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WHC
Renku Seminar
Haikuforum Seminar on "Traditional" Renku
in English
Session
8: Guest Speaker, Ferris Gilli "English Grammar: Variety in
Renku"
Paul
MacNeil
For the eighth installment of
the first WHC Haikuforum Renku Seminar, I
have sought to give you relief; to let you "hear" a voice other than
mine on a renku subject. Throughout the Seminar, I have sung the praises of the
notions: variety in all things, variety is king. I have asked Ferris Gilli to
comment on the grammar of renku stanzas and its possible variability. Having
read her piece several times, I am struck that her advice is widely applicable
to English prose as well. Repetition of sentence order can be deadly dull in
haibun or any piece of writing. An extension of this may also apply to haiku
writing -- not necessarily as sentence structure, which often doesn't formally
apply to haiku, but to the order of focus and variety across one's body of work.
Thank you, Ferris, for the care and effort you have shown to help us.
- Paul MacNeil
English Grammar: Variety in Renku
Ferris Gilli
Florida, US
Variety is vital to renku. You may be muttering to yourself, "Okay, I know
that already-- how do I put it into practice?" The answer is, avoid
repetition.
Vary verse construction, so that
the same type is not repeated twice in a row, and does not appear in clumps on
the same page; there should not be an abundance of verses with the same
structure throughout the renku.
Among the parts of speech that
should be used only once in a renku are distinctive nouns, verbs, adjectives,
and adverbs.
There should be no more than six
or seven verses containing present participles within verbal phrases. Example
with the present participle "hacking":
the machete's glint
hacking a narrow path
for the film crew
It's a good idea to use gerunds
(verbal nouns such as singing, painting, etc.) sparingly, and avoid placing them
near verses that contain present participles or gerunds.
A verse may be a complete sentence
with a subject and transitive verb; or the sentence may use a form of the verb
"be," or may use a verb with passive voice; or it may use an
intransitive verb, where there is action but no direct object. A sentence may
use one verb or two, or the verse may not be a sentence at all, having no verb,
and is simply an image, a subject with modifiers.
Beginnings of verses should vary,
as should ENDINGS. There are many different ways to begin a renku verse, with
articles, nouns, pronouns, adverbs, adjectives, verbal phrases, prepositional
phrases, subordinate clauses... The idea is to avoid clumps of verses that begin
and/or end the same way. The same noun or verb ending (for example, '-tion' or
'-ing') should not be repeated for at least five consecutive stanzas.
Kinds of phrases should vary, as
should their placement within sentences and non-sentences.
So, you've begun your first renku (a kasen no less), your partner's
brilliant hokku is waiting to be capped by your wakiku, and
already you're wondering how in the world you can sustain variety of verse
construction for the next thirty-five stanzas. A valid concern indeed, but let
me reassure you-- it can be done, if you will think of English grammar as your
best friend. Fortunately for those of us who write renku in English, English
grammar by its very nature is our ally in the constant quest for variety.
The American Heritage Dictionary defines grammar, in part, as
(A) The study of how words and
their component parts combine to form sentences, and
(B) The system of rules implicit
in a language, viewed as a mechanism for generating all sentences possible in
that language.
You may see already, just from the
definition, how grammar will serve you: "...a mechanism for generating all
sentences possible in that language." Therein lies Variety with a capital
V, all that our language holds, because you will be using whole sentences and
parts of sentences in your renku, and in their creation, drawing from a huge
reservoir of parts of speech. It's quite wonderful how these sentences,
fragments, phrases, and all their parts can be shuffled and reshuffled to
sustain variety. The trick is to be constantly shuffling them in your mind as
you write each verse. Will you use a complete sentence, and should it be simple,
compound or complex-- or will sentence fragments do the job? Should the verse
consist only of descriptive phrases? Is it too soon to use another participial
phrase at the beginning? How about a verse with a pivotal second line, or a
prepositional beginning? How can you construct this verse so that it doesn't
begin with yet another "the" -- or "a" -- or "an"?
Sometimes it helps to have at hand examples of different verse structures.
a machete
slashes tall bamboo
in the rain forest
thick kudzu
has blocked out the sun
A bald eagle
flies in wide circles
above the runway
the boy runs
with the wind
the sun
has been blocked out
by thick kudzu
all the bamboo
is destroyed by man
first dawn --
the barbwire fence
is soft with fog
to smell the rain
she opens a widow
she opens a window
to smell the rain
Complex
Sentence
when I mention my old flame
he gives me that look
he gives me that look
when I mention my old flame
Sentence Fragments
alone in the dark
with your scent to guide me
gleam of ripe blackberries
dulled by road dust
on the first day of sex ed.
all the downcast eyes
after school
racing home
ahead of the rain
Perhaps I can demonstrate how we get to know the possible faces of a renku
verse. Let's begin with a spring hokku and wakiku for a kasen renku, already
written and accepted by both partners (I will be player A):
mountain pasture-- (1)
a shepherd lingers
with the day
woven among fence vines (2)
the first twigs of a bird nest
So far, we have used the classic cut verse in the hokku: the setting and a hard
cut, followed by subject and action-- in this case a complete sentence; and in
the wakiku, we've used a verbal phrase in the first line followed by an inverted
subject in the second line.
From now on, we must find ways of rearranging the grammatical furniture of
sentences, and even throwing some of the furniture out, to avoid the hard-cut
structure while maintaining
variety. We will no doubt repeat the structure of the second verse somewhere
down the line, but not right away. So, what is left for verse #3, and what would
work best here? Let's play with structure a little and find out.
mountain pasture-- (1)
a shepherd lingers
with the day
woven among fence vines (2)
first twigs of a bird nest
For verse #3, I want to link to
things woven together, moving together. These are the first warm days of spring.
Outside my window the neighbor's children are blowing soap bubbles, and I have
found my link. I could write this:
open window
colored soap bubbles blend
with loud giggles
but that uses the same structure
as the hokku, and is a cut verse. Perhaps I could begin with a prepositional
phrase and forget the verb:
through the window
soap bubbles
and loud giggles
But no, that is too similar in
structure to #2, with an inverted subject. Back to the drawing board:
soap bubbles
drift into the house
with children's laughter
Now I have an uncut verse without
a setting or deliberate juxtaposition; but it is only one removed from the
hokku, which also contains a complete sentence. Hmm. Maybe I could revise the
second line to a participial phrase:
soap bubbles (3)
drifting into the house
with children's laughter
I hope my partner will like that
version.
So, I have now used the first present participle (drifting) in this renku.
Another present participle should not be used for at least five more stanzas. My
partner, having accepted my #3, drafts this link:
beneath layers of dirt
a flea-market table
But there's that inverted subject
again, a bit too soon my partner thinks, so she revises:
the layers of dirt
on a flea-market table
Now we have simply a noun modified
by prepositional phrases; no verb, no sentence. We also have our first verse
that begins with the definite article "the."
mountain pasture-- (1)
a shepherd lingers
with the day
woven among fence vines (2)
first twigs of a bird nest
soap bubbles (3)
drifting into the house
with children's laughter
the layers of dirt (4)
on a flea-market table
My turn again-- maybe it's time for another complete sentence. And so it goes. .
. draw, discard, shuffle, shuffle . . .
Mon, Apr. 10, 2000
Originally posted to WHChaikuforum as the eighth essay-lesson in the Haikuforum
Seminar on "Traditional Renku in English".
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