The Art of the Visionary Skid

The hybrid style of a haiku text, although it employs discursive language, tempers it to serve the needs of the poem. Thus, without aiming to eliminate sentences altogether, it favors the use of fragments—shorter phrases that are syntactically well-formed. Through omission, suppression, and ellipsis, it succeeds in targeting things it does not explicitly name. This results in an economical adjustment of the text, making it richer, denser, and more charged.

A Statement Report

The final appearance of such a text resembles that of a statement report. Its terseness manages to overlay an ironic hush upon the formulation of the text. Usually, words that refer to the author, to the human being, to emotions and feelings, to abstractions and concepts, to spirits and ghosts, as well as archaisms, neologisms, and regionalisms are eliminated. Everything that hinders a smooth, uninterrupted reading is removed.

Reading such a text initially involves filling in these omissions and completing the real referent being targeted. Undoubtedly, the author’s purging is accompanied by clues that help the reader enjoy both the author’s skill and the potential of the language available to him.

A discursive-format text says something explicitly. It asserts or claims, indicates or specifies, declares or displays, presents, recounts, narrates. With slight differences among the modes of speech listed, all suggest an overt firmness in communication, in emission and reception. The rhetorical structure of the text—its syntactic formatting—is what specializes it for this. But it also limits it. Words are trapped in a syntactic corset that restricts their freedom and their virtual play.

reading at dawn – 

from the book my palm

gathers pollen

(Șerban Codrin)

The discursive performance of this text lies in its way of observing and recording what happens as objectively as possible. What is seen and what the character does. Without any subjective, emotional, or ornamental addition. Dry, barren. Like a police officer rigorously recording an event according to procedural standards.

It therefore seems natural for a reader unfamiliar with haiku irony to take the discursive style seriously. And the flawless, clear, to-the-point, fluid text with normal word order and correct grammar might lead them to believe that this is the (somewhat withered) charm of the poem. When, in fact, the author has cleverly staged a trick.

The Role of This Trick

Its purpose is to increase the tension of the text. To create, ironically, a false trail. And, of course, to hide or make more difficult access to the gateway that leads toward the poem’s suggestive weave.

The Allusive Weaving

The haiku’s hybrid text means that it is, as the marketing phrase goes, “two-in-one.” That it is both discursive and allusive, simultaneously. The discursive text, being more assertive, quantitatively dominates the allusive one. Or, put differently, it conceals it. One might say it is harder to spot—being more reserved, perhaps shyer. It usually acts only as a gateway to the allusive weave. The same poem cited earlier serves as a perfect illustration of how the allusive layer appears, behaves, and is read.

Usually, the evoked scene, no matter how bland, captures the reader’s attention. It hypnotizes and captivates them. It leads them to settle simplistically for what they see or feel. It fixes them on an image. The gateway into the realm of allusive language is too cleverly hidden. And, in a way, this is natural, because we are not dealing with a trivial game, but with a concealment.

It’s about reading differently the words I gather pollen. The pollen may be brushed off the page or collected for a purpose that the reader must imagine. These two words are a trigger for this silent reading. They spark a search and a transformation of meaning. They help us reevaluate the words in the discursive text. Dawn reading allusively skids toward the dawn of life, of youth. The book also skids toward the formative, beneficial effects of reading on a young person’s personality. The treasured pollen becomes a kind of gold—vital fertility.

We are already dealing with a true allusive weave—invisible and silent. Nonexistent in the text, yet spreading through the poem’s subtext. Some of the words in the discursive layer have slipped toward other meanings, and the entire poem has undergone an allegorical transfiguration, toward another symbolic achievement.

A haiku is valid, rich, and complex only if it grants access to a vision. Confirmation, however, comes only if the reader also knows, cultivates, and practices the art of the visionary skid.

Corneliu Traian Atanasiu – Un cerc de linguri (A circle of spoons), comentarii la poeme haiku de Șerban Codrin Denk (comments for haiku poems by Serban Codrin Denk), page 21

Rearranged Life

 this beach of pebbles

after the wave

my life rearranged

Gregory Piko (Australia)

I believe the emphasis falls on this — this beach of pebbles. The one I'm contemplating and evoking now. The one revealing something unexpected and fascinating. The one I’m offering you, too, as a source of admiration and reflection.

Colloquial language knows how to say, elliptically and succinctly, only what needs to be said. It doesn’t burden the text with details or descriptive adjectives. This is enough, and at the same time, deeply expressive — it draws you in, invites you to see, to feel, and to understand the moment.

