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Lorraine Ellis Harr's The Red Barn Haiku
Lorraine Ellis Harr was a great haiku writer, but more than this, she was a great champion for haiku. According to the website <http://www.ahapoetry.com>, she started writing haiku in the 1960’s, and even won an Honorable Mention in the Japan Air Lines contest in 1964. This was all the encouragement Harr needed to write. She continued writing and never stopped, even telling a journalist she writes up to a 100 haiku a day. She became an assistant editor for Haiku Highlights a haiku magazine started by Jean Calken, and in 1972, she became editor. Harr changed the name of the magazine to Dragonfly: A Quarterly of Haiku. Under Harr’s direction, the magazine took on many changes. The greatest was its use in recruiting members for the Western World Haiku society that Harr organized in 1972. (Aha Poetry). She followed the Japanese tradition of haiku where to belong to a group one subscribed to the magazine. This became a school of writing with Harr as the teacher encouraging beginners and guiding them with her famous list of “do’s and don’ts.” She became so synonymous with her Dragonfly magazine, her Japanese colleagues called her Tombo or Dragonfly, in Japanese. She took this name as her own and even wrote a volume of haiku entitled Tombo.
Though one of Harr’s most renowned haiku works is Tombo, I chose to study her copulation, The Red Barn. The Red Barn encompasses one of Harr’s central themes—the simple beauty and innocence of rural nature. Harr follows her steadfast dedication to the tenets of Japanese haiku writing in both technique and feel.
Sun on the barn roof;
Rhode Island rooster rounds-up
His harem of hens
Harr, The Red Barn pg. 2
Instantly one is taken to a beautiful peaceful day simply by the line “sun on a barn roof, the precision of the language “Rhode Island rooster” allows one to see the specific Rhode Island Red she is referring to, it allows the mind to create a vivid picture. The use of the word harem in the last line is so much more descriptive than flock. The language though simple provides a robust image of the scene. So much is said with so few words.
The calico cat
Ambles through the red barn–
Mouse hunting
Harr, The Red Barn pg.4
This is a familiar scene to all that have spent any time at all on a farm. If one has visited a farm to buy apples or to select a pumpkin, they have seen the stalking barn cat.
The use of so familiar a scene in haiku extends the feeling of contentment to the reader.
In afternoon shade—
are there three white heifers
beside the red barn?
Harr, The Red Barn pg 27
Again Harr uses a familiar comforting phrase to start her haiku. “In afternoon shade” provokes an image of a cool oasis from the stifling heat. It joins our human experience and allows us to begin the poem in one mood. Her juxtaposition of “white Heifers” beside the “the red barn” is an alarming visual contrast. Harr’s underlying theme again is everyday beauty.
Since Harr was such a proponent of Japanese Haiku one would be remiss in discussing her haiku and not comparing it to the Japanese master Bash
The old pond-
A frog leaps in
And a splash.
Basho, Matsuo Basho,pg.53
A small green frog
Leaps into the pasture pond
The circles widen—
Harr, The Red Barn, pg 30
This is obviously an attempt to honor Basho’s most famous haiku. She gives her frog more definition by making him both small and green. An old pond and a pasture pond shares many characteristics. They are both murky and full of debris. While Basho concentrated on the sound the frog makes, Harr chose to concentrate on the visual of the frogs effect on the pond. I like the imagery that is produced by the words “The circles widen” the circles widen to encircle the reader and thus make them part of the haiku. Another of Basho’s haiku that Harr pays homage to is “Summer grasses”.
Summer grasses
All that remains
Of warriors dreams
Basho, Hand out, global haiku class
Burning stubble
and the crickets have all
gone silent …
Harr, The Red Barn, pg. 45
This coupling is alike not so much in phrasing, but in feel. “ Summer grasses” are replaced by burning stubble. Basho’s warriors have become crickets, but the mood is the same, the longing for what once was is inherent in both poems.
The fact that Lorraine Ellis Harr left her mark on haiku is unmistakable. Through the contests she sponsored through the Western World Haiku Society, Harr was able to encourage and teach many haiku authors. Her scope reached around the world with her society becoming international in outreach and membership. “Many haiku writers answered a poll done in 1985 that either their first haiku was published by Lorraine, or that it was from her influence and instruction that they had learned about haiku.” (Aha Poetry).
Lorraine’s life ended on march 3, 2006, but her haiku legacy lives on through her writings and the throngs of new haiku authors she has inspired. Following are a few noteworthy haiku I would like to share from the author.
how to explain
the way it looks—dragonfly
on Queen Anne’s Lace
Harr, Tombo, <http://www.ahapoetry.com>
The sparkler goes out
And with it-the face
Of the child
Harr, The Haiku Anthology pg66
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Works Cited
Harr, L. (1975). the Red Barn. Portland, Oregon.
Heuvel, C. (1999). The Haiku Anthology. New York: W.W. Norton.
Reichhold, J. (2009). Aha Poetry. Lorraine Ellis Harr. <http://www.ahapoetry.com> Retrieved from the web March 22, 2010.
Ueda, M. (1982). Matsuo Basho. Tokyo: Kodansha International Ltd. |
