“Haiku” is a traditional form of Japanese poetry. Haiku poems consist of 3 lines. The first and last lines of a Haiku have 5 syllables and the middle line has 7 syllables. The lines rarely rhyme.
Haiku* dates from the time of the pre-Modern Edo Period (1603-1869), best exemplified by the great master Matsuo Bashō (1644–1694), so it has a 400 year literary history in Japanese culture. A period as long as America has been settled by White people.
The entire corpus of Japanese language poetry** dates to 710 A.D., more than 1,300 years ago, when the vast majority of white Europeans, including Trump’s forebears, were living in wood and mud huts and were illiterate.
Donald Trump is not renowned for his literate grasp of the nuances of his native English language. Yet, he has undeniable presence as a sloganeer.
Lock Her Up
Build the Wall
Throw Them Out
Total Ban on Muslims
Make American Great Again
Verbal punches in three and four word combinations. His muscular, tough guy phrases exude testosterone fueled power, amplified through loud volume and chanted repetition.
Nor is Trump especially introspective or self-reflective by his own account. He gets bored easily. A wag might even agree what could be more boring than a steady diet Of 24/7 Trump on your mind.
Nevertheless, there is a spotty inner poetic vein in Trump’s core, that only emerges in brief peek-a-boo style with patient exploration.
After careful study of a welter of Trump’s verbal declamations, video performances, and Twitter offerings, a coherent pattern of subtle beauty and grace emerges.
It is at once a practical guide for Trump’s life choices, an anthem of self-pride and meaning, and a summary of his internal moral code and ethos.
Kokin Wakashū: A Revered Collection of Japanese Haiku from 1120 A.D.
The Modern American Haiku of Trump is short and straightforward, but deeply embedded and anchored to bedrock.
I’ll Push You
Mama Loves Me
White Is Best
Women Should Serve
Trump’s American Haiku covers nearly all the prominent themes in his personal life, justifies his political views, and explains Trump’s life choices and behavioral quirks.
It is a variable, floating four-point compass of three-word phrases. One significant word for every month in life’s annual cycle. No repeats.
Perfect American English syllabic symmetry of 3-4-3-4 form. None of this mystical Oriental 5-7-5 asymmetric stuff. Yet Trump’s version is related in a peculiar way to the essential Japanese internal spirit.
Two words of me and a you. Two about women. Four active verbs. One color. Twelve special ambassadors of Trump’s vision.
Simple Meaning Deconstruction of Trump’s Haiku
(1) I’ll Push You
(2) Mama Loves Me
(3) White Is Best
(4) Women Should Serve
Just the first, most cursory deconstruction yields new vistas of insight to his mental and philosophical architectures. A review of line number #1 helps explain the source of Trump’s bullying tactics, the unrequited thirst for revenge, his childish reaction to insults as an adult, and his Kamikaze approach to business deals,
Kamikaze Fighter Plane on the Attack (1940’s)
Number #2 is the heart of his plea for love as a slighted 4th child, his narcissistic need for constant affirmation and approval, his ceaseless grasping for money and fame, his lack of empathy for others, and his poor history of personal family relations, and his defective charitable impulses.
Number #3 explains his attraction for white supremacist rhetoric, his antipathy to immigrants different than us, his religious intolerance for Muslims (who are overwhelmingly brown black, yellow, or desert colored), and his pattern of racial insensitivity and biased business behavior towards American blacks, though he denies harboring personally racist feelings.
Number #4 can be expanded to encompass additional three word coda. For example, Women Should Serve:
At the office, in the background, as quiet helpmeets, on their knees, one step behind, as arm candy, to raise children, as clever subordinates, as submissive objects, on raised pedestals, to perform housework, for public show, their master’s pleasure, male fantasy roles, as verbal pin cushions, as venerated creatures.
America needs to begin to appreciate the unstoppable, poetic verbal skill of its newest political Artist-in-Chief. Trump has another linguistic place outside Twitter. A veritable Renaissance Man of the English language. We have four years to grow in and savor our aesthetic appreciation of Trump.
46% of Americans already get it.
Will you follow them, now that you’ve seen the spiritual code?
