Go Take A Haiku, Part Deux

Dear SunWinkers!

We’ve been talking about haiku, that ancient Japanese party game. Instead of gathering together to play Twister or Grand Theft Auto, 12^th century Japanese poets would get together and write renga, collaborative poems of verses in syllables 5-7-5, 7-7, 5-7-5, 7-7, etc., going around the room, each person contributing another verse, ultimately running to hundreds, even thousands of verses. It was quite an honor to be chosen to contribute the starting verse, called the hokku.Poets would come to renga parties prepared with dozens of hokku, and would inevitably go home with lots of leftover hokku. So they would publish books of hokku, and hokku became an art form unto itself.

About the 16^th century, various art forms became the province of the hoi polloi rather than just the royalty; these included Kabuki theatre, woodblock prints, and hokku. The popular hokku degenerated into something very much the equivalent of the bawdy limerick. They called these haikai, which means “unusual fun.” Basho (1644-1694) is credited with raising the art of the hokku/haikai once again to something more sublime. What’s easy to overlook is that Basho and others did not always have their heads in the clouds. They were not above writing personal, droll epigrams and even getting scatological.

(The term haiku, by the way—it means “unusual verse”—emerged only in the 20^th century and was actually unknown to the likes of Basho and Buson.)

So, here are some examples of haikai by the great haiku poets:

The dream I had
of being stabbed…was for real!
Bitten by a flea

Kikaku

The roadside thistle, eager
to see the travelers pass
was eaten by the passing ass!

Basho

Even at the time
when my father lay dying
I still kept farting

Sokan

Thud thud
upon the flowers
drops the horse turd

Issa

Tub to tub
The whole journey
Just hubbub!

Issa

[Issa is talking about one’s whole lifetime being framed by two baths, the newborn being cleaned off just after birth, and the corpse being cleansed in preparation for burial.]

Men are disgusting
They argue over
the price of orchids

Shiki

There’s no loincloth
on that butt blown in view
in the spring breeze

Buson

Tell them
I was a persimmon eater
who liked haiku

Shiki

I’m trying to sleep
Go easy
when you swat flies

Shiki

 

Now, when I wrote my haiku series last fall, a colleague remarked of one or more, in effect, “I don’t think that’s really a haiku. Maybe it’s a senryu.” I was a bit chaffed by this. My reaction was something like Sure it is! and so what if it isn’t? I didn’t put it that way to her. I suggested perhaps it was an American haiku, or an ironic haiku. So, I was delighted to discover there’s a name for what I was doing, namely haikai.

Here is a sampling of my favorite original haikai, along with a couple by modern Western poets:

sitting in my own poo
smearing it on my face
it’s great to be me

Constant pang of dread
in the pit of my stomach—
it’s my ulcer app.

Challenger explodes
due to reckless optimism.
Teacher’s last lesson.

Pixels draw you near
You answer my cyber-ad
Cling like silicon

Before my lawn mower
Butterfly clings to clover
Goodbye, butterfly

DW

A piece of green pepper
fell
off the wooden salad bowl:
so what?

Richard Brautigan

 

After weeks of watching the roof leak
I fixed it tonight
by moving a single board

Gary Snyder

 

The Prompt

Write one or more haikai.

Post your response on your blog. If it’s a WordPress blog, tag it WeSun. Or put it in a Note on Facebook or some such functionality, something you can link to. Then comment to this post with the link.

Sources/For Further Reading:

Faubion Bowers, ed.: The Classic Tradition of Haiku; Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, Inc., 1996.

X.J. Kennedy: An Introduction to Poetry, 5^th Ed.; Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1982.

Ron Padgett, ed.: The Teachers and Writers Handbook of Poetic Forms; New York: Teachers & Writers Collaborative, 1987.