 |
|
|
Robert Leiter
"At the time, I kept reading about how Buddhism was influencing Judaism,
about all these Jews making pilgrimages to Tibet. So I thought of going for
something Zen-like and spiritual in that sense, but suited for a Jewish,
urban, neurotic temperament
Haikus For Jews
Purchasing this book
-- linked to the left in article --
helps fund JWR
BASHO, THE GREAT MASTER of the Japanese haiku, a brief rarified form of
poetry, once said that "There is no subject whatever that is not fit" for
the genre. Still, what he would make of David Bader's collection of Haikus
for Jews, recently published by Harmony Books, is anybody's guess.
Basho's works adhere to a severe formal elegance: three unrhymed lines of
five, seven and five syllables respectively, totaling 17 syllables.
The preface to Bader's book picks up on this severity and does a deadpan
imitation of high-art literary criticism. "Of all the many forms of
Jewish-Japanese poetry, the Jewish haiku is perhaps the most sublimely
beautiful. Consisting of just 17 syllables, this little-known style of
verse combines the simplicity and elegance of Asian art with the
irritability and impatience of Jewish kvetching. Its brief,
carefully-wrought lines are designed to produce in the reader a 'haiku
moment' - a sudden, intense realization, such as, 'so, that's it?' "
For example:
"Looking for pink buds
to prune back, the mohel tends
his flowering garden"
Or:
"Is one Nobel Prize
so much to ask from a child
after all I've done?"
According to Bader, the idea for Haikus for Jews came to him shortly after
his first book, How to be an Extremely Reform Jew, was published several
years ago.
"Well, there's something called a Zen koan - those are the almost senseless
phrases like 'What is the sound of one hand clapping?' So I first came up
with something along the lines of Koans for Cohens, but I didn't think
anybody would know what a koan was. Sonnets for Jews didn't rhyme, but the
haiku thing did. And I liked the idea that you were supposed to have an
enlightenment moment, this epiphany, when you read them. But in these haiku
moments the scene wouldn't be through an old frog pond, as in Basho, but
through gefilte fish."
Bader said he wanted the poems to be funny but also for them to mimic great
haiku poets - "real haikus, but silly." He said that his favorites in the
collection are those that have a Japanese feel to them - they mention
cherry blossoms, insects or flowers - but inject a sort of borsht belt
twist.
"At a minimum, I hope people will laugh," the writer said, "and that some
of them might even seem perceptive."
"Heimlich. Is that a
Jewish name? I wonder, as
a diner turns blue"
Robert Leiter is Literary Editor of the Philadelphia Jewish Exponent.
