Notes from the Gean is pleased to be able to reprint this essay first published in Wingbeats:

wingbeats

Wingbeats: Exercises & Practice in Poetry is an exciting collection from poets who teach both in and outside academia. Fifty-eight poets in various stages of their careers have contributed sixty-one exercises ranging from quick and simple to involved and multi-layered. In seven chapters, ranging from "Springboards to Imagination" to "Chancing the Accidental" to "Complicating the Poem," each exercise includes not only clear step-by-step instructions, but numerous poems that exemplify the successful completion of the exercise. Wingbeats, edited by Scott Wiggerman and David Meischen, includes exercises for working in pairs and/or groups, for incorporating research and/or the Internet, for writing outdoors, for creating a hands-on experience. Of course, traditional poetic techniques covering metaphor, persona, forms, and revision are also included. Wingbeats is destined to become a standard instructional book in every poet's library.

http://dosgatospress.org/wingbeats

 

 



Circling the Pine—Haibun and the Spiral Web

One can pluck the web of one’s experience at any node,
and the whole thing vibrates.

 

For me, the basis of all poetry writing begins in synthesis—like Indra’s web. One can pluck the web of one’s experience at any node, and the whole thing vibrates. A good poem connects the thing perceived with the perceiver, as does a good haiku. Basho is reputed to have said, “To write of the pine, go to the pine.” In a good haibun, we go to the pine—and then through the haiku we follow the pine’s roots, or needles and cones as they fall——spiraling farther and farther afield while still orbiting the pine—still linked to the original image.

In our book, The Haiku Handbook, my late husband, William J. Higginson, (Bill), reflects on haibun written in the West:

Bringing the spareness of haiku poetry to prose gives us the best of autobiography and familiar essay—the actions, events, people, places, and recollections of life lived—without weighing them down with sentimentality, perhaps the greatest enemy of art and life. (221)

Along with the benefits of “bringing the spareness of haiku poetry to prose,” that Bill cites above, the  adding of  haiku, themselves, to haibun prose feels akin to the experience of linking in the communal poetry called renku. I've always enjoyed writing renku—a process that requires one to come up with verses that turn a corner—“move away”—with respect to each preceding verse, but still connect in mood, tone, image, or theme. In renku-writing, this is often referred to as “link and shift.” If the haiku in a haibun work well, they both anchor the piece and let it go. Or, they simultaneously frame it and break the frame, allowing the content to spiral outward in ripples of association.

After having deliberately written a number of original haibun, I recently decided to experiment with revising longer narrative poems and prose-poems into haibun. Hopefully, sharing my process with you will  encourage you to experiment in similar ways.

Revising a Narrative Poem Into a Haibun

When one takes a narrative poem and transforms it into a haibun, something quite different happens to the original poem. A good poem may already reverberate in several directions, ripple with associations. But recasting that poem into poetic prose and adding haiku open it up even further—precisely because the haiku shift the focus enough that it becomes a different work. They expand upon the original perception. In the following two examples, you can see how my original narrative poems changed when I translated them into haibun.

The poem “Driving Home,” reminisces about a drive through the hills of Pennsylvania while coming home to New Jersey. Here is the original narrative poem:


 

Driving Home

We flash past a wreck at the road’s edge—
a motor-home cracked open as it smashed
into the guard-rail and fell on its side.

Furniture has spilled from its twisted ribs
like stuffing— a bed, a dresser, and a table
pitched into the weeds.

A man and woman  sit beneath the trees
in lawn chairs, staring at debris and the
red and white strobes of police cars,
the recently arrived ambulance crew.

But this has become history, this story
dwindling behind us as the road unwinds
through mountains and night begins
to fill it, falling from these hills
like skeins of purple silk.

Earlier on a more local road, we’d slowed
to pass six stags arrayed in a meadow
like figures from a medieval frieze,
full-blown velvet racks upon their heads.

As we drew abreast of them, they turned
to run into the forest beyond, vanishing
so quickly that they seemed a dream,
sacred stags sent to lead the hunt,
and faintly I heard horns on the wind
and the distant baying of  hounds.

Behind the man and woman by the road
another woods begins, another dream,
and from those trees the branches bend
to pull them in so swiftly that they never
crashed at all, never sat in canvas chairs
beside the ruins of their home at that
random intersection with our lives—
though now we meet again.

In the following haibun version of the poem above, I found myself making changes in the prose, particularly in the first and third paragraphs of the haibun vs. the first and fifth stanzas of the poem.

For instance, I combined the first two stanzas of the poem into one prose paragraph, and in the third stanza, I deleted some words and recast “staring at debris and the / red and white strobes of police cars, / the recently arrived ambulance crew.” into a more straightforward version of these lines.

Also in the haibun, I combined stanzas five and six of the poem, cutting as I did so. I found myself wanting to combine verse stanzas here and there because the rhythms of the prose seemed to demand that. The interspersed  haiku are based on memories. They shift away from the narrative, but connect in image, mood, and theme—especially the theme of time passing.

