Mount Orégano

Haiku is plagued by rules, some of which are false. Others are little-known but essential.

False: the idea that a haiku consists of 3-5-3 lines. I'll let Gabi Greve and Haiku Society discuss that. In Japanese, there is a count, but it's not exactly English syllables.

Fewer people know about the kireji, or "cutting word." In Japanese, these act sort of like punctuation or add grammatical structure, and function similarly to the volta or turn in a classic sonnet. The kireji cuts the poem into two parts. In Japanese, a kireji may indicate a question, emphasis, surprise, completion, probability, cause, or interrelationship.

In English, these words are sometimes represented by punctuation, such as colons, dashes, commas, ellipsis, exclamation points, or question marks (: — , … ! ?) or words like but, how, and, yet, now, this, still (and a lot more) or simply by a line break.

Kireji link two ideas. The best haiku have more depth than a simple observation; they link an observation, often about the changes in nature and its seasons, to something else.

Kireji also free the poet from the constraints of a sentence. Words can be left out, and fragments of sentences can be connected to create both emphasis and brevity. (If you love 17-syllable sentences, you may wish to investigate the poetic form of American sentences.)

How does this work? Here are some of my haiku, offered humbly to avoid plagiarizing other better poets:

hard to say:
which day did the robins
leave town?

Christmas eve —
the woman in the checkout line
blinking back tears

back to school —
even the playground trees
are taller

old man
thinks no one is watching
and limps
(Here and is the kireji.)

bus stop
an empty bench
and a bag lunch
(It's and again.)

songbird hatchling
dead on the sidewalk
but Spring does not pause
(but)

finally
on last year's poinsettia
a red leaf
(line breaks)

open gate
a girl climbs the playground fence
anyway
(Here the kireji is anyway. The location at the end of the haiku brings you back to the beginning, and gives an emotional closure to the poem.)

These haiku also include the traditional immediacy and personal experience — I saw all those things and was inspired by them. Something happened in the context of something else that created a meaning beyond the words themselves.

………

Recommended resources for learning more about Haiku:

World Haiku Review archives
http://whrarchives.wordpress.com/

Happy Haiku Archives
http://happyhaiku.blogspot.com.es/2000_07_01_happyhaiku_archive.html

— Sue Burke
Also posted at my professional writer's website: http://www.sue.burke.name

When I was a freshman in college, I read an excerpt of a book by the Spanish writer known as Azorín, which was the pen name of José Martínez Ruiz, (1873-1967). Mario Vargas Llosa has called him "one of the most elegant artisans of our language."

It changed the way I thought about writing.

The excerpt was from a chapter called "Theory of Style" in the book Un Pueblecito: Riofrío de Ávila, published in 1916. It's set in the little town of Riofrío de Ávila and deals with the experiences of the parish priest, Bejarano Galavis. Chapter 4 describes Bejarano's theory of good writing style — really Azorín's:

………
The snow and the water

[...]Look at the whiteness of that mountain snow, so smooth, so clear; look at the transparency of the water in this mountain stream, so clean, so crystalline. Style is this; style is nothing. Style is writing in such a way that those read it think: This is nothing. They think: I can do this.

And yet they — the ones who think they can — nevertheless can't do such a simple thing; this thing which is nothing may be the most difficult, the most laborious, the most complicated of all.

Directly to the things

Bejarano Galavis, in the prologue to his book, puts forth his theory of style. His declarations are categorical. "Clarity," our author says, "is the first quality of style. We do not speak except to make ourselves understood. Style is clear if it immediately conveys the things in it to the listener without making him pause on the words."

Let us retain this fundamental maxim: Directly to the things. Without words that slow us down, hold us back, make the road more difficult, we arrive instantly at the things.[...]

One who isn't an artist, who isn't a great stylist, who hasn't mastered technique, will always fatally tend to dress up his feelings and ideas with annoying accessories and fuss. He'll never understand that a style should not be rejected for being simple. "The quality of simplicity as a point of style isn't a term of contempt but of art."[...]

And the author adds: "Simple style has no less delicacy or precision than the rest." "Of all the defects of style, the most ridiculous is the one called overstuffed."

