Dreaming Chickens

A couple of days ago mention was made here of a new book recently brought home. In December of last year Houghton Mifflin Harcourt released a small but beautiful book of “stories” by Lou Beach titled 420 Characters: Stories. The catch is, each of the stories in this book of 176 pages is limited to 420 characters, including letters, spaces and punctuation. They were each written as a status update on the author’s Facebook page.

Facebook status updates and numbers aside, the format of 420 Characters is jet fuel to a longtime personal attraction for a couple of reasons. It started with the discovery of an even shorter format in the style of Japanese haiku, a type of poem impressive for its three lines of seventeen syllables sparsely hinting at an unvoiced thought. There always seems to be more to it, that the reader is being encouraged to participate in filling in blanks toward the creation of a bigger picture. And then Nobel Laureate Kawabata Yasunari produced over the years a collection of stories ultimately called Palm of the Hand Stories. Most of those stories are a page long, the longest no more than three, and like the traditional haiku form, emphasize the power of reduced words in calling the reader to greater participation.

Lou Beach is in the same stream of style. Like the haiku poets he gives himself a goal of pitching a tiny story into its greatest arc within the space of 420 characters. Kirkus Reviews described Beach’s stories as: ‘An adroit experiment that marries linguistic restraint to literary cool.’ Within the small space prescribed, Beach writes about criminals, bimbos, animals, small town girls, divorcées, sentient objects and two dozen others acting out their moments in a mini-world that fronts for something much wider, much deeper. The reader jumps from the surreal to the lyrical, to the puzzling and bizarre, and then suddenly back to chickens who smoke cigarettes. Beach has such color and tone in his tiny palette of possibles that the reader is alternately dazzled, bumped, soothed and then slapped in the face by these stories that take up no more than a third of the page.

Lou Beach is an artist/illustrator, and now with the publication of 420 Characters: Stories, a writer. He passed his early years in Rochester, New York until the 60s led him to California where he has lived ever since, happily married to photographer Issa Sharp, with two children, a dog, a cat, a backyard full of cactus and an orange tree. Asked about himself, Beach says…“I was born on a mountaintop in Tennessee, killed me a bear when I was only three. No, wait..I was born in Germany of Polish parents, came to the US when I was only four, spent my youth in Rochester, New York, riding my bike, building snow forts, throwing chestnuts at the kid down the street. I was a fair student, no great shakes, disappointing several teachers by not realizing my “full potential.” Higher education was a two-year community college affair followed by a year of night school at a state university. I did not graduate or learn much (in class).

Below are five of the stories from 420 Characters.

‘The gunnysack hangs from the pommel, full of sparked ore. I let Shorty sip from the stream, long neck arching in the sun. There is a ghost in the cottonwood I sit under to reread your letters. It tries to sniff the pressed flowers you sent from the garden in Boston, but the scent is gone. The petals and paper, envelope, all smell like campfire now.’

•

‘Cheap and gaudy as jellybeans, hard as a jawbreaker. Candy Nelson sat on the bench in front of Jessups Hardware, filing her nails. Discomfited by yet another yeast infection, she crossed and uncrossed her legs, finally just opened them like a book, displaying to the illiterate Luther Choate, driving by, a page from heaven, causing him to lose control of his pickup and run over a red hound that was crossing the road.’

•

‘The nurse left. Ann’s eyes were closed so I dumped her meds into my shirt pocket, snapped it shut. I looked around the room, put her laptop in my backpack. I leaned over to give her a goodbye peck on the forehead. She smelled like her next bath was going to be in the Ganges. Her eyes flew open, she grabbed my wrist and said: “Ronnie, give me a smoke.”’

•

‘FOR-EV-UH. She had it tattooed in a little arc over her left boob, like a military patch. She’d punch me in the arm, punctuate each syllable, leave a blue mark. Told me that’s how long her love would last, shouted it out. After a few months she seemed distant, took off one night for Tulsa with the drummer from a hair band. I went to Skin’N’Ink, asked Mooney if he could make me a tattoo of a bruise, put it up on my arm.’

•

‘“Are you my mommy?” said the little blue egg. “No, dear. You are a plastic trinket full of sweets,” said the brown hen. “My baby is over there,” and she pointed to a pink marshmallow chick being torn apart and devoured by a toddler. The hen screamed and woke up, her pillow wet with sweat, the sheets twisted around her legs. “Christ, I hate that dream.” She reached for a smoke.’

