Cool kids were into haiku. I am not sure whether that was junior high or high school. It was a secret: how to do it, what it meant, where did they find out about it? There was one guy who was into radio; that was cool. I guess there were a few who actually played chess, or maybe that was what they said they did. The smart students in a private school said they played chess. The haiku writing was exactly right. It was Japanese, but it was in English. It has a code for writing it: 5/7/5. I do not think I crashed their game until I read Reading Whispers, by J. Chester Johnson. Odd the way something simple can turn into a mystery. Do not show the paper with the 5/7/5 happening. Fold it over so no one else can see it.
In Reading Whispers, there are 97 pages of haiku, and it could be 291 haikus since this author made each of his haikus into three verses. Yes, 5/7/5: three times to make a longer poem than a haiku reader expected, more to think deeply, more for the author to present what he wants to tell the readers. It is that humans are rarely humane, frequently bigoted, and more often violent. In what I will call classic haiku, the last line of the three lines should have a thought or observation that gives the reader enlightenment or at least a surprise. The classic haiku would have thoughts of the seasons or a comment on the moon. Johnson, author of these 97 haikus, has stretched the delicate form. The classic ones can open one’s eyes and feel the force at that third line. Now the author has three last lines so he has more verbal ammunition.
I found three haikus that had a bit of continuity. First, is ROMANCE, p 44:
Lingering for cold
Cod, coleslaw, even cold hands
Until he found her
Who knows how to say
How I am the one alone
To set her heart free
One more day has found
One more reason I wish for
One more look at her.
Senryu is the word for haikus that focus on humans; the classical haiku features nature. Humans can consider themselves as something else even though humans are part of nature, so far. The ROMANCE last line does represent a fleeting moment of time.
The author addresses envy in the seven sins. ENVY, p 45:
Let someone repeat
That to envy is also
To admit defeat
Much worse than anger,
A slice of envy splits me
Apart and commands...
How to envy is
To cede to criteria
I had made my own.
For more envy, see the book’s page 95, and the poem ONE OF SEVEN. That is coming up soon. Classic haiku mostly do not use rhymes. In the first verse of ENVY, the “repeat” in the first line rhymes with “defeat” in the last line. The author chose to rhyme just as he has to choose words with the right syllables.
The author nails himself down for not being perfect. There is a hidden actor or a distant cloud that surrounds these poems. It may not be expressed or not named, and yet there is something hovering. It is not the author; it is the author’s measurements of himself. He hovers. Even planets and spirits around the globe are projected from him. If we are thinking of God, or a god, we have run out of time because it could be an observer of the quantum thingy changing the thingy.
The third one in this three page group is REMEMBERED, p46:
I can’t imagine
The days that are yet to come
To be remembered.
One may wonder (but
Not too much) how and why we
Have watched the sun fade
Then I hear poets
Want their words praised to widen
The gap amongst them.
The author feels time. The title is in past tense. He thinks of days that will go by and those days will be remembered, not lived. Being able to remember new days sets our times apart, and the memories are past. The “days that are yet to come” seems to be always time gone. The poets of the last three lines remind the reader of “The gap amongst them.” Is that gap referring to their different ages, or is it the envy of success or less? The author reads the years as “the sun” fades. Where did the Now fade? How have we lost the “fleeting moment” of a second holding awareness or the permanent solidity of mountains? Time is a mystery, and it can wrap a shawl around one, feeling he or she feels real.
VERBS come up just after the poets who “Want their words praised to widen/The gap amongst them”. We learn to use verbs more than adjectives. Ours is an active language; some others are, too, but our culture wants us to do something.
VERBS p47
But to conjugate
A verb without having you,
My dear, in the midst!…
That “Is” had become
Everything until that “Are”
Made saints of us all.
Ourselves may be the
Root of our evil, and the
Subject of most verbs.
