Style personal style

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Personal style in Haiku

. compiled by Larry Bole

What is Basho's style?
His style evolved over his career, from the early Danrin school influence, through Genroku 'keiki' style with its Chinese influence, to his final 'karumi' style.

And as Blyth points out, Basho could write from a lot of different points of view.

Blyth says (perhaps under the influence of Shiki):

Basho's verses are comparatively few in number, about two thousand in all, of which about a hundred are really good, but one thing that strikes us about them is their variety. We can see in his verses the tendencies which later poets developed.

[all translations below are by Blyth]

Epic

ふきとばす石も浅間の野分かな
fukutobasu ishi wa Asama no nowaki kana

The autumn blast
Blows along the stones
On Mount Asama.


Chinoiserie

よぎはおもしごてんにゆきをみるあらん
yogi wa omoshi goten ni yuki wo mieu aran

The bedclothes are so heavy;
The snow of the sky of the Kingdom of Wu
Will soon be seen.


Still life

しおだいの はぐきもさむし うおのたな
shio-dai no haguki mo samushi uo no tana

In the fish-shop
The gums of the salted sea-bream
Are cold.


Unconventionality

野を横に馬牽むけよほとゝぎす
no o yoko ni uma hikimuke yo hototogisu

Lead the horse
Across the moor
To where the hototogisu is singing!


Humour

麦飯にやつるる恋か猫の妻
mugi-meshi ni yatsururu koi ka neko no tsuma

The lady cat,
With love and barley-rice
So thin!


Picturesqueness

しぐるるや田の新株の黒むほど
shigururu ya ta no arakabu no kuromu hodo

First winter rain,--
Enough to turn
The stubble black.


Delicacy

粽結ふ片手にはさむ額髪
chimaki musubu katate ni hasamu hitaigami

Wrapping rice-dumplings in bamboo leaves,
With one hand she fingers
The hair over her forehead.


And David Landis Barnhill says,
regarding Basho's style when it comes to use of language:

Basho's hokku have been called a "poetry of nouns" because of its tendency to rely primarily on image rather than statement. We can look back at the Sado Island, crow on a withered branch, and old pond poems as examples. In each case we have the same pattern of noun, noun-verb, noun. Much of the dynamism of these poems is in the stark imagism that turning them into a statement would only dilute.
[end of excerpt]


And here is how Ryu Yotsuya
describes the styles of some 20th-century haijin:

Kyoshi:
Kyoshi's haikus are not limited to a fixed style. Among his haiku, several are splendid and virile, whereas others are subtle and delicate; several give free rein to his imagination, others describe simply daily facts. The world of Kyoshi is a true chaos, varied like a field full of wild flowers and grasses.


Kijoo, Suiha, Fura, Dakotsu, Sekitai, and Hisajo:

These poets are generically called "poets of Taisho Hototogisu".
大正ホトトギス

Taisho Hototogisu Magazines 1912

The characteristic of their poems is to describe the nature and to express the worship to the eternal and mysterious existence, in a traditional style with a lofty tone. And their themes are the great landscapes (mountain, valley, sea, or sky) or the life of men in the great nature.

One of the characteristics of the Taisho Hototogisu poets is the technique to create a pseudo-perspective by combining the distant view and the foreground.


Taisho Hototogisu Magazines 1912


--comments taken from "History of Haiku,"
by Ryu Yotsuya:
http://www.big.or.jp/~loupe/links/ehisto/ehisinx.shtml




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Related words

***** . Mount Asama and Shinano 浅間山



***** . Chimaki 茅巻 rice cakes
for the Boy's Festival, May 5



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