Starting soon, DailyHaiga will feature a special series of haiga by Ray Rasmussen, written in “Issa” style.
Ray comments on his work:
“don’t worry spiders
I keep house
casually
Kobyashi Issa, trans. R. Hass
This haiga series is the result of several recent stimuli: 1) a trip to Eastern Canada for canoeing and hiking in Ontario’s Algonquin Provincial Park’s fall colours; 2) an ongoing infatuation with Issa’s haiku – because of him, I find myself talking at times to flowers, insects and even canoes … as you’ll see; and, 3) my recent reading of the Letters” of Horace Wapole, English art historian, man of letters, antiquarian and politician. In one to Anne, Countess of Ossory, on 16 August 1776, he first stated his oft-quoted epigram, “This world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel.”
All of this led me to produce a series of haiga focused, in part, on beauty, but in part on that unique mix of humour and pathos for which Issa is famous. In doing so, two cautions came to mind: Who am I to think that I can write like Issa? How can I abide being a copy-cat? In answer, I don’t think my haiku will stand up to Issa’s, and I do think that a certain amount of derivative writing has a place in every writer’s education – through it, you gain a deeper appreciation of a great poet’s work. Cor van den Heuvel offers support for this position: “The writing of variations on certain subjects in haiku, sometimes using the same or similar phrases (or even changing a few words of a previous haiku), is one of the most interesting challenges the genre offers a poet and can result in refreshingly different ways of ‘seeing anew” for the reader. This is an aspect of traditional Japanese haiku which is hard for many Westerners, with their ideas of uniqueness and Romantic individualism, to accept.” (Cor van den Heuvel, The Haiku Anthology: Haiku and Senryu in English, New York: W.W. Norton, 1999, p. ix-x).
don’t fret haijin
I write haiku
clumsily”
Ray Rasmussen, February 2013
