Every year, with the exception of the first two years of the pandemic, since 2016, I’ve taken part in Write Like Your Alive, (first founded by Zoetic Press), a month-long generative writing workshop. I look forward to this time of year, as it gives me the opportunity to work on a project, or to generate enough pieces to polish and submit over the rest of the year.
This year, when WLYA was rebooted for the few dozen of us who took part previously, I thought about how much time I wanted to devote to this, and what I wanted to write. One year, I wrote a series of scifi poems (still waiting for that book to be published). Another year, I chose to write a series of prose poems with the single word prompt “why”. This summer, I’ve been slowly reading the book, Basho: The Complete Haiku, a volume of over 1,000 poems. Alongside the poetry, the book also shares the story of Basho’s remarkable life, and more importantly, his evolution as a haiku poet.
What caught my attention is Basho’s triple directive when writing haiku: live and write in the present moment, keep it simple, and that the haiku should also contain an element of loneliness.
First, let me say, I’ll NEVER be able to achieve the level of mastery Basho attained. I live in an urban area, have two jobs, and am mostly a homebody. This is the opposite of Basho, who freely traveled throughout Japan, lived a monastic life, and was supported by a variety of patrons and friends. That being said, I do strive to live a spiritual life.
Second, when looking across the centuries, Basho lived in a time where nature was much more pronounced than now. There exists a carefully cultivated patch of nature in my backyard. My landlady, a Hindu from Fiji, has turned the backyard into as close a tropical garden as she’s been able to, in a chaparral climate, and during a thousand year mega drought. When I look out my window, I’m greeted with rows of red pepper bushes, two pomegranate trees, marigolds, hibiscus flowers, datura vines, and rose bushes. I also live several hundred feet from Ballona Creek, which feeds the Playa del Rey Wetlands, and then meanders to the Pacific Ocean.
Most writers tend to pick the time of day they’re most comfortable, and alert to write. For me, that’s the morning. For Basho, that was anytime, but he produced a good deal of his poems in the evening. A good portion of Basho’s haiku features the moon as an element, or inspiration for his poems. I decided to use sunrise.
I almost missed my first day (August 1st). I woke at 6:45 AM, minutes after the sunrise. I felt resentful, as summer is my least favorite season, and with climate change, summer in California is now pretty much all year round. My goal was/is to write at least three haiku a day, and that first day, I wrote the following:
sunrise
I left my shades
on the kitchen table
*****
sun at noon
shadows
offer little comfort
*****
afternoon sun
long shadows hid
so many secrets
Not bad for my first day, or so I thought.
Another surprise is how quickly I grew to resent my chosen inspiration. How many haiku could I write about sunrise? So, I reformatted my rules. I gave myself permission to write other haiku, with the new rule that sunrise needs to be included in one haiku. This opened the door for more variety, which helped me to relax, and enjoy the process, as with these haiku I wrote on August 4th.
hibiscus blooms
new friends
in the garden
sunrise
my hungry cats
demand breakfast
For the first week, things progressed nicely. I found myself eager to wake up and write haiku. Then, another challenge presented itself. There’s another form of Japanese poetry I’ve spent a great deal of time writing; tanka, which is like a haiku, but adds two more lines (5/7/5/7/7). This form was (re)made popular by Masoaka Shiki, a Japanese poet and literary critic who brought both haiku and tanka back to the forefront of Japanese poetry. Tanka, while a natural element is preferred, allows the poet to further develop the turn, and narrative of the poem. Modern tanka is now considered, at least in Western poetry, to be any poem with five lines. My love, and preference for this form quickly began to assert itself, as with the two poems (one haiku, and one tanka), on August 8th:
dawn greets me
in her gold and lavender
fancy dress
*****
from the palm trees
a crow cries out
for its mate
and receives
no answer
As a poet, I’ve learned to not ignore the progression of a poem. I can only speak for myself, but when a writer attempts to subvert the intuitive, organic development of a poem, it becomes an artifice. I reset my expectations, and found, in letting go, the poems developed themselves, like with the ones I wrote on August 15th:
sunrise
dries up my dreams
of cool rain
*****
butterfly lands
on a marigold
for a moment
I feel
alive
*****
dust motes
dance in sunlight
yesterday's ghosts
Haiku also allows for the writer to live in the present, while filtering through the emotions involved with that moment. Like any good poem, a haiku paints a picture that allows the reader to step in, and live that moment the writer intends to share, like with two haiku I composed on August 17th:
sunrise
heat rises
with my anger
*****
no moon tonite
your absence
drives me to tears
The loneliness Basho encouraged his students to incorporate into their poetry became more difficult, for me, to deal with as the month progressed. I found myself grieving for friends and family who not only died before/during the pandemic, but also for those who’ve drifted out of my life. I discovered I can’t bury my grief, how lonely life without my loved ones has become, or how I may have engendered loneliness in others, as with the a tanka sequence poem I wrote on August 21st, about a breakup with a clueless boyfriend from my teenage years (last two stanzas):
sometimes I wonder
where and how
you are
we never spoke
again
I’ll never forget
how I ripped your soul
in half
or the tears
in your eyes
Predictably, for me it became more difficult to write haiku toward the end of the month. As a writer, endings are not my strong suit, and as a procrastinator, it’s also easy for me to put aside a self-imposed task. What was I missing out on, as a writer, while producing only one or two forms of poetry a day? And how many of these qualify as actual haiku/tanka? I took a chance, and submitted six haiku to Under the Basho, and had one accepted for a fall release. One, out of six? For the record, I'm honored to be included, and as my fellow wordsmith, Amélie Frank pointed out, “It’s quality, not quantity, with poetry, that counts.”
She’s 100% correct.
You’ll be glad to know I completed WLYA. When I woke up on August 31st, it was with a sense of relief, and a bit of sadness. I’ll keep writing haiku and tanka, but I’ll be going back to other poetry forms, and writing in general. On that last morning, I watched the sun rise, and thanked them for being my constant companion, and muse for the month:
sunrise
my last haiku
about you
poems/photos/content © 2022 marie c lecrivain
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