Back to Haiku

I suppose it won't contribute to my understanding of haiku any, but King Lear has some of the most powerful nature poetry in the English language.

First Lear in the storm:

Blow winds and crack your cheeks!  Rage, blow!
You cataracts and hurricanoes spout
Till you had drenched our steeples, drowned the cocks,
You sulphrous and thought-executing fires,
Vaunt-couriers of oak-cleaving thunderbolts,
Sing my white head.  And thou, all-shaking thunder
Strike flat the thick rotundity o' th' world.

And now Edgar, describing the view from the top of a cliff:

How fearful
And dizzy 'tis to cast one's eyes so low!
The crows and choughs that wing the midway air
Show scarce so gross as beetles.  Halfway down
Hangs one that gathers samphire -- dreadful trade;
Methinks he seems no bigger than his head.
The fishermen that walk upon the beach
Appear as mice, and yond tall anchoring bark
Diminished to her cock, her cock a buoy
Almost too small for sight.  The murmuring surge
That on th' unnumbered idles pebbles chafes
Cannot be heard so high.

The purpose of these powerful images is clear.  They were written to be spoken by actors on an empty stage.  There would be stage hands underneath making thunder, but the rest of the scene was left to the audience's imagination.  Shakespeare was painting a picture with words to allow them to see the scene.  (He pulls a rather dirty trick in the second sequence -- Edgar is describing the scene to a blind man prepared to jump, but really they are not on the cliff at all).

Could one fit so powerful an image into 17 syllables?  I understand that haiku does not have to exclude all human artifacts, or even be a nature poem at all, so long as there is a seasonal reference.  Nonetheless, taking a few snatches from the poems that exclude human artifacts and take up about 17 syllables, we can get:

[T]hought-executing fires,
Vaunt-couriers of oak-cleaving thunderbolts

or

And thou, all-shaking thunder
Strike flat the thick rotundity o' th' world.

or

The crows and choughs that wing the midway air
Show scarce so gross as beetles.  

That last might possibly be made to work as haiku, the others are just too over the top.  So, let me consider what the advise was last time I posted on understanding haiku.  From my sister:

The goal is to make you stop short and review scenes that you think are familiar. Many haiku contrast two ranges of experience - perhaps visual and sound, or closeup and panoramic views, or natural and intentional language, in a tiny frame of thought. I think we are meant to suddenly contextualize a familiar scenario into a surprising or pleasing new setting.

And from my mother:

I think of a haiku as a verbal snapshot that captures a transient moment—concrete, physical thing(s) seen/heard/smelled—in words that can recreate its full emotional impact when you encounter them again. Writing them can make you more observant and aware of the world around you.

. . . . . 

The Japanese have developed elaborate rules for “classical” haiku: they have a seasonal reference (snow-winter, moon-fall, etc.), they describe things directly (not through similes or metaphors) in ordinary language, they usually juxtapose two items unexpectedly, they often make an elliptical leap between the second and third line, and so on. 

So if I try

Birds flying in air
Halfway down from the cliff top
Seem small as beetles.

It meets the 5-7-5 rule and is simple and literal without any extravagant flights of fancy.  But I still have no sense of whether it achieves the rest of a haiku -- to make a snapshot that can recreate the experience.  And I don't really see a contrast or juxtaposition. And to me as an English speaker, it just lacks the poetic power of the original.

Of course, this is me competing against Shakespeare, so we have to take that into account.