April is the poet’s month.

This weekend’s poetry is a selection of haiku. This calls for wisdom: what you have heard called a haiku is probably not one. For example, contrary to popular opinion, the following may be amusing, but it is not a haiku:

Three things are certain:
Death, taxes, and lost data.
Guess which has occurred.

— David Dixon, Haiku Error Messages [sic] (1998)

You may have heard that a haiku is a Japanese poetic form with three lines in a 5-7-5 syllabic pattern. Actually, that’s doubly wrong. First, because Japanese haiku aren’t measured in syllables; they are measured in characters of hiragana, which correspond to morae, not syllables, and in some cases may be somewhat shorter than what an English-speaker would recognize as a syllable. Second, because haiku is only one of the Japanese poetic forms that are written in a 5-7-5 pattern. Senryū, for example, are also written in a 5-7-5 pattern; what distinguishes a haiku from a senryū is not their construction but their subject-matter. If you have a poem–especially a light or comedic poem–about human foibles, it may be a senryū, but it’s not a haiku; haiku are not primarily about people at all. They’re about nature, and especially about moments in a particular season. Unfortunately, a lot of people in the English-speaking world–grade school creative writing teachers in particular–have mistakenly thought that any three-line poem with a 5-7-5 syllabic pattern is a haiku, and they’ve inflicted this misunderstanding on a lot of kids who never knew any better because they figure that it will be a good way to get them started on formal poetry with something short and easy. But the double confusion causes a triple problem. First, if you try to mechanically transfer the 5-7-5 rule–and mechanically transfer rules based on mora counts to rules based on syllable counts–you’ll get a form that is actually subtly inappropriate to the English language, and also a form which encourages poems substantially longer than the classic Japanese haiku. (It’s for precisely this reason that most contemporary translators don’t stick to 5-7-5 form when they are translating Japanese haiku into English, and why most contemporary poets writing haiku in English don’t stick to 5-7-5 form either.) And second, since the students never learn the distinctive subject-matter of haiku, they may go through the whole course without ever writing a single haiku. And third, since most students are taught haiku as an easy form and aren’t taught anything about the sort of stylistic discipline that goes into writing them, they end up dashing off a bunch of silly non-haiku and spend the rest of their lives thinking that haiku poetry is trivial and silly.

Whatever the silly poetry that the students end up writing is, it’s usually not haiku. If it’s anything at all, it tends to be senryū. I suppose if you had to give a name to the homeless mongrel form that you learned in junior high school, you could do what L. does and call it gaiku (the poets who write haiku are called haijin; the people who write gaiku can be called gaijin).

All of this is too bad, because when well done, a genuine English-language haiku is anything but trivial; it can be beautiful stuff, and classical haiku, in the hands of the masters, is often absolutely stunning. Rather than expand on the quiet elegance or the sense of space or the intense presence of masterful haiku, I’ll simply shut up at this point and let the masters speak for themselves.

Spring

Teishitsu (1610-1673):

Ah! I said, Ah!
it was all that I could say —
the cherry flowers of Mt. Yoshino!

Basho (1644-1694):

even in Kyoto
when I hear the cuckoo
I long for Kyoto

Buson (1716-1783):

treading on the tail
of the copper pheasant
the setting sun of spring

Chigetsu (?-1708):

the songbird’s song —
it stops what I am doing
at the sink

Summer

Buson (1716-1783):

longing for the grass
at the bottom of the pool
those fireflies

Chiyo-ni (1703-1775):

cool clear water
and fireflies that vanish
that is all there is …

Basho (1644-1694):

a clear waterfall —
into the ripples
fall green pine-needles

Autumn

Kyoriku (1656-1715):

even to the saucepan
where potatoes are boiling —
a moonlit night

Issa (1762-1826):

grasshopper —
do not trample to pieces
the pearls of bright dew

Buson (1716-1783):

the harvest moon —
rabbits go scampering
across Lake Suwa

Winter

Suzuki Masajo (b. 1906):

no escaping it —
I must step on fallen leaves
to take this path

Basho (1644-1694):

the sea darkens —
the voices of the wild ducks
are faintly white

Chiyo-ni (1703-1775):

it’s play for the cranes
flying up to the clouds
the year’s first sunrise …

Like the Great Americans at Riding Sun (2005-04-05), The Jawa Report (2005-04-04), Michelle Malkin (2005-04-05), et al., I am outraged at the obvious, slavish political bias of the mainstream news photography elite. The 2005 Pulitzer Awards in Breaking News Photography are only the latest example of their anti-military agenda and their love for anti-government insurgents. I mean, check out the World Press Photo Award Winner for 1989:

Besides being very possibly staged by a reporter who was working with insurgents, this photograph also shows the People’s Liberation Army troops in a negative light. This photo portays the Chinese government as tyrannical and likely caused untold anti-Chinese inflammation. Equally telling is what the photo doesn’t show. No photos show Chinese troops rebuilding their homeland. No photos show People’s Liberation Army troops playing with kids in the street. No photos show the results of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. No photos show the thousands of freed prisoners from Imperial Japan’s tyrannical rule.

