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Mićun Šiljak, A Firefly in a Woodpile / Svitac u drvljaniku (Haiku udruženje Srbije i Crne Gore, 2008), ISBN 978-86-84813-11-6), translation: Saša Važić, proofreading and editing: Norman Darlington

Zoran Raonić, Montenegro

МIĆUN ŠILJAK, A (HAIKU) POET

The Pljevlja bard, Mićun Šiljak, has not grown tired even in his later years. Poetry – prose – poetry, and all over again. And of course haiku is here as part of the whole poem, and still more. Our small poetry form has found a faithful and persistent follower even in this long-established writer. He already has an enviable opus behind him, and with him haiku has gained a writer who has enriched the very genre.

Those who want to mystify haiku poetry -- both its writers and interpreters -- are large in number, ascribing it some exclusive, Zen and geographical features, although it long ago became a planetary phenomenon deeply rooted into almost all of the world’s cultures, almost equally “infesting” members of all confessions. Many try to disdain both haiku poetry and haiku poets, and they are, most often, those who themselves are nobodies. Probably because those three lines seem too little and too clear, or perhaps somehow exotic, making them to shake their heads and to give up on them. Аnd they refuse to see that the haiku poem has become an utterly respected phenomenon in all serious literary circles. This can be proven by the fact that it has been written by some of the most important names from among the most significant cultures at the turn of the two centuries and two millennia. Among them are several Nobel Prize winners and nominees, even Borges.

First and foremost, a haiku must be a poem, аnd a poem needs a poet. Аnd when someone is that, he finds it easy to be somebody and something in that poetry genre. Аnd Mićun was, is and will be. Coming to that area in his mature life and creative phase, he adopted the form easily as his own. In return, the haiku poem found its precious protagonist, the one that, they say, writes itself. The old master recognized himself in it right away and gave vent to his gift, accepting that small and worthwhile form simply and in a unique way, successfully. So much so that his poems excited the informed, and amazed those who are not. Before us is an envious opus out of which a selection is offered in this manuscript representing Šiljak in a new way as a (haiku) poet, but also haiku poetry as a lyric genre which has eventually taken root even in these mostly epic areas, gaining an ever-increasing number of followers.

Desanka Maksimović once said that through haiku poetry (in which she has left an impressive opus, both in quality and quantity) she had paid off a dept to her painting gift and her first creative artistic impulse, from which she was to stray over time. However, it is well-known that haiku poetry and painting have much in common. Mićun Šiljak has added spice to his poems with his another great gift – music adding to that short and brief form a specific, his own, rhythm, a melodic one that can but rarely be seen in some other authors’ poems, regardless of other values of their work. That’s why it is poetry. Or music. Or a painting. Or a painting in music. Music in a painting. Or a poem in a painting. Or – all of that altogether. Yes, Mićun has succeeded in all of that. And it of course needs a gift, which this author has in abundance. While it’s true that he has wasted that gift, he has also made good progress, reaching some heights, mostly in our country, the heights from which this time of ours and its people and creators will be benevolently observed. The evidence for this can be found in a number of haiku selections and anthologies in our country and abroad, published in several languages; the proof, his presence in highly reputable haiku magazines. His haiku poetry has been recognized by some great authorities in this field, putting his name among important writers of this poetry.

Haibun, most akin and close to haiku poetry in its spirit, a prose poem in a way, of which haiku is an integral part, the essence, the malt, most often the main point – in a poetical sense, has naturally found its way in the literary opus of Mićun Šiljak. And -- in a most beautiful fashion. The poet has also written valuable works in that form, which are included even in the first and serious haibun anthology published in the Yugoslav region, out of which a selection is offered in this manuscript. Correctly, of course, since it excellently represents Mićun as a writer. In this field Šiljak also enters some topics in a poetical way, focusing on a certain motif, phenomenon or image, hitting the bull’s-eye, the core, illuminating, briefly and concisely, the essence and beauty. Where some would need pages and pages, Mićun accomplishes, in a small space, the ideal, which is that it’s narrow for words and wide for thoughts. The associations from these miniatures spread like waves amidst the ocean, on all sides, rocking themselves through the universe full of sense and nonsense, doubling and tripling them to such degree that there are enough of them for every being, wherever he/she is and if he/she wants to accept them.

With this book Mićun Šiljak will establish his place among prominent haiku writers in the South Slavic regions, while its translation into English will make a breakthrough into new ones. The book will also establish the reputation of his whole work of one of the important Montenegrin writers.

Nebojša Simin, Serbia

Тhe Music and Poetry of Mićun Šiljak

Mićun Šiljak writes haiku which rely on established patterns of European lyrics, with some exceptions when the brevity of the form draws him towards what is, for local readers, in many respects an unknown side of Far Eastern figurativeness, drawing a considerable poetic fascination out of the seemingly common and ordinary, as is the case with this poem:

Hollow trunk:
curled up snakes
make love

Or, even more impressively, with this one:

A stray blowfly
keeps me company –
it’s something, too

With the third line, “it's something, too,“ Mićun Šiljak clearly joins the haiku side, where, bare to the core, sincerity and simplicity become the measure of poetic credibility, while renouncing all connotations that could, from the first two lines of this haiku, disentangle themselves around the reader's mental reflex accustomed to straightforward lyric poetry. The same refers to the verse “Hollow trunk.“ The only difference is that in the latter case the line-break is not after the second but after the first line, immediately after the image of the “hollow trunk.“ This gives the poem a more festive mood, although it does so quite discretely, in conformity with the contents of the other two lines of the haiku.

