Meditation and Poetics - 96 - Haiku - 9 (Haiku continued)

AG: One (haiku) that suggests space:

      Oh, snail

      climb Mt. Fuji,

      but slowly, slowly.

That's Issa, who is the most like William Carlos Williams in temperament - that is to say, he includes himself as a solitary, lonesome, weepy object, a sort of objective picture of self.  He was the one that had for a brushwood gate, for a lock, the snail. He also was the one, 

      The young girl 

      blew her nose

      in the evening glory

      Beaten
      at battledore and shuttlecock

      the beautiful maiden's anger.

That's like a tiny novel, too.  

      An autumn night,
      Dreams, snores

      The chirping of crickets.

That could lead to a (Walt) Whitman line, "The old man sleeping in the Oklahoma night, dreaming, snoring, amid the chirping of crickets."  

      Angry and offended

      I came back

      the willow tree in the garden.

 This is one that I've always liked, because it conjures up a whole geography and a season and an emotion and an objectivity that follows the emotion and a gap.

      Not a single stone      

      to throw at the dog

      The wintry moon.

Ground all frozen.  He actually couldn't pick a stone up off the frozen ground because the stones were frozen to the ground.  And there he was in the frozen ground, suddenly noticing the wintry moon, also, and his anger.  "Not a single stone to throw at the moon" -- gap, breath -- "Not a single stone to throw at the moon? The wintry dog."  The dog at the wintry door.  "Not a single stone to throw at the dog.  The wintry moon."  

      The Rose of Sharon 

      by the roadside

      was eaten by a horse.

That's one of the funniest, actually.  That's Basho, again.

      You light the fire

      I'll show you something nice,

      a great big snowball. 

This is the first Basho composed one snowy day when Sora, another friend, haiku maker, called on him.

      You light the fire

      I'll show you something nice,

      a great big snowball. 

      A shower came…

This is again in the region of almost synchronicity [and] indefineability: based on synchronicity and yet some tricks of nature that sort of confound the mind, or confound logic:

      A shower came

      Running inside,

      it cleared up.

All the activity responding to the shower, vain.  But the playfulness of it and the harmlessness of it.  - A shower came/Running inside,/ it cleared up.

The next is an exemplar of, again, “no ideas but in things”, dwelling in materiality, or suggesting powerful emotions through presentations of purely material objects.

      The departing servant

      umbrella in hand

      she gazes out at the evening.

Student:  Say it again.

AG:

      The departing servant

      umbrella in hand

      she gazes out at the evening.

Sort of a great space-out blank.   And then, an alternative to that:

      The change of servants

      her tears splash 

      on the tatami mat.

      Some scraps of paper

      after she'd gone.

      A feeling of lonesomeness.

Then to get some sense of sacred mystery, again through purely material means:

      The travelling altar just set down,

      Swayed with an earthquake
      On the summer moor.

You have all of the awe of nature in that - The travelling altar/ just set down/swayed with an earthquake on the summer moor.  You really couldn't get more cosmic, actually. 

Back to Issa, relating to anger and emotion and then a gap and realization.

      Striking the fly

      I also hit

      a flowering plant.

So he's again, like Williams, totally material in a sense and personal - the most personal of the haiku artists.

      The thunderstorm having cleared up

      the evening sun shines on a tree

      where a locust is chirping.

That's quite a jump.  The thunderstorm:  Having conjured up a thunderstorm in the first line - "The thunderstorm having cleared up/ the evening sun shines on a tree/where a locust is chirping." - So you have this vast thunderstorm and attention narrowing down to that single sound, through the slanting rays of the sun, on a tree and the single chirp of a cicada.  Beginning, then, with Wagnerian majestic cloud and ending on a very tiny note. 

This for a suggestion of pathos or compassion or without mentioning, without mentioning pathos, compassion or any abstraction:

      Mountain persimmons..

Mountain persimmons,  that is to say, obviously, uncultivated. Somebody's up there gathering wild persimmons, perhaps out of hunger.  But, anyway:

      Mountain persimmons      

      the mother is eating 

      the astringent parts

So who got the sweet parts? - "Mountain persimmons/ the mother is eating/ the astringent parts

Then the one of space that I mentioned before:

      

      It walked with me

      as I walked

      the scarecrow in the distance.

That's a funny kind of common optical perception that's exemplified in that.  

Spontaneous Poetics - 49 - A Brief Survey of Haiku

This [Allen hands out a home-made xerox-ed collection] is a little anthology of choice haiku taken from the four-volume set of haiku in the library collected by R.H.Blyth - Spring, Summer, Winter, Autumn. How many have looked into that, or know that collection? It's a collection that (Jack) Kerouac used and Gary Snyder and Philip Whalen all used as a sort of poetics reference encyclopedia handbook inspiration text around 1955. I was reading haiku, then, in those books and chose the best ones, or the ones that stuck in my head, about twenty or thirty, so I'll read them off.The point is that they are related to the activities of Ezra Pound and Willam Carlos Williams and the Imagists and the Objectivists in the American tradition. At least, they are trying to notate what's seen where the eye hits an object - sight, which is where (the eye) hits an object, at least trying to work with material that's palpable, not eliminating the impalpable or subjective sensation but making use of palpable images to suggest "Unspeakable (Thou Bridge) to Thee, O Love", or at least (the) "unspeakable". Or maybe not bothering to worry whether it's "unspeakable" or not, but they're accepting the evidence of their senses and working with what's there (which is a problem for many of the poets here also, of working with the evidence of the senses, or working with direct perception. So these are pretty good exercises."On the low-tide beach/ Everything we pick up/ Moves" -  "Tilling the field/ The cloud that never moved/ Is gone" - Buson -  "Bringing them up/ They call the silk-worms/ Master" -  That's Issa. Issa's very similar to William Carlos Williams in subjective personal humoresque style.



