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I sent the following haiku for publication in Modern Haiku:-

Above
thousands of sunflowers
pale     just one moon.

It was accepted, yet the editor, Robert Spiess, trying to convince me in detailed explanatory notes that it would result in an improvement, suggested radical modification, thus:-

Pale moon
thousands
of sunflowers

He wrote  ‘... “above” is not needed; if there is a moon in the sky it has to be above the sunflowers, except of course if it is just rising and the sunflowers seem to be taller than where the moon is. But in such a situation one normally would write something in the order of  “a rising pale moon”. It seems a bit better to have the moon come first as it is the higher of the haiku’s entities ...’

     Running Bob’s line of thought over in my mind, I decided that it was worth working out the different points of view: perhaps we are here, in part, up against two divergent paths of development taken by German and American haijin. Speculations of this kind might lead us to a deeper insight into what we are practising and make us more sensitive to the benefit to be gained from studying different perspectives.

     On the one hand, German haiku are on average visibly longer than their English, let alone American, counterparts. This is simply due to the different structures of the languages; it shows up even in such a matter-of-fact text as instructions for using, say, a lawnmower! German contains far more inflected forms, not only with verbs, but also with nouns, pronouns and adjectives;  prefixes are used as noun-modifiers and there is much compound graphic word formation (grape = Weintraube = vine berry / saucer = Untertasse = under-cup / moat = Wassergraben = water ditch) which of course leads automatically to words with more syllables. Thus the 5-7-5 pattern of traditional Japanese haiku meets to a greater extent the rhythm of the German tongue. But this does not justify the official Deutsche Haiku-Gesellschaft  (DHG  - German Haiku Society) advocating slavish adherence to the strict observance of the handed down rule.

     On the other hand, with American haiku, people have got used to following the strong tendency towards cutting down the moment’s revelation to its absolute minimum in the written result.

     Taking these diverging courses as a basis, it is easy to understand that the German original of the haiku quoted above with its English equivalent is revolutionary for some Germans, yet will still arouse some feeling of unease with the majority of Americans.

     A close and careful analysis, though, sheds some more interesting light on other fundamental aspects of the creative art of composing haiku: Bob’s revision and argument is no doubt tantamount to the renunciation of rhetorical devices or poetical effects which are so important, in my opinion, to help haiku gain acknowledgement as a lyrical form. If we are to reject punctuation, for instance, to suggest that everything is in a state of flux we make an important metaphysical point, but we deprive ourselves at the same time of the possibility of more subtle modes of expression.

     Keeping information wide open in skeleton, or minimalist, haiku-writing leaves plenty of scope for the imagination to get to work, but it also could imply that the writer is not prepared to engage in an exhaustive search for precise expression. The bare bones will not provide either distinctive features or an appealing picture. It’s the muscles, tendons, flesh, skin, and hue that make up real physiognomy. Hence mere skeleton ideas are destined to fall flat in the end whereas concrete brushstrokes supply vigorous food for thought and emotions.

     So, to return to my haiku...   How does it work linguistically for me?

     To start with, the preposition ‘above’ was separated from its associated noun phrase after careful consideration. A single word, isolated and centralised, signals visually as well as by its meaning some solitary splendour. A pause for thought! We are in a state of expectation!  In the next line there’s a contrast in number of words and the multiplication of meaning; there’s the build up of s-sounds and pictorial expressiveness. Lost in admiration of the sunflowers, we forget that our curiosity was aroused initially by the thought of looking upwards.

     The last line does not run on smoothly but comes again to a halt right after the first word, a poignant adjective forming a strong, at first sight, sad contrast to the vivid gold of those innumerable sunflowers. The ritardando with accentuated single-syllable words is both a slowing down of the tempo and a toning down of our simplistic exaltation. Giving the secret away at the very end - another important contrast by structure! The ‘moon’  can be contrasted with many things, most significantly perhaps with the sun, another celestial entity. However, is her uniqueness seen negatively or positively? Or does she encompass all by her extraordinary untouchable beauty, outdoing all comparisons?

     Two different views? Only one way?  Is there anything we can learn from these varying approaches?