Where is the balance? Why didn’t the so-called World Press Photo Award give equal recognition to visually stunning works like these?

Is that the best the World Press Photo committee could find? Did they even bother to discuss the issues raised by The People’s Daily before bestowing the prize upon Charlie Cole? Were they ignorant of the controversy? Or did they simply decide in the end that it didn’t matter?

Update: More insurgent-loving sedition from the hate-China-first crowd can be found from Enemies of the People like feministe (2005-04-06) and Rox Populi (2005-04-06).

DED Space 2005-04-01 reminds us that April is National Poetry Month. A lot of the literati these days seem to think that contemporary poetry is a lost cause. I don’t know that that’s true at all; but even if it were, it would, at the most, be a good argument for promoting the poetry of the past until our contemporaries get back up to speed again. Just because something’s out of copyright doesn’t mean it’s not good anymore, and just because something’s new doesn’t mean that it’s therefore more worth running in your journals and lit mags than something old.

So, in honor of the event, the Ministry of Culture in this secessionist republic of one will be reprinting poetry throughout the month. Since Yazad reminded me how good it is just a couple of months ago, we’ll begin today with Ozymandias (1818), by Percy Bysshe Shelley. Enjoy:

Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

I’ve never seen Catwoman, but I’m sure it’s a wretched film. It looked bad enough from the previews, and critical consensus seems to have placed it somewhere between Robocop 3 and An Allan Smithee Film Burn Hollywood Burn in the annals of catastrophically bad films.

In fact, I think it’s quite right to point out that Catwoman is only part of a series of lame, derivative superheroine-exploitation flicks that have been coming out lately, and that Hollywood has been pumping trash into the cinemas on the completely mistaken assumption that formulaic flicks about sexy superheroines are just as guaranteed to produce box office smashes as past hits such as Charlie’s Angels and Lara Croft: Tomb Raider. So I find it hard to disagree with Christina Larson at the Washington Monthly when she points out that after the success of a few films featuring women with superpowers, Hollywood overreached. Studios didn’t pause to figure out why audiences loved action heroines. Instead, they rolled out a formula that pandered to all of the wrong instincts. True that. But I find it a lot easier to disagree when Larson goes on, apparently, to inform us that the problem isn’t that the flops were formulaic and derivative–it’s that they used the wrong formula. The mistake, you see, was for Hollywood to give the anonymous gendered masses plots and characters limited by the narrow criteria of sexual titillation and choreographed fight scenes–when they should have been aiming to give them plots and characters limited by the narrow criteria of self-confident sex appeal to men, immense worldly success, and a distinct lack of inner conflict.

So, also, we are told that Hollywood needs to realize that the first crop of warrior women won a following because they were strong, smart, and successful in addition to being sexy. Men wanted them, and women wanted to be them. Who needs a a richer selection of superheroine films that deal with the many different ways complicated women in extraordinary circumstances might relate to the world? Why not just kvetch about Catwoman’s contempt for men or Elektra’s grim life: her personal magnetism doesn’t measure up: She’s a gloomy assassin who suffers from nightmares, insomnia, and OCD. Plus she hates her job but can’t–or won’t–figure out what else to do with her life.

Now, Peter Parker, of course, was an angsty teenaged boy who hated his life and couldn’t–or wouldn’t–figure out what else to do with it for quite a while in Spider-Man 2. Sure, the film also included a lot of glorious spectacle and comic-book battle scenes. But its real narrative arc was a pretty somber, inward-directed reflection on loss, duty, and sacrifice featuring a geeky boy whose life as a superhero was steadily destroying his friendships, job, studies, and, oh yes, his aborted love life. The hero is nervous, moody, socially isolated, and filled to the brim with male teen angst. The movie worked, really worked, and it was fantastically successful at the box office to boot.

On the other hand, The Punisher tried to adapt a notoriously dark comic featuring a sociopathic antihero whose survives as an empty shell, living only on a consuming lust for vengeance, which fills scene after scene with remorseless death and suffering. The Punisher was a box-office flop, and by most accounts a pretty bad film.

Of course, neither of these films is mentioned, either as a point of comparison or of contrast. Nor do we hear anything in particular about whether superhero movies smash box office records or disappear without a trace when they are about the psychological journey of afflicted heroes. But of course that’s because they involved boys, and since boys’ gender is invisible, there’s no need to try and piece out what the particular successes of Spider-Man 2 or failings of The Punisher mean for the prospects of any and all films that happen to feature a male superhero. Ah, but throw a pair of breasts into the mix and suddenly we have a Gender Issue to sort out. And what better way to sort out a Gender Issue than to make up a list of arbitrary rules for women’s conduct? Take this one—please!

