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Lyrical Passion Poetry E-Zine interviewed Michael Dylan Welch since he
is one of Raquel's favorite haiku poets. We'd like to share Michael
Welch's creative insight and spirit with other haiku writers and
aspiring haiku poets. We've also selected a few of his beautiful haiku
to inspire your writing. APRIL 2009 As I read in a few of your past interviews, you studied haiku for many years. What was it about haiku and Japanese short form poetry that drew you to learn about and write in this particular poetic style? I
learned of haiku in high school and began writing it (badly) then, and
kept writing it (badly) for almost ten years. The twenty-plus years
since then have been kinder. Like most students who learn haiku
superficially in school, all I knew was the idea of a syllable count.
It was a neat little bucket to put poetry in. In the years after I
first learned of haiku, I began to read books on Taoism and Zen and
encountered haiku in translation. I didn’t quite connect the dots that
these poems weren’t in the “prescribed” syllable count, let alone
understand why, but I enjoyed reading haiku more and more. Cor van den
Heuvel’s The Haiku Anthology (second edition, 1986) was a
revelation. I finally saw and internalized the understanding that
content mattered more than form, and that the traditional Japanese
pattern of counting sounds could not be duplicated in English by
counting syllables. The word “haiku” is three sounds, but two
syllables. One hundred yen is not equal to one hundred dollars. Yet
how many well-meaning teachers and textbooks, and even established
poets, have made this erroneous assumption that Japanese haiku count
syllables? This revelation about content over form immediately
liberated my haiku, and they instantly improved in quality. Quite
simply, I was no longer filling a bucket with seventeen apples. If you
keep apples in a bucket, they’re pretty useless. But apples are much
more enjoyable when you see them on the tree, in your hand, as
windfall, or in a freshly baked pie. This was when I started studying
haiku more earnestly, buying books devoted to haiku in translation, and
then books of criticism, as well as collections of original haiku in
English. More than twenty years ago, I repeatedly visited the Oriental
Bookstore (now closed) in Pasadena, California, spending several
hundred dollars on each visit, buying Blyth books and so much more. But
really, I never considered this “study.” Rather, it was a passionate
desire to learn more, to explore the history and examples of this
resonant poetry down through the centuries. It’s a passion to figure
out what makes a haiku tick. It’s an innate desire I would wish any
aspiring haiku poet to have.
I
was drawn to haiku because I’ve always been interested in writing short
poetry, even as a child. As I’ve said before, for me, haiku is an
approach to infinity. By focusing on supremely brief or ephemeral
moments, haiku somehow captures the rightness of the whole universe.
There’s something metaphysical about haiku, yet also something
anti-metaphysical and paradoxical in its utter ordinariness. As Kerouac
once said, haiku should be as simple as porridge.
For
anyone interested in haiku, if it doesn’t come naturally to read haiku
and, in balance, to read about haiku, then perhaps haiku is just a
passing diversion. But literary haiku demands more of the writer than
the superficiality taught—and "mistaught"—in our schools. In
his book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell talks about how experts
typically practice their art or profession for at least 10,000 hours
before reaching mastery or expertise. How many haiku poets rush in and
expect success at a mere fraction of that devotion? I recall Jim Kacian
once saying that he wanted to have written a thousand haiku before
sending any out for publication. I usually sit on my own haiku for at
least a year, sometimes several years, before sending them out. The
space in time gives me fresh eyes to look at my own poems objectively,
and to be more selective in what I send out. There’s no hurry. One of
my favorite quotations on haiku is by French philosopher Roland
Barthes, from Empire of Signs. He says that “haiku
has this rather phantasmagorical property: that we always suppose we
ourselves can write such things easily.” The best haiku requires
discipline and patience, and I think some of that discipline and
patience comes from a careful reading and study of the genre, from
questioning your own assumptions.
When do you feel you write your best work? Could it be a particular mood or a specific time of day?
For
me, I don’t think there’s any particular time, or any particular best
way. Good haiku, for me, have come in all sorts of ways (I had an essay
about this in a recent issue of Haiku Canada Review). Driving
to work last fall, I was momentarily surprised to see a bicycle in the
ditch beside the road, and wondered if its owner had crashed. Then I
saw the cyclist a few feet beyond the ditch, picking bright red berries
from a thick bush. Many haiku come from momentary inspiration like
that, but really the poem came slightly later, as I reflected
on this experience, trying to put it into words. As Wordsworth said,
poetry is the spontaneous overflow
of powerful emotion recollected in tranquility. A key word in this
definition, which also applies to haiku, is the word “recollected.”
Even if it’s just a few seconds later, we have to process experience,
to recall and re-form the experience. What matters is not the immediacy
of experience, but its vibrancy. Thus good haiku can come from very old
memories or from recent ones. All haiku is history. But it’s history
brought alive as a sort of “present intense.”
I
don’t believe, by the way, that haiku has to be inspired only by
personal experience. Within certain limitations, the imagination can
be a suitable source of inspiration, too. That’s haiku heresy to some
people, but I think what matters most is how authentic the poem feels
to the reader, regardless of its source of inspiration. If
some people are less prolific with their haiku, it could be that they
force an unnecessarily narrow restriction onto their sources of
inspiration. Of course,
the right process makes for good product, if you want to think of haiku
that way. But when we read finished poems, the “product,” it should not
matter to us one bit how the poem might have been inspired.
Upon
researching Japanese short form poetry, I notice that there are very
talented American haiku and tanka writers. If you could name one modern
haiku writer in America that you admire greatly, who would that writer
be? Why?