“Ourselves’, the “root of our evil:” there is no purity, good purpose, or friendship; there is a struggle to be ready to pull up the “root of our evil.” To “conjugate” the author makes that first haiku an active longing., but he cannot stay with his “dear” while so much is going on. It is hard to stay on his subject; he has more to describe and more to act. He has found a significant “subject of most verbs.”
Before studying others of the haiku/senryu category, it could be fun to approach the verses. If we look at the haiku/senryu without the author admitting the seven sins to the content, there is a game here. There are boundaries: only five syllables for the first and last lines; the center line gets seven syllables. In order to meet those rules, the author or gamester has given him or her a challenge. You think you can say what you are thinking about, but you will have to think about syllables. Find a word with the right number of syllables and with the right meaning. Maybe it fits and maybe it does not. One free call for help could be using contractions. “Can’t” is one syllable; “cannot” is two. This can write on with little secrets. There are other helpers. The author uses three dots ... at the end of a line. It could mean continue, and it also can leave the end of the line open to speaking the word before the ... the reader’s breath can carry it on as though there was another word or at least more breath. The three dots make a difference in the rhythm or it would suggest the line is not over even though the syllables have leaned into that breath. The author also occasionally uses a long dash at the end of a line. It is not exactly like the ..., but it also could suggest another word, which would be too many syllables. It also uses the reader’s breath to finish off a line with, wink wink, kind of a syllable in absence.
Matso Basho, (1644-94) uses a long dash in A CATERPILLAR
A caterpillar,
This deep in fall—
still not a butterfly.
It demonstrates that nature and humans of nature may not reach their goals. He is one of the great haiku poets and allowed the verse to have 5/4/6; sometimes not the rule.
Here is a three part haiku/senryu that uses the dots. POLITICIAN p 53
He tried to work toward
The center where none notice,
But his edge rebelled...
The majority
Usually gets it wrong:
I shouldn’t say that...
Is their approval
Enough to forfeit myself?
It could be evil.
In the play An Enemy of the People, Ibsen demonstrates that the majority is usually wrong, and the minority may have the truth. Personal integrity must resist social pressure. To “forfeit” oneself to do evil to whatever community is willing to give their evil approval; this can work but cannot be good. Recently in California, a powerful state senator stated that he will do whatever he needs to do in order to be elected to the Senate in D.C. Finally, one of his supporters walked away, but that is only one.
THE WALK, p 89 has the ... and also a long dash. The triple haiku branches into other feelings and other needs.
I had walked alone,
Seeing things just as they were,
One pedal twice blown...
I talked with the ground,
Easy on the face of it —
Spring breath and mute sound
The visions aspire
Away from my lame secrets
And costly desire.
His walk was special because he saw things “just as they were.” He “talked with the ground” allowing himself to come close to natural reality. The last line of the middle haiku of THE WALK has more of nature, “Spring breath and mute sound.” “Spring breath” might mean that the air is now springing with fresh air and pleasant scents. I am not sure about the “mute sound.” Is the person walking “mute”? Does he not hear it? Or is the sound mute very quiet. I do not think a sound could be mute. This is a challenging description. In the third part of the haiku, it seems that his aspirations want to leave him and his “secrets/And costly desire.” It is not made clear what he desires, “costly”things.” His visions aspire to something else, better than “lame secrets.” What he wants is not made clear, but what costs comes from his thoughts.
So far in the collection, there are no funny senryu. The triple haiku/senryu, TRAVEL, is nearly funny, p 56.
To travel is to
Invade, to inspect, to grade
What others have made
You’ve gone too far when
You haven’t gone far enough
To make a difference...
Meanderthals then
Wander slowly home, throwing
Humans at the rocks.
It is true about “travellers” or “tourists;” they are invaders and inspectors. The “Meanderthals,” is a made up word with Neanderthal, some one who moves slowly and is not bright. It fits, plodding along “throwing/Humans at the rocks.” Noel Coward understood Johnson’s attitude: “Why do the wrong people travel, travel, travel/When the right people stay back home?” (from musical SAIL AWAY, 1961) Though there are prejudices about Neanderthals, too.
