marlene mountain
as is
2001

 

4/28

let bygone haiku

i could learn everything about mississippi delta blues and play
it but i could never create it. it would be imitation because it is
not my culture. it does not come from personal experience as a black
who has had to endure oppression and who has survived. who has made
art out of it all. i could however write the blues.

i perceived many years ago that i can not write japanese haiku. this
did not come from books but from the experience of living in japan. i
don't want to write japanese haiku. if it only had one teeny-tiny rule
which i knew backwards and forwards i still would not want to write it.
japanese haiku is bound up in too much culture, philosophy and denial
like the other disciplines. it is complicated even to japanese and
many laugh it off as just so much old stuff. the japanese arts are
quite tiresome. as are old western concepts.

let bygone haiku be bygone haiku so to speak. the way i see it we
write our own haiku or we are writing nothing at all

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