Editor's Choice, March 2009

In this issue I could not help choosing two poems rather than one. There is no ranking between the two of them.

The first one is by Anita Virgil, one of the most refined haiku poets in our contemporary world.

every window gone

the old house takes in all

the spring wind

Anita Virgil, USA

Haiku is not a painting. However, there is something of an old master painting in this poem. It is not so much the vivid pictorial image it exudes as the tight and orthodox style it betrays that I feel as if I were looking at a Flemish landscape painting, or, if not old masters and nearer our time, Andrew Wyath. This is only my way of embellishing what is usually and simply mentioned as ‘classic’.

Being such, the haiku needs no comments really. Nowadays, there are too many haiku poems which are obscure in describing what is going on, the situation, scene, or what is actually happening. In the case of traditional Japanese haiku, if one cannot understand what is going on in a haiku after reading it twice, it is regarded as failure. Look at the first line of this haiku. The depiction is clear and vivid, and more. It gives a strong impact on the reader and keeps him/her on tenterhooks waiting for what comes next, having all sorts of imagination and associations. Line 2 of course gives the answer that they are windows of an old house but that’s not all as it contains another enigma, ‘takes in WHAT?’. The suspense, now probably ‘the reader being on pins and needles’, gets resolved in line 3 as it is revealed that it is the spring wind that the house is taking in through all the windows. A good story-teller does the same thing.

There are a number of points which show the author’s technical excellence. They include the positioning of the word ‘all’. If it is placed at the head of line 3, then the whole haiku could degenerate into a banal sentence. In line 1, ‘every window’ could in theory be ‘all windows’ but that would have lost the impact I mentioned before, and it would clash with the same word ‘all’ used later. ‘Every’ is specific and direct. ‘All’ is general and more like an overview.

One can read a lot into this haiku, which is not a pre-requisite of good haiku but which is often the case with good haiku. Equally important is that in many cases one had better not read anything into haiku however tempting it may be. This haiku may be a case in point.

The second haiku of my choice is by Kristin Reynolds. Among hundreds of poems submitted, I caught sight of this one and it never left me.

passers by

do not see me

passing by

Kristin Reynolds, USA

Of course the most obvious point is the clever use of words between line 1 and line 3. But one has to ask why it did not become gimmicky. Though expression is different this haiku somehow reminds one of Basho’s famous haiku: “on this road/where nobody else travels/autumn nightfall” (tr. Makoto Ueda). In Basho’s case, there are no passers-by but the sense of loneliness is the same in both poems. In our modern time, loneliness is felt even among the crowds as has been widely pointed out, maybe even more keenly because of that. Alienation is a deep cause of unhappiness in the modern world, especially if one lives in a godless world. In Basho’s time it meant life or death. I have a mixed feeling. On the one hand, I am itching to talk to Kristin Reynolds and ask her to tell me all about this haiku. But on the other hand, I at the same time do not wish to know anything from the author as I’d like to think that I know all there is to know about it, which is a great deal.

Susumu Takiguchi