Training wheels and soap bubbles
There comes a time akin to learning to ride a bike, when we have to discard theory, critique, and analysis, and just start riding our bikes with the structural support of our 5-7-5 training wheels. Eventually it is the practical experience of actually riding a bike or reading and writing the haiku, again, and again, and again that develops our ability to become proficient. Then we can detach from our 5-7-5 training wheels.
It's sadly ironic that the essence of what makes haiku so aesthetically and literally unique is also contributing to its natural demise. Despite all this I still feel compelled to continue creating traditional & non-traditional haiku, and senryu, along with other ehi, like tanka, haiga, and poekuagery.
So what does it feel like when the poet collaborates with nature and artistically processes zoka, koto, and shizen. How does the reader know they're experiencing traditional haiku?
"Have you ever blown soap bubbles through a plastic ring? You know that moment when you touch a soap bubble with your fingertip and it disappears ... That’s an ephemeral moment ... a moment of tactile and sensory lucidity ... when your mind and body are momentarily unified and seem paused within the arch of time ... As if caught up in a moment of walking meditation ... that’s when we're more open to lucid discerning when our sensory conduits are peeked to being receptive ... to other visceral ways of hearing ... seeing ... and knowing ... Ideally haiku hold within them a gateway to one of those other intangible ways of (perceiving) sharing and knowing". (Bukusai Ashagawa, JIKU)
When this soap bubble moment is being blown by the haijin through the mossy wooden ring of nature, then the poet and the reader are experiencing haiku in an ideal setting. When readers experience this while reading, they can even recreate these moments again for themselves. How? Via these sub vocal readings of haiku we can experience them again and again. After these readings we can harness the energy of the poet. Then we the reader can use this energy as a catalyst to inspire our own creative process.
Advocating for sub vocal readings of Haiku
I adamantly believe that haiku’s readers should at least initially read haiku sub vocally or silently. Why? Well here is what one of America's Haiku Masters had to say in reference to how she ideally envisioned someone reading her work.
"My dream reader would have this book ... laying on a nightstand ... (or even in a little room of great relief) where, in an idle moment when the soul is soft and open, there is time to snatch a glimpse of a poem or two. Soon finding something to ponder, the book would be closed and laid down with the mind far away in the realm of imaging" (Jan Reichhold, Gualala, California October 1991).
“Abrahamic traditions tend to focus outward and Dharmic ones, inward. The difference between observing historical mandates and discovering the structures of consciousness is stark” (Rajiv Malhorta)
When we experience a Dharmic art form like haiku aloud we are projecting our focus, our experience outwards. Yet when we read haiku sub vocally, silently, we are engaging with the images, sounds, smells, and tactile experiences of being a part of nature inwards, internalizing them, and in essence momentarily becoming vicariously unified with them. If we are listening to haiku being presented as spoken word if you will, we have replaced our own internal voice with an external one. Now we have two external elements, the words on the page, and the voice of the person externally inserting/reading the poem into our conscious. This replaces our own internal voice with an external one, which only dilutes and possibly distorts the intensity with which the words on the page impact us. Unnecessary external elements decreases the chance we will viscerally connect to the poets words, as if we were a stalk of bamboo swaying within a groove of bamboo. If this is the only method available to present a haiku, then by all means do so. Still I believe that at least initially, sub vocally reading haiku quietly alone to be ideal.
Nature & Art, where Eastern & Western Traditions gather
Think for a moment of a plein aire painting, nature is as synonymous to this art form as it is to haiku. Or think of classical landscapes painters like Van Gogh, Cezanne, or Monet, they all personified traditional A-W or Abrahamic painting. The natural creative process of these western oil painters (especially in regards to their western way of rendering clouds) influenced their (Dharmic) woodblock painting counterparts like, Hokusai and Hiroshige, and vice versa.
Can you imagine Van Gogh, Cezanne, or Monet painting nature primarily from their studios rather than for the most part in the natural scenes they artistically rendered upon their canvases? So I wonder, why might it seem like we too, don't need to be out and about in nature as we create haiku today. Saigyo, Basho, and Issa all wrote haiku as a part of the natural environment that much of their kigo either existed in or was derived from. How can we expect to be any different than our artistic predecessors? Predecessors like Ansel Adams with his grand landscapes. Or one of his sojourning companions Georgia O’Keefe, and her interpretative renderings of the Southwest landscapes. These varied art forms and artists all embraced what they experienced in nature, at least for a time as their primary subject.
Nature, it transcends Western Transcendentalism and Eastern Embodied Knowledge, or Dharmic and Abrahamic thinking. Nature, it's continually challenging our conceptions of self and the nature of nature. Maybe haiku would find itself revitalized if we began a "plein aire haiku movement" of our own.
So here’s to striving to get us all to paint haiku with several broader less definitive brush strokes. I am hoping that together we can acknowledge and embrace the diversity and intersectionality of the many ways haiku is written and defined today; in doing so our brush strokes can become more unified and once again personify "nature with her seasonal changes that much like haiku idioms personify unity while transcending uniformity" (Bukusai Ashagawa).
Sincerely,
Bukusai Ashagawa
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