Tarot Haiku

[dodalisque]

but of course it goes without saying...

...etc. See how much trouble I would get into if I ever started posting in the Devil's Advocate section! BTW I only have about 5 ideas and 12 stories in my head so I trust you to let me know when I start repeating myself. It won't take long for me to get to that point. I really should stick to haiku. Art is an escape from personality, isn't it. It allows the soul to elbow the personality aside for a few minutes.

[dodalisque]

I'll just say that I draw the cards and write each line singly (without seeing the next until the line is written), so the first is a sort of key that begins to unlock inspiration; the second sheds a little more light on the first and the third (hopefully) comes to some sort of conclusion (or maybe just a clue) as to the meaning.

I'll have to try that. Nailing down the first card would save me skittering back and forth juggling a thousand conflicting possibilities. I would probably be tempted to start with the last card - get the punchline in place. I find that's the best way to rhyme too - in a couplet I generally like to write the second line first and then backtrack to find something to lead into it. Another approach is to take in all 3 cards as a whole to see a unified story - like doing a standard tarot reading. Then starts the miserable business of shoehorning that idea into 17 syllables. No, I prefer your approach. It's like putting one foot in front of another, and you get more surprises that way. If you start with the "idea" first there is almost no chance of stumbling over something enigmatic and original. In a way you are surrendering control of the poem, and that's something I badly need to learn how to do. My neurotic attempts to assert control over the finished product is what has prevented me from ever writing anything good. I squeeze the fun out of it.

[dodalisque]

Perhaps it depends on who The Lady represents in this tarot - I suppose she's the Lady of Wands rather than the the Queen. For curiosity's sake we'd need a guidebook to know what Robert Place intended, but the images work as visual clues anyway - better not to know everything as far as haiku is concerned.

Absolutely. It's fatal to read what the deck creator intended. Stops us from seeing the card. In Place's LWB for the Sevenfold deck, as a matter of interest, about the Lady of Staffs he writes: "She sits with her torch in the desert. She represents a change of circumstances, claiming a new territory as one's home, comfort overcoming uncertainty." Absolutely no bloody help at all. I see a small staff resting on her knee, not planted in the desert, but maybe that's what I wanted to see. Like you I see a melancholy look in her eyes but Place's whole deck is a homage to the paintings of Edwin Burne-Jones, the Victorian pre-Raphaelite English painter, so pretty much all the faces in the deck have that moony otherworldly frown of anxiety. Place was all the rage when his Alchemical Tarot was given the thumbs up by Rachel Pollack in the 90s. He's made some lovely decks. Some draw their inspiration from Plato; I prefer Play-Doh.

[Pen]

Wonderful story about Kay Ryan - I must find some of her poems.

Re. Leonard Cohen's later songs - yes, and I liked him, his voice and performance so much more when he became old and seemingly very spiritual. He was so full of calm graciousness, rather than what seemed in his earlier career to be a rather overt sexuality that often felt uncomfortable. There, now you've made me say something that should perhaps belong in the Devil's Advocate thread...

Re. Dylan, I seem to remember reading somewhere that he wrote his lyrics by cutting up old letters and rearranging phrases and sentences, but that might have been someone else.

[dodalisque]

MAAT TAROT ( by Julia Cuccia-Watts, 2006)

5 of Wands / 6 of Cups / 8 of Swords

Negotiations
On the political stage
Mask naked terror

[Pen]

Yes.

[dodalisque]

MAAT TAROT (by Julia Cucchia-Watts, 2006)

4 of Coins / 6 of Coins / 5 of Coins

What we have preserved
May be offered as a gift
At the sacred spring

- an odd bunch of cards to show up next to each other in a 3 card reading, but the deck was well shuffled and, as usual, I let my wife pick the cards with her eyes closed

[dodalisque]

JEAN NOBLET TdM , c.1650 (by Jean-Claude Flornoy, 2001)

Justice / Star / Fool

The cups are empty -
When the jars are empty too
I am free to go

or,

Excalibur, hurled
Into the lake, reemerged
As a beggar's staff


- Hey, JM, I think you were right about having a separate haiku thread for the Tarot de Marseille majors. One line per card, which works so well for the modern decks, is just too restrictive. There might be other approaches but perhaps each TdM haiku could be a meditation on the message of the 3 cards taken together. I don't know. I would be interested to see what else people could come up with for these same 3 cards. A bunch of readings for the same 3 cards could be revisited and added to.We would be looking at the same thing from different angles. Very Rashomon-esque.

