Managing Your Writing Career: Haiku
By Rusty LaGrange, High Desert Branch
Whether you write for fun, for profit, some articles, a novel, or poetry, it will always be your job to expand your training and your experiences to become a better writer. I’m active in our poetry group, the PoemSmiths, and as an active member, I am always surprised by new concepts or old ones that I have never heard of before.
I came across a Huffington Post article by Carol Kuruvilla speaking on the ancient writings of Zen Masters, the term “koan” and early forms of Haiku, and ways that poetry was used as a teaching tool to the masses. In this look at Haiku, one of the easiest forms to master, and often taught in schools as the primary step to poetry, I was stunned by my lack of understanding in how the poem is actually created, and how koan fits in.
Sure, anyone can count five syllables for the first line, seven for the second, and five for the last — the basic structure, although there are others. But the true inner thoughts of the lesson in a Haiku, or any other assortment of short thoughtful poems, is derived from the basics of Zen and Buddhist teachings.
Zen master is a somewhat vague English term that arose in the first half of the 20th century, sometimes used to refer to an individual who teaches Zen Buddhist meditation and practices, usually implying longtime study and subsequent authorization to teach and transmit the tradition themselves. — Wikipedia
So, of course, I opened a search for the meanings of the meanings — and fell down a rabbit hole — hours later, and feeling rather hungry, I decided to stop and reflect. When we write a Haiku, as an example, we try to fit the words to the form rather than write from the spirit of the thought and let the form fit. Hmmm… so while I’ve been tapping out syllables, I missed the true point of the teaching. A piece of wisdom or an intellectual insight should inspire the poem and be creatively ended with a twist, a hook, and “ah-hah” moment in order for the reader to appreciate it. Enter the koan, pronounced ko-an with accent on the first syllable.
A koan is a riddle or puzzle that Zen Buddhists use during meditation to help them unravel greater truths about the world and about themselves. Zen masters have been testing their students with these stories, questions, or phrases for centuries. Many koans can be traced back to the collections of sayings amassed by Chinese priests in the 12th and 13th centuries.
Koans may seem like paradoxes at first glance. It is up to the Zen student to tease out their meaning. Often, after a prolonged and exhausting intellectual struggle, the student realizes that the koan is actually meant to be understood by the spirit and by intuition. – Wikipedia
I won’t promise to use more koan in my creative pursuits, but now I know what it is. I believe I do have the spirit of ideas that I can transmit to paper in my poems and short prose. Although I may not know if the reader understands everything I write, I am making an attempt to communicate at a higher level than seventh grade — the national average.
In my early attempts at poetry I remember this little one (in blue box) that I created in the 1970s, in Pioneertown where I lived for several years. It was a great place for inspiration and insight especially at night. Coyotes, desert breezes, and a velvet night sky can pry into the creative depths, making you feel worthy of taking pen to paper.
There sat the moon
on a branch of a tree
like the smile of a Cheshire cat
and I smiled back.
Rusty LaGrange is editor of the CWC Bulletin
as well as the High Desert Branch newsletter, The Inkslinger.
She served as designer for the current issue of the CWC’s Literary Review.
This article first appeared in the October 2018Inkslinger.