What Do You See?

What Do You See?

For over thirty years I was a diligent practitioner and student of Buddhism. Buddhism is a huge subject, covering a vast array of practices, traditions, and interpretations. Here I want to focus on one school of interpretation referred to as “Mind-Only”.

The basic idea in the mind-only school of interpretation is that people bring with them their own conceptual understandings to whatever they encounter and this literally alters their perception. The result is that what we perceive is, actually, not just the object in front of us, but also we perceive our own mind shaping the appearance.

This seems like a bewildering position to hold, but it isn’t, I think, that difficult to understand. The key to gaining access to what the mind-only school is referring to is to pick a really gross example. A good starting point is the avowed bigot; say someone who is strongly racist or has an extreme animosity towards some religious group. Upon meeting the object of their dislike, such a person literally cannot perceive the human being standing in front of them; instead what they perceive is their own mind, churning out categories of animosity. If you have ever been the object of such distorted perception you know exactly what mind-only means.

Another example that most people can access is the borders between countries. I grew up with the division between East and West Germany. This border was heavily militarized and great nations vowed to destroy each other over the maintenance of that border. Yet a few decades ago the border vanished and is now simply a part of history. Where did it come from? It came from the human mind, and when the human mind no longer had an interest in maintaining the border, it vanished. Note that I am not saying the border was non-existent. Mind-only interpretation is not solipsistic. What is being pointed out is the power of mind to generate distinctions that seem to have an objective basis in the world when their actual basis is entirely the human mind.

I would like to apply this kind of analysis to how different people view a poetic tradition, particularly a poetic tradition that is new or foreign. Specifically, I am going to take the tradition of Japanese Tanka. As someone interested in syllabic poetry when I look at the Tanka tradition I see a poetic tradition that has maintained its syllabic integrity over 1400 years of written history. What I see as the singular distinguishing feature of Tanka is the syllabic count of 5-7-5-7-7. Everything else about Tanka is secondary to the syllabic contours of the Tanka tradition because it is only the syllabic count which has been maintained over the centuries; other aspects of the Tanka tradition have come and gone, but the count has remained the same.

Because I bring a strong interest in syllabics and the application of syllabics to English poetry, I was surprised to discover that hardly any of the self-identified Tanka poets in the U.S. have even a slight interest in the syllabic structure of Tanka. Opening an American Tanka journal, I had the distinct feeling that I was simply reading free verse. I couldn’t find anything in the journals that distinguished the offerings from the free verse one finds in countless poetry magazines across the country. Syllable count in these journals is all over the map, from counts as low as ten syllables, to long counts of forty or more. Lineation was also chaotic, just like what one finds in standard free verse. No attention to count was discernible.

What baffled me was how it was possible for a poetic tradition with a written history of over 1400 years, and whose written history was clearly formal, a tradition that was based on a closely regulated, counted, line, could be used as a basis for what was obviously a free verse approach and that dismissed the idea of a regulated line. I still find that amazing.

But when I thought about it some more, I realized that what many American poets who encounter Tanka bring with them is a strong background in free verse. Unlike me, they are not interested in syllabics and a regulated line. Just as I bring with me my own interests and focus on syllabic verse, so other poets bring with them a set of different interests based on their own background and approach to poetry, which in the case of most American Tanka poets is free verse, meaning verse with an unregulated, that is to say uncounted, line.

So what does an American free verser see when they look at Tanka? I think what free versers see when they look at Tanka is a set of techniques that have become prominent in the Tanka tradition. I’ll use one example; the pivot. Many Tanka are structured in two parts which are connected through the use of a pivot line. The pivot line simultaneously functions as the last line of part 1 and the first line of part 2. This technique allows for a short poem like the Tanka to become richly complex as the two parts both interact with each other and also pull in somewhat different directions. Here’s an example where I use this pivot technique:

Futurescape

On the silent street
A deer quietly grazes
Among the ruins
All the windows are hollow
Open to the moonlit wind

Part 1 contains lines 1 through 3:

On the silent street
A deer quietly grazes
Among the ruins

Part 2 contains lines 3 through 5:

Among the ruins
All the windows are hollow
Open to the moonlit wind

What the reader feels here is that Part 1 is a complete image and Part 2 is also a complete image. Together they make a complex set that both re-enforce and tug at each other. This particular example is mild; the two images feed into each other easily. Stronger usage occurs when the pivot line sets up a stronger contrast between parts 1 and 2.

