Monday, November 18, 2024

Imagery in Haiku - Panel Discussion, 29th June 2024, Cafe Haiku








 

Monoku: Imagery and Juxtaposition 29 th June 2024

By Pravat K. padhy

The "image" is a synonym for "picture". Imagery is a literary device poets , writers uses connotation of words or diction that create imagery of emotion, and sensitive connection with the readers. It is an art of creation of mental images in the readers mind through connotative words or diction.  It is called ‘Imagism’ or imagery in poetry. Imagery is related to the elements in a poem that are related to the senses, the five senses (sight, hearing, touch, taste, smell) and use of imagery implies image of smell, touch etc. [seasons / or seasonal words associated with sensory phrases ]

Ezra Pound: “An “Image” is that which presents an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time . . . It is the presentation of such a “complex” instantaneously which gives that sense of sudden liberation; that sense of freedom from time limits and space limits; that sense of sudden growth, which we experience in the presence of the greatest works of art.”

 

A lightning flash:

between the forest trees

I have seen water

 

-Shikki

 

It is a visual imagery. Denotation of actual lightning flash is not used here. On the contrary, connotation of lightning flash implies to convey the readers the flow of water in the forest.

 It employs visual imagery. Rather than denoting an actual lightning flash, it connotes the flow of water in the forest.

Say, some children in the ground may lead you to think might be roaming in the ground, for playing or discussing something. But if one of them holds a ball, you may feel children are at play etc. The object ‘ball’ kindles the mental image, and story forthwith.

 

  • Visual imagery: Images of sight.
  • Auditory imagery: Imagery of sound.
  • Tactile imagery: Imagery of touch.
  • Olfactory imagery: Imagery of smell.
  • Gustatory imagery: Images of tastes.

There are two imageries not directly related to conventional senses:

  • Kinesthetic Imagery: Images of moments and action of people or objects
  • Organic Imagery: related to personal experience, fear, love, loneliness etc
  • Literary imagery (as it is)  Vs. Figurative Imagery (metaphor, similes etc)
  • Abstraction Imagery
  • Synethesia (Fusion of sense)
  • Sense reversal
  • Multiplex Imagery

Monoku is a one-line poem featuring brevity and clarity of expression. The term was coined by Jim Kacian in his essay “The Shape of Things to Come,” and weds a Greek prefix (mono, one) with a Japanese suffix (ku, poem) to create a new English term. The concept of one-line haiku in English developed in the 1970s. Japanese haiku are written in a single vertical line with 17 on (sound units, not syllables). (In conventional 3-line haiku, there is one pause (kireji) between the fragment and phrase of haiku.) Monoku can be interpreted with multiple pauses (kireji) depending on how it is parsed.

 

Some one-breath monoku cannot be expressed in conventional 3-line haiku and poet may opt to use monoku to create imageries with the shortest speech. Monoku is the braided stage of a river when it flows fast downhill with more velocity. The economy and compressed feeling is released with spontaneous energy. Normative haiku (3-line) is like a river meandering with poetic resonance.

 

One-Breath :

 

The poem starts and finishes in one stroke (shortest speech) without any pause or break in between (poetics of caesura) or maybe subtle pauses in monoku corresponding to speech rhythm. It has to have a vivid interplay of image and poetic sense. Otherwise, it would appear more like a sentence or a prosaic expression.

 

This white space acts as a pivot for exhibiting the sense of juxtaposition or disjunction. There is an economy of language. “One-line one-thought”: “Rather than a piling up of images upon the imagination, a single image is extended or elaborated into a second context, stated or implied.” -Jim Kacian

[implied juxtaposition or passive juxtaposition in case of one-breath/ syntax and semantics]

 

an aid I curve skyward for the temple tree, The Helping Hand Haiku Anthology, 2020

gunshot the length of the lake

Jim Kacian, First publication: Harold G. Henderson International Haiku Contest 2005,

Jim Wilson describes, “What distinguishes the monoku from the haiku is that the single line of the monoku has no breaks; it just goes from the first to last syllable.”  The monoku is instead one “complex statement with overlapping parts forming a complex whole.”   

in a tent in the rain i become a climate

-Jim Kacian, First publication: NOON 2

Monoku more than one Kireji (Classical ones)

 

the zero-shadow moment I am with myself, By Pravat Kumar Padhy , The Heron’s Nest Vol. XXI, Number 3, 2019

 

Nicholas Klacsanzky  interprets the above haiku in his haiku Commentary:

 

“As with most fine one-line haiku, this poem can be read in several ways:

A monoku can be interpreted  more than one way by switching different syntactic elements. The different readings of the poem can add new depth or dimension, add meanings, extend, or juxtapose one another to create several interrelated poems with shifted importance to different word phrase or meanings.

