HAIKU'S METACOUP : Basho - The Poet of the Banana Tree Hut

Author’s Notes: Wishing to return the 'favour' of a review I visited one poet's page to find it was all ‘Haiku’! - A quick bit of research was called for. The website “In the Moonlight a worm” was a

particularly helpful and informative website. Especially helpful with many examples given from Basho himself.   - That done - and assuming I understand the basic idea – I composed and published my first ‘deliberate’ Haiku...Having digested the “data” a bit more I thought  I would makes some notes in poet form... They may be of use to someone thinking about Haiku but like me ‘knows nothing”…Thanks also to Jane Reichhold for her extremely lucid and informative article “Metaphor in Basho’s Haiku” (ahapoetry.com)...

                                          

Recently I had pause to consider in brief the Basho pattern poem 

Home in the East and from the hand of Japan’s Master poet man.

Banyan tree rooted by students kind, in front yard of his cabin built

So he would have a place to stay and not be obliged to pay any rent.

And he became by popular consent, The poet of the banana tree Hut.

A keen observer of Nature’s bounty he lacquered it with respect right deep

Up to the very day of his death. Many of his works do ‘focus’ on Gaia’s

Turning seasons. Autumn in particular, seems to have been a favourite of

This character and other things, dragon flies, crickets sour chestnuts,

Worms and spider’s crying in the wind.

His expressions intent was to distil,

And snap the existential moment and convey facsimiles part to the

Skin, eye, ear, heart and hand. Instructive in layered ways, their

Underlying structure universal, cross culture clearly they do span.

That’s ‘Haiku’ to you and to me. Its bipolar tripartite pattern clear for all to see.  

Its intricacies, as in the Western mind, part contributed by the reader,

Can surprise, inform and comment on the condition of man, and delight

With the delicacies of reflection’s crucibled titration eased on the heart.

And, as with Poetry tree in the West there’s talk of forms, oft conceived

As antithetical, the ‘strict’ and the ‘free’. Some even sail on to speak of

What is eyed upon and of what is Best. Nevertheless, ‘Classically’

Seventeen syllables are embroidered in sections and apportioned out in lots of three.

Five and Five equal either side of the Seven in balancing swing

Usually written in Kanji the language of Japan, and patterned apiece after every

Day warp and woof of folk’s speech; one might be forgiven for thinking that, for

Them it’s much easier to understand.

Seventeen syllables then, cut in two sections.

As to where the cut or break occurs, for that

A signal clear such as a comma, exclamation mark, dash, etcetera.   

As for the works of Basho its said an early one concerned, not the early bird,

But instead the evening rain and how of it, it was the basho who was first to say

Said by some to be his most famous it might be called the crow, its metaphorical power magnificent.

It illustrates well the power of spiralled, reversed, double speak.

Of how crow alighting on autumn’s branch at dusk settles lightly calling to the night.

At the passing of the day into the Winter nights of Seth

Basho’s poem is there by popular behest.

It’s called the Poem of Death. What composure!

It speaks of dreams roaming on his Journey across parched moors of last breath.

And another, spoken just after, and more Intriguing still,

echoes the dreaming and the roaming of the moors and there it just ends!

Basho now under, Own Cherry Blossom Tree would, I think be pleased there.