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WHC Renku Seminar
Haikuforum Seminar on "Traditional" Renku in English
Session 3:  A Fox Circles, writing a shisan renku

Paul MacNeil

 



Imagine this situation: You are seated at a table with a chess board and a box of chess pieces. A man comes by and says, "Oh, chess -- can I play a game with you?" Assenting, you start to put pieces on the board, but your new companion has put his on the wrong squares, in the wrong order. You straighten out that his pawns indeed go in the front row and switch the king and queen. You offer him the first move, he lifts a bishop and places it in the center of the board.

Or this at a duplicate bridge table: The game's director has matched you with another partnerless player for the session. You are seated at the first table and play begins. Your opponents ask what system you play -- you both reply "just standard bridge." You then proceed to win the evening [hey, I can dream can't I? -- it's my story].

In the first case, a game cannot be played. One player knows no rules. In the second, two strangers can compete because they do know a common tradition of the game. In these belabored bits of fiction, lies a lesson about renku. Given a common understanding, a chess game can happen with an infinite variety of plays; so too with bridge -- and renku.


In the first "installment" I made more than a dozen short declarative sentences, one after the other. One was that renku is a game. It is. The next was that renku is an art form. It can be. The game of linking a pair of verses is over 1,000 years old in Japan. Basho and others of his time began to elevate haikai no renga and its first verse hokku (haiku) to the levels of literature. In my own theory of aesthetics, this is or can be Art, capital "A." It is a game, but it generates words, spoken and written. A series of haiku-like stanzas are composed by individuals mindful of their obeisance to each other and tradition. Individual verses can be and are prized for originality and/or brilliance. But this is a very non-western concept. There is no competition, no "See me! I'm so clever! Top that!" mentality. The group, the resulting Art, the form, are each to the point. The sharing of minds and a goal are paramount. Renku links are channeled through the intellect, unlike haiku, but arise in the same haiku-mind.


When it is my turn to provide the next stanza, I will ask myself what this renku needs (attention to both rules and the flow of the work), and I will simultaneously react to the stimulus of the preceding verse. It is the preceding verse which is the universe for the creativity of the link and the subject of the my next verse. Many, and I will posit to you that most, of the best renku verses are haiku-like -- from personal experience of man and nature. Certainly fiction is written and haiku-like truth is tailored to fit the renku's group needs as well as the rules, but the better efforts can be an amalgam of intellection and emotion.


Alexis Rotella has editorialized for better, more serious artistic effort in English-language renku at the website:

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Olympus/6647/litter.html

A short excerpt from the Essay:

When we write haiku (or tanka or any other form of poetry), we usually approach it with some degree of reverence toward the form itself. In renga, however, we often lose our focus and produce a bunch of simplistic meanderings that, if published, is a big waste of paper (and in the long run, trees). -ar

Two others of my declarative sentences were that renku is not anarchic linking, and renku is not serial haiku.

Like the rules of chess or bridge, a renku form is known or adopted in advance. Real adepts (most in the West including me, are not such) might be able to meet and simply proceed with no agreement, no rotation of players. But it should be noted that Basho brought such a rotation to sessions that he mastered (and was paid for). Renku can be written with a master with full approval, dictating the type of verse needed next and imposing his/her will on the session. Renku can be anarchy, each player doing his or her own thing as may happen on Internet lists, or renku can be run as a democracy. I have written in a mastered session, played with anarchists, and most often been a democrat. Each verse is approved by each partner before progress is made to the next. This is how Ferris Gilli and I wrote "A Fox Circles" that I shared with you in the last installment. She and I helped each other at each step.

I invited Ferris to play after Thanksgiving (USA holiday) and to try to finish before the busyness of Christmas would intervene. We agreed to write the shortest of renku forms. Note: Rengay is a form of 6 haiku united by a common theme. Even though a rengay uses two- and three-line haiku they are still haiku, able to stand alone without the context of the whole. The shisan renku is 12 stanzas. The tradition from Japan that we have been taught is what guided Ferris and me. Shisan is quite different from kasen (36) that Basho taught and wrote. We'll come to kasen later in the seminar.

In this shisan method there are the usual alternations of three and two lines. Easy to remember: an odd number is always three lines. This form will have six "season" verses and six "no-season." It will have love, but only mentioned in two sequential verses. As is usual in all renku, it starts in the season the writers are in when they get together. Unlike other renku forms, the shisan goes once through the seasons and ends in natural order. Our autumn, then, ended in summer. Other renku forms always end in spring (more later). The elements of "season" that have come to be of most interest in the Japanese tradition are autumn and spring. These are the seasons of change, of birth and death. Each is represented in most kasen by more verses than winter or summer. In shisan, there are two spring, two autumn, and one each for winter and summer. As previously mentioned, other traditional symbols for Japanese poetic tradition are the moon and the blossom symbolizing the promise of spring (usually in Japanese tradition the flowering of cherry or plum). A shisan has one mention of a blossom and one of the moon (traditional kasen have two and three, respectively).

So, Ferris and I started in autumn. Before beginning we knew several things. The second verse would, by rule, also be autumn. And, we knew the last, #12, would be the single summer stanza. That is all that was precisely known about the verses. We had to get to a winter verse and two of spring sometime in #'s 3 through 11. We needed a moon verse in one of the season verses, and we needed a flower verse in one of the season verses. There should be six verses of seasons and six that are no-season. And --- ahhh, love too, sigh.

I know I said I'd not footnote, but some of these definitions and principles of shisan are derived from a lecture and a shisan-writing workshop I participated in at HNA '99 in Chicago. Both lecture and writing were presided over by yet another master in English, William J. Higginson, and by professor Tadashi Kondo. Dr. Kondo, a master in both languages, is a visiting professor at Harvard in these very topics.