There's not a poem in this book lacking a refined feel for the music of words. In those poems which are less haiku-like the talent for music is even more expressive:

Тhirst at watering place.
A herd of cattle leaks
an empty trough

There where Šiljak's poem strays from haiku, it is overtaken by the higher harmonies of ballad, ode, epic, as is the case with lime trees blossoming in Cetinje or purple blackberries on the charred forest ground.

Šiljak skillfully weaves a net around the poetic muse, who amply repays him. Both him personally and his reading public. He has already gained the attention of that public with his poetry collections from an earlier period in terms of maturity but equally sumptuous.

Bogdanka Stojanovski, Serbia

MIĆUN ŠILJAK’S HAIKU AND SENRYU

Just as haiku originates from renga, so it is that out of the entire creative work of Mićun Šiljak as a music educator, poet, story writer, аnd most of all as a bohemian, in his later years haiku poetry would originate.

The poet has embraced the short Japanese form, satisfying its basic requirements. His topics and motifs are diverse but firmly rooted in Mićun’s life, giving him an ability to notice just those moments which we can say time inexorably erases:

A band sings –
a blossoming rose shows itself
on the window

Deeply conscious of the transience of everything that exists, the poet does not get into mere pathos, but leaves to the future reader a clear image of a different reality which he neither estimates not compares. Simply, he reports it through his haiku:

Old town –
sensed only
in the song

Also, the poet himself discloses his inner life, all the while avoiding banality, which rarely happens in the senryu poems of our other authors:

Autumn rain –
all night from the eaves
insomnia drips

With all these features Mićun establishes himself as a good haiku and senryu poet, since we know that without a clear image, sensible sentence and clear expression, there is no excellent haiku/senryu comprehensible to a reader from any part of the world. That in addition makes haiku/senryu universal, so that those features of the short Japanese form are nowadays not infrequently considered as another characteristic making them a very popular, understandable and generally acceptable form beyond Japan, too:

Running after a cat’s tail –
kittens and the first
fallen leaves

Mićun Šiljak’s haiku are especially enriched by his ability to create a "new" word, or rather to form a sentence in an unexpected way, indicating that, apart from being a poet, he is also an excellent observer, that he is also a skilful writer. That is why he "discovers" a precise word to "tell" us about his experience contributing in that way to the clarity of an image which has inspired him to write a haiku, which again indirectly helps a careful reader and an expert in haiku to recognize the very moment in which a poem was created. A good example is this one:

Market tumult
outshouted by a voice
rejoicing me

When we close the covers of Mićun Šiljak’s book, we will be left with the images spoken in the form of the short Japanese poem into which the poet has inserted the craggy inclines and abysses of his homeland, shelters and highlanders but also cultivated rose gardens, lilacs and guitars... And his name will "never be spoken by silence" since:

Late into the night
I think haiku, and look:
the light

Мićun’s haiku fireflies will shine, his firebrands will sparkle for a long, long time... into infinity.

Nevena Simin, Serbia

Mićun Šiljak, a haibun poet

I first got to know Mićun Šiljak through his haibun sent to the haiku contest held in Novi Sad in 2001. Specifically, I judged haibun in that contest and I myself, at that time still without a good background and experience in that literary novelty in our country, thanks to Mićun, "corrected the curriculum": a form does not choose a poet, a poet is always a poet, and the form his toy. That encounter with haibun violently opened the door toward the world I had locked in one of twelve enchanting cellar rooms. And I threw away the key...

But, what is haibun?

Our reading public somehow gets along fine when it comes to haiku: it has been accepted as a poetry form which is nothing but a moment caught in three lines; it is known that this tiny poem speaks about NOW, about the present where both great and minor experiences, whether grandiose or quite insignificant – are equally significant. OK, but what is haibun? Literally speaking, an event and experience shape a haibun into a harmonious whole, as is the case with an intimate private diary, where an event is depicted through prose and an experience through the haiku form. More exactly, by definition a haibun should contain a story getting a poetical metaphor by summarizing the experience into one or more haiku. Therefore, if the most significant haibun are those combining documentary records (action, drama) with one or more haiku which choose an image/experience from that event – then the reader may enjoy such combination, and for a moment be involved in the world as seen by the author who views it through the window which opens to poets exclusively.

