December
2003, Volume 1, Number 6
Interview
With Michael Dylan Welch
by
Robert Wilson
Q) You
say, "Haiku is the world and her people." You also
say, "Haiku is a window into ourselves." These are
two very different statements. Or are they? Please explain.
A) I'd
say they're not that different. Perhaps they are two different
parts of the same elephant. Haiku is
about nature and human nature, so it's about all of us, and
our surroundings (including so-called "man-made" surroundings,
for a house is not really any more "unnatural" than
a bird's nest is). Haiku is also about ourselves, in the way
it can imply feelings in reaction to the sensory experiences
we all have. Haiku is a poetic means of conveying experience,
and if we feel life deeply, and capture that living in our poems,
we can share it with others. Likewise, haiku poets can feel
and experience the lives of others through their poems. While
haiku isn't a way of life for all haiku poets, it is for many,
and this way of life is a way of seeing everything more closely,
including the world around us and inside ourselves. A good haiku,
though, should not be about our thoughts or feelings, but should
be about what *caused* those thoughts or feelings. By leaving
out that reaction, we enable the objective haiku poem to imply
that reaction, and that key haiku technique is what makes haiku
so rewarding to read as well as write.
Q) What
is it about haiku that draws you to it?
A) I
like to think of haiku as an approach to infinity. As a young
child (around age six or seven), during
nap time at school, when we had to lay our heads on our desks
for a period of time, I used to hold my finger about an inch
above the desk's shiny surface. Then I would try to cut that
distance in half, and then in half again, and then again. I
figured, if I could hold my finger steadily enough, and divide
each distance in half accurately enough, I would never touch
the desk. That was my first approach to infinity (the infinitely
small). And there's echoes of this relativism in Dr. Seuss's
*Horton Hears a Who*, which I also remember from my childhood.
And in the graphic art of M. C. Escher and the stories of Jorge
Luis Borges. The connection to haiku is that the poem typically
seeks to capture a moment of time, the infinite now. Some people,
such as many Japanese haiku poets, do not see haiku as specifically
aiming at the so-called "haiku moment" (this is generally
a Western conception of haiku, largely influenced by R. H. Blyth
and other Zen-influenced haiku enthusiasts, such as the Beat
poets). However, I do think the moment plays a chief role in
identifying most haiku (Japanese and otherwise), and I value
this transcendent aspect of the genre, something that has clear
spiritual overtones, at least for me. On the other hand, I hasten
to clarify that I don't think of haiku as a particular spiritual
or Zen sort of poetry, though it can be that for some people.
Again, in Japan, most Japanese poets are puzzled when they hear
Westerners refer to haiku as a Zen art or as a spiritual poetry,
though of course it did have some Buddhist influences. What
draws me to haiku, beyond the abstract notion of approaching
infinity through the poem is the way haiku can capture emotion
and suchness in such a clear and immediate way. It's wonderful
to read a poem, and to make the leap that the writer has set
up for the reader. And it's wonderful to write poems that way
as well, and see the moment of realization in the reader or
hearer of the poem that matches your own realization that inspired
the poem in the first place. Haiku, too, is a largely social
sort of poetry, in that it requires a reader to finish it, filling
in the parts that are intentionally left blank or unsaid. I
am also drawn to haiku because it is a worldwide phenomenon.
It's a pastime, a hobby, a form of poetry and literature, a
sort of meditation, a means of making you more keenly aware
of everything around you, the same way a photographer is always
seeing pictures in the landscape, framed in his or her head
the way they are seen through a camera lens. And like photography,
there's a level of objectivity to the poem that should be honoured,
yet also subjectivity in that you choose to focus on certain
things rather than others. Haiku has introduced me to many wonderful
people, and that's perhaps the best accidental benefit of all!
Q) You've
edited several publications showcasing haiku. What criteria do
you look for when selecting haiku?
A) I
think I need a whole book to answer this question! It's a synthesis
of an objective depiction of an authentic
moment (something that comes across to the reader as authentic,
regardless of how "true" the poem may be to whatever
might have happened or not). A good haiku typically has two
parts, one part often juxtaposed with the other to produce what
Harold Henderson called "internal comparison." (Don't
just aim for juxtaposition, aim for the effects that effective
juxtaposition can produce.) The poem should always leave something
out, letting it be implied, and the reader's figuring out at
least that something is what gives the poem its emotional power.
