'Frankly speaking I never liked haiku, I never thought three lines would ever fulfill my poetic thirst. One evening I was standing in front of my private library, picked up a book and started reading. That was a book of Bengali Haiku written by Rahima Akhter Kalpana, not all of them were alluring, but some of them were eye-catching and provoked me. Suddenly a few words, exactly in haiku form, came to my mind. I wrote them on my cell phone and for some reasons they have come in English. Lines were:
It's a silent spark
In the wave of thick high-wood
Concentrated dark.
From that silent spark a light had been lit somewhere and I continued to write haiku next few days, like an addict. Mostly they’ve come while I was driving to/from office or doing my morning or the after-lunch (30 minutes) walk. Half of them I’ve written while driving and few on my morning walks in Holliswood and the rest on the after-lunch walks in Manhattan, mainly on 47 street between first and second avenue.
While the haiku writing was going on, I was simultaneously reading the history, forms, comments, anything and everything about haiku. As a haiku lover perhaps, you know it originated from Japan in the 17th century. Prior to that also Japanese poets wrote similar poems. Haiku has a long history, the founder, many people believe, was the most popular haiku writer Basho Matsuo (1644-1694). Chicago based ‘POETRY’ Magazine published a small article on Basho and Haiku, I believe worth it to include that article here to understand Basho and Japanese Haiku.
The 17th-century Japanese haiku master Basho was born Matsuo Kinsaku near Kyoto, Japan, to a minor samurai and his wife. Soon after the poet’s birth, Japan closed its borders, beginning a seclusion that allowed its native culture to flourish. It is believed that Basho’s siblings became farmers, while Basho, at Ueno Castle in the service of the local lord’s son, grew interested in literature. After the young lord’s early death, Basho left the castle and moved to Kyoto, where he studied with Kigin, a distinguished local poet. During these early years Basho studied Chinese poetry and Taoism, and soon began writing haikai no renga, a form of linked verses composed in collaboration.
The opening verse of a renga, known as hokku, is structured as three unrhymed lines of five, seven, and five syllables. In Basho’s time, poets were beginning to take the hokku’s form as a template for composing small standalone poems engaging natural imagery, a form that eventually became known as haiku. Basho was a master of the form. He published his haiku under several names, including Tosei, or “Green Peach,” out of respect for the Chinese poet Li Po, whose name translates to “White Plum.” Basho’s haiku were published in numerous anthologies, and he edited Kai Oi, or Seashell Game (1672), and Minashiguri, or Shriveled Chestnuts (1683), anthologies that also included a selection of his own work.
In his late 20s Basho moved to Edo (now a sector of Tokyo), where he joined a rapidly growing literary community. After a gift of basho trees from one student in 1680, the poet began to write under the name Basho. His work, rooted in observation of the natural world as well as in historical and literary concerns, engages themes of stillness and movement in a voice that is by turns self-questioning, wry, and oracular.
Soon after Basho began to study Zen Buddhism, a fire that destroyed much of his city also took his house. Around 1682, Basho began the months-long journeys on foot that would become the material for a new poetic form he created, called haibun. Haibun is a hybrid form alternating fragments of prose and haiku to trace a journey. Haibun imagery follows two paths: the external images observed en route, and the internal images that move through the traveler’s mind during the journey. Basho composed several extended haibun sequences starting in 1684, including Nozarashi Kiko, or Travelogue of Weather-Beaten Bones (1685); Oi no Kobumi, or The Knapsack Notebook (1688); and Sarashina Kiko, or Sarashina Travelogue (1688).
His most well-known haibun, Oku no Hosomichi, or Narrow Road to the Interior, recounts the last long walk Basho completed with his disciple Sora—1,200 miles covered over five months beginning in May 1689. While their days were spent walking in the evenings they often socialized and wrote with students and friends who lived along their route. The route was also planned to include views that had previously been described by other poets; Basho alludes to these earlier poems in his own descriptions, weaving fragments of literary and historical conversation into his solitary journey. Basho revised his final haibun until shortly before his death in 1694. It was first published in 1702, and hundreds of editions have since been published in several languages.
Haiku spread out all over the world. There are Haiku societies, Haiku Clubs everywhere. I realized all haiku writers maintained the ‘17-syllables in three lines’ (5/7/5) format but only a handful of them maintained end rhyming. Basho himself wrote without rhyming, most of the english haiku writers also avoided rhyming. The poetry form of Bengali literature is very complicated, it is not straight forward that we count only syllables. We have different value for open and closed syllables. As haiku form follows 5/7/5, in Bangla only the rule of Matrabritto Chhanda (rhythm) allows to maintain this form, so, most of the Bengali haiku writers wrote and are still writing in Matrabritto, where closed syllables have two counts value and open syllables have one count.
I have written few in Bengali and I maintained 5/7/5 syllables, like english or any other languages, in bangla that form is called Shorobritto. But in Shorobritto four syllables make one step, so it progresses following 4 4 structure. Though Shorobritto doesn’t allow to form 5 or 7meters line, I still used that.
This book is presenting 102 english haiku, written by me in last summer/autumn. I have religiously maintained end rhyming between first and third lines and of course the haiku format 5/7/5. Mystery is one of the characteristics well valued by haiku writers and haiku lovers, you will find mystery in many of them. I also tried to build imagery that must be the prime objective of a haiku writer. I am quite confident that I have finally could build few good imagery, mystery and at the same time could portrait many elements of nature. I also tried to blend modern technologies (like a cell phone).
Traditional haiku writers tried to explain the status, instead of explaining an action, such as instead of saying the car is moving, they love to say, the car on the street. I didn’t necessarily follow that policy always.
Lots of drawings are used in this book that enhanced the aesthetic values and beauty. I’m grateful to artist Syed Iqbal for his dedication to draw all these pictures and to Bridget Halisey for drawing two trains.
Before concluding my few words let me express my satisfaction in one word, I am ‘confident’ that I could write some good haiku in this book.
I hope you will enjoy them too.'