Also, today in contemporary haiku there has been a break from the standard Americanized haiku that puts a writer in a box where the poem can only be three lines long and must contain certain amounts of syllables per line. This has since gone by the wayside. The Japanese did not even follow all of these silly rules, however, as Americans we wanted to create a template for ourselves to make it easier for us to recreate this Japanese art. This entrapment led to a rebellion by contemporary haiku writers, who did not let themselves be all conformed into one category and instead branched off in the spirit of the Japanese and looked to world around them for inspiration that knew no bounds.
This semester I have been learning about all different kinds of haiku, but my favorites were always the haiku that left more up to the reader’s own imagination, leaving extra gaps for suspense, or simply adding strange details that left the reader trying to figure out what the writer meant by the words they wrote. I came to the conclusion that my favorite haiku were the ones that left me thinking and wanting more. The haiku above is from an entire book of haiku dedicated to telling the story of a human who turns into a zombie through haiku. Zombie Haiku was written by Ryan Mecum in 2008 and it not only contains various creepy and definitely mysterious haiku, but is also written from the perspective of a human who then turns into a zombie and it shows his different haiku before he was bit, while he was changing into a zombie, and then when he completely transformed into the walking dead. I think this haiku really helps capture what my paper will be focusing on and will be able to help me show the differences between haiku that can still be placed into the same category. The beauty of haiku is that even if multiple haiku can fit into one category, such as mysterious, the haiku can still be read in many different ways and be able to be interpreted however the reader wants to interpret them. Haiku do not fit in boxes and neither do artists so that is what I am trying to show through this essay.
Next, I would like to point out a haiku that is still in this same category or genre, but that has an entirely different feel to it. In the book, Some of the Silence, by John Stevenson, there are many haiku that are very simple, but have an eerie quality to them.
doe nestled
into the shape
of the ditch
Stevenson, SOTS, 13
This haiku contrasted with the last shows the stark contrast between haiku in a similar or same genre. This haiku can still be classified as strange and mysterious, but it is very different from the zombie haiku involving blood. This haiku is much more traditional. It contains elements of nature, which is a classical piece to the haiku puzzle. However, the zombie haiku also contained another classic element of Japanese haiku, sensory images. This concept is used to help the reader envision something they are familiar with. It is very easy for someone to imagine what blood looks like and therefore immediately allows the reader to picture something in his or her mind. This haiku about the doe, although disturbing is also somewhat peaceful, especially if one only reads the first two lines. Another thing about haiku that I find interesting, is that most of them cannot have the same meaning if you take away one line of the three. For instance, in this haiku, if the last line were taken away, then one could definitely see the calm of the haiku too. I personally like this haiku a lot because of the mixture between the traditional haiku and also the creepy haiku. It also shows the fragility of life, which I find so interesting to ponder. Another thing I love about haiku, is the deeper meaning that can be found within them. In this haiku, I think that the deeper meaning of this haiku is that life is very fragile and that it can end very quickly and suddenly. This haiku has so many interesting elements and I just think that so many different people can read this haiku differently. I also really like when spacing is used to help convey different things in haiku as well. In this haiku, I think the spacing helps show the curve of the ditch that I pictured the deer inside of. Although this haiku is dark, I again also think there is a peaceful or calming quality to it. This quality is what intrigues me about dark and mysterious haiku. Although they can be disturbing, there is still something that draws in the reader, just like a suspenseful movie draws in its audience.
There are still many other haiku in this genre to discover, and some of my favorites are the haiku that do not really make very much sense. For example, there is another haiku by Ryan Mecum that sort of comes out of nowhere.
Being on fire
seems to not hurt me as much
as it’s hurting him.
