Dimitar Anakiev
HAIKU AND CAPITALISM
From the Anglo-Saxon world we often receive instructions on what kind of haiku we have to write, then what haiku is and what rules a poet must follow if he/she wants to write haiku. Although we can agree with most of the advice in principle, the results of haiku practice are increasingly chaotic and we can freely say that haiku is affected by a kind of globalist entropy and shares the fate of all other "natural phenomena" on planet earth. Paradoxically, the situation is similar to social life: there are more and more rules and regulations and life is more and more uncontrolled, and I don't believe that the problem is only in non-compliance with regulations. The problem seems deeper and requires the right naming instead of mere dictation and renewal of rules which obviously cannot solve the problem because it is not formal but essential in nature.
Last year I received an e-mail from the editor of the British magazine "Soundings" asking me to send a few haiku for publication. Along with the request, the editor forwarded me the address of the magazine's website. I was surprised and intrigued to see that this is a magazine that deals with political topics. I was even more surprised to receive the published poems and in addition to my name I saw other poets in a pretty solid haiku block. They were Frances Angela, Jim Kacian, John Martone, Kala Ramesh and Martin Lucas - all with 5-6 poems. However, a real surprise followed when I read the title "Cultures of capitalism" on the cover of the magazine (1). I asked myself very excitedly: "Is it possible that haiku is an expression of capitalism?" Further questions followed: "Is haiku the art through which global capitalism speaks most eloquently, so that we can take it to illustrate capitalist culture?" If someone had asked me the same question before, I would have categorically denied it, without thinking. But, paradoxically, the answer was affirmative, and that affirmative answer also answers the question of the previously mentioned problem of the entropy of haiku.
Regardless of my unwillingness to look at haiku (or any art) through the prism of political economy, the determination of haiku as capitalist art has imposed a spontaneous question of the ontological connection of capitalism, that is. Western materialism - which highlights material gain (within which is the subjugation and exploitation of nature) - and the philosophy of coexistence with nature, the expression of which should be haiku. Although not so long ago I heard from a respected Japanese poet that haiku can be adapted to everything (which roughly answers the claim that life can be adapted to everything), I believe, however, that the problem is ontological and that we should answer the question of the connection between haiku and of Western materialism negatively. In practice, however, the answer is "yes" and that is our problem.
"Capitalist haiku" has spread and taken root in its many mutations, often expressing a spirit that has broken its vitality and uses it as a form without an ontological essence. Such "capitalist haiku" cannot be helped by further formal regulations to be "real" simply because it is not real, or not real enough, and perhaps even completely false. After criticizing the "naivety" of the New Age rebellion against our own culture and after we managed to adapt haiku from the subculture to the demands of the mainstream, we must face the result, and that result is "capitalist haiku."
If we ask ourselves what are the features of "capitalist haiku" then the maximum reduction of human content is striking so that reading the poems of today's "capitalist haiku" we can learn almost nothing about authors as people - the whole spectrum of human themes has disappeared and "capitalist haiku" is dominated by dehumanized themes of nature. Nature is therefore a mere object in them as if it were an end in itself, and man is most often present as an affirmative witness, while haiku is a note in the "index affirmatorum". There is no need to say anything, and there is a need to register. There is no deeper connection, crucial for haiku. I guess that the so-called "Ecological haiku" is thus a subtype of "capitalist haiku" because the real, essential, connection with nature is replaced by critical consciousness. The big question is whether "capitalist haiku" can be considered poetry, and the question is whether it is haiku. If so, then it is the lowest species.
The basic problem today is how to free people to communicate their intimate thoughts through poetry at all, while using the symbolism of nature, which would be in the spirit of haiku. Because naturalization and humanization go hand in hand and I think it’s the same. Western haiku poets, if there are any, should be taught and encouraged to communicate and face life, asked daily what happened to them today, or what they want to pay attention to, or simply rethink the meanings - what people would like to say and then teach them to say it through natural symbols, therefore indirectly, metaphorically. But above all, a Western haikuist must wake up and feel humane in order for nature to be born in a poetic heart. It is quite the opposite way of burying poets in rules and forms as if haiku were their bank cards and check accounts and not free-spirit products. Haiku is emancipation and liberation and not regulation and subordination.
(1) http://www.lwbooks.co.uk/journals/soundings/archive/soundings38.htm
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