Three Simple Lines: A Writer’s Pilgrimage into the Heart and Homeland of Haiku

The Makioka Sisters,

Any emotion one feels, pure and simple, moves, passes, if accepted. Earlier I was trying to dominate my confusion, make it clear. Haiku reminds me that it clears on its own, with patience, over time.

Zen Waves, in which each chapter illuminates a single Basho haiku.

Follow your inner moonlight. Don’t hide the madness. ALLEN GINSBERG

Really, this is how we learn to write. We fall in love with an author and realize we are what we love. No separation.

He also told us that the formal five syllables, then seven, then five, often taught in Western schools, does not necessarily work in English. In Japanese each syllable counts. They don’t have the, an, that, those articles of speech, so he encouraged us not to worry about the count if we write or translate haiku.

Only make sure the three lines make the mind leap. “The only real measure of a haiku,” Allen told us that one hot July afternoon, “is upon hearing one, your mind experiences a small sensation of space” — he paused; I leaned in, breathless — “which is nothing less than God.”

The piercing cold — in our bedroom stepping on my dead wife’s comb BUSON

Writing Down the Bones