“It was
unthinkable that a poem should get no reply.”
This sentence
from The Tale of Genji, Japan’s profoundly melancholy
Buddhist novel written around the year 1000 by Murasaki Shikibu,
marks the formalization of a particular approach to poetry.
Poem responding to poem seems the basis of Murasaki’s
worldview. Her book includes nearly eight hundred poems, most
of them exchanged between lovers. For a person to meet with
a poem, or any deep expression, and make no response, Murasaki
believed, is to have no heart, no nervous system. It is to
show oneself “uncooked,” a mere barbarian, with
the shabbiest of table manners or bedroom etiquette. Once,
in her book, a lover dashes off a reply on lavender paper and
sends it by messenger, affixed to a pine sprig still frosted
with morning snow.
Now let’s stretch the notion of poetry a little. Perhaps
you’ve noticed that the meadowlark perched on a ponderosa’s
high twig is practicing its own form. Spring peepers under
the creek bank, the elk bugling in Rocky Mountain National
Park, pigeons cooing under the eaves of Wells Fargo are making
poems too. It is a very old impulse to open your heart to another
creature’s delight or its sorrow and reply with a verse.
Somewhere in this interaction between creatures is where poetry
occurs.
Recently I wrote from India -
a pariah kite
breaks over the Neem tree
moon clatter bright chaos green pinions
to which Gail Sher replied
with notable precision from California -
gills sharp, thrashing
o river catfish
For three or four years I have been practicing renga - “linked
poetry” - a form of collaborative verse devised in Japan
around eight hundred years ago. Renga gave particular, codified
rules of verse-sequence to the practice that Lady Murasaki
had seen as a natural impulse. Renga feels just right for our
contemporary world. It meets our raw need to talk to each other
in ways freed from the daily rounds of buying and selling,
or the terrible depersonalized language that worms its way
into the workplace. It lets us use folklore, image, metaphor,
and brisk humor, which feel like home ground. The voice we
were born with.
A year ago I took part in a session of renga, gnarled and
unforgettable as an ancient twisted pine, with a group of young
poets on Green Mountain, here along the front range of the
Colorado Rockies. Since that day in March - I’ll return
to it below - I have worked hard at the practice and studied
the tradition with fervor. It’s sobering to read that
the renga masters of old Japan thought it took twenty years
of training to learn the rules. Only then could you compose
poems with the effortless skill and confidence that made you
a worthy partner. Renga rose to its period of highest accomplishment
in Japan at the same time Zen Buddhism flourished, and most
of its poets had some amount of Zen training. Perhaps several
decades of Zen study have ripened our North American karma,
and renga will quickly feel native to the home ground of Thoreau
and Whitman. Maybe the elaborate rules devised in feudal Japan
are shifting and have gotten less important than the simple
human act of making poems together.
In the West, renga’s great Japanese practitioners are
thought of as “haiku poets.” Thus to get a view
of linked verse it may help to begin with haiku. Matsuo Basho
(1644-1694), whose name is nearly synonymous
with haiku, was a quintessential poet of linked verse. He never
used the term haiku and probably never heard it. Please look
closely at his following counsel. Without it, the practice
of linked verse will make little sense.
Make the universe your companion, bearing in mind the true
nature of things - mountains and rivers, trees and grasses,
and humanity - and enjoy the falling blossoms and the scattering
leaves.
That last phrase, “falling blossoms and the scattering
leaves,” shows up in Japan for hundreds of years in limitless
variations. You can take it as shorthand for impermanence (Japanese,
mujo), the cornerstone of Buddhist insight. Nothing in the
world is eternal, permanent, safe from dissolution or death.
A leaf falls in October, and you turn up your collar. Blossoms
and leaves whirl in the wind like small poems, wistfully recalling
the transient existence of everything in the known world. To
delight in their beauty is inseparable from feeling a touch
of sadness. Centuries before Basho, the linked-verse poet Nijo
Yoshimoto (1320-1388) had written -
As we consider it today, it has become tomorrow. As we consider
it spring, it has become autumn. As we consider the flowers,
they have faded to yellow leaves. Is it not all summed up in “whirling
petals and falling leaves”?
No one has better depicted the spirit of renga. I like to
notice how so much old poetry, including haiku and renga, is
grounded in accurate details of natural history. These shifting
phases of plants, wind, birds, animals are our teachers.
