Ludmila Balabanova
Between Poetry & Puzzle
Ambiguity in contemporary haibun
Photo by Alexas Fotos. Courtesy of Pexels.
In 2015 David Cobb identified two main forms of haibun: nikki (“a few hundred words of prose wed to one or two haiku,” similar to a diary entry) and kikōbun (“a travel journal”). “So far,” he said, “the most haibun composed in English are nikki, “especially the vogue type with a single haiku at the end, [in which] the role of the haiku is limited to some kind of summation.”1
A decade later, haibun writers have developed new directions for the haibun. Emerging structures include the “burning haibun”2—a series of erasures that, to date, sometimes seems like a play that is more fun for the author than the reader—and “braided” haibun, in which the lines of a haiku are broken apart and interspersed between prose, creating at least four “webs” of connections.3 The style of prose can also vary, from classical poetry in verse form to text that relies on an intriguing plot, as in fiction. And, rather than the nikki’s “few hundred words,” today’s haibun can vary in length from a few pages, with haiku scattered among the prose, to a single sentence.
But even a “micro” haibun preserves the most important quality of the form: the resonance between haiku, prose, and title. This resonance is expressed in as few words as possible, thus coming closest to the essence of the haikai style. In recent years, that relationship between those three elements has become more and more vaguely implied. Haibun comes from a culture that highly encourages intuitive perception; the simplicity, even to some extent the “ordinariness” of haiku, contrasts with the poetic charge of the insights perceived. This increasing ambiguity—which I see as a positive trend—continues that tradition. “A Habit”4 by Susan Yavaniski offers an example.
A Habit
Surrendering its length
to the sea wind:
her black hair.The way she has always walked, with her eyes fixed upon the earth, has yielded many things, including a trove of abandoned hair elastics in perfect condition. Utilitarian, frugal, eco-conscious, she brings them home, washes them, and reuses them in her own hair, which she routinely restrains. Still, there’s a side of her that sees in these bands a message, an invitation from some secret sorority of women and girls, who on city streets and mountain trails, in farm fields and in parking lots, on subways and in grocery stores, have pulled out the ties holding their ponytails, buns, and braids, and freed the length of their hair to the wind, and the sun, and the weather.
dawn
a fairy circle bursts
from the dew(Note: The poem in italics is by Santoka Taneda, translated by William Scott Wilson)
This is a good example of a haibun that leaps from the simple and the ordinary to the essential and the significant. The title suggests routine and limitation, and the first sentences of the prose continues this theme by introducing specific elements in tension with each other. The line “with her eyes fixed upon the earth” fixes one side of the opposition: the earthly; the practical; the utilitarian. That first sentence also contains the most important image, the “hair elastic,” the constricting limitation of her life and personality. Such an ordinary and insignificant “female object,” which she herself searches for and finds. It serves as the main metaphor, along with the hair—the other side of the opposition—which never stops growing. This connection is implied through Santoka’s quoted haiku, which equates “her black hair” with the ever gushing, unstoppable life within her, a life that she herself tightens and limits. The message of the closing haiku points to a new beginning through the image of the dawn. The reappearance of the circle is interesting, but the circle of dew carries other signs – of purity, of transience, of the possibility of always going beyond. And if we go back to the title again, what is this elastic that tightens our personality and does not allow us to follow “the wind, and the sun, and the weather…” Isn’t that the routine? Isn’t that the habit?
This ambiguous relationship between title, prose, and poem can also be seen in contemporary tanka prose. Here is an example Jenny Ward Angyal titled “Beauty & the Beast.”5
Beauty & the Beast
Half awake, I glimpse the hummingbird feeder between the slats of the kitchen blinds. A long, dark object, bulging at the bottom, dangles from the feeder. On closer inspection, the thing morphs into a black rat snake, tail wound around the syrup jar, hanging head down and motionless. An engorged throat and a pair of wingtips sticking out of the corners of the mouth give the snake’s head the air of some monstrous chimera. I step out onto the deck for a closer look. Instantly, the snake uncoils, dropping into the flower bed like a ribbon of dark silk, and vanishes from sight.
the river
that has no name
flows
through wing & fang—
shapeshifting clouds
The title conveys the entire metaphorical world of a very famous work—a fairy tale familiar to everyone, regardless of language or cultural heritage. Such connections with other works are often used in haibun, more or less successfully. Here we have the fable establishing a metaphor that works on many levels: beauty and the beast in nature; beauty and the beast in human relationships; beauty and the beast within us… The prose offers a very strong poetic image: a bird swallowed by a snake. This cruel opposition in nature is the outer layer of reality that prepares us for the deeper insights presented in the tanka poem. Here, each poetic image asks a question, the answers to which lie in different layers of reality. What is “the river that has no name”? Is it the personal life of each of us? Our common path as humanity? The evolution of the universe? Or a process in which creation and destruction are opposing and complementary forces? The idea of the poem is going beyond opposition, getting closer to the principles of yin-yang philosophy, implied by the last line “shapeshifting clouds”. Thus, the theme set in the title is taken to a higher level beyond the happy ending of all fairy tales.
According to Roland Barthes, “Poetry usually signifies the ‘indefinite,’ the ‘vague,’ the ‘inexpressible’ … it is the class of unclassifiable impressions.”6 The deepening of ambiguity in haibun and tanka prose aligns well with Barthes’ observation, and this trend will undoubtedly continue. However, writers must be careful. Occasionally, we read haibun where the ambiguity is created in a completely artificial way, like a puzzle designed specifically to make the author’s point difficult to understand. That type of vagueness and indecipherability is not what Barthes meant. Rather, poetry should convey those innermost truths that are impossible to verbalize. It is a test of a poet’s talent to find that narrow zone where the message oscillates, reaching the reader without being clearly spoken by the author. Haibun and tanka prose will continue to develop in the coming years, and writers will undoubtedly experiment further (a characteristic of postmodern Western literature, with its desire for collage, the mixing of genres, and the birth of hybrid forms). But whatever trends and experiments emerge, that reliance on the reader’s intuition will always remain at the heart of haibun. After all, I doubt that someone going to a desert island and only being able to take one piece of music, would choose John Cage’s “4’33”.”
Notes
- David Cobb, “Potentials of Two Different Haibun Forms: Nikki and Kikōbun”, Kyso Flash Issue 3: Spring 2015.
- A tripartite form consisting of a prose poem, an erasure of that poem, and a further erasure to create a short, haiku-like poem. It was invented in 2017 by torrin a. greathouse, a poet and essayist who teaches in the low-residency MFA program at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington. See “Writing from the Ashes: On the Burning Haibun” by torrin a. greathouse, Poetry Foundation, 7/3/2023.
- For more detailed information about braided haibun, see “Plaiting Poem & Prose: The Art of Braided Haibun,” by Rich Youmans, cho 18.2.
- “A Habit” won first place in the haibun category of the 2024 San Francisco International Competition for Haiku, Senryu, Tanka, Rengay, and Haibun, and was reprinted in contemporary haibun 20.
- “Beauty & the Beast” originally appeared in cho 20.3 and was reprinted in contemporary haibun 20.
- Roland Barthes, L’Empire des signes (Swiss, Ed. D’Art Albert Skira, 1970).
About the Author
Ludmila Balabanova, a computer engineer with a Ph.D. in literature, has published 10 poetry collections (including three haiku books and a haibun book) and a book of criticism (Haiku: A Dragonfly under the Hat: The Power of the Unsaid, 2014). Her awards include a Touchstone Distinguished Book Award and an HSA Merit Book Award. She lives in Sofia, Bulgaria.