2015 the Haiku Foundation

juxtaone Research and Scholarship in Haiku 2015 the Haiku foundation JUXTAPOSITIONS 1.1 juxtaone Research and Scholarship in Haiku 2015 The Haiku Foundation 1 JUXTAPOSITIONS 1.1 juxtaone ISBN 978-0-9826951-2-8 Copyright © 2016 by The Haiku Foundation JUXTAONE is the print version of Juxtapositions 1.1. A journal of haiku research and scholarship, Juxtapositions is published by TheHaiku Foundation. The Haiku Foundation PO Box 2461 Winchester VA 22604-1661 USA www.thehaikufoundation.org/juxta Senior Editor Peter McDonald General Editors Stephen Addiss Randy M. Brooks Bill Cooper Aubrie Cox Review Editor Ce Rosenow Haiga Editor Stephen Addiss Managing Editor Jim Kacian Technical Manager Dave Russo Proofreader Sandra Simpson 2 JUXTAPOSITIONS 1.1 Contents Jouissance among the Kire: A Lacanian Approach to Haiku . Ian Marshall … 7 Haiga: “the rope” . Guy Beining … 21 Aesthetics of Discipline: Tranströmer’s Prison Haiku . Alexander B. Joy … 23 Haiga: “for a moment” . Ion Codrescu … 43 Shangri-La: James W. Hackett’s Life in Haiku . Charles Trumbull … 45 Haiga: “honeybee alchemy” . Annette Makino … 103 Forgive, But Do Not Forget . An Interview of Itō Yūki by Udo Wenzel … 105 Haiga: “black tulip” . Ron C. Moss … 119 Beyond the Haiku Moment: Bashō, Buson, and Modern Haiku Myths . Haruo Shirane … 121 Haiga: “chaos 2” . Marlene Mountain … 143 Karumi: Matsuo Bashō’s Ultimate Poetical Value, Or was it? . Susumu Takiguchi … 145 Haiga: “Drenched Ants” . Ellen Peckham … 175 The Shape of Things to Come: Haiku Form Past and Present . Jim Kacian … 177 Haiga: “solstice” . Alexis Rotella … 207 This Perfect Rose: The Lasting Legacy of William J. Higginson . Michael Dylan Welch … 209 Richard Wright’s Other World . Jerry W. Ward, Jr. … 231 Haiga: “power outage” . Lidia Rozmus … 237 Juxta Resources: A Scholar’s Library of Haiku in English . The Juxta Staff … 239 Juxta Haiga . Commentary by Stephen Addiss … 259 Juxta Contributors … 263 Juxta Staff … 267 3 JUXTAPOSITIONS 1.1 4 JUXTAPOSITIONS 1.1 Editor’s Welcome Welcome to JUXTAONE: Research and Scholarship in Haiku 2015. We hope you are as excited as we are to see the launch of this important scholarly outlet for haiku research. Such a journal comes at an opportune time in the evolution of haiku from a literary niche in the West through much of the 20th century, to a worldwide form of sophisticated poetic expression with an increasingly diverse and deep body of scholarship and research. Yet to date, no publication has dedicated itself solely to the exploration of haiku as a form worthy of formal scholarly investigation. Juxtapositions fills this lacunae. Since the seminal work of R. H. Blyth appeared in the 1950s and set a benchmark on scholarly investigations of the form in the West, many haiku journals have published essays of exegesis on the Japanese masters or explored emerging efforts of Western poets to find their haiku voice. Juxtapositions for the first time provides a single scholarly outlet for these investigations in a peer-reviewed academic journal. We sincerely hope university faculty, haiku essayists, poets and reviewers from across the spectrum regardless of background or national origin see fit to submit their prose work in English to Juxtapositions. I am very pleased by the quality of our strong editorial board. They are each accomplished and knowledgeable haiku researchers in their own right who, together, seek to ground haiku studies in the literary mainstream of academic scholarship in the West. There is fertile ground for diverse explorations and research in this publication. Among the articles included in this first issue is a study on the haiku of the late Nobel Laureate Tomas Tranströmer, “Aesthetics of Discipline: Transtromer’s Prison Haiku.” Another explores a Lacanian approach to haiku. Still another the work of poet and philosopher 5 JUXTAPOSITIONS 1.1 James W. Hackett. And much more. Of particular interest to haiku scholars will doubtless be the authoritative bibliography we’ve titled “A Scholar’s Library of Haiku in English” covering the seminal research on the form, and its practitioners, published in English in monograph over the last century. It is very much a living document and the editors would welcome added entries. As senior editor, I wish to thank each of our editors who have worked so hard to bring this first issue together, and to Jim Kacian and The Haiku Foundation (THF) for serving as our publisher. The journal is formatted for indexing in the major online abstracting services, and will eventually be fully searchable via library databases and the web. For now the journal is free. A subscription model remains under discussion. Please send us your feedback and thoughts. We welcome inquiries from anyone interested in writing articles or book reviews for the