December will soon begin, and with it comes the holiday season.
How does one deal with holidays in hokku? The same way one deals with a season. A holiday verse is like a miniature seasonal verse — in other words, it should express the character of the holiday, how it manifests — with emphasis always upon [...]
Archive for November, 2009
BLOWING LEAVES
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged autumn, dog, haikai, haiku, hokku, hokku lessons, leaves, nature, poetry, seasons, spirituality, transience, wind, writing, zen on November 25, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
A hokku appropriate to late autumn, by the woman Sono-jo:
A dog barking
At the sound of the leaves;
The windstorm.
It is an odd fact in hokku that the simplest are often the best, and this is a very good hokku because it has very strong sensation. By sensation we mean that it affects the senses strongly. In [...]
HOKKU TO MAKE YOU COLD
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Bashô, ducks, haikai, haiku, hokku, Kikaku, moon, nature, poetry, Sôgi, snow, stubble, Tantan, winter, writing, zen on November 24, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
An old winter hokku by Sōgi, who lived long before Bashō:
In the freezing night,
The ceaseless flapping
Of duck wings.
We can easily see its form. It is:
Setting: In the freezing night.
Subject: duck wings
Action: the ceaseless flapping of
In other words, we have what is common to many hokku — a setting, a subject, and an action — [...]
THE FARTHER ONE TRAVELS THE LESS ONE KNOWS
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged autumn, Bashô, Daodejing, haikai, haiku, hokku, knowledge, nature, poetry, rain, seasons, winter, wisdom on November 23, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
On setting out on a journey, Bashō wrote:
Tabibito to waga na yobaren hatsushigure
Traveler to my name shall-be first-winter-rain
“Traveler”
Shall be my name;
The first rain of winter.
If that last line looks a bit long in comparison to the others, that is because Japanese translated into English does not always take up [...]
ENTERPRISES THAT REQUIRE NEW CLOTHES
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Blowing Zen, haikai, haiku, Henry David Thoreau, hokku, nature, poetry, seasons, selflessness, shakuhachi, spirituality, writing, zen on November 20, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
The almost frantic desire of contemporary society to drop whatever is perceived as no longer fashionable in favor of whatever is new holds no attraction for writers of hokku, who see such chronic dissatisfaction as just another manifestation of the illusion that abandoning what one has for what one does not have will make one [...]
LEARNING THROUGH TRANSLATION PROGRAMS
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged haikai, hokku, languages, nature, poetry, translation, writing on November 20, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
I see that some people read my site in Italian, in Spanish, in Czech, Russian, and other languages by using Internet software. I wish that I could write as fluently in all those languages as in English, but I cannot. And Internet translation software does not often translate what I write clearly or even correctly. [...]
AUTUMN COMINGS AND GOINGS
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged autumn, Buson, Gyôdai, haikai, haiku, harmony, hokku, nature, poetry, seasons, Shôhaku, spirituality, transience, writing, zen on November 15, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Gyōdai wrote:
Aki no yama tokorodokoro ni kemuri tatsu Autumn’s mountains here-there at smoke rises
The autumn hills; Here and there Smoke rises.
It is a pleasant verse, and reminds one of Appalachia, of seeing smoke from cabins rising here and there among the gold and red leaves of autumn covering the hills.
But it [...]
FOG AND THINKING
Posted in Buson, Kitô, autumn, tagged autumn, Buson, fog, haikai, haiku, hokku, Kitô, nature, poetry, river, seasons, Shiki, wild geese, writing, zen on November 8, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Perhaps you remember my “Fall” hokku:
The river –
It flows out of and into
The fog.
Fog is very important to autumn hokku, and important to ink painting — one of the other contemplative arts — as well. Fog both hides and reveals as it moves and changes. I have always been fond of those wonderful old Chinese [...]
DESCENDING GEESE, FALLING LEAVES
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged autumn, falling leaves, Gyôdai, haikai, haiku, harmony, hokku, Kyoroku, poetry, seasons, wild geese, writing, zen on November 7, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Some Japanese hokku seem to defy translation into English, even though their meaning is not difficult. An example is Kyoroku’s:
Descending geese –
Their cries pile on one another;
The cold of night.
As one group of geese comes down from the sky, followed by yet another, their cries seem to layer one upon the other. This piling of [...]
LEARNING FROM OLD HOKKU
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged autumn, Bashô, falling leaves, haikai, haiku, hokku, nature, poetry, seasons, waterfalls, wild geese on November 4, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Every good hokku is simultaneously a pleasure and a lesson. We enjoy the experience of it, but we can also learn how to write our own hokku from it. Take this verse by Bashō:
In the original it is:
Ochikochi ni taki no oto kiku ochiba kana
Literally,
Far-near at waterfall ’s sound hear falling-leaves [...]
SPILLING THE MOON
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged autumn, haikai, haiku, hokku, moon, poetry, seasons, spirituality, writing, zen on November 1, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
In the previous posting I mentioned that many of Shiki’s “haiku” would still be classifiable as hokku, though they often tend to be illustrations. But even among his illustrations some are better, some worse.
Here is one of his verses:
An isolated house;
The moon declining
Above the grasses.
Do you see why I say that such hokku are illustrations, [...]
WHAT DID SHIKI REALLY DO?
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged haikai, haiku, hokku, seasons, Shiki, spirituality, writing, zen on November 1, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
In previous postings I have written that the haiku did not exist until near the end of the 19th century, when it was “created” by a Japanese failed novelist, the journalist generally known today as Masaoka Shiki, or simply Shiki. That is an historical fact, and easily verifiable by anyone willing to expend a minimum [...]