Free Poetry! (High Coup Redux)
I mean liberate it! Here are some more random, perhaps paradoxical observations that came to my mind in response to further comments in the haiku debate on the ClevelandPoetics Yahoo listserve. Some of what I say may not make total sense if you've not read the others' remarks on that site.
Marcus wrote, "The difference is between people who want to do art and people who want to do blurt. Those who want to do art are trying to get something across. Those who want to do blurt merely want to get something out there. The latter don't care whether they're communicating or not."
I daresay Miles Davis blurted - and Whitman's "barbaric yawp" qualifies as a blurt. Does this mean neither wanted "to do art" or communicate? Is the difference between blurt and art as distinct as you make it sound?
Even the creation of a blurt is a creative act.
It might require more creativity to play tennis without a court than with one. One who's never tried it might not know.
You may say "Without a court it wouldn't be tennis." Really? One man can (and did) create a game with a court and label it tennis (it wasn't tennis until he named it so, and now it is because he did). I hereby create a game with no court and label it tennis. I also hereby create a poem with one rule ("Say what you will in as many silly bulls as you like") and call it high coup (spelled "haiku"). Why are my "tennis" and "haiku" labels/definitions less valid than those created by someone else in an earlier century? I admit my versions of "tennis" and "haiku" are not in the dictionary and are not accepted or known as real words by most folks. But neither was the other (original?) "tennis" the day it was created. And the poems folks are calling real "haiku" weren't called by that word until Masaoka Shiki in the 19th century. (Oops - I used passive voice in that last sentence - not because I don't know what active voice is and why many deem it preferable to passive - and certainly not because I'm lazy - but merely to make a subtle point.)
Why can't there be more than one meaning to "haiku" - one used by Masaoka Shiki and one by me (and perhaps a third by the poet who unwittingly provided the catalyst for this debate)? Why can't there be more than one meaning to "tennis"? It wouldn't be the first word/label that refers to more than one thing (Apple, anyone?).
Words are merely reflections, inadequate at best, of reality. Therefore all words are, in a sense, artificial. To speak a word at all, using its traditional/dictionary definition, or using a newly minted/invented definition that communicates little or nothing to others - like mine for tennis - is to engage, consciously or not, in a form of artifice. That makes any speaker or writer an artist of sorts, and makes whatever he or she speaks or writes a form of art, whether or not someone (or anyone) else regards his or her words as such.
And why can't the meanings of words evolve? If we resist using words with meanings that have evolved (narrowed/broadened and/or changed) from their original meanings, I suspect we would have to avoid at least half of our English vocabulary, including the word "haiku."
Michael Ceraolo suggested that there is an artificial distinction between the words haiku and senryu. Since all words are in essence "artificial," I am inclined to assert that ALL our distinctions between all words, all meanings of words, all spellings of words, and all spieling of words are "artificial" - and therefore (in at least one sense) expressions of art - blurted or not.
"Spieling" might be a coinage - I'll be disappointed if it isn't.
And because I'm barbaric and/or creative enough to risk taking Shakespeare's words out of context, let me suggest that there's nothing (no poem, no music, no "haiku," no word, and no art at all) "good or bad, but thinking makes it so."
Thank you all for some mostly stimulating reading.
Emily Dickinson wrote: "To see the Summer Sky / Is Poetry, though never in a Book it lie— / True poems flee."
Peace and poetry,
John
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Categories: Cleveland, Writing and Poetry, Religion and Philosophy
Tags: Poetry Nothing good or bad Haiku Free Poetry
where would we all be iff everyone adheared to art forms eye just did a poem called very and substituted VERY for VARY to make the poem bleed a haiku can be anyway the poet wants his HIGH COO too bee you rock JOHN
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eye have been in many poetry forums that would not accept mye stYle of speeling words incorrectly and makeing poems bleed and making the ART work the WORDS form the poem having said that what is a HIGH COO but the artiste making a poem to share thats how the Japanese did it even the SAMURI FIGHTERS made poetry some about a blade of grass near a flower its true
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Haha! Thanks, Charles!
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I think it might interest the poetic community reading these blogs and postings to know that there is a great deal of, for want of a better phrase, dismissive amusement among the serious haiku poets concerning all the rest of us who write (they would call it "dabble") using haiku forms. By serious haiku poets, I mean those haikuists who practice the art and ritual of writing haiku and senryu-- and tanka and renga--religiously, and who study the forms and the precedents with an avidity about which we can only dream. I've met a great many of these haiku masters, for I used to write haiku on a regular basis, and followed the teachings and publications of some of the best haikuists of our time. I had the privilege of attending haiku conferences where I met such masters as William Higginson, Robert Spiess, Michael Dylan Welch, and others. The school of thought that I followed (or tried to follow, lol-- I do NOT consider myself an expert or master, but a mere student), was that of "modern" haiku, or haiku more concerned with the purity of thought than of syllable count (and that is WAY oversimplified!). These haikuists disdained those haiku written in the popular American way of 5-7-5 syllables. They also disdained haiku without a "nature word" or "kigo", without a "punch" or juxtapositional line, and haiku that were too weak or pointless. Not being a purist, and agreeing more with JC here, that art and communication can take many and multiple forms, and that "thinking (art)
makes it so", I wrote and still write modern haiku, syllabic haiku, and experimental "haiku"-- or "high coup", or whatever name we give them.
