Seeds from a Birch Tree: Writing Haiku and the Spiritual Journey, by Clark Strand (Hyperion, 1997).
Amid the countless books on the business of poetry — writing, revising, and publishing — I’m surprised how few deal with poetry as a strictly spiritual discipline. The only two that come to mind, in fact, are Clark Strand’s Seeds from a Birch Tree and John Leax’s Grace Is Where I Live (Baker). (No doubt, I’m forgetting some obvious ones.)
If taken for its haiku instruction alone, Seeds from a Birch Tree is that rare book in which the author has achieved a balance of authority and humility. Strand neither intimidates the reader by touting his experience nor annoys the reader with cloying self-effacement. He teaches as much by example as precept. His writing is clean, practical, often lyrical, and full of wisdom. Take for example:
“I once heard haiku described as a perfectly transparent window on the world. A few years later I came across a poet who suggested that the window was open so that it was possible to look at things directly, rather than through glass. Nowadays I would say that the perfection of haiku comes only when the house has been abandoned for the out-of-doors” (p. 172).
Strand, a former Zen monk and teacher, understands Eastern “haiku mind” better than most Westerners (including Alan Watts). Even while insisting that they don’t, most Western haiku teachers implicitly encourage the “clever” style, those haiku with a slightly intellectual “twist,” as though written by O. Henry.
In Japan, that style does indeed exist, but it is a genre all its own — senryu. The problem with clever haiku is that they are displays of the author’s wit rather than insights into the nature of the real and the present and the passing.
Haiku mind, rather, strives to transcend personality, to reach beyond self-consciousness and precocious word play. Strand is able to show how haiku writing approaches experience by not drawing attention to itself or its creator. All of which requires discipline and almost a kind of self-abnegation, which, of course, suggests the second great virtue of this book: its wisdom regarding poetry as a spiritual path.
Ultimately, haiku and religious faith have many things in common: the intentional “losing” of the self, the discipline of looking outward, the reaching for honesty, the humility, the giving of the heart, and a deep, extravagant love for the world. Strand delves into these topics and makes them integral to the writing of not just haiku but poetry in general.
If you have any interest in haiku, don’t just read this book but reread it year after year. If you find it helpful, be sure to find Strand’s fine book on meditation, The Wooden Bowl: Simple Meditations for Everyday Life (Hyperion, 1998), which is just as practical, if not quite so lyrical.
http://www.workingpoet.com/pen/pen01-01.htm#birchtree