The uguisu. The uguisu is very traditional in Japanese haiku furniture. It has a familiar cry and is a familiar image in almost all traditional haiku - "Its first note/ The uguisu/ Is upside-down" - "The uguisu/ Poops on the/ Slender plum-branch" - Matsuo - "Ah! the uguisu pooped/On the rice-cake/On the veranda" - or "Ah! the sparrow shat/On the rice-cake/ On the veranda" would be the equivalent. That's Basho, celebrated classicist. "It was such a fine first dream" - this is for New Year's day, a genre of New Year's Day haiku - "It was such a fine first dream/ They said/ I'd made it up" - "The first drink of the year/ I kept it secret/ And smiled to myself" - "A swallow/ Flew out of the nose/ Of the Great Buddha" - that's Issa again - Then, here's a whole series - "Taking the field/ He wipes his snotty hand/ On the plum flowers" - that's also Issa. And Basho's presentation of the same - "The sound of someone/Blowing his nose with his hand/ The plum blossoms at their best" - I guess to wipe off your snot! -"The moon and flowers/ Forty-nine years walking about/ Wasting time" - Issa again - "A frog/ Floating in the water-jar/ Summer rain" - Outside on the porch, a big jar of water, a frog got in by mistake, floating around, can't get out. It was presumably dry and then it got rained on - "Frog/ Floating in the water-jar/ Rains of Summer" - "Summer rain/ A crab crawling out/ Of the stone wash-basin" - "Rains of May/ Here's a paper parcel/ Entrusted to me long ago"

My idea of haiku is, actually, ""Rains of May/ Here's a paper parcel" -  two disparate images, or two separated images, or two images that wouldn't necessarily have any logical connection, except that they're both noticed one after another, and the haiku artist noticed his mind noticing both in that sequence and wrote it down, not necessarily knowing why they were linked, or why they had a mysterious perfume when linked, or why they made a  little flash in the mind when they were linked, but it's like setting up two - a positive and a negative - poles, and (observing) a little spark, (a) lightning-flash between. "Lightning flash/ flint spark" - that's Philip Whalen-  "Lightning flash/ flint spark". The "Rains of May" - so, rainy day, somebody sitting brooding about time. "Here's a paper parcel/ Entrusted to me long ago" - somebody's old Kerouac novel, or his mother's autobiography, or the bills of landing for an old opium deal that everyone got busted for - "Rains of May/ Here's a paper parcel/ Entrusted to me long ago" 


Student: Did you write that?


AG: No, no, that's Sampu - "On rainy days/ The monk Ryokan/Feels sorry for himself" - So your own subjective can also be part of the subject-matter objectively. In other words, if you see your thoughts or your moods as an object, like "Rains of May" - "I'm feeling sorry for myself" - then you can include that in the poem too. It isn't that you are eliminating subjectivity by taking an objective look at all phenomena and putting two details together - a detail of the entire field - "The monk Ryokan/ I'm feeling sorry for myself on a rainy day". He's looking at himself as an object - "The monk Ryokan feels sorry for himself" - by Ryokan  - "Naked/On a naked horse/ Through the summer rain" - At that time, (19)55, I wrote a little comment on that - "On my porch/ In my shorts/Auto-lights in the rain" - What I got out of that was porch in the shorts/auto-lights in the rain, there's a creation of space, actually.
                                                                                                                                        

I was talking about haiku earlier with..(friends), going through these. A lot of the haiku seem to parallel the aesthetic intention of Paul Cezanne, painter, who spoke in his letters, (to Emile Bernard I think), of, by means of triangles, cubes, squares (pre-Cubist method) creating planes on the canvases that he painted by means of hot colors advancing and cold colors receding optically, creating what he called "petite sensation", the little sensation, of space, which he defined as none other than Pater Omnipotens Aeterne. So, space as God, space itself as God and Father Omnipotent, Eternal God. Cezanne said, "I've got my little sensation. I'm getting older and older but I'm not like those other coarse people who haven't refined their senses. I'm refining my senses till I get a clearer and clearer realization of my petite sensation (my little sensation) of space which is none other than God." And he does on his canvas, if you look at them - there's a space created by the geometrical forms set next to each other with the colors advancing and receding without a narrative reliance on perspective lines. In other words, to get space he didn't use perspective lines, he just used colors advancing and receding, and brush-strokes, and building up his forms with geometrical solid figures and making the geometric solids out of the hot and cold colors advancing and retreating. So, in that sense, the haiku also creates the impression of the "little sensation" of vast space.   "One end hanging/Over the mountain/The Milky Way" (that's Shiki). Another Shiki - "A flash of lightning/ Between the trees of the forest/ Water appears. Also Shiki - "Coming out of the water/ The wind blows on the nipples/ Cooling on the veranda" - "The wind blows on the nipples" - well, that's not space, that's just Vipassana detail - "Fleas lice/ The horse pissing/Near my pillow" - So he's got a whole novel there. He's traveling. He's going through poetic situations as a beatnik in Japan - the horse pissing near his pillow, sleeping out in the stable, out on a voyage - "In the corner of the old wall/ Motionless/ The pregnant spider" - Shiki - which reminds me of (Jack) Kerouac's great haiku - "In my medicine cabinet/ The Winter fly/ Has died of old age" - "How admirable!/ He who doesn't think "Life is fleeting"/ When he sees the lightning-flash" - "How admirable!/ He who doesn't think "Life is fleeting"/ When he sees the lightning-flash" - So that actually creates a funny space. By removing language, by suggesting a space without language and without mirrored self-conscious comment, it conjures up an odd actual lightning-flash space - "I am in Kyoto/ Yet at the voice of hotogisu/ Longing for Kyoto - "hotogisu", another traditional haiku bird. So I wrote a poem following that - "Back on Times Square, Dreaming of Times Square" - "Everything is going well in the world/ Let another fly/ Come on the rice" - Issa again. Now that's Williams-esque - sort of. That's a little bit like Williams' poem going up his front porch and seeing his children smiling and happy to see him, on the stoop, and his heart sinking, and he says, "Why is it I want to kill my children?!" - Objectifying his mood. Yeah, that is, seeing the humor of his mood, seeing his mood as an object