1. Do fight demons. Don’t fight only inner demons.
2. Do play well with others. Don’t shun human society.
3. Do exhibit self-control. Don’t exhibit mental disorders.
4. Do wear trendy clothes. Don’t wear fetish clothes.
5. Do embrace girl power. Don’t cling to man hatred.
6. Do help hapless men. Don’t try to kill your boyfriend.
7. Do toss off witty remarks. Don’t look perpetually sullen.

— Christina Larson, The Washington Monthly (March 2005): Seven Mistakes Superheroines Make

So let’s review. (1) Whatever the conditions of your life, stay bright-eyed and confident all the time. (3) Don’t weird out on us. (4) Dress sexily, but don’t be a slut. (5) Embrace something that vaguely resembles feminism, unless it vaguely resembles the kind that makes boys squirm in their seats. (2), (6)-(7) Good God woman, whatever you do, ensure that you are both sexually available and unthreatening to men at all times. And so there you have it: an advice column for superheroines, straight from the pages of Cosmo, passed off by the Washington Monthly as a piece of cultural criticism.

It’s not that I mind articles which seriously explore the double-standards that men and women are held to in our culture. There are lots; sometimes they occur in weird places; and it’s worth spelling them out. But it’s worth spelling them out critically; if there is such a narrow formula that Hollywood priorities are forcing superheroine flicks into then that’s as good a reason as any to demand better, richer films about women with extraordinary powers.

But no; that would require thinking that audience tastes when it comes to gender and sexuality are complex, or–horribile dictu!–that it’s possible for them to change over time and acquire a taste for something more than the standard formulaic fare that you and I have been fed so far. But the worst thing you could possibly suggest about gender and sexuality in the mainstream culture is that they might be complicated or changeable.

So what matters is not that Catwoman was a wretchedly-written film or that Tomb Raider 2, like most sequels (not to mention most video game flicks), was derivative hackwork. It’s that they involved women who weren’t pleasing to the gaze of an anonymous, immutable, and male-defined audience. Any possibility of criticism must be stifled as quickly as possible, and the best way to do it is to present yet another manual for the sexy single superheroine to achieve success by resorting to every simplistic gender cue available. In other words, we have another opportunity to give a lecture–not to filmmakers to stop producing sleazy, also-ran hackwork, of course, but rather to fictional women, to ensure that they remain young, pleasant, and sexually available to the male gaze. Because that’s all the anonymous mass of boys can stand and all the anonymous mass of women want. Or something.

God only knows what they would do with a superheroine who happens to be a homicidal lesbian terrorist.

The latest news from the Traditional Values front comes to us from Roseville, Michigan, where we find that the defenders of public decency are marshalling their forces to preserve our precious culture and heritage–by launching a legal assault against a local artist for his reproduction of part of Michelangelo Buonarroti’s ceiling for the Sistine Chapel:

In Ed (Gonzo) Stross’ eyes, his variation on Michelangelo’s Creation of Man mural is art.

In 39A District Judge Marco Santia’s eyes, it’s a crime.

Santia ordered jail time, a fine and probation — a sentence that sounds a little harsh to a state senator, the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan and fellow artists.

Santia ordered Stross, 43, to serve 30 days in jail, do two years’ probation and pay a $500 fine for violating a city sign ordinance. Roseville officials said letters were prohibited on the mural and Eve’s exposed chest is indecent.

Besides jail time and the fee, Stross is to tastefully cover Eve’s breasts before reporting to the Macomb County Jail on Monday morning, and to paint over love by May 1.

— Detroit Free Press 2005-02-18: Muralist’s vision has jail staring him in face

(Link thanks to Copyfight 2005-02-23 and No Treason 2005-02-22.)

Of course, a bare-breasted Eve wasn’t too much for Pope Julius II; he not only approved of its public display, but was glad to have it on the ceiling of the most important church in all of Western Christendom. You might have thought that some of our traditional values include glorifying God and Creation through beautiful art, or at least respect for the achievements of our forebearers. But when it comes to the community standards of our day–which are, after all, mostly set by reference to the sensitivities of the most obnoxiously vocal and litigious segments of the Religious Right–it appears that all of these pale in comparison to the importance of ensuring that no child see boobies, ever. Anyway, since when have traditional values had anything to do with history?

This, it seems, is the modern Religious Right: a horde of know-nothing busybodies, apparently hell-bent on making Mencken’s definition of puritanism look plausible, and going to the mat to enforce the values of a past that–fortunately for the achievements of Western civilization–never existed.

Further reading

• GT 2004-03-10: Traditional marriage