Driving Home

We flash past a wreck at the road’s edge— a motor-home cracked open as it smashed into the guard-rail and fell on its side. Furniture has spilled from its twisted ribs like stuffing—a bed, a dresser, and a table pitched into the weeds. A man and woman sit beneath the roadside trees in lawn chairs, illuminated by the red and white strobes of police cars and the recently arrived ambulance crew.

storage unit—
after your death, I discard
box after box

But this has become history, this story dwindling behind us as the road unwinds through mountains, and night begins to fill it, falling from these hills like skeins of purple silk.

grandmother’s shawl—
sunset filters through
the frayed fabric

Earlier on a more local road, we’d slowed to pass six stags in a meadow. Poised like figures in a medieval frieze, they bore full velvet racks on their heads. As we drew abreast of them, they turned to run into the forest beyond, vanishing so quickly that they seemed a dream, sacred stags sent to lead the hunt, and faintly I heard horns on the wind and the distant baying of  hounds.

she plucks feathers
from the just-killed hen—
blood in the sink

Behind the man and woman by the road, another woods begins, another dream, and from that woods green branches bend to pull them in so swiftly that they never crashed at all, never sat in canvas chairs beside the ruins of their home at that random intersection with our lives.

milkweed pods—still
spilling seeds into the sky
of my childhoo

 

The following is another example of the benefit gained when revising a free-verse poem into a haibun. Even in what I considered its final draft, the original  poem felt unfinished, lacking enough “punch” to capture my experience.”

Estell Manor State Park

That gray day, wind soughed in the pines,
and oaks arced full over trails that faded
into green or snaked into a density
of swamp and lichened trunks.

We walked a narrow road around
the wooded heart, wondering which trail
would claim us first until the wind
caught a dead limb and tossed it
down before us—the loud crack
fusing with its swift descent.

We said the usual things: what if
we’d been a few yards further along,
or a car had been there—then cautiously
pressed on, although we stopped
to drag the heavy branch aside
before we left the loop road for a trail
that led us deeper in.

Framing the poem in haiku gave me a chance to pick up on both the harsh shock of the limb falling and the lingering fear in the wake of the experience.

Estell Manor State Park

turkey buzzard—
red beak into its own
black wing

That gray day, wind soughed in the pines, and oaks arced full over trails that faded into green or snaked into a density of swamp and lichened trunks.

We walked a narrow road around the wooded heart, wondering which trail would claim us first until the wind caught a dead limb and tossed that full weight down before us—the loud crack fused with its swift descent.


We said the usual things: what if we’d been a few yards further along . . . or if a car . . . then cautiously pressed on, although we stopped to drag the heavy branch aside before we left the loop road for a trail.

night thoughts—
my heartbeat quickens
in this dark

In first draft, this poem-turned-haibun included only the last haiku. However, a friend suggested it needed something more at the beginning. I added the opening haiku because I had seen that turkey buzzard in the park, and the irony of the fact that it usually sinks its red beak into carrion struck me at the time. Thinking about how close my friend and I had come to being seriously injured, or even killed, that harsh image seemed a fitting introduction to the mood and content of the haibun. The closing haiku, although amplifying the earlier fear, can also be a universal experience. We all have experienced those thoughts that can visit us in the pre-dawn hours.

Turning a Prose-poem into a Haibun

The same reverberating circles of meaning can happen when haiku are added to  a prose-poem. I wrote “Voices in the Rain” on a chilly November night, and “After the Blizzard” a few hours after a fierce February blizzard had dumped several feet of snow on southern New Jersey. Both piece began as prose-poems and then wanted that expansion that adding haiku can offer.

Voices in the Rain

Thinned by running water, blown on a thawing wind, distant voices drift through bare branches,waver like flickering stars. Between us and those galaxies, someone slams a window. A dog barks. A faint train whistle rides the clouds, going somewhere. Riddles rise and spill onto the blacktop in the parking lot out back. Mother has been dead five years.

antique store—
the doll carriage holds
costume jewelry

The haiku following “Voices in the Rain” echoes memories of visiting antique stores with my mother, and shifts to her love of costume jewelry. For me, it reverberates with a kind of nostalgia—the distance of time echoing the distance in the prose images of the haibun.

 

After the Blizzard

They say when one is dying, one’s whole life runs through the mind, a kind of rapid transit time-travel. But this can happen anytime. Having lost my husband,  I stare out at drifting snow while memories slip through my fingers like rosary beads.  

back-yard clothesline—
diaper by diaper she grasps
the weathered pins

Now locks of all the hair I’ve ever cut are falling around me—snippets from the album of my past. Baby bits my mother trimmed held traces of my first birthday cake. The full-length strands my scalp lets go each day chart months of me. The two most recent inches held the sad chemistry of a year ago. I watched a young girl sweep them away.

we count the rings
in a fallen tree trunk—
how green the lichen

Tonight, as deep snow presses against my windows, I remember slow-dancing, my head leaning on my love’s shoulder, our arms wrapped around each other. I want to dance that way again.

mating, the monarchs
seem one butterfly—
wings upon wings

            (Frogpond 76)

As a prose-poem, “After the Blizzard” didn’t do enough to really capture my emotions that bitter night. When I added the clothesline (remembering when my children were little), the fallen tree trunk (and yes, we did count those rings), and the butterflies (an image from a documentary), the poem really opened up to absorb my mix of feelings.

