The Workings of a Haiku

The Workings of a Haiku

Of all poetry, probably the tightest of form and structure is the haiku. While a sonnet asks for fourteen lines of iambic pentameter to explicate its argument, a haiku demands precision in only seventeen Japanese syllables. The standard Japanese haiku consists of three lines, the first having five syllables, the second having seven syllables, and the third having another five syllables. This seems ridiculous that a poem can be that short. Meaning can't be expressed in only seventeen precious syllables. That last sentence was seventeen syllables. Maybe fewer words can drive home a point deeper than volumes.

Empty shelf—
dusty outlines of books
my parents read.
--Kirsty Krakow

This short poem is only thirteen precious syllables. These thirteen syllables tell us a far deeper story than a novel because it leaves the reader to fill in the precious details. “Today, many bilingual poets and translators in the mainstream North American haiku scene agree that something in the vicinity of 11 English syllables is a suitable approximation of 17 Japanese syllables, in order to convey about the same amount of information as well as the brevity and the fragmented quality found in Japanese haiku” (Imaoka).

According to Japanese haiku master Matsuo Basho, “You can learn about pine only from the pine, or about bamboo only from the bamboo. When you see an object, you must leave your subjective preoccupation with yourself, otherwise you impose yourself on the object, and do not learn. The object and yourself must become one, and from that feeling of oneness issues your poetry. However well phrased it may be, if your feeling is not natural—and if object and yourself are separate—then your poetry is not true poetry but merely your subjective counterfeit.” This poem by Krakow does this because that book shelf really tells the story, not Krakow.

Had Krakow chosen another form of poetry, she would have told us the story from her perspective. Her perspective would entail how the parents removed the books from her purview, and what all that meant. By looking at it from the shelf, an “empty shelf,” we are forced to see it from the perspective of an empty shelf and all that entails.

The empty shelf holds the mystery. The books were there once, apparently long enough to leave “dusty outlines.” Her parents read these books; she has not read them. Herein lies the story: those books are now gone for some reason. The speaker did not receive the knowledge or stories from them. She has not repopulated the shelf with a library of her own because the shelf is empty. Is she lamenting this fact or merely pointing it out? There is no personal interaction with the shelf and the speaker. There is only the shelf and a vague physical description of all that is on the shelf.

Krakow was not leaving a “subjective counterfeit.” She does not tell you how she feels about the empty shelf, leaving her “subjective preoccupation” behind. It is the reader that assigns meaning to the few syllables because that is what a reader does. The shelf is the object, and only the bare physical description is written. What we learn about the ramifications of that description is the same as a tall pine tree explaining itself to us. One need only look up at a pine tree to find the answer. The pine cannot speak, but somehow, just by looking, we understand its meaning by simply looking at it.

Works cited:

Imaoka, Keiko. “Keiko Haiku Rules.” Online. http://www.ahapoetry.com/keirule.htm