 

- "Oh snail/ Climb Mount Fuji/ But slowly, slowly!" - Issa again. That was almost the best exemplification of one object set beside another object to create space. That little snail on Mount Fuji - Fuji's giant curve - Here's a kind of a weird one [to student] - I thought your little poem about the chrome..

Student: Green

AG: ..chrome-green glint of the..

Student: "The cat's eyes/ Flash/ Chrome-green"

AG: "The cat's eyes/ Flash/ Chrome-green"  - "The snake slid away/ But the eyes that glared at me/ Remained in the grass" - That's kind of mysterious - "Through the back door/ The bamboo-grove is reflected/ In the cold broth" - He's holding a cup of cold broth, stillness. So it's still enough. He must have been holding it a little while for the surface to settle, and thinking, and thinking of drinking it, and then came into present consciousness of the space in which he was sitting, still and silent, then maybe looked back at the broth and saw the bamboo-grove reflected in the surface of the cold broth through the door behind him. "Through the back door" - through the back door, no less. You get more than enough detail for an entire hut, for an entire universe - "Through the back door/ The bamboo-grove is reflected/ In the cold broth' - "The old man/ Has a marvelous sickle/ For cutting barley" - which is like a good Gary Snyder naturalistic line, or Ezra Pound appreciation of non-usurious arts and crafts. What you have there is just a little noticing - "That guy has a marvelous sickle. He's been working at it for years. He's got the sickle perfect. He's a real barley-cutting champion" -  "The old man/ Has a marvelous sickle/ For cutting barley" - "The old man/ Has a marvelous cock/ In bed" is my 1955 comment on that - Buson - "Weeping over my umbilical cord/ In my natal place/ At the end of the year" - Like a New Year's haiku, or a year-end haiku - "This dew-drop world/ It may be a dew-drop/ And yet, and yet" - Issa - "The moon in the water/ Turned a somersault/ And floated away" - That's unfair. Because he's turned a little Surrealist trick there - "The bright moon.." (this is a 20th Century one, I think) - "The bright moon/ No dark place/ to empty the ashtray" - (which is a real good comment on consciousness. Last night (Chogyam) Trungpa was talking about the painfulness of an awareness that has no hiding place, where everything is revealed, where there are no corners cut, and where there are no shadows unseen, where no events (go) unnoticed - "The bright moon/ No dark place/ To empty the ashtray"




- Basho... ah yes, and the one that I thought the greatest Basho, creating space again. The famous one of Basho - "An old pond/Kerplunk!"  (or, the Japanese word would be the sound of a frog jumping in(to) water, like the English "kerplunk" might be) - An old frog. The sound of water jumped into by a frog, but "an old frog/ kerplunk", is considered the most famous of all haiku, because it suggests an entire situation of someone meditating, practicing zazen, total silence, sitting by an old frog-bordered pond, old frog-bordered pond, complete silence, everything at rest, complete stillness, all of a sudden, "splash!" (either in the mind or in the phenomenal world) - creation - Also by Basho - the one I thought was best for space, for the creation of the petit sensation of space - "A wild sea/ And stretching out towards the island of Sado/ The Milky Way" - So you've got a fantastic panoramic, visionary Japanese painting there -  "A wild sea/ And stretching out towards the island of Sado/ The Milky Way"




