Haibun and Modern Haiku Publication

Years ago, I subscribed to Modern Haiku. I recently re-subscribed, and the issue arrived the other day. Beautiful.

While I've been writing a lot of haiku again the past couple of years, I hadn't pursued various publications, other haiku poets, or my own submission/publication goals. But I'm back to it!

Along with my rediscovered exploration, I've been writing Haibun. Haibun is a short (anywhere from 20 to 300 words) (more or less) poem, essay, narrative, memory, recollection, prose piece, autobiography, micro-story, poem, and ending with a haiku. The Haibun can have a title.

Several things about this form I love. There is 'Zen zone' between the end of the haibun and the haiku. The haiku is not a linear conclusion. It stands alone, as does the haibun. But they also go together.

The haibun needs to be descriptive, sensory, detailed, succinct, non-repetitive.

I have a Haibun work-in-progress. It's not finished; this is the second draft. It started out as a poem, but I've been re-working it to fit into the Haibun form.

Bronson Caves, Hollywood California 1969

My father -- Big D we called him -- was an amateur photographer. He'd develop his photographs in our living room; trays of smelly solutions transforming paper into black and white images. Big D would develop horrible cracks, peeling skin, on his hands from the chemicals. He gave me his Olympus camera. I felt important, proud, and loved taking photos of the L.A. art museum on Wilshire, billboards, cemeteries. But then he took it back. My dad was also an actor and ex-child performer in the Tom Mix circus. He was killed in an episode of Gunsmoke, the naive and well-meaning young cowboy shot dead by the villain. He rehearsed a role from the Ice Man Cometh in our living room, scaring the shit out of me with his emotional coldness. He directs me telling me to scrams as I run through caves at Bronson Park. "Again!" he yells. My screaming is not sincere enough. I try again, running, shrieking . . . "Stop!" commands Big D. "Do it once more ... really act like you're frightened." Jesus Dad, I'm scared every goddamn day. What the fuck? But I do it again. And again. Still, it doesn't take. 

a narrow cave

ochre walls

dim light

________________

So that's the work in progress. Another version of the haiku at the end:

a narrowing cave

ochre walls crumble

at the end -- a glow

I've written three Haibun so far. The first two I'm very happy with, but can't post them here since I'll be submitting them to Haibun.com and Modern Haiku.

The one I've published here; I get happier with it as I work with it, but it's not quite there yet. As far as the haiku goes, they give off different feelings. The first one, closer to what I was feeling and the overall emotion of the Haibun. The second, is a little more hopeful. I think I'll stick with the first one.

NaHaWriMo: Stop with the 5-7-5 Haiku!

“The term syllable is an inaccurate way of describing the actual metrical units of Japanese poetry.”

        —Haruo Shirane, in his introduction to Kōji Kawamoto’s The Poetics of Japanese Verse (Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 2000)

“I don’t think counting 5,7,5 syllables is necessary or desirable. To reflect the natural world, and the season, is to reflect what is.” 

        —Gary Snyder

Indeed, the point of the “no 5-7-5” NaHaiWriMo logo is to emphasize that it’s a widespread misunderstanding to think of haiku merely as anything written in 5-7-5 syllables. Remember, 5-7-5 does not a haiku make. (NaHaiWriMo.com)

Oh I love this article! As I love the website. NaHaiWriMo --- haiku that does not follow the entrenched idea among westerners that haiku must be 5-7-5. Three lines that must have 5 syllables in the first line, 7 in the second, and 5 in the third.

I am an educator. I cringe and freak every time a well meaning teacher teaches their class about haiku. Students happily write haiku, following the mandate they're taught from the beginning: haiku has to have three lines of 5-7-5.

It's frustrating to have students, excited by the idea of haiku, become stuck in the 'right way' to create a haiku. After all, their teachers taught them that. Trying to gently teach them otherwise -- students and adults -- is difficult. That's when I pull rank; I'm a published haiku poet, etc. Still, I get suspicious looks, as if I'm not really correct and am somehow misinformed about all this.

The NaHaiWriMo site has an excellent article on why 5-7-5 is not the goal of writing haiku. It is not the 'rule.' 

Seminar

Seminar

So the Professor assigns a dream poem.
 “Exactly as it happened” he instructs. 
An exercise in the surreal even while maintaining academic constructs within a decontructionist model of ironic post-modernistic symbolism within personal narratives.

I read my dream. Exactly as it happened. 
The dream had the following: floating zebras, talking mallards, velvet capes, a white-haired woman, nude beneath the moon, and oh,
the giraffe.

I was chided. Told my dream was “too much.” I said:
“Well, I was just folliowing directions. I reported back, truthfully. Tried to be accurate.” 
I was asked, “Well, what does it mean? What were you trying to say?”

“Oh,” I said. “I thought we were to just write down a dream we had. And I did. See?” --
   ...  floating zebras, talking mallards, velvet capes, white haired women (nude, beneath moon) and, the giraffe. I don’t know what it means.”

“Well,” said the Professor. “While it’s true exploring the archetypes and motifs within the conceit of the dream landscape wasn’t a part of the assignment, ... still ... it’s ...
too much.”

“Try again.”

regan lee

june 2017

Misconceptions in writing haiku

Even in college, I was surprised (as well as frustrated by the arrogance of a published poetry professor) who insisted that haiku must be 17 syllables. Rigid adherence to the 5-7-5 rule!

This is such an entrenched belief, taught to students from elementary grades and beyond.

In Japanese, a haiku poem is usually divided into three groups/lines of syllables, the first and last with five syllables, the second with seven. However, be careful not to get stymied by strict adherence to the number of syllables and miss the essence of haiku. The 17 syllables is not an absolute rule. Most Japanese syllables are short, as in po-ta-to. English syllables can be long, and take up too much space in a haiku, so English haiku frequently have fewer than 17 syllables, sometimes as few as ten. (from: The History and Artistry of Haiku, Patricia Burleson)

Haiku is a moment in time, in the present.  An act of not thinking but being.  It is noticing. Seeing. It is elegance and brevity. Balance. It is all of you within that moment without the ego of you interfering. 

Haiku is not the creation of crunching an experience into a set of syllables for syllable's sake.