Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

Maurice Tasnier (‘Of Sheep, Goats and In-betweens’ - Blithe Spirit March 2001) justifies the anthropomorphism of his ‘late daffodil…..puffing and blowing’ by claiming that the figure of speech came as an integral part of his original experience. Would he have condemned it if it had been something he had thought up later? If so, would he argue that we ought to judge a haiku, not by the effect it has on us when we read it, but by the mechanism by which it was created? What then, if someone falsely claims that a carefully contrived image was really part of the original haiku moment?

Carol Rumens (‘Sunrise Thoughts about Haiku’ - Blithe Spirit June 2001) suggests that a haiku poet wants a daffodil to be ‘pure daffodil’, ie what a daffodil is, not what it is like.

Well, a daffodil is a flowering plant. That’s all. If you want to know more about it you can carry out a biochemical analysis of its metabolism, and if you want to know what it ‘really is’ you should study the structure of its DNA. The ‘essence’ of a daffodil, which distinguishes it from an onion - or a haiku poet - is simply this DNA and the operation of the genes that comprise it. Any response to the plant as an embodiment of some aspect of Zen Buddhist philosophy is a response, not to the daffodil, but to that philosophy.

Poetry is not about the molecular biology of DNA. It is not about objective fact at all. Facts are well enough conveyed by straightforward, literal prose: ‘The cat sat on the mat’.

Jargon adds precision where the message is complex: ‘I…for the purposes of regulating the disposal of my means and estate, heritable and moveable, do hereby nominate and appoint...to be my executor, and give, assign and dispone to him etc.’

Symbols refine the detail still further: H2 SO4 + H2 S - 2H2O + SO2 + S . The less poetic the language the more accurate the communication of fact.

Poetry and all creative writing is about the human emotional response to an encounter with brute fact, and not about the fact itself. If there is such a thing as a haiku moment, as I believe there is, it is the moment of just such a human emotional response; and, apart from dialogue, which is outside the scope of haiku, emotion can best, and often only, be communicated by the use of figurative language such as personification (anthropomorphism) and metaphor/simile.

Tasnier’s response to the late arrival of his daffodil was that it was as if it were ‘puffing and blowing’. Wordsworth’s response to his encounter with the plants was that it was as if they were ‘nodding their heads in sprightly dance’. That that precise way of expressing his feelings may not have occurred to him until after he’d got home and had supper shouldn’t matter. The moment had occurred, as he says himself, ‘all at once’.

This is not to say that the emotional content of a haiku moment may not be conveyed by the abrupt juxtaposition of unrelated ideas without the use of imagery.

around a crashed car
yellow daffodils blooming
alcohol free

But if the experience of the moment can be better conveyed by the use of elaborate metaphor and personification, why should creative writers deny themselves such enhancements?

rainy days
the trees coil their tails between their legs
bullfrogs are laughing