The Worldess Poem

      I'm reading again the book "The Haiku Anthology" by Cor van den Huevel. I came across some lines which I want to share.


     When I first read Alan Watts's characterization of haiku as "the wordless poem," I thought it was because a haiku had so few words, but now I believe it goes deeper than that (whether Watts intended it or not). Haiku, for the reader, is wordless because those few words are invisible. We as readers look right through them. There is nothing between us and the moment.
     To achieve this goal, certain literary practices common to traditional western poetry are usually avoided by American haiku poets. Such devices as figures of speech or rhymes are rarely employed, for these tend to take away from the thing as it is. The haiku should take us right to the moment and present us with the tree or a leaf, the spring rain or the autumn wind, a rose in a garden or a rusty pick-up under the pines, just as they are-- no more, no less. The phrasing and choice of words provide the music of a haiku, which must be short as a birdsong. Meter is rarely employed. When it is, it is used to create a musical flow that is unobtrusive.    


     Ending this section of the book, Forward to the Third Edition, he writes, "I hope you'll agree that living in the haiku moment is a poetic experience of the highest order."   
     I definitely agree!

What Is Haiku?

     I read a book about of one of the greatest haiku masters, Kobayashi Issa. In the author’s introduction, I came across these lines. I love the way he describes haiku.

 　

                                                   

Like many of the delicate Japanese ink drawings, haiku uses clear outlines of thoughts in order to convey a multitude of images, moods, and sensations. Every word is carefully balanced by every other word and no word, thought, or image is ever used to excess. In one respect a haiku poem is like a tree in winter without leaves, suggesting through its shape, nakedness, and the imagination of the reader what it will look like, full-bloom, in the summer. What is not said in a haiku poem is as important as what is said- or as one poet put it: “It is a hand beckoning, a door half-opened, a mirror wiped clean.”

                                                                                                             

Richard Lewis

Of This World: A Poet's Life in Poetry