WHAT’S IN THREE LINES

Painting by Paul E. Marquart

Spring inspires most of us in various ways—perhaps the mild weather causes us to write poetry, paint, or plant flowers. The advent of spring inspires me to search my shelves for books about haiku, those three elegant lines of aesthetic verse written by the great Japanese poets. The major ones include Basho, Buson, and Issa, for whom haiku was a way of life, sometimes, as in Basho’s case, a wandering way of life that required focused attention to details of nature, primarily flowers, trees, mountains, lakes…

When I looked for books about this art form, I discovered Natalie Goldberg’s observations about three-line verses and her visits to Japan to study haiku further in a book entitled Three Simple Lines. However, Sam Hamill’s Pocket Haiku, published by Shambala Press in 1995, actually ended up in a pocket of my Covid-wear (slouch pants). The book satisfied my envee for haiku and sent me outdoors several times yesterday.

Those three lines of an art form in poems by the aforementioned Japanese poets—Basho, Buson, and Issa—peaked in the 1700s and spanned only 100 years of Japanese literature. This brief period brought listeners and readers poignant and lasting metaphors in three short lines of 200 poems in Hamill’s translation. The book is small enough to fit into a pocket of slouch pants, robes, or blue jeans, any casual wear that allows haiku readers to relax and think about images of beauty.

Most contemporary poets fail to compose poignant insights in three lines of verse, and Hamill cites Gary Snyder, Richard Wright, and Richard Wilbur as leading the enlightened few to produce memorable haiku.

 

Many wannabe poets attempt to write in this form but fail to explode the top of my head, metaphorically, as Emily Dickinson describes her feeling from reading good poetry. The work of a master does not reflect brief surface thoughts but records a single moment of deep spiritual contemplation.

When I look at my brother Paul’s painting above, I think of haiku and wish that I could write a “three-liner” that captures a single moment of appreciation for this lovely piece of art. I dare not! However, I allow Basho to say what I feel:

Come out to view

the truth of flowers blooming

in poverty.

Painting by Paul Emerson Marquart, photo by Lori Marquart