Modern Haiku 41.3

Haiku as Emblem of Creative Discovery: Another Path to Craft*

Michele Root-Bernstein

The study of creativity is my passion. Pen a few lines on your imagi-native skills or compositional habits, and I’m peering over your

shoulder, wide-eyed and wondering. I don’t think it makes much sense to explore creative processes, however, without also experiencing them from the inside out. So some years ago I decided to immerse myself in an aesthetic craft. I took up haiku. And somewhere along the way, I re-alized that my two journeys — the scholarly and the poetic — were one and the same. In form and function, haiku model the basic principles of creative discovery.

Actually, I took up haiku twice. In my first novitiate, I wrote with the insouciance of the semi-ignorant. My poems looked good to me, but I only ever managed to get one into a real publication — Modern Haiku at that. Yet try as I might, I couldn’t repeat that little triumph. No mat-ter that I had read my Haiku Handbook. No matter that I knew what William Higginson and Penny Harter had to say about images, juxta-positions, and so forth. I didn’t understand what haiku were about, not by a long shot. And I didn’t know how to learn.

For some years, then, I turned to other things until the day Kay Grimnes, biologist and haiku poet, convinced me to try again. Play, she said. Since I had just finished co-writing Sparks of Genius, a book on imaginative skills (one of which was play) this suddenly made sense to me. Creative individuals of many stripes use play to learn skills,

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* An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Haiku North America

Conference, Ottawa, Ont., in August 2009.

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probe problems, and advance the art and science of their craft. Why not me? Only this time, I thought, I have something else up my sleeve. I have a research agenda. How does the novice experience the acquisi-tion of craft skill? Might explicit attention to creative process enhance learning? As I walked the path to craft, I would be my own novice to study.

In such a case, of course, objective knowledge colors subjective ex-perience. A few words about my preconceptions are thus in order. For psychologists and other scholars, creativity means more than artistic talent or industry. It refers to the production of effective novelty, no matter what the field or discipline. A surprising poem can be as new and valuable as the latest ketchup bottle or scientific experiment — and in much the same way. Novelty and effectiveness depend on context.

At the simplest level, it is possible to distinguish between personal and public contexts or spheres of activity. The novice poet is just as likely as anyone else to have a personally new experience, for instance, but she may not achieve public novelty of thought or language in her haiku. Though her articulation of poetic images carries personal mean-ing, it may offer little of value to readers in the wider world.

In the public sphere, evaluation of effective novelty also reflects the constraints of a craft and its traditions. Anything does not go. A haiku is a haiku and not some other form of poetry because it is recognized as such; it exhibits characteristic patterns of thought and expression. Pick up any haiku primer and you learn (at least nominally) what these pat-terns are: three lines (usually) of minimal length, two images and two phrases (most of the time), and a multitude of relationships that may be articulated between these two parts of the poem.

On the road to public craft, then, the novice must grasp both out-ward and inward form — and of the two, inward is the more difficult. Why? Because, the novice in me says, despite any and all explanation what takes place inside the poem is clearly ineffable. Because, the re-searcher in me rejoins, the nearly ineffable at the heart of haiku is the creative spark itself. Unless or until the poet learns how to make that creative moment happen, her haiku have no engine to propel them into the public realm.

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So here’s my argument: understanding inward form in terms of creativ-ity can help the novice “get” haiku and step up the level of her artistry.

Put it another way, any good haiku functions as an emblem of cre-ative discovery. By emblem I mean “a visible sign of an idea,” and by creative discovery I particularly refer to the functional definition articulated by Jacob Bronowski, mathematician, poet, and host and writer of the television documentary series The Ascent of Man. From a perspective straddling multiple disciplines, Bronowski saw that “[t]he discoveries of science, the works of art are explorations — more, are explosions, of a hidden likeness” (Values 19). Explaining further, he said, “The scientist or the artist takes two facts or experiences which we separate; he finds in them a likeness which had not been seen before: and he creates a unity” (Values 27).

Explorations of hidden likeness abound in the history of science and in the history of art and literature. Newton perceived that an apple and the moon fall for the same reason, and revolutionized physics. E.E. Cummings sensed that painting and poetry have much in common and developed his unique poetic style from their synthesis.

Call it another insight of hidden likeness, but Bronowski’s definition of creative discovery could almost pinch hit for a definition of haiku. Consider in Figure 1 how it resonates with Robert Spiess’ description of the poem’s inward form (quoted in Gurga 2).

[A] haiku is a … poem in which two, rarely three, objects in a now-

moment of awareness are juxtaposed so that each enhances one’s ap-

preciation of the other and together they evoke … insight … of the

suchness of things. — Robert Spiess

The scientist or the artist takes two facts or experiences which we sepa-

rate; he finds in them a likeness which had not been seen before: and he

creates a unity. — Jacob Bronowski

Figure 1. Two definitions in juxtaposition

There are good reasons for the novice to explore these definitions and their convergence. To consider haiku as an emblem of creative

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discovery is to focus attention on the internal dynamics of the poem, thus to examine how the outward juxtaposition of images may capture the inner essence of experience, facilitate the recreation of that essence and, ultimately, convey the universal in the particular, the public in the personal.

