...Through An
Open Door
I want to thank
all of the participants in the first Showcase Haiku. The
haiku each of you sent were interesting to read and it was
quite a challenge to select only three to feature in this
Showcase. For me this month has also presented challenges;
twice my computer has been down, and finally after several
hurried trips to Best Buy the diognostic people tell me I
have to replace my machine. Consequently, I have asked
John Daleiden to make the selections for this column.
~ Karina Klesko
1st Choice
Moon Festival
alone, I whisper to myself
in my mother tongue
Chen-ou Liu, CA
Autumn Kigo: "Moon Festival" -- autumn season/festival,
World Kigo Database:
http://worldkigodatabase.blogspot.com/2006/01/moon-and-his-links.html
"Moon Festival" is an ancient Chinese cultural event
occurring on the 15th of the 8th lunar month;
the festival is a millennium-old
festival, dating back to 2000 years ago. Different regions
or groups of people have different ways to celebrate the
festival. Generally speaking, it is mainly a night for
family sharing time. Today, it is celebrated sometime
between the second week of September and the first week of
October. Chinese culture is deeply imbedded in traditional
festivals; in the West traditions like Thanksgiving and
Christmas are culturally similar in tenor to Eastern
traditions like the Moon Festival. The celebration has many
aspects. It is a very poetic and elegant celebration—people
place ornaments and offerings next to windows, on verandas,
and in other places where the moon can be seen in
conjunction with items like vases filled with pampas grass
and autumnal herbs—people prepare seasonal foods like
dumplings, pears, persimmons, and grapes. Moon Festival is
an occasion for family reunions, similar to the family
events associated with an American (Western) Thanksgiving
and / or Christmas. When the full moon rises, families get
together to watch the full moon, eat moon cakes and sing
moon poems (World
Haiku Data Base).
The kigo, “Moon Festival” is laden with cultural meaning—and
much of that meaning may be obscure to readers unfamiliar
with Chinese traditions. In Chen-ou Liu’s haiku the kigo
“Moon Festival” is a simplistic statement with a rich
cultural message; that message is one of the advantages of
haijian who use kigo. The kigo found in a saijiki have been
selected because they, in a word or two, express volumes of
meaning. In her World Haiku Data Base Dr. Gabi Greve has
collected the information above about “Moon Festival”. …And
in employing this kigo Chen-ou Liu is expressing the
sentiments in a millennium of Chinese cultural custom. In
the world of haiku, kigo carries out a rhetorical function
that Western writers call understatement—a figure of
speech in which a writer / speaker deliberately makes a
situation seem less important or serious than it is. The
direct and denotative kigo statement, “Moon Festival”, shows
restraint and a lack of emphasis, when in point of fact the
phrase is an understatement that really conveys a host of
implied and connotative details expressed in the previous
paragraph. The kigo is the most important element in this
haiku and it is balanced against the second most important
element, the word “alone”. In this haiku the narrator finds
himself in a painful situation on this family occasion—he is
“alone”, isolated from the meaningful events and occasions
of his past. These two elements of this haiku offer a
contrast of the past with the present—and the two situations
are painfully different. Through understatement Chen-ou Liu
displays a severe contrast between the descriptive details
of what usually takes place during a “Moon Festival” and
what in reality is taking place for the narrator on this
particular “Moon Festival”—he is alone. His subsequent
action: “I whisper to myself / in my mother tongue” is a
second understated event. He “whispers” and his chosen
expression is “in my mother tongue” a language he probably
no longer uses for daily communication, having had to learn
a new language because the environment in which he lives
does not use his “mother tongue” for communication. This
haiku uses simple language embedded in a complex structure;
this haiku is a memorable example of restraint in artistic
expression. Through understatement the reader comes to
comprehend what is not being said directly and understands
the pain the narrator is experiencing.
2nd Choice
patter of first rain––
in the tea shop
a haiku reading
Neal Whitman, US
Autumn kigo: "first rain" San
Francisco Bay Area
Nature Guide and Saijiki: Sky and Elements, edited
by Homan, Gallagher, and Machmiller, p. 56.
Regional saijiki are beginning to play an important role in
the development of haiku written in English. “first rain”
reflects a particular autumn weather condition in the San
Francisco Bay Area. The area is also quite active in haiku.
The language of Neal Whitman’s haiku is deceptively
simple—straight forward and descriptive of two simultaneous
activities—the patter of rain and a haiku reading in a tea
shop—nothing out of the ordinary here, at least on the
surface. Imagine, a rainy morning in the Bay area—then
entering a tea shop (more water, but this time for a
different purpose), and a haiku reading. We are not told
what haiku are read—perhaps haiku by the classic masters,
Basho, Buson, Issa, Shiki—or is the focus on contemporary
Japanese haiku—or better yet, the current haiku of
practicing Bay Area haijin! The pun on “reading” in line
three is amusing—for just as haiku are meant to be read
aloud before an audience, so too are the tea leaves meant to
be “read” as an interpretation of the future for a client.
Once again the depth of the haiku is penetrated through
contemplation and careful consideration of the implied and
unstated concepts buried below the surface. A haiku such as
this one allows the reader to imagine an entire world beyond
the surface meaning—one needs simply to push open the door
standing ajar, to enter the “dreaming room” beyond, and
engage the imagination. Neal’s haiku which seems to present
a “sketch” from ordinary life is anything but boring when
the listener / reader fully engages with the pleasant
invitation to enter and experience the delight of a “haiku
reading”.
3rd Choice
Windstorm
the wheat bent
but not broken
Karen O'Leary, US
Autumn Kigo: “windstorm” / the heavens: The Five Hundred
Essential Japanese Season Words
http://www.2hweb.net/haikai/renku/500ESWd.html
Autumn “windstorm(s)” are common throughout the world—and,
as anyone knows such storms can be devastating or they can
be mild. Yet, the anticipation of destruction can create
extreme apprehension. Picture an expansive field of what
anywhere in the world, perhaps nearly full grown, a few days
away from harvest and a secure income for a wheat farmer and
his family; he has toiled in caring for the land, investing
in hard work, preparing his fields, planting his crop and
then caring for it—but wait…on the horizon an autumn
“windstorm”. Will the crop be destroyed or salvaged? Will
the farmer reap the benefit of a successful harvest, or will
he and his crop be wiped out by a “windstorm”? Karen
O’Leary’s seven word haiku captures the intensity of this
situation as it unfolds. We see the “windstorm” on the
horizon in line 1; in line 2 we see the “wheat” being bent
over by the wind; and…finally, in line 3 we see that the
“wheat is not broken”. By showing us the steps of the event
Karen makes us relive the situation over and over every time
we read the haiku; the events unfold before our eyes—they
can be replayed like a movie, over and over. So much of the
significance of a “wheat crop” is implied in this simply and
directly stated haiku; but, below the surface of the haiku
are the implications of “toil” to produce the crop—the
economic realities for such an investment—and the terror
that can impact a farm family if the crop is destroyed by a
“windstorm”. It is with great relief that the listener /
reader reaches the end of the haiku with the realization
that the damage is at best minimal.
Each of these haijin have successfully employed kigo to
extend the meaning of their haiku. Kigo carry decades of
experience, meaning, culture, and societal implications and
when skillfully wed to additional events in a haiku then
both the surface story and the understated story, the
implications, can have a powerful effect on readers. The
three haiku above by Chen-ou Liu, Neal Whitman, and Karen
O’Leary are intense examples of successful haiku.
~John Daleiden
The
Sketchbook editors wish to extend a a
hearty Seasons Greeting to the participants in the first round of Showcase Haiku.
