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Between the Lines in the Silence: the Haiku of Wally Swist
sudden rainstorm—
crimson leaves stick
to our new umbrellas
—Swist (Silence Between Us, 109)
This is a typical haiku by New England poet Wally Swist. There is a deep connection to nature juxtaposed with archetypal human traits. Swist brings this idea to every haiku he writes that forces the reader to, as Swist puts it, “live with it for a while”. After contacting Swist about his poetry and his approaches, I mentioned my favorite to him, and his response was for me to “live with it for a while”, and respond to him later after I had let it affect me over a longer period of time. I have done so, and I realize that Swist gave us the clue to appreciating his haiku in the title of his collected haiku, The Silence Between Us. It is not necessarily what you read or hear in his haiku, but what you feel in between each line, in the silence. That is the connective tissue that binds Swist, the text, the reader, and actually other haiku together.
winter sunset:
in the brass door handle
an eviction notice
—Wally Swist (S.B.U. 30)
streetlight silhouette
on the snow:
two lovers
—Melanie McLay
When I read the poem by Swist I automatically went to this one by Millikin student, Melanie McLay. I think that it is perhaps because when we shared McClay’s poem in class, it was universally a very warm cuddly kind of haiku, and I think pairing it with this changes the interpretation. I got two similar images; the first was of a man who had just been left by his wife and he has been secluded in his house in depression, but he has finally decided to go outside and when he opens the door he finds the eviction notice on his door, he goes walking and sees his wife kissing another man. The other image that I got was that he was out in the park and saw his wife kissing another man and he was going home to leave her, but as he reached the door he finds the notice, which means for him that either way he cannot return to this house ever again. Either way, it is pretty bleak. Not that I am totally in love with the morose, but I think the pairing of these two adds depth to both of them by having them linked through the seasonal element, because now the authors heart is colder than the outside could ever be. Swist achieves this connective technique through taking typical, nearly cliché, seasonal images and juxtaposing them with atypical human occurrences, rather than events. (It would be unfaithful to Swist’s haiku to refer to the human element as an event because events are very special moments that stick out in life. Things occur constantly, so I believe that it more appropriate to associate Swist’s human element with occurrences.) Winter is a common theme in haiku and Swist furthers it by using a foreboding image. It connects well with McClay’s because she moves away from the cold with the warm image which makes the audience juxtapose the cold human moment with the warm one. Swist’s seasonal element not only makes interesting comparisons with other haiku poems, but can also add ambiguity to the human element of the haiku.
one unbroken pane
remaining in the shed
full moon
—Swist ( S.B.U. 31)
The tone is what drew me toward this one. It has this air of defeat in it, which I believe is not too common in haiku, because this one is not coupled with desperation. I imagine that a man looks through his kitchen window at his shed and notices the single pane that is in tact, but he knows in the forefront of his mind that soon, it too will be joining its brothers as shards in the grass due to harsh whether, animals, or vandals. The full moon could mean that since there will be more light out he can spy to see who is breaking his windows, so he could call the police, or drop them with a deer rifle, either way really. The full moon could also symbolize the foreshadowing of danger. I associate full moons with werewolves, something that is obviously thought of as dangerous. Perhaps, then, that could have been Swist’s point; to have the reader associate the full moon with danger. Swist, with his full moon, is able to convey both safety (moon light), and danger (foreboding), it is up to the reader to fill in the “silence” between the lines to decide whether the poem looks at the moon in a positive or negative light.
checking the herd—
the roving sheep dog’s
blind eye
—Swist ( S.B.U. 63)
This haiku reinforces the theme that nobody’s perfect through Swist’s clever use of irony. This dog is specifically bred to guard sheep, yet it has what I would call a crippling disability in a watchdog. You feel sorry for the dog, but at the same time you are encouraged because it still can keep watch over the sheep, the owners didn’t kill or sell the dog when one of its eyes went blind. Then I think how the dog went blind; perhaps it was just sick, or maybe the dog got it while protecting the herd from a fox or coyote. Applying this to everyday life, we are trained to do something. What if a dancer broke their ankle? A singer blows out their vocal chords, or a butcher chops off his hand? These all would end the careers of these individuals. I think this haiku speaks to how valuable our skills and abilities are to us and that we should put them to use, lest they be taken from us. Following Swist’s advice, I filled in the “silence” between the lines to connect it back to the humanity. Here the human element, was not specifically written by Swist, but was implied in the silence that I filled in. Now perhaps another reader would not have found any human element. For myself, and my brief correspondence with Swist, I know he has a slightly Zen approach to haiku, where everything is connected through a life-force. That is where my interpretation came from; that we are all equal with set skills and whether or not we speak, meow, bark, or hiss we all are subject to nature’s will.
