Carpe Diem #929 wind bag

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

Welcome at a new month of Carpe Diem Haiku Kai. In this month we will explore the writing skills of Basho as you can see in the "subtitle" of this month. Basho used a lot of Haiku Writing Techniques in his haiku and this month we will explore 22 of them. In every episode I will start with a haiku by Basho and than I will tell you about the technique he used ... and than it's up to you ... create a haiku in the way of Basho.

Basho's haiku:

hating flowers
the mouths of talkative people
and the wind bag

© Basho (Tr. Jane Reichhold)

Introduction:

As I read this haiku I was a little bit confused, because of the first line 'hating flowers' ... I thought that was a to strong line, but after reading and re-reading I started to understand ... in this first line 'hating flowers' Basho speaks of the fragile beauty of flowers. For example: cherry blossoms are fragile and the Japanese were (and still are) anxious that that fragile beauty will be destroyed by the wind ... or even by people who don't have respect for the beauty of nature.

cherry blossoms in the moonlight so fragileah! the Spring breeze

© Chèvrefeuille

In the way of Basho

In this haiku "hating flowers", Basho uses the association technique. This method of linking can be thought of as "how different things relate to or come together".
One of Basho's major objectives was to find new and apt associations that made the reader rethink reality and the connectedness within. This technique Basho used very often. In the above haiku by Basho he says that the mouths of people who talk too much and the bag of winds, a fanciful expression of the place were the spring winds come from, have something in common. The both must hate the cherry blossoms because each reduces a person's pleasure in enjoying the flowers. The talkative person distracts from one's appreciation of the beauty of the scene and the wind blows the petals off the tree.

Nature Chandelier

My response in the way of Basho

This looks familiar with the disturbance of a cell-phone going of in a museum or a movie theater. and  that inspired me to write the following haiku:

cell phone rings
as the soprano reaches the highest tone
the chandelier breaks

© Chèvrefeuille

Hm ... a nice one I would say, not really my style I think, but I think I succeeded to write a haiku in the way of Basho.

This episode is open for your submissions tonight at 7.00 PM (CET) and will remain open until March 3rd at noon (CET). I will try to publish our new episode, a new Tokubetsudesu episode, later on. For now ... have fun ... and let's go write haiku in the way of Basho.