David Cobb on humour in haiku

Humour in Haiku (one/two)
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Humour in Haiku, page two

Now for something completely different. Whimsy is surely the characteristic of:

it's no use mouthing
O after O at me —
I don't speak Goldfish!

published in Mounting Shadows and in the BHS Haiku Kit

One can't deny uninhibited delight, either, and there is also a smidgeon of linguistic humour, with the capital G suggesting there is a recognised language called Goldfish. I fancy many British readers might squirm at this kind of humour, possibly call it 'silly', but it is curiously popular abroad, In Ireland and Germany it was picked out for attention, and in Japan Yasuhiko Shigemoto actually wrote about it as one of his 'favourite haiku' (Blithe Spirit, Vol 5 No 2).

For kindly parody I will offer you two, the first leaning on Issa's well-known turnip-puller poem already cited, and the other on the most famous haiku of all, Basho's ancient pond:

lost in the country —
the roadmender points the way
with his mobile phone

unpublished

plastic pond
a frog jumps
past it

unpublished

I don't think these are senryu parody, because I am not taking the mickey out of the original poets or their poems, but in each case out of contemporary civilisation. I am recruiting Issa and Basho as auxiliaries. If these poems have a weakness, it is to engage in social polemics. Others will think haiku in modern times need to engage like this.

A kind of linguistic humour is apparent in:

children's fete —
the wind freeing
free balloons

published in
New Zealand Poetry Society Anthology 1994

I would argue that the cleverness of this is mitigated by the paradox — the balloons, which are free in the sense of costing nothing, have still to be liberated by the act of eager children taking them away without paying anything.

Puns are hazardous in all kinds of communication, but I think the following is successful:

across the fields of stubble
flame stalks flame

published in Mounting Shadows

The reason being that the two different meanings supplied by stalks are equally valid, both of interest, and complementary.

(Anyone who has never seen the now illegal practice of stubble-burning after harvest may need the explanation that field workers set a torch to certain rows, leaving rows of stubble in between to be 'hunted down' by those already on fire.)

Allusion is apparent in:

'A Nation's Grief' —-
leaking through the headlines
fish and chips

published in Blithe Spirit

the 'grief' on this occasion being for Princess Diana. However, this is obviously a senryu.

The following two seem to me to have compassionate irony:

nativity play —-
red face of the angel
coming on too soon

published in Blithe Spirit

morning of the 'op'
changing the blade
of my safety razor

published in The Rialto
and Haiku Canada Sheets

I'm not sure what 'political correctness' has to say about angels, but one might think a red-faced one would always be 'too soon' or out-of-place, and so there may be an interesting undercurrent of humour of contrast here, between the immediate and the eternal, and between the celestial world and the world of the 5-year-old child. In the second example, there is an obvious contrast between the safety razor used by the patient and the less predictable blade the surgeon is going to wield later on. One might call this self-compassionate irony.

Examples of humour of self-deprecation are:

mid-life crisis —-
purchasing Valentines
three at a time

published in Spin
and Jumping from Kiyomizu

as she lies dying
I tell her the crocuses
are early this year

published in Bare Bones
and Jumping from Kiyomizu

The first of these is senryu, the second haiku.

As an example of humour of the grotesque I suggest:

barbecue —
hairs on the cook's belly
sprinkled with salt

published in Jumping from Kiyomizu

For humour of the illogical I offer you:

the misshapen apple —
ending up cutting it
into five quarters

unpublished

which also involves linguistic humour, as there is ambiguity about quarters. We have paroadox, and contrast between precision and rough calculation. Of this haiku Kaj Falkman has this to say: "Very intriguing — from no form to cutting the form, thereby transforming it into five forms. Excellent. Very philosophical."

To sum up so far, I would like to quote some words from Martin Lucas (Blithe Spirit) which just about hit my nail on the head for me. He says:

"There is no substitute for uninhibited delight, and I would like to be able to read and write haiku that reflect it. Our love of nature should be as passionate as Li Po's and only a little more careful. Our approach to our subject matter should be bold, dealing with the agonies of birth and death as well as moments of serenity and contemplative bliss in-between."

In conclusion, I would like to add that all I have said about humour in haiku applies to haibun. In fact, it applies in spades, for the common purpose of haibun is to be readable and to entertain. But Ken Jones has drawn our attention (Blithe Spirit, Vol 10, No 3) to the humourlessness of so many currently published haiku, in which, with the minute attention writers give to recording their own mundane activities, they run the risk of sounding self-important.

Because of the linking potential of haiku in haibun, to as it were simultaneously stabilise and shift, the scope for humour of contrast can be great. I would like to use an excerpt from a short unpublished haibun of mine to illustrate this. The story so far: I have been asked by her German mother and (wicked?) step-father to help return a beautiful Eurasian teenager to her native land, Siam (yes, such things really happen in the life of a haijin!) She had left with her mother when her father, an eminent doctor, died of lung cancer. We are on board ship, which has broken down in mid-North Sea. It is our first dinner at the captain's table, and ears at nearby tables are craning in our direction. Let the haibun take over:

As we wait after the waiter has removed the soup bowls, my ward smiles, opens her pretty handbag and takes out a small silver box, beautifully chased. Suitable for snuff or spice. She smiles a second time, ineffably, and opening the box over the empty space between my knife, fork and spoon, takes out a folded piece of paper. "These are my father's," she explains, opening the paper and spreading it before me, where the waiter is ready to place a warmed dinner plate, some fragment of charred bone.
	next table silent — a jade cigarette holder drops a plume of ash.

I would like to suggest that several kinds of humour are at play here. Grotesque humour, obviously. Linguistic humour, perhaps, because beyond jade a subtle mind might detect a hint of jaded. But a strong degree of contrast, a contrast that connects, for the 'cigarette holder' reminds us that the doctor died of cancer, and the 'plume of ash' reminds us of his funeral pyre. There is tension between 'holding' and 'dropping', the one implying stability, the other instability. The haiku is dramatic and plays its part in a small act of tragi-comedy which is typical of life.

David Cobb
May 27, 2001

Humour in Haiku (one/two)
haiku page 1 | haiku page 2 | haiku page 3
biography and credits