In our language milieu, one of the poets who will have a special haibun place, who will be quoted as a haijin, no matter how large his haijin opus is, Mićun Šiljak is capable of really masterfully looking at NOW, then of choosing an event and of supplementing and summarizing it with an experience so that they add to each other significance, meaning, metaphor and beauty. Mićun Šiljak’s language is beautiful, clear, enriched with meanings, precise, "hits a bull’s-eye" and – most of all -- communicative. The reader need not wonder what the author has in mind: everything is clear, unambiguous and splendid. Such language belongs to those poets who no longer come into conflict with the world from which they draw their poetic subject. Only one example:

"The aged Vukasin, the eldest and most respected member of the tribe, under the Montenegrin sky, on the shady side of the mountain, amidst the monastery reserve, with the prior’s blessing, in memory of himself, in honor of chance visitors, has built a fountain.

From pines roots
through the cold stone
time pours..."

I awarded first place to this haibun in the above-mentioned contest because with a number of words, so small, but very thoughtfully selected, it draws the careful reader into an eternal world, a world where values are set in a different fashion than in the everyday rush and race to fill the needs of our stomachs. This record is convincing, clear and multi-layered, and it echoes in the reader’s inner world. The very haiku which comes as a crown to the prose record may be considered separately, losing none of its authenticity and strength. As a supplement to the prose record it provides a few layers more: we come to know the environment where that time pours, the tradition and space to which this memorial, dedicated to others and to his own self, belongs. It might have been that I decided to award first prize to this haibun following the principle of giving others in order to be given. Since, all that follows a man’s wish to leave a memorial after his death gives the fullness, joy and sense of living – and our ancestors knew that pretty well. That is the reason for the award.

This is the way Mićun Šiljak writes in a few lines and makes you open the eye of your heart and the eye of your mind, to feel and to follow your feelings like circles on water widening into distance, into depth and into time.

There were more such encounters of Mićun’s haibun and my selections; I read his other work, too and what could I say but that he is – A POET. Regardless of whether he chooses verses, whether he chooses prose, whether it is haiku or haibun. The form is his toy, and what he writes hits deeply -- a bull’s-eye.

Milijan Despotović, Serbia

MIĆUN ŠILJAK’ S HAIKU POETRY

In haiku poetry man merges with nature, and its description, the recording of experiences which he notices, is the discipline of mind with which a poet is inspired just by nature. Тhat unity is achieved by enlightment which bears a poet such as Mićun Šiljak. His perceptive poetics reveal those human characteristics of the author who knows how to turn the obscure and evil into the allure of an experience, at the same time remaining unique and straightforward in happiness. There’s no crisis of self-satisfaction in him. "Such a man is not afraid even when he climbs to the highest spot. He does not get wet even when he enters the water. He does not get burnt even when he enters the fire" (Toshihiko Itsutsu).

Šiljak writes his poems in an artistically simple manner in his shelter and expresses his human feelings, excluding his emotions, through natural phenomena. His feeling are subtle, given in indications, the poet simply touches all that he sees leaving a contour rather than a complete image for the reader. And there where he records, seemingly only an image with no main point, he leaves us with the possibility of discovering that what he is is a poet not stopping the flow of life. The swallow is back in that shelter, isn’t it an experience?

Framed landscape
in my shelter, look:
the swallow is back

Although there is a connection between his experience and memory, framed in other forms, Šiljak follows the rules of noticing here and now in most of his haiku... Gifted with considerable powers of observation, he records everything now to avoid the distance which can annul an immediate experience. Where he has not done so, the poem leaves its banks and flows into another form. Timelessness and infinity are those things that adorn haiku, into whose depths the reader should sink "as in a space with no top and no bottom," as Andrej Arsenjevic Tarkovski used to say. Mićun Šiljak gravitates toward that marvelous suchness and if we analyze his work as Blyth would do, citing in his essay some of the characteristics he considered typical of haiku, we shall discover the Zen spirit as well and thus that our culture is similar to that of the East.

Unselfishness:

Nature images
in indications. A cricket’s chirp
is my spirit

Solitude:

Looking back
at my shadow – its length
surprises me

Gratitude:

Autumn evening –
a white air bubble rises
from a caldron

Inexpressible:

A magpie on the verandah
pecks at the first strawberries –
what bad news does it predict?

Humor:

A girl waves away
a cigarette smoke –
rose petals fall

Liberty:

A poodle jumps
onto its mistress’ lap –
decorated with a burdock

Simplicity:

Women washing laundry...
The warm river flows away
the color of white linen

Materiality:

River whirlpool –
a fisherman pulls a net and
the quiver of water

Love:

At the window, look:
an awake girl –
the smell of lilacs

Šiljak obviously enters the poetical haiku form in a serious way, conscious of its formal requirements and of the instantaneousness of life that moves along all the way scorning egotism. And what would be its purpose if life is like a wind, as seen by famous Lorca: "The wind, kissing the spring / leaves no trace." That is why one should learn from nature; the eye of a poet is that bond with it.

These poems by Mićun Šiljak have been noticed by the eye, and each of these haiku "makes a furious storm of poetry in a glass," as put by the Italian haijin, Giuseppe Napolitano.

Translation: Saša Važić

Proofreading and editing: Norman Darlington