The Concrete and the Abstract Haiku of Raymond Roseliep

by Wanda June
4/30/12

Raymond Roseliep was an award winning haiku poet, as well as a Catholic priest and an English professor at Loras College in Dubuque, Iowa. Clearly a man of many talents, Roseliep's approach to haiku draws from a variety of unconventional elements. This includes influences from other mediums of art, such as music and painting, as well as metaphysical and abstract content. Roseliep's haiku are particularly striking in that they create a distinct atmosphere, drawing from the reader's past artistic experiences, as well as from spiritual influences. His haiku bring together a fascinating blend of very concrete elements, as well as some more abstract—and often times a beautiful combination of the two. His haiku often create what he so eloquently described in the author's forward to his work, Listen to Light as a "haiku moment". In this paper, I will discuss Roseliep's unconventional approaches, and how each of these creates this moment, which I believe to be one of pause and contemplation.

Much of Roseliep's haiku references specific artists from other mediums—frequently we see Monet the painter and Beethoven the composer throughout Roseliep's work. For example, the following haiku which mentions the great classical composer, Beethoven, found in Roseliep's work Sailing Bones:

after Beethoven
he gets the furnace
roaring

Sailing Bones, 34

This is a work of poetry, inspired by musical works—in this haiku, there is a poignant expansion of a shared artistic experience that builds upon and transcends the original work. I have my own idea of Beethoven—I hear his high energy fifth symphony when I read this haiku, and think of how I feel when this symphony ends. It is quiet, almost too quiet—and in the haiku, a roaring furnace seems like a fitting noise to fill this uncomfortable kind of quiet, to echo the roaring of the symphony that had just ended.

Someone else reading this haiku might have wildly different interpretations—maybe the first thought that comes to mind when someone hears "Beethoven" is his much calmer piece, "Moonlight Sonata". This would result in the haiku having a totally different tone and context for that reader. It is an interesting technique to utilize the work of other artists such as Beethoven in haiku because of the wide variety of past experiences and impressions that people have with those artists. This leads to a wide variety of readings, each of which is personal and deeply connected with the mentioned artistic work. And even regardless of how this haiku is read, it strikes me as a great example of the "haiku moment". There is a great sense of pause in the haiku, in particular because it is taking place "after" something. The moment has a sense of ending and finality to it from its very start.

Reading this particular kind of haiku has allowed me to reflect on the way that art influences art across mediums. What makes haiku so striking is how it can connect the poet to the reader so distinctly. This is honestly what I would say art is—a shared human experience—and haiku perfectly embodies this definition. The following haiku can be found in the work, Sky in my Legs:

garden flowers
bloom this winter morning
in Monet

Raymond Roseliep, Sky In My Legs

This haiku references Monet, an Impressionist artist, well known for his paintings of lily pads and flowers. This haiku suggests the amount of life that can be found in such a painting, describing flowers that bloom "in Monet". Having seen a fair bit of Monet's work, this haiku resonates with me, and draws upon images of the artist paintings that I already have stored away in my memory. When I read this I picture the color scheme of his lily pad paintings, and the lily flowers floating on the water. It's interesting too that Roseliep wrote, "bloom this winter morning" for the second line. While flowers may not bloom in the winter, flowers will always be blooming in Monet's art, whether it's winter or spring.

One thing that I have considered while reading Rosliep, is that these kinds of haiku may not be wholly accessible to everyone. Some people may not have the necessary background for the haiku to really be impactful. For example, from Roseliep's Rabbit in the Moon—

children bobbing
through the pelvis
of Georgia O'Keeffe

Rabbit in the Moon, 90

This haiku references Georgia O'Keeffe, an artist well-known for her paintings that abstractly depict reproductive body parts. Someone who knows the work of O'Keeffe would read this haiku and understand the significance of the children bobbing through the pelvis, but anyone unfamiliar with this artist would likely be at a loss to understand what the haiku is about. Knowing Georgia O'Keeffe's work, this haiku pulled a chuckle out of me, as I pictured a group of children wandering through an art museum, walking past an O'Keeffe and unaware of the abstract "pelvis" it depicts. This is surely an amusing image and idea, but one that certainly necessitates some prior knowledge.

This is something that I happen to really love about Roseliep's work—while all of it may not resonate with every person who reads it, when a reader does make a connection to it, it's extraordinarily personal. While these haiku require some prior knowledge, that prior knowledge of Monet or Picasso entails particular memories and images and sounds that Roseliep calls upon and builds on in his own work.

In some of his haiku, Roseliep even pays homage to some of the great Japanese haiku poets, such as this haiku that mentions Matsuo Basho:

glasses
lying on Basho
look on

Listen to Light, 63

Roseliep's haiku demonstrates that he draws influence from the artists that inspire him in writing haiku. In this haiku, he mentions Basho, and it's clear from a few readings of Roseliep that he draws a great deal of influence from this famous poet, whether he's mentioning the man in a particular haiku or not. When I read this haiku, I imagine Roseliep sitting in a living room somewhere, taking a break from reading some haiku with his glasses set on an anthology of Basho's work.

