#6 Physical Distancing Prompt: Haiku is a tool to find this moment's language - Jane Hirschfield

Haiku is poetry in daily ordinary life.  Bashô was a master of the haiku form which not only retains its popularity in today's Japan, but has also been introduced into American schools at all levels.

"Haiku evolved from the haikai, linked verse, that was written in the Tokugawa period. Every haikai begins with an opening verse of seventeen syllables. This opening verse was called a hokku. It was written in three lines of 5, then 7, then 5 syllables to make the total of 17 syllables. Bashô took this opening verse, the hokku, and refined it to become what is now known as the haiku." - Robert Oxnam


Every haiku has two parts to it. It's divided in the middle by what's called a "cutting word". It's a structure that is designed to engage the reader and it permits multiple interpretations to this potent poetic form.

Haiku Poem
kareeda ni
karasu no tomarikeri
aki no kure

on a bare branch
a crow has alighted
autumn evening

The kigo, or seasonal word, is very obvious: it's the autumn. And there's what's called a kireji, or cutting word, in the middle and it comes right after "has alighted," "tomarikeri." So we have two parts to what's now called the haiku, but what was then called the hokku. "On a bare branch a crow has alighted" and then there's a break, and the second half is "autumn night fall" or "end of autumn."

Now, the important part about the cut, the kireji, which cuts the two parts of the haiku is that it leaves the poem open for the reader to complete. So, it's like the linked verse. You have one verse, the verse is basically unfinished. The next person has to complete that by adding a verse. The same thing happens within the bounds of the haiku, or the hokku. The two parts are sliced in half and there's an open space which the reader, the audience, is supposed to enter into.

1. Makoto Ueda, Bashô and His Interpreters: Selected Hokku with Commentary, p. 314.
 
 Jane Hirschfield in an interview about her book in 2011 Heart of Haiku:
 
"Basho himself, though, is a perennially useful lens, since haiku as we now know it was so radically changed by Basho, generally described as its “founder,” even though the form existed before him. For current, American writers of haiku, The Heart of Haiku is really a way to look back to the rootstock, to refresh their relationship with how haiku was first conceived by its extraordinarily radical and continually evolving founding figure. 

Basho himself was concerned with so many of the issues that current haiku writers are concerned with—how to write in this moment’s language and perception, how to learn from the past without being bound by it, how to use haiku as a tool not only for expression but for the navigation of a life. I still read Sappho and Homer, I still read Su Tung Po and Dante, and I still read Basho and Issa and Buson. These are wellspring poets for me. 

Basho’s teachings about writing are as relevant and provocative now as they were when he was alive. “Poetry is a fan in winter, a fireplace in summer.” “To learn of the pine, go to the pine.” “Don’t imitate me, like the second half of a melon.” His navigation of the creative life and poverty, his restless curiosity, his losses, even his death was exemplary, really—Basho’s last spoken words take the point of view of the flies his students were trying to chase from the room. They show how supple and compassionate a poet’s sense of existence can be." - Jane Hirschfield, Interview from FROGPOND with Jane Hirshfield on The Heart of Haiku

Today's prompt: Haiku at one point was a party game, with chains of haiku continued by writers from person to person. For today's prompt, focus on one moment in your day today. Write a haiku and pass it along to another writer to continue the chain.