Haiku is intuitive, in that you intuit its "meaning," even
while it doesn't try to "mean" anything but make you
feel something. The writer's burden is to capture a feeling
without stating what the feeling is, and the effective haiku
will communicate that feeling while controlling ambiguity (not
necessarily limiting it). A good haiku will make an image or
a moment come alive in the reader's mind or heart, and the reader
will be able to see, hear, smell, touch, or taste nearly as
well as the poet originally did. In selecting haiku for journals
such as Woodnotes, which I edited from 1989 to 1997,
and Tundra, which I have edited since then, and the
numerous haiku books and anthologies I've published with my
press, Press Here, and other publications, I look for authenticity,
effective capturing of the suchness of the moment, originality
and freshness (being aware of the literature of haiku is the
editor's burden), and avoidance of contrivance. In addition
I consider matters of craft, such as using present tense, avoiding
titles and rhyme and overt metaphor and simile, using good punctuation
or alternatives such as indents, creating clarity of meaning,
and other techniques. It all adds up, but overall the poem has
to somehow "click," which is a wonderful thing. Everyone's
tastes for haiku will be different, and I value that difference,
but I think as different poets and editors make their contributions
to the genre (I consider haiku a genre, not a form), the best
work will tend to rise to the top.
Q) You've
said, " I prefer haiku that are sharply imagistic, focus
on the here and now, and are objective, yet intuitive." Could
you elucidate?
A) I
think I've already answered much of this question, but I think
a good haiku boils down to how it handles
or controls objective versus subjective elements. T. S. Eliot
wrote of what he called the "objective correlative," meaning
that objects naturally convey or correlate to different emotions,
and that poetry can rely on these correlations to carry meaning
and emotive power in the poem. This is especially true for haiku.
As for focus, if I write about the all the furniture in a house,
that's not nearly as immediate and powerful as writing, say,
of one piece of furniture:
home
for Christmas:
my childhood desk drawer
empty
However,
sometimes the plural is what you need to focus on, as something's
plurality is its essence:
tulip festival--
the colours of all the cars
in the parking lot
If a poem is written in the past or future tense,
it's not as immediate as a "now" poem:
meteor shower . . .
a gentle wave
wets our sandals
And as I've said, a good haiku leaves something
out, so it can be figured out by the reader.
For example, what is my subject in the following
poem?
an old woolen sweater
taken yarn by yarn
from the snowbank
Though I don't mention a bird building a nest,
the perceptive reader quickly realizes that
this is my subject. And how old is the person
depicted
in the
following poem?
spring breeze--
the pull of her hand
as we near the pet store
Many
people see a child, which is fine, though the poem doesn't actually
say that. Yet the
details of spring, breeze, and the puppies and
kittens
we associate
with a pet store do suggest childhood, don't they? And I'm glad they do,
because this experience actually happened in the autumn, on a
windy evening, near
a coffee shop, with an adult, but I think the
poem as I crafted it is a superior
poem. Underlying most good haiku, I believe, is a careful use of objective
images. It's not "the eager pull of her
hand"--that would kill the very eagerness
of youth that I'm trying to convey. By relying on objective details, the
poem can produce a setting focus and ultimately
a feeling that the reader figures
out, intuitively. Haiku is not an intellectual poem (except when one is talking
about its theory), but an intuitive one. You feel haiku, intuitively leaping
to an understanding of them, rather than intellectually figuring them out.
That's the beauty of haiku. Where these objective
details come from, of course, is
our five senses. A good haiku is about what we see, hear, smell, taste, and
touch. This is how experience enters our bodies, and this is what a good
haiku typically focuses on in the present moment
of experience. In fact, I've recently
come across an idea that really appeals to me. It's that the future can be
thought of as being *outside* the body, and
the past can be thought of as *inside* the
body. How time moves from being outside to inside the body is through the
five senses, at the moment of now. This is
what haiku seeks to capture--the electric
moment of the infinite now as it moves from the future to the past, doing
so in the conduit into our bodies of our five
senses.
Q) You've
emceed public haiku readings for a long time in San Francisco.
How are they received? Are the haiku performed or just read?
A) I
now also lead a reading series, called "Haiku
Garden," in Seattle, where I moved in 2002. Previous to
that I led a long-running series in San Francisco called "Haiku
City." These and other readings have mostly been for other
haiku poets, which is an audience educated to appreciate haiku,
and thus highly receptive to this poetry. It's quite another
thing to make haiku work for a nonhaiku audience. Senryu is
easy, because the audience can laugh at the humour or satire
or irony. But sharing haiku is more difficult. I think it's
good for haiku poets to read for nonhaiku audiences with some
regularity. As my friend Dana Gioia has written in his influential
essay "Can Poetry Matter?," it's worthwhile to present
the poems of other poets at poetry readings, to celebrate the
canon of the best poetry, and the same is true for haiku, too.