In his forward to Listen to Light, Roseliep said, "The most serious of Western haiku poets keep as their touchstone old Basho's declaration of the haiku moment. They witness firsthand the real nature of things and sometimes even the Buddha nature of things. They aim to use a minimal number of words to report the instant of intuition, uniting the self and the object which has moved them emotionally" (11). The following matched pair of Roseliep and Basho's haiku demonstrates how similar the work of the former is to the latter:

campfire extinguished
the woman washing dishes
in a pan of stars

Raymond Roseliep, Listen to Light, 62

The rough sea—
Extending toward Sado Isle,
The Milky Way

Matsuo Basho, TMHP, 54

I paired these two together for several reasons. They both end with an image of the stars, the first referencing stars in a pan, which I take to mean the woman washing dishes is doing so outside, and the sky is reflecting onto the water. Basho's haiku mentions the Milky Way at the end. My imagined response to this haiku is the image of a sea reflecting the stars from above, seen far away from the Sado Isle in the middle of the sea, perhaps from the vantage point of a fisherman. Both haiku establish a different vantage point of the universe—of "campfire extinguished", Collette Inez said in a forward to Rabbit in the Moon,
". . . a favorite, is the 1980 Shugyo Takaha award winner, a haiku in which the universe is reduced to a mundane setting." This is a completely unexpected yet interesting way to look at the world, just as "the rough sea" takes an unconventional vantage point, seemingly away from the land it describes.

Furthermore, both haiku exude a sense of calm amid what is sometimes a chaotic universe. Roseliep's haiku takes place after a campfire was extinguished. This gives the reader the sense that it had been a long day, and perhaps even a long night of camping and laughter. Afterward there is a solitary woman, cleaning up after all the fun. She is calm in this moment, under the stars and in the quiet of the night. Basho's haiku is a bit more chaotic than this with its description of "rough sea"—but even a rough see when looked at from afar can appear to be quite calm and smooth, which is what I envision when reading this one.

Some others of Roseliep's haiku are even more abstract, for example:

in water
my body
of water

Raymond Roseliep, Rabbit in the Moon, 18

This haiku strikes me as somewhat clever—Roseliep sandwiches "my body" in between two lines about water. "Body" could mean a human body, as well as a body of water, and in this haiku it seems to mean both. A man's body is both in the water, and it is of water, as the human body is mainly composed of water.

While Roseliep is similarly clever in much of his work, others of his haiku are just stunning in the abstract ideas they present and the concrete images they evoke. For example, his award winning haiku:

horizon
wild swan drifting through
the woman's body

Rayond Roseliep, Rabbit in the Moon, 42

It is no surprise that his haiku is so well loved. I think of my own immediate reaction to it—the haiku makes me think of a woman swimming in some sort of body of water—in my mind she is throwing her head back and arching her back in an elegant way, and appears to the view as a wild swan. It is such a gorgeous idea that the woman swimming has the spirit of swan drifting through her. The idea of a swan drifting through the woman is clearly abstract, as a swan is not literally drifting through her, but it suggests a beautiful and real image of a woman.

Some of Roseliep's haiku can be quite philosophical, suggesting some interesting things about what it is to be human, an experience we all share. For example, from Sailing Bones:

walking in rain
I pass a stranger
I know

Raymond Roseliep, Sailing Bones, 32

It sounds like a contradiction for someone to be "a stranger I know". However, this haiku made me wonder—I recall times when strangers have seemed utterly familiar to me, and even if I couldn't have known them, it was like I did. The other situation I imagine is this: knowing someone who has changed dramatically, so that they became like stranger to you. I have plenty of former friends who I see in my hometown, who I'll recognize in passing but never say hello to, because I know we've both changed too much. This haiku certainly has caused me to evaluate what it means to be a stranger and what it means to truly know someone, questions that really concern everyone as a human being. Roseliep's haiku, while evoking a stunning image of two people quietly passing one another in the rain, also evokes these aforementioned abstract concepts.

A final technique I would like to discuss from Roseliep's work is haiku that utilize what the poet himself referred to as haiku-stanzas. He described this technique in a forward to Rabbit in the Moon: "Some of these stanzas are haiku which can stand alone; some may send the reader back to the poem's title to complete or capture the haiku moment; or the stanzas advancing in their movements toward a unity may generate haiku enlightenment" (9). This is an interesting sort of experimentation with form, a favorite of mine can be found in Listen to Light:

AFTER DUSK

asleep
the firefly
is fuelling

sparks
however small
light lovers

our bodies
listen
to light

Listen to Light, 39

I'm so glad to have read Roseliep's description of this technique, because it describes perfectly my experience of reading this haiku. Each haiku is beautiful on its own, but together they create this great momentum leading up to calm. It starts with a firefly that is sleeping, then moves to the "sparks", giving and image of light to accompany the firefly, and ends with an interesting use of synesthesia. The concluding stanza uses the word "our", which brings the reader back into his or herself, and places them into the scene being described. I found myself reading this haiku-stanza, then going back and reading the title, "After Dusk", which makes a great deal of sense in connection with the haiku moment.

All of Roseliep's techniques are great for the same reason—they create a haiku moment, a time to pause and think and imagine and remember. This is what I love about his work, and the surprising, yet effective ways that he manages to do this. Many of his haiku experiment with form, while other remain true to form but bring in fascinating metaphysical and abstract elements. Raymond Roseliep is indeed a talented haiku poet, and his work will continue to resonate within the haiku community, and will create haiku moments for each new reader that finds him.

• • •

Works Cited

Roseliep, Raymond. Listen to Light. Ithaca: Alembic Press, 1980.

Roseliep, Raymond. Rabbit in the Moon. Plainfield: Alembic Press, 1983.

Roseliep, Raymond. Sailing Bones. Ruffsdale: The Rook Press, 1978.

Roseliep, Raymond. Sky In My Legs. La Crosse: Juniper Press, 1979.

Ueda, Makoto. The Master Haiku Poet: Matsuo Basho. Tokyo, 1982.