EnriqueEnriquez
Dear all,
In this week’s essay I mention Japanese poet Matsuo Basho, who is literally regarded as the Saint of Haiku. There is one technique in haiku-making that I find very useful for crafting metaphors. It basically consist on seeing, or thinking, of something, and then find three sentences to describe it. For a long time Western scholars have thought that Japanese poets employ no metaphors in their haiku, when in truth, they simply have a different way to create metaphors. For us, a metaphors creates meaning by establishing a relationship between two terms. Each term must be significant by itself. The capacity a metaphor has to create meaning depends on having us perceiving a relationship between these two components.
In a haiku meaning is created as if we were drawing with words. The haiku present us with three different strokes to complete a metaphor. Take for example this haiku from Basho:
roadside rose
of sharon: devoured
by my horse
Here, Basho is creating meaning by giving us three images: a rose, eaten, by a horse. What is powerful about this is that he uses very specific images to have us completing a whole event which is small/specific enough to elicit all kinds of sensations. One can listen to the powerful jaws of a huge horse chewing these tender petals. The experience becomes a full sensory spectrum one.
Haikus have very specific technical requirements (a first line composed by 5 sounds, a second line composed by7 sounds, a third line composed by 5 sounds). Leaving aside that, I would like that you, this week, looking at the cards not to write haiku but to ‘think haiku’. In other words, I would like for you to place three or four cards in a row and define a whole idea by describing each card using one single sentence.
For example:
Lets say we have THE FOV, THE CHARIOT, V DE BATONS, ACE DE COUPPES
Then I would say:
THE FOV: a man walking
THE CHARIOT: takes a lift
V DE BATONS: and get derailed
ACE DE COUPPES: from his objective
“A man walking takes a lift and get lost from his objective”
This would be the faster way to get a message from the cards. We create one whole, specific, idea by assigning very specific, LITERAL, ideas to each card in a sequence (try not to get symbolic here, but very literal: The Fool is a man walking, just that. The V de Batons a bunch of interwoven roads, things like that). The work we have done at seeing analogies in the pips (Exercise Number Three) and the work we have done at creating whole narratives from shape (Exercise Number Four) should make this exercise very simple.
Please, do this exercise at least three times. This is, draw at least three sequences of three or four cards, and proceed in the way I did on the example above. Those of you who may want to do more are welcome to do so. (The way I used to practice was by drawing three cards, seeing a message in this way, then I would draw three more cards, see another message, and so on until I went through the whole deck, day after day.)
As usual, questions and comments are welcome.
Best,
EE
In this week’s essay I mention Japanese poet Matsuo Basho, who is literally regarded as the Saint of Haiku. There is one technique in haiku-making that I find very useful for crafting metaphors. It basically consist on seeing, or thinking, of something, and then find three sentences to describe it. For a long time Western scholars have thought that Japanese poets employ no metaphors in their haiku, when in truth, they simply have a different way to create metaphors. For us, a metaphors creates meaning by establishing a relationship between two terms. Each term must be significant by itself. The capacity a metaphor has to create meaning depends on having us perceiving a relationship between these two components.
In a haiku meaning is created as if we were drawing with words. The haiku present us with three different strokes to complete a metaphor. Take for example this haiku from Basho:
roadside rose
of sharon: devoured
by my horse
Here, Basho is creating meaning by giving us three images: a rose, eaten, by a horse. What is powerful about this is that he uses very specific images to have us completing a whole event which is small/specific enough to elicit all kinds of sensations. One can listen to the powerful jaws of a huge horse chewing these tender petals. The experience becomes a full sensory spectrum one.
Haikus have very specific technical requirements (a first line composed by 5 sounds, a second line composed by7 sounds, a third line composed by 5 sounds). Leaving aside that, I would like that you, this week, looking at the cards not to write haiku but to ‘think haiku’. In other words, I would like for you to place three or four cards in a row and define a whole idea by describing each card using one single sentence.
For example:
Lets say we have THE FOV, THE CHARIOT, V DE BATONS, ACE DE COUPPES
Then I would say:
THE FOV: a man walking
THE CHARIOT: takes a lift
V DE BATONS: and get derailed
ACE DE COUPPES: from his objective
“A man walking takes a lift and get lost from his objective”
This would be the faster way to get a message from the cards. We create one whole, specific, idea by assigning very specific, LITERAL, ideas to each card in a sequence (try not to get symbolic here, but very literal: The Fool is a man walking, just that. The V de Batons a bunch of interwoven roads, things like that). The work we have done at seeing analogies in the pips (Exercise Number Three) and the work we have done at creating whole narratives from shape (Exercise Number Four) should make this exercise very simple.
Please, do this exercise at least three times. This is, draw at least three sequences of three or four cards, and proceed in the way I did on the example above. Those of you who may want to do more are welcome to do so. (The way I used to practice was by drawing three cards, seeing a message in this way, then I would draw three more cards, see another message, and so on until I went through the whole deck, day after day.)
As usual, questions and comments are welcome.
Best,
EE