Haiku (俳句) is a very short form of Japanese poetry. It is typically characterized by three qualities:
The essence of haiku is “cutting” (kiru). This is often represented by the juxtaposition of two images or ideas and a kireji (“cutting word”) between them, a kind of verbal punctuation mark which signals the moment of separation and colours the manner in which the juxtaposed elements are related.
Traditional haiku consist of 17 on (also known as morae though often loosely translated as “syllables”), in three phrases of 5, 7, and 5 on respectively.
A kigo (seasonal reference), usually drawn from a saijiki, an extensive but defined list of such terms.
Modern Japanese haiku are increasingly unlikely to follow the tradition of 17 on or to take nature as their subject, but the use of juxtaposition continues to be honored in both traditional and modern haiku. There is a common, although relatively recent, perception that the images juxtaposed must be directly observed everyday objects or occurrences.
In Japanese, haiku are traditionally printed in a single vertical line while haiku in English often appear in three lines to parallel the three phrases of Japanese haiku.
Previously called hokku, haiku was given its current name by the Japanese writer Masaoka Shiki at the end of the 19th century.
In comparison with English verse typically characterized by syllabic meter, Japanese verse counts sound units known as “on” or morae. Traditional haiku consist of 17 on, in three phrases of five, seven and five on respectively. Among contemporary poems teikei (定型 fixed form) haiku continue to use the 5-7-5 pattern while jiyuritsu (自由律 free form) haiku do not. One of the examples below illustrates that traditional haiku masters were not always constrained by the 5-7-5 pattern.
Although the word “on” is sometimes translated as “syllable”, one on is counted for a short syllable, two for an elongated vowel or doubled consonant, and one for an “n” at the end of a syllable. Thus, the word “haibun”, though counted as two syllables in English, is counted as four on in Japanese (ha-i-bu-n); and the word “on” itself, which English-speakers would view as a single syllable, comprises two on: the short vowel o and the moraic nasal n̩. This is illustrated by the Issa haiku below, which contains 17 on but only 15 syllables. Conversely, some sounds, such as “kyo” (きょ) may look like two syllables to English speakers but are in fact a single on (as well as a single syllable) in Japanese.
The word onji (音字; “sound character”) is sometimes used in referring to Japanese sound units in English although this word is no longer current in Japanese. In Japanese, each on corresponds to a kana character (or sometimes digraph) and hence ji (or “character”) is also sometimes used as the count unit.
In 1973, the Haiku Society of America noted that the norm for writers of haiku in English was to use 17 syllables, but they also noted a trend toward shorter haiku.
Some translators of Japanese poetry have noted that about 12 syllables in English approximate the duration of 17 Japanese on. Also in translations four lines is more appropriate for the colloquialism of the language and is closest to natural conversational rhythm, necessary to carry the weight of the hokku
Illustrated Portrait of Master Haiku Poet Matsuo Basho (1644-1699)
A traditional haiku by the Japanese master, Bashō (1644-1694):
初しぐれ猿も小蓑をほしげ也
はつしぐれさるもこみのをほしげなり
ha-tsu shi-gu-re (5)
sa-ru mo ko-mi-no o (7)
ho-shi-ge na-ri (5)
In English:
the first cold shower
even the monkey seems to want
a little coat of straw
How neatly it all applies to Trump. On the eve of his inauguration, he seeks shelter and protection from the storm produced by Russian spy hacking.
A bit more on Haiku:
Here’s a Haiku to help you remember:
I am first with five
Then seven in the middle —
Five again to end.
Because Haikus are such short poems, they are usually written about things that are recognizable to the reader. Animals and seasons are examples of recognizable topics children might enjoy exploring.
The most popular Haiku exercise I have found for children is a “What am I?” Haiku. These act like a riddle. The writer uses the Haiku to describe something. The other children in the class can then attempt to guess what the poet was describing after listening to or reading the Haiku.
The poem can be read aloud by the poet with their classmates guessing the answer after it is read or all the Haikus can be hung on the bulletin board giving everyone the chance to read and guess.
What am I?
Green and speckled legs,
Hop on logs and lily pads
Splash in cool water.
