The Poetic Image: haiku & photography

The Poetic Image - Haiku and Photography 

Birmingham Words / National Academy of Writing Pamphlet 2006 

Edited by Alan Summers, Roger Brown, and Will Buckingham
Cover Image: Gareth Thompson 

Those images that yet fresh images beget…
W. B. Yeats

Welcome to the first in our new series of Birmingham Words pamphlets.
These pamphlets are a new venture for us, in which we are seeking to publish
high-quality new writing in a format that is accessible from anywhere in the
world.

It has been a pleasure to launch this series with the present collection, The Poetic
Image: Haiku and Photography, and to work with Alan Summers and Roger
Brown, this issue’s guest editors. What makes a poem or a photograph succeed
is hard to put your finger on. But for me at least, a poem or photograph has
the power to open up chinks in my world, to allow in a flicker of light or flame.

This collection of fleeting images will have done its work if even a single image
– whether a poem or a photograph – succeeds in catching fire in your
imagination, leading to fresh insights, new moments of clear seeing.
 
Will Buckingham


The Haiku.

“Today it may be possible to describe haiku but not to define it.”
Hiroaki Sato: Author, columnist, and editor of “One Hundred Frogs: From
Matsuo Basho to Allen Ginsberg” http://hiroakisato.org

“There are descriptions of haiku as there are stars in the night sky: this is mine.”
Alan Summers http://www.withwords.org.uk

Haiku are possibly the shortest, and the longest regularly written form of poetry in the world. They are of incidents of everyday proportions: whether crossing a busy road: noticing a flower in a crack of concrete; running from a downpour of rain; or just those many episodes in our lives we unknowingly share with people from other cultures and backgrounds.

Haiku can allow you to respond not only as a reader, but as a “co-poet” with the original writer. This isn’t unique to haiku but may equally be one of the defining characteristics of haiku: where we are able to experience within our own lifestyle something that links us all...the piquancy of the moment.

“For me nature is not landscape but the dynamism of visual forces - an event rather than an appearance.” Bridget Riley “Working with Nature” from “The Mind’s Eye” 1973

When I found this quote I immediately thought of Basho and one of his most famous haikai verses (Basho wrote before the term haiku was used). I have visited the place this poem originally related to, but I also feel it is only too universal:

these summer grasses:
the remains of warriors
with their dreams

(English-language translation version by Alan Summers)

natsu-gusa ya / tsuwamono-domo-ga / yume no ato
summer grasses (:!) / strong ones’ / dreams’ site
 
(romanised version with literal English-language translation)

Haiku are not ‘Nature Poems’ although:

“I try to capture the feelings of "The Fours": in a year – the four seasons; in a month – the four stages of the waxing and waning of the moon; in a day – morning, afternoon, evening, and night.”
Dr. Akito Arima: Minister of Education, Science, Sports, and Culture (1998-2000). Simply Haiku interview October 2003, Vol.1 No.4

The Photographs

I have chosen 12 photographs on the basis of what seemed to me the intention behind making them, their poetics and aesthetic appeal especially with the use of light, the interest of the subject matter and how well these three strands were woven together in a satisfying whole.

Some of the images I admired for their elegant simplicity, others for their more complex significations. All of them I find subtle and richly enjoyable. I hope you do too.

Roger Brown
Guest photography editor.

Selected haiku from the collection:

in the dream
they called me brother –
pounding rain

the tremor
in his hand
blue hydrangeas

Peggy Willis Lyles


pitch black night
the glow of temple lamps
on bejewelled women's faces

Angelee Deodhar

autumn winds
the old man dances
with butterflies

Narayan Raghunathan

Haibun (prose with haiku) 

EARLY MORNING IN THE MIST

Like being in a large bowl, the hills, glaciated, unglaciated, making a ragged edge. Always a bank of clouds rising over them in the fall. Sometimes the cloud cover is so low that the car barely has enough room to squeeze through underneath. If I stopped, I could climb on the roof and haul myself up, run across the tops of the hills, valley and ridge, valley and ridge. Rise and dive, rise and dive.

Girl
(why not)
on a dolphin

Helen Ruggieri

More selected haiku 

fresh earth
on the lifeline of my palm
a tiny worm

winter full moon
the ebb and flow
of her headache

Graham Nunn 


a shy man
half in shadow...
spring sunset

only a pebble
yet nothing can replace it...
the child's pebble

Keiko Izawa 


CHRISTMAS IN VERNON

jazz radio –
delicacy of snowflakes
on the keys

Men's Studies –
the only book in the section
What I Meant To Say

Richard Stevenson
 

radio off...rain
without
interference

Christmas
City...
a fairy-lit crane

Helen Buckingham

 
































A Birmingham Words/National Academy of Writers pamphlet.

