Haiku
for Sports Fans
I
have touched before on how Haiku has become part of English language poetry and
that one of the ways that we can see this is through popular Haiku. There is a lot of popular Haiku published
these days on every conceivable topic.
And this demonstrates, I think, how the 5-7-5 rhythm has become a part
of English language poetry.
One
of the topics that popular Haiku focuses on is sports. Sports are a major concern for a high
percentage of people and so it makes sense that the intersection of sports and
Haiku would generate Haiku on this topic.
A recent example of this is Five
Seven Five Sports: 2012 in Haiku – Language of the Games, by Andrew Hanson.
I
found this collection to be intriguing.
It is distinctive in that the Haiku in this volume all consist of syllabic,
5-7-5, Haiku stanzas: that is to say that each entry has 5-7-5 stanzas, of
various lengths, ranging from 1 to 14 stanzas. The emergence of the Haiku
stanza is yet a further indication of how deeply Haiku has sunk roots into
English poetic culture.
In
the past I have been aware of Haiku stanzas only by famous practitioners of
poetry such as Richard Wilbur. So I was
pleasantly surprised to find the Haiku stanza form in popular Haiku as
well. I take this as evidence that the
5-7-5 rhythm of Haiku is strong enough to create its own variations.
Hanson’s
book is a major undertaking. It is done
as a calendar of sports events for the year 2012. Each day of the year there is an entry for
some sporting event that occurred on that day.
Thus there are 366 Haiku stanzas (2012 was a leap year), one for each
day of the year. The stanzas are of
actual sporting events that were held on that particular day. So for sports fans who also happen to like
Haiku, this is a fantastic volume. It is
a record in Haiku stanzas of an entire year of specific sporting events.
As
mentioned above, the stanzas range from 1 to 14 verses. The sports events that are covered consist of
both college and professional competitions.
In addition a wide range of types of sports are touched on including
baseball, basketball, golf, hockey, tennis, etc. It is an amazingly complete record of the
2012 sports season.
Hanson’s
Haiku are all in the 5-7-5 traditional syllabic format. For the most part, Hanson’s lineation is
based on grammar; each line is a grammatical unit. Here is the entry for August 5:
Human
lightning bolt
Running
for independence
Usain
in London;
41st
long stride,
With
head leaning for the gold –
Olympic
record;
Unstoppable
force
Strikes
across the stadium –
Black,
gold, and green cape.
At
times, Hanson uses poetic devices such as alliteration. Here is an example from March 31:
Kansas
moves forward,
Inbound
to the title game,
Foes
failing to foul.
Line
3 is nicely alliterative.
And
here are the stanzas for October 30:
Checking
into game,
Allen
taps KG’s shoulder –
No-look
pass on bench . . .
On
broken-down play,
A
drift behind Celtic’s back –
Ray
buries big 3 . . .
Shot
clock running down,
Ray
squares in replacement’s face –
Soft
Miami bank . . .
Ringing
D-Wade’s neck,
Rondo,
too far behind, fouls –
A
heated finish.
The
non-sports fan, like myself, will miss much of the action. Even the more casual sports fan, I suspect,
may have to look up some of the names. Hanson names players and strategies with the
assumption that the reader will understand whom or what he is referring
to. But for the dedicated sports fan,
like my older brother, I think these stanzas will be readily accessible. So these are specialized Haiku stanzas
written for a particular audience.
And
I have found that this is often the case with popular Haiku. The Haiku by Ryan Mecum, whose Haiku are
focused on the horror film genre, assume that the reader knows the specifics of
werewolves, vampires, and zombies. In
other words, Mecum’s popular Haiku are written for a knowledgeable audience in
a specific field. Likewise, Hanson’s
sports Haiku are written for people who are already soaked in sports; the kind
of person who readily recites sports statistics, knows famous games and players,
and is familiar with the rules governing various sports in detail.
But
even if you are not a sports fan, this collection is worth looking at. It is a good example of the Haiku Stanza and
how the form of the stanza can tell a brief story. All of these entries tell a story, a story
about a game won or lost. In other
words, these are narratives, condensed narratives, but nonetheless narratives,
often with the main characters named. As
a Haiku poet, the tendency is to avoid narrative and instead focus on bare description. So Hanson’s Haiku stanzas are a good
teaching, or guide, on how to use the Haiku form in a narrative context. Even a single stanza entry has a narrative
context. Here is the one for April 7:
Sergio
beckons
Birdie
brother on the twelfth –
Two
roaring Amens.
The
integration of story-telling into Haiku has not been undertaken in a
significant way by the English Language Haiku community. It is here, I feel, that Hanson’s work
significantly expands the range of Haiku topics. So even if sports is not of significant
interest to you, if you are interested in Haiku, its scope, its range of
subject matter, I think this collection has a lot to offer. In closing, here is one I particularly
enjoyed, it is for April 26:
Patented
headband –
Cloned
this night by Wolves teammates –
Absorbs
one more blow;
A
charge drawn and called,
One
final substitution,
A
bench full of hugs;
Head
tap from the coach
Prompts
removal of symbol,
Towel
over head;
Fourteen
years of work
Coming
out Brad Miller’s eyes –
Bittersweet
liquid.
**
Five
Seven Five Sports: 2012 in Haiku –
Language
of the Games
By
Andrew Hanson
ISBN:
9781481714419
$23.95
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