Haiku Canada outsiders and insiders

 
Chris, it was really my own curiosity, asking about Eric Amann's memoir -- in case I, a slow reader, might actually be able to read it in a visit to Special Collections. So, no worries about not including that level of detail.

From what I can tell, Eric and Anna Vakar were both rather 'outsiders,' which is why they clicked on some level, if only for a short time.

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Hi Again Vicki,

It's quite a slight volume, and I'm sure you could read it in an hour or two in a relaxing afternoon in the archives  ;  )

Yes, I'm sure Eric thought of himself as an outsider. While cleaning dinner dishes, I did some further reminiscing about Eric and his involvement with haiku. In his memoir The House on Fountain Street the reader can see why this would be so - he was raised by "rough", working class New Canadians, and he would have stuck out like a sore thumb in that group. He was an intellectual swan in a flock of very supportive adult ducks. My image of his early editorship of Haiku mag is of a lonely, highly intelligent and deeply philosophical person looking for soul connections in the strange universe of NYC. The uniqueness of haiku, its esoteric nature in the still staid Amerikan culture of the early 1960s, would explain its appeal to the young med student/doctor.

It's always dangerous describing someone's looks, but Eric was noticeably different looking. When I finally met him at what I consider the founding meeting of HC circa 1977/78, I thought he looked gnomish or elvin. I bet he was teased a lot in his youth for his immigrant background, his high intelligence, sensitivity and his unusual looks. Definitely the makings of an "outsider" personality.

Regarding the Haiku Society of Canada and it's morphing into Haiku Canada, I can see a profound difference in the personalities of Eric and George Swede and their styles of leadership. Eric the quiet, self-effacing outsider who seemed to want our haiku community to be low key and casually social and individualist. After the initial meeting in Eric's apartment near The Danforth in Toronto, our next gatherings were casual restaurant dinners and get-togethers. I think of George Swede as the flip side of Eric's casualness - the corporate and promotional leader. Of course it took both aspects and the contributions of many, many other haijin to form HC. It bugs me that the founding of HC is described in its online home page as consisting of Eric, George and Betty Drevniok. There were a LOT of other haijin involved! I suspect that the major personality differences between Eric and George caused Eric to move on from George's "corporate" version of HC. After a lot of initial commitment to developing HC, I also became absorbed in my own poetry and writing projects, including founding Unfinished Monument Press and coordinating the Main Street Library poetry readings. In the longer view it took both these competing styles of leadership, and it's likely that without George's more organized and formal leadership style, HC would probably not still exist some 45 years after its founding and we wouldn't be corresponding today about  archival projects!

brief history of haiku/haibun

Hi Marvin,
The forthcoming reprint is of my 1990 book, EEL PIE ISLAND: a memoir/haibun. Haibun is considered a form of poetry. Actually haibun is prose, interspersed with haiku. The prose gives the haiku context, something which is generally missing when poets/haijin publish individual haiku.

Basho, the wandering Japanese poet priest, created the haibun form. His classic is THE NARROW ROAD TO THE DEEP NORTH. Sometimes this title is interpreted as THE NARROW ROAD TO THE INTERIOR, which gives a better sense that Basho's journeys were as much internal as external.

The English language haiku movement began in the 1950s, when many Americans stationed in Japan during post WW2 reconstruction learned of the form and attempted to both describe and imitate it. The classic works on this are by RH Blythe.

(The book I recently finished reading, JAPANESE PILGRIMAGE, was also written by one of these Americans stationed in Japan after WW2.)

Early English language haiku were almost always written in imitation of the Japanese form, which decreed a strict syllable count of 5 syllables in the first line, 7 in the second, and 5 in the concluding line. Thus these early haiku have been nicknamed 5-7-5s.

Canadian medical doctor Eric Amann founded a very crucial haiku magazine, titled appropriately, if not very creatively, HAIKU. I believe he founded HAIKU while pursuing medical studies in New York City in the early to mid 1960s. Eric was an early proponent of writing a shorter, more concise style of English language haiku. The rationale for this is the Japanese definition of syllables. Apparently the Japanese language has a different method of labelling syllables than English, and individual letters such as "m" and "n" are counted as syllables. Thus English language attempts to write in 5-7-5 form were much longer and wordier than Japanese haiku.

