fandomhigh | The Art of Poetry; Monday, First Period [01/24].

"Welcome back, ducklings ♥," Shunsui greeted the class with the usual sleepy smile as they all got settled and comfortable and had their tea poured (an imperial genmaicha today, for the record) and passed around, "and good morning ♥. Since it was brought up last week in relation to the shanshui poetry we discussed, today we will be shedding a light on a personal favorite type of poetry, and that is, of course, the haiku ♥."

And if one were to guess that the haiku was among Shunsui's favorites because it was relatively short and simple, well...one would not be wrong.

"Now," he said, continuing after a long sip of tea, as he set the cup of aside for the the lecture, "a haiku is a traditional short form of poetry that originated, much like myself, in Japan ♥. They are a bit deceptive in their simplicity, consisting of but three lines broken down into pattern of syllables, five for the first line, seven for the second, and five again for the third, and each haiku should also contain a kireji, which means 'cutting word' and a kigo, which means a seasonal reference. That is where the connection to shanshui comes in: both styles are referential...and reverential toward nature and the way it inspires us ♥.

"Haiku started as an opening for a longer form of poetry called a renga, which was a form of collabrative poetry of alternating stanzas...starting with a haiku and followed by a mora, which has two lines, each with seven syllables, but the haiku itself developed into quite the form of its own since then, even into the Western world, where many of the aspects of its connection with nature were dropped in favor of a focus on the syllabic structure, which is particularly interesting when one considers how it can sometimes be a bit lost in translation, anyway ♥.

"Due to their brevity, the most popular haiku-ists tend to have a great many examples to choose from; Matsuo Bashō is possibly the name best known and revered in haiku, with nearly one-thousand poems attributed to his name, scribed during his travels all throughout Japan ♥. Some examples:

"The oak tree:
not interested
in cherry blossoms.

"The dragonfly
can't quite land
on that blade of grass.

"When the winter chrysanthemums go,
there's nothing to write about
but radishes.

"Taking a nap,
feet planted
against a cool wall."

"That last one," Shunsui added with a bit of a grin, "is a personal favorite ♥. And, of course, keep in mind that, for some of these poems, the 5-7-5 structure gets lost in the translation of it, though most translators do what they can to keep it the same. We will clearly be building our own haikus in English for convenience sake, and so I'd like you to keep the structure in tact ♥. But first, we should talk about the poems themselves. Considering this is but a fraction of even Bashō's own work, we could talk examples all day, but let's focus on those four. They seem simple enough, neh? But is that all there is to them? What deeper meanings to you think are hidden inside such simple lines, if any? Or do you think they truly are no deeper than the very surface of a puddle pretending to be a pond ♥?

"Let us discuss a little, then, shall we, before we dive in and see how deep we can go with our own haiku and perhaps try a little response with building them into renga ♥."

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Keep it short and simple!

You have tea, you have poetry, you have comfy cushions; what more could you want out of a Monday morning?

What deeper meaning might be derived from the poems used as an example? Is there deeper meaning? Or are they truly just little blips of amusement and nothing more, as intangential as the scent of sakura on the breeze?

"Now that we've explored the nature of haiku a little more," said Shunsui, refilling his cup, "I think, my little poetic ducklings, that it's time to make our own ♥. Now, at the start of the lecture, I did mention that the haiku developed as its own form from the renga, where in a poem starts with a haiku and is responded to by another poet with a mora, which is two lines of 7 syllables each. So let's try our own hand at a little renga, shall we ♥? We can each put together a haiku of our own, and then we can each respond with a new mora to go along with it. If you feel so inspired, you can continue the exchange for more stanzas if you like, or just appreciate the simplicity of just a single call-and-response. But to get us started, I shall give you an example of a classic renga, called 'Three Poets at Minase', between the poets Sogi, Shohaku, and Socho:

As it snows the base
of the mountain is misty
this evening

Far in the way the water goes
a plum-blossom-smelling hamlet

The wind from the river
sways weeping willows
now it’s spring

The pole of a boat makes
a clear sound at dawn

The moon must be
visible even
in a foggy night

Frost on the field
autumn at its end.

"The poem itself seems to cycle through the seasons; we start in winter, and, by the end, we return, as it is with time immemorial ♥. So let us see what journeys our own poems will lead us today. Take some time to put together a haiku, share it, and we'll see what sort of mora response we can come up with to continue the prose ♥."