Poetry or Not

by Neal Whitman, Poetry Prof

“My purpose is, indeed, a horse of that colour.” Twelfth Night,  Act II, Scene 3

Olivia’s servant, Maria, plots to humilate Malvolio by forging a love letter to him from Olivia. That may be where we get the saying, “That is a horse of another color,” to mean that one thing is another matter. In my October 1 Poetry Prof, I agreed with the belief that vis-a-vis prose,  poetry is a horse of another color; it is not just another way to use language, it is another language. I agree with Mary Schmirch, who wrote in the September 2009 issue of Poetry, “Poetry is not just another way of writing, it’s a way of thinking.”

This month I am asking whether haiku is or is not poetry.

This was prompted by a poet-pal last month, who, when I told her I had gotten an acceptance, asked, “Was that for a regular poem or one of your haiku?” I took a long, deep breath and told her it was for a “regular” poem and added that some haiku purists would say that haiku was not regular poetry — in fact, it was superior.

A little background: Beginning with Imagist poets Ezra Pound and Amy Lowell among others, 20th century Western poets became intrigued with the three-line concision of haiku and its focus on concrete rather than abstract thinking. Today there is a worldwide haiku community and, within it, there is a strong voice in favor of citing haiku as not poetry, but its own thing. For example, haiku teacher David Coomler tells students, “Do not think of it as poetry… It is just too different from what we ordinarily think of as poetry.” On the other hand, the Haiku Society of America does not divorce haiku from poetry: “Haiku is a short poem that uses imagistic language to convey the essence of an experience or nature of the season intuitively linked to the human condition.”

What the “is not ” and the “is too” camps do agree upon is the tradition of a two-line phrase and a one-line fragment structure. We will leave for another day whether the editor of Bear Creek Haiku was wise to publish my submission (the editor of another journal refuses to review two-line haiku):

still

still

I submit for your consideration a Declaration! Our inalienable rights include Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Haiku — but haiku as you define it. Consider:

1. On one hand, do you find it not limiting, but liberating, to write haiku only in its own season? Since it is now autumn, the haiku purist writes only autumnal haiku. This “not poetry” camp embraces haiku as “making a living” that is enhanced when you live in the season. This means not living in past — writing now about last summer — or looking ahead and writing about next winter. Poets writing in Western forms feel no such constriction, and writing haiku you might not either. If haiku is poetry, then you are free to live in any time zone.

2. So, on the other hand, do you embrace “poetic license” and feel free to make things up? In my Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, the a-definition of license is “permission granted by a competent authority.” The b-defintion is “a document, plate, or tag evidencing of a license granted.” [note: my personalized auto plate, PG POET, is in a customized frame inscribed "Poetic License"]. You might give yourself permission to make up images for your haiku. But, beware. Should you submit your work to a haiku journal, you should know that some editors in the “not poetry” camp have a nose for what is made up and will reject it. They are looking at the c-definition in my dictionary: “freedom that is used irresponsibly.”

If you choose to write haiku only in its season and convey only what you actually experience, then haiku is not just another form of poetry — it is a horse of another color. May I offer a way out of this “one or the other” dilemma?

Could we agree that haiku is not, not poetry?

How can I have it both ways? Well consider this link. In writing a haiku, the challenge is to find two things that do not go together, yet do go together. I am suggesting that the same can be said of haiku. It is and is not poetry. Why do I embrace this “less filling” and “more taste” notion of simultuneity?

I do like the notion of haiku as its own way of life. As an idealist, I see that haiku could be a gateway into living in the present and experiencing in each season the deep emotions that recycle each year and shadow the stages of my life. Yet, as a pragmatist, I welcome the license to make things up, as in my haiku published in Ink, Sweat, & Tears.

snow in July

rare as unicorn

alone on a beach

And, I do like the notion that haiku is part of the rich imaginative traditon of saying what cannot be said in prose. Listen to what Stanley Plumly said of lyric poetry in the November-December 2009  American Poetry Review:

spacing is as important as timing; piecing as valuable as joining. This is as vital to the tripartite structure of haiku as to the stationing and development of a sonnet.

Ah, the sonnet’s last two-line envoi like the fragment rejoiner to the haiku’s phrase! Well, couldn’t we re-write and reverse Plumly?

spacing and timing, piecing and joining as vital to the sonnet as to haiku

Well, that is it this month.

I am the eggman. They are the eggmen. I am the walrus.

__________

p.s. Jane Campion’s Keats bio-flic, Bright Star, is simply awful. But, Stanley Plumly’s Posthumous Keats: A Personal Biography is cinematic splendor in prose.

more: Neal Whitman • Poetry Prof.