Carpe Diem – looking at Basho’s karumi – “under the trees” – May 27, 2015

Pencil Oil Sketch

clouds and cold wind
near Murano’s main canal
hot cappuccino

along the docks
gondolas and motorboats
ancient and modern

© G.s.k. ‘15

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Today’s episode on Carpe Diem Haiku Kai is dedicated to the haiku style invented and promoted by Basho known as karumi.  He began using this style in his later life, trying to reach a certain lightness which the word karumi alludes to.  He travelled far and wide to promote this style and lost some of his followers who didn’t feel comfortable writing in the style:

“One of Basho’s major objectives was to find new and apt associations that made the reader rethink reality and the connectedness within. Association is very important in Basho’s work, he used it very often.

….it seems Basho was trying to write poetry that was less emotional. Basho seems to have believed that it is the verb that carries the emotional baggage of a poem. The poems he considered to exemplify the concept of karumi best are the ones with few or no verbs.
In our times this technique of writing haiku without a verb produces what is pejoratively called “grocery list”-haiku.”

Chèvrefeuille

The following are examples of karumi used by Basho:

ki no moto ni shiru mo namasu mo sakura kana

under the trees
soup and pickles
cherry blossoms

© Basho (Tr. Jane Reichhold)

wakaba shite om me no shizuku nuguwa baya

young leaves
I would like to wipe away
tears in your eyes

© Basho (Tr. Jane Reichhold)

was it a bush warbler
poop on the rice cake
on the veranda’s edge

© Basho (Tr. Jane Reichhold)

glass noodles
few slices of fish
plum blossoms

© Basho (Tr. Jane Reichhold)

hydrangea
a bush is the little garden
of a detached room

© Basho (Tr. Jane Reichhold)

And here is an example of the style illustrated by Chèvrefeuille’s inspired haiku:

slowly a snail seeks
his path between Cherry blossoms
reaches for the sky

© Chèvrefeuille