LETTERS FROM H.F. NOYES
I came in touch with Tom Noyes , born in 1918 in Oregon, USA, when he was already past 80. Very
knowledgeable about the Japanese tradition of haiku and tanka, and critical of
the Western, including American understanding thereof, he practiced
psychotherapy for 25 years, published seven books worldwide, won the Heron’s
Nest award for some of his haiku, and died in Attikis, Greece in 2010. He read my haiku
and tanka with interest and offered comments from time to time. Simplicity and
selflessness were his watchwords for haiku. I respect his critical opinion.
1.
4/20
Dear Dr. Singh,
I am so grateful that you shared with
me your fine publication, Creative Forum
(a splendid title). I have read it
through with real pleasure, and I believe it to be a project that will promote
the “one world” haiku feeling and international interest and
participation. India seems to be a prime
leader in this sort of undertaking.
Bravo!
I have written a short piece for AZAMI’s first spring issue -– no., it
will be the second—about the booklet and my enthusiasm for the haiku
therein.
I greatly admire your spirit, and I
cherish your words, “There is God’s abundance to feel in the brief three lines…”
and “The briefer I become, the nearer I am to silence.” Haiku is but a sketch of a moment’s
experience, to be filled out by the
reader. It does not use sentences, as
does prose. It also does not use the
devices of Western poetry, nor share its use of the sentimental and
simile—preferring always contact with the real—the things of Nature and the
spirit of Nature herself.
My good friend, in thinking of me and
writing to me, remember that I will be 81 in May and am beginning to fail—slow
but sure. My spirits are still high, but
my work capacity is naturally diminished.
I wish you godspeed with Creative Forum and your other
undertakings. I sense that you’re a man
of great energy and great good will.
With
my warm thoughts,
Tom
Noyes
2.
Good Friday – (our Easter is the 30th)
Dear R.K.—
I do so appreciate your warm,
friendly letter and your sharing of your poetry. Last night I thought about what you said,
that people were helping you to understand haiku better, and I’d just read the
recent KŌ magazine. It seems more and
more clear to me that “East Meets West” is one of the great truths of our times. I’m no expert, but I’ve followed
the trends quite closely in Japan and the West—esp. America, of course; and I’m
more and more convinced that Frogpond
and Modern Haiku are among the best
representatives of the haiku of Bashō and his contemporaries, and that most
Japanese publications are not paying any sort of strict attention to the old
guidelines. As much as I admired Ikkoku San and
his friends who contributed their “vernacular haiku” to AZAMI,
though those efforts had charm and something of the haiku spirit, at least in
the English translations, they fell far short of genuine haiku. The translations from Croatia and Yugoslavia
are equally far from being the real
thing, and they seem to me strongly influenced by Western poetry. Kōko Katō is far too “romantic” in her
feeling expression—even sentimental. And I don’t usually see any relationship
between James Kirkup’s poetry and haiku.
It’s mostly mental and very close to Western poetry. So my general conclusion is that not only East
met West, but they have changed places in the haiku world.
We in the West learned so well from the Japanese masters that it is we
who not represent them, more than the
Japanese themselves. An exception is
Kohjin Sakamoto, a professor like yourself; he writes some of the very
best haiku being written today. Your own soul is highly poetic, and I feel
intensely the struggle you’ve gone through to try to bring your haiku down to
earth. May I suggest that you try at a
library to find a copy of F.S.C. Northrup’s East
Meets West – an old book, but truly great one, written from a solid and
scientific point of view. Haiku have their roots in Zen, and when you mix in
Christianity, as Kōko Katō and some of her contributors do, it just doesn’t
work. Zen and haiku are completely reality-oriented.
Their concern is what is – what you see and hear and touch. Another romantic is Marijan Čekolj, pres. of
Croatian Haiku Assoc. and editor of Sparrrow.
His latest book is mostly 3-line love poems that have no relation to haiku
whatsoever. After all these years of experience, he’s created what I view
as a sacrilege. (He calls them HAIKU!)
I like your “Crouching out of the
bath.” It’s like one of mine from years ago, in reference to the Holocaust:
In the queue to die:
a
desperate clutch at modesty—
hiding
naked sex.
and
Her
photograph
ever
mysterious
haiku
moment
is splendid.
To shorten one’s haiku is a
profitable discipline. “Haiku moment” is
the great secret. “Chicken pox” has
a feel of sabi’s sense of
loneliness. Thoreau wrote:
Why be lonely?
Is not our planet, too
In the Milky Way?
Congratulations on your haiku in
Greek. A fine achievement. I’m amazed at
how few syllables the translator uses, because Greek language is overflowing
with syllables. Zoe Sabina is a very
nice person, married to an artist, and talented; but she, too, is overly
influenced by Western poetry, its beautiful description and metaphor. Of your 3 beautiful haiku that I
commended and really love, only “drowned in dreams not seen” seems overly
poetic in the Western sense. The third – “peddling dreams”—has the true haiku
spirit. Reminds me a little of Ion
Codrecu’s wonderful haiku:
Easter
evening—
the
old woman gathers
her
unsold flowers
By the way, this is Good Friday, and our Easter will be the
30th. Orthodox Easter is
never on the same date as the other European and American.
It’s a good aim to try to express sensuousness in haiku, and
most of the time I think you do it well.
After all, it’s not just seeing and hearing that offer us reality, but touch
as well.
Yes, if you’re a poet, writing haiku too much can suppress
some of your true poetic instinct. They are very different. I too find the cost
of getting published very discouraging, as I live on a pension from the
Navy.
