A Place For Shadows (poems, 2006-08)
Vespers #9: My First Haiku & Haiku Theory!
grey stone after light image— poetry all things float
still grave stones remain still grave stone remains still grave stones—
wind's shadow― leaves tremble
a weary field of dust
atoms made of concrete
car exhausts the flower garden— colliding
whales gather at dusk to sing
a thousand trees rise— on a single blade of grass
hard edged shadows cool— sunlight on a wooden deck
only by contemplating nonsense— poetry!
rose rose rose rose
but we cannot stop for a moment— language continues to fold
light leaves grass
& now you have read thesewords
“Make of the reader a poet... the joy of reading appears to be the reflection of the joy of writing, as though the reader were the writer's ghost. At least the reader participates in the joy of creation that, for Henri Bergson, is the sign of creation.” (Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, 1958)
“What matters, therefore, is the exemplary character of production, which is able, first, to induce other producers to produce, and, second, to put an improved apparatus at their disposal. And this apparatus is better, the more consumers it is able to turn into producers—that is, readers or spectators, into collaborators.” (Walter Benjamin, The Author As Producer, 1934)
“In traditional Western conceptions of poetry the relationship between the poet and the reader is usually understood hierarchically. Meaning is put into the poem by the poet, and then interpreted by the reader. In haiku the reader is encouraged to participate, to collaborate with the poet in the production of meaning, to experiment with the poem rather than simply interpret it. To become poet themselves.” (Dick Whyte, One Plum Slowly Ripens, 2017)
Some time between 2006-2008 I started studying haiku and tanka, which helped to resolve some of the difficulties I was having with poetry, as mentioned in the notes on my previous set of poems (2004-05). My first haiku proper was probably written in 2007 or early-2008, and published the following year in the long running English-language haikai journal Simply Haiku (Summer 2009), originally with an ellipses at the end, rather than an em-dash;
still grave stones remain still grave stone remains still grave stones . . .
This was followed by numerous others, including these two abstracts, written sometime in mid-2008, originally published in tercet form, in the experimental haikai journal Roadrunner (Nov. 2008);
atoms made of concrete
whales gather at dusk to sing
My interest in haiku came about while I was writing my masters thesis, on the experimental short-films of Aotearoa artist and poet Joanna Margaret Paul. As it happened, Paul’s approach to cinema and poetry was deeply influenced by Japanese poetics, and this led me to researching haiku and tanka. While I had come across haiku 8 or 9 years before, and even attempted writing some, I never developed anything beyond a few failed sketches. Unbeknownst to me at the time, this would begin a lifelong obsession with haikai poetics, which I am still unpacking and developing today.
In particular, my father gave me a copy of Harold Henderson’s book An Introduction to Haiku, and I ended up using it as a framework for unpacking the kinds of poetics I could see in Paul’s films. I combined this with Michel Foucault’s analysis of power, Annette Kuhn’s feminist discussions of film in Women’s Pictures, Vivian Sobchack’s phenomenology of the cinematic eye, Laura U. Marks’ Intercultural Cinema, and Deleuze and Guattari’s metaphysics of thought in A Thousand Plateaus (among other things).
Sobchack makes a fascinating argument with regards to film. While her overall thesis is too complex and nuanced to get into here, the overall gist (greatly oversimplified) is that if the screen can be understood as a giant “eye” observing a “visible (semi-objective) world” (i.e. objects on the screen), then the cinema becomes a kind of “invisible (inter-subjective) body” which we as the audience existentially and phenomenologically experience. This opens up a unique dimension to film analysis which explores the affect and effect it has on the body of the audience (see, for instance, Paul’s short-films Body House and Task). Furthermore, it also implies that the film has a “brain” which selects and combines the images, further opening the analysis onto noological discussions of how ‘images’ are related to ‘concepts’.