[Joan Marie]

- Hey, JM, I think you were right about having a separate haiku thread for the Tarot de Marseille majors. One line per card, which works so well for the modern decks, is just too restrictive. There might be other approaches but perhaps each TdM haiku could be a meditation on the message of the 3 cards taken together. I don't know. I would be interested to see what else people could come up with for these same 3 cards. A bunch of readings for the same 3 cards could be revisited and added to.We would be looking at the same thing from different angles. Very Rashomon-esque.

Let's do it.

I can start one this weekend although if you'd like to please feel free.
I think there needs to be a little explanation in the first post though.

Would love to see some TdM people join in, especially any who have studied or looked into the Enrique Enriquez style of reading TdM.

[dodalisque]

Let's do it.

I'll leave it to you and then make suggestions if I think of anything to add. Really, anything goes as long as it sticks to the 5-7-5 syllable count. Perhaps not even all 3 cards need to be acknowledged. The trick is to pick up very clear motifs shared by 2 or more cards. That is the "loose brick in the wall" that initiates more complex readings with the TdM - a striking visual coincidence on which you can build more elaborate ideas. I think the tight form forces us to keep the imagery as concrete as possible. No room for explanations or elaborate interpretations of symbols. Objects/events/details have to stand alone in the poem. It should be a good demonstration of what EE says about the inbuilt metaphorical power of analogy.

Leaving out little connecting words like "a", "the", is", etc. would give us more elbow room. I need to read a bunch of translations of Japanese haiku and senryu (the jokey version of haiku) to see how they get around the problem. English is not as concise as Japanese. They don't need to be made up of smooth complete grammatical sentences. Most haiku are usually two images juxtaposed with little explanation of the connection between them.

I certainly like the idea that various people can submit alternative readings for a particular group of cards. The variety created should be funny. That will show the richness of the TdM majors. And I think we should stick to majors only. Very few can bring the pips to life, especially in such a narrow form. I certainly want to avoid utilising book meanings for the pips that are simply imported from the RWS or instruction books. Somehow we need in the introduction to stress the necessity of sticking to visual facts rather than learned meanings, though some aspects of the traditional meanings of the major cards will inevitably make there way into things. If someone is skilled enough to read concretely with the pips then they should have a try to write haiku like that. I'd love to see it. I certainly can't.

The whole point of sticking to visuals is that ANYBODY can see what you are getting at - they don't need any specialist tarot knowledge to understand the connections you are making. In a way this approach is almost anti-tarot, at least the RWS-style tarot. You could theoretically be using this visual method to do readings with any group of images. The only thing that the TdM provides that random images do not is that the repeated motifs in the deck allow the cards to "speak" to one another. That's what makes the TdM so unique.

I know we've talked about all this before but I'm just putting down a few things to give you some ideas for the introduction to this thread. I'll be surprised if many join in, but I hope I can stick to it for a while to see if it can hone my feel for the deck. After a few months I might even feel better about taking EE's course again.

[Pen]

MAAT TAROT (by Julia Cucchia-Watts, 2006)


4 of Coins / 6 of Coins / 5 of Coins

What we have preserved
May be offered as a gift
At the sacred spring

- an odd bunch of cards to show up next to each other in a 3 card reading, but the deck was well shuffled and, as usual, I let my wife pick the cards with her eyes closed

This is lovely - so simple, so direct - as if no other haiku could have been been written for these three cards in this order.

