Writing & Reading Haiku
By Paul ElliottLesson 4: Blyth and Western Haiku
Pound and the Imagists
Of course, Blyth is not the only Western poet to be influenced by Japanese and Chinese literature; he was not even the first. One of the earliest (although also not the first) was the Modernist poet and critic Ezra Pound. Pound gained a respect for Japanese and Chinese verse after reading the work of the translator Ernest Fenollosa and using his part translations as a basis for his work "Cathay."
Many critics have, in fact, suggested that it was Pound’s "Cathay" that provided the basis for the study of Chinese and Japanese work in the West. Whereas this may well be an over-statement, it is certainly true that Pound’s interest in the form, along with fellow poets like Arthur Waley and Amy Lowell, introduced many of the poets we now take for granted such as Li Po, Basho and Wang Wei to a Western audience. Pound’s translations in "Cathay" say more, perhaps, about Pound as a literary theoretician than they do the original poets but they are an example of how beautiful English poetry can be made from beautiful Chinese.
Blue, blue is the grass about the river
And the willows have overfilled the close garden.
And within, the mistress, in the midmost of her youth,
White, white of face, hesitates, passing the door.
Slender, she put forth a slender hand. (trans. Ezra Pound)
Images like these almost certainly led to the development in the West of the Western haiku. As we have seen, the Western haiku is somewhat different from its Eastern cousin. It is simpler, more straight-forward, but none-the-less beautiful when written correctly. James Kirkup’s
The great Bell
Of the temple at Yamadera
Trembles to the fall of the first cherry petal.
Contains many of the elements of Zen and technical aspects of composition we have looked at so far. We see the same sense of emptiness, of loneliness. There is the same brevity, wordlessness ,and the juxtaposition of the lightness of the petal with the large heaviness of the temple bell. Kirkup demonstrates what can be achieved with Western haiku. It is highly reminiscent of Blyth’s translations, sticking to the same verse form and single image pattern but has a curious Western-ness about it; a definite image, formed out of a language that seeks to reduce meanings to one thing or another as opposed to being content with vagueness and ambiguity.
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