- "A full moon/ A man-servant/ Leaving the puppy to die" - "The bright Autumn moon/ Crying in the saucepan/ The pond snails" - "Crying in the saucepan", that's nice - "The autumn wind/ There are thoughts/ In the mind of Issa" - And back again. I thought that was the best you could get, in a way, as far as reconciling subjective and objective. Reconciling the big argument - "How subjective can you get in poetry?" - Issa there is referring to himself directly and using himself as a subject, but in doing so, by treating himself as if he was a puppy left out to die in the moonlight - "These are thoughts/ In the mind of Issa" - It gets romantic - Basho - "Shake oh tomb/My weeping voice/ Is the wind of autumn" - that's very operatic! - "The bright autumn moon/ Sea lice/ Running over the stones" - "Baby mice in their nest/ Squeak in response. To the young sparrows" - So you have baby mice down on the floor in their nest and sparrows cheeping in their nest above, (presumably in the eaves), squeak, squeak, and the little mice answering, and a man silent enough to hear both and notice both. "Baby mice in their nest/ Squeak in response. To the young sparrows" - That may be the most perfect in terms of disparate noticings, or two images, or two separate facts, set side-by-side to conjure up (the) usually "unspeakable", but nonetheless logical, relationship. In this case, a direct communication between the mice and the sparrows, except there's also a gap in there. There's a gap of space, like the sunyata void gap, because, do the sparrows hear the mice? The mice are mistakenly thinking it's other mice maybe? Or, at any rate, it's something to figure out - whether the mice are communicating to the sparrows, or whether they're just squawking in the void, hearing another sound from the other end of the void (but there's a lot of void-space in-between the two of them, and a great desolation, actually) - "The festival of the weaver/ One is writing a poem/ The other leans toward him" - Two guys writing poems and watching each other. It's like a painting, that - "Harvest sparrows/ Shot by the arrow of the scarcecrow/ They fall into the sea" - "Picked up on a pilgrimage/ And put together/ A scarecrow" - "In this fleeting world/ The scarecrow also/ Has eyes and a nose" - That's a good one. Actually, that does conjure up the empty space of the skull (or, comparing the scarecrow's anatman, lack of identity, lack of self, or, comparing human lack of identity, lack of soul, lack of a self, ultimately). "In this fleeting world", the scarecrow also has an appearance of identity - "The scarecrow also/ Has eyes and a nose" - "The autumn tempest/ Blows along even/Wild boars" - So he didn't say "Big strong mighty autumn tempest", he actually gave a demonstration of the autumn tempest -  "The autumn tempest/ Blows along even/Wild boars" - "The morning glows/ In the faces of men/ There are faults" - Issa - "Issa alone I said/ He wrote it down in the register/ How chilly the autumn night" - "The maiden flower/ Stands there/ Vacantly" - More Issa, that was.. "Not a single stone/ To throw at the dog./ The Winter moon" - So frozen the ground that not even a single stone could be picked up - "A hundred different gourds/ From the mind/ Of one vine" - That would be an earlier Buddhist notion - Yogacara Buddhism believed in one mind. That was before Madhyamaka Buddhism which destroyed the notion of any kind of mind at all. Second century A.D. they got hip to that fact, that it was completely empty - "The maiden flower/ Stands there/ Vacantly" - Issa - "Night/ Biting the frozen brush/ With the remaining tooth" - Buson, that - "Examining/Three-thousand haiku/ Two persimmons" - A persimmon puckers your mouth, as a haiku might pucker your mind. "Examing/ Three-thousand haiku.." - he's a judge in a haiku contest - Shiki - This is a haiku by a judge in a haiku contest -  "Examining/Three-thousand haiku/ Two persimmons" - "Ill on a journey/ My dreams wander/Over a withered moor" - That's Basho's death-verse, his last haiku -  "Ill on a journey/ My dreams wander/Over a withered moor" - "The tern alights.." - a bird - "The tern alights.." - I guess it's a boat, a moon-viewing party or something, they're out on the lake. This is Issa again - "The tern alights/ Various sorts of nitwits/ On a moonlit evening" - That's like Kerouac a little, that humor - Issa. My favorite haiku of Issa is in Japanese - "naki haha ya umi miru tabi ni miru tabi ni" - "naki haha ya umi miru tabi ni miru tabi ni" (and (a) literal translation - "Dead momma/ Oh/ Ocean see time at" - and the Blyth translation - "Whenever I see the ocean/ Whenever I see it/ Oh, my mother" -  or "Oh momma/ Whenever I see the ocean/ Whenever I see the ocean" - "naki haha ya umi miru tabi ni miru tabi ni" - There was one that created a great deal of space that I missed somewhere here. Like that one (that) end(s) "hanging over the mountain/ The Milky Way"...let's see if I can find the exact one here.. [Allen consults his selection of haiku] - Oh, the cow! - More Issa - "The cow comes/Moo-moo/ Out of the mists" - That's like a movie, the beginning of a movie, the cow coming "Moo-moo" - Issa - Just three short lines - "The cow comes/Moo-moo/ Out of the mists"  - Basho - "The octopuses in the jars/ Transient dreams/ Under the summer moon"  

Mind, Mouth and Page - 14 (Haiku continues)

[Kobayashi Issa (1763-1827) - Self-Portrait]

"Picked up on a pilgrimage/ and put together/ the scarecrow" - "Harvest sparrows/ Shot by the arrow of the scarecrow/ they fell into the sea" ("Shot by the scarecrow's arrow/ The harvest sparrows/ fell into the sea") - "In this fleeting world/ the scarecrow also/ has eyes and a nose" - Wild boar - "The autumn tempest/ blows along also/ even wild boars" ((see?) so he doesn't have to say it's a big tempest) - "The morning glories/ in the faces of men/ there are faults" (Issa) - "The maiden flower/ stands there/ vacantly" (Issa, again) - Shiki, a haiku artist, this is a great classic - "A hundred different gourds/ from the mind/of one vine" - Shiki judged a haiku contest in which thousands and thousands of haiku were presented - "Examining/three thousand haiku/ two persimmons"

Student: Or two haiku there, maybe

AG: Well, you could say two. I was just guessing maybe it's a haiku about (persimmons). Maybe there's two haiku, probably, yeah. - "Night/ biting the frozen brush/ with a remaining tooth" (Gregory Corso! ) - ""Night/ biting the frozen brush/ with a remaining tooth" (Buson)

Student: Allen, isn't that brush the brush with which they write?

AG: Oh yeah, of course. I was all goofed up. I was thinking it was a horse or something! - Of course - "Biting the frozen brush" - so it's a poor artist, like poor calligraphy - "Night/ biting the frozen bush/ with a remaining tooth" (that's an old calligrapher, probably Buson himself, the haiku artist).

Many of these were done in relation to real fast sharp calligraphic drawings of the precise scene or situation, visually, that accompanied the haiku. In fact, the haiku were very often simply little commentaries on a brush drawing.

"Not a single stone to throw/ at the dog/ the winter moon" (the winter moon) - "Not a single stone to throw/ at the dog/ the winter moon" - "The first winter rain/ and my name shall be called/ Traveller" (Basho) - Basho's death verse (Basho is considered the most solid and sublime of the haiku artists, and this is his death haiku, death verse) - "Ill on my journey/ my dreams/ wander over a withered moor".

