Jenny Schultz • Jenny's Haiku •

Lee Gurga first discovered haiku in the first volume of R.H. Blyth’s Haiku when he was sixteen or seventeen years old. Since then, this form of Japanese poetry has permeated his life through college, dental school, and beyond for over thirty years. That discovery on the shelves of a Chicago bookstore during his teenage years has led to a lifelong passion: Gurga is now recognized as one of the world’s leading contemporary haiku poets, with his work appearing in Global Haiku: Twenty-five Poets Worldwide, Cor van den Heuvel’s The Haiku Anthology, and three of collections of his own haiku as well as four volumes of translations of Japanese haiku (with his translation partner, Emiko Miyashita). He is also the editor of Modern Haiku, an independent not-for-profit haiku journal dedicated to preserving and promoting the art of haiku. What is it about haiku, then, that grabbed Gurga’s attention when he first picked up that copy of Blyth’s Haiku? I asked him how he became interested in the genre, to which he replied, “Haiku appealed to me because of its brevity and clarity and its connection to nature.” This connection to nature is a key element in Gurga’s own haiku. Rarely will one find a poem of his without a reference to the season, and in his book Haiku: A Poet’s Guide, he writes, “season is the soul of haiku” (24). But nature is not the only reason that haiku appealed to Gurga. In my e-mail interview with him, he wrote that “Blyth presented haiku as the jewel of East Asian culture,” influenced greatly by Zen Buddhism. Blyth’s writings also introduced Gurga to the classical poetry of China, which he claims has the “vastness of scale of the Midwest.” A native of Illinois, he could easily relate to Chinese poetry’s breadth, but he still liked the conciseness of haiku. As Gurga put it, “Haiku takes the expansive feeling of Chinese poetry and combines it with the claustrophobia of Japanese life to produce something unique and unexpected.” Clearly, he had found his poetic niche. For Gurga, this niche quickly snowballed into a lifelong passion. Fueled by the idea that haiku takes him “where [he] wants to go,” he has spent much of the last three decades writing and perfecting his poems. When I asked what has kept him so involved in haiku for all these years, he responded, “Temporary insanity.” He went on to admit that although he has been writing haiku since his teenage years, his pattern of writing is best described as “episodic.” Often, he will spend a zealous year or two writing haiku and then a comparable period creating little poetry “of interest to myself or others.” But most importantly, he continues to write and edit haiku through the years. On editing Modern Haiku, Gurga notes that he feels it is his duty to the genre. “If one loves something,” he writes, “then one must take responsibility first that it continues to exist and second that it is not distorted into something less as a result of people's ambitions and lack of vision.” These inspiring words show just how dedicated Gurga is to the art of haiku and why he has chosen to spend much of his life preserving and promoting it. Of course, in addition to selecting which haiku will appear in the next issue of Modern Haiku and continuing to write his own poetry, Gurga must, like any other poet, edit and revise his own work. While he mentions that some haiku, such as: his side of it. her side of it. winter silence FS, 101 …which appears in the collection Fresh Scent, come out pretty much finished on the first try, most haiku need at least some revision. To help other poets with their revision process, Gurga has included a chapter on revising and an extensive editing “checklist” in the pages of Haiku: A Poet’s Guide (106-118). For his own work, he told me that it can be invaluable to ask other haiku poets for their input, since they may be able to point out shortcomings that the author can’t see. Gurga himself gets together regularly with his “haiku buddy,” fellow poet Randy Brooks, to critique each other’s work. But there are still times when a haiku must go through several revisions before it seems right. For instance, Gurga wrote to me that the title poem of Fresh Scent: fresh scent— the labrador’s muzzle deeper into snow FS, 19 …originally began with “following the scent…” and went through several changes before it finally sounded right. “I inquired of several poets (Cor van den Heuvel, Gary Hotham, Elizabeth Lamb, as I recall) which [version] they preferred and got quite different answers, which should tell you something about haiku!” he writes. Gurga also said that sometimes it can be months before a haiku is finished, and that there are even times when he has not seen what was “wrong” with a haiku until it was published in a magazine. “Very humbling, let me tell you!” Hopefully, Gurga does not feel humbled by the publication of the following haiku, which are some of my favorites from Fresh Scent. I find nearly all of the haiku of his to which I have been exposed to be insightful and easy to relate to; this is a select batch of those that have become my “favorites of the favorites.” my dream awakens me… I wake you FS, 20 I love the imagery that this haiku expresses. Most people have been awakened by a dream, either