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Haiku at the Treetops Studios
The Model Haiku The haiku is a deceptively simple type of poetry. The concept is Japanese. The canonical Japanese haiku is written in characters totalling exactly seventeen spoken syllables, arranged in three groups; five, seven, five. The haiku must contain a word alluding to a season of the year or at least the passage of time. The allusion can be indirect, a croaking frog implying spring. The haiku should present a single concept. The concept is developed in two parts: an observation - often some specific event in nature - and a reflection or generalization upon it.
The finesse - and the beauty - of the haiku is its simplicity. It is said that the poet is struck by a sight, his mind leaps to an insight and the poetic text is conceived - almost in an instant. I wonder how often that really happens. Nevertheless, one attribute of a good haiku is this freshness. The format is so controlled and the text so short that it can be read almost at a glance or spoken in one breath. Ideally, the ordinary reader should be able to grasp the concept and appreciate the play between the two parts of the haiku at the first reading. Banality and cliché must be avoided. The reader's response must be to grasp a new or fresh insight; 'I never thought of that.' or 'I never saw it that way before.'
The fact that many haiku are delightful reflections on a, literally, mundane event does not diminish their artistic power. A good haiku will have other, perhaps many other, levels of meaning. The better the reader's education, the broader his or her experience of life and the deeper our understanding of the human situation, the more a good haiku - like any artistic form - offers us. Top
The Haiku in English keeps the seventeen syllable structure, arranging them in three lines of five, seven and five syllables each. The stress on a fresh insight remains and a crisp, two part, 'thus' and 'so' logic is a joy to the reader. The passage of time and the cycle of the seasons are always popular themes.
The haiku is a superb vehicle for introducing poetic concepts. Most students in the 12 to 14 year old group will have a broad enough vocabulary, and a growing sense of the depth of meaning attached to English words. They will be able to understand the basic haiku structure and grasp the central concept. With a little application they will see a two part development as well. Rhythm and stress are not a problem: their music submerges them in it. Rhyme, allusion, alliteration, scansion - all the techniques of seven hundred years of poetry - can be introduced as the occasion offers.
When I joined a grade six class as a mathematics enrichment volunteer I found a haiku project in progress. I dedicated this haiku to their teacher, a truly dedicated educator, on the last day of classes for the year. I had been driving by the rowing sheds on Elk Lake during the week:
Poplar Fluff
Late spring. White. Drifting
lightly over low blossoms.
Last snow? Poplar fluff.
Thick drifts of fluff from the line of poplars that stands between the rowing sheds and the Pat Bay Highway were blowing slowly across a patch of grass and small spring flowers. Top
The following year a similar project was afoot in a grade seven class. Math mentoring is best done with a small group in a separate study room so I seldom wrote on the board in the home room. My contribution, extemporary but derived from an observation in the Studio garden that morning, was an early version of:
Honey Bees, Lavender & Mint
Our honey bees know
when mint flower is sweeter
than spring lavender.
I had noticed that morning that the honey bees had abandoned the maturing lavender for the first of the new mint blossoms two feet away. A few of the students had been with me the previous year so that my writing on the board drew some interest. One minute of relative calm in the classroom in return for a few seconds of watching spring. Not a bad trade. Top
Playing with the Haiku Of course, one of the advantages of being the poet is that you can play with the rules. In the next two haiku I am playing to a young audience, deliberately altering the model by dropping one syllable in the last line.
Butterfly Flutterby
I saw, butterfly.
Just a ripple in the light,
As you flutter .This little word play comes from a voice and hand motion game that a kindergarten class picks up in a few repetitions. I remember the game from my late 1950's as a summertime play park staffer in Greenwood, Nova Scotia. After a few examples of haiku composed strictly by the model, a middle school class will probably catch on immediately, especially if you interpolate a one beat pause at the end of the first line and then set up the stresses in the second and incomplete third lines to anticipate a missing fourth line. Probably not strictly cricket for a haiku reading. Having a group of five to eight year old's make up a fourth line was as much fun as watching them tumbling into the hole at the end of the third. Top
The second example of a missing syllable is a bit more subtle. The haiku above tells the story from the point of view of the observer/poet. This one tells a story from the point of view of a Wooly Bear named Icarus. He decides to skip the bound conformity of the cocoon
Wooly Bear Flying
No cocoon for me!
Jump! See the sky! I can fly.
Look at the ground ... .The missing beat is poor Wooly Bear coming to a sticky end. But perhaps not. Maybe he just landed silently in the grass. Wooly Bears are quite resilient and can survive a fall, as well as a lot of clumsy handling. Maybe he tried flying several more times before he tired of being overstimulated, had a few choice milkweed leaves as a late larval snack and finally retired to his chrysalis. Top
My last example of playing with the model haiku came when an evening of wind and great waves on the beach at Yachats, Oregon was followed by a morning of calm and gentle lappings over the sands. A bit like the family cat begging to be forgiven for morphing into a mountain lion in a dream the night before. (Is there a haiku about summer storms in that image too?) ("Well, of course there is!" says a well-tailored bunny as it hurries by.)
A great master might do it in one haiku. But I needed two, one for each personality of the sea and then their juxtaposition to make the contrast.
Great Wave Little Wave
Have you raced the wind,
great wave, to crash on these rocks
before the storm ends?
Have you paced the moon
little wave, to smooth these sands
before the tide turns?
My Haiku These haiku are grouped more for web display convenience than anything else. The inspiration for each haiku comes without warning. I suppose that, given the time, I could sit down and write a cycle of haiku on any assigned topic. But I suspect that they would lack sparkle. Enjoy them as they are presented. And then, the next time a visual image strikes you, start counting in 5 - 7 - 5 time!
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