Editor's Choice, October 2008

World Haiku Review, Volume 6, Issue 4, October 2008

EDITOR'S CHOICE

willow shade

the old poet lowers

his bones

John Bird

This haiku deserves to be appreciated widely by those who wish to write genuine haiku and/or write them in Japanese haiku spirit. Those who have this spirit outside Japan are few and far between. If someone boasts of having it the likelihood is that he/she hasn't got it at all. This author is one of those few and it is proved by this haiku by him.

If we focus on the willow it is spring. If on the shade, summer. So, it could be either but that is not of the primary importance. The feeling of season or nature is vivid.

However, it is in the line 2 and line 3 that the feeling of a genuine Japanese poem resides. So much so that if they are translated into Japanese, few Japanese people would think that they are in fact written by non-Japanese. Of course, that in itself does not make good haiku but it is an extremely difficult thing for a non-Japanese to achieve.

Self-mockery has been part of Japanese humour, especially in the literary and artistic fields. Hokusai Katsushika used to call himself a mad old man. Junichiro Tanizaki did the same thing in our time. More often than not I too undertake self-mockery in my poems, sometimes talking exactly about my old bones (rohkotsu in Japanese).

If the content of self-mockery gets projected onto someone else it will assume different characteristics, as shown in the haiku I have chosen for this issue. The author may still be talking about himself if the old poet means him looked at as if he is a third person by the author. However, if it is someone the author happened to witness in the shade of a willow tree, just about to take a rest or to try to cool himself, then the author's feeling is that of compassion. It may be his compassion for the old man over the old age and all that it brings, loneliness or some other plight in which he finds himself.

If the willow is the season word, i.e. spring, then the contrast between the freshness and newness of it represented by new leaves of the tree and the twilight years of the old poet cannot be stronger. Even if the season word is shade, i.e. summer, the sight of the old poet fading into it from the brightness of the sun and the vividness of the willow's green is depicted so vividly in this poem.

I don't think that the author tried to 'imitate' the Japanese haiku features as many do without success, for example, by talking about a fly or butterfly coming out the nose of a stone Buddha statue, or about a man pissing, or the moon reflected on the rice paddy. He may not even be conscious that the use of 'old bones' is a Japanese thing to do. He may not even be conscious that this haiku of his has a definite feel of an essence of Japanese literature and might be delighted if he were told that. Be it as it may, we will come to the same thing anyway, namely, the expression reflects the Japanese sentiment and is most appropriate for haiku-writing. Either way, the author should be congratulated on arriving this far on the bumpy road to good haiku. So, heart-felt congratulations from me too!