Obscure style, obscure thought

Everything must be sacrificed to clarity. "Every other circumstance or condition, like purity, measure, elevation, and delicacy, must cede to clarity." Isn't this enough? Well, for the purists, this: "It is better to be censured for grammar than to not be understood."

"It is true that every affectation is reprehensible, but without fear one can affect to be clear." The only excusable affectation is clarity. "It is not enough to make yourself understandable; it is necessary to aspire to be unable to be misunderstood."

Yes, the supreme style is serious and clear. But how to write seriously and clearly if one does not think that way?[...] Here lies the big problem. We are going to give a formula for simplicity. Simplicity, the extremely difficult simplicity, is a question of method. Do this and you will suddenly achieve great style:

Put one thing after the other. Nothing more; this is everything. Haven't you observed the defect of an orator or writer that consists in putting things inside other things by means of parentheses, asides, digressions, and fleeting and incidental considerations?

Well, the opposite is to put things — ideas, sensations — one after the other. "Things should be placed," Bejarano says, "in the order in which they are thought, and given their proper extension."

But the problem ... is in thinking well.
………

— Sue Burke

Also posted at my professional website: http://www.sue.burke.name

Late in December of 2001, I got my first euros, a "starter kit" bag of coins purchased at a bank with Spanish pesetas. I took them home and we admired them, all shiny and new. On January 1, 2002, we would begin to use them.

No more peseta, which had served Spain for 133 years. No more peseta prizes in the El Gordo lottery held every December 22. At the lottery drawing, the winning numbers and prizes are always sung, and in 2001, the audience began to sing along — singing goodbye to the peseta. Rarely do average citizens get to participate directly in such a grand historic event as the introduction of a new international currency involving fourteen European countries.

Euro-ready or not, nine days later, midnight struck! People lined up at ATMs on their way to New Year's parties to withdraw the new cash. The Madrid subway system discovered that its ticket machines were not quite euro-ready and didn't work with the new currency, so people got to ride free until that was fixed the next day.

Officially, the euro had existed as a non-physical currency starting January 1, 1999, so we had a long time to get ready. Despite all the preparation, on January 1 a waiter in France got confused and accepted a 5-denomination Monopoly bill as a 5€ bill: both are grayish, the same size, and have big 5's on them.

Here in Spain, we officially had until February 28 to shift over to the new currency, but it took only a few days. By law, we could pay in pesetas and get our change in euros, and that's how we did it: people would buy a 100-peseta cup of coffee with a 10,000 peseta note.

We all had to do a lot of math to figure out equivalents: 166.386 pesetas equaled 1€. For a long time I saw befuddled elderly people in stores helplessly holding out a handful of euro bills and coins to check-out clerks, who would pick out the right amount. The euro had cents, like dollars, and my husband had to teach our landlord how to write a check with decimals. I knew that the copper coins would tarnish soon like US pennies, but Spaniards were dismayed when they saw the pretty coins turn brown.

But even before the euro began circulating, the problems had begun to surface. To avoid paying taxes on under-the-table earnings, many Spaniards kept significant savings in cash — suitcases full of bills. How could they exchange these for euros without paying taxes? They couldn't, so they began spending the pesetas. One December 2001 advertisement for diamonds simply showed jewelry and the tagline: "Honey, the euro is coming and I don't have a thing to wear."

But where they really stashed their cash was in real estate. Spain already had a real estate bubble, and this spending inflated it fast, with unhappy consequences. The video Españistán (with English subtitles) explains the bubble well, although very angrily. Building became uncontrolled. In addition, the European Union's financial policy of low interest rates designed to favor Germany's growth further fueled the real estate boom in Spain and other European countries.

Then, in 2008, the boom blew up. A US financial crisis spread world-wide, and although it hurt Europe in general, it specifically destroyed Spain's real-estate construction business. Suddenly, Spain's national budget went from surplus to deficit as the government coped with unemployment while revenues dropped. Recession struck Spain and other European countries. Then it turned out that Greece, with the help of Goldman Sachs, had lied about its government finances. Borrowing at the low interest rates had kept Greece afloat for a while, but starting in 2009, it couldn't pay back the money it had borrowed.

