Zinovy Vayman – Hi-tech Haiku

Zinovy Vayman

Hi-tech Haiku

Panel discussion on new technologies for haiku was opened by Tadashi Shokan Kondo. He opined that one haiku may change a whole world and he got carried away with that insight.  Tadashi also mentioned Dr. Skinner of Harvard and recalled Walden Pond as an American landmark.  I visualized the famous Skinner’s box in which a human being was isolated (a sort of a coffin) and tried to absorb the high-tech vision.  But instead of it I began channeling two miniature poems, one by Issa.                                         The way of this world—                                         We walk on top of hell                                         Looking at flowers and a quasi-haiku by Joseph Brodsky:                                         spur of the moment                                         and cheap pants pulled down—                                         that’s how the world will end Jim Kacian spoke next about how ambitious and fool-hardy we become as haiku writers and readers and ruminated about audiences and “niche” publishing houses (he is one of them).  Rich publishing houses may reach more people and web does wonders for haijin who may satisfy their ego needs and even use “i-universe” to produce books on computer. “Honorary European” Jim also hopped on a hi-tech bandwagon and was supported by Visnja McMaster.  She praised haiku blogs’ capabilities. The only low-tech demo by Helga Harle reminded me of an interesting fact: that Indian government fed its people using low-tech agriculture.  Just by hard work it solved the problem of hunger. My many years of work in the hi-tech field of solar energy started to creep onto me when Tadashi remarked how lonely haiku poets are and crescendoed with his motto “Write renku!” Ah, my dear haijin, the solar panel house which instead of paying electric bills, was receiving payments from the electric company, cost $1,000,000 20 years ago. The price of the solar cells dropped by using simpler technology and CHEAP Chinese labor kicked in and the solar companies became more or less feasible. And I concluded that when a haiku book becomes like a Dover Thrift Edition’s “Haiku Anthology” by Faubion Bowers, this thin volume priced at $1.50 (remarkable coincidence—the price of 1 kilowatt of the sun-produced electricity also should be less than $1), only then we might have substantial delivery of such books to the reading classes.  We must do so only with very good stuff distilled through kukai, contests, workshops and selfcensorship.  We also may produce an inexpensive book on a Xerox machine (typed on computer, a type-writer or even written by hand.) Mimicry of the huge publishing houses is not a way for people trying to share their chamber music of haiku. Such a SAMIZDAT activity was dismissed by Jim Kacian.  But why?  We did just that and made a book of haibun (after no response from Rich Youmans, an editor of the American haibun publishing house at Cape Cod, Massachusetts) and distributed it among more than 700 people either for free (95%) or for a nominal fee of a couple of dollars, which may be a fair price if snail mailing is involved.  It is easy to recycle.                                         crawl,crawl,oh,my snail!                                         carry your house                                         until it is empty

 
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