Japanese Forms

This will be an oversimplification of the Japanese forms. I could spend a year or years, but I’m doing them only on this one day. The haiku is used to that treatment. It’s the best known and most attempted by western poets. Many writers in English know 5-7-5 and mention something about nature, meaning the three-line poem has five syllables in the first line, seven in the second, then five in the third and last. They also know it should include something about nature, something profound if possible.

The haiku was originally written as a hokku, the starting verse as the long form known a renga, written as a group effort at a renga, or poetry writing party. Poets would have at least one, if not a few, verses ready - hoping to be chosen to give the starting verse. This left a lot of verses not used and eventually they were published as independent poems known as haiku.

The old master of haiku is Matsuo Basho (1644-1694). Here is one of his most famous works:

            old pond . . .

            a frog leaps in

            water’s sound

It doesn’t fit the 5-7-5 rule because it was written in Japanese. It doesn’t, and doesn’t have to, fit western rules. I still get a chill when I think that some of the original translators of haiku made them rhyme. Basho’s poems are collect in The Narrow Road to the Deep North. Here is another Basho haiku.

             Ah, tranquility!

            Penetrating the very rock,

            A cicada’s voice.

 Another Japanese form is the tanka. It’s usually written in five lines with the first three written much as a haiku followed by two more lines with seven syllables. In Japanese these would be written in one unbroken line, but in English they are often one five line stanza or two stanzas. The first three lines as the first stanza followed by a two line stanza. I originally learned this years ago as a haiku with an extension, but I’m a western poet. That was my take at the time. It won’t be a surprise to learn that the old master of the tanka is the same Matsuo Basho, but many of these poems were also written by women including Murasaki Shikibu, who wrote The Tale of Genji in the 11th century. More about that is here: The Tale of Genji. Here is a more contemporary example by Tada Chimako, born in Japan in 1930. She grew up in Tokyo during World War II. 

                                            the hot water in
                                            the abandoned kettle
                                            slowly cools
                                            still carrying the resentment
                                            of colder water

 The haibun is a prose/poetry hybrid. It starts with a brief prose recollection of something in the poet’s life and is followed by a haiku on the same topic. Each enhances the other, but does not attempt to explain. Again, Basho is the ancient master of these, but there are contemporary examples. Here’s one.

Missing Man     J Zimmerman
   
    Mid-November after I rake the leaves I stand at Central and First,  holding the Stars and Bars. All of them died in Nam — my brother Joe, my cousin Freddy, mom’s youngest brother Jack. Sometimes I just have to come out on the streets and stand with my flag. There’s no parade.
   
            The smell of burning
            could be diesel
            could be napalm

First published in Frogpond 34:1 (Winter, 2011)

 

 

 


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