Mecum, ZH, 124
This haiku is very random in my opinion. It’s not everyday that there is a haiku about people being on fire. It is definitely creepy and mysterious, but it is quite different from the haiku about the doe. This haiku moves us into the more contemporary age of haiku. The random quality of this haiku is almost what makes American haiku unique. American haiku do not have to make any sense and are usually more well-accepted by the haiku community. Randomness allows the reader to create more of their own image of what they think is happening in the haiku. It creates more gaps where the reader can let their imagination run wild before continuing on with what the author actually wrote. This concept is another important element of haiku. Without it, there would be little room for the haiku to morph in the reader’s mind into another art form in and of itself. Part of the art of haiku is that it is collaborative. It is not just the author who creates the haiku, but also the reader. In fact, haiku is not even “born” until someone reads it and has a reaction to it. Although the randomness in this haiku can be confusing, it can also be a great moment for this collaboration to happen. For instance, let’s say that I read this haiku and after each line I had a thought in between the previous line and the next. For instance:
Being on fire (I immediately imagine a car burning for some reason) seems to not hurt me as much (I picture an injured man in the car with blood on his face) as its hurting him. (Now two individuals are involved and imagine that they are strangers and the narrator Sociopath).
Now this interpretation is my own and is different from what every other person will imagine. That is what is beautiful about the art of haiku. There is no right or wrong way for someone to interpret a haiku and everyone’s interpretation will be different because we all perceive things differently. I really like having class discussions on haiku because then I get to see new things in a haiku that I did not see with my own eyes, but can see through someone else’s. Thus, this is why the haiku community is so large. There is no limit to what can be discovered in one single haiku when hundreds of people get together to discuss it and they all have their own specific interpretation. In fact, I will be presenting this essay soon to a class of about twenty honors students at a university and cannot wait to see all of their different reactions to the haiku that I have found in my research.
I personally liked this haiku because the image of fire itself is very strong and that is in the first line of this haiku. It is very bold and captures the reader, quickly drawing them into the haiku, which is hard to do when haiku are already so short. There has to be a lot happening quickly to keep a reader interested as well as keep them from reading it but not actually listening to the words that are written.
Next I would like to discuss more contemporary creepy haiku that are taken from the real world around us. Here is a matched pair of some of Stevenson’s more contemporary haiku from his books, Some of the Silence and Live Again.
children’s ICU—
a tissue box beside
the pay phone
Stevenson, SOTS, 39
again his account
of the airbag inflating
inflating
Stevenson, LA, 19
Both of these haiku are strange and somewhat disturbing in and of themselves, but put together they create a whole other picture of sadness and loss. I really liked placing these two haiku together because they seem to mesh quite nicely and help each other tell one cohesive story even though it may not have been what the writer intended. This idea goes back to the art of haiku being a community and a collaborative effort. What I saw in these two haiku, caused me to link them together, but not every person would have done that. These two haiku did come from the same writer, but not from the same book. I just so happened to have both of the books and then notice ties between them. I really liked these two together because in the first one, there is not anything that helps the reader know why the child was in the ICU and why someone is now upset about that and on the phone. However, when paired with the second haiku, I think that it becomes clearer that maybe a parent was driving a car and crashed with their child in the car with them and now the parent is fine, but the child is hurt or worse. I personally think the child has probably died, because the ICU is not a place for kids who just have a couple scratches or a broken bone, it is for very severe cases where the child is clinging on to life and needs to be constantly monitored. The language of not just a children’s hospital or hospital room, but instead the very specific choice of the ICU (Intensive Care Unit) is very strong and definitely lets the readers know that something really horrible has happened.
What is really fascinating, but also scary about these haiku is that both of these haiku are very real situations that can and do happen to people today. I think that was another reason why I liked them so much. I have seen bad things happen to good people in my life and wondered why that happens, but it is just how life goes sometimes. Life is not always happiness and sunshine and that is why I think this category of haiku is very important, especially today. The bad things in this world can sometimes have great outcomes and I think these haiku can be beneficial to people going through rough times. I also think haiku can be therapeutic for people going through these situations. Haiku has so many different forms and different ways that it affects people, more than most other arts, in my opinion. Audiences today respond well to this kind of haiku because it is real and I think that makes this genre and this sub-category the most liked by modern audiences.
Another form of these creepy and strange haiku is suspenseful haiku. One of my favorites of these haiku was written by Joanne Morcom, a social worker and the author of pale moon, a small pamphlet of some of Joanne’s haiku.