Years of study have led me to regard haiku more as a state
of mind than a form of poetry. This is in keeping with haiku’s
near-universal identification with Zen Buddhist ideals of perception:
clear looking, inner thoughts quieted, contrivance held to
a minimum. Haiku is too short for complicated ideas, fancy
metaphors, intricate figures of speech. Three lines (in old
Japan, seventeen syllables) leave small room for self-promotion,
baroque ideas, philosophic reference. What a relief to leave
big notions of poetry and the Norton Anthology’s two
thousand pages behind! In the annals of Zen, the fourteenth-century
Rinzai master Bassui wrote, “You should know that the
voices of frogs and worms, the sound of wind and raindrops,
all speak the wonderful language of the dharma.”
The first haiku I ever read - I was twelve years old and remember
it vividly - appeared in the James Bond thriller You Only Live
Twice. In fact, this was James Bond’s introduction to
Japan and to haiku. He composed it in response to one by his
Japanese host, Tiger Tanaka -
You only live twice:
once when you’re born
and once when you look death in
the face.
Years later, with all the fine translations of haiku available,
with living masters among us, I see that this is a very poor
haiku indeed! Its words are too big, too abstract. Life, birth,
death. It is the haiku of a professional hitman, a high-paid
government worker hopelessly out of touch with “the voices
of frogs and worms.” Contrast it with Basho -
A crow settles
on a withered branch -
autumn evening.
Do you need to be told that Basho wrote this poem on his deathbed?
When you first heard it, did you turn up your collar with an
involuntary shudder?
Peony petals
two or three dropping
on top of each other
- Buson
Poems like these were not left to settle long on their own.
Somebody needs to respond. Buson’s verse was followed
by one from his friend Kito, so the link goes like this -
Peony petals
two or three dropping
on top of each other
early summer waning moon
faint in the dawn
Earl Miner in Japanese Linked Poetry notes, “Here the
silent fall of peony petals perhaps relates to the moon’s
faint light as it fades.” My favorite word in Miner’s
commentary, the key to it all, is perhaps. Here we enter the
twilight of poetry: “perhaps it relates.” Your
heart feels it or it doesn’t. This is the sphere of interdependence,
the co-emergence of all things - which is the other cornerstone
(along with impermanence) of Buddhist thought. Things arise
together. Flowers, moon, dawn, killers, poets. What links them? “Perhaps”!
The tradition in Japan was for a group of poets to gather
in a formal setting, at times in a tea ceremony hut. Three
poets was a common number, though you can have fine festivals
that convene ten or more, and two people are all it takes.
Each participant shows up for the gathering with a possible
opening verse - a three-line stanza called a hokku. It should
catch some precise detail of his or her time and place, the
season, the bioregion. It should feel fresh, alert to falling
petals, whirling leaves. A master poet acting as judge selects
the one that fits the occasion best. It is then used to open
the sequence. The poets, following various rules of composition,
spend the next several hours or even days composing a poem.
They begin in their common season and location, revolve through
the four seasons, not necessarily in order, traveling as far
as the group’s imagination permits, and return together
to end in spring, time of the year’s new growth. Possibly
an archaic fertility ritual lingers here.
Spring thaw -
one small carp hides in the shadows
- Gail Sher
Writers of renga observe a number of cardinal rules. Three-line
stanzas alternate with two-line stanzas. There are always verses
on the theme of love; the word dream should not occur more
often than every seventh link; the autumn moon must appear
in a pre-ordained stanza; the name of a spring flower, in the
next to last. The final verse, whether the sequence is twenty,
thirty-six, or a hundred stanzas (common numbers), carries
a whiff of the opening one.
The best connection between stanzas occurs in the realm of “perhaps.” A
pariah kite and a catfish - one eats carrion, the other’s
a bottom feeder. Basho spoke of “scent” (nioi)
as the most profound principle that joins stanzas. There is
also the important, untranslatable poetic term yugen: mystery,
beauty, melancholy. “Crow on a withered branch; autumn
twilight.” Crow, leaf, evening dusk, poet - all have
arisen together, all are vanishing. If some unarticulated longing
moves your heart, this is yugen.
