hiaku - surreal

[ma...@hwsys.com]

From: "john s. hughes" <hugh...@wfu.edu>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.poems
Subject: Re: Haiku
Date: Wed, 12 Apr 1995 14:54:04 -0400

John writes:(excerpts)

>The problem with this haiku is that the only basis in realism
>which we are given, before we plunge into the surreal, is the
>1st line. I read the 1st line as realism, but it doesn't give me
>much of a rock or a face to go on, once the 2d and 3d line's
>distortions begin.

(a little later)

>Bottom line: I don't know what the 2d and 3d lines mean, and
>they don't have enough absolute beauty to exist without any
>meaning. Recall that Stevens said the poem should resist the
>intelligence *almost* successfully-- not wholly.

John- It's about a cup of tea or coffee and dunking sugar cookies
or doughnuts in it for breakfast. The diamonds could even be
salt on a cracker. The lake of sponge is both the dipped
sweet(now saturated) and the cup of brew with crumbs.

[B I think it goes from the "hard real" of breakfast into
the "surreal"(could be lots of things) of line 2 and then
finishes coming out of the surreal, almost but not quite;
hinting that it isn't the best breakfast but it's there.

There's another spin here too: You're at breakfast(common-real),
the "finger of diamonds" is a ring with a lot of
stones(wealth-real), and "a lake of sponge"
is a bowl of cereal(imagined or real contrast between the value
of your breakfast and the ring or who is wearing it).

I think that the surreal is easily transcended into reality
once you start equating the last two lines with having breakfast.
You could be alone, with a girlfriend or wife or being served at
a restaurant. I see a lot of convergence back to line 1. It has
to go that way- I wrote this way intentionally- once there you
can take it most anywhere.

I hope this helps. Thanks for your comments- they'll come in
handy for some other poems I've been working on as well.
-mak

On 12 Apr 1995, Mike Kepko wrote:

>
>
>
> Morning breakfast
> a lake of sponge
>
"Finger of diamonds" is surrealism. So is "Lake of sponge."

What is surrealism.

Surrealism is and can only be distortion of reality. It is the
distortion of reality, not the denial of it. It can only be the
distortion of reality because all we have to work with is reality. The
other world is not truly other. It is only describable by reference to
things of this word. Ezekiel, if he saw otherwordly items, could only
describe them by reference to items here. So his angel had twenty eyes
where its mouth should have been, and it spoke a sound of raw white death,
perhaps, through the raucous flutter of fifty wings-- but as described by
eyes, wings, voices, deaths of this world.

Surrealism is dependent on
reality, or realism as the theme,
to which it is the variation.

Surrealism only works where the artist has put in a good dose
of simple realism as an underlying basis. For instance,
Magritte starts with the realistic face, or rock-- recall his training
in the painting manner of conventional realism, as a professional
advertisement artist--

ONLY then comes the surreal effect of the rock being
a boulder, wholly in the air yet still supporting a
castle, or how her smiling face includes a window
in its forehead through which blue air shines.

IF we did not recognize the smiling face, would the hole possibly shock
us as much??

The problem with this haiku is that the only basis in realism
which we are given, before we plunge into the surreal, is the
1st line. I read the 1st line as realism, but it doesnt give me
much of a rock or a face to go on, once the 2d and 3d line's
distortions begin.

Compare middle period James Wright. First he was stuck in
excessive realism, and boring old fashioned form, in his 1st
book. Then he starting writing straight out surrealism except
it was flawed b/c it lacked a realistic substructure or basis.
Then finally as he matures we get the excellent combination of
the real and the surreal in poems like "The Muse," etc.

Bottom line: I dont know what the 2d and 3d lines mean, and
they dont have enough absolute beauty to exist without any
meaning. Recall that Stevens said the poem should resist the
intelligence *almost* successfully-- not wholly.

Still, one may prefer a poem which resists meaning too much, over a poem
which leaks into meaning too quickly.

JSH> > > > > >