Ray Rasmussen
Is It Possible for Non-Poets to Write Haibun?
I’m launching this essay in an unusual way, with an exchange of emails between friends. If you’ll bear with me, my answer to the title’s question will reveal itself.
Email: James to Ray
Ray, After a walk with Rufus, my border collie, I returned home to find an envelope you had sent containing Harriot West’s collection of haibun, Into the Light. I remember you and I discussing haibun, but until I read her book, I didn’t have an appreciation for the sort of personal memoirs one finds in that genre. I took it to our dining table and read a few pieces to my wife, Joan, and we had quite a discussion.
It clearly requires a person of both courage and great honesty to author such a book. I am sure that West’s writing will invite others to be more reflective of their life experiences. Having read her offerings, I felt as if I was a bit dead to the world and asked myself, “Have I lived life asleep at the switch?”
In my undergraduate years, a philosophy course I took was taught by a man I much admired, Professor Samuels, a bright and warm person, an ex-Marine who wore wide brimmed hats, his black Labrador always at his side. As it happened, I and another chap received the top mark on an assigned paper. Going over mine, Samuelson mentioned that I and the other student had different strengths, mine was logical analysis whilst his was more a poetic or literary bent.
I think I am more of a linear, logical thinker than an insightful type. I wish I had better capacity to see and express what I see in the world—in writing, photography and in art.
Email: Ray to James
Nice to hear from you, James. After you had mentioned wanting to write memoirs about your life, I thought you’d enjoy West’s book, which includes a mix of memoirs, reactions to current experiences in her life, and even some fictional stories. My partner, Nancy, and I also had some very enjoyable evenings reading it aloud to each other.
Your comment about where it took you personally—to Professor Samuelson’s pronouncement—caught my attention. Given what you write about your “linear self,” I was surprised because your email was well written and it had for me an element of wabi-sabi—a summing up that speaks to transience—the shortness of life, the regrets, and, buried deep, the wish to have become something more. And what an irony that is—to have created a piece of writing that claims you are stuck for life in category X, yet there you are expressing yourself in category Y.
I think I can understand your feelings, because I’m having a similar reaction to yours as I read E.B. White’s short stories in One Man’s Meat. While enjoying his memoir on one level, I also see that I simply don’t have his prose poetry skills and, thus, I discount my own writing.
Your email – may I call it a memoir? – also brought to mind my feelings after having gotten an undergraduate engineering degree with almost no liberal arts courses. Toward the end of our degree year, we grads used to laugh at ourselves and say, “Yesterday I couldn’t even spell Inginer, and now I are one.” Technical whizzes that we were, I think we felt shame in sensing that in our choice of a professional degree, we’d missed out on something important that perhaps could never be replaced, a liberal arts education.
As to whether you are of a literal versus poetic bent, I’d hope that you don’t let your good professor’ analysis continue to shoehorn you into that singular category. I think that we all have both the analyst and poet in us.
You mentioned before that you’ve had the impulse to write about events in your life. I had the same impulse when I started trying the haibun form. For me, haibun is an attractive genre because the writing tends to be quite personal—autobiographical sketches if you will. In your case, reading West’s personal collection triggered your memory of your professor’s pronouncement and brought to mind not only your reaction as a student, but your present feelings about your writing abilities.
Writing memoirs (and other types of haibun) is about learning to recognize these sorts of signals as grist for the mill and imposing the discipline of putting pen to paper. Then there’s the revising, revising, revising, and, most important, wheedling editorial suggestions from colleagues who might be willing to serve as careful readers and say what they truly think. For me, the rewards are deeper insights into the life I’ve lived and creating pieces that can be shared with family and friends and perhaps even appreciated by readers we will never know.
About the Author
Ray Rasmussen resides in Edmonton, Canada. His haibun, haiga, haiku, articles and reviews have appeared in the major print and online haiku genre journals.
Ray presently serves as Encore editor for contemporary haibun online, and Technical Advisor for Drifting Sands Haibun. In the past, he has served as part of the editorial/technical teams for Notes from the Gean, Simply Haiku, A Hundred Gourds, the World Haiku Review and Haibun Today.
Ray’s Blog is “All Things Haibun” and his haiku-genres website is “Haiku, Haibun & Haiga.”