This column offers a vibrant argument from an educator and recent MA graduate of English Literature in Taiwan. He suggests ways in which university students can be introduced to haiku, and English Language Haiku (ELH), in their classrooms. Students today are looking for content that is short, authentic, and that can be enjoyed immediately. Haiku—a genre which possesses those three attributes--could quench their thirst, he claims, if modern writers composed ELH in a way that remediates three areas of lack identified by the author.
This fascinating essay elucidates the researcher’s thought process: starting from a spark of an idea that came from watching an online video, he kindled opinions from a newspaper column penned by a long dead poet. He then leaned on methodology based on the materiality of literature to analyze the way that haiku have been integrated in fictional and non-fictional texts. Further investigation on these materialities lead him to the formation of theoretical frameworks that he believes offer modern day readers a chance for greater engagement with ELH.
Reuters (2019) released a short video titled The Z Factor, which identified the prime content demands of Generation Z, the population cohort born between the late 1990s and early 2010s. According to the video, what Generation Z craves the most when it comes to content is that it be short, mobile, and really real, as well as provide a sense of authenticity and in-the-moment feeling that can be equated with the phenomena and impressions of presence. Literary theorist Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht (2004) believes we are missing this content “in a world so saturated with meaning” (p. 105).
As both an educator and a composer of English Language Haiku (ELH), what struck me at the time was how, on the one hand, ELH, and haiku in general, manifest Z Factor qualities to a greater degree than their literary counterparts (namely the novel, the short story, and longer-form poetry) while on the other hand, the vast majority of ELH fall short when it comes to reaching the levels of critical engagement that their counterparts offer. This debate was formally presented to a class at National Kaohsiung Normal University (Figure 1).
As such, this brought to mind Masaoka’s (1899) belief that because haiku is a part of literature, and literature is a part of art, that the standard of literature be the standard of haiku. Thus, if one is able to comment on ELH from an equivalent standard, we can judge ELH as literature. However, from what I have observed, ELH criticism continues to be something quite different from the criticism of its literary counterparts, but this has less to do with academics (which, as far as I have observed, is very receptive to the inclusion of ELH under certain conditions), than it does with current approaches to ELH criticism and the characteristics of ELH themselves.
This led me to question how, then, current ELH could be composed (as well as what characteristics to look for) that could propel the genre towards the foreground of literary studies, where it is to be met by the hearts and minds of Generation Z students that make up the majority of current undergraduate and postgraduate university students (Figure 2), as well as what theories and aspects of composition and engagement are currently missing and that may necessitate its overall growth.
This absence is in line with the nature of lack and privation defined in the psychoanalytical paradigm of Jacques Lacan (Rabate, 2003). Absence compels the consideration of desire and hence a desire for being. What could be imagined as lacking has to do with the being of ELH itself, or in Žižek’s (2000) terms, its foundation. Therefore, providing a justification for its absence in the academic environment of literary studies in the first place can assist ELH in taking its first steps towards greater academic recognition.
From an academic perspective, I was compelled by the notion of the word being to first substantiate the existence of ELH. I considered how ELH are being composed on ontological and phenomenological levels, relating back to matters concerning the materialities of the text. As such, in line with Gumbrecht’s (2004) thinking, ELH would come to offer the academic environment of literary studies one possibility for reclaiming a lost vitality and aesthetic immediacy by first granting primacy to the lived experiencing of a text before giving way to the meaning components.
In this way, ELH finds itself in situations of lack that correspond to a real lack of theoretical frameworks to compose and engage with ELH on the level of lived experience, by way of the materialities of the text, as well as a real lack of a Western aesthetic foundation to situate and conceptualize ELH. Furthermore, as a poetic, literary genre with multiple, written forms, its being and existence can be further substantiated by accounting for poetic, aesthetic, and technical expectations regarding composition, which provide a foundation from which to compose and critique ELH as an extension of the traditional haiku in Japan, not as imitation, but rather as an honoring, as well as from its arguable roots in Western Modernism. In this way, ELH finds itself in a situation of lack that corresponds to a real lack of precursory positions. Bloom (1997) suggests these precursors are necessary to set the aforementioned expectations.