I do now have chronic bronchitis, so there isn’t much
hope of its going away. But if I can
swim in the ocean this summer, I will surely feel much better for a while. Good
luck with your allergies. The Greek Stoic school believed that we shouldn’t let
anything affect the Self (the inner self). While we’re creating
something, it does seem to work – “Mind over matter.” Poetry and prayer and “love-thy-neighbor” can
help.
My warm thoughts and friendly good wishes always,
Tom
3.
June
5 [2000]
Dear R.K.—
I must say I feel some agreement with Lyle Glazier’s
commentary on haiku in general. There is
a “mutual admiration society” and it’s true that haiku poets are moving toward self-expression and away from
the perception experience, which haiku of the old masters almost
invariably was. Also the old Japanese
haiku of Bashō, Buson, Issa and Shiki was SIMPLE, and Bashō particularly in
his older years aimed to reflect the
values of karumi or lightness: “Let your haiku be like a willow branch
waving in the breeze.”
I don’t agree with Glazier that haiku “has little worth”
outside the inner circle of mutually admiring poets. I believe if there can be
another shift – this time away from mere self-expression (and as Glazier says,
back to “concentrated objective visual/auditory/sensory revelations” from
“virtually didactic” or clever manipulations of the simple truth of nature’s
wonders, haiku can be a major and world-respected form of poetry. People
already make pilgrimages to the haunts of Bashō out of reverence for what he
stood for and what he achieved.
As for your own best way, you’ll find it for sure, because
you’re “committed.” But just considering the 6 poems you sent me, it does seem
to me that the tanka is the best and that your preference is for expressing ideas,
thoughts, and on a different, more literary level than haiku was intended to
be. The “cobweb of years” is a mature
literary expression. “he breathes Kamini” is also, and isn’t a
true fit with haiku. Even “waltzing
ripples” is Western poetry, though I
wouldn’t actually fault it in haiku. In haiku we offer the thing itself,
not a poetic or literary or philosophical view of it. “flowers inviting” is
what flowers seem to you to be doing. A haiku in their own voice would likely
be quite different, as they they themselves have a life utterly different from ours.
If you want to write authentic haiku, let the
flowers, the water, the night and the sun speak for themselves. I think a good
example is:
Night washes the sky
for
the sun to shine freshness
at
my window
but don’t attribute a purpose or aim to the night.
Just
night
washes the sky—
the sun brings morning freshness
to my window
and let the reader make the connection. In haiku, we don’t elaborate or explain, only
sketch our experience of the moment.
Thank you for Poets
International. “Small waves/growing into perfect tides/without warning” is
a perfect haiku, WITHOUT “An uncertain life” which is Western poetry. Obviously
the editor of Poets International is
look for “sublime” poetry, rather than haiku.
There’s no law against India establishing its own genre, but it’s NOT
HAIKU. Cekolj’s Here and Now has no
relation to haiku.
For continuing in the Japanese
tradition and expressing yourself,
TANKA is your best bet.
I deplore the American influence in
literature, cinema, business (“free trade”) and politics—it’s disastrous.
I feel profoundly how difficult it is
for you to conceive of your son having to sacrifice himself “for the foolishness of petty politicians.”
One should LIVE for his country, not DIE for it, to be a hero.
Tom
4.
July 8
[2000]
Dear R.K. –
Your #2 tanka is very deeply
felt. The tanka tradition is in general
a romantic one. I wish I could afford to send you The Country of
Eight Islands with the great old
Japanese tanka of earlier centuries. I
admired your haiku this time, but I am not familiar enough with your subjects
to comment. “on a sheet of ice” paints
an amusing picture. There is sabi in “waiting for the flight” – loneliness but
without the important element of beauty, (“the beauty of loneliness in time”).
I totally agree that simplicity and
lightness should be the aim of all haiku, and detachment is desirable in our
way of looking at things—detachment, selflessness, and a sense of our oneness
with all of life. Spinoza wrote that the
highest understanding is of the union of our minds with nature. The Bible says, “Though shalt be in league
with the stones of the field.”
I deplore the Western influence – its
power over adult minds and even children.
When I practiced psychotherapy in N.Y. I used never to miss seeing the
wonderful Indian films. (Now I understand that India puts out more than
Hollywood!) I loved Tagore’s poetry and plays, even at college age. I’ll never forget his writing: “The purpose
of life is the pleasure of living.”
I’ll be on holiday soon. Hope you, too,will have time off from “the
grind” of your workload.
Warm thoughts,
Tom
P.S.: At 82 I am having to cut down
on my correspondence. Please forgive.
A favorite waka (tanka):
This long bridge:
pausing to gaze
at the willows,
I forgot which way
I’d thought to go.
--Clark Strand
sun behind the
hills
the fisherman
ships his oars
and drifts into
shore
Nick Avis, Dragonfly, Vol. XII,
No.1, Jan., 84
“Haiku,” wrote
Lorraine Ellis Harr, Dragonfly
editor, “is like an iceberg….It is the unseen part that is
important….What floats within the depths is the universal oneness of the
experience.” (Dragonfly, Vol. XII, No.4, October ’84). When the sun goes behind
the hills, it’s the signal all over the world for working people to let down,
to call it a day—for fishermen to rest the oars, to drift in peace. It’s a hallowed hour, a time of special
blessing, of rest well earned. A time
for the mind too to drift—to the haven
of that emptiness—fullness which revives our hopes and dreams.
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