Meanwhile, many European banks held the toxic assets created in the US, as well as local mortgages and other real estate investments that had suddenly lost much of their value — but they didn't know exactly how much they had lost, since the investment securities were opaque. They also held Greek government bonds, and since banks had become weak, they couldn't afford to take a hit from Greece, which for some of them would have been a big hit.

The European Union responded by forcing the banks to do that, and a tottering system began to tilt. The fault, supposedly, lay with the PIGS — Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, and Spain — for having acquired too much debt due to unwise spending. In truth, Germany's government had high indebtedness, too, and its smaller banks had frightening balance sheets. In spite of that, financial speculators decided that Germany, whose economy was still robust, would never default, but the PIGS might, so speculators pushed up interest rates on those governments' bonds, which only deepened those countries' debts and troubles.

Social spending has always had ideological enemies, and the debt crisis let these ideologues claim that the error lay in bloated government budgets. Germany, who as it turned out unilaterally runs the European Union, demanded austerity budgets from those countries that slashed social spending in exchange for getting a little protection from speculators. In effect, this was like punishing a man for starving by sending him to bed without his supper.

That's where we are in January 2012. The problem is financial, not fiscal: banks, not budgets. But no one wants to deal with the thorny problem of a dysfunctional financial sector, and "morally upright" northern European countries don't want to pay for the supposed errors of southern Europe.

Simple mechanisms could solve this crisis fast, such as having the European Central Bank behave more like the US Federal Reserve and be a lender of last resort (in effect, printing money), permitting inflation, or issuing Euro-bonds. But Germany, specifically Angela Merkel, says no.

Instead, it's relatively easy to force budget cutbacks. And yet if budgets aren't the root problem, cutbacks won't solve the crisis. Cutting government spending will only deepen the recession, and things will only get worse.

The joy of a decade ago has given way to gloom, and in a recent survey, 70% of Spaniards said the euro has been of little or no benefit to Spain.

— Sue Burke

For years I wondered about the shells in the marble in the hallways of our apartment building. What were they, when did they live? The brownish-cream stone had a lot of them, but I didn't know how to begin to investigate.

Then a friend happened to give me a fossil — and it was a match. I had a Gryphaea obliquata, an extinct oyster common in the Jurassic and Cretaceous Periods.

That clue was enough to eventually identify the exact marble, called Ulldecona stone or Cenia stone, from the town of Ulldecona in Tarragona, eastern Spain. It had been formed in the early Cretaceous Period. At that time, eastern Spain lay under warm, shallow oceans. The shoreline lay close to Castilla-La Mancha, where La Huergina Formation and other fossil beds continue to yield important finds of dinosaurs and other animals.

Now when I wait for the elevator, I stand on the shore of that 130-million-year-old sea.

The oysters under my feet grow in vast colonies. They have two unequal shells, and the heavy curved lower shell keeps them upright on the soft seabed, while the upper lid opens to filter water for food and oxygen. Above them swim fish and ammonites — along with plesiosaurs, which look a lot like the Loch Ness Monster. Do I see one toward the horizon, its long neck arching over the waves?

A forest of ferns and pine trees rises behind me, and off in the distance, a Turiasaurus raises its long neck to munch on a tree. It's a sauropod the size of a small commercial passenger airplane ... safely far away.

Primitive birds, pterosaurs, and insects fly above me, and the buzzes and calls seem familiar. On the ground, frogs and shrews (my ancestors) scurry around.

I hear a heavy rustle. It's geologically too early for T-rex, but a variety of its smaller theropod cousins flourish — the Cocavenator, for example, not exactly a big Velociraptor with quills, but close enough.

Another rustle. It could be the wind in the ferns, a toad hoping after a beetle, or it could be a carnivore edging toward a new, strange prey that seems defenseless and distracted. Then something rumbles in front of me.

The elevator has arrived! I escape into the present. I'm the dominant species now — but the stone under my feet was once alive.

— Sue Burke

In honor of August:

On August 6, 1881, Alexander Fleming was born in Scotland. He became a doctor and served in the Royal Army Medical Corps throughout World War I. When he returned, he began to search for new anti-bacterial agents because he had seen many soldiers die of infected wounds.

In September 1928, he discovered that a fungus had destroyed some of his experimental bacterial cultures. By the end of the month, he had cultured the mold and found that it produced a substance that killed many bacteria. Soon, he had named it penicillin after its genus.

