solitary seclusion
(autumn) blossoming
in my mtn side hovel
stoking the fire
Tuesday, August 11, 2015
Monday, August 10, 2015
Sunday, August 9, 2015
Saturday, August 8, 2015
Thursday, August 6, 2015
Up the Mtn, Again! #205
Saigyo's creek spilling
into Basho's pond, Buson's paintings
flakes, blossoming in me
Tuesday, August 4, 2015
Monday, August 3, 2015
Sunday, August 2, 2015
Saturday, August 1, 2015
Friday, July 31, 2015
Thursday, July 30, 2015
Up the Mtn, Again! #188
drifting wisps flurry
wild land forest fires - Ash
hell's snow
our floating world
crying hot cinder tears
Tuesday, July 28, 2015
Up the Mountain, Again! #190
half awake ... just ...
field mice ... scampering ... on my roof
- right ?
Monday, July 27, 2015
Saturday, July 25, 2015
Up the Mtn, Again! #180
breathing out sunlight
breathing in the moonlight
life & death eclipsing
karma's cycle
the breadth of breath
Wednesday, July 22, 2015
Tuesday, July 21, 2015
On the Euro Zone Crisis (in Ireland, Spain Portugal, Italy, and Greece)
(Greece?) austerity
compounding interests
the One percent
Sunday, July 19, 2015
Saturday, July 18, 2015
Up the Mtn, Again! #165
thunderous booming
piercing crackles lightning
swollen, pregnant clouds
birthed on a mtn side
divine intuition
Thursday, July 16, 2015
Up the Mtn, again! #133
deep in the forest
my hovel my hermitage
healing seclusion
natures divinity
continues on and on ... and on
Monday, July 13, 2015
Up the Mtn, Again! #129 "Hovel Passage"
trail to my hovel
camouflaged by foliage
obscured by falls reign
Sunday, July 12, 2015
Saturday, July 11, 2015
Friday, July 10, 2015
Up the Mountain, Again! #164
clouds drooling
saturating top soil
woodland roots feasting
ferns n' firs focused downwards
rainstorms cooconed in root balls
Wednesday, July 8, 2015
Tuesday, July 7, 2015
Up the Mtn, Again! #154
"Last Night"
fullmoon, Cool night
moonbeams, soft, fluid shadows
Magic! aglow
pure bough filtered moonlight
f or ml E ss. soothing, tranquil, whisps
Up the Mtn, Again! #148
fall autumns
Beyond coloured foliage
- faint sheets of rain
(Inspired by Robert Wright''s work below)
In the summer haze:
Behind Magnolias
Faint sheets of lightning.
Monday, July 6, 2015
Wednesday, July 1, 2015
Up the Mtn, Again! #142
distant thunder ?
storm Up the Mtn? Soon?
trunks sway, boughs bend
winds howl n' scream FLASH!
lightning, signaling - Calm reigns
Monday, June 29, 2015
Sunday, June 28, 2015
Up the Mtn, Again! #143
earth, air, shudder
mountain thunder clap deafens
- divine revelation
religions irrelevant
humbled acquiescence - faith ?