In the first haiku, grasping the weathered pins echoes the rosary beads. In the second, the many rings echo the falling hair and left- behind years. The third haiku speaks for itself. As you can see from the above, combining haiku and prose makes haibun a very effective genre for capturing deep emotion.

I encourage you to try taking narrative poems, or prose poems that you’re not sure work the way you want them to, and explore the possibility of  revising them into haibun. You may also fall under haibun’s spell. It can be an exciting and rewarding process. And if you’d like to share your results with me, I invite you to do so by contacting me at penhart@2hweb.net

 

 

For more information on the haibun, I encourage you to visit the following web sites:
contemporaryhaibunonline.com/pages_all/haibundefinitions.html
http://www.themetpress.com/modernhaibunandtankaprose/masthead.html
http://contemporaryhaibunonline.com/
www.redmoonpress.com/
http://www.amazon.com/Journey-Interior-American-Versions-Haibun/dp/0804831599
http://www.dailyhaiku.org/special-features/special-feature-5-modern-english-language-haibun
http://www.simplyhaiku.com/SHv7n1/haibun/introduction_haibun.html
http://haibuntoday.blogspot.com/2008/02/worth-saying-david-cobb-on-haibun.html
http://tobaccoroadpoet.com/haiku/haibun/haibun.html
http://hortensiaanderson.blogspot.com/ (Re: work by Hortensia Anderson)
http://www.haikumuse.com/html/publications.html#a_boys_seasons   
(Re: work by Cor van den Heuvel)

 

And you can search “haibun” in any search engine and on various booksellers’ web sites. And besides work by Hortensia Anderson and Cor van den Heuvel (linked above), there are many other excellent individual collections in print, too numerous to mention here

 

Works Cited

Higginson, William J., Penny Harter. The Haiku Handbook: How to Write, Teach, and Appreciate Haiku. Tokyo, New York, London: Kodansha International. 25th Anniversary Edition, 2010.

Harter, Penny. “Voices in the Rain.” Modern Haibun and Tanka Prose. Ed. Jeffrey Woodward. Baltimore, Maryland: Modern English Tanka Press, Winter 2009. 128.

Harter, Penny. “After the Blizzard.” Frogpond. Volume 33, Number2, Spring-Summer 2010: 76.


Resources

You can search “haibun” in any search engine and on various booksellers’ web sites. For more information on the haibun, I recommend the following anthologies. In addition, there are many excellent individual collections of haibun in print, too numerous to mention here.

Modern Haibun and Tanka Prose. Ed. Jeffrey Woodward. Baltimore, Maryland: Modern English Tanka Press, Issue 2, Winter 2009.

Modern Haibun and Tanka Prose. Ed. Jeffrey Woodward. Baltimore, Maryland: Modern English Tanka Press, Issue 1, Summer 2009.

Journey to the Interior: American Versions of Haibun. Ed. Bruce Ross. Boston—Rutland, Vermont—Tokyo. Charles E. Tuttle Co. Inc. , 1998.

 

And from Red Moon Press [http://www.redmoonpress.com/], various years, available for order from their on-line catalog:

American Haibun & Haiga Volume 1: up against the window, edited by Jim Kacian and Bruce Ross.

American Haibun & Haiga Volume 2: stone frog, edited by Jim Kacian and Bruce Ross.

American Haibun & Haiga Volume 3: summer dreams, edited by Jim Kacian, Bruce Ross and Ken Jones.

Contemporary haibun Volume 4, edited by Jim Kacian, Bruce Ross and Ken Jones.

contemporary haibun Volume 5, edited by Jim Kacian, Bruce Ross and Ken Jones.

contemporary haibun Volume 6, edited by Jim Kacian, Bruce Ross and Ken Jones.

contemporary haibun, Volume 7, edited by Jim Kacian, Bruce Ross, and Ken Jones.

contemporary haibun, Volume 8, edited by Jim Kacian, Bruce Ross, and Ken Jones.

 contemporary haibun, Volume 9, edited by Jim Kacian, Bruce Ross, and Ken Jones.

 


 

Works Cited

Higginson, William J., Penny Harter. The Haiku Handbook: How to Write, Teach, and Appreciate Haiku. Tokyo, New York, London: Kodansha International. 25th Anniversary Edition, 2010.

Harter, Penny. “Voices in the Rain.” Modern Haibun and Tanka Prose. Ed. Jeffrey Woodward. Baltimore, Maryland: Modern English Tanka Press, Winter 2009. 128.

Harter, Penny. “After the Blizzard.” Frogpond. Volume 33, Number2, Spring-Summer 2010: 76.