spring rain—
an ancient pattern gleaming
on the turtle’s shell
—Swist ( S.B.U. 95)
Swist’s admiration of nature also intrigues my curiosity. For instance a turtle is an interesting subject for a haiku. Some people keep turtles as pets not because their cute, but because they are very low maintenance pets; you throw a piece of lettuce in the tank and that’s it. I don’t like actual turtles, but the thought of them is calming. I believe Swist chose the turtle because it is viewed as a fairly inconsequential animal, no one fears of being attacked by a turtle, children have no problem picking them up and prodding the shells. Turtles are then paralleled to the human occurrences; they are just there, a matter of being, rather than being something special or extraordinary. Turtles don’t have any of the dangerous mechanisms that other animals have that make us fear them, horns, teeth, speed. I like to think that turtles are slow, not because they physically can’t move quickly, but because they are confident that they will get to their destination. Turtles just choose not to be in a hurry; they always take the scenic route and drive half the speed limit, just so they don’t miss anything along the journey. I think people could learn something from the turtles. Stopping and smelling the roses, and whatnot. In this haiku I like the image of the rain coming down and rinsing the filth off of the shell to reveal the pattern, like Swist is trying to tell us to slow down and take notice to our surroundings, natural or otherwise.
The reader would have to really stop to discover the meaning behind the words, which I believe was the whole point of the haiku in the first place. This haiku is a good reinforcement of Swist’s Zen influences. He has said that he believes “the best haiku are ‘egoless,’ and in my opinion, the best writing is often ‘egoless.’ When I am in nature, and begin a poem, it almost always has very little ego associated with it”. The turtle here has no opinions; the author has expressed no opinion of the turtle, and has not compared the turtle to anything else. All we see is the turtle not even fighting against the rain, but being washed by the rain. We see nature providing for its subjects, and the turtle does not destroy nature, but lives among it. Swist has really captured the full natural aesthetic by not offering juxtaposition here for the reader to work out; rather it contrasts with many of his other poems by making the reader adjust their “Swist-vision”, so that they may find the relationship without battling the images together.
mountain trail…
the fragrance of horses
mingling with pine
—Swist (S.B.U. 92)
So remote a place,
covering the haiku monument
a springtime shawl
—Teruko (A Hidden Pond, 54)
This final match comes because both of these haiku have similar structure and subject manner. They both notice their location in the first line and then focus on something specific about the place. I think that both contain a kind of irony in them. This illustrates Swist’s faithfulness to the Japanese tradition in haiku. For instance in the Swist poem, when I think of pine aroma, I think very peaceful and pleasant. When I think horse fragrance, I think horse apples and that awful stench that rises. Mixing the two does not make the horse smell any better, but definitely brings down the value of the pine. Likewise in Teruko’s poem when I think of a monument, especially one to haiku, I imagine something somber, committed to nature that would relax anyone who approached it. When I hear the word “shawl”, I imagine an old woman wrapped in something hand knit, that has a few imperfections, but putting that in spring seems completely inappropriate. I then thought that perhaps someone came upon it during the winter and in order to protect the beauty of the monument, placed the shawl over it and have not yet returned to reclaim it. I think with both of these poems they concentrate on taking something out of place and blend it so that it seems more puzzle-like and that they will make their audience jump into that mind frame of spinning their observations into other perspectives, because even though the horse fragrance and shawl seem out of place, it is reasonable that one would find them in their respective places. By comparing Swist’s poetry with that of contemporary Japanese haiku, it is a fair assessment to conclude that Swist has not Westernized his poetry by adding literary devices that many other poets subscribe. In the forward to The Silence Between Us, Swist offers his definition of a successful haiku,
The essence of a successful haiku itself is in the experience of an eternal moment, the numinous found in nature, and in the austerity of the juxtaposition of the images themselves, in that experience, without the use of metaphor or simile (15).
Throughout we have seen evidence of Swist’s egoless nature-influenced poetry. He has put a spin on poetry that is not Western, but that is “Swist-ian”. Unlike many English-speaking poets he does not use metaphor, simile, personification, nor does he ignore the nature element. So much poetry becomes about the human experiences and relationships that they neglect the Japanese/nature traditions in which haiku is rooted. Lee Gurga, editor of Modern Haiku, speaks of Swist’s work as balancing, “on the razor’s edge between epiphany and oxymoron to enhance our experience of the poem while staying true to the moment” (20). There lies Swist’s talent, that even though he pushes us into our own imaginations to fill in his “silence” by using vivid language, he never pushes us so far that we fall out of relation with the poem. I believe that he can be seen as one of the contemporary masters of haiku poetry because of his ability to innovate an ancient art form while still remaining faithful to its roots and traditions.
Works Cited
Wally Swist. The Silence Between Us. Brooks Books (Decatur, IL), 2005. |
