Haibun

Haibun is a Japanese form that combines prose and poetry. A narrative or description is interspersed with haiku poems that arise from and illuminate the prose. Bashō’s The Narrow Road to the Deep North (see next page for excerpt) is a classic example. Subjects such as travel and nature are “naturals” for haibun. 

Explain haibun to the class and read them an example passage or two. Some points:

• It’s usually best to call for loose haiku––no syllable count, just free little three-liners in the haiku spirit. (See HAIKU exercise.)
• Emphasize the down-to-image aspect––no generalized writing. Haiku captures a moment. (A preliminary haiku session might be helpful.)
• You can use prose pieces the students have already written and “pepper” them with haiku.
• Emphasize that the haiku should add or change something––not just sum up what’s already there. The haiku can well be offbeat, unexpected, a “twist” or a passing fancy.

Try one out on the board. Read a paragraph of prose aloud (twice) and then, with the class, compose a haiku to follow it. Here is an example (on Civilian Conservation Corps workers):

Entertainment for both kinds of camps was basically the same. After-work hours were generally spent playing cards, mainly penny ante gambling. During the summer the men also practiced baseball. Charles Kane noted, “Each camp had a field someplace close by, where they could have baseball...”

CRACK! Bat hits ball
roadbuilder runs bases
dust rises, swirls

Ask the students to write. They can write their haiku on a separate sheet and use circled numbers to show where they fit into the prose.

This exercise is particularly good for a later revision session––mostly getting down to image and “making it new.”

THE NARROW ROAD TO THE DEEP NORTH (excerpt)*

I went behind the temple to see the remains of the Priest Buccho’s hermitage. It was a tiny hut propped against the base of a huge rock. I felt as if I were in the presence of the Priest Genmyo’s cell or the Priest Houn's retreat. I hung on a wooden pillar of the cottage the following poem which I wrote impromptu.

           Even the woodpeckers
           Have left it untouched,
           This tiny cottage
           In a summer grove.

Taking leave of my friend in Kurobane, I started for the Murder Stone, so called because it killed birds and insects that approached it. I was riding a horse my friend had lent me, when the farmer who led the horse asked me to compose a poem for him. His request came to me as a pleasant surprise.

           Turn the head of your horse
           Sideways across the field,
            To let me hear 
           The cry of a cuckoo.

           Bashõ (translated by Nobyyuki Yussa)

(*Haiku are three-line poems; this translator has chosen to make four-line English versions.)

HIGHWAY 93 SOUTH

           Mountain’s shadow falls
           Old cowboy and new girlfriend
           Roll past in red truck

Every weekend I drive between Salmon and Missoula, about 140 miles. The most interesting part of the trip is crossing Lost Trail Pass, where the state line runs between Idaho and Montana. It is a high winding road surrounded by endless trees and snow-covered slopes where the mountains make their own weather. The rest of the trip always surprises me, however, and every time I make the trip something miraculous happens. Wild animals appear as the river courses alongside us, revealing

           A line of fishers
           in blue coats. Legs and elbows.
           Herons! Ten of them.

So I continue watching the road, craning my neck. Farther on, near Darby,

           Five mountain sheep stand
           curving horn and winged shoulder
           turn like silk and fly

Once, at the top of the pass, a fox stepped out of the forest and walked up to my parked car to gaze into my eyes as she lifted one paw, then the other, a slow march in place.

           My lost pup is here
           Green and black eyes of forests
           Recognizing me.

I feel a relationship with the wildlife that steps out onto the side of the road to look into my eyes. I got the idea the fox and the mountain sheep had a message, a secret, for me.

           Driving pass
           Elk appears. I shout, suddenly,
           Hear my father's voice.

Sheryl Noethe

Here is a haibun on early school buses:

Ida Egge said, “Charles ‘Dutch’ Marshall also owned a truck/bus in about 1940. Dutch had a black Chevy truck with a wooden box in back with an emergency door in it, with a hole cut in the roof for the chimney of the wood stove—so us kids wouldn't freeze in the winter. He picked up the kids from about Baker on down to Salmon making a loop on the old highway and around the old back road.”

           Teeth chatter, children shiver
           fire pops, cracks, and clatters
           wood and canvas creak

Dr. Frossard, who did not grow up around Salmon, remembered his older brother riding in a school bus “like a crude station wagon, wood-framed, brown in color, with an exhaust pipe running from front to back, to provide heat.” He also remembered students having to go home instead of to school because they had fallen and burned themselves on this exhaust pipe.

           Bumping into heat
           child screams, flesh burns,
           brakes screech—oh—cold snow

Don Stenersen had the impression that these early conveyances were makeshift at best. They were privately owned and served other daytime purposes on the farm or commercially cifter delivering students. Sometimes a different vehicle would transport the kids home at night. These early machines helped speed the development of the modern motor coach.

           Motor coughs, sputters
           coming to life
           —off goes the yellow wonder

Annisa Stenersen (11th grade)