an open field

in a room with no windows drawing stars           — ai li, still two one (1998) There are two things that immediately strike me about ai li’s haiku: a strong sense of containment, perhaps even imprisonment, from the image of a room with no windows. the concrete images at the end of each line – room, windows, stars – which anchor me to the real world. The idea of containment/imprisonment is a subjective response; the room could as easily be a cellar where the poet/narrator has chosen to be. But surely there’s a sense of longing, or aware* , in the third line, a longing for the exterior world, the night sky, for beauty and peace and freedom, that reinforces this idea for me.  But if this is about imprisonment why don’t I feel any distress or sense of restriction? Perhaps because of those three concrete words at the end of each line. Poets place (or should place) words at the ends of lines for deliberate and conscious reasons. And these d...

猪がきて空気を食べる春の峠       a wild boar      comes and eats air      spring mountain path           — Kaneko Tohta, Selected Haiku With Notes and Commentary Part 2:1961-2012 , translated by the Kon Nichi Translation Group (Red Moon Press, 2012) The translation of poetry has to be one of the most challenging arts. How can someone translate words, syntax, sound, rhythm and connotation from one language to another and be sure of achieving something comparable to the original author’s intention? How does the translator balance commitment to the original text with the necessity of creating poetic effect in the translated one? I am not a translator. And while my reasonable grasp of French and Spanish might help me produce a passable English translation of a short poem in either of those languages, all other languages are beyond my reach. So it’s the translation of Kaneko Toh...

spring foghorn . . .  cormorants spilling  from an over-crowded ledge   Paul Miller, Called Home (2006) Sound, sight and movement, and texture. These are the explicit physical senses through which the haiku speaks to me. But there must be more haunting the images and the spaces between the lines to produce an element of unease in me. There’s warning in the sound of the foghorn. Spring tides (despite the natural response of ‘joy’ that we have to the idea of Spring) can be dangerous and have stronger than usual rip currents. The company of black birds spills into the air like a ragged cloak of wing and cry. There’s a sense of danger, or risk, implicit in an overcrowded ledge.  The ellipsis at the end of line 1 indicates hesitation and uncertainty. spilling/ at the end of line 2 also allows the reader to experience that sense of falling into the white space on the page. Line 3 ends gruffly with the definite thump of a single syllable: ledge, Twi...