I want to call attention to one detail: that each poet who
arrived at the traditional Japanese gathering brought a three-line
verse, hoping it would be chosen to open the sequence. Since
only one poet’s hokku could be chosen - after the first,
stanzas are written on the spot - everyone else had to put
theirs away.
Poets ended up with satchels of orphan verse. These separate,
unused poems came to be highly regarded. Many were quite good,
and there was an important sense that they should be able not
only to fit into a sequence, but also to stand on their own.
Anthologies of these “stand-alone” poems got collected,
and eventually hokku (opening verse) and the much-used term
hai (innovative, sportive, playful) were compounded into a
new word, haiku. It is possible that this term did not appear
until the twentieth century. Basho, like most of the famous
poets of his day, was a renga writer. Only about three hundred
of his poems could be called haiku, in the modern sense that
they stand alone.
During the rise of renga, Japan was in tumult. Poets frequently
wore Buddhist robes, which let them wander the countryside
unmolested. Some actually were monks; nearly all had undergone
at least some Zen training. The best of them made a spartan
income, traveling from town to town as teachers of renga. Their
patrons were businessmen, but farmers, out-of-work samurai,
thieves, schoolteachers, pharmacists, and professional poets
all participated. Basho, writing the most when he traveled
on long foot-excursions, saw himself as on perpetual pilgrimage
to the sites and sources of poetry. In his travel journals,
he shows how his poems nearly always appear linked to the poems
of friends who accompany him, poets he visits, or to those
who have gone before. “It was unthinkable,” Lady
Murasaki had written, “that a poem should get no reply.” For
Basho, the initial poem might come from a companion. Otherwise
a cricket, a cicada, a fish. A monkey, a child. A Chinese poet
whose verse he worshipped; a warrior slain years ago.
“The essence of renga,” wrote Sogi (1421�1502), “is
to give heart to that which lacks heart.” (The Japanese
word is kokoro: heart, mind, spirit.) “To give speech,” Sogi
continues, “to that which cannot speak.” Renga,
like haiku, is not just a poem but a state of consciousness.
I’ll quote Basho again, from Robert Hass’s volume
of translations The Essential Haiku:
There is a common element permeating Saigyo’s lyric
poetry, Sogi’s linked verse (renga), Sesshu’s painting,
and Rikyu’s tea ceremony. It is the poetic spirit (furabo),
the spirit that leads one to follow nature and become a friend
with things of the seasons. For a person who has the spirit,
everything he sees becomes a flower, and everything he imagines
turns into the moon.
In April 2006, with this counsel in mind, armed with notebooks,
pens, teapot, Primus stove, thermoses, and warm coats, a group
of eleven poets from Naropa University set up the West Ridge
trail of Green Mountain, above Boulder, Colorado. Temperature
was in the forties, sky low with impending snow, and a driving
wind that would sweep into gusts up to fifty miles per hour.
Leaving the trail, eyeing the tenebrous sky, we settled into
a circle at about 8,000-foot elevation on a bed of kinnikinnik,
or bearberry. Behind us, for shelter, a small ridge and a cluster
of pines. The resulting poem - written with icy hands and abundant
tea drinking - demonstrates in memorable fashion the spirit
of renga, what Basho calls furabo.
Everyone had brought to the mountain a possible opening verse.
Each poet read his or her verse, calling it out sharply, above
the wind. From the eleven possible stanzas we selected a hokku
by silent vote of hands. Democratic procedure seemed appropriate.
The old Japanese notion of a single judge or master poet doesn’t
sit right in the land of blue jay and red fox, mule deer, raven,
and coyote, all of them frequent visitors to this high ridge.
We moved a buck-handled knife around the circle at each new
stanza (“passed the buck”), so everyone served
as judge, successively, for a single link. All but the judge
for any given link wrote a stanza to add to the previous verse.
After five minutes or so of writing, the judge for that link
listened carefully to each person’s offering. If necessary,
she asked to hear one or two again. Then, with the interests
of the renga in mind, she selected one. What is the fragile,
intuitive “scent” that links a verse to the one
that has gone before? What shifts the poem away from the earlier
verses, so it can revolve with the seasons?
