Morgan Ewald on Clement Hoyt

December 6, 2012

I chose Clement Hoyt as my author to study for the Global Haiku seminar. I picked Hoyt because I thought some of his haiku had a particularly eerie feel to them, and I thought that they would be interesting to study further in greater detail.

The book, Storm of Stars, with works written by Clement Hoyt, contains background information on Hoyt as well as selected poems and essays. Clement Hoyt was born in 1906, and lived until 1970. He was from Houston, Texas. Hoyt had shown talent in writing from a young age, and had been writing poems since he was six years old. He published a newspaper when he was twelve. While at Hill School in Pottstown, Pennsylvania his professor, John Lester, helped him discover his intellectual approach and technique of haiku. Hoyt worked on many magazines and newspapers throughout his young life (Hoyt 8).

In 1936, Nyogen Senzaki, a Japanese Zen Master had come to the United States to teach and Hoyt became one of his students. The two formed a close relationship until Senzaki's death in 1958. Hoyt learned the art of writing haiku from Senzaki. "Senzaki taught his pupils the haiku as a means of aesthetic self-expression, bordering on sheer recreation" (Hoyt 9). Hoyt finally wrote a haiku that Senzaki said was worthy, and had it printed in calligraphy (Hoyt 9).
Hoyt wrote many poems, but submitted few for publication. He won many awards for his work. His most important from the Poetry Society of Texas was the Old South Annual Award. He won first in The Green World Annual Awards in 1965, but was second in 1964. He won an award for his haiku entitled, Black Ship Festival Award in 1967. This was given to him by the city of Yokosuka, Japan (Hoyt 10).

Hoyt had a heart attack in 1961, and had others after the first. He passed away in his sleep on June 20, 1970. "Beneath the seeming complexity of his poems runs the simple basic faith of all men, and it is this for which the young people of today seem to be searching. He seems to have found the winding path through the mist of time" (Hoyt 10).

I will be focusing this paper on that idea. The fact that haiku are able to exist throughout the sands of time and still be relevant today even when they may have been written years ago. As mentioned in the book, Storm of Stars, Clement Hoyt's approach to writing haiku was very intellectual. Many of his haiku are also quite eerie and unusual. For example, in Hoyt's haiku:

Back in the big woods:
     The sense of being there first,
          then finding ruins

Hoyt, SOS, 106

The language in this haiku seems very well thought out and he follows the assumed haiku "form" of five syllables, seven syllables, and five syllables. This comes from the academic and intellectual standpoint that Hoyt takes on for his haiku. He also follows correct punctuation throughout the haiku, including capitalization. Often, in haiku, many more modern poets do not follow a specific form and the lines of haiku normally begin with lowercase letters.

Hoyt's haiku do still allow the reader to understand what he is trying to describe even though he uses a specific form. Some more modern poets think that form suppresses the possibilities of a haiku, but I think that Hoyt's haiku achieve the same goal that most haiku are trying to achieve. I think all haiku poets try to give their audience an image with a haiku poem that allows the reader to interpret it in whatever way he or she feels necessary, and so they leave the haiku open-ended so that we can put our own thoughts and feelings into the haiku as readers.

This haiku, specifically, reminds me of being at my grandma's during the Thanksgiving season. When we were younger, my cousins and I used to go tromping through the woods around my grandma's home exploring for whatever we could find. One year, while exploring a different part of the woods than we had explored on other occasions, my cousin and I found a cave! For us, it was the coolest thing ever because the small cave seemed like it had never been found before. The area we were exploring was away from all the homes, and we just assumed that no one had been there before us. The town that my grandma lives in is a retirement community, so unless someone else's grandchildren have been spelunking the same cave we found, we believe that we were the first to find it. It is in the middle of nowhere and it is a special place for us because we discovered it as children. Hoyt's haiku makes me think of this experience I had personally, even though the haiku was written way before my time. Hoyt's haiku are able to withstand the test of time.

Another one of Hoyt's haiku I found particularly interesting is:

The pretty matron,
     sure she is pregnant again,
          smashes potted plants.

Hoyt, SOS, 115

I found this one thought provoking because it gives a really unique image as well as keeping the use of a 5-7-5 form and proper punctuation. The image in this poem is intriguing because for most people, getting pregnant is a happy thing, and they would not go around smashing potted plants because of it. I just picture a woman being really angry about the fact that she was pregnant for some reason or another, and is just outside throwing around plants on a cobbled street. I picture terra cotta pots being smashed on the stone streets, and the pieces just being left out there for anyone passing by to see.

The language in this haiku is also very distinguished and interesting. The word matron implies that the subject of the haiku is an older, married woman or a prison guard. I thought this fact takes the haiku in an even further direction. It allows us as readers to try and work through what could be going on in this haiku. If the haiku is referencing a married woman, for some reason or another, she is extremely upset about being pregnant. Maybe she is getting up in age, and she is worried that there will be health complications with the baby if she is pregnant at this age. I suppose that could be a reason for why she is feeling like this. That is the way I read the haiku.

This next haiku was an example of the eeriness of some of Hoyt's haiku:

Sky candy! — The kites,
     teasing the stretched fingers
          of skeletal trees

Hoyt, SOS, 115

This haiku has an element of playfulness in it with the talk about kites. I particularly like the language when it says, "Sky candy!" because I think it is very creative. It's amazing to me how Hoyt can use all of this beautiful language and still keep the 5-7-5 form. The playfulness of the beginning portion of the haiku contrasts with the eerie factor that is in this haiku. The first line says, "Sky candy!" which is very fun and playful sounding, and then it goes straight to the eerie line that says, "skeletal trees," which makes the haiku take a scary turn. However, Hoyt still uses the word "teasing" when he talks about the "stretched fingers" of the skeletal trees, which makes the haiku feel a bit uncomfortable for the reader.

