumn of the year, perhaps
issuing from personal circumstances and recent losses in the haiku community
among friends and families. Among those was a haiku Bob wrote in dedication to
his adored, 14 year old blind pet skunk, aka-chan (found as a baby on the beach
near his home), which died in August, just a few weeks before his own passing.
During that same time, when Susumu had written to WHC members of his father's
death in Japan, Bob sent his condolences, offering his understanding:
No beginning or
end only constant change. -bob.
Robert
Gibson: This is Your Haiku Life, by Susumu Takiguchi, (reprinted from World
Haiku Review, Volume 1, Issue 1, 2001)
Quoted
from bob at WHChaikuforum
Haiku
by Robert Gibson
Tanka
by Robert Gibson
A
two-part onlist essay on haiku taboos by Robert Gibson
