Customer Reviews

Seeds from a Birch Tree: Writing Haiku and the Spiritual Journey

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Clark Strand is an American Haiku Master; he doesn't say so (no American does), but he is. Most of the haiku contained in the book were written by his disciples (he calls them his students). Anyone interested in becoming a serious haiku poet or who just wants to be able to write a few good haiku, will benefit from reading this book. The book is very straightforward and easy to understand. He offers the readers some good tips on how to get started and describes many deeply personal episodes of his own spiritual and haiku journey and development, which for Strand, often go hand in hand. He even makes fun of himself and describes personal failures, something most writers would never dare to do! A definite intimacy between writer and reader is established which is also rare.

It should however be said that Strand's approach to haiku is heavily influenced by his experiences and schooling in the teachings of Zen. It should also be mentioned that Strand belongs to the Shiki school that believes haiku are "sketches of life". This is one viewpoint; there are many other valid ones. Shiki stated that most of the haiku written by the painter Buson were excellent while most of the haiku written by the philosopher Basho were mediocre, but it appears that Strand parts paths with Shiki on this point. He likes Basho's approach as well and quotes his own Zen master's haiku in the book, a type of haiku much closer to the Basho school than to the type of haiku Buson and Shiki and their successors wrote.

My favorite example from Strand's book of the "sketch approach" is the following haiku by Ken Stec:

Oars flash in the sun: at the center of the lake two men cease to row

My favorite example from the book using the "philosophical approach" is the following haiku by Strand's Zen Master, Soen Roshi:

hana no yo no hana no yoh naru hito bakari

in a universe flowering with sentient beings each being flowering

Strand has a very disciplined approach and thus strongly defends the 5-7-5 syllable pattern in writing haiku in English. He makes some good arguments, but makes the serious mistake of comparing English language syllables with Japanese jion (sound beats) which are shorter in length. It has been proven that 17 jion are the equivalent in sound length to about 11-14 syllables in English. He also fails to mention that the Japanese use three words for punctuation: ya, kana, and keri instead of using the dash, comma, colon, semi-colon, exclamation mark, and ellipsis used in English. Comparing these two systems with one another is like comparing pineapples with pine trees.

Strand also fails to mention urban haiku for city-dwellers (he only includes a couple of mild examples in his book) and important issues such as the degradation of the environment. Today we have acid rain, polluted skies and seas, contaminated rivers and frog ponds, golf balls on the moon, disappearing rain forests, extinct and endangered plant and animal species, thousands of skin cancer cases due to the depleted ozone layer, etc. all of which most of us on this planet are deeply affected by today and are therefore legitimate topics for inclusion in haiku. The pristine beauty of the natural environment in the days of Basho passed long ago.

But these criticisms should not be overweighed; the book is a very enjoyable reading experience for anyone who is interested in haiku and/or Zen and includes four helpful exercises that anyone can easily try out as an experiment. For me, the book reaches a peak in about the middle. My favorite chapters are Cockscombs, Daisies, and Sound. These three chapters alone are worth the price of the book; they are priceless! Sound is only about a page long, but contains the key to writing really good haiku. Want to know what it is? Buy the book and find out!

But different parts of the book, fifty short chapters in all, will appeal to a wide range of people for different reasons. Clark Strand is a good teacher. He has a gentle and intimate approach and like all really great teachers, teaches from his own experiences and practices what he preaches. It is a bit curious that Strand has not come out with a book of his own haiku yet nor an anthology of his follower's haiku. I certainly hope that all of us won't have to wait too much longer. However, Seeds From a Birch Tree, a book long overdue, was well worth the wait.

This book has changed the way that I think about the reading and writing of haiku. I not only found it to be very informative and interesting, but also an inspiration to my own writing.

Clark Strand's book on the history and technique of haiku is simply brilliant. In this book, Strand provides a great introduction to the art of haiku. Like haiku, this book is short and full of information.

Rather than provide a dry analytical discussion, Strand explains the ground rules and encourages the reader to try his/her hand at writing haikus. He also discusses how to turn haiku writing into an everyday spiritual practice.

My only complaint is that Strand did not include a larger number of classic haiku. But then again Strand never promised an anthology.

I highly recommend this book to anyone, especially a non-poet or non-writer, looking for a creative outlet or considering haiku. A better introduction cannot be found anywhere else.

While the author clearly has sincere intentions, this book was a disappointment for several reasons. To begin with, Strand makes several statements about haiku and the process of writing it that I believe are simply wrong. Two examples of such statements: he claims that the only effective haiku are written in 5-7-5, and also suggests that the best haiku generally are not revised. Most haiku practitioners in the U.S. today are writing good haiku that do not conform to the 5-7-5 syllabic structure. And secondly, most good poets revise their poems. Clark Strand may not revise his, which might explain why most of the examples of his own haiku are quite mediocre. I was not impressed with the majority of his examples, either written by himself or his students. In sum, the book is not successful as a how-to book on writing haiku (many better and more detailed books are out there); nor is it successful as a memoir, because it does not contain enough autobiographical detail to engage the reader. The bottom line is that despite Clark Strand's sincere interest in haiku and his desire to share what he knows, the book is misleading, has has very little to offer that is new or fresh to the haiku poet.