Student: Could you read that again?

AG: "Ill on my journey/ my dreams/ wander over a withered moor".

And two final verses by Issa - "The ten nights" (I've forgotten at this point what the holiday was or what the suggestion was) - "The ten nights/ Various sorts of nitwits/ on a moonlit evening". And Issa's most moving haiku (very complicated to translate) - "naki haha ya umi miru tabi ni miru tabi ni" - "When I see the ocean/ whenever I see it/ Oh mother!" - Well, the translation is so crude. It's (literally) "a dead ma oh ocean sea time at". Dead mother Oh dead ma, oh, ocean sea time at", or "When I see the ocean/ whenever I see it/ whenever I see the ocean" - the repetition is "whenever I see the ocean" - "Whenever I see the ocean/ Oh mother!" "Oh, my mother". "My dead mother". It's very beautiful that "umi miru tabi ni miru tabi ni" for the ending.

So I wonder if I have any more here? Yeah, another Issa, yes - "I'm alone I said/ he wrote it down in the register/How chilly the autumn night" (so he's traveling, he's registering in a hotel) - "I'm alone I said/ he wrote it down in the register/How chilly the autumn night" (So, actually, what he's saying is like the frog - his loneliness, or his solitude, but all the space of his solitude with a whole chilly autumn night - the whole scene - traveling, registering at a hotel - "Are you with somebody?" "Is your wife with you waiting outside?" - in the motel, you know? - "I'm alone I said/ he wrote it down in the register/How chilly the autumn night"

Well all of these depend on bare attention, bare mindfulness, fact..almost all. Occasionally there might be an emotional generalization, like "Oh mother!" or "I'm alone, I said" - so that's a fact also.

Mind, Mouth & Page - 13 (Introduction to Haiku)

[Matsuo Basho (1644-1694) by Sugiyama Sanpu (1647-1732)]

AG: Haiku is like a real brief snapshot, usually consisting of two images, unconnected, except by the mind of the reader and the writer. So it's sort of like whatever generalization is made, is obvious in the little tiny poem itself, it doesn't need a generalization, it's just two facts put together. And one of the most interesting of the haiku writers is a fellow named Issa, I-S-S-A,

I think, 17th century, who is just like William Carlos Williams. He's the sort of Japanese haiku Williams - "New Years Day/ my hovel/ the same as ever" - "A beautiful kite/ rose from/ the beggar's hovel (Issa again) - "The first drink of the year/ I kept it a secret/ and smiled to myself" (Chiyo-ni) "It was such a fine/ first dream/ they said I had made it up " - At this time [early 1950's] (Jack) Kerouac was reading haiku also. I was, too, trying to write little haiku - "Drinking my tea/ no sugar in it/ no difference" (because all the Zen people around me were saying, "Don't put sugar in your tea". Kerouac wrote (this was 1954, '55, I guess) "Useless, useless/ the heavy rain/ driving into the sea". He also wrote "In my medicine cabinet/ the winter fly/ has died of old age" - "Tilling the field/ the cloud that never moved/ is gone". (Buson). "Bringing them up/ They call the silkworms /"Mister" (that's Issa again). There's a very little pretty-sounding bird called the uguisu - "It's first note/ the uguisu/ is upside-do)wn" "The uguisu/ poops/ on the slender plum branch/ People take off on that thing" - "Ah!/ the uguisu/ on the rice cakes on the veranda (that's Basho) - "The sparrow shits/ upside-down/ Ah! my brains and eggs" (that was my variation on that) - "A swallow flew/ out of the nose/ of the Great Buddha" (that's Issa also - (out of) the Great Buddha statue). (And) one of the most powerful of Issa (very similar to (Williams') "Who shall say I'm not the happy genius of my household?") - "The moon over the mountains/ kindly shines/ on the flower thief" - "Tilling the field/ he wipes his snotty hand/ on the plum flowers" (Issa) - "The sound of someone blowing his nose/ with his hand/ the plum blossoms at their best" (Basho) - "Peach blossoms/ but the ferryman/ is deaf" (Chiyo-ni) - "The cow comes/ moo moo/ out of the mist" (that's Issa again) - "The octopuses/ in their jars/ transient dreams under the summer moon" (A Chinese apothacery, a Japanese apothecary, or perhaps a fish-store maybe?) - "The octopuses/ in their jars/ transient dreams under the summer moon" (also Basho) - "A wild sea/ and stretching out toward the island of Sado/ the Milky Way" (that gives great space, to begin with) - "A wild sea/ and stretching out toward the island of Sado/ the Milky Way" - "The moon and flowers/ forty-nine years walking about/ wasting time" (Issa) - "The rains of May/ here's a paper parcel entrusted to me/ long ago" (Sampu) - "A frog floating/ in the water jar/ rains of summer" (Shiki) - "Summer rain /A crab crawling out/ of the stone wash-basin". And by Ryokan - "On rainy days/ the monk Ryokan/ feels sorry for himself" - "Naked/ on a naked horse/ through the summer rain" (Issa - it's just complete there, the one sensation) - "A flash of lightning/ between the trees of the forest/water appears (Shiki) - Basho - one of the most celebrated haiku is from a Zen point-of-view, or a no-mind point-of-view, or a watching point-of-view (but not analyzing), now - "How admirable/ he who doesn't think life is fleeting/ when he sees the lightning flash". Shiki - "Coming out of the bath/ the wind blows on the nipples/ Coong on the verandah" - The uguisu, the bird, remember?, a celebrated sound, a very mournful, plaintive, sound - "I am at Kyoto/ yet at the voice of the uguisu/ " longing for Kyoto" (I paraphrased that in a poem - "Back on Times Square/ dreaming/ of Times Square" - Basho - "Fleas, lice/ the horse pissing/ near my pillow/ Everything is going well/ in the world/let another fly come on the rice" (Issa again, Issa is sort of like the humanist among them) - "In a corner of the old wall/ motionless/ the pregnant spider" (that's Shiki) - "Oh snail/ climb Mount Fuji/ but slowly, slowly" (that was Issa) - "Spider webs/ are hot things/ in the summer grove" (Buson) - "There is no trace/ of him/ who entered the summer grove" (Shiki) - "The snake slid away/ but the eyes that stared at me/ remained in the grass" (Kyoshi, that fellow). It's kind of a nice thing, it's not very sharp but..."The master emerges/ from the depths/ of the evening glory" - "From the back door/ the bamboo grove is reflected/ in the cold broth" (a little cold broth cup, looking out, seeing the reflection). So that observation (the bamboo grove reflected in gthe cold broth), that's sort of eyeball kicks, in a sense, but it requires meticulous watching in order to make a haiku, or in order to remember what you saw for a haiku, in order to realize what you're seeing. Meticulous watching to realize what you're seeing without analyzing it , but simply seeing the reflection of the bamboo in the cold broth. Like Williams' recollection of gthe water freshening - standing there waiting for the water to freshen.