Wednesday, June 24, 2015
Tuesday, June 23, 2015
Monday, June 22, 2015
#7 Unifying Intersectional Discord within Haiku Idioms
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
Up the Mtn, Again! #115
warm dusk lust drizzles
her parasol swollen wet
COME! lingering heat
Crimson Moon (iro) softens
mornings glory (iros) wanning
Sunday, June 21, 2015
Tuesday, June 16, 2015
#6 Unifying the Intersectional Discord within Haiku Idioms
Nature as a muse, “the way of life, the way of haikai”
Why does traditional/classical ehi resonate with A-W readers? While meanwhile the actual creative process required to write it isn’t resonating with most poets today? I believe the reason for this imbalance is in part due to the fact that nature’s creative essence is not consciously being accessed as part of their creative process (zoka) when creating haiku. Meanwhile readers of ehi vicariously glimpse into a world that seems peculiar, esoteric, and enigmatic. I would argue that most haiku poets today have only to tap into the latent zoka awaiting to be awakened within them, while unified with nature. This can be accomplished simply by embarking on extended sojourns into, and more importantly as a part of nature. Though modern society does not lend itself to creatively writing haiku in conjunction with nature; and academia and literate society does not perceive nature as an element essential to, and intertwined with our intellectual and spiritual development. I believe creating or spending time in nature to be essential in the development of a haiku writer’s process. It can also be applicable in the development and process of many other intellectual, scholarly, artistic, and other art forms as well. I believe this type of interactive collaboration with nature to be essential to humanities continued development as an integrated part of our planets ecosystem. Without this kind of interaction with nature humanity will continue to act as a divisive force, one that continues to decimate the planet.
During a 2013 interview with WIRED MAGAZINE, the Icelandic musician and performance artist Bjork said this in regards to how she conceptualizes music. “European (musical) notation is not the only or proper way. (Musical) Notes are not just B&W, from a European point of view”. She then spoke of African and Japanese music as being equally valid forms of music. Again during a 1991 Charlie Rose Interview she spoke of sporadically having to return to nature alone in a tent, to replenish herself before returning to more urban settings.
I think embarking on sojourns into nature is something many feel compelled to do from time to time. The musician Bjork speaks of nature’s music, as many haijin do of nature's visual, auditory, and olfactory imagery. Bjork speaks of nature’s sounds, as sources she derives much of her musical inspiration from. She states nature played a key role in her development as a young vocalist, musician, and performance artist. It is not much different for haijin, we too find inspiration in nature, although instead of processing the visual and auditory stimuli we experience in nature vocally or musically, our process is to transpose these experiential stimuli literally if you will, in a style we call haiku. Haijin today much like Basho and his frog pond, visually leap, and auditor-ally kerplunk into the waters of our haiku. Only we need to engage with haiku with more intentionality, with the intent to unite as part of nature, rather than as detached neutral observers apart from it.
Today on our planet most all of us live in urban, suburban, or rural environments. Far fewer of us live in the backcountry of Alaska for instance. Very few of us intentionally spend extended time or live isolated in the woods. Think for a moment of Emerson, Thoreau or Whitman, and the way they spoke of their experiences of living or being in the woods, much like Basho, but in a more A-W or transcendental-ist manner. They did so from the perspective of perceiving the wonderment in nature, while still speaking as if apart from nature; which is opposed to haiku's idealistic perspective of speaking as if an integral part of nature and her cycles. To paraphrase Basho "The earth’s cyclical changes of Heaven & Earth are the seeds of Hokku Poetry". "The way of life and the way of haikai ... are inseparable". (Quoted to me by a Buddhist Monk in Sapporo, Japan) By the way of life he too, was referencing the cyclical ways of nature.
This way of life, this way of nature is what I experience as well. I experienced it, while working as an artist in residence in the forests of Northern Hokkaido (Japan), and again while staying at a monastery in Tibet, and once again "Up the Mtn" at my writers hovel in the Willamette National Forest in the Pacific Northwest, and yet again while hiking on the Pacific Crest Trail for months at a time, or while staying at forest lookouts. All of these experiences were characterized by simplistic living. I was living where life was dictated to me by my internal unification with the rhythms and cycles of nature, rather than by the externally projected uniformity of a clock. These experiences have played a key role in my development as a haikijin, tanka, and senryu poet. It is nature and her cyclical daily and seasonal rhythms that bring forth my innate ability, my embodied knowing and understanding. It is something we are all equally capable of innately tapping into. Even a trip out into the woods car camping can begin to produce similar results.
