haikaiTALKS: a saturday gathering! 21st December

haikaiTALKS: Integrating Our Skills | a saturday gathering under the banyan tree

host: Lev Hart 21st December 2024

haikaiTALKS: a saturday gathering under the banyan tree

Your host for haikaiTALKS: Lev Hart

Integrating Our Skills: Part 1 (of 3)

Each week, we have focused on how a single aesthetic concept is expressed in a particular haiku. No good haiku, of course, is based entirely on a single aesthetic concept. As my tenure at haikaiTALKS approaches conclusion, I would like to focus on how the concepts that we have studied since June merge in one verse:

       a bullock cart

       creaking its way homewards

       harvest moon

       (Sreenath, haikaiTALKS, November 16, 2024)

The kigo, "harvest moon," sets the lonely mood traditionally associated with autumn. We cannot help but imagine that the cart’s driver is by himself. Sreenath’s choice of kigo is indispensable. If it were "spring morning," for example, the haiku would not feel right. Every other word in the ku is likewise indispensable, with not one too many or too few. The combination of the kigo with the rest of the verse --- the toriawase --- is perfect.

The autumn kigo is like a macrocosm for the rest of the verse, revealing the essence of the season in the moment of "a bullock cart / creaking its way homewards." The combination of macrocosm and microcosm reveals what Blake called, "Heaven in a grain of sand, and eternity in an hour." The toriawase has mysterious beauty --- yūgen.

Sreenath’s ku engages the reader's imagination on multiple levels, with its combination of visual and auditory images. All of the images are unified by their common theme, movement. The year is passing, the day is passing, and the cart is passing. The temporal theme expresses sabi; and the austere imagery, wabi.

Despite the theme of temporality, the fact that nothing is moving except the cart conveys stillness, just as the lone sound of the cart conveys silence. Sreenath does not resort to using the words “silence” and “stillness,” because he shows them to us through his imagery. 

This week’s goal is to compose two verses combining toriawase with yūgen, sabi, wabi, karumi, and/or mono no aware. Or perhaps you would like to write a verse or two with ichibutsujitate. Tell us which aesthetic concepts you mean to express in a line below the verse. (Two lines is too many.)  Avoid stock phrases and shopworn images. Strive for originality. Remember the kigo.

 “A Dictionary of Haiku Classified by Season Words with Traditional and Modern Methods,” by Jane Reichhold:

https://thehaikufoundation.org/omeka/files/original/7fb6654a1dfd1afef97369da920530f8.pdf

indian subcontinent SAIJIKI:

https://www.trivenihaikai.in/indian-saijiki

The Five Hundred Essential Japanese Season Words:

http://www.2hweb.net/haikai/renku/500ESWd.html

The World Kigo Database:

https://wkdkigodatabase03.blogspot.com/

The Yuki Teikei Haiku Season Word List:

https://yths.org/season-word-list/

**

Thank you for doing this for us, Lev

Members,

Please give your feedback on others' commentary and poems too. _()_

We are coming to the end of Lev's lessons in haikaiTALKS!

He will be stepping down in January and embarking on an exciting journey.

We wish him the very best.

He'll be sharing the news with you!

In the meantime, keep writing and commenting! _kala