I liked this because it contrasts the two different "genres" within the same haiku. I thought this was interesting because the poems are only three lines, and the poet does well in creating the contrast within the lines with such a small amount of space and with the confinement of the form.

While reading this haiku I imagine the sort of trees that are in the film, The Wizard of Oz that throw the apples and come alive. The haiku personifies the trees so much that it makes them seem almost like people.

The next haiku from Hoyt I have paired with another haiku from the book, The Haiku Anthology:

in an upstairs room
of the abandoned house
a doll moongazing

John Wills, THA, 304

Leaves moil in the yard,
     reveal an eyeless doll's head . . .
          slowly conceal it.

Hoyt, SOS, 114

I chose to match these two poems because they both had the same subject matter—a doll. I also matched them because they were both sort of creepy. In the first haiku, I like that the house is abandoned because it paints a really interesting picture. I see in my mind a house that is falling apart and is very run-down. I picture the floors and the walls covered in dust and dirt. I imagine the room mentioned being a young child's, with nursery room wallpaper peeling from the walls, and broken toys lying about. Nobody knows why the home is abandoned, or why the family didn't take any of their things with them.

The second poem is equally as creepy. I find this one creepy mostly because the way the person who found it slowly conceals the head. The fact that it's eyeless is creepy too, but most people who saw something like that would hurry and throw the leaves back on it. The other way I read this haiku was that instead of a person uncovering the doll's head, that maybe it was simply the wind uncovering the leaves from the ground to reveal the head. And the reason that the head is being covered back up slowly is because it was uncovered slowly by the wind, and the wind does not usually cover things neatly. It takes some time for the wind to move enough leaves to cover the head completely back up.

Hoyt also continues to bring in the element of the eerie in his haiku:

In that empty house,
     with broken windows rattling,
          a door slams and slams.

Hoyt, SOS, 114

This haiku, along with the rest of Hoyt's haiku works, follows the 5-7-5 pattern, and uses highly interesting and choice language, and punctuation. For example, the haiku uses the word "that" instead of another, less specific, word like "the" or "a." It gives the haiku a more specific picture painted, because instead of just any empty house, there is a specific house mentioned. The language is also eerie because it leaves the reader questioning what is going on with the house.
When I picture this haiku, I imagine windows unhooked from their shutters and from the walls. I picture vines growing up the walls of the outside of the house, and door partly broken off of the hinges so that it begins to slam against the house repeatedly.

I think that Hoyt's haiku are exceptional mainly because he can keep the audience interested even though he has the potential to be restricted by the form he keeps himself tied to. I was surprised when I realized that Hoyt is always using form for his haiku because when we first read his poetry in The Haiku Anthology, I did not even notice that the haiku were in a form since I liked them so much. The subject matter and the language intrigued me, and I thought it would be interesting to study the way that Hoyt so beautifully creates his haiku even with strict form.

Another favorite haiku from Hoyt is:

Serpentine tangles:
     vines writhe up on each other
          where the arbor stood.

Hoyt, SOS, 113

This haiku from Hoyt particularly stuck out to me because of the descriptive language that he is using. I love the line, "Serpentine tangles" because I could only picture the area where the arbor once was covered in tangles of vines. I picture the stalks of the vines to be decently thick because they seem like they have been there for a long time. I also really love the word choice of "writhe." This makes it seem like the vines are moving, either in horrible pain, or like snakes. I think Hoyt's word choices are incredibly interesting. Sometimes all it takes for one thing to mean something entirely different is one word being changed. For example, if the word "writhe" were changed to something like "hang," the haiku would not be as powerful for me. I think for a haiku, word choice can make all the difference sometimes. For one, more interesting words help you reach a wider audience as a poet, and it makes the poetry far more interesting to listen to or read when the poet has a good balance and variety of different kinds of words.

I have one final haiku to mention that really shows the eerie side of Hoyt:

A Hallowe'en mask,
     floating face up in the ditch,
          slowly shakes its head.

Hoyt, SOS, 108

I think that this final haiku really shows the eerie side of Hoyt. I don't think that the word choice in this particular haiku is the best he has ever done, but I still get a really eerie feeling when I read this haiku. It describes the scene that is playing during this moment in such great detail for only using simple words. When I read this haiku for the first time, I remember being very creeped-out. I thought it was extremely interesting, because I could not figure out exactly what I thought about the haiku. I knew I liked it, but I was never sure the exact meaning. It was at this point that I decided it must just be exactly what is sounds like. A child's mask had fallen off into a ditch that had a little water in it, and this is allowing the mask to move slowly from side to side causing it to look like the mask is shaking its head. However, after I thought about that, I realized that, in my mind, what had really happened was that someone had a kidnapped a child on Halloween night, killed the child, and hid his or her body in a ditch. The ditch was filled with water, but was still shallow enough that you could see the Halloween mask there floating in the darkness. I imagined the mask to be there alone, with nobody around to look at it.

Overall, I think Clement Hoyt did a splendid job trying to put a specific practice and technique into his haiku, and keeping very consistent with the work he was doing. He always had his haiku in 5-7-5 form, he used correct and regular punctuation and grammar, he used language that really helped set the scene of the haiku and bring his message across. I have really enjoyed studying Hoyt's haiku, and I think it would be interesting to take a look at some other haiku poets in a bit more depth to see what I could find out about their style of writing haiku, because everyone's haiku style is different.

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Works Cited

Hoyt, Clement. Storm of Stars. Baton Rouge: The Green World, 1976. Print.

Van Den Heuvel, Cor, Editor. The Haiku Anthology. New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 1999. Print.