Haikumbha: June 2010

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Immortality

high fine clouds like phoenix plumes
- a sickle moon scythes past lives
In afternoon blue

-Jeronimus

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Who is the Poet?

No subject comes to mind -
the whole vibrating world's a poem
with sun and moon for metre.

Blue and Gray

Weeks of gray skies
brushed away by a cold blue wind.
New slates cover blue sarking.
-Jeronimus

Saturday, June 5, 2010

Early Winter

a single shining sound
in the darkness before dawn,
- the rain-quickened stream

-Jeronimus

Haiku Poetry

Haiku is a Japanese form of poetry traditionally using three lines of 5, 7, 5 syllables. This structure is often relaxed by haiku poets writing in languages other than Japanese. The Japanese language is much more syllabic in nature than English, and some have argued that there is no point in keeping to the traditional syllable counting with English, because it can never produce the same effect as it does in Japanese.
A haiku can be about anything; however, it should, traditionally, evoke a sense of place, time of day, or season. Often one of the lines is a so-called 'cutting line' which may shatter the logical flow of the poem, rather like a Zen koan (irrational statement designed to startle the mind out of its slumber of conventional thought).

According to the masters of Japanese Poetry, good haiku may only be composed in a state of egolessness. The poet and the subject of the poem must become one, in a state of thoughtless awareness (meditation). This is the same principle by which the art of yoga (union with the authentic self) is practised.
The style of the haiku is not one of commentary or didacticism. There should not be an attitude of sermonizing or expounding one's own opinions on things. The subject of the poem (or the poetic moment) should be allowed to speak for itself (for the Universal Self).

The poet Doho was a disciple of Basho (perhaps the most famous exponent of the art form). Doho, recalling what he has learned from Basho, relates:

"The master said, 'learn about a pine tree from a pine tree, and about a bamboo stalk from a bamboo stalk'. What he meant was that the poet should detach his mind from self [ego]… and enter into the object, sharing its delicate life and its feelings. Whereupon a poem forms itself. Description of the object is not enough: unless a poem contains feelings which have come from the object, the object and the poet's self will be separate things."

In the philosophy of Zen (from Chinese 'dzan', a word itself derived from Sanskrit Dhyana = 'meditation') the aim is to free the mind from opinions and thoughts, not to clutter it up with more - hence Zen-influenced Haiku poetry can sometimes appear banal or pointless to the uninitiated. The way to appreciate the beauty of Haiku is to try to enter into the meditative-ness of the poetry and so participate in the mood of transforming everyday natural things into the inexpressible... or allowing them to transform you.

Haikumbha

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Immortality

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Who is the Poet?

Blue and Gray

Saturday, June 5, 2010

Early Winter

Haiku Mind

Haiku Poetry

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