Discuss: Kana

Arctic sirens
moving ashore
boulders nest.

Morning moon, a lung,
an organ for the sky, light
with opening I.

my haiku:

Iridescent red breast, whirring wings

Sipping

Gone.

—way of life
Through an asphalt crack
Bursts a flaming poppy

meteor shower . . .
a gentle wave
wets our sandals

Students of haiku traditionally write these poems by using a season word (kigo in Japanese) and a cutting word (kireji in Japanese), and also often employ objective imagery based on the five senses (thus avoiding excesses of commentary, judgment, and interpretation). The word “kana” is actually a cutting word, and is one of many in Japanese haiku (I think there are 17 or 19 or so). It’s a meaningless syllable, sort of like spoken punctuation, that, in this case, conveys a sense of surprise or delight.

Robert Hass’s description of it as an intensification is helpful, but it is only part of what cutting words are. Consider Basho’s most famous poem:

furuike ya
kawazu tobikomu
mizu no oto

old pond--
a frog leaps into
the water’s sound

In the first line, “ya” is a cutting word, a grammatical intensifier, and it too expresses wonder and contemplation ("kana" isn’t the only cutting word that does that). But cutting words are actually functioning with a larger purpose in haiku that to intensify (whether intensifying surprise or something else). Rather, a cutting word divides the haiku into two parts, like a caesura (hence the literal meaning of kireji as “cutting word"). There isn’t really an equivalent to cutting words in English, but leading haiku poets (such as in Cor van den Heuvel’s *The Haiku Anthology* [third edition, Norton, 1999]) create an equivalent by presenting two grammatically disjointed fragments in their haiku, with the cut between them sometimes indicated by a dash or other punctuation (or an indent). The point is to create a juxtaposition between two parts of the poem, with the relationship between the two parts creating something larger than the sum of the parts--letting readers “leap” between the two parts to figure out the relationship between them, to figure out something that’s deliberately been left out. That’s really the point of cutting words, and “kana” is simply one example of many that help to convey a tone of delight.

Thus there is much more to “kana” than is hinted at in this article, and it’s merely one example of many cutting words used in Japanese. It may impart some degree of tone, but it is not really equivalent to an aesthetic ideal (as this article seems to suggest) along the lines of wabi, sabi, yugen, makoto, karumi, or other Japanese aesthetic terms. Still, haiku itself is a delightful poetry of wonder and appreciation, which can happen whether a haiku uses “kana” or not.

Michael Dylan Welch

A beautifully written haibun, Chris. And your understanding of the haiku moment is smack dab on! Bravo!

somewhere within
the roar of the falls
birdsong

Kana:

walking the foot-thwacking,upright swan through halted traffic back to the river that gave her grace.