Source Poems: Basho's Cicada Shell

For National Poetry Month 2014, I have invited 17 authors and poets to guest post about source poems. In this series of essays, each writer will describe a single poem's significance in his or her life.

Today's guest blogger is librarian and poet Diane Mayr. Diane's blog is Random Noodling. Diane was the winner of our February Pantone Poetry Project challenge. You can find the project wrap-up, and links to Diane's colorful poems, at this post.

Diane Mayr and Skippy

When Less Is More

Back in the 90s, when I first became seriously interested in haiku, I wanted to read everything I could find on the topic. One book, which I saw many references to, was Haiku by R.H. Blyth (there's a remembrance of Blyth here).

Haiku is a multi-volume set of poems, translated by, and commented on by Blyth. Boy, was it hard to find!  It took me a long time before I found a set of reprint paperbacks, and I paid a bit more than I should have to finally get my hands on it. (Considering the prices I see for the individual volumes in 2014, I will say, however, I ended up with a bargain!)

The set is amazing, and one of the poems I read in volume 3, Summer - Autumn, has become a touchstone. It was written by Basho. (Blyth formatted the poem using capital letters and end punctuation, but today writers don't often format it that way.)

      The shell of a cicada;
It sang itself
      Utterly away.

This poem spoke to me like no other poem has before or since. The idea that a creature could sing itself into oblivion, and the expression of that idea in ten simple words (16 syllables), to use an old hippy-days expression, blew my mind! 

Blyth wrote this bit of commentary:
This is the cicada's Zen.  In actual fact, of course, the cicada is not dead, it has cast its skin.  But Basho, indifferent to the scientific truth of the matter, and taking the empty shell of the cicada as a symbol of its extinction, perceives that the cicada sings with all its mind and heart and soul; no "looking before and after" spoils the eternal present of its complete and full existence.

Since I first read Basho's "shell of a cicada," I have come across a number of other translations that pale in comparison, and, if I had read them first, the poem would have gone in and out of my consciousness within seconds. 

(Although this haiku is not included, I found an interesting look at translations of other Basho poems in “Selected Hokku by Basho with Multiple Translations.” Also of interest may be One Hundred Frogs: From Renga to Haiku to English by Hiroaki Sato, which has a hundred variations of one of Basho's most famous poems!)

A second touchstone haiku, and one I often use in explaining haiku, is by Raymond Roseliep.

snow
all's
new

It is a sterling example of less is more. A complete scene has been painted in three, that's THREE, words! It is what I try to do with most of my writing--eliminate the unnecessary. (I must confess, though, it's not easy! I'm so, very, guilty of using some words, which are totally not needed. It is really hard to break myself of the habit--it's quite a bad habit, I know. I just can't write without junk words!  But I digress...)

One might ask why a writer should be so terse? There are probably a dozen reasons, the most important one in 2014 is that a reader's time in precious! I would also say it is the job of the poet to leave something for the reader to bring to the poem. For instance, with Roseliep's haiku, in my mind it's morning and I've awakened to snow outside my window. Before me is the possibility of a "snow day," which would make all my plans for the day wiped from the slate. You, on the other hand, might see the snow glittering under a streetlamp.

Here's a response to Basho's poem:

she freaks out

at the gas pump

--cicadas emerge

And this is my response to Roseliep's:

April 2014

snow

remains

Portrait of Basho from the Library of Congress

After years of writing poems, Diane Mayr finally admits to being a poet--an admission she considers frightening!  A public librarian for almost 30 years, she also writes books for children, and spends too much time on social media.  (She is now working on labeling herself an artist, but it's going to take a bit longer.)

Previous posts in this series:

Laura Shovan on "This Is Just to Say" by William Carlos Williams

Dylan Bargteil on "On Moral Leadership as a Political Dilemma" by June Jordan

J. C. Elkin on "Hannibal Clim" (author unknown)

Poetry Friday: Remembering Samuel Menashe

Economy of language.

It’s a phrase thrown about in praise of poems. What exactly does it mean?

Does it mean the poem doesn’t sound like everyday speech or dialogue? Because there are some great poems filled with dialogue and spoken phrases.

Does it mean that small words – articles, conjunctions – should be avoided whenever possible? Not unless you want all of your poems to sound like haiku.

I looked up the phrase “economy of language” and found a great article, “What is Poetry?” by Mark Flanagan.

Flanagan writes: “One of the most definable characteristics of the poetic form is economy of language. Poets are miserly and unrelentingly critical in the way they dole out words to a page. Carefully selecting words for conciseness and clarity is standard, even for writers of prose, but poets go well beyond this, considering a word's emotive qualities, its musical value, its spacing, and yes, even its spacial relationship to the page.”

Yet, Flanagan goes on to advise poets not to “shackle your poetry with definitions.”

There’s another favorite phrase in the writing-class world, “Show me, don’t tell me.”

Today, I’d like to show you a master of economic writing.

Rue

By Samuel Menashe

For what I did   

And did not do   

And do without   

In my old age   

Rue, not rage   

Against that night   

We go into,   

Sets me straight   

On what to do   

Before I die—

Read the rest of the poem at the Poetry Foundation.

I love the way the poet plays with sounds, re-mixes a famous phrase from Dylan Thomas, and stays (no matter what William Carlos Williams says) in the world of ideas, rather than things, in this twelve-line poem.

The poet Samuel Menashe died at the end of August. He was 85.

From the Poetry Foundation, which gave Menashe a Neglected Masters Award.

Menashe had a gift for pulling key ideas out of language, without tipping into explication and losing the poetry. He was the first poet to be given the Neglected Masters Award from the Poetry Foundation (2004).

Menashe’s obituary in the New York Times includes a paragraph describing how he came to poetry.

After serving in WWII, including the Battle of the Bulge, “’I came back, I heard people talking about what they were going to do next summer,’ he told The New York Times in 2003. ‘I was amazed that they could talk of that future, next summer. As a result, I lived in the day. For the first few years after the war, each day was the last day. And then it changed. Each day was the only day.’”

That was when he began to write.

The obituary I liked most (for its descriptiveness) comes from The Economist, which says of Menashe’s work:

“They were very short poems. Many were only four lines long. He began with more, but then worked to make them as concise as possible. They were honed down to the essence, sculpted like stones. He left them on scraps of paper all over the apartment.”

If you happen to be teaching economy of language with your creative writing class, instead of giving them a definition, show them Menashe’s work. They will see poetry with new eyes. You can find more of his poems at Archipelago magazine.

Enjoy your Poetry Friday, everyone. Today's host is Amy at The Poem Farm.

I'll be getting ready for the Baltimore Book Festival and 100,000 Poets for Change this week -- both are next Saturday. Hope to see you there!