Featured Writer: Keith Polette

First-person reflections on the art of writing haibun

crosswinds at dusk
tango dancers stepping
into couples

One thing that intrigues me about the haibun form is how it allows for the dramatization of what Tony Hoagland, in The Art of Voice, calls “the mind in motion.” For me, as a writer, the prose and the flourish(es) of haiku conspire to enable the exploration and expression of modes of heightened awareness. This is something Basho showed us how to do, and in my explorations—which range from poetic meditations to surreal adventures—I try to open myself to a prose style that shifts gears as it moves through avenues of its own making. Through its coordinated movements (movements I generally discover during writing), I can convey the mind that is unexpectedly caught by, but is also actively participating in, various epiphanies.

autumn moonlight
the locomotive pulsing
in the pen

To convey these moments (modest as they are) I generally strive for compression and concision (which allows for a kind of felt immediacy), an attention to detail, and an emphasis on rapid association—what the late psychologist James Hillman would refer to as “imaginal language.” This kind of language derives from Jung’s notion that “psyche is image,” based on his discoveries that the mind is poetically based. What Hillman and Jung are pointing out is the primacy of the (psychic) image, its origin in the prelinguistic intelligence, and its unique ability to carry and convey evocative meaning in a precise, essential, and energetic manner. It is similar to what such poets as Robert Bly, Jerome Rothenberg, and Robert Kelly have referred to as the “deep image,” and it operates in a sphere that precedes what we might call the Cartesian rupture between subject and object. This kind of image is also what Flannery O’Connor referred to as “anagogical” because of its capacity to reveal multiple layers of reality simultaneously: the known and the unknown, the conscious and the unconscious, the finger that points and the dark side of the moon.

Consequently, most of my haibun are infused with psychic images rendered through colors and hues of various poetic devices: concrete detail, lyrical language, alliteration, simile, metaphor, personification, and hyperbole. While I understand that haibun writing has traditionally been grounded in simple, direct language — a tradition that I greatly respect and admire — I am, by following the urgings of the creative unconscious, attempting to use the rich palate of western poetics to find new ways to embody and express the elusive yet essential sensibility of “wabi sabi.” By doing so, I hope, in a small way, to begin to expand the conversation about what constitutes the prose aspect of the haibun.

plucked tomatoes
so much music waiting
inside

Literary Influences and References

Robert Frost reminds us that “the ear is the only true writer and the only true reader.” His statement certainly calls to mind the immediate and powerful nature of spoken poetic language: the Homeric Hymn, the scop’s verse, and early singers of renga. Poetic language is historically at its most potent when it is spoken dramatically, when it activates the imagination through the ear. By exciting the audio circuits, it makes the most direct and immediate (and, perhaps, most primal) impact on one’s poetic sensibility.

Marcel Marceau
how we carefully watch
what he hears

On another level, Frost is suggesting that we all derive our ideas of literature — and in this case, haibun — from other writers. Our sense and practice of writing is based on the manner in which we have internalized the sounds, shapes, and structures of other writers. Where, for instance, would John Keats be without having studied and assimilated the works of Shakespeare? Where would T. S. Eliot be without having absorbed the vibrant tones of Robert Browning’s dramatic monologues? Where would William Faulkner be without having been thunderstruck by James Joyce’s Ulysses? And where would Shiki be without having had earfuls of Basho, Issa, and Buson? In other words, the writers we read leave a kind of archetypal resonance in our imaginations, and these resonances provide the energy field for literary engagements.

tornado season
the vortex I stir
in my coffee

What I have found curious is the manner in which the voices of so many other writers are manifest in the haibun I’ve written — especially since I only began writing haibun in 2018. Early on, I considered restricting the use of literary allusions and references, as well as the active inclusion of other writers’ work. Ultimately, I decided against it, and not just because the early Japanese haibun writers alluded to other authors. I wanted to write haibun that allowed for the kind of totality of experience where, as Jung reminds us, opposites are synthesized into a third view. To do that, I had to move beyond a singularity of voice and aesthetic expression, to a position where my voice could be the site of literary synthesis.

As such, one key aspect of my haibun writing is centered on my ability to draw upon and include, wherever necessary and appropriate, the myriad voices of not just authors, but also musicians, artists, and other creative minds I have to some degree internalized. Like koi fish swarming in a pond at feeding time, they arrive to elevate my voice from the smallness of its own experience to something larger. For instance, in my book of haibun, pilgrimage, I reference David Waggoner, Robert Frost, William Blake, Jules Feiffer, Robinson Jeffers, Norman Rockwell, Vincent van Gogh, Galileo, Scott Joplin, Schumann, Debussy, Chaucer, Hemingway, Yeats, Mark Twain, Hawthorne, Kafka, Borges, and Chinese folktales. I hope that the allusions and direct literary references offer a blended amplification of my limited perspective, something that I could never hope to do without situating myself in the realm of those authors whose works will always shine so much more brightly, and much longer, than mine ever will.

Lorca at midnight
the moon glowing like the tears
of an orange

The Complementary Relationship of Haiku and Prose

It seems that, in many haibun, the prose parts are oriented toward the haiku, so that the haiku (which so often terminates the piece) becomes a concluding statement. In this way, the haiku generally carries almost the entire “poetic” element of the haibun, while the prose section restricts itself to language that is more simple and straightforward, as its chief purpose is to drive the narrative to its conclusion. While I appreciate and respect this type of construction, I see the relationship between the prose and the haiku as more complementary, the haiku being less teleological. I envision the haiku (one or more) as a kind of moon in the orbit of the haibun. Sometimes the orbit is close, and the haiku clearly connects to an image or idea in the prose. Sometimes, though, the orbit is as far as it can be without severing the bonds of gravity holding it in place, and the haiku expresses a sudden and often surprising connection. Such leaps are endemic to the creative imagination, in much the same way that the mind may spring forward into a sudden expression of freedom after having mulled for months over a Zen koan. In this way, the haibun prose and the orbiting haiku form a dialectical relationship, one that expresses multiple states of heightened awareness.

welder's sparks
redwing blackbirds bursting
into flight

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The following haibun by Keith Polette appeared in Presence, Issue 69 (March 2021), and won the Best-of-Issue Award.

Rules for Writing Haibun

Never use adverbs—especially negative ones—unless you’re trying to describe something like an errant rooster, an unruly tooth, or a horse stamping in a stall of stars. Never use abstractions, unless, of course, you are that famous insurance-executive poet who wrote, “Let be be the finale of seem,” but even then, you may be thought of as dubious. Write about what you have experienced, unless you’ve spent your life in a cocoon, in which case, you should borrow somebody else’s dreams. Avoid consonants—those shards of glass and bits of gravel on the keyboard beneath your fingers—except for “k” and “z” because they have flown with owls. Learn the differences between “there” and “their” and “they’re,” and avoid writing about places where “there’s no there there.” Be sparing in your words; if at all possible, draw a picture, or better yet, just hum. Be sure the haiku at the end of the haibun depicts a “moment of epiphany”; remember though, such a “moment” can last a year, or even a lifetime (or at least the time it takes to eat an orange). Go to fish markets for inspiration. Associate with mechanics, woodworkers, and funeral directors. If all else fails, follow the way of the frog.

vanishing point
all your stories
ending in tigers

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About the Author

Keith Polette’s book of haibun, pilgrimage, received the HSA Merit Book Award in 2021. His book of haiku, the new world, was on the short list for the Touchstone Award in 2017. He currently lives and writes in El Paso, Texas.