[dodalisque]

MAAT TAROT (by Julia Cucchia-Watts, 2006)

The Chariot / 8 of Wands / 3 of Cups

At the centre sits
A spinner of yarns weaving
The fabric of time

[Pen]

MAAT TAROT (by Julia Cucchia-Watts, 2006)

The Chariot / 8 of Wands / 3 of Cups

At the centre sits
A spinner of yarns weaving
The fabric of time

Such a clever pun for the 8 of Wands - my brow wrinkled (a little more!) for a moment there.

[dodalisque]

pun

Yes, I wondered about that. Puns seem very un-haiku-like somehow. The lowest form of satori. They put the sartorial in satori. When I think of the RWS 8 of Wands I remember those 8 "arrows" flying through the air, falling to earth, an unusual card in the deck because there are no people on it. 8 is the number of completion or perfection or fixity - two 4s, so fixity doubled - but Wands are the suit of energy, so Pamela Colman Smith needed to find an image that conveyed the idea of something in motion suspended just before the moment of arrival, combining the irreconcilable opposites of movement and stillness. Brilliant, really. So travel is usually a theme on this card and therefore this is not really someone writing a novel, as the haiku suggests, but must be a letter writer. The painting behind her - a Vermeer-like clue - suggests she is writing to another woman. This is a very rich, well-thought-out deck.

I do like the last line - the three witches of Fate measuring out the length of each human life before snipping the thread - the Fata in Latin - the Moirai in Greek mythology (Clotho, Lachesis, Atropos) - the Norns in Norse mythology - the Celtic Matrones. Wikipedia goes on to inform me that our word "fairy" derives from the Latin "fata", which had never occurred to me but must be common knowledge. The credit for "fabric of time" has to go to the card creator, who must have had the connection between time and fabric in mind. Her interpretation is quite different from the RWS 3 of Cups - all of them bent over the cup of the cauldron, dying the threads - which is not usually mentioned as one of the responsibilities of the Three Fates. I like the suggestion that Time itself is a fiction - a yarn - a dream in the mind of God. Or something that's all in our head - the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves to create a personality for our soul to inhabit, in the same way we inhabit a physical body, during our time on Earth during this incarnation. But of course you don't think of all this stuff until after the line has been written.

Prospero - in "The Tempest"

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd tow'rs, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

[Pen]

Tarot of the Origins

1) X11 The Sacrifice: Welcome Surrender
2) 2 of Soul: To The Spirit of All Things
3) 9 of Jewels: Gems concealed within

[dodalisque]

1) X11 The Sacrifice: Welcome Surrender
2) 2 of Soul: To The Spirit of All Things
3) 9 of Jewels: Gems concealed within

I'm always amazed how inevitable the interpretation seems once it's there. After you see it, it's hard to unsee it!

[Pen]

The Artists Inner Vision Tarot

1) 9 of Cups: A familiar face.
2) 7 of Cups: Celtic wine, the hollow hills;
3) The Chariot: The old foe vanquished.

Should one count 'familiar' as three or four syllables, I wonder...

[dodalisque]

Should one count 'familiar' as three or four syllables, I wonder...

Good question. A witch's "familiar" in Shakespeare is 4 syllables, so you should probably use that one. But I suppose it can be either depending on the diction of the speaker. 4 syllables sounds more precise and particular, but is much less common than the 3 syllable version.

Who is the "old foe", I wonder? Loneliness, maybe, since the speaker is so glad to see a "familiar face". Time, possibly, since there are clock-faces on the third card? A time of waiting in solitude, then? Perhaps the familiar face has brought wine to someone who has been hiding in a cave in the "hollow hills". Perhaps she is bringing news that a human "foe" has been "vanquished". She could not come before. In fact, she was being held prisoner in that castle on the first card, yearning to come to her lover in exile. The wine is specifically "Celtic", which carries suggestions of magic and ancient times. The human "foe" would represent an invading power intent on disturbing the old ways.

[Pen]

I like the depth of your interpretation, which raises the question of subjectivity and whether the haiku would 'speak' as effectively without the images. The truth is that being restricted by syllable count, the only thought that came to me was that I knew her face from the painting, and that 'witch's familiar' links with the 'Celtic wine' (the spiralled cups) and 'hollow hills'. I liked 'familiar' too much to change it, so I think the broken rule had better stay - it can be part of the ambiguity. The clocks are prominent and 'the old foe' is definitely Time for me - which now goes by so quickly that I seem to be repeating daily actions at five minute intervals. Ambiguity, symbolism and magic...

