"Out-and-out Vagueness"
"Out-and-out Vagueness"
by Brad Bennett
Many haiku are born of observation, and the haiku poet strives to be accurate and precise. Specificity helps to set the scene and invites the reader to partake of the haiku moment. As Mary Oliver explains in The Poetry Handbook, “The language of the poem is the language of particulars. Without it, poetry might still be wise, but it would surely be pallid. And thin. It is the detailed, sensory language incorporating images that gives the poem dash and tenderness. And authenticity.” There are certain times, however, when you want to be deliberately vague in a haiku. William Higginson suggests that, “Generally, haiku poets avoid wide-open ambiguity. Without a fairly well-defined concrete image there is not much for the reader to build on. But occasionally risking the border of out-and-out vagueness produces startling results...” Vagueness suggests that the poem is unresolved, and readers may find that experience intriguing and inviting. In an essay titled “Thirteen Ways of Reading Haiku,” Michael Dylan Welch writes, “The Japanese haiku master Seisensui has referred to haiku as an ‘unfinished’ poem. This means that the reader finishes the poem by engaging with it. The art of reading haiku amounts to finishing the poem that the poet started.”
Haikuists make decisions all the time about how specific or vague our words need to be. For instance, we might choose “flower,” “wildflower,” or “starflower,” depending on the needs of a particular poem. Each option does a different job.5 But there are also some deliberately vague words, such as “somewhere,” “anyone,” and “something,” that can create Higginson’s “out-and-out vagueness” in a haiku.
