UNIVERZITA KARLOVA V PRAZE FILOZOFICKÁ FAKULTA ÚSTAV ANGLOFONNÍCH LITERATUR A KULTUR Magisterská diplomová práce JAN ROUBÍČEK 20TH CENTURY HAIKU IN ENGLISH ANGLICKY PSANÉ HAIKU VE 20. STOLETÍ Vedoucí práce: doc. Justin Quinn, PhD 2009 1 Prohlašuji, že diplomovou práci jsem vypracoval samostatně a že jsem uvedl všechny využité prameny a literaturu. V Praze, dne ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ……………………………………….. Podpis autora práce 2 CONTENTS: INTRODUCTION ..............................................................................................................................................4 1. INTRODUCTION TO HAIKU....................................................................................................................6 1.1. THE TRADITIONAL HAIKU AND HAIBUN FORMS.......................................................................................6 1.1.1. Haiku ...............................................................................................................................................6 1.1.2. Haibun .............................................................................................................................................8 1.2. THE HISTORY OF JAPANESE HAIKU AND HAIBUN.....................................................................................9 1.3. ENGLISH VS.JAPANESE PROSODY ..........................................................................................................11 1.4. A BRIEF HISTORY OF ENGLISH-WRITTEN HAIKU AND THE AMERICAN HAIKU MOVEMENT...................12 2. JAMES MERRILL’S “PROSE OF DEPARTURE” ...............................................................................15 2.1. THE PLOT OF “PROSE OF DEPARTURE”:..................................................................................................15 2.2. THE FORM OF “PROSE OF DEPARTURE” AND ITS EFFECTS......................................................................20 2.3. PUNS AND OTHER POETIC DEVICES IN “PROSE OF DEPARTURE”:...........................................................24 3. PAUL MULDOON AND HIS HAIKU......................................................................................................28 3.1. INTRODUCTION TO PAUL MULDOON ......................................................................................................28 3.2. INTRODUCTION TO “HOPEWELL HAIKU” AND “90 INSTANT MESSAGES TO TOM MOORE” .....................29 3.2.1. “Hopewell Haiku”: Form and Content .........................................................................................29 3.2.2. “90 Instant Messages to Tom Moore”: Form and Content...........................................................33 3.3 MULDOON’S HAIKU – SPONTANEOUS POETRY?........................................................................................35 3.3.1. Can haiku be spontaneous? ...........................................................................................................35 3.3.2. Are Muldoon’s haiku spontaneous?...............................................................................................37 3.4. CONCLUSION ..........................................................................................................................................41 4: HAIKU JOURNALS: SURVEY AND COMPARISON..........................................................................43 4.1. INTRODUCTION TO HAIKU JOURNALS .................................................................................................43 4.2. COMPARISON OF TWO ONLINE JOURNALS, SHAMROCK AND ROADRUNNER.............................................45 4.2.1. Shamrock .......................................................................................................................................46 4.2.2. Roadrunner....................................................................................................................................50 4.3. CONCLUSION ..........................................................................................................................................53 5. CONCLUSION............................................................................................................................................55 BIBLIOGRAPHY ...........................................................................................................................................61 ČESKÉ RESUMÉ ...........................................................................................................................................64 3 Introduction The history of haiku written in English is about 100 years long, beginning with the poems of Ezra Pound and Amy Lowell, continuing with the haiku of R. H. Blyth, Jack Kerouac and haiku criticism by Kenneth Yasuda and H. G. Henderson, and “ending” with an impressive number of haiku journals, several haiku societies, several publishing houses, haiku competitions and conferences nowadays. The original form of haiku written in Japanese vastly differs from its English counterpart, partly due to the predominantly accentual or stress-timed character of English and the syllable-timed character of Japanese1 and partly due to cultural and other differences which we will take note of in this paper. The main focus of the present paper is the American poet James Merrill and his sequence “Prose of Departure,” and the Irish-born poet Paul Muldoon and his “Hopewell Haiku” and “90 Instant Messages to Tom Moore.” The choice of these two poets is motivated by: their difference in approach to the haiku form, and their different cultural backgrounds and opinions. James Merrill is frequently taken as a poet of the occult whose poems have a spiritual aura, whereas Paul Muldoon is often seen as a slightly eccentric poetic acrobat who can write excellent sestinas and other difficult forms and who can infuse every poem with a specific ironical humor. The context for the discussion of these poets is 1) the tradition of Japanese haiku, haibun and associated forms; 2) the contemporary haiku production in English, as it appears not only in published poetry collections, but also – and in greater variety – in haiku journals and similar publications: In this paper we discuss two online journals, the Ireland- based Shamrock, and the U.S.-based Roadrunner. The paper is divided into five chapters: Chapter One introduces the haiku form, its history and the prosody differences between English and Japanese. Chapter Two deals with the plot and the formal aspects of “Prose of Departure,” its resemblance with a traditional Japanese poetic diary, Merrill’s blurring the distinction and boundaries between poetry and prose, the use of poetic devices, etc. Chapter Three is focused on Paul Muldoon and his two haiku-sequences, which are both formally refined and elaborate and which, in terms of contents and overall “tone” or “mood,” differ 1 In Japanese, the syllables are mostly shorter than English ones and therefore, the classical 5-7-5 haiku pattern can be retained, but with very different effects. 4 from each other in a number of aspects. The Fourth chapter is more of a survey, introducing the journal scene and comparing Shamrock, a quarterly featuring mostly Eastern-European haiku in the translations of its editor A. A. Kudryavitsky, and Roadrunner, a more selective quarterly focusing on good quality and diversity in form, presenting the poems in a comparably neat online environment. As a part of the haiku-scene survey, we also briefly discuss several minor poets whose haiku have appeared in the issues of Shamrock. The Fifth Chapter, being the Conclusion, sums up the various approaches to writing haiku in English that have been discussed, reevaluates the importance of the Japanese tradition, and questions the prose-poem dichotomy in long haiku & haibun sequences. 5 1. Introduction to Haiku 1.1. The Traditional Haiku and Haibun Forms 1.1.1. Haiku The haiku is originally a three-verse, 5-7-5 morae (or onji)2, non-rhymed poem written in Japanese. The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetics puts forth, as an important characteristic, its focus on natural images that derive their potency from the Japanese literary tradition, as well as from Buddhism, Taoism and Shintoistic animism. Barbara Ungar, in the introduction to her “Haiku in English”, proposes several characteristics of the Japanese haiku: 1. brevity, 2.de- emphasis of language, 3.de-emphasis of the poet’s voice. The latter she explains as the haiku’s lack of commentary, or lack of “objectivity”. Being very brief, the poem relies merely on the suggestion of ideas (saying less and meaning more), and on leading the reader or listener to other ideas through the workings of association.3 Normally, the haiku would expose a scene, a given moment, by naming only a few “essential objects or experiences which made this moment.”4 There would be absolutely no judgment or further comment about this experience or scene. The reader would or should come to their own private experience of the moment. In the Buddhist tradition, the poem as a whole was also designed to lead the reader to some “fundamental truth about the nature of things-in- themselves.”5 This more spiritual motivation in writing haiku was evident in many of the “classics,” some of whom were practicing Buddhists for a part of their life. 2 We explain morae and onji in section 1.3. in some more detail. 3 The Greek-born Japanese scholar and haiku poet Lafcadio Hearn says: “By the use of a few chosen words the composer of a short poem endeavors to do exactly what the painter