"SEEDS FROM A BIRCH TREE is about nothing but dust and clay," Clark Strand writes in the Introduction to this book, "because all things, including ourselves, have their being in the earth" (p. 2). I returned to Strand's book today after first reading it several years ago. It is actually a book about living life as haiku, a spiritual path Strand has been travelling for twenty five years. He is a former Zen Buddhist monk, and an editor for "Tricycle" magazine.

This book offers many insights into haiku. Most of us only know haiku as a seventeen-syllable poem drawn from nature, arranged in three lines of five, seven, and five syllables. Most of us also spend our lives behind walls. "Nature occupies a small place in our lives," Strand observes, "if and when we really notice it at all" (p. 40). "The Way of Haiku is to return to nature" (p. 11), Strand writes. As a child, he "struggled with the feeling that there was a language in the blossoming of trees" (p. 12). After taking up the study of Zen Buddhism, Strand discovered "haiku is a spiritual path" (p. 16). Reading haiku "becomes a journey" (p. 29). "Haiku," Strand explains, "in many ways the most outward, most concrete, and most profoundly grounded form of poetry, is also the most inward. It requires a lot of inner work" (p. 135). Haiku poetry flows "directly out of life" (p. 107). In these pages, "chrysanthemums bloom" (p. 19),"oars flash in the sun" (p. 71), "warm breezes turn leaves over" (p. 93), "a field cricket bangs his head" (p. 100), "mosquitos bite" (p. 100), and "a button pops off" (p. 120). Reading haiku "evokes a smile" (p. 54).

Strand knows his subject. I recommend this 189-page book for anyone interested in reading or writing haiku, or for anyone interested in Zen practice. It is well-illuminated path amidst the birch trees you, too, may find yourself revisting over the years.

G. Merritt

This is an excellent book - much more accessible than some other introductions to haiku. Perhaps this is because it is fairly short, but I think more due to the author's writing style. Strand weaves his way between pearls of wisdom about writing, autobiographical snippets and pointers to haiku practice with fluidity and ease. I read half of this book in the bookstore where I found it - I just couldn't put it down. In fact one of the many factors that kept me reading was the author's self-revelation. With remarkable concision he tells us a great deal about his own spiritual journey, in and out of Zen monasticism, in and out of depression, without a single word of self-indulgence. If you want to know everything there is to know about haiku, this book is only the start. But if you want to know how to merge haiku with your everyday life in a meaningful way, this book is the *best* place to start.

The Library Journal review of this little book is amusing for its thorough distortion of the author's message. It mentions the "focus on the spiritual struggle." If I've read Strand's work correctly (and it is entirely possible I haven't), there is no struggle to spirituality. In fact, if it is a struggle, there is probably no spirit to it.

The same goes, of course, for poetry, which cannot arise from conflict. Certainly it can reflect it, but if the writer's heart is wrapped in knots of struggle, then he may indeed produce verse, but not poetry.

This, to me, is one of the more nourishing lessons of Zen, and of this book. Strand is an experienced, insightful, modest, and eloquent teacher: his work is about paying attention, hearing the song of life and singing back in one's own voice. Strand encourages that we each become a citizen of Nature rather than striving to be its master. This is what Lao Tzu called "entering the cosmic rhythm," becoming a dancer in the infinite instead of attempting to be the choreographer. Haiku, Strand teaches, provides an unusual opening in this respect: it is simple, songful, and easily learned, and can be done anywhere. I often write a few haiku during my commute on a subway train in New York City.

If we can practice what Strand describes for us in his pages, we can without effort live more vibrant--that is, poetic--lives. It is not a matter of struggle, only of presence and attention.

While I don't subscribe to the 5-7-5 formula that Strand insists on, I find this book very instructive and inspiring. Strand invites the reader into nature as refuge, as spiritual path, and the writing of haiku as an expression of this experience. It has been a book that I turn to during those dry spells that we all fall into and it never fails to ignite the magic spark of "ordinary mind".

Strand, a former Buddhist monk, shows how there is freedom in the simple 17 syllable form of the Japanese haiku - a freedom to be fully present in each moment of our lives, to experience each moment with "beginner's mind".

This is a book I wished I liked better than I do. The concept - a nurturing, gentle introduction to the writing of haiku for spiritual seekers rather than poets - is an excellent concept. The author feeds the formal and historical information required to read or write haiku in small, friendly doses. He uses primarily examples from his students or himself rather than "the masters". He has the pleasant ability to laugh at himself and, thus, make the reader confortable with stumbling/bumbling along the way themselves. And some of his students have written excellent haiku.

The problem? the subtitle promises more than it gives "writing haiku and the spiritual journey" for spiritual journey is limited to the author's own Zen journey, the description of which, gives the reader little confidence in the author's qualifications. From the poems of Sister Benedicta he includes, I'd rather read the same material as written by her. I say that in the context of being a Westerner and a Catholic who is also both a haiku poet and a Buddhist scholar.

From the other reviews of this book, I observe that several individuals highly recommend this book - if their reviews entice you to read this, don't let my lack of enthusiasm disuade you.