******************************************************************
V.  Rediscovering Haiga with Atwood -- Gary Warner
******************************************************************

Most of my haiku reading is done by means of our University's
excellent InterLibrary Loan facilities.  Unfortunately, this
means that in most cases I blindly select a few books from a
library's holdings, and have them sent to me.  I had noticed
several books of haiku by an author named Ann Atwood, and
requested several of them to get a good sampling.

My first impression was that I had made a bad choice.  The books
were almost entirely photographs and seemed to be children's
books.  . .something more appropriate for my five year old than
for me, but then read on.  The books I received were:

   haiku:  the mood of the earth (1971)
   My own Rhythm -- an approach to haiku(1973)
   haiku~vision(1977)


haiku:  the mood of the earth(1971)

In this, the first work I found, each haiku was accompanied
by two photographs, the first being a general photograph,
and the second zeroing in from the first to concentrate on
the subject of the haiku at hand.  I found this to be a very
natural approach, almost as if the author was inviting you
to accompany her on her journey of writing.

  Musings on a gnarled
  tree root
  my mind leaps
  as a stallion rears up!

  (This poem is accompanied by two photos, the first showing
   a tree root, and the second focusing on a part that does
   indeed look like a "stallion"!)

By having her haiku accompanied by photographs, Atwood is able
to make jumps in her poems that would not be possible without
the accompanying photographs.  The pictures become PART of the
poetic experience.

"Haiku has been called the poetry of sensation, but
 primarily, it is a visual experience", Atwood explains.


My own Rhythm -- an approach to haiku(1973)

I was still not comfortable with the value of the photographs
as a part of haiku.  As I read "my approach" Atwood pointed
out the legitimacy of her method.  In a fantastic introduction
Atwood imagines her camera in the hands of the masters . . .

Buson first takes the camera, and we see a rock in a tide
pool, gently washed by a wave.  Buson, the artist, would
have caught the patterns and colors of the rock in that
transparent interval when the water was still . . .

Issa, so in tune with each portion of nature, feels the surge
of the wave engulfing the small island . . .

Basho, the mystic, would have contemplated the light which
illumined the whole. . .

After discussing the three patterns, Atwood turns to her
own poetry, and following that explanation, one can sense
that each of us would not only have written the haiku
differently, but taken the photo differently, stressing
the things WE interpreted the scene to stress.


"Luminous silence...
only color filling the space
between night and day."

(a sunset makes a lake/cloud merger seem to be viewed through
tinted glass in the picture)


"Spring on the river--
the island-nest of the swans
floating in flowers."

"Spring in the river--
the tips of water grasses
Dripping with diamonds"

(the "whole" scene is illustrated in a center picture, and then,
as if emulating different poets, she focuses the lens first on
the swans, and then on the grass in the water.)

In a very "Issa" poem/photograph

"So slowly you come
small-snail...To you, how far
is the length of my thumb!"


"...the sea fanning out
and folding in upon itself
My own rhythm!"


haiku~vision(1977)

The theme of the third book seems to be developing the right
"mindset" to find haiku in the scenes around us.  As Atwood tells
us: "The spontaneity native to photography makes the camera an
effective instrument in developing haiku-vision."

In each book, her approach varies.  In haiku~vision, a single
photograph is presented on each page, with one or two accompanying
haiku.

The first drop of rain
on the just-opened blossoms --
how the branch trembles!

(photograph of newly opened blossom among unopened ones,
drenched in rain)

By this point I was really thinking that Atwood was discovering
something new, but Atwood points out, and even a preliminary
survey will reveal its truth, that this was a related art-form
practiced widely at the beginning of the seventeenth century,
"when Zen monks, using a calligraphic, or handwriting, style
of painting, included the words of the haiku as an integral
part of the picture."  While part of the beauty of the haiku
is choosing words that relate the scene experienced to the
reader, an equal beauty can be found in using the poem to
draw out or emphasize a portion of the scene related in picture.

"Haiga, like haiku, were brief and highly suggestive...each
recognized space as a positive element, emphasizing that
which was not said was as essential as what was said."

"Shadows and silhouettes are in themselves a kind of haiga
for by eliminating detail they transform the personal into
the universal",

     Through darkening trees
     the heron hunched on the rail
     it is already night.

(photo of heron on a rail, in silhouette against a pale lake,
framed with a blur of dark leaves)

Myself, I am not a photographer, but reading the explanations
that Atwood offers, and seeing how she weaves her poems into
her photographers to create a seamless piece of art, I have
come away with renewed respect for haiku with pictures, the
modern Haiga.

(Other books of photography and text by Ann Atwood include:
 The little circle ... Kingdom of the forest ... and
 New Moon Cove ... all published by Scribner)

Return to Table of Contents

Return to Dogwood Blossoms Index