"Basho ... alone outside during a frigid winter night ...he saw a thread-thin moon, a scene that can be cold, stark, or beautiful, depending on a person's frame of mind ... he was watching nature sculpt his surroundings and thoughts. ... The changes of heaven and earth are the seeds of poetry ... He was watching zoka with his five senses" (paraphrased from Makota Ueda's "Basho and His Interpreters")
Nature is key in my creative process too, when creating haiku. Simply sitting quietly in a forest can begin one's transformation of readily sensing and becoming one with nature’s impermanence. That intangible creative artistic force intertwined in natures own unique way. We are all born with this innate capacity to artistically create in unison with nature, though most of us get in touch with it in more man made or mukigo/senryu like ways. As a janitor, scholar, garbage person, athlete, parent, artist, prisoner, homeless person, etc, all of us develop methods of creatively working and living, though usually not in and as a part of nature.
Haiku’s natural essence transcends western transcendentalism and eastern embodied knowledge. It does so with natural imagery, auditory symbolism, tactile sensations, and olfactory tangibility. When we naturally interacting with and learn from them, the haijin can personify nature’s essence when they put pen to paper. An thus they begin the process of "becoming the bamboo, to speak of the bamboo".
Embodied intuition and finite scientific truth
I believe what Basho and to a lesser extent Shiki were trying to address was the possibility of realigning ourselves with our latent embodied knowledge, which we are all innately capable of accessing. This creative force can be ignited and transformed into poetry or most any other creative endeavor. It is what I too have experienced as a martial artist for over twenty years. This is a process that does not require any scholarly knowledge. It is just that as our society advances, our ability to artistically co-create with nature is impeded, and our embodied intuition begins to seem more and more enigmatic in nature, as opposed to being something we realistically endeavor to develop in ourselves
So how do we write with kigo as the theme of our haiku? Well it's a task that’s ideally pursued in solitude amidst nature. Learn about the "pines from the pines and about the bamboo from the bamboo". (Masako Hiraga, Eternal Stillness”)
"Haiku exists in what one sees and what one hears. The sincerity of haiku is to put what a poet feels directly in the verse". (Sanzoshi, in ibid., pp. 157-158)
"Pivotal to Matsuo Basho's teachings on the composition of hokku (haiku) is his belief in the essentialness, of the infinity of following zoka, while in the moment, letting go the finite teachings determined as truth by science." (a paraphrasing from Robert D. Wilsons online essay “The Colonization of Haiku”).
"Dharmic Philosophy conceptualizes time, like the cosmos, as being infinite, without beginning or end, whereas Abrahamic Philosophy conceptualizes time as starting upon the creation of this one-and-only finite universe that will terminate at the forthcoming End Times." (paraphrased from Malhotra, Rajiv’s Being Different). If we want to become more accomplished at writing haiku, I believe we have to open ourselves to the infinite possibilities that our unified interactions with nature can cooperatively create.
This is the challenge for all of us, to acknowledge and accept rather than tolerate the cultural contributions all of us make. In doing so we become acquainted with other Ways of being, thinking, and artistically creating; these ways that are equally valid and worthy of us all, as members of our planets intersectional and multicultural world.
For example, I’ve been taught by A-W scholars how to write Italian and English sonnets. Yet I do not try to redefine them or try to replace a sonnets A-W essence, its rhyme scheme of stressed and unstressed syllables with haiku’s syllable or onji/mora counting. I do not try to, appropriate octav (propositioning) with haiku’s mid verse cutting, or sestet (questioning) with haiku’s end verse cutting, and then outright eliminate a sonnets volta all together. To do so and no longer call it a sonnet is one thing. Yet to do so and still characterize it as a Japanese Sonnet is no different then what many do when they call English senryu haiku. This is also what is known as cultural reappropriation, and we have to stop doing it.
Monday, June 15, 2015
Sunday, June 14, 2015
#5 Unifying Intersectional Discord within haiku idioms
Rectifying haiku's distorted identity
Many justifiably criticize much of the haiku written today. It seems there is no disagreement in regards to the dearth of kigo if not kireji, in much of the haiku published today. Why is this occurring, and how do we rectify it?