For this dimension I used Deleuze & Guattari’s work. They critique dominant models of Western philosophy as being what they called “tree” thought (based in essentialist identity, transcendent binaries, ontological notions of being, either/or logics, spatially striated territories, hierarchies, categories, etc.). I saw this as being akin to dominant Hollywood narrative forms (which I love, but also feel are worth heavily critiquing).
As an alternative, they offered a model of thought they called “rhizomatic” (based in multiplied haecceities, immanent triads, noological becomings, both/and logistics, spatially smooth plateaus, horizontals, connections, etc.), which I saw as being more akin to experimental and avant-garde cinema, and haikai poetics. This is something I plan on writing about in more detail at some point but for now, here are a few excerpts and assorted notes from my thesis which outline how I understood haiku and haikai at the time:—
“The haiku is often comprised of fragmented words, and relies on the spectator to complete the poem.” Furthermore haiku and haikai are grounded in collaboration and community. This is distinct from classical Western frameworks of authorship in which the individual ‘genius’ of the poet is displayed by their ability to produce stable, singular, “profound” meanings in their work.
“Haiku are typically about simple, everyday subjects (trees, gardens, animals). They are comprised of a minimum vocabulary, reducing the ‘image’ to its bare necessities, to nothing but a ‘trace’. Like the ‘poetic image’ (as Gaston Bachelard and Julia Kristeva define it), haiku uses the “power of suggestion” to reach beyond what is written on the page (i.e. to disrupt the “representational” meaning of the words). As Harold Henderson writes, ‘only the outlines... are drawn, and the rest the readers must fill in for themselves’.”
In haiku, it is not a case of a poem having either a simple or complex meaning (as in Western poetics, i.e. an “either/or” binary, in which meaning is “being” one or the other), but rather the ‘simple’ gives rise to a ‘complexity’ of meanings (i.e. a “both/and” multiplicity, in which meaning is always in a state of becoming): “By making the haiku ‘simple’ it is able to be “read” by anyone, without any specialist knowledge… However, after multiple readings [which might include the application of specialist knowledge] the reader may notice the poem opens onto other meanings, and it becomes ‘complex’. It is for this reason that haiku reading itself is an art, a “knowledge” transmitted in repeated readings of the poem. In this sense, the haiku has no fixed, singular meaning. It suggests a number of entry points, producing a multiplicity of possibilities.” Key to this, is that it begins as “simple” to read, and becomes complex over time (rather than being complex from the outset, thus gatekeeping its knowledge).
One method of achieving this is through the “use of a number of specialist terms, such as ‘cut-words’, ‘pillow-words’, and ‘pivot- words’. Deleuze and Guattari call these complexes “floating lines.” A “pivot” (whether a word, or line) is a phrase that can be read in many different contexts within the frame of the poem, foregrounding the multiplicity of meanings every word has, and the diverse ways in which words produce not meaning (in the singular) but meanings (in the plural): possibilities. This allows for the experience of the poem to literally ‘pivot’ or ‘float’. In this sense, the haiku poem “folds” both into itself, and out into the world. It has no one “line of action” (from point A to B to C), but opens onto “lines of flight” and “dovetails of becoming.” Haiku functions like an an incomplete list… and asks the reader to become poet in the act of reading.”
Haiku defies singular and essentialist interpretations, and asks us to engage in endless and multiple experimentations on the self.
Echoing this, my original thesis had no conclusion, and instead fragmented into numerous pages of short poems, some of which are included above. Unfortunately this was not appreciated by the institution, and I was advised to write a traditional conclusion, which I begrudgingly did.
Vespers
Poems by Dick Whyte, and other miscellanea. Explore the archive . . .
Thank you for this wonderful post.
' still grave stones remain
still grave stone remains
still grave stones—'
I love that so few words can make one feel so much. Though I write poetry, I've always been intimidated by the haiku and this makes me want to let go of my fear and try my hand at it
"The institution" may have lacked appreciation, but this was one of the best reads I've enjoyed in a very long time. The details, connections and global perspectives captivated me and led me to research several of my own rhizomatic learning opportunities. Brilliant. Literally.