3 a.m.
my neighbor’s lights
are also on
Morcom, PM, n.p.
I personally really liked this haiku simply because of a scary movie I saw recently that reminded me of it. The movie was called “Annabelle” and it was about a doll that became possessed by a demon. In the very beginning of the movie, it is established that it is 1969 at the height of Charles Manson and that people needed to make sure they were locking their doors to keep the cult worshippers from coming in. One night the main character, a pregnant housewife, wakes up in the middle of the night to discover that her neighbor’s bedroom light is on and then she heard a scream. She wakes up her husband and chaos ensues as he goes to check on the neighbors and the intruders in the neighbor’s home move into their own home and begin terrorizing the young couple. The cult worshippers, who had broken in, ended up dying. The police stopped one of the intruders, while the other sacrificed herself to be able to have a demon possess the doll in the baby’s future nursery. This haiku reminded me of this movie because of the fact that the haiku basically describes the first scene in the movie. I also liked this haiku because 3 a.m. is the witching hour and that automatically gives it a creepy factor. I’m sure the author knew this too, since she is fascinated with horror herself and loves to write about it.
The example I gave above about how this haiku reminded me of a movie I saw is very common and practiced amongst haiku readers. Authors write haiku with gaps so that the readers can have their own memories be brought into the haiku. For me, my memory reminded me of the movie I had seen recently and so I drew a parallel between the movie and this haiku, whereas someone else may have read this haiku and remembered that a few nights ago they woke up around 3 a.m. and so whatever they felt when they had experienced waking up at that time would come back to them and become part of their response to this haiku. Everyone thinks of something different when they read haiku and this again helps it to have a very broad range of interpretations.
The final haiku I would like to discuss is another haiku by John Stevenson. I found his work to be the most versatile, but most of his haiku had a dark quality that helped me find different kinds of dark and disturbing haiku that were also different enough from each other that I could use it to show that haiku can be creepy in all different ways. Here is another haiku from Stevenson’s Some of the Silence:
battery weakened
the low, slow laughter
of a demon
Stevenson, SOTS, 51
This haiku can be taken a couple different ways. In Stevenson’s book, he prefaces this haiku and states that this haiku is actually referring to a toy jack-o-lantern accidentally being set off, whereas when I read this out of context, I thought it meant an actual demon. In ghost-hunting books and shows, they say that demonic spirits and ghosts can use energy from batteries to help communicate and so sometimes batteries will go dead when a person is in a haunted space because the spirit is trying to use that energy to communicate. The fact that this haiku states that the battery is weakened first and then the demon laughs basically perfectly exemplifies this rule. This haiku, without knowing the context that it was in, would be the creepiest of all the others in this paper because it specifically makes mention of a demon and I do not think that there is anything scarier than a demon. Again, depending upon who the reader is a different response will be formed.
Creepy haiku is a rather broad topic and has many subcategories. As has previously been mentioned, haiku can be interpreted differently by everyone who reads them. Haiku that I placed into the “creepy” category may not be considered creepy by other people, this goes back to the fact that haiku cannot be placed into specific categories that can fully be agreed upon. Haiku is an art form that is pliable and shifts based upon different interpretations readers have of them. Haiku is one of many art forms that cannot be put into a box or perfectly analyzed down to single formula that is the recipe for the correct form of a haiku. Haiku is a free art form that molds itself based on what is seen by different people in one work. Now, I would like to leave you with one final haiku by John Stevenson that I think can help to show that gaps are important in a haiku as well as what the reader gets out of the poem.
a deep gorge...
some of the silence
is me
Stevenson, SOTS, 66
• • •
Works Cited
Mecum, Ryan. Zombie Haiku.Cincinnati:HOW Books, 2008. Print.
Morcom, Joanne. Pale Moon. Haiku Canada Sheet, 2000. Print.
Stevenson, John. Live Again. Winchester: Red Moon, 2009. Print.
Stevenson, John. Some of the Silence. Red Moon, 1999. Print.
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