 

the zero-shadow/
moment I am with myself 
[zero shadow is emphasized]

 

or:

 

the zero-shadow moment/
I am with myself
[time is emphasized]

 

or:

 

the zero-shadow moment I am with myself

 

Examples of some of my monoku related to imagery along with a few examples by others

 

Imagery and Juxtaposition:

1.Imageryof sight.

on the back of a refugee a pregnant dog thrashing the shore current, is/let, 21.3.2020

streamflow of another milky way, Heliosparrow Poetry Journal, 27th  October 2020

 

sun, sea, sand and the footprints, Modern Haiku, 50:3, 2019

[interrelated juxtapositions]

googled for a word full of twinkling stars, The Haiku Foundation, Workplace, Theme: Lost in Translation, 8th March 2017

mallards leaving in the water rippled sky By Penny Harter, The Monkey's Face,1987

family photo another maid half visible

Engin Gülez, whiptail: journal of the single-line poem Issue 5: As the Now Takes Hold (November 2022)

2.Imagery of sound

the sound of silence into Shinto shrines, Akitsu Quarterly, Winter Issue, 2017

 

dune after dune the migrating songs, Presence 60, 2018

 

crowing cocks reach the morning sun, EarthRise 2015: Years of Light, Haiku Foundation

 

following the trail of receding light  a cricket’s cry, Presence #78, 2024

 

3.Imagery of touch.

a stone in her tiny hand once a mountain, Wales Haiku Journal, Summer 2022

[a technique of ‘Narrowing focus’( mountain to stone)]

friendship day how thoughtfully birds live with the trees, Presence # 73, 2022

 

a piece of chalk in my pocket  first day of retirement, Frogpond, 41:2 Spring –Summer Issue, 2018; Mann Library 15th February 2021

 

4.Imagery of smell.

at every window the moon and night jasmine  Unpublished

Kind of Blue the smell of rain By Allan Burns, Acorn 20, 2008. 

the thyme-scented morning lizard's tongue flicking out By Martin Lucas, Presence 39, 2009

burning sun the cool of her sweat on my lips By David Batta, Face Book , 7.5.2020

5.Imagery of taste.

peeling orange taste of the crescent moon (Unpublished)

 

*****

 

“peeling layers of childhood green mango chutney”

 

-Neena Singh, Heliosparrow, 2020

 

(12 syllables. Structurally, the use of ‘gerund’ (peeling) in monoku writing has been nicely crafted.)

 

writing orange she peels away layers of the bitter unknown from each moon By Ken Sawitri, Under the Basho, 2015

melting icebergs the bitterness of blue curacao By Ingrid Baluchi

 

6.Kinesthetic Imagery: Images of moments, action

ambulance siren the beggar bows his head, Prune Juice # 39, May 2023

 

ant trail somewhere the missing sound, Heliosparrow Poetry Journal, 27 October 2020

 

snow follows snow  the layers of silence, Kontinuum, vol.1,no.1,2021   

 

floating clouds  birds fly the other way, brass bell: a haiku journal, July 2014

the clouds disappear into colourless, Proletaria, Dec 2019

 

7.Organic Imagery: related to personal experience, fear, love, loneliness etc

the moon behind the shyness your crescent smile, A Hundred Gourds, December 2015

 

autumn solitude my footprints on  the desert sand, Presence # 58, 2017

 

obituary column messaging silence into the sky, Under the Basho, 28.8. 2017

moonrise the sky from the oncology wing, Presence #61, 2018, a hole in the light: The Red Moon Anthology of English-Language Haiku 2018

 

dreams she conceals winter chrysanthemum, Whiptail, Issue 4, 2022 

 

8.Use of synethesia  ie. fusion of sense (ex. gray happening, yellow voice, loud

colour etc ) in a profound way is an art of writing haiku.

 

the train I board flags the green light of memories, Unpublished

 

forest poem a child rhymes green and green

 

(later published in Cold Moon Journal,  19th  September 2024)  

 

an eagle shadows a wheat field’s yellow whisper , tinywords, Issue 19.1, 2019

-Kala Ramesh

 

9.Sense Reversal:

 

The technique of one-word images with opposite senses at the beginning and at the end of the one-liner can be an innovative way of writing monoku.

 

bright sky still holding half of the darkness, Blo͞o Outlier Journal, Winter Issue, 2020

 

10.Figurative Imagery

 

hot argument snow falls of  its own, ephemerae 1B, 2018

a mother’s life revolving door

-Vandana Parshar, Haiku Dialogue, The Haiku Foundation, 14th April 2021

the shadow in the folded napkin by Cor van den Heuvel, My Haiku Path

I began to think of one-image and one-line haiku as a part of my approach to haiku. There is almost always something else in the experience of the reader that will resonate, if only sub-consciously, with a single image-if that image is striking and evocative enough. One may think of it as an invisible metaphor.”- Cor van den

 

…imagistic fusion combines with one-line brevity to create a sense of insubstantiality in the read text.” – Robert Gilbert

 

leaves blowing into a sentence   [like a sentence]

 

-Bob Boldman, Cicada 4.4, 1980

 

Richard writes: “…the object cannot possibly satisfy the subject. …. In Boldman, we can see the outer reality of leaves blowing into a shape, say a line, but to become semantic stretches the sense of subject-object agreement.”