Student: It's like Kerouac in that celebrated passage looking at the bumper of a car in the cafe and seeing the reflection of people walking by.

AG: Yeah, he does that for twenty pages or so and it's an amazing thing. He simply noticed that there was a whole phenomenal world in the reflections of... a polished car fender was it?

Student: I think it was the bumper.

AG: Bumper?

Student: But maybe I'm wrong.

AG: Uh-uh (no), bumper's right - "The old man/ had a marvelous sickle/ for cutting barley " (Buson) - I think the Japanese preserved the umbilical cord as a a memento, wrapped it up (so) - "Weeping over my umbilical cord/ in my native place/ at the end of the year" (Buson) - "One end/ hanging over the mountains/ the Milky Way" (Shiki) - "The moon in the water/ turned to summer salt/and floated away" (Ryokan) - Sodo (more modern) - "The bright moon/ no dark place/ to empty the ash tray" - "The full moon/ A man-servant/ leaving the puppy to die" - "Among the moon-viewing party/ there is none/ with the face of beauty" - "Sampan" is a little boat - this is a moon-viewing party in a little sampan - "The bright autumn moon/ crying in the sampan/ the pond snails" (I guess a fishing boat, a fishing sampan) - "The moon has sunk below the horizon/ all that remains/ the four corners of a table" - "The autumn wind/ there are thoughts in the mind/ of Issa" (that's by Issa - "The autumn wind/ there are thoughts in the mind/ of Issa") - "Shake, oh tomb/ my weeping voice/ is the win of autumn" (Basho) - "The dew drop world/ it may be a dew drop/ and yet and yet... (that's Issa again, coming on with his self) - "The bright autumn moon/ sea lice/ running over the stones" (that's a totally visual and moving (image). It's like the moon in a stream turning a somersault and floating away) - "I go/ you stay/ two autumns" (that's a very famous one by Basho, which is supposedly untranslatable) - "An old pond/ the sound of water jumped into /by a frog" (but he doesn't mention a frog. (He doesn't use) the word "frog", there is (rather) a specific Japanese word for the sound of water-jumped-into-by-a-frog).

Student: I've heard it (translated as) "A frog in the pond/ the sound of water".

AG: Well, see, this is the most famous haiku, and there's about six million translations. Well, sixty translations.

Student: In English translations, they're trying to keep to seventeen syllables.

AG: I don't give a shit about seventeen syllables. Many of these are seventeen syllables, but don't worry about that. It's the point of getting an image. Stop analyzing. Clamp your mind down on objects, is the point. It can be seventeen syllables - what is that, five-seven-five?, three lines five-seven-five? - but anyone who gets hung up on counting the syllables is either a genius or he's going in the wrong direction. If you've got it made with your images and you can fit (it) into seventeen syllables, you've got something - but the seventeen-syllable thing is very specific to the Japanese language, and there's all sorts of assonance and end-rhymes, and weird rhymes, and the word "kana" (filler words that they use, like "huh" or "ah"), "kana", that are specific to haiku. And if they've only got fifteen syllables, they can say "kana". Like, "The autumn wind/ there are thoughts in the mind/ of Issa kana". That's just sort of convention - you can put in "kana". So don't worry about the seventeen syllables, just strip it bare, down to the action.

Student: I wrote one about that, which is sort of bare attention, which went - "Writing haiku/ stops/for I'm busy counting/useless syllables"

AG: "Writing haiku/ stops/ busy counting/useless syllables", that would be alright - "Writing haiku/ stops/ busy counting/useless syllables" - Listen, "Writing haiku/ stops/ busy counting/useless syllables" - That's all you need. You've got all the information there. You leave yourself out of it - "Writing haiku stops - busy counting syllables". That would reduce it. It would make some sense, because (there) is a mind-jump there. You suggested something there about the whole process of mind. But you've got to cut it down clean, you know, so you don't have a lot of extra babble. But that's actually pretty good, I thought.

Student: Does the Japanese word "kana" mean anything, or is it just a...

AG: I forgot what it means. I read a whole book on it about two years ago and I think it's just a conventional word (utterance) like..

