Three Japanese Haiku Masters and One American

i. Basho (1644-1694)
         

          Matsuo Basho is considered the grandfather of haiku. His born name was Matsuo Kinsaku, but took on the name Basho when disciples built a hut for him with a basho (banana) plant in the yard. He actually made a living of poetry as he traveled around and taught others. Wherever he stayed, other poets came to study with him, and they, in turn, passed on his teaching to others. In his day, Basho was a master of a linked poem known as haiku-no-renga and specialized in its first verse, hokku, which at the turn of the 20th century we began to call haiku. He also popularized haibun, the combination of haiku with prose, often in the form of a travel diary.        
 When my wife, Elaine, and I went on our 30th wedding anniversary Highway 1 North road trip from our home in Pacific Grove, California, to Bandon, Oregon, I brought a book by Basho Elaine bought for me, Narrow Road to the Interior. Reading it each evening inspired me to think about the dual meaning of  what it means "to make it home."

wherever we are
we promise to make it home
Basho in hand

ii. Buson (1716-1783)
          Yosa Buson, who studied both painting and poetry, was greatly influenced by Basho, but added what we could call a "painterly" quality to his verse. Thus, he has been dubbed "Poet of the Eye." Among his accomplishments was mastering haiga, a combination of haiku with a visual image ("ga" means painting). Today many haiga aspirants begin first with a picture or photograph and then write a haiku to go along with it. But, to truly follow in Buson's footsteps would be to write haiku and then find or create the image.
          Inspired by his example, Elaine and I walked through the Pacific Grove Farmers Market and I jotted down sights, sounds, smells in my little haiku notebook. I picked up and touched fruit and vegetables; I took in the experience and invited myself to have an emotional experience of the autumn season. When we got home, I wrote a haiku and then Elaine composed a still life photograph of what we had bought at the market. Our experiment was published as a Workshop Feature in the Winter 2009 Haigaonline [www.haigaonline.com].
          Now, here is a haiku I wrote last winter during a break in a period of extreme weather.

   a lull in the drenching
   the ivy greener than green…
    lush-Buson-ish

iii. Issa (1763-1828)
          Our third Japanese master, Kobayashi Nobuyuki, took on the pen name, Issa, which means "Cup of tea." He experienced many tragedies in his upbringing and family life, which could have lead to bitterness. His mother died when he was two. Four of his own daughters and one son all died before the age of one. Instead, he used his inner eye to look with empathy for all living creatures, including the mosquito and even those ever-popular fleas and flies. His haiku does not sentimentalize the "low," but instead offers a shared encouragement. Issa is "one" with common people and finds dignity in all walks of life.
          When I read Issa, I think of the Roman slave, Terence, who was freed by his owner and became a successful playwright. Today he is best known for one line of dialogue: "I am human being, so nothing human is alien to me." Here I try to look through the eyes of Issa:

young man and his dog
both sleeping in the city park
 loose change

iv. Gary Snyder (1930 - )
          Early 20th century poets were inspired by translations of  Japanese poetry as they aimed to write concise poetry that favored precision of imagery over sentiment. But, even as I read and admire what has become known as Imagist poetry, I turn to Beat Poetry to find the first true connection to the "aha" Zen-like experiential verse that is the essence of haiku. Gary Snyder was one of the first American poets to climb that mountain – literally – as he describes in Mountains and Rivers Without End, a compilation of 39 prose/poetry pieces he wrote between 1956 and 1996.  Snyder began climbing the high snow peaks of the Pacific Northwest when he was thirteen years old. During visits he made to Japan in the 1950s, he wrote that he had never lost his sense of belonging to North America: "I kept nourishing the images and practices that kept me connected to a sense of the ancient (Japanese) landscape."
          In 2004, Snyder was awarded the Masoka Shiki International Haiku Grand Prize. In a 2007 interview with John Festiner, author of Can Poetry Save the Earth? (2009), Snyder said, "More than any other literary tradition on earth, haiku has been the language of the natural world… it's an exercise in mind-focus that everyone shares."
          Jack Kerouac, in his Beat Generation novel, Dharma Bums (1958) uses mountain climbing as an opportunity for philosophy and poetry. Here he portrays Gary Snyder in the character, Japhy Ryder: "Look over there," sang Japhy, "yellow aspens. Just put me the mind of haiku… Walking in the country you could just understand the perfect gems of haiku the Oriental poets had written…" In 1998, Elaine and I built a cabin in the Wasatch Mountains of Utah, opposite the Honeycomb Cliffs –– our perch a perfect place for exploration.

          autumn dusk ––
  the wind in the aspens
  mistaken for rain

NEAL WHITMAN
PACIFIC GROVE, CA

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Cross My Heart