Red-Headed

The decisive cause for this blog was the reaction that I got to enquiring why there is a perceived (or otherwise) difference between the haiku poetic form & the senryu. The fact that my spell checker doesn’t even recognise the word senryu is interesting in itself. I was beginning to think it may actually be a form indigenous to the continental United States. That illustrious tome otherwise known as Webster’s dictionary only notes that the first recorded usage in American English was in 1965.

It turns out that the Edo era Japanese poet Karai Hachiemon gave it the appellation after his own pen-name; ‘River Willow’. It was a development of the haiku but often without the Taoist inspired reference to nature.

I am not sure why it has not caught on as a form in my country (England) more. This perceived, possibly cultural difference has been (& still is) most intriguing to me.

The ultimate origin of Zen poetry seems to have begun with the T’ang through Sung dynasties of China (CE 618-1279). The Sanskrit Gatha which was a verse often praising the Buddha inspired a Chinese form. There appears to have been a syncretism between the Buddhism introduced by Bodhidharma in 520 CE & the indigenous Taoist belief system. A story related in the Liu-tsu t’an ching is related of the sixth patriarch Hui-neng’s enlightenment poem. This poem seems to have been very important in the development of the Zen philosophical school. The Book of Odes, a collection of poetry compiled in the five centuries before Confucius, divided into three sections of; Feng, Ya & Sung also has its influence, primarily with the last division which are essentially ritual & religious songs & poems.

So the source has a long lineage. Poems of enlightenment were written predominantly by followers of Zen rather than by poets themselves. Many of these poems utilised the ‘koan’ or ‘problem’ to solve. We are quite familiar with these concepts now because of the proliferation of Zen culture into the west. The unsolvable ‘one hand clapping’ & ‘Joshu’s Oak’ are non-logical problems which demand a non-logical approach. They are intended to be meditated upon by the unconscious mind. I am sure most people are familiar with these concepts now. The famous Butcho-Basho conversation gave us one of the most famous of Basho’s haiku, oddly about a frog.

It seems that haiku were inspired by the simplicity of certain calligraphy forms & artistic minimalism (shubuyi).

The nature references which many people seem to think are so important to haiku as a form may have been inspired by the Taoist need for a harmony with nature. In Taoist belief a poem linked to nature is linked ultimately to the cosmos; thus, is in harmony with ‘the ten thousand things’ (or all of creation). This is a yin/yang type of balance & underpins a lot of Taoist thought.

Eventually a form of poetry which was written in appreciation of the koan appeared in China, Korea & Japan. These employed a variety of line lengths. One of the most famous collections being Hui-kai’s ‘Gateless Barrier’ (wu-men-koan). This form often employed cryptic & ironic concepts which would later influence both haiku & senryu.

The Kendo master poet & lay preacher Yanoka Tesshu (1836-1888) wrote a haiku as he was on the verge of death, which was a tradition in Japan. Later the form became less rigid & poets like Takeda Santoka (1882-1940) a priest of the Soto Zen sect wrote verse in a free form style.

So, am I any wiser? I think it is an interesting subject & I will certainly give it some more thought. I will probably still call my seventeen syllable poems haiku. There again, who knows?

Bibliography:

Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, Penguin Classics.
The Penguin Book of Zen Poetry, Stryck & Ikemoto.
Zen: Tradition & Transition, Ed, Kenneth Kraft.
The Oxford Companion to English Literature, Ed M Drabble.
A Dictionary of Modern Critical Terms, R Fowler.
Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary.