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3 July 2004. Okay, here are the last of the 41 conventional haiku I got published in the seventies (all in Dragonfly):
sudden gusts,
and next to the crammed parking lot
a flowered field careens
large erratic wind
in the blooming knapweed--
or just small breezes?
January 1976
beyond dense traffic
and the beach it passes:
the clear evening sky
April 1976
among pigeons
involved with an old woman's scraps
a snowflake falls
rainy March morning;
the empty street's traffic lights
green for seven blocks
July 1976
the third shadow
of the lamp-flanked winter oak
-- due to the full moon
where the swan emerges
the willow shadows . . .
even darker
October 1976
the cold wind;
a few red berries in the hedge
- shining
passing headlights--
from the sidewalk's withered leaves,
sudden shadows!
January 1977
the steady fall rain;
from somewhere in the pines--
a dripping sound
continuing rain:
barely audible except . . .
for where the roof leaks
April 1977
the ovals formed--
where reflections of reeds curve up
to reeds curving down
at the bus stop
the different sizes of dewdrops
on a blade of June grass
July 1977
The best of these are what I call Wry Observations. It seems to me, after reflecting on my small oeuvre of haiku, and others' haiku, that haiku fall into four categories. The best are those that strike me as in being in
touch with eternity. Basho's "old pond," and many others but certainly not all of his. Maybe my red kite and old pier ones. . . . I wouldn't rate either at the level of Basho's old pond haiku, but I wouldn't rate more than a half dozen or less haiku I know at that level, either. Pound's "In a Station of the Metro" would be one, although many would refuse to accept it as a haiku. Ditto, Williams's "Red Wheelbarrow."
Most good haiku are wry observations of Nature & Life but not maximally
deep; the majority of published haiku, and probably the majority of my 41, are pedestrian but not horrible. Few are in my fourth category, bad haiku. None of mine are quite that, I believe--even the one about the doll's smile. It seems to me it would be hard to make a genuinely bad haiku--as opposed to an instantly forgettable one--since any attempt to write a haiku that results in some kind of haiku will describe something, and what can be described without yielding some positive feeling if sympathetically reflected on?
Maybe my first two haiku above are close to wry observations, I really can't tell. Both were taken from real life. I often mention that. It may be important in haiku; I would guess that scenes from others' observation would already have been wryly observed by others, and imagined scenes possibly too likely to be based on already used wry observations . . . But my "just left of the falls--/ a dragonfly disturbs/ a little dark water" was imagined, and I consider it one of my better haiku. On the other hand, it was based on falls I've seen with still pools in the rocks the falls are plunging past, and I've seen plenty of dragonflies disturb still water, so the poem was all that imagined.
My "among pigeons" is nearly as close to forced pathos as my "doll's smile" haiku. I suspect there are dozens of haiku presenting a similar picture, tone and attitude in print. The empty street's green lights is another okay wry observation, but I'm not sure how original it is. It was inspired by just such a street, but I'm sure other haijin have written about similar streets.
("Haijin" is what composers of haiku are called, not one of my terms, by the way.)
I guess "red" has some kind of hold on me: I see I used it once again to contrast life with darkness in my hedge poem, which I consider a second-level poem (i.e., a wry observation haiku)--but almost too ordinary unfresh an image with a very standard haiku observation. That's despite its being based on a hedge in Westport, Connecticut, I observed in the sixties. Which makes me think I must have written some of these haiku before the seventies. I don't remember, but I was composing visual haiku partly inspired by the Peter Pauper serioes of haiku collections then, so I can't imagine I wouldn't also have been composing conventional haiku at the same time.
My "passing headlights" haiku doesn't work for me now. What I mean is that I'm not sure what I was describing makes sense. My subject was leaves flat on the sidewalk that would therefore not cast shadows--until stirred by the passing car. I fear a reader wouldn't know that from the poem.
My curving reeds haiku was one I remember Modern Haiku editor Bob Spiess praising in a letter to me, which made me feel very good. Another wry observation haiku--this one based on a photograph of reeds in some magazine.
The two haiku about rain-sounds seem minor wry observations, too--so maybe my haiku here are mostly wry observations, after all. It must be obvious to all by now that rain is one of my favorite subjects. I have nothing against being outside, but I love the feeling of being indoors, and nothing is better at inducing that feeling that a good rain against something one is dry inside of.
My final haiku in this entry seemed semi-profound when I thought it out while at the bus stop that was its setting: the infinite variety of even the smallest things. . . . But I now find it too "intellectual," somehow, for me to count it "in touch with eternity." On the other hand, as I just now realize, it is also about how waiting into an unexpected frame of mind can enrich one (which was an intended meaning of it that I at first forgot just now). I still wouldn't put it at the top level, but I do think it a good wry observation haiku.
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