One of the amazing things about hokku is that it draws our attention to things so ordinary that we might overlook their inherent feeling of significance. That is why a verse about some common thing – but that thing seen in a new or different way – presents us with such a jolt of surprise, the feeling of suddenly realizing that we already knew something without knowing that we knew until reading the verse – and that feeling is what Blyth would call a little enlightenment.
Shikô wrote:
Summer rains;
They clear until a lark sings,
And then….
One wants to ask who would think to write a verse about such an event, yet what we really should ask is who would notice such an event. It is precisely that noticing that distinguishes a good writer of hokku from other people.
It is paradoxical that in reading such verses, we are taken aback with admiration. There is of course nothing remarkable in the event itself, nothing out of the ordinary, and the words could hardly be more plain and simple. That is why there is really no scope for poetry as it is conventionally understood in hokku, but there is remarkable room for the inherent poetry of sensory experience. And it just happened to be Shikô’s good fortune that he saw and felt the unspoken and un-speakable significance in the pause between the rains and in the singing of the lark, something many would let pass without noticing.
The structure of the verse is somewhat unusual.
Summer rains;
They clear until a lark sings,
And then….
The subject is obviously “summer rains,” and the action is “they clear until….and then,” meaning that the rains pause and then begin again. But there is also a secondary subject — “a lark,” and a secondary action, “sings.”
So structurally this is almost a kind of double hokku if you will, with a primary subject (which also functions as the setting) and action and a secondary subject and action.
David