Here’s another example where the usage of pivot occurs several times:

The Tree Branch

The tree branch falling
As I looked out my window
I saw you walking
Farther and farther away
A swan flies over a field

Line 2 functions as a pivot. Part 1 is

The tree branch falling
As I looked out my window

Part 2 is

As I looked out my window
I saw you walking

The pivot of Line 2 serves to complete the image of Line 1 and at the same time starts the image completed in Line 3. There is a perceptual shift, a shift in focus, from the tree branch to the person walking.

Line 4 is also a pivot. Part 1 is

As I looked out my window
I saw you walking
Farther and farther away

Part 2 is

Farther and farther away
A swan flies over a field

Line 4 completes the image started in Line 3 and begins the image started in Line 4. Again there is a shift in perception and focus as in the first pivot line; here it is from someone walking to a swan flying.

In addition, Line 3 is a pivot for Lines 1 through 3, and Lines 3 through 5:

The tree branch falling
As I looked out my window
I saw you walking

And

I saw you walking
Farther and farther away
A swan flies over a field

In this particular Tanka the use of pivots weaves multiple images together, yet each image directs the focus of the reader in a slightly different direction and towards other objects.

Now this technique of pivot, which is a strong part of the Tanka tradition, is a technique which does not depend on form; that is to say as a technique the usage of a pivot can be applied outside of a Tanka context. It can be applied to free verse or it can be applied to non-Tanka formal verse (it is sometimes used in Haiku, for example).

Which brings me to my point here; if someone is a poet who is committed to free verse, who sees the world of poetry through free verse concepts, then it makes sense that what they will find intriguing about the Tanka tradition are techniques, such as the pivot, which can be absorbed into a free verse context. When I clearly understood this my sense of being baffled about American Tanka journals fell away. Just as my own interests in syllabic verse have shaped what I see in the history of Tanka, the interests of the free verse poet shape what the free verse poet perceives in the history of Tanka.

There have been some consequences for my own Tanka composition that flow from my focus on form. Because of my interest in syllabic verse, for me the singular feature of Tanka is its syllabic count and clear lineation. For this reason I don’t see any specific technique as definitive of Tanka. The consequence of this is that I often write Tanka that do not use a pivot; I refer to them as “unified Tanka”. By “unified” I mean that they present a single image, that they are not meant to have a pivot. Sometimes I use simple juxtaposition. By juxtaposition I mean two images placed side by side, but without a pivot line that belongs to both of the images. This preserves the two-part structure so often found in Tanka, but severs the structural link between the two parts. And in many cases the Tanka have no pivot or juxtaposition; they are simply a single image, event, or emotional depiction. Focusing on the syllabics of Tanka has freed me from any ties to a particular technique. From a syllabic perspective technique is secondary.

If, in contrast, syllabics is not of great interest, then technique moves into the foreground and what one looks for is the skilled usage of that technique; the pivot line is a favorite among free verse Tanka poets, but there are others as well.

What I’ve learned is that both are valid approaches to the Tanka tradition. We bring with us our own interests, focus, and understanding when we encounter something new, we bring with us our own minds. And what we find in this something new has resonances with our already formed views, interests, and curiosities.

So the question of which approach to Tanka on the part of English language poets is more accurate isn’t the right question. Both are accurate. Both use the Tanka tradition to nourish their own different approaches to poetry. It is a wonderful thing that the Tanka traditional is nourishing enough to enrich such disparate poetic expressions.