[dodalisque]

which raises the question of subjectivity and whether the haiku would 'speak' as effectively without the images.

For me it's a bonus if the tarot haiku works without the images, and at first I try to read them that way. I suppose in a way we are using the cards to trick ourselves into writing a real haiku. But we have to remember that these are not haiku but tarot haiku, so perhaps the poetry often is in the combination of word and image. I know my tarot haiku are unbelievably flat and banal without the images. In fact I think I get most of my chuckles from the idea of going through enormous contortions to produce a very, very plain statement. I think that's what I enjoy most about Edward Gorey's stories. He will devote hours and hours, or even days, who knows, of meticulous cross-hatching to complete the wallpaper behind the characters in a virtually empty room in which nothing much is happening. His captions are not particularly enlightening either. I must be a big fan of deadpan humour. Talk about "art for art's sake"! You know that Laurel and Hardy scene where they are trying to get a piano to the top of a long flight of steps and it always ends up back at the bottom?

So, you say that that "familiar face" on the card is from a well-known painting, and that's why it's familiar? Cool. I like the way you introduce elements into your haiku that have a mysterious resonance like that. It leaves room for the imagination of the reader to come up with explanations. Once a group of words is out there it's open season on what it means. I know Rilke in "Letters to a Young Poet" says somewhere that a poem isn't a poem until other people see it.

I wish I could learn how to allow myself to let some air into the poem the way you do. The fact is, and it's taken me a lifetime to admit it to myself, I just don't have a creative temperament. All of my skills are analytical and interpretive. I really enjoy poetry and it gives me tremendous pleasure to read it but I couldn't ever write any myself. What I produce might be technically amusing, but I just don't have the guts to put myself out there like that. Oh well, as the comedian Steven Wright says, We can't have everything...Where would we put it? It's not going to stop me from trying though.

[Pen]

dodalisque wrote: I wish I could learn how to allow myself to let some air into the poem the way you do. The fact is, and it's taken me a lifetime to admit it to myself, I just don't have a creative temperament. All of my skills are analytical and interpretive. I really enjoy poetry and it gives me tremendous pleasure to read it but I couldn't ever write any myself. What I produce might be technically amusing, but I just don't have the guts to put myself out there like that. Oh well, as the comedian Steven Wright says, We can't have everything...Where would we put it? It's not going to stop me from trying though.

I believe you're being too hard on yourself. I've enjoyed all your thoughtful and strangely insightful haiku and other writing here on CoT - some seemed like readings personally meaningful to yours truly, although I guess that could be the effect of the way we can find connections for interpretation fairly easily (referred to in the TdM thread).

I think it was Hemmingway whose advice on writing was something like: "It's not hard... first you open a vein...", but the quote has been attributed to others. It seems to apply to poetry too, as some sort of validation, especially these days. Personal truths are very much part of the zeitgeist. I used to know someone whose advice was (in Cockney rhyming slang) to "...be your own trick-cyclist..." and It seems that this is one of the lessons of a lifetime's experience that makes the process easier the older one becomes. 'Know thyself', my school motto, is good advice, but I'm not sure I could manage to open a vein and spill blood all over the page unless the result was carefully concealed.

[dodalisque]

Know thyself', my school motto, is good advice, but I'm not sure I could manage to open a vein and spill blood all over the page unless the result was carefully concealed.

"Tell all the truth, but tell it slant," as Emily Dickinson said.

[dodalisque]

which raises the question of subjectivity and whether the haiku would 'speak' as effectively without the images.

I guess Basho himself used images with his haiku, so maybe he invented the tarot haiku. In his 5 travel journals, which include "Narrow Road to the Deep North", he sets each scene before inserting his haiku in order to place the poems in context. They wouldn't work nearly as well without these word pictures in prose.

[dodalisque]

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