It
would seem unfair of me to name just one at the expense of others. And
at times, I’ve admired different writers because of what I needed to
learn at the time. At other times, I may have happened to see more of a
particular poet’s work, and grew to appreciate it. But over the years,
I would say poets such as Marlene Mountain, Garry Gay, Cor van den
Heuvel, George Swede, Ebba Story, Christopher Herold, Fay Aoyagi, and
Carolyn Hall have all particularly moved me, and continue to do so with
regularity. Even this list of names leaves off poets who I also greatly
enjoy, such as John Stevenson, Lee Gurga, Ferris Gilli, Peggy Willis
Lyles, LeRoy Gorman, and so many more. In the past, too, I particularly
enjoyed Nick Avis, Adele Kenny, and Alexis Rotella. And Jerry Kilbride.
I think what makes them all succeed is a sort of authenticity, an
honesty that trusts the sharing of the self. Voice comes naturally.
Each poet has a way of seeing the world in his or her unique way, and
we relate to individual poems where we are able to recognize the same
world, or where we are shown the world we know in a previously unknown
way. Because each person’s voice and perspective is unique, I believe
that haiku will have a never-ending potential for personal
self-expression.
If you could describe your haiku / tanka poetry with one word, what would that word be?
I
don’t think I could do that, nor do I think it would provide anything
useful to readers, to be honest, because it too easily narrows down a
person’s poetry. Some poems are pizza dough, others are mushrooms or
pepperoni. I consider myself a hopeful and optimistic person, and I’d
pick the word “hope” for myself, but not necessarily for my poems.
Hope, for me, enables me to feel joy at every turn, and haiku are
ultimately a poem of joy, even when they celebrate dark subjects. This
joy leads to gratitude, too (I am reminded that Sam Hamill used
“Gratitude” as the title of one of his poetry books). In an interview with The Paris Review,
former United States poet laureate Billy Collins once remarked that “a
very deep strain of existential gratitude . . . runs through a lot of
poetry. It’s certainly in haiku. Almost every haiku says the same
thing: ‘It’s amazing to be alive here.’”
I’m
a closet Taoist, too, and like to feel that the universe is unfolding
and flowing as it should. I am reminded of the scene in the movie American Beauty that shows a white plastic bag floating, dancing, in front of a red brick wall (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDXjnW3nIWg&feature=related). As
the character says in the movie, “That’s the day I realized that there
was this entire life behind things, and this incredibly benevolent
force that wanted me to know there was no reason to be afraid, ever.”
After the main character dies, his voice over at the end of the movie
says that “It’s hard to stay mad, when there’s so much beauty in the
world. Sometimes I feel like I’m seeing it all at once, and it’s too
much. My heart fills up like a balloon that’s about to burst. And then
I remember to relax, and stop trying to hold onto it, and then it flows
through me like rain and I can’t feel anything but gratitude for every
single moment of my stupid little life.” That’s the joy—and hope—of
haiku.
I
am well aware that you have done several interviews about your haiku
poetry and many writers and readers study your work. Which one of your
haiku poems would you say is your most stunning piece of work? What
about your favorite tanka poem? I would
shy away from considering any of my haiku or tanka to be stunning.
That’s for others to decide, if at all. That’s such a personal choice,
too. What might strike one person as extraordinary might not strike
others quite the same way, or at least not at the same time. Rather
than thinking of any of my poems to be stunning, I would feel satisfied
if a given poem communicates to a few people. As an “unfinished” poem,
haiku requires a careful reader, and I think each poem finds its own
home. Each haiku, if it’s lucky, finds a unique reader who “finishes”
the poem with his or her individual interpretation. That’s how I feel
it should be, for readers. We each bring something with us to each
poem, balanced with consciously trying to empty ourselves to see what
the poem can bring us. It’s a wonderful dance, and each poem is a
personal invitation.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Michael Dylan Welch
dense fog—
I write your name on the airport window Frogpond 20:3 (December 1997) Additional publication: San Francisco Bay Guardian (24 March 1999); A Table for One (broadside, 1999); Open Window (online book, 2000); Haiku for Lovers (MQ Publications, 2003); Vox Populi: 2007 Seattle Poetry Festival Anthology (2007).
first snow . . . the children's hangers clatter in the closet Woodnotes 23 (Winter 1994)
Additional publication: Dogwood Blossoms #11 (Summer 1995, online); Shreve Memorial Library (Shreveport, La.) Electronic Poetry Network, December 30, 1997; Snapshots 4 (October 1998) 3rd Best of Issue; van den Heuvel, Haiku Anthology 3rd ed. (1999); Open Window (online book, 2000); Barlow and Lucas, eds., New Haiku (Snapshots Press, 2002), Presence #18 (September 2002); First Star (broadside, 2004)
toll booth lit for Christmas— from my hand to hers warm change Second Place, 1995 Henderson Contest (Haiku Society of America); Frogpond 18:4 (Winter 1995) Additional publication: Shreve Memorial Library (Shreveport, La.) Electronic Poetry Network, November 19, 1998; van den Heuvel, Haiku Anthology 3rd ed. (1999); Global Haiku (Iron Press and Mosaic Press, 2000); Modern Haiku 30:1 (Winter-Spring 1999), 32:1 (Winter-Spring 2001), and 35:1 (Winter-Spring 2004); Presence 12 (August 2000); Tagged with Ribbons (broadside, 2002)
relaxing my arm butterfly on the bull's-eye Third Place, 2005 Drevniok Award (Haiku Canada) (published in results flyer, 2006) Additional publication: Bullseye (broadside, 2005)
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