I was charged with recording the poem as it emerged, making
a fair copy in my notebook. A blast of wind came over the ridge
late in our three-hour session, knocking the teapot off the
Primus stove. The pot bounced down between some small pines,
and lost its lid. Boiling water hit my notebook and obscured
several words. Later, I realized this had saturated some of
the verses more deeply with yugen, the fragile, melancholy
mystery the old masters regard as the key to a good renga.
Here is a sequence of verses from our “Green Mountain
Renga,” with a look at how the poem shifts. Each new
stanza is meant to link to the previous one, but also to effect
a shift from what’s gone before. All previous verses
twist away like “swirling petals and falling leaves.” Verse
six had entered the notebook:
dripping with creek water
hunting snails
After five minutes of writing, the judge chose a verse that
filled out the picture. Now you can see what stands there in
the creek:
dripping with creek water
hunting snails
a white egret
impossible legs
like straw
The schema we were following for this particular renga called
now for a verse on love. The next poet accordingly changes
the tone. From a tender haiku-like portrait of one of nature’s
elegant waterfowl, a vivid human mood rises with the new verse.
a white egret
impossible legs
like straw -
she turns to look
he kisses her exposed neck
Such a delicate gesture, captured for a fragile instant. Someone
points out the egret, as though to say, “See how undisturbed
it is! We are alone. Nobody will see us here.” The young
woman turns innocently to look, leaving her neck - lovely as
the white egret’s - profoundly vulnerable.
But how long can such a mood last? Are we permitted to linger?
Five minutes of writing, and the next verse brings a shift
in time and emotion.
she turns to look
he kisses her exposed neck
she stiffens
unprepared -
the name of another
How many old poems have prepared us for what no one can prepare
for? There must be thousands of such poems from Japan, India,
Greece, Spain. The moment when one’s lover or spouse,
in a fit of passion, whispers “the name of another.” How
many began their quest for the dharma from a similar, singular
moment of truth?
The next poet deepens the mood, giving it a pastoral twist
with reference to a flower that echoes the literature of classical
Greece:
she stiffens
unprepared
the name of another -
the narcissus no longer sacred
under the ant’s footfall
An echo of Ezra Pound. The shock of betrayal has settled deeply,
and the human heart grown cold. The entire world has turned
pallid. How far we have traveled from the excitement of that
first abrupt kiss, by a deserted creek bank, witnessed by only
the silent egret. And yet, right here, the earth too is pursuing
its yearly rounds. Summer suddenly gives way to autumn -
the narcissus no longer sacred
under the ant’s footfall
it passes
the paper bridge
into September
How precise the return to “materiality.” The tiny
world of life is all around, and the poet notices a lone ant
tracking across his notebook page. This coupling of stanzas
makes me shiver. I see a trace of the Buddhist-inspired Noh
drama of Japan. The paper bridge is a stark, stylized stage
setting - it is “the bridge of dreams,” guiding
us across to another “world.” Another season. Love
has passed, gone with a breath. The world turns into itself,
towards fall, and the “it” could be anything -
it passes
the paper bridge
into September
autumn of withered grass
autumn of ghost-like winds
On the mountain we leaned into a circle, lee side of the jumbled
ridge, wind whipping the pines about. The pines of the American
West look so vividly like Japanese ink paintings. They are
ancient Buddhas, Dogen Zenji would say, crouched in concentrated
postures. Or stepping forward to gesture madly. By contrast,
we humans sat bundled against the now-roaring wind, vulnerable,
resolute, working swiftly to finish the poem and get off the
mountain. Everyone had to shout their new verse over the wind.
You could feel links and shifts crackling about. Basho wrote: “In
this mortal frame of mine, which is made of a hundred bones
and nine orifices, there is something, and this something can
be called, for lack of a better name, a windswept spirit, for
it is much like thin drapery that is torn and swept away by
the slightest stirring of the wind.”
Maybe it was the gnawing cold. Maybe the darkness brought
by an oncoming storm out of the higher peaks, maybe the sharing
of hats, mittens, scarves. A primal camaraderie came forth.
The last of the tea had gone cold. The poem seemed to compose
itself, independent of our will. Renga mind, let’s call
it. Without a trace of self-centeredness, everyone wrote toward
a single poem. “Big medicine in the lyrics,” someone
said. Indeed! The first sharp pellets of snow began to drive
through the pines as the poem ended. A medicine Buddha as well
as a poetry Buddha sat on Green Mountain that day. |
