The Moon as Companion

The Moon as Companion

Susan August has written four books of Haiku that I have previously reviewed.  I find her work well crafted and a delight to read.  August covers a wide range of topics in a crisp, no frills style.  Here is one of her Haiku that I particularly enjoy:

walking late at night

in a city far from home

the moon is shining

(Haiku Applecart, Susan August, page 26)

Again, notice the sparseness of the style.  There are no modifiers, no adjectives or adverbs, in the Haiku.  The lineation is straightforward: each line is a grammatical unit.  Line 1 is a verb phrase.  Line 2 is a prepositional phrase.  Lines 1 and 2 lead up to Line 3 which is a simple sentence.  There is a word used in the Quaker tradition that, I think, describes the esthetics of this Haiku: the word is ‘Plain’.  If you go into an old Quaker Meeting House there are no decorations, no icons or statues, not even a pulpit or cross.  All you will find are rows of wooden benches.  This is ‘Plain’.  It means simple, unadorned.  This Haiku reminds me of that kind of Plain presence.  Plain as applied to Haiku style refers to a lack of figurative language; there are no metaphors, similes, or other poetic techniques.  The Haiku does not rhyme or use metrics.  The only determiner of lineation is grammar, which is used effectively and is sufficient for clarity.

The line count is the classic 5-7-5 of traditional Haiku and the count feels completely natural to the English language.  The Haiku seems to arise effortlessly out of an English language context.

August’s Haiku uses the technique of pivot where Line 2 is kind of a hinge.  Reading Lines 1 and 2:

walking late at night

in a city far from home

We have a simple statement of an activity.

Reading Lines 2 and 3:

in a city far from home

the moon is shining

We have another simple statement, a simple observation.

Line 2 functions to unite the two parts of the Haiku.

Notice also what is left out: the city is not named and the phase of the moon is not explicitly referenced.  In traditional Haiku from Japan, where a Saijiki is used, this would be a Fall seasonal Haiku.  This is because when the word ‘moon’ is used it is automatically used as a Fall Season Word, unless the Haiku explicitly says otherwise.  The moon of the Haiku, or its energy, fits the Fall season, and I’m willing to go along with the traditional attribution, though I don’t know if August intends it that way.  As a westerner she may have wanted to be deliberately ambiguous about the season.  Either way, it is effective.

Also left out is any description of the person who is walking late at night.  Is the person male or female?  What is their age?  Why are they in a city far from home?  To visit family?, for work?, to give a talk?, perhaps they plan to move?, perhaps they are starting a new career or going to college?  All of these questions remain open in the presence of this bare description of an act.

This Haiku is amazingly open-ended and it is that open-endedness that allows the reader to enter into it.  Each reader will fill in the Haiku with details, but those details will differ for different readers.  In addition, those details will change for a single reader over time.

I enjoy the way the Haiku moves from the individual person to the celestial in a stepwise manner.  Line 1, ‘walking late at night’, is about a person.  Line 2, ‘in a city far from home’, is the larger setting, the city, in which the walking occurs.  Line 3 expands the setting of the Haiku further by noting the presence of the moon.  So in each line the Haiku moves outward, expanding the context; moving from an individual concern to a celestial dimension.  This is done so simply, so naturally, that the reader does not feel that the movement is forced or manipulated.  It is very skillful.

I also a feel a kind of resolution in this Haiku.  The movement to the celestial presence of the moon unites the individual walking through the city with the people who are still at home.  The individual is far from home, but the moon in the sky is shared by the person walking and by those who still remain at home.  They share the moon and so the moon becomes, in this Haiku, a companion and a dispeller of loneliness.

It is the sparseness of a Haiku like this that allows us to return to it; for each time we come back to it we can find new possibilities, and new ways to explore its possibilities.