The point I'm trying to make is that the way are debating haiku among ourselves is sort of like college grads debating Michaelangelo's paintings-- we kind of know what we're talking about, and we appreciate the art form, but we don't really get as deep into it as the beauty and techniques warrant. We only scratch the surface. I think we should embrace the differences and divergences, for isn't that the whole point of being creative-- doing things that others haven't? Creating new art?
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Good points.... I figuring if I'm not saying something that hasn't been said before - or saying something that has, but bears repeating, in a new way - what's the point?
Solomon allegedly said, "There's nothing new under the sun." I feel that part of my role as an artist is to prove him not entirely truthful. That said, I do believe you can say something new using traditional forms - and I believe it's helpful to know the boundaries before presuming to expand them. Still, to pretend things like the meaning of words (e.g. haiku) don't evolve and to insist they mustn't strikes me as rather un-Darwinistic and unrealistic.
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To repeat: all art is anal -- retentive on the right, and excitative on the left.
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Some say the worst (or best) part of anal is right down (or up) the middle.
Perhaps it depends on whether one is speaking of farting or fucking.
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Thanks, Mike. It occurs to me that I was being excitable when I wrote this blog. I guess you could say I was on the left and feeling quite right. I hope I didn't seem dismissive of your very valid comment when I made a joke in response. It doesn't seem as funny this morning as it did yesterday.
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I'm not even going to try to make any comments with regard to haiku or its various forms and what fits where and why. Because it is something I admittedly know little about. But I will make a few general comments.
When you choose to label something... the nature of the beast is that you've defined something. You've set parameters.
It is essential to how language works.
But it is obvious too that language changes and evolves over time and by culture and usage. It's an obvious fact. It is a necessity or given to reflect change in culture and society. So word meaning changes and also how word are used can change. And also some words disappear and new words are born.
These changes will be reflected in ALL Language including it's many usages and expressions including poetry.
In my mind then, it is a natural thing to expect poetry and poetic form to change and evolve along with the culture and the language it is expressed in. Because it is how language works.
When something is defined it does not necessarily mean the originator meant for it to be strictly adhered to forever.. it could mean that at that time when people want to understand something they had a reference point as to what it was or how it was defined at that time.. Almost like a starting point on a map.. .. That doesn't mean you can't venture from where the reference point is. In fact you WANT to venture from the reference point to explore as much territory "language-wise" as possible.
So it would seem there should be a lot of flexibility to these things and if not, you manufacture a new reference point and go on from there..
It does not make anything "wrong" or "right"... if you see it as process. An evolving, changing, growing thing.
I think form is useful.. but form also needs to be surpassed and broken for purposed of creativity and growth.
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Good points... definitely "An evolving, changing, growing thing" - as, you might say, is everything.
A lot of words have narrowed in meaning over the years: "hound" (used to refer to any dog, now refers only to specific breeds) is an example. Others have expanded, like "gay." I don't think that's stoppable - and the "purists" aren't going to stop the evolution of the word "haiku" either (in fact it's been evolving under their noises pretty much since the word has been in existence).
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Well.. my thoughts go to the idea that I'm glad I don't speak the way Shakespeare spoke so many moon ago... it doesn't fit the current culture..
Slang is another example .. it flows and changes right on the very cutting edge of language... it evolves and changers almost on a moment by moment basis...
And I don't care how someone wants to slice and dice it poetry is an art form, just crafted with language.. so why shouldn't it change..?? You would expect it to.
Your examples prove my point.. also the fact that there are many words we just don't use any more or have evolved so completely to mean something quite different.
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The comments here led me to post George Carlin's video called Modern Man again. What a humorous take on the language of today. lol
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Love the Dickinson quote at the end. Very fitting.
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Thanks, T.M. That's always been one of my favorites!
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Everything evolves, even art, poetry and music. The truly innovative and creative are remembered far longer than the copycats. Beethoven, Picasso, Dali, John Cage. etc. broke with tradition and created "newness" with originality. To maintain that haiku must abide forever by the Japanese rules makes no sense. But it shouldn't be called haiku. I like high coo better. It retains the humor of the modern poet and shouldn't be taken so seriously.
The dove in the tree,
Has more meaning for me
When singing high coo.
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i cannot get into or respect the type of mind which says "i am educated, i know the answers, you must see the same way i do." they are what creativity and free will have been fighting against since time began and the obnoxious began saying "listen and see like me."
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