A city can be a world of its own and the people who live there structure their worlds within the city. The author compares a city to his home town. THE CITY, p 62
The City runs its
Course: delights and spangles to
Ease its pending ways.
I am not quite here,
But from great sod did I once
Feel whole, faithful, clean,
As land from where I
Came was Mother, the City,
A perfect Lover.
As much as he finds pleasant “delights and spangles,” he confesses that he is “not quite here.” I wonder about two words. I do not understand “pending ways.” Does “pending ways” mean waiting for someone or something? Or do the city’s ways depend on other activities or individuals? I think “delights and spangles” might be OK, but there is a sense that the author may not totally approve the spangles. He gets it that that is what a city is good for, although it is not quite normal for him. He knows that he came from “great sod” that makes him “Feel whole, faithful, clean.” Are city folks clean? Split the two ways of life and city has diversity and entertainment, but the first home Mothered him. It seems to be on the “land from where I/Came was Mother.” What is “A perfect Lover”? A perfect Lover might be a spouse or a partner, and a perfect Lover might be an episodic relationship. Or it is possible the author truly loves the city which can bring him knowledge, new acquaintances, recognition for his work? The scenes are so different and each has values, maybe we need to TRAVEL, p 56.
Writing about the triple haiku or senryu, I have chosen poetry which visits the author’s wide interests and his original approach to the subjects. Now it is time to look at what sets him afire. That is the racist treatment of Black Americans. There are at least four poems in this collection representing the horrors of discrimination and violence. RACE, p59
The skin is skin deep,
No farther into the realm
Of our conjecture.
For many, a bleached
Contrast rose high above them,
Hiding all color.
Instead of friendship
And such, our town learned to lure,
Choosing white for sure.
This statement goes with THE CITY. It is not written in the poem, but it is there. The author knows the town he calls Mother has a wicked hypocrisy. There is segregation and no friendship.
IF I AM NOT BLACK, p 68 This one acknowledges the difficulty of being in one or another self and an individual who is always on trial.
If I am not Black,
How can I ever be what
White folks cannot see?
If I am not Black,
Why do I pose as image,
Risks to those so white?
If I am not Black,
Why do I yet wear the last
Excuse for the past?
It is difficult to be exact about not being black. The white neighbors cannot tell what he is. If his skin looks black, is it sure for the not-black person? Is it only the skin? A doctor, a teacher might live a white kind of a life, but he or she might have darker skin or a seasonal sun tan. How to tell what an individual’s up to? Then, there is this other difficulty: The white person who is not-black but is in sympathy for those who are black. Banker, baseball player, or plays a tuba in an orchestra, how does the not-black person get an “Excuse for the past?” Maybe he or she, the not-black ones, cannot polish up the attitudes of the past, even though they have learned to be better or learn to teach others about not being a white who is a not-black.
The poems get more vicious to match the community. DAY OF VIOLENCE, p 94
Sounds of savagery
Knocking on a racist door,
Though he waits for more,
For more sought, for more
Crimes to keep the hated fed,
For blame too long said.
He had the story
Downpat, fixed in fire and rite,
Repeated for bite.
This poem has three sets of rhymes. On the first verse there is “door” and “more” at the ends of the second and third lines. In the middle verse it is again at the ends of the second and third lines, “fed” and “said.” The third verse also has the rhyme of “rite” and “bite” at the ends of the second and third lines. In classic haiku going through the centuries from 17th century to the early 20th century, it is rare to have rhymes. However, just as the classic authors sometimes skip away from the rules of 5/7/5 there is no powerful rule against rhyme. Of course, there are poetry writers who might say “Rhyme? Go to jail.” My friend who presents concerts says, “Play an accordion? Go to jail.” There are several triple haikus that have a few rhymes in this collection. I think it can hold the haikus together. In DAY OF VIOLENCE, it gives the poem more than a punch, it makes the lines threatening, focused, and as at the end, the violence will happen again, “Repeated for bite.”