bad or good, at some point during their lives. Being able to share that dream with someone else, though, is truly a gift – especially if that other person is not angry for being awakened in the middle of the night. In this instance, I feel that the interruption of sleep does not bother the other person (a spouse). The speaker of the haiku hesitates, as shown by the ellipsis, but not for long. This dream is either too good or too awful to not be shared. “I wake you” comes very quickly after the ellipsis, just a breath after a moment’s pause. There is a very strong word link between the two images of this haiku. “Wake” in the third line is almost a repetition of “awakens” in the second line, but not quite. It is this similarity without sameness that really makes this haiku work. The second image echoes the first, showing that the awakenings of these two spouses happen in a similar manner, but without repeating. rural interstate— all the other cars exit together FS, 23 This is a haiku moment that I can truly relate to. When I am back home in suburbia, there are always other cars sharing the interstate with me whether it’s 4:00 P.M. or 4:00 A.M. But when I am driving back to Decatur after a weekend at home, the story is different about as soon as I’m south of I-80. Rural interstates are interesting in that one can be driving along with several other cars, passing and re-passing one another for miles, when all of the sudden the driver of one car realizes she is suddenly alone. Looking into the rear view mirror, she notices the last of the cars she has spent the previous miles with has its blinker on and is veering down the exit ramp. The succinctness of the last line of this haiku embodies the loneliness that one then feels, facing miles and miles of interstate as the sole vehicle. Even the words of this haiku seem to represent the group of exiting cars on the interstate of paper. When you reach the end of the haiku, you are left with the blank space surrounding it – the loneliness of the empty interstate. television light flickers on my children’s faces— autumn sunset FS, 25 The juxtaposition of these two images is both amusing and a depressing picture of a “technologized” America. It can be extremely difficult to tear children away from a favorite TV show, and after years of babysitting I can sympathize with the father whom I imagine is speaking this haiku to us. He does not want to disturb the peace of his children’s contentedness while watching TV in the evening, but at the same time he is thinking, “Why are you inside watching this canned garbage? You should be outside watching the television show that nature is putting on instead!” He sees the light from the television flickering (such a wonderful word for this haiku) on their faces, but he also sees the deep orange sunlight flickering through the color-changing leaves outside. This haiku represents the quintessential battle between nature and technology, a battle that is being fought at this moment in the father’s own being. grandma’s funeral— shaking hands with the cousins I don’t remember FS, 34 Here we have another excellent haiku (a senryu, actually) with which I can easily relate. Personally, I don’t have any trouble remembering the names of my first cousins since there are only 20 or so of them. But my mother has somewhere between seventy and eighty cousins (there are so many that we’re really not sure of the exact number), at which point remembering names becomes a far more demanding task. And it’s the occasions like this funeral where it really becomes obvious. When my own grandma died in 2002, there were a number of distant relatives at the wake and at the funeral who offered their condolences to my first cousins and me. Every time I turned around, I was shaking hands with and receiving hugs from people that I knew I had met before, but whom I could not remember to save my life. However, they all remembered me as “Theresa’s daughter with the pretty red hair.” All I could do was smile gracefully, nod, thank them for their sympathy, and try to keep that look of “I have no idea who you are or how you’re related to me” out of my eyes. This haiku expresses in very simple language the complexities of the particular haiku moment. arc of a rubberband back and forth across the room; winter evening FS, 37 on the second day I buy a deck of cards— spring rain FS, 44 I chose to pair these two haiku because they both show symptoms of cabin fever. In the first, I envision two grown men who are college roommates shooting a rubber band at each other during an evening of being snowed in. (Why do I envision two grown men? Because I witnessed this happen with my boyfriend and his roommate just a couple months ago.) In the second, I see a man at a downtown train station, heading home after a long day of work. The weather is quite dreary with no sign of letting up, so he stops at the magazine stand before boarding the train to buy a deck of cards. Personally, I prefer the second haiku to the first because I feel it leaves more open to the imagination. In the first haiku, we are in a room with two people and the only action is shooting the rubber band (and ducking when it is shot back) while the snow floats down outside the window. But with the second