It proved hard to grow and refine, but after he abandoned it in 1940, some chemists began to work on it to produce the world's first antibiotic for troops in World War II. By 1945, they had mastered mass production.

Penicillin has saved hundreds of millions of lives. The drug became one of the 20th century's most important discoveries and Fleming one of its most important people.

Why would this matter to bullfighters? They get gored a lot on the job, around once a year. Some injuries are minor, but all are dangerous.

Bull horns are rough and fighting bulls are not bathed before entering the ring, so the horns introduce bacteria and other infectious agents into deep wounds. Recovery can be difficult, but it was much more dangerous before antibiotics.

That's why bullfighters collected money to erect a monument in 1964 to Alexander Fleming. It stands outside Las Ventas bullring in Madrid, one of the biggest and the most important in the world.

Bullfighting has seen better days. Besides an anti-bullfighting movement, which has existed for centuries, the current economic crisis has meant cutbacks. A decade ago, Spain had about 2,000 bullfights a year. In 2010, there were 1,487. While surveys show that most Spaniards oppose a ban, most aren't interested in bullfighting, either.

If Ernest Hemingway were to come to a bullfight today, he wouldn't see many changes, and he wouldn't see many young faces in the stands. That's bad, says Manuel Molés, director of Los Toros program on SER radio. "We can't live without innovation."

Antonio Lorca, a bullfighting critic for El País newspaper, says the fiesta has lost its excitement. "Its star, the bull, has ceased to be a fierce and powerful animal and has become a sickly antagonist who provokes more pity than respect." Fighting bulls are no longer bred to be as dangerous as they used to.

"Today's bull is no good for this eternal fiesta based on thoroughbreds, on the fierceness and bravery of a powerful and challenging animal that creates fear and glorifies the bullfighter who manages to defeat it in passionate battle. But today there is no battle, not even a quarrel. At most, some childish and insipid capework worthy of a schoolyard."

He identifies the culprits: "There are too many ranches, too many bullfighters, too many businesses, and more importantly, too many egos and too much selfishness to allow the purity of the fiesta and the interests of the spectator to prevail."

What should the spectator want? Salvador Boix, a musician who defends bullfighting, says danger is key to the spectacle:

"We live in a society of fear. Fear if it's cold in winter and hot in summer, fear of the nuclear threat, even more fears than society is actually suffering. The bullfighter incarnates the conquest of fear, the respect for his adversary, the will to overcome, qualities that are more and more rare. That's why I'd recommend going to a bullfight at least once. It will put all those fears behind."

………
Canal+ has video highlights of major bullfights at:
http://www.canalplus.es/toros
………

— Sue Burke

Arab and Islamic governments keep making news these days, among them Saudi Arabia, so I'll take this opportunity to tell how I saw the King of Saudi Arabia, His Majesty Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz al Saud, several years ago.

I was walking through downtown Madrid and happened to go past the Hotel Palace. It's one of the city's top hotels, the place where statesmen and stars tend to stay. I wasn't surprised to notice security agents outside — I'd seen that before — but I was intrigued by the enormous quantity of them, including Spanish and foreign agents and even Spanish soldiers. An exceptionally Very Important Person was staying at the hotel.

They let me keep walking up the sidewalk toward the entrance (although I got some careful looks) and I saw a big limousine under the carport. Maybe this VIP would come out soon. I crossed the side street and joined a couple of tourists waiting there to see who it would be. The street is old and narrow, and I was surprised that the security agents allowed us to remain so close, but there seemed to be two men in suits with nothing better to do than pretend to read newspapers while keeping an eye on us.

A minute later, a bustle told me that the VIP might be approaching — and out walked a man with a black mustache and goatee, wearing beautiful Arab robes, surrounded by an entourage. He was the walking definition of regal bearing.

He got in the car without a glance at us gawkers and his motorcade took off, sirens blaring. I didn't know who he was, but the next day I identified him as King Abdullah from a photo in a newspaper article.

That's the only royalty I've seen so close, and one brief glimpse isn't worth much, but I came away convinced that this man knew he was important and fully believed that he deserved his place in the world. If there is ever political change in Saudi Arabia, that attitude could matter.

— Sue Burke
Also posted at my professional website: http://www.sue.burke.name