•

420 Characters: Stories is a book that could be on anyone’s ‘Best’ list.

The Moon Flowered

Along with the calligraphy or brush writing of Japan that I found in library books many years ago and felt so drawn to, there were also the brief three line haiku poems that somehow, even in ignorance of their depth still captured my heart. I was moved by the sudden and momentary awareness on the poet’s part of a fleeting scene picked from the humdrum setting, the queer and unexpected observation of something as prosaic as a hat or dried field, a sitting bird, or buzzing mosquito. In the case of a seventeen syllable haiku poem the ordinary made luminous is its essence—observation colored by a skillful expression finding resonance in the reader’s experience. And in some ways my rushing off to live and work in Japan is owed in large part to the sensitivity I discovered in those poems.

Despite its apparent simplicity and brevity, haiku is not an especially easy poetic form to grasp without contemplation. While it is true that many of the short poems do strike an instant chord in the reader’s mind, most of them remain clouded by the constraints of form, rules and tradition. I will admit that I am inexperienced in the form as it is practiced in English and cannot say much about haiku poems written originally in that language. There are many who practice the writing of haiku in English and I would say nothing whatsoever to criticize or disparage those efforts; it is a worthwhile pursuit, and one that has produced a number of well-received collections.

Though the rule is broken by many Japanese writers of haiku, the traditional form is three lines of 5-7-5 syllables working out to seventeen in full form. To take a well-known example: fu-ru-i-ke-ya / ka-wa-zu-to-bi-ko-mu / mi-zu-no-o-to by Matsuo Bashô is composed of three lines totaling seventeen syllables. In English the poem is something like: Old pond / a frog jumps in / sound of water and in any language is a difficult example to fathom—though it does illustrate the traditional form. The picture above shows the poem written in Japanese.

By any standard, Matsuo Bashô is considered Japan’s favorite and most studied haiku poet. He was born in 1644 and lived a short life of only forty-nine years, but in that time completely reshaped the concept of the haiku form. In his twenties he wrote poems that strongly impressed his contemporaries, by his thirties he was considered a master and sought as a teacher, and by his forties tired of that, he embarked on a series of journeys, walking the roads of Japan recording his impressions in travel journals filled with haiku poems. He is revered today as an iconic figure in Japanese literature and no student in Japanese schools is unfamiliar with his name and at least a few of his more famous compositions.

I have chosen a handful of my own Bashô favorites to include here. The translations are by Robert Hass, and come from his book, The Essential Haiku.

First day of spring—

I keep thinking about

the end of autumn.

Withered bones

on my mind,

a wind-pierced body.

You’ve heard monkeys crying—

listen to this child

abandoned in the autumn wind.

The oak tree:

not interested

in cherry blossoms.

The winter’s sun—

on the horse’s back

my frozen shadow.

A cold rain starting

and no hat—

so?

A cicada shell;

it sang itself

utterly away.

In the fish shop

the gums of the salt-bream

look cold.

A field of cotton—

as if the moon

had flowered.

This last example is the poet’s death poem:

Sick on a journey,

my dreams wander

the withered fields.

The Color of Salade

The earliest form of poetry in Japan has at first reading the look of casual, off the cuff expression. This same characteristic is visible in much of modern and contemporary poems, with the impression of bare simplicity and unstudied form that hides or negates meaning beyond that of a momentary observance by the poet. But despite the camouflage that suggests quickly jotted words and lines, traditional Japanese poetry is a form fraught with rules of composition. Many of the modern poets have thrown off those rules, and consistent with the times and the idea of artistic freedom, produce poems in a style more familiar to Western readers. Ishikawa Takuboku is one modern Japanese poet responsible for putting the first cracks and breaks in the old rule book of poetic composition.