As for "performing" haiku, that strikes me as a bit
of a crutch. Sure, haiku can be "performed," but
then it's the performance that's going to matter more than
the haiku
itself. That's why I think it can be problematic to pair haiku
with music or dance. It must be done carefully so that one
isn't merely entertained by one art or the other, and so that
each
art (or at least the haiku) stands on its own merits. Some
people read haiku twice, which can be fine. But I also think,
if the
reader knows how to control his audience's attention, reading
each haiku just once is perfectly fine. I dislike the automatic
assumption that haiku should always be read twice in public.
What's at issue is getting the audience's attention, and a
good reader will know how to do that with just a single careful
reading
of each haiku. (Though it's fine to read a haiku again if an
espresso machine starts snorting, or an ambulance sirens by!)
Q) Which
of the haiku masters have influenced you the most and why?
A) I
think I would have to say Shiki, because the revolutionary thought
that he promoted a hundred years ago
is central to the revitalization of haiku as we know it even
today. His notion of "shasei" (sketching from life)
haiku is akin to the objective approach to haiku. Yet haiku
is not simply bald "so what" descriptions, which Shiki
realized. Sketching from life should be selective, in the same
way that a camera is "objective" (like a "shasei" haiku),
yet there are clear elements of subjectivity in that the photographer
aims his or her camera here rather than there, at this height
or angle rather than some other way, at a certain time of day,
and perhaps at a certain moment of action. This is how haiku,
even the seemingly "objective" or "shasei" poems,
can become subjective, especially when the poet is carefully
selective in choosing his or her subjects and how they are depicted.
I value Shiki's reforms of haiku, yet also value the giants
that passed before him, especially Basho. We have much to learn
from all of the haiku masters of Japan, as well as the best
haiku writers writing in English. What's important, too, is
not to think of the "masters" of haiku being only
in the past in some distant country behind a mysterious and
exotic cultural veil, but to realize that haiku is an ongoing
dialog today that each poet can participate in. Whether the
notion of "master" is appropriate or not for today's
English-language haiku, an attitude of humility towards the
poems we read, if we want to improve our craft, can help us
find our steps along the path.
Q) In
1996, Jerry Kilbride, Garry Gay, California State Librarian,
Kevin Starr, and yourself cofounded the American Haiku Archives
in Sacramento. What is the purpose of the Archive? Is it accessible
to the public?
A) Others were involved too, and the archives
couldn't have come about without the blessings of Elizabeth
Searle Lamb, one of the key initial donors, and the Haiku Society
of America, which pledged the HSA archives to be part of the
American Haiku Archives. I'm very proud of helping to set up
this archives, because I believe it will be of permanent benefit
to all haiku poets. There is much work to be done, such as making
a Web site that could more thoroughly explain the use and benefit
of the archives, but the American Haiku Archives advisory board,
chaired by Garry Gay, have begun to accomplish this. For example,
we have a set of photographs that show the process of archiving
each book (sometimes rebinding them, and often putting books
in special acid-free containers). The archives seeks to preserve
everything it can related to haiku in English, as well as the
lives of the poets associated with it, including letters, ephemera,
and books and journals. The original goal was that the archives
would be a valuable repository for all haiku materials in perpetuity,
for the study and enjoyment of future generations of haiku poets
and scholars. The California State Library is open five days
a week, and anyone is welcome to request materials through the
rare book section, and materials will be brought to you in a
climate-controlled room where you aren't allowed to use pens.
We are very fortunate to have the services of the California
State Library, thanks to Dr. Kevin Starr, in preserving the
history and achievements of haiku through the American Haiku
Archives, and if haiku poets wish to have a tour of the haiku
archives while visiting Sacramento, California, it can easily
be arranged by contacting Jerry Kilbride, Garry Gay, or the
office of Kevin Starr.
Q) Any
pearls of haiku wisdom you'd like to share with our readers?
A) To me, haiku is a valuable gift. It's a
means of communication, and so we should best use it to communicate
clearly, without opaque or overly personal messages or images.
If I could boil haiku aesthetics down to one piece of advice,
I think it would be to say, don't write about your thoughts
or feelings, write about what caused those thoughts
or feelings. Understanding the difference is vital to haiku.
Let me conclude with three of my favourite haiku, so that the
poetry has the last word:
Valentine's Day--
she reminds me
to fasten my seatbelt
a few pines
tagged with ribbons . . .
winter stillness
spring breeze--
the oars fed
into the oarlocks
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