Well “The essence of haiku is in its natural imagery, not in a metaphoric presentation of symbolic poetic language”. (Bruce Ross “Haiku Mainstream” in Modern Haiku).
Unless we poets find novel ways to re-engage with nature how can we be expected to speak to or of nature, when we know nothing of it, relative to those like Basho who lived not just in nature, but as a part of it. We often speak and write to what we know of, our human experience, "Symbolic, metaphoric representations" of manmade life, in essence mukigo/senryu act as the fraternal twin to kigo's/haiku's natural imagery. It is not that metaphor cannot be used in haiku; it is what is being symbolically represented by the metaphor, nature or man, kigo or mukigo. It is not that one generation of poets is greater or lesser than the poets of another era, it is simply that most all poets tend to speak to their life experience. If Basho were born and raised today, in say Tokyo, NYC, or London he too would likely employ mukigo and write satirical senryu to a much greater extent.
So we have to ask ourselves wouldn't today’s Basho write of his life experience using mukigo, while still writing with what he characterized as karumi in his life? Isn't, wasn't, Basho's conclusion in his hut to get out of it, and cease isolating himself, to speak to life around him regardless of where he was?
When living in a city I frequently leave society to become immersed in, and unified with nature. I do so through a firsthand experience of its natural imagery, its kigo. Then once in this natural environment haiku inevitably, for a time effortlessly flows from me. Other forms of poetry like senryu can do the same for us, when we are in an environment dominated instead by the senryu poets subject matter, humanity.
It seems senryu and haiku have reached a point where they are almost undistinguishable to most. So how do we begin to differentiate them? Well how is haiku defined by scholars, experts, critics, publishers, and those who write it?
As Makota Ueda put it in his translation of "The Path of Flowering Thorn; The Life and Poetry of Yuson Buson", Stanford University Press, 1998.
"... haiku ... has sunk into an abyss of ... inadequate study ... unable to agree on what is and isn't haiku, in Japan and in the Anglo-West ... Japanese aesthetics were replaced by Anglo-Western aesthetic concepts ... the concept of kigo was reinvented to accommodate an Anglophile mindset far removed from Taoist ... Shamanic animism Buddhist Doctrine ... Confucian Group ideas ... and Shinto adaptation of animism ... haiku suffers from an identity crisis people have yet to cure ... Today's haiku ... is ... this homogenization of cultures ... kigo, meter, and aesthetic styles ... There is no East or West. Haiku has become an Anglo-Western poetic genre. Definitions for haiku are obscure with most publications admitting that haiku is in limbo, definition wise". (Makota Ueda)
Here in the west most struggle with how to interact with nature. Although well intentioned, Fuller and Emerson's concepts of transcendentalism are still derived from examples of Abrahamic and Greek historicism, which struggles to reconcile these accommodating anglophile mindsets. This culturally specific and self conflicted A-W mindset just can’t be universally applied to all other cultures. Just as concepts of Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Shinto or Confucianism cannot be expected to be universally applicable throughout the A-W world.
Attempting to Identify or define haiku as I've been doing in this essay is akin to doing much the same with Buddhism or it's concept of emptiness. Some things, some concepts, can't be quantifiably or qualitatively measured, defined, analyzed, or classified, especially in words. Some art forms are more intangible than tangible in nature. It would be like trying to definitively write of a ballerina's' pirouette or a martial artists tobi ukemi. As if you could literally capture the essence of their physical and or spiritual presence and movements, by scribbling ink across a page. Still for the part of me that is influenced by the A-W world, I'm aware that I’m contradicting myself, by attempting to define haiku into words.
