"If I am the storm, if I am the wonder, will I have flashlights, nightmares, and sudden explosions?"

Another for my collection of bad poetry: Harold G. Henderson's An Introduction to Haiku. I was warned of its existence by this Making Light thread about unreliable research sources. So of course I had to get it -- not for the translation mistakes, which are a dime a baker's dozen, but because he makes the haiku rhyme.

I'll let that sink in a moment.

Mid-last-century, there was a serious debate about this -- whether use rhyme to mimic some of the other sound effects of Japanese. You can make reasonable (if wrong) arguments for it -- and Henderson even does in his preface -- but his actual results don't help the case. It'd be easy to stack my case by searching for the most egregious examples, but it's more telling to pick three as randomly as possible: eyes closed, open page and point.

Sudden Shower

Not even a hat—
   and cold rain falling on me?
      Tut-tut! think of that!


In the Paddy Field

Women, rice-planting:
   all muddy, save one thing—
      that's their chanting.


The Great Buddha at Nara

Out of the hollow
   of Great Buddha's nose—
      comes a swallow.

1. Basho: Kasa mo naki ware wo shigururu ka nanto-nanto
2. Raisan: Sa-otome ya yogorenu mono wa uta bakari
3. Issa: Dai-butsu-no hana kara izuru tsubame kana

I don't read Japanese, but the transcriptions make it pretty clear the originals don't chime so insistently. Or so painfully.

Or, really, at all.

---L.