Eric and others intuited that to be truer to the spirit and essence of Japanese haiku, English language haiku should be written in a more concise form. Eric promoted this with his HAIKU magazine, and over time these shorter haiku have become the established form of English language haiku. This has become true to such an extent that the old 5-7-5 haiku are often not even considered haiku anymore.

I was fortunate in discovering Eric, and his magazine, and Eric's insistence on this shorter format around 1966/67. Poems I had submitted to the college litmag were rejected, but the editor informed me that my brief poems reminded him of haiku. In the back of a copy of THE VILLAGE VOICE in the college library I found a classified ad for HAIKU magazine and wrote for a subscription.

Thus began a mentorship between Eric and myself, prob. for around 2 or 3 years. I was 18 or 19 years old when I began writing haiku, and I am among the first English language haijin (haiku poets/masters) to literally grow up writing (and spiritually living) the form.

Although Basho, the creator of the haiku, wrote haibun, most English language haijin haven't written in this format until quite recently. My EEL PIE DHARMA, published in 1990, is among the first English language haibun. An old friend from my hippie days, Weed, published EEL PIE DHARMA online about a decade ago, and it's one of my 'brags' that EPD is likely the most widely read English language haibun so far.

(Of course Jack Kerouac's books contain haiku, and perhaps Kerouac should be considered the earliest, and most popular, writer of English language haibun.)

I tell most of this background in my introduction to the reprint. I've heard the claim that haiku/haibun has become the most quickly growing genre in English language literature.This is largely due to the success of the internet in providing access and examples of the form (e.g. my EEL PIE DHARMA).

So the reprint of EEL PIE DHARMA (as EEL PIE ISLAND DHARMA) should help establish it as the definitive literary landmark it is, especially in Canadian literature and Canadian haiku.

I'll send you a copy as soon as it's off the presses  :  )

peace & poetry power!
Chris ... and Chase  wrfffffffffffffffffffffffff! and MacDuff wffffffffffffffffffff (Sylvia's cairn terrier who is hanging out with Chase and me for a week or so)

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Hi Chris,
   Thanks so much for your quick response.  And thank you for your
elucidation, explanation, and history.  I now have a better
understanding and grasp of the subject.  You certainly played a
prominent role in the field.   I did grow up enjoying Basho's
evocative thoughts and beautiful imagery.  I will be honoured to pass
a copy of your reprint on to the Univ. of  Calgary Library.
     I will keep in touch.
     Regards to Chase and MacDuff.    Wrrrroof.
     I shout love.
     Marvin (Orbach)

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first Canadian haiku collections 1969 (?)

Subject: my 2 1969 booklets: first chapbook collections of Canadian haiku (?)
email Sept. 9/12

Hi Marvin,
Great to hear from you - you sound well & in good spirits  :  )

As always, I'm pleased that you are finding a good, permanent home for all these poetry-related items and ongoing communications. I'm trying to be selective in the emails I copy you on; I don't want to send anything which would compromise another writer's privacy, & yet I want to give future readers & literary historians an inside view of the day-to-day life of Canadian poets and how we interact among ourselves, our publishers, our non-literary friends, and of course the readers (who of course are mostly other poets and academics anyway).
                                                          
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I'm pleased with your request for copies of my two 1969 chapbooks, CRICKET FORMATIONS and GUEST IN A GARDEN (or I AM A GUEST IN A BEAUTIFUL GARDEN). I self-published these two collections in the late summer and fall, months after I had moved to England to avoid the draft for the Vietnam War.

Both these chapbooks are quite seminal in the world of English language haiku, and they are very seminal for Canadian haiku. They are possibly the first collections of haiku by any Canadian haiku poet (haijin)

Eric Amann is generally acknowledged in the haiku world as one of the godfathers of modern English language haiku, and as Eric is Canadian, he is most definitely the  godfather of Canadian haiku. In the mid-1960s it was Eric's magazine, Haiku, which promoted the form (and to a lesser degree the content) of modern English language haiku.

I've told the story of Eric's long distance mentorship and encouragement of my haiku elsewhere, including in my memoir, EEL PIE ISLAND DHARMA (about to be reprinted).
After several initial rejections of my first attempts at haiku, Eric began publishing my work in "Haiku". This was circa 1967/68, and I was in my late teens.  