haiku, we are permitted to fill in the blanks: where does he purchase the deck of cards? What card games will he play? Does he have someone to play them with, or will he play a dozen variations of solitaire? And finally, how long will the rain last? By noting that it is the second day of rain, I am lead to wonder how many more days of rain there will be. Should this man be preparing for a Noah’s Ark sort of situation? Or will it end tomorrow, after which the deck of cards will be forgotten? The open-ended presentation of these images works well for this haiku. a bike in the grass one wheel slowly turning— summer afternoon FS, 55 This is probably my very favorite of all of Lee Gurga’s haiku. When I first read it in The Haiku Anthology, I would have mentally paired it with this haiku: rows of corn stretch to the horizon— sun on the thunderhead FS, 65 …because I envisioned the following:It’s one of those Midwestern weather tricks, the way a thunderstorm can sneak up on the clearest day and just as quickly be gone again. Here, some children have been outside enjoying the summer sunshine and heat, riding bikes and playing hopscotch. But suddenly their entranced playtime is cut short when the raindrops on their skin alert them to an approaching thunderstorm. One young boy leaps off of his bike, abandoning it tangled in the grass as he makes a mad dash for the shelter of his house. The sky darkens in minutes and small bits of hail bounce off the sidewalk. Seconds later, however, the rain begins to let up and the clouds move on. The sun and heat return. Outside, steam is rising from everything – the driveway, the roof, even the grass – and the boy notices that the front wheel of his bicycle is still turning, very slowly, from the velocity of his escape. That’s how fast the storm was. On a second reading many weeks later, however, the haiku spoke to me in an entirely different way. This time around, I was reminded of how children have short attention spans and can be easily distracted. A young boy is out riding his bike around the neighborhood and enjoying his school-free summer days, when a couple of neighborhood children come by and ask if he wants to go do something else – sell lemonade on the corner, for instance – instead. Excitedly, the boy leaps off his bike and gives it a hefty push into the middle of his yard. He and his friends run down the street. Meanwhile, the bike has landed in an oddly contorted heap, with the front wheel still turning lazily in the air while the boy is already at the corner. The hesitation at the end of the second line shows the reader how time has elapsed on this muggy afternoon. It could be several minutes before the bike wheel stops turning, but the heat will still continue. It also shows the fickleness that children have when it comes to playing with friends: first we see the bike, then we notice that the wheel is still turning…finally, we are reminded that it is a summer afternoon, and children are out of school and outside playing, continually distracted by their games and ideas. The presentation of images in this haiku works splendidly with the mood it creates. his side of it. her side of it. winter silence FS, 101 Oftentimes, strong punctuation such as a period is too overbearing for the brevity of haiku. But in this particular haiku, that is very much not the case. The poem would not be nearly as effective without its punctuation. It becomes a mentally spoken part of the poem: “his side of it – PERIOD.” That’s all there is to it, and neither he nor she is willing to compromise. Both are firm and unbending in their position, unwilling to listen to the ridiculousness that spills out of the other’s mouth. Putting the scene in wintertime is also an insightful move. Not only is it cold outside, but it is also cold inside. Both people are giving the other the cold shoulder, and the atmosphere between them is so frigid that each person has to leave the presence of the other in order to warm up (both physically and emotionally). There is so much going on between these people and in this haiku that I am amazed that it can be so beautifully expressed in just a few words. But, as Gurga mentioned in his response to my first e-mail interview question, it is the brevity of haiku that first attracted him to the genre. Along with its connection to nature and ability to express so much imagery and feeling, the short form of haiku has led Lee Gurga on a lifelong journey of preserving and promoting the Japanese literary art for which he is so passionate. Through editing Modern Haiku and having his work appear in multiple anthologies and his own published collections, Gurga has been able to make certain that his beloved art form continues to exist without being distorted into something less pure. Although most of his haiku may go through several revisions before being ready for publication, when they are finally printed they are among the most poignant and insightful creations I have ever been exposed to. Lee Gurga’s haiku as well as his passion for the genre are truly a gift to the English language. Works Cited Gurga, Lee. E-mail interview. 27 April 2004. Gurga, Lee. Fresh Scent. Decatur: Brooks Books, 1998. Gurga, Lee. Haiku: A Poet’s Guide. Lincoln: Modern Haiku Press, 2003.