Therefore, teaching ELH in a way that allows for critical engagement with primary texts becomes a process of acquainting students with the three areas of lack. The first area of lack involves establishing real precursory positions. To fill this hole, I suggest teaching the theories and certain poetry of the American poet Ezra Pound as well as the compositional poetics, aesthetics, and techniques of the Japanese poet Matsuo Basho’s school of thought. These poets play a significant, relevant role in ELH composition and engagement. In this way, the movement towards the realization of a combined-precursory position comes to stand in the place of the poetic father-figure in Bloom’s (1997) theoretical environment, providing a new foothold for judging ELH compositions, as well as establishing a foundation from which ELH poets can swerve.
Students acquainted with the first position of lack come to possess a greater knowledge of Pound and his poetics as well as Modernism and the movements of Imagism and Vorticism, while also developing greater familiarity with and an appreciation for haiku in Japanese as well as in English. Furthermore, certain expectations from which to judge and criticize current ELH are proposed. This will encourage students to become active participants who may come to possess the ability to shape the future of the ELH genre.
The second area of lack is the real lack of a Western aesthetic foundation to situate and conceptualize the genre and form. Students need to be provided with more haiku history from its starting verse (referred to as hokku in Japanese) and linked verse beginnings. Students need to be exposed to the controversial idea of the haiku moment, which comes to situate ELH in the Western philosophical traditions of ontology and phenomenology, adding a degree of eclecticism to their learning.
This then leads into the third area of lack, which is the real lack of theoretical frameworks to compose and engage with ELH on the level of lived experience, by way of the materialities of the text. This is supported by the belief in certain moments of intensity that can manifest through a compositional and formalistic ideal that derives from the lived experience produced by the text of the ELH itself. This ideal, as well as these moments of intensity, are associated with the concept of Presence (Gumbrecht, 2004).
Furthermore, additional components of traditional haiku provide a means to engage with the text of an ELH from a level first-removed from Presence. That level is the intermediate place of atmospheres, which can be produced by the seasonal components of a haiku (referred to as kigo in Japanese), as well as the emotional overtones (referred to as yosei in Japanese) linked to the use of certain aesthetics. The concept of atmospheres was further developed by Gumbrecht (2012).
In conclusion, I suggest familiarizing students with the concepts of Presence and Atmospheres. I recommend connecting to what Rauh (2019) states as being of aesthetic importance in the world today: “namely the quality of the impression that emanates from things” (p. 149). In this way, the three positions of lack explained above can provide students with a number of critical tools to analyze ELH, while at the same time retaining all the other means of engaging with texts that one would find in the academic environment of literary studies. In Figure 3, students can be seen participating in a group activity that required them to determine the seasonality of a verse based on the use of a seasonal element. This discovery was then used to discuss atmospheres, and how the emotional and physical components of atmospheres (as a felt thing akin to weather) can affect one’s interpretation of an ELH. As such, if an ELH does not reach the level of critical engagement students may come to expect and even demand from it, it is not a problem of the student, but rather a problem of the ELH, putting the entirety of the burden, as well as the future of the genre, on those that compose it.
References
Bloom, H. (1997). The anxiety of influence: A theory of poetry (2nd ed.). Oxford University Press.
Gumbrecht, H. U. (2004). Production of presence: What meaning cannot convey. Stanford University Press.
Gumbrecht, H. U. (2012). Atmosphere, mood, stimmung: On a hidden potential of literature (E. Butler, Trans.). Stanford University Press.
Masaoka, S. (1899). Haikai taiyo (The essentials of haiku). Nippon.
Rabate, J.-M. (Ed.). (2003). The Cambridge companion to Lacan. Cambridge University Press.
Rauh, A. (2019). The atmospheric whereby: Reflections on subject and object. Open Philosophy 2(1), 147–59. https://doi.org/10.1515/opphil-2019-0017
Reuters. (2019, January 11). Gen Z’s prime time demands: Short, mobile and really real. Reuters TV. https://www.reuters.com/video/watch/idRCV0065QC
Źiźek, S. (2000). Melancholy and the act. Critical Inquiry 26(4), 657–81. https://doi.org/10.1086/448987