The style of haiku I was writing back then with Eric's encouragement, and which I continue to write to this day, has become the dominant and established style and content for modern English language haiku. This wasn't necessarily true back in 1969 when I published my two haiku collections, when many or most haiku poets were still writing stiff and formulaic haiku, often in the strict 5-7-5 syllabic pattern. None of my haiku were (or are) 5-7-5s. Inspired and encouraged by Eric I worked hard to shorten the haiku form and content to better reflect what I believed to be the spirit of the Zen-inspired Japanese haiku masters.

Unfortunately I do feel to some extent the primacy of my early haiku work and publications has been overlooked among my fellow Canadian haijin, or more accurately, perhaps, strongly downplayed. The existence of my two early haiku publications, and their creation by an individual writer and haiku poet, perhaps runs counter to another version of the development of 'Canadian' haiku. This version of Canadian haiku might be described as group oriented  - that first came Haiku Canada (originally THE HAIKU SOCIETY OF CANADA - founded in the late 1970s), and that out of this organization modern English (and French language) Canadian haiku developed.

The problem with this Haiku Canada historical narrative is that I had already - a decade earlier - published these two slim collections.

As you note, they are extremely rare. I'm not sure if I have even one copy of GUEST, but I'm sure I can find a copy of CRICKET FORMATIONS to add to the Univ. of Calgary special literary collections.

Thanks again for all you do for CanPo ...  :  )

peace & poetry power!
Chris/cricket and Chase ... wrfffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff!

p.s. I have donated a copy of CRICKET FORMATIONS and some other haiku materials to the Special Haiku collections at a Univ. in California


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On 2012-09-06, at 9:23 AM, marvin orbach wrote:

Howdy Chris,
  Just a short note to say hello.   I trust that  all is well with
you and that the  reprint  of your memoir is coming along fine.
  I continue to receive copies of your recent e-mails.  About a week
ago I sent off  3 packages to the Promised Land.   These include all
your recent contributions, plus correspondence.  They will be
preserved for posterity.
  I must say that I enjoy reading Katherine Gordon's new poems that
appear in your blog.  She certainly is a talented poet.
  I wanted to ask you about your first two publications that you did
in England.  I assume these contain poems.  I checked Amicus, the
online catalogue that lists the holdings of thousands of Canadian
libraries.  I couldn't find any listing of these two  books. That
means no Canadian library has these two titles.   If you have spare
copies, I would be happy to deposit them in my collection at the
University of Calgary, if they contain poetry.
   The weather here is still unseasonably warm. I don't remember
such a hot   summer.
    I imagine Chase is doing well.
   I must go now. Looking forward to your response.
   I shout love.
   Marvin.

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On 2012-09-19, at 2:58 PM, marvin orbach wrote:

Hi Chris,
    Your copy of Cricket Formations, your first book, arrived safely
in this morning's mail.   Thank you very much.   What a little
treasure this booklet is.  I enjoyed reading the amazing haiku.  Was
it by accident that your name does not appear anywhere, or was this a
Zen way of minimizing your ego?  As far as I know the U. of C. Library
will be the first library in Canada to have this book. What an
honour!!    It will head west with my next shipment.
     I am looking forward to rereading Eel Pie Dharma when it is
reprinted. If you happen to have a spare copy of the first ed., and
you are wiling to part with it, I would be happy to deposit it into my
collection in Calgary.
     Aye, we are all flowers!!!
     I shout love.
     Marvin.


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Hi Marvin,
I'm so pleased the copy of CRICKET FORMATIONS  arrived OK. It is a real rarity, both for my work and in the field of English language haiku.
And of course I'm very pleased you enjoyed reading it ...  Yes, it was youthful idealism, rather than youthful egotism or carelessness, which omitted my name from
the small booklet  :  ) ... and I'm glad I did it that way. There is so much overbearing egotism in the haiku/haibun world now, that it makes me pull
away from it most of the time.  (but from time to time I try to assert myself and what I feel is my rightful place in the development of English language
haiku/haibun - the blog is a great way to chest thump!)

I wish I had a copy of the original EEL PIE DHARMA to donate. I don't have a single complete copy myself, at least that I can find.

I borrowed the line from James Joyce, but of course,

Aye, for we are flowers, all!

peace & poetry power!
Chris/cricket ... and Chase ... and MacDuff    Wrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrf!    Wrffffffffffff!   Wffffffffff!



You have asked several times for some new haiku/haibun from me, so you can take substantial credit for encouraging the following, composed a few hours ago: "dog day afternoon haibun".

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