journal. Our submission criteria is on the THF website. Once again, we thank you for your readership and interest. We hope you will spread the word of this seminal endeavor and become a part of future issues. Warm regards, Peter McDonald Senior Editor [email protected] < 6 JUXTAPOSITIONS 1.1 Jouissance among the Kire: A Lacanian Approach to Haiku Ian Marshall ABSTRACT: Applying psychoanalytic theory to haiku, this article explores how haiku might be seen as an attempt to return to the preverbal state of oneness with the world in what Jacques Lacan called the Imaginary Order — doing so with the mechanism of language, which Lacan says begins our entry into the Symbolic Order, where we begin to recognize the separation of self from the world — and while living in Lacan’s Real Order, where objects outside the self are seen as symbols of lack. Ultimately, haiku place us in the fraught position of being caught between possibilities — between lack and oneness, separation and unity. A good haiku, despite the fragmentary syntax often used to present juxtaposed images, offers us the possibility of jouissance, that momentary return to the Imaginary Order and the breakthrough into oneness with the world associated with the haiku moment. At the same time, a good haiku also reminds us that things outside the self, like the images in a haiku, are just as likely to be symbols of lack. 7 JUXTAPOSITIONS 1.1 juxta For those of us who are interested in seeing the study of haiku make its way into the broader literary canon — and into college literature classrooms — one way of achieving that goal is to demonstrate how fruitfully contemporary literary theory can be applied to haiku. What I propose to undertake here is a reading of haiku using Lacanian psychoanalytic literary theory. To sum up the basics, Jacques Lacan traces human development through three stages. First there is the Imaginary Order, the pre-verbal world of the infant where all needs are met, mostly by the mother, and there is no recognition of any division between self and not-self. Since this is a pre-verbal state, we know the world in the Imaginary Order only as a series of undifferentiated images that are not seen as discrete from the self. As we grow we enter the Symbolic Order, where we begin to learn language. For Lacan, this is a powerful experience, for, as linguist Ferdinand de Saussure had argued, rather than reflecting our experience of the world, or even our consciousness, language structures our experience of the world and our consciousness. Learning language is the beginning of recognizing that the things outside the self are not the self. Each thing out there is labeled with a word that identifies it as not-me. But of course a word is not the thing itself—and even more distressing, it may well be an indication of the absence of a thing, for we can say the word in the absence of the thing; in fact, that’s usually why we need to use the word in the first place, because the thing is not present. It is in the Symbolic Order that we realize where the self ends and other people — and objects — begin, and it is at this point that we realize all these things are separate from the self. This is the beginning of our fall into the Real Order, the real world of things. But those objects outside the self are known only through language, and every one becomes a symbol of lack. It is not one with us, and since we still yearn for the sense of oneness of self and world that we experienced in the Imaginary Order, those objects out there become objects of desire. But it is unfulfilled desire, so each is a symbol of lack. Occasionally, though, we experience moments of intense feeling called jouissance that take us somewhere beyond 8 JUXTAPOSITIONS 1.1 one language to the oneness with the “all” that we experienced in the Imaginary Order. Literally, jouissance means “enjoyment,” but the term also evokes suggestions of orgasm and, for Lacan, it can be a kind of pleasure that goes beyond joy into pain or suffering. But regardless of whether they are pleasurable, the intensity of these moments is significant for allowing us to momentarily experience again what it is to live in the Imaginary Order. Applying Lacanian theory at a basic level is simple enough: you look at the objects in a poem (or story) and recognize them as objects of desire and symbols of some sort of lack that has led to a fragmented self.1 We might also look for those moments of jouissance that take us out of the Real Order and return us (only for a brief moment) to the preverbal state of the Imaginary Order, where we have no sense of a self that is separate from the world around us. Haiku practitioners might recognize that moment as the much-vaunted “oneness” that many associate with haiku.

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