Again, an appropriate riddle for a passel of DWA Trump supporters, The answer, as you will have guessed, is a green frog. A fitting match to the Pepe the Frog White Nationalist (Alt-Right) meme, all the recent rage among a subset of the faithful, who have celebrated the Coming of Trump to restore American values in 2016. Also adopted for social media comment by official Russian sources more recently.
The Real Donald Trump himself has joined the grinning greeny fun via Twit (October 13, 2017).
**From the Wikipedia entry on Japanese poetry:
Japanese poetry is poetry of or typical of Japan, or written, spoken, or chanted in the Japanese language, which includes Old Japanese, Early Middle Japanese, Late Middle Japanese, and Modern Japanese, and some poetry in Japan which was written in the Chinese language or ryūka from the Okinawa Islands: it is possible to make a more accurate distinction between Japanese poetry written in Japan or by Japanese people in other languages versus that written in the Japanese language by speaking of Japanese-language poetry. Much of the literary record of Japanese poetry begins when Japanese poets encountered Chinese poetry during the Tang dynasty (although the Chinese classic anthology of poetry, Shijing, was well known by the literati of Japan by the 6th century). Under the influence of the Chinese poets of this era Japanese began to compose poetry in Chinese kanshi); and, as part of this tradition, poetry in Japan tended to be intimately associated with pictorial painting, partly because of the influence of Chinese arts, and the tradition of the use of ink and brush for both writing and drawing. It took several hundred years[citation needed] to digest the foreign impact and make it an integral part of Japanese culture and to merge this kanshi poetry into a Japanese language literary tradition, and then later to develop the diversity of unique poetic forms of native poetry, such as waka, haikai, and other more Japanese poetic specialties. For example, in the Tale of Genji both kanshi and waka are frequently mentioned.
The history of Japanese poetry goes from an early semi-historical/mythological phase, through the early Old Japanese literature inclusions, just before the Nara period, the Nara period itself (710 to 794), the Heian period (794 to 1185), the Kamakura period (1185 to 1333), and so on, up through the poetically important Edo period (1603 and 1867, also known as “Tokugawa”) and modern times; however, the history of poetry often is different than socio-political history.
Kokin Wakashū Classic Japanese Poetry Collection Wood Covered (1700’s Edition)
In the Pre-modern or Edo period (1602–1869) some new styles of poetry developed. One of greatest and most influential styles was renku, (also known as haikai no renga, or haikai), emerging from renga in the medieval period. Matsuo Bashō was a great haikai master and had a wide influence on his contemporaries and later generations. Bashō was also a prominent writer of haibun, a combination of prose and haiku, one famous example being his Oku no Hosomichi (or, The Narrow Road to the Interior).
The tradition of collaboration between painters and poets had a beneficial influence on poetry in the middle Edo period. In Kyoto there were some artists who were simultaneously poets and painters. Painters of the Shujo school were known as good poets. Among such poet-painters the most significant was Yosa Buson. Buson began his career as a painter but went on to become a master of renku, too. He left many paintings accompanied by his own haiku poems. Such combination of haiku with painting is known as haiga.
Waka underwent a revival, too, in relation to kokugaku, the study of Japanese classics. Kyōka (mad song), a type of satirical waka was also popular. One poetry school of the era was the Danrin school.
Hokku renga, or of its later derivative, renku (haikai no renga).[4] From the time of Matsuo Bashō (1644–1694), the hokku began to appear as an independent poem, and was also incorporated in haibun (in combination with prose). Haikai emerged from the renga of the medieval period. Matsuo Bashō was a noted proponent. Related to hokku formally, it was generically different.
In the late Edo period, a master of haikai, Karai Senryū made an anthology. His style became known as senryū, after his pseudonym. Senryū is a style of satirical poetry whose motifs are taken from daily life in 5-7-5 syllables. Anthologies of senryū in the Edo period collect many ‘maeku’ or senryū made by ordinary amateur senryū poets adding in front of the latter 7-7 part written by a master. It was a sort of poetry contest and the well written senryū by amateurs were awarded by the master and other participants.