Before Ferris and I started, I worked out a rotation of two writers for the shisan length, 12. The basic pattern of the hokku in three lines, followed by alternation of two and three, ending with two had to be maintained. With only two players, just taking turns will give all the three-liners to the first player "A." So, some switching off is needed to even it out and make it both fun and fair. Please see the website I have already praised to you by Jane Reichhold, another master in English writing. She has worked out kasen forms for two players -- and has the instances where a player goes twice in succession to get off the odd or even pattern.

In the shisan, A Fox Circles, with Ferris as "A," we had the pattern:

A, B, A, A, B, A, B, A, B, B, A, B.

We each switched, or "twisted," once. The whole shisan worked out this way:

1.) hokku, autumn
2.) autumn
3.) winter
4.) no season
5.) no season, love
6.) no season, love
7.) no season
8.) spring, blossom
9.) spring, moon
10.) no season
11.) no season
12.) summer

But as I have already said, what would happen next with verses three through 11 was decided one at a time by the player whose turn it was. We knew we had to get it all in, but not just when. A lot of uncertainty and creativity was possible.

Ferris set the hokku, a lovely haiku in three lines. The other verses are not written as haiku, but are supposed to accentuate the flow of the work. Master Basho taught that a haiku is "cut" and has an actual kireji, or in some cases an understood kireji. After the hokku, the verses of renku are not cut; in Japanese there is no sound beat(s) of any one of the 18 classic kireji. So too in English. I have said already that these renku verses are haiku-like but are not cut and are not free-standing out of the context of the renku.

This hokku has images of autumn; an interplay of color and action. Past the concreteness of the hokku, can also be read a faint hint at another level. The fox is circling, perhaps preparing to do something. The leaves are falling, perhaps as our words do in renku -- in the renku we are embarking on, preparing to do. I thought of these things as I read it. She may not have -- Ferris can chime in with her own ideas or opinion. In shisan there is no notion of the "pages" of a kasen (Jane, again, has a great section on the kasen's sections likened to a dinner party -- a beginning, middle and end). The shisan is so brief it just progresses. My second verse (and you can read these along with me from the last installment, URL's are below) takes the action indoors, to humanity (as opposed to the hokku's pure nature) expressed in the third person. Canning it is called, even though glass jars are used. An autumn activity, preserving the harvest. The subject is SHIFTED away from the preceding verse. It is LINKED to the previous in one obvious way, the turning of both the fox and the lid on the jar, and perhaps in a more subtle way to the colors of the sunlit field and fox, and to the feeling of the bright jam or jelly colors in the clear jars as the kitchen light or sunny window light hits it. This last, while possible to "see" is not necessary for a reader -- I practice that a reader or partner has to at least have a chance to find the link. And, of course either a master or, in the democratic method, the partners will approve the linking method as being to their taste before going on.

Next, for the 3rd verse, Ferris chose to go right to winter, and back outdoors and to all-nature. She introduces the weather. Did you find the link when you read this last week? It is the filling of the jars and the stump. I note that they are each roughly round things, too. A writer may create a link or several, and a partner may find others, so may a reader. This is a part of the delight.

Ferris next went to a non-seasonal verse, knowing that we needed six of them and had none so far. Still outdoors, she adds the element of people, the Hopi are a tribe of Native Americans in the SW of the USA. And, she has added an element of sound. This is variety -- and variety is to be prized. To link and shift. Variety, linking and shifting are essences of the play. Did you find the link she used? The chants may be filling the air, the sound, but mostly I found the rhythm of the flurries coming and coming again led to the rhythm of the chanting. See too, how the two-liners have slightly less information than the three's. Perhaps one element or action less. The two liners often flow the fastest to the new subject, the new direction. Note how right at this point we are hearing chants across perhaps a desert -- it may be night, we can see the land from a great distance -- the mesas in panorama. How far we have come from a kitchen just two verses back!  A contemporary Japanese master, Shinku Fukuda (in Western name order) said at the Yuki Teikei Renku website I suggested to you:

Shift from two before is the golden rule of renku. Do not forget!!!

This shisan was not done perfectly, I make no claim of that, especially my verses (pace Ferris). In #5 I return to a female in the third person, but at least it is a profession "barmaid" and not the general "she." A barmaid is coming and going bringing drinks, clearing. It is I who now start the "love" verses. A sexual verse in this case. The poet leers (and yes I experienced it at an airport lounge waiting for an arriving flight, ha!). The verse seems to be indoors, and the linkage is from the flavor or as the Japanese say the "scent" of the scene. The primitive to animal-ness and the muscles. Such a link continues the mood from one verse to the next. There may or may not be music at the bar -- the Hopi may be dancing -- all indefinite. Note now, how different the first 5 verses are grammatically, too. One has no verb, they all begin with different parts of speech. This is all intentional. Variety in all things. Variety is king. In #6 Ferris pairs the love verse as she must. In all types of renku, it is usual that no love verse is a single. In
shisan two in a row are standard -- in kasen it may be two to four. And as we shall see in kasen, love may be brought up twice in groups of two to four verses. Ferris's love stanza is another "hot" verse. It links through clothing, but more subtly as leering from afar becomes close experience, and perhaps the rippling of either the silk or the unmentioned bodies or the unmentioned verbs imaginable in her verse. This is a long way from the penultimate verse of Hopi chants across a desert night.

Next session, I'll finish A Fox Circles and I hope to reply to any questions or controversies I've raised so far.

- Paul (MacNeil)

Tue Feb 8, 2000
Originally posted to WHChaikuforum as the third essay-lesson in the Haikuforum Seminar on "Traditional Renku in English".

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