The text continues just as laconically and, in the end, slips — more than suggestively — from what the wave actually does (shuffles the pebbles and leaves them in a new, different arrangement) to a completely improbable effect: it (re)orders the poet’s life (and the reader’s, if they’re open to the same revelation). Through this simple substitution — the image of constantly shifting stones moved by the waves for the image of human life — what we witness becomes a parable, and the text takes on the aesthetic value of a haiku.

The revelation, in human terms, is actually an acceptance under the sway of an image that becomes a vision. There is no disorder — every change under the constant assault of life’s waves is simply a new, unexpected, and unmatched order. This wave is just the moment when someone understood and made peace with fate. The pebbles had known this all along. They had always been telling him so — but in vain.

The poem tells us this without insistence. It simply gives us something to ponder. It gently draws our attention to the fact that this has already happened — to someone.

*

The allegory is clear: we speak of pebbles, and they quietly speak to us — about ourselves.

(Comment by Corneliu Traian Atanasiu)

The Avenged Desolation - comment by Corneliu Traian Atanasiu

The poem below is one of Bashō’s most well-known.The author’s notation is sober and austere. Objective. There’s no lyrical tremor added to the text. Still, two parts of the poem vaguely take shape.

The second part, however, seems merely a dating of the event mentioned. Or perhaps the first part is just a fact set within the broader, more expansive atmosphere of an autumn dusk.

The dusk doesn’t appear out of nowhere—it is simply a complement, a completion of the event. Or the act of the crow is an expressive illustration of the autumn dusk.

on a dry branch

a crow has settled from its flight

autumn dusk

In the poem that follows, the author, Șerban Codrin, is from the outset more daring. Desolation is evoked through the lens of autumn. At first glance, the two elements of the scene seem entirely different—the season and an abandoned musical instrument. Yet their juxtaposition, precisely through its silence, suggests continuity, an escalation of desolation to the point of explosion. The damaged guitar can no longer even whimper. A wood fiber snaps—perhaps in solidarity with the unbearable situation. Perhaps as compensation for human helplessness, it is the wood itself—a symbol of inertia and passivity—that reacts.

autumn desolation –

inside the guitar one more fiber

snaps

The break in the text is clearly a provocation. An opportunity to ease a back-and-forth between the two parts. To call upon their suggestive powers and visionary slippage. It is no longer merely an image—from the beginning, it is only a pretext for a kind of story. The whole poem is pierced by a tremor of rebellion beyond human power. Nature takes its revenge.

Waves of Haiku - Summer 2025

 Choose your favorite from the sea themed poems by three Romanian haiku masters:

1.

flying seagull –

suddenly the coolness

of a fan

Șerban Codrin

2.

wind all day long –

a heap of thoughts

out of place

Corneliu Traian Atanasiu

3.

the old fisherman

pulling a line from the moon –

the sky unraveling

Eduard Țară

The Flavour of the Breeze

 the flavor of the breeze –

stealthily the wave steals

sand from under my soles

In the subtext, the mycelial filaments add meaning.

Savoring the breeze, the character is unaware of the trick the wave is playing on him.

Emotion threatens his stability from head to toe.

(Haiku poem and comment by Corneliu Traian Atanasiu)

Thin ice

thin ice –

only the moon dares

to cross the lake

 

Ion Reșinariu

 

Of course, the detractors will immediately find it reprehensible that the moon is personified, if not because it does something that man does, at least because its action is characterized as bold. And we are talking about an action that is impossible to consider for an inanimate thing. The author's intent, for the reader who tastes haiku, is obviously to prove the fragility of the ice, and to do so using the reflection of the moon on the ice. The moon is there, we see it, even if it's moving slower or coming to a halt, and the ice isn't breaking. It is a staging that is part of the easy transfiguration of what we see. It's like walking on ice. After all, it is the allegory, without which haiku has no tension and vibration. What was indexed is actually what works to make the poem authentic.

 

(Comment by Corneliu Traian Atanasiu)

How to read a haiku by an educated reader

 

fleeting love –

in front of her gate

idling away

 

(Mirela Brăilean)

 

 Some general remarks:

- the author is not mentioned in the text, discreetly, he is standing in the shadows

- the text does not talk about any emotion felt by the author or by the reader

- the feeling of being in love is rather depicted with the help of irony

Important in the poem are the approaches that are read between the lines and link the two parts. The fleeting love (temporary, transient) in the first part corresponds to the expression of idling away (without a determined goal, without purpose, at random). There is an abbreviation, an ellipse, in the second part. One that can be easily recovered. It is obvious that the lover is the one who passes by in front of the gate, idling away. He passes (he is a passer-by), but not only because of the idling away (literally - for her sake,) but also almost uselessly (figuratively). Love thus proves to be fleeting, outdated, and fragile.

 

Comment by Corneliu Traian Atanasiu