Haiku

"Learn of the pine from the pine; learn of the bamboo from the bamboo." ~ Basho.

According to one of Basho's disciples, to be a genuine poem, it must contain the spontaneous feeling that comes from the object itself. 'In effect, the poet's first job is to share in the essential nature of the thing written about.'

SPEAK YOUR MIND DIRECTLY - GO TO IT WITHOUT WANDERING THOUGHTS

The main lesson of Haiku that I want to share with you - as I read in the book that taught me... is that a haiku is something that comes from not being able to express what we are feeling.  A haiku is there to describe the surrounds and climax to us achieving that feeling - so that the reader can essentially feel it for himself.  This has been my main focus throughout the years I have been writing.

That's the aim anyway. Listen to this - it's one of my favourites:

In a tight skirt
  a woman sweeping leaves
    into the wind. 

~ Virginia Brady Young

I can imaging the woman sweeping, I can picture the skirt, and the wind blowing the leaves. I can hear the wind and the bristle of the brush as she sweeps the floor.

Taking this thought - I look to my own collection.  I know that in the beginning I very much wrote for myself, as I hadn't imagined anyone to read them, and so they won't perhaps inspire this shiver down the spine of knowing exactly what the author intended and felt.  However, to me, I couldn't live without them. One of the first Haiku I ever wrote was this:

Hot potato.
  just a marvel in itself to
     be eaten. Cold night.

I remember where I was when I wrote it, and I remember how I felt and why I was there.  What plans I had in my mind and the coldness in the air. Every feeling that I had that night are pulled to the front of my mind when I read this.  Does anything you write bring such vividness to mind?  I wrote this haiku in 2005 or 2006 and knowing how bad my memory can be, such a punctum for me when reading this, it means everything to me.

When I was asked to submit some haiku to an arts collective in Shrewsbury in 2006 I started to write more for the audience; hence these few:

To be by the sea
  again. Breathing fresh air and
    talking with the gulls.




Warm sunlight scatters
  green reflections of the leaves
    onto sleeping cats.




Birds talking over
  each other in excitement
    Summer is dawning.

...where hopefully you can close your eyes and feel the sunlight, hear the birds, and breathe in the fresh sea air. 

I still write just for me though, as a reassurance that in years to come I will remember and be transported back to a time and place that had a hold on me. I write haiku everyday, and can write about almost anything. I love it and feel that if ever I am having a bout of writers block for my blog or any other kind of writing, I start the spontaneous writing of haiku, and it soon returns.

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