Safe bet to say that the Japanese poem most familiar to readers in Europe and the US is the haiku. It has even been adopted by a large number of non-Japanese poets, many of whom may never have even visited the country of origin. But then who says you have to visit Russia to learn how to make borscht? The haiku is basically a shortening of the older waka or tanka form of thirty-one syllables in five lines, a composition using only the first three lines of 5-7-5 syllables. This is a Japanese syllable count and has nothing to do with English translations or English originals. In this sense it is difficult to put a finger on the count, but here is an example of the longer waka showing a thirty-one syllable count:

HI-SA-KA-TA-NO (5) On this early day in spring

HI-KA-RI-NO-DO-KE-KI (7) When the radiance of the air

HA-RU-NO-HI-NI (5) breathes tranquility,

SHI-ZU-GO-KO-RO-NA-KU (7) Why should the cherry petals flutter

HA-NA-NO-CHI-RU-RA-N (7) With unsettled heart to earth

Syllable count was not the only tradition in early poetry. There are lists of words that were allowed for use and others that were not allowed. Seasonal words were important as well, and categories of words linked to others by association. Composition could at times be complicated by tradition.

Takuboku Ishikawa did not write haiku, but tanka, the thirty-one syllable poem. He lived at a time (1886-1912) when many of the old rules—cultural as well as literary—were being broken and he broke many of those rules himself. A major poet of the modern Meiji period of his country’s history he saw himself surrounded on all sides by innovation. Had he lived longer his influence would perhaps have been even stronger, still his poems show a spirit eager to break out of the established conventions of poetry. Ishikawa published his first book of poetry at the age of eighteen. He died from tuberculosis at twenty-six. The five poems below are from his collection, Sad Toys, published two months after his death in 1912.

Like some train across a wild waste

This agony

Now and then through my mind!

Recoiling

From a stethoscope—

As if some hidden thought were being pried loose.

Delightful

The color of salade!

Chopsticks in hand and yet—

Though I closed my eyes,

Nothing crossed my mind…

Only this emptiness on opening them again

All my past unreal, invented, made up—

Even that pretense

Gives no comfort to this mind!

Rabbits on My Mind

An old journal reminds me that January 1 of the past year was a morning of cold but fine weather in Tokyo. One year later a similar description could be applied to Florida, maybe a little warmer but another dazzling New Year’s Day.

To all those who have been faithful readers and friends—including those sometime readers as well, I thank you for the support and wish you a year’s allotment of contentment and realized dreams.

Here are two new year cards, past and present wishing all a Happy New Year. The card at the top is 2011, the year of the rabbit. Just below HAPPY NEW YEAR at the top of the card are qualities associated in myth and symbolism with rabbits.

The card at the bottom is another rabbit, this one from some years back, and includes a short poem. The three lines in the center are from top to bottom, right to left:

Fuyu zare ya

usagi no wataru

yamakage ni

The English is something like: In winter’s chill, the rabbit hops across a mountain cove

Studying Japanese calligraphy, scratching down inadequate haiku poems and sitting with an old grandmother who struggled with her student’s attempts at ink painting. Such were the days in 1987.

The Shaggy Poet

I’ve been digging around in boxes again. Yeah, boxes, those things that have become an icon of my existence the past four months.

Papers are starting to pile up as I continue to sort, which makes me think about getting a box-sized filing cabinet, something with folders to organize the papers. But other than papers, every now and then I pull out from a neglected box some curio or precious diamond that I had temporarily forgotten. That happened today when I uncovered a near antique wrapped in packing fluff at the bottom of one more box.

Once upon a time I loved art class, and not being a very good student otherwise, gave it my best in high school. Mrs Collier was a good art teacher, a memorable woman, and in retrospect someone I imagine was saved from a bohemian, or beatnik lifestyle by an unplanned marriage. I always felt she was more open-minded than her school colleagues. She made her classes enjoyable, relaxed and informative.

One month we were practicing drawing with pen and ink. I was amazed at the variety of textures possible. Trees were a favorite subject. But in an opposite direction, haiku-like drawings, spare lines against white also caught my fancy. Mrs Collier, I recall, never brought up Japanese sumi-e, or the emptiness of Japan’s haiku style.

So, the near antique-curio I uncovered earlier is the pen and ink drawing above (badly discolored). It was my homework project for the lessons and practice of using pen and ink. The model for the shaggy Napoleonic “poet” was a ceramic statue on the mantel in my boyhood home. In my greenness it never occurred to me to wonder who or what the statue stood for. I did no more than sit in front of the mantel and, in my own way, draw the statue. Mrs Collier praised my work, and awarded me one of my few A’s.

Years later, I discovered two particular arts of Japan, sumi-e and haiku, where empty space plays a big part. I tried my hand at sumi-e, taking lessons for a while, but never managed to get control of it.