haikaiTALKS: Basho & Shiki | a saturday gathering under the banyan tree
host: Srinivasa Sambangi
1st February 2025
haikaiTALKS: a saturday gathering under the banyan tree
Your host for haikaiTALKS: Srinivas Sambangi
Basho and Shiki
Basho and Shiki are two of the four greatest haiku masters we have ever seen. Basho is known as a pioneer and Shiki a reformist. Let’s understand a few differences in the way of their writing haiku.
Basho:
Basho moved away from traditional description of nature related to one of the seasons and elevated hokku to a highly refined and conscious art. He called this new style as shōfū or
“Bashō style.”
Focused on hokku on what he observed during travels, with a sense of personal experiences and historical references. We can find both the vertical and horizontal axis in Basho’s haiku. In the contemporary haiku in English, the vertical axis is often missing.
Basho had a great influence of zen in his writings. Towards the end of his life, he realised, karumi is crucial for the perfection of his style shōfū
Shiki:
Mostly focused on observation and remembering things around him Insisted on the blend of two images with a cutting word. Shiki was an admirer of Buson and a critic of Basho. Shiki derived the idea of shasei as applied to literature. Shiki suggested shasei (sketches of life) for beginners and makoto (poetic truth) only to the more advanced poets.
Shiki was born when Japan, a country that was insular for centuries, was being opened to the west. But he resisted West’s influence to increase the length of haiku.
While we all are inspired by both of them, our muse tends to lean more towards one of them. Please reflect upon what you write and tell us if your style is inspired more by Basho or by Shiki. You may give examples of their writings and your own creations. Alternately,
you may pick up any one of your favourite haiku by them and write a
new poem inspired by it.
While I admire both the masters I’m inspired more by Basho. Here is an example
in Kyoto
hearing the cuckoo
I long for Kyoto
- Basho
(This expresses a sense of longing and nostalgia for the city of Kyoto)
childhood village
only one as it was
a banyan tree
- Srinivasa Rao Sambangi (Published in Akitsu, Spring 2020)
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KIGO WORDS
Shall we please try to include a kigo word in all the poems we share here?
Give the season and the word—under your poem.
I'm quoting Lev Hart's request here: "This week’s goal is to compose two verses with toriawase, blending wabi, sabi, karumi, mono no aware, and/or yugen. Tell us which aesthetic concepts you mean to express in a line below the verse. Strive for originality. Avoid stock phrases and shopworn images."
For seasonal references, please check these lists:
“A Dictionary of Haiku Classified by Season Words with Traditional and Modern Methods,” by Jane Reichhold:
indian subcontinent SAIJIKI:
The Five Hundred Essential Japanese Season Words:
The World Kigo Database:
The Yuki Teikei Haiku Season Word List:
**
Thank you for this post, Srinivas.
I hope our poets take the challenge and create a haiku on these lines!
Poets,
Please give your feedback on others' commentary and poems too. _()_
We are continuing haikaiTALKS!
Keep writing and commenting! _kala
Many of you have taken one haiku and said L1 show horizontal axis and Ls 2 & 3 show vertical axis.
Please read Shirane's explanation of the aixis.
The whole haiku should represent the horizonal axis and the whole haiku should lead the reader to the vertical axis.
Am I clear?
Talking about vertical and horizontal axis:
Quoting from Shirane's essay:
In other words, there were two key axes: one horizontal, the present, the contemporary world; and the other vertical, leading back into the past, to history, to other poems. As I have shown in my book Traces of Dreams: Landscape, Cultural Memory, and the Poetry of Basho, Basho believed that the poet had to work along both axes. To work only…
06.02.2025
#1
summer holidays
am i too old to build
sand castles
Kalyanee Arandhara
Assam, India
Feedback most welcome
Horizontal axis: L1 and L2— present
Vertical axis : L3, reference to the past — childhood
Wabi sabi
(Hope this works)
i am glad i waited a few days and came back to this to read everyone's haiku and input
thank you Srinivas, for provding yet another informative lovely facet to writing haiku 🙏
#2 2/3/2025 Revised: Thanks, Sriniwas! bleeding ice
a century of silence
in the black box Sandip Chauhan, USA *** bleeding ice—
the black box folds
into a century of silence
Sandip Chauhan, USA
feedback welcome
Notes:
Horizontal axis: Immediate scene of the Potomac River mid-air crash near Reagan National Airport.
Vertical axis: Connects to a century of disasters, from the Titanic to other aviation and maritime tragedies, a long history of human loss.
Wabi-Sabi: The black box, the fragility of life and what’s left behind after tragedy.
Yūgen: "folds into a century of silence"—mystery and things we may never fully know.
#2
making do
with one loaf of bread
winter freeze
Alfred Booth
Lyon, France
(feedback welcome)
Horizontal axis: inclement weather.
Vertical axis: reference to former cultures where famine occurred and might have been avoided. I deliberately did not speak of eggs to set up only the current US situation.