 

11.Abstraction imagery

the zero-shadow moment I am with myself, By Pravat Kumar Padhy , The Heron’s Nest Vol. XXI, Number 3, 2019

 

who I am the body contours who I am not, Whiptail, Issue 4, 2022 

(a bit abstraction style with disjunction)

sculpting my body into a sanctum sanctorum

 

-Sholka Shanker ,  Mann Library’s Daily Haiku, July 21, 2023

 

12. Multiplex or Composite Imaginary

 

cross-beddings on the rock surface once the river flowed towards sunrise, The Pan Haiku Review, Issue 1, 2023 

 

[Geol history, signature markings on rock surface inferring Process-Response relationship]

 

One-liner Vs. 3-Line Haiku (tercet):

 

melting away my pain-- garden dew

 

The Heron’s Nest, Vol. XV, No. 4, December 2013, tinywords, 18th January 2018; Mann Library’s Daily Haiku, 26th February 2021

 

The seasonal references and human aspects have been well juxtaposed in the above monoku. The patient feels solace after the disappearance of pain like dew. There is no mention of sunlight for the gradual disappearance of dew. It is poetically embedded that the warmth of love and care might have caused the reduction in pain.  Here the transmission of images is compressed and polarized.

 

Now, let us try to put it in the form of a 3-line:

 

garden dew--

the warmth of the sun

melts away my pain

 

The middle line is introduced to express it in a conventional 3-line format of haiku, which has a fragment and a phrase with juxtaposition. One can visualise the structural style and the intensity of poetry in both cases. The monoku is more expressive for the readers and it renders enough space to visualize and expand the sublime poetic beauty in its brevity. The conventional structural format in 3-line is more of an expanded poetic style with enriching resonance and elegant juxtaposition.

Juxtaposition:

[implied juxtaposition or passive juxtaposition in case of one-breath]

 

friendship day how thoughtfully birds live with the trees, Presence # 73, 2022

James Longenbach defines poetry this way, “Poetry is the sound of language organized in lines.”

 

drifted thoughts the fallen leaves, Presence #72, 2022

 

who I am the body contours who I am not, Whiptail, Issue 4, 2022 

(a bit abstraction style with disjunction)

dense bamboo bush the comfort of a sparrow, Presence 63, 2019

the ocean in a raindrop inside my womb a heart by Kala Ramesh, Modern Haiku, 43.3, 2012

 

clothing the night white jasmines by Richa Sharma, Proletaria, 2019

 

on the lake wrinkled face of wind  by Ramesh Anand, Mann Library’s Daily Haiku, July 21, 2015

*****************

Saturday, November 2, 2024

 My two poems have been featured in the Swallowtail Edition, The Wise Owl, November 2024. I am grateful to Dr. Rachna for honouring me the ‘Poet of the Month.”


https://www.thewiseowl.art/pravat-padhy

 

Life: A Floating Cloud

Floating clouds in the sky

In a destined path they move

As if hanging from the roof.

 

Often stop for a while

Over the mountain range

People laurel as the silver crown.

 

Play hide and seek

In the dark midnight

With the cheerful full moon.

 

Painter embroider

Poets wistfully deck them all

With syllables of ornament.

 

As time escapes through

They turn old and dense

And sacrifice in the form of rain.

 

A great allegiance

For the cause of others

And wish to be born and float again

 

Life is a floating cloud

Let us bloom it

with fragrance love and peace.

 

*****

The Wish Flag

Conflict and competition

eclipse the voice of the mass.

Slogans of demand and supply

hijack the prime spot

with a mere footnote on clean energy.

 

The ice sheet melts into

grief-stridden flow.

The green turns into brown

and further into barren.

 

No space for the frogs,

chirpings of birds

Red velvet mites, buzzing of bees

in this concrete jungle.

 

Clouds blackened with smoke,

no ripples of joy in lakes,

often laden with caustic foams.

 

Mountain slopes

caved in with naked trees.

No ferry of floating clouds and

the sky no longer decked with

smiles of rainbow.

 

Waterfalls

soaked with cracked stone

River bed

left with wide mud-cracks

as the sea rises and invades

deep beyond the shore.

 

I wish poetry

of the living world

to shape the hues of nature

and sing together the muse

for a colourful world.

 

The Wise Owl, Swallowtail Edition, November 2024 (Ed. Dr. Rachna Singh)