Student: "Uh"

AG: Yeah, or "hm" - "Baby mice in their nest/ squeak in repose/ to the young sparrows" (actually, that takes a lot of observation, watching, or hearing, that takes a lot of mindfulness) -

"Baby mice in their nest/ squeak in repose/ to the young sparrows" (which means there's a nest full of sparrows here, and there's a nest full of baby mice, and the sparrows are making their sparrow sound and the mice squeak back)

But about the old pond, the sound of the water jumped into by the frog - all that's done there is a description of an old pond and a hut, I think, and the word "plop" in Japanese (but it's a specific verb - or "plop", I guess - a specific verb that's only associated with a frog jump. So the word "frog" is not mentioned, but because the guy is sitting there (and actually it's a monk sitting in meditation - or Basho sitting around in meditation) so he's not looking around to see the frog. The old pond is his mind, completely still. (Then) all of a sudden the action, in terms of shabda - sound. So he conjours up a frog without mentioning (a) frog, which is the whole. point of the haiku - to conjour up. What is it..? there's a line of Marianne Moore. She was defining poetry as conjuring up imaginary toads in real gardens. I think she was probably taking off from that old haiku. [Allen continues reading] - "The festival of the weaver.." (That is, I guess, a yearly festival. The weaver is a constellation in the sky, a lady, a girl, and she was in love with a herd boy, which is another constellation, and at some point or other in the year the constellations cross, or the weaver star and the herd boy star cross, and touch, so, once a year they get together) - "The festival of the weaver/ one is writing a poem...

[tape breaks off at this point, to be continued]

Gnosticism, Milton & More (Allen's 1975 NAROPA class continues - 1)

Continuing with Allen's June 23 1975 NAROPA lecture, (topics already covered, John Donne and Andrew Marvell - and now this:

AG: According to some Gnostic schools, in the beginning was the Abyss of Light, which somehow shimmered to reflect itself for a moment and that reflection was the Word, known as Sophia, wisdom, or word, and in Sophia's mind, being born, she had a thought and, as (William) Blake says, "One thought fills immensity". So her thought was the first Aeon, first time-span, presided over by the Archon, or ruler of the Aeon, or guardian of the Aeon. I believe his name was Ialdabaoth, and Ialdabaoth had a thought and his son, or thought, was Iao - I-A-O - and had his Aeon. And Iao had a thought (I forget the Archon that was his son), and then the next Archon and the next Aeon had another thought and his son was named Elohim, and Elohim had a thought and I believe his son was named Yahweh, and Yahweh had a thought and this thought included a Universe and a World, and a Garden of Eden, and Adam and Eve, but Yahweh didn't want Adam and Eve to know that Yahweh was as "insubstantial a pageant" as Shakespeare's players. Yahweh wanted that authority. Yahweh was so far removed from the Abyss of Light that he'd already developed a fully grown ego, which he felt was permanent, and so he told Adam and Eve they could take any fruit from the Garden except from the Tree of Knowledge, because, if they tasted the Tree of Knowledge, they would know that they were as insubstantial as Yahweh, and that Yahweh was only the thought of Elohim, and Elohim was only the thought of Iao, and Iao was only the thought's thought, the thought of Ialdabaoth, and Ialdabaoth was only a thought of Sophia, the word, and Sophia was only a shimmer, or a reflection, within the Abyss of Light. So there they were, stuck with the CIA in the Garden of Eden, arrogating to itself all of the authority of the Universe. So the way they got out of that, because all the Archons were guardians of their Aeons, and they had this property they wanted to protect now - Self and Thought and so, Sophia, realizing that she was the spark of the Light of the Abyss, a reflection, and that everything she thought that had a spark of the Abyss originally was in her, in it, even her thoughts..(and) she felt incomplete, and compassionate, and felt she'd made some great mistake, or that it had to be restored, that all these sparks had to be restored to the original night, to the original Abyss. So she devised the Stranger, (so there's the concept of the Stranger, the Wanderer, the Caller of the Great Call - a beautiful idea - the Caller of the Great Call, the Alien, the Messenger), to go down through the Aeons in disguise, and go to Adam and Eve and tell them what to do, and so, the only critter that would get past the eyes of the Archons (it was so lowly a thing) - was the Snake. So she sent the Snake, as the good guy, the Messenger from Sophia, the wise Messenger from Sophia, to go down through the Aeons, undisturbed by the Guardian Archons, and get to Eve, and tell her to turn on, which she did. And so broke the mind-spell of the Garden of Eden and the egoistic hallucination created by Jehovah (which some people are still trying to enforce!).

That was because I started mentioning "gnostics". That's the Mandaean gnostic interpretation of The Garden of Eden, otherwise known as the Ophitic - O-P-H-I-T-I-C - the Snake interpretation. Sir?

Student: I did my homework. I dug it up

AG: The Milton?

Student: Yeah

AG: Yeah, I'm actually about finished with Marvell. Now the Milton. Who brought the Milton up to begin with? You?

Student: I don't know

AG: Somebody mentioned a... no you didn't.. Somebody mentioned a poem by (John) Milton that they thought had great inspiration in it. It has a little inspiration in it because it is a brief poem, but it does have a little inspiration in terms of the breath

I just jumped to Milton for one sonnet because, when we were out on the grass [sic - class had moved outdoors since the room had been taken over] somebody mentioned Milton's sonnet to his deceased spouse and saintly wife, and wanted it introduced, and why not? My father (Louis Ginsberg) will be here later in the term to teach one day, and he'll teach Milton (because he taught me Milton), so you might as well get it from the horse's mouth.

Student: Is this Sonnet 23?

AG: Yup. On his deceased wife - [Allen reads in its entirety Milton's Sonnet 23] - "Methought I saw my late espoused saint..." - Well, there's quite a bit of excitement there, breathing excitement in that, the last half. Some of the references I don't understand - "Mine, as whom washed from spot of child-bed taint/ Purification in the Old Law did save.." - I presume she died in child-birth? - "Purification in the Old Law"? - I don't know what that refers to. You can guess. Do you know?