I'd define haiku as a poem whose essence is personified by nature. It's nature is personified through kigo. Kigo speaks to the elusiveness of nature's minutia. This minutia, this kigo, is superficially defined as a seasonal reference; a reference that can ideally be processed with zoka, with which we can create haiku. Kigo in haiku acts as the literary personification of nature's yugen essence. Nature's essence, it's yugen is what haiku abstractly embodies. This in part is why haiku is so hard to literally define.
From a more technical A-W perspective, traditional haiku should also include ya or kana style Kireji or toriawase; reinterpreted into English, which is expressed through punctuation, words, space, or an abrupt change of subject matter. Most all haiku should follow a short long short format. Although I do believe that jimari and jitarazu are occasionally acceptable. There is also kaeru which Basho periodically employed. kaeru references the rare swapping of the short long short format for long-short-short or short-short-long. I believe on extremely rare occasions this too is acceptable. One line haiku are also acceptable. To me it's akin to jazz improvisation. Still as a poet I think you have to demonstrate that you've written extensively in the more traditional format, before re-interpretively writing haiku with jimari, jitarazu, or kaeru . Haiku of course includes what can be defined as subjects. I think that subjectivity is also acceptable (on par with jimari, jitarazu, and kaeru), when used sparingly, although I know many do not. Most definitively I believe that including kigo/kidai from saijiki to be the essential ingredient in traditional/classical haiku; and again you can still have haiku that is more contemporary as opposed to traditional/classical which doesn’t containing kigo/kidai from saijiki.
I have heard it said that haiku should be more activity based. For instance, reading some of Mr. Wilson's other online essays he described "object based haiku" as "falling flat", or as being "mush melon". I'd say I prefer more action or movement based haiku as well. Though I do think there is a place for more static/passive based haiku, on occasion. I've chosen a few of my more passive based haiku that have a different feel as examples. Still I believe these haiku are as effective as the activity based ones contrasting them.
passive mush melon, or object based movement, action based
Northwest Cathedral rapedseeds
mossy knotted gnarled sap STUMPED! husks swept about by brooms
Old Growth AVATAR sprawled naked grains
a weathered season moonlit mountain winds
the age of fall unfolding shrieking thru valley nostrils
browned ferns fall buds abstruse treetop breeze
cherry petals draw
A visual eulogy
falling past their prime
From a more artistic perspective this is how I define haiku.
"Haiku are meant to evoke an emotional response from the reader ... to light the spark that triggers creative rumination ... They act as literary manifestations ... visions of nature’s seasonal modulations ... They're emotionally tinged words, barely perceptible sensory flickers ... literary etchings of lucid visions transposed into the minds of its readers ... They're meant to act as sensory catalysts ... like the passing of a penciled baton laid out upon a piece of paper that a reader might grasp for in their mind's eye ... all of which prompts the reader to continue exploring the sensory experience elicited from the writers pen ... This is how the literary sketching of poets are intended to function ... as creative muses with which readers can draw from and viscerally apply to their own artistic idioms ... from that lucid space within their heads ... where their minds eye can spark their own creative visions"
Bukusai Ashagawa, 2013
(Ashagawa, Bukusai, from the 6th edition of the book JIKU)
So how do you think haiku should be defined? Do you think it can or should be defined? What about kireji? How many kireji in a haiku are appropriate? What style of kireji do you prefer? How many kireji if any at all actually exist, before the poet creates their own? How do you feel about subjectivity or active versus passive haiku? How do you feel about jimari, jitarazu, and kaeru? We need to come to some sort of consensus on these issues in order to clarify the meaning and purpose of haiku. We don’t need to agree on everything, but we do need to acknowledge others that write and define haiku differently then we do. We need to find common literary ground to unify and move haiku forward. Maybe we can all endorse different styles or schools of haiku. Styles and schools that have varied and unique focuses, yet also share common characteristics. In doing so I believe we can unify the way haiku is characterized, without making it uniform or static in nature. Our reluctance to constructively yet critically engage in these types of discussions is in part why “haiku suffers from an identity crisis people have yet to cure” (Makota Ueda)
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