On Poekuagery, Rhythm, & Polyrhythmic Sound in Bebop Jazz & Haiku (EHI)
Practicing a form of poetry that is so succinct is part of what causes haiku to be perceived as so deceptively simplistic and rudimentary to many of the uninitiated, just as with abstract art. Also Haiku can have a strong spiritual component much like jazz. This spiritual connection to nature in haiku, never mind placing nature as the divine centerpiece of a haiku poem is what adds to the Anglo-West's (A-W) misconceptions and misinterpretations of haiku as a form of poetry lacking sophistication. Although "the more subjects you add to a haiku the more you dilute it's spiritual potency" (Bukusai Ashagawa). It reminds me of something Miles Davis once wrote, "the smoother you play a trumpet, the more it sounds like a trumpet when you amplify it. It's like mixing paint ... Too many colours you get nothing but mud" (Miles Davis). Although jazz much like haiku can be practiced without its spiritual component. Still for me haiku as well as "music has always been healing for me and spiritual." (Miles Davis)
Haiku or Jazz without their spiritual components are still technically haiku & jazz. Although it is when haiku is missing not its spiritual component but a connection to nature as its primary subject matter that it ceases to be haiku, and is instead actually senryu or gendai haiku in Japan. Still, senryu can be spiritual as well.
Haiku today practiced outside of Japan and sometimes even inside is an art form much like jazz that was and is a cross cultural artistic endeavor. Haiku much like the polyrhythmic sounds of Bebop was and is created by the mixing and blending of at least two distinct cultures. In regards to (Bebop) jazz it was Western Classical and (predominately East African) African drumming, and its use of Polyrhythmic Sound. In regards to haiku its the result of Japan's isolation, it's cultural homogenization, it's spiritual identity, it's multi linguistic qualities, and it's unique artistic aesthetic, an aesthetic that is in regards to haiku indivisible from nature. The polyrhythmic features found in jazz are also akin to the literary characteristic or trait of a form of poetry called poekuagery.
"In bebop, several non-western concepts of music were brilliantly reasserted. Its most striking characteristic is (an) intense, polyrhythmic drive to which even the melodies are
subservient.
In other words, the dynamic rhythms of melodies are organically and intricately interwoven with the pulse and multiple accents of the rhythm section, which is typical of an African way of making music." (Carr Ian)
This stream of melodic "notes , wide interval leaps, displaced accents, and asymmetrical phrases, present a rhythmic vitality so foreign to American listeners" ... even today " that It drew frightened and hostile comments from all sides. Even established musicians - no doubt because they felt threatened - attacked it." (Carr Ian)
The way A-W Society, especially music critics threatened and then attacked bebop for its (predominant) use of (African) polyrhythmic sound and subservient (white) melodies is much akin to what has been occurring with haiku and other English Haiku Idioms (EHI) in the west today.
What all of these art forms have in common, jazz, classical, East African Drumming, haiku, and abstract art, is that they all "originally came from someone's spirit" (Carr Ian Miles Davis: The Definitive Biography).
It is much the same with haiku. In haiku we have displaced or incomplete sentences. Haiku features fragmented syntax, and incorrect grammar. Haiku's evolving use of pragmatic particles for kireji is an ever evolving phenomena. Much like in jazz these pragmatic particles are used as Miles would to create space between his notes and stretch out the composition, so that fewer syllables are required to say more with less.To paraphrase Ian Carr from an excerpt of his biography of Miles Davis, Haiku draws "frightened and hostile comments from all sides Even established poets and academia, because they feel threatened."
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