Student: Yeah, the whole thing is based on Alcestis, and Alcestis was rescued by Hercules

AG: Heracles

Student; Alcestis died for her husband. I forget his name, Admetus or something like that. The Fates told Admetus, her husband, that he had to die, and he didn't want to die so he got someone else to accept his fate. Admetus's wife accepted his fate. So she died. And then the husband started feeling really bad, and Heracles was visiting in his house, drinking wine and everything, and then he came up to this man and said, "Why are you feeling so bad?" - "Oh, my wife died, can you do something to help me?". And so he goes and wrestles with Death, who is personified, and he brings her back. And that's "her face was veiled" ("Her face was veiled, yet to my fancied sight/ Love, sweetness, goodness, in her person shined"). The husband doesn't recognize.. this guy's a real creep. He doesn't recognize her when Heracles brings her back from death and so that's what Milton does.

AG: Gluck wrote an opera called Alceste..also (probably recorded and available if anybody's really interested).

Student: Isn't this thing about ablutions performed at childbirth ?

AG: Maybe. I'm actually interested in the sound. I was interested in the sound and the breathing. I don't want to neglect the intellect or the wit or the learning in the poem, but I don't feel I'm prepared to deal with it at the moment, as I'm prepared to deal with the sound, so, move on.

Now we have.. in between.. there are several things I want to do before we get to (looking at) modern poetry, but that depends (on) what you want to do. I'd like to stop briefly on Christopher Smart, who wrote four lines a day in Bedlam, once he wound up there, and wrote this huge poem called "Jubilate Agno" ("Rejoice in the Lamb") while he was in Bedlam. Has anyone got a copy of that here? There's one in the library. Is the library still open? Too late?

Let's get a copy. I want to go through a little of that from the point of view of inspiration. That is, the breath. Because it's a break with this form, where it's long-line poetry, a little bit like (Walt) Whitman, or my own, or Guillaume Apollinaire, a French poet. So I'd like to stop on Christopher Smart a friend of Dr. (Samuel) Johnson.

Student: It (the library)'s closed

AG: Okay. Maybe next time. (I) also would like to stop over on (William) Blake, sing through Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience. Would anybody have that here?

Student: Yeah

AG: You do, Okay (and) maybe I'll read some fragments of Shelley and some Wordsworth. Now that would probably take a day or two more.. or finish this day and another day, maybe. Do you want to do that or do you want to insist on jumping ahead to the 20th century?

Student: Let's do that

Anne Waldman: I think Dick (Gallup) is going to be here Wednesday

Student: I'd like to jump ahead

AG: How many would like to go ahead to the 20th Century? Raise your hands. You're allowed to if you want. There's free will here. How many want to go through Smart, Blake, and a little bit of Wordsworth, raise your hands.

Student: And Shelley

AG: And Shelley. Okay. When I get to the moderns, we still have several weeks. I'll try to cover.. begin with Whitman, go to William Carlos Williams, some Ezra Pound, at length, if possible, on Kerouac's Mexico City Blues, some of Gregory Corso's classic numbers, and anything else that comes up. Maybe a little Gertrude Stein. I have recordings of Pound, Williams, Stein, also vocal recordings of Russian poets, Vladimir Mayakovsky and Sergei Yesenin, which are recordings that probably have never been heard in any school, but their actual voices, so you get voice again, sound, because they have that heroic style of reading. So that's what I'm planning, at least by the finish. We have how many days left now?

Anne Waldman: Two more weeks after this..

AG: Okay. Pardon me?

Student: There will be eight more sessions after this.

AG: Oh, okay. We'll have time to do something. I want to get into, first, a little (William) Wordsworth. I'm jumping way ahead. Yeah?

Student: Allen, where would Oriental poetry fit into this cosmology, or does it?

AG: Well, the problem is time. I have a very interesting anthology of haiku - Oh Ant, Crawl Up Mount Fujiyama, But Slowly, Slowly by various Japanese, (and then) the R.H.Blyth series of haiku in four volumes

Student: It's in the library

AG: They're in the library. Blythe's haiku, which you can look up, which, when we get to 20th Century poetry, relates very clearly to a lot of the inspiration of 20th Century poetry, which was precision observation, detail, single-mindedness, and clarity of observation of an object. Mindfulness - that mindfulness of non-generalized, non-abstract, visual detail. I thought we might get into that sooner or later. I haven't plotted out a course, I'm just working on what texts we have around. The other would be.. I have a really great book made in India, an anthology of Sufi, Yogi, Hindu poetry - different Hindus, different Sufis and different Yogis, covering about a thousand-years span, very beautifully translated, including Kabir, Dnyaneshwar (actually, the lineage of Swami Mutkananda, if anybody knows Swami Muktananda Paramahamsa, the 12th century poets in his lineage that he goes back to), Dnyaneshwar, Nivruttinath.

Well, I'm not quite sure how you mean it. What do you mean by how does it fit into the scheme? It's basic human perception, a certain amount of gorgeous extravagance, "What wond'rous life is this I lead/ Ripe apples drop about my head" - (A poet in?) Nivruttinath's lineage had a very great poem about how Nivruttinath's consciousness included cooked diamonds. His disciple wrote of the smell of pearls. Namdeo wove a garland of roses. The secret of all three has come into my hands, so says [Shantidaan (?)]. There's like an extravagance - Cooked diamonds. It's all poetry. People inventing gorgeous strange words out of their own heads to turn other people on to the weirdness of mind.