ARKANSAS HEAT, p 96 is not pleasant. Its heat is humid and few houses and buildings have air-conditioning, at least the long time ago I was there. The temperature is a metaphor for what happens to people sweating and swearing.
They had wished early
And often for a sunrise
To compel terror.
Regardless of where,
They wait for Arkansas heat,
Knowing what it brings.
Peculiarly, as
Heat builds, so the difference
Between Black and White.
When individuals have outright bigotry or even a slightly hidden racism, the heat urges bad behaviors: burning homes, churches, lynching. While the sun streaks in one’s vision, it blurs what such persons cannot hold back.
The hovering I suggested earlier in this article becomes visible in the poem, HIDDEN p 93. This is a religious debate for some and an authentic statement of what the poem’s religion’s position is. I will confess I do not remember hearing about Elihu in Sunday School, though we read about Job. So, I gave myself a chance to learn something, though the teacher, myself, may not measure up. My interest is the poem itself.
HIDDEN
What I see is not
All, though I wish it weren’t so—
The rest sleeps hidden.
Elihu recalls
The prayer he taught Job: “Teach me
What I do not see.”
The part we can’t find,
The one name not to be found,
Words yet to lead us.
There is a pun in the third line of the first verse. “The rest sleeps hidden.” It could be that rest is what one does when tired. Or rest is what is left hidden in sleep. Elihu tells Job a lot. Elihu teaches Job what to do, what G-d will or will not do, and what Job can do. If he a good person, why is Job suffering? In reading about Elihu’s part in this event I noted a few explanations, this is primarily about G-d’s majesty. G-d comes out of the whirlwind to show G-d’s power; Job is questioned about the creation, but he is limited; G-d challenges Job’s understanding of divine justice and the complexity of the world. Instead of answering Job’s questions, G-d continues showing power. Here comes Elihu; he had presumptions to speak on G-d’s part. G-d restores Job’s good fortunes and shows G-d’s grace and mercy, affirming Job. Elihu? he just walks off. Elihu, I have read, is the only person who affirms Elihu.
This is one of many triple haikus, but I think the author needed to include this view of the collection. The triple haikus are propelled by a powerful religious outlook. For the most part, Johnson did not specify religious beliefs, but his subjects have moral backing.
The other topics that appear in several poems are aging and death.
DEATH p 57
It is the twisted
Rope that left the limp body
In the square at dawn.
To die alone is
Not so telling, but to die
In fear is tragic.
They disappear, and
Yet, it’s likely death is just
A quiet rumor.
The “twisted/Rope” might mean a death by hanging. It is a ghastly image and a way of death to terrify persons who are not recognized as full citizens. The author visits the disasters of such murders. Then, Johnson suggests that this death is only “A quiet rumor.” This immoral act is described as the murderers in communities that do such things. No one will acknowledge that such a thing happened.
FORESHORTENED p97. When a person ages, others ignore the elders. They might no longer work; when they converse, the others turn away; one might wear out of style clothes and ignore the news.
We did not know it
Would be this way, cutting life
Short before its time.
With surprise, we say
That we slowly disappear
As the light goes down,
As age surrounds us
Everywhere, and everyone
Looks through us, as mist.
As a female aging, it is a double foreshortening. One has the experience of someone in a line walking through the over 40 woman. It is time to fight back. I believe the author of this collection will not be seen as mist. Reading Whispers is an unusual book. The use of haiku is a challenging approach, especially because it is not following the frequent style of current poetry.
Katsushika Hokusai, a 19th century poet wrote A POPPY BLOOMS
I write, erase, rewrite
Erase again, and then
A poppy blooms.
Its lines are not perfect 5/7/5, and still it answers with a poppy.