According to Bronowski, the internal dynamics of creative discovery may be understood as the explosion of hidden likeness between two aspects of nature. Haiku embody this notion fully. They are nature poems. They place discrete images within the same conceptual space. And the intent is to evoke insight. The focus on nature and the idea of juxtaposition are easy enough for the novice to grasp. What is harder to understand is the nature of the juxtaposition. Mess that up and you miss out on the insight. Unfortunately, contemporary how-to books tend to discuss haiku juxtaposition in terms the novice may find rather vague. At the heart of haiku is “an organic force” (Yasuda 54), “some kind of inner necessity” (Ross 20), “an internal comparison” (Gurga 14) or a “resonance” (Higginson 117) that is unstated, yet neverthe-less conveyed. Looking at haiku through the lens of creative discovery, however, helps clarify these statements — by suggesting that haiku in-sight begins with the sudden recognition of an unexpected or hidden likeness.

What is likeness? Likeness may be a matter of attribute, structure, or function. When likeness is oblique, two otherwise unlike things may share the same shade of gray, perhaps, or a similar fan shape; they may both involve processes that lead to new growth. Likeness of this sort suggests metaphor, that is, the understanding of one thing in terms of another. Haiku aesthetics tend formally to reject the use of metaphor as a figure of speech—but not, it may be argued, as a form of thinking (e.g. Gurga 84–85, Balabanova, Blasko and Merski 40–42). As many cognitive scientists, linguists, and philosophers currently argue, meta-phoric thinking is, in fact, fundamental to human thought. That does not mean that cognition is in any way limited to a simplistic “this is that” mentation. In haiku, when likeness remains hidden (unstated but conveyed) metaphorical thinking blossoms with possibility. Sud-denly the poem’s elements open up and incorporate a whole range of

Modern Haiku 41.3

associations, patterns, narratives, memories, and emotions leading to a larger unity.

Attention to hiddenness has much to do with attention to the es-sence of experience. And essence has much to do with leaving things out. “The haiku that reveals seventy to eighty percent of its subject is good,” wrote Kenneth Yasuda, paraphrasing Bashô. “Those that reveal fifty to sixty percent we never tire of” (6). But how do we know what to reveal, what to conceal? The question has exercised many thinkers in many fields who wish to convey reality with a minimum of words, lines or gestures or otherwise to abstract the necessary and telling qual-ity of experience.

Pablo Picasso, a master of the essential visual image, offers the haiku novice a particularly instructive example. “To arrive at abstraction [i.e. the essence of a thing], it is always necessary to begin with a concrete reality,” Picasso once said. “You must always start with something. Af-terward you can remove all traces of reality … the idea of the object will have left an indelible mark” (quoted in Ashton 64, 68). He himself does this brilliantly with his series of bulls. (See Figure 2.)

Beginning with the “reality” of a representational bull, the artist embarks on a process of experimentation, eliminating features one by one, until he arrives at the simplest of visual images. Picasso strove to suggest the bull, not draw it. By analogy, the haiku poet seeks to do something very similar: to move away from an over-description of reality to precisely that set of images — and precisely the right detail about those images — that conveys but does not state the insight ex-perience.

Considering the haiku as an emblem of creative discovery also directs attention to the recreation of insight and enlighten-ment in the reader’s mind. Bronowski addresses this aspect of poetic creativity in his book, The Visionary Eye: Essays in the Arts, Literature, and Science. “[I]f you want to understand the poem,” he wrote, “you have to recreate it for yourself.… The in-ternal relations that make it beautiful to you have to be discov-ered and in some way have to be put in by you.… [There is] no poem unless you yourself enter it and fill it out” (Visionary 14).

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Figure 2. Pablo Picasso, The Bull (1946),clockwise from upper left: second, fourth, eighth and eleventh state.

© 2010 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

In terms of haiku, this means, ideally, that the reader mirrors or re-experiences the writer’s moment of insight. The haiku representing the experience of insight is also an experience recreating that insight.

In this sense, haiku are made of both call and response. Any Heron’s Nest Award commentary may provide example; for instance, in her response to this haiku by Rick Tarquinio,

glowing embersI tell her a storyshe already knows

Ferris Gilli accepts the poet’s invitation to “enter a universal and time-less familial scene,” one that brings up a multitude of personal memo-ries and shared associations. “I can easily replace Tarquinio’s scene with one from own childhood or my daughter’s early years” says Gilli, and proceeds to do so (52–53). Indeed, the skillful reader of haiku creates

Modern Haiku 41.3

as many images, ideas, and emotions as he or she recreates. She partici-pates as an equal partner or collaborator in constructing the creative value of the poem.

Recreating insight has a corollary, which is the discovery of the uni-versal in the particular. Bronowski explains this discovery in the arts as creative enlightenment. At first that insight or enlightenment may be grounded in personal intuition. But finally, if the insight rings true for many people, it takes on a collective cast. “[W]hen we catch the sense of the image and its echo in us,” he wrote, “we recognize our-selves in the artist, we recognize ourselves as one with his creations, and conversely, we recognize the whole of the human race within ourselves” (Visionary 127, italics mine).

Again, this universality in the particular is recreated for us in many haiku commentaries. In his reading of Carolyn Hall’s poem,

circle of lamplightI complete the baby quiltbegun for me

Robert Gilliland probes the sense of her lamplight image. The “circular glow of the light” is just what it is, of course, but something more as well. It “suggests our planet’s path around its lamp, the sun.” It be-comes, in its essence, a symbol “of continuity, and the seasons that mark our ascendance, decline, and eventual demise flow seamlessly one into the next, year after year,” generation after generation (Gilliland 15). By the end of Gilliland’s imaginative and creative response, we recognize a larger humanity in the simple act of quilting, if not all our daily tasks.

This is where my journey as a student of creativity ends. By virtue of their very form and function, haiku embody the essential elements of creative enlightenment: (1) the discovery of hidden likeness, (2) the abstracting of those elements of experience that provoke insight, (3) the recreation of that insight by others, and (4) the recognition of the insight’s universal meaning and value. Understand haiku, then, and you understand the basics of knowledge-making in all human endeav-ors, in all the sciences and all the arts.

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By the same token, understand creative discovery and you under-stand haiku. This is where my journey as a novice poet begins — or, rather, continues. Exploring haiku as creative emblem has allowed me to make personal inroads assimilating the technical and imaginative craft of haiku. Grasping internal dynamics has helped me to move from syllable counts and static images:

autumn tattletaleagain a field mouse rustlesthrough the kitchen trash

to dynamic resonances set off by hidden likenesses:

fall frosta new piece of cheesein the mouse trap

South by Southeast 16:1 (2009)

Getting a feel for abstracting only the most necessary elements of the insight experience has enabled me to move from description:

daybreaka robin tosses bits of shellfrom its nest

to essence:

dawnthe broken edgeof a blue shell

The Heron’s Nest 8:3 (September 2006)

Abstracting only the essence has empowered me to move from telling:

head winda sea gull flies to the seaat a standstill

to suggesting, thus leaving space for the reader to re-create experience:

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sea gullsa gust of autumnfills my jacket

Acorn 22 (spring 2009)

And when hidden likenesses have possibilities, then I have been able to move my poems from particular, closed and merely personal expres-sion:

heartsickmy dad beneath the old treeleaving

towards a universal, open, and public expression that more successfully stimulates associations, patterns, narratives, memories, and emotions in the minds of readers:

eveningthe maple lays downits shadow

Modern Haiku 40.3 (autumn 2009)

Both first and following steps tell me that attention to the creative discovery at the heart of haiku offers the novice an additional path to craft. When the poet learns with barest touch to evoke imaginative ex-plosions of hidden likeness, then she may move from personal novelty and meaning to public freshness and value. Opening up to the co-creation of universal insight, she will find her own vibration of voice.

Works Cited:Ashton, Dore, ed. Picasso on Art: A Selection of Views. New York: DaCapo, 1972.Balabanova, Ludmila. “Metaphor and Haiku.” Modern Haiku 39.3 (autumn

2008), 49–58.Blasko, Dawn G. and Dennis W. Merski. “Haiku Poetry and Metaphorical

Thought: An Invitation to Interdisciplinary Study.” Creativity Research Journal 11.1 (1998), 39–46.

Bronowski, J. Science and Human Values. New York: Harper & Row, 1956.Bronowski, J. The Visionary Eye: Essays in the Arts, Literature, and Science. Cam-

bridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1978.

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Gilliland, Robert. “Commentary.” The Heron’s Nest — Vol. IX (2008), 14–15. Also available online at <http://www.theheronsnest.com/haiku/0901C1154/thn_issue.c1.html>.

Gilli, Ferris. “Commentary.” The Heron’s Nest — Vol. VII (2006), 52–53. Also available online at <http://www.theheronsnest.com/haiku/0702j1628/thn_ issue.c1.html>.

Gurga, Lee. Haiku: A Poet’s Guide. Lincoln, Ill.: Modern Haiku Press, 2003.Higginson, William J., with Penny Harter. The Haiku Handbook: How to Write,

Share, and Teach Haiku. New York: Kodansha International, 1985.Root-Bernstein, Robert, and Michele Root-Bernstein. Sparks of Genius: The 13

Thinking Tools of the World’s Most Creative People. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999.

Ross, Bruce. How to Haiku: A Writer’s Guide to Haiku and Related Forms. Boston: Tuttle, 2002.

Yasuda, Kenneth. The Japanese Haiku: Its Essential Nature, History, and Possibilities in English. Boston: Tuttle, 1957.