The Pdf can be received on request at:
alan@withwords.org.uk

The Poetic Image - Haiku and Photography 
This collection, guest edited by Alan Summers and Roger Brown, contains work by an international cast of thirty-one poets and photographers, from Birmingham to Brazil, and several points in between - whatever way you decide to travel.

.

Matsuo Basho's Summer Grasses

I found this hanging up on a wall in a Japanese cafe:

The summer grass -
'Tis all that's left
Of ancient warriors' dreams.

Inazo Nitobe

No mention of Basho as the author of the original Japanese poem on the poster, or that this is a translation.

When I Googled, I found that Inazo Nitobe, the famous Bushido author, did translate this, and the poster simply leaves off Basho's name as the original author.

Cache:
Daily Yomiuri, Early summer rain falls, temple of light shine

Japanese Reference Site:
Summer Grasses & Samurai Glossary

"Perhaps Bashō wanted to emphasize natural growth as a force of solace and renewal – seeing the summer grasses at Hiraizumi as a reason for hope as well as melancholy; hence “deep” would perhaps seem too dark and brooding a word."
A Dream of Ruined Walls by Paul Rouzer, University of Minnesota
http://simplyhaiku.com/SHv4n2/features/Rouzer.html

I personally visited the area which Basho wrote about in his Summer Grasses haiku, but alas there was no marker to the famous haiku & battle.


夏草や兵どもが夢の跡

Summer grasses,
All that remains
Of soldiers’ dreams

ON LOVE AND BARLEY, HAIKU OF BASHO Matsuo Basho - Author, Lucien Stryk - Translator

The romanised version (romaji):

Natsukusa ya
Tsuwamonodomo ga
Yume no ato

Transliteration:

natsu-gusa ya / tsuwamono-domo-ga / yume no ato

summer grasses (:!) / strong ones’ / dreams’ site 

(romanised version with literal English-language translation)


these summer grasses: 
the remains of warriors 
with their dreams

(English-language translation version by Alan Summers)

Basho http://www.uoregon.edu/~kohl/basho/life.html 

I feel the verses of Basho’s time can often carry a power beyond their original intention. Matsuo Bashō did what a lot of poets would want to do, and that's to visit important places, including temples and shrines, and old battle scenes. I’ve been to the battle scene this haikai verse refers, and it was still overgrown with grasses, but years later it may now be developed. The poem has often been adopted, although it was not its intention, as an anti-war or certainly not pro-war haiku.

The "warrior's dream" verse can refer to the Fujiwara clan and the samurai soldier/warrior Yoshitsune: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minamoto_no_Yoshitsune#Rumors_and_legend 

In Romanised Japanese (created for English-speaking peoples mostly):

natsukusa ya tsuwamano-domo ga yume no ato

"Tsuwamono (兵) - An old term for a soldier popularized by Matsuo Basho in his famous haiku. Literally meaning a strong person."

http://www.jref.com/glossary/samurai.shtml

Ato can mean “site”; ”ruin," "trace" “track” or “aftermath.”

Yume can mean: "dream," "ambition," or “glory.”

'tsuwamonodomo' is the plural for warriors, so Basho can mean both all the soldiers involved in a specific battle as well as just one major warrior.

Summer grasses:

http://area17.blogspot.com/2006/04/bashos-summer-grasses.html

In actual Japanese, the haikai verse, to a Japanese haikai reader of the time, contains an incredible amount of information because the reader could fill in the gaps. 

In contemporary society (both Japan and the rest of the world) we might have to carefully juggle what readers might not know. But then again, with internet access, we need take only 2-3 seconds to learn something nowadays!

Do consider visiting this blog page:

The Tragedy of Hiraizumi

https://donnykimball.com/hiraizumi-420c4d695e44

Another Summer grasses haiku, and powerful in its context of the dawning of the industrial age in Japan is:

summer grasses—
the wheels of the locomotive
come to a stop

YAMAGUCHI Seishi (1901 - 1994)
translated by Takashi Kodaira and Alfred H. Marks

The Essence of Modern Haiku - haiku by Yamaguchi Seishi
http://www.worldcat.org/title/essence-of-modern-haiku-300-poems/oclc/28530343
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/offer-listing/0963433539/ref=tmm_pap_used_olp_sr?ie=UTF8&condition=used&qid=&sr=


A Sample Page of The Essence of Modern Haiku including notes plus Japanese characters and romaji: