One of the most famous haikus in the Japanese canon is this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
An old pond.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n A frog jumping into<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n The sound of water.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s a literal translation, but (if I understand this right) the ambiguity of what the frog is jumping into (the water or the sound?) is there in the seventeenth century original.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The poem is partly famous because it epitomises the art-form\u2019s focus on the single moment. It\u2019s as though the poem is trying to give you everything you really need to know about one particular moment, without trying to draw out any lessons from it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Just \u2013 there was a pond. A frog jumped in. Plop \u2013 the sound of water<\/em>. No need for further discussion. That\u2019s just how that particular moment was. A single significant moment captured with extreme brevity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But \u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n Human minds don\u2019t work quite like that and human language is the same. So, yes, a frog jumping into water is just something that frogs do, a perfectly normal observation. But a frog jumping into the sound of<\/em> water \u2013 well, I guess frogs do that too, but it\u2019s a very different type of thought. The frog becomes suddenly a thing of energy and movement and magic, not a small, cold wet thing you could hold in the palm of your hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And then again: we start with an old pond. I\u2019m guessing we see something with mature weeds, an unruffled surface, a lack of movement. But then: a dart of movement and a very temporary sound. So something old still flickers with something evanescent and alive. Our sense of the pond at the end is changed from what we imagined at the start.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now \u2013 haiku and novels: not natural bedfellows. Given that I tend to write long \u2013 my first novel was 180,000+ words \u2013 haiku are a very, very long way from my place of happiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But \u2013 it struck me that our books often contain secret little haikus of their own. Here are some examples of what I mean:<\/p>\n\n\n\n I hope you feel some haiku-ishness here. What I mean is fragments of text that<\/p>\n\n\n\n At the same time, you just can\u2019t put things like this down on the page without the reader creating some kinds of connection for themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So take the snippet about that suburban evening \u2013 lawnmowers and kids on bikes and men with white legs. Those are, in a way, just three truthful but disconnected observations about a sunny evening in outer Cardiff. But \u2013 they all have the smell of family and order and social connection. Fiona has none of that, or not in an ordinary way. So by presenting those images, Fiona is also offering us a little haiku that says something like:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Summer evening:<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n The sound of lawnmowers and children.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n I don\u2019t fit<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Or take the first example \u2013 a description of a rich woman\u2019s kitchen. Partly that is just a straightforward way to describe a room (units = ivory; cooker = posh version of blue.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n But it ends with a tiny little haiku that seems to insert sunlight as part of the actual furnishing of the room. Something like this, in effect:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Venetian blinds<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Sofas and slatted shadows<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Sunlight<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Just as Basho\u2019s frog was jumping into water and into sound, here the room is furnished with physical things (sofas, cookers, flowers) and also light, that\u2019s been given a kind of order by the blinds. The purely physical melts a bit into something wider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And sometimes the haikus just sneak their way into the text without needing much modification at all. Like this, for example:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Six days slide by<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Dark fish in an urban canal<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n No sleep for me.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Now, I definitely, definitely don\u2019t advise stopping your prose and just dropping chunks of (slightly weird) poetry into the gaps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But that\u2019s not what we\u2019re talking about. We\u2019re talking about finding ways to drop together a small collection of observations that make perfect sense in a purely literal way \u2026 but that offer something extra as well. Basho\u2019s frog. A suburban world that excludes its observer. A kitchen that seems furnished in sunlight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In one way, this is easy writing: you\u2019re just making plain statements without any kind of rhetorical complexity. But it\u2019s also subtle writing: you\u2019re arranging things so that those plain statements amount to something more than the sum of their parts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019ve never really stopped to notice this before: it was a Christmas gift of a book of haikus that alerted me to it. But \u2013 it\u2019s an easy technique, and it\u2019s a powerful one. And fun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
<\/li>\n\n\n\n
<\/li>\n\n\n\n
<\/li>\n\n\n\n
<\/em><\/li>\n\n\n\n\n
\n
\n
\n
\n