Tracy Koretsky: ON A HILL OVER HAIFA: HAIBUN SANS HAIKU, EXPERIMENT AND COMMENTARY

Several months ago, as a response to some of Jeffrey Woodward’s more nascent ideas about haibun sans haiku, I decided to try one. I began with great skepticism. To my mind, haibun was a mixed medium. Without the spacious leap from prose to haiku, the final effect, for better or worse, would be different than the effect of a haibun.

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The hardest part of the project was coming up with a basic concept that would convey haibun sensibilities in and of itself. Since the original haibun were basically travelogue, I thought exploring similar material might bear fruit. More importantly, I sought a premise that would have internal contrast, something that I hoped would imply the kind of shift that the haiku provides in a haibun.

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In composing this experiment, I attempted to contrast the depictions of two "worlds" through prose style. I chose to "pad" what I’ll call the rustic sections and "pare" the modern sections. In other words, I made extra observations of the rustics, using many adverbs and clauses. In contrast, I glossed the modern world prose, did not make careful observations, chose action verbs, even strung a bunch of short declarative sentences into one long sentence with semicolons to underscore the lack of clarity and distinction amongst the speaker's observation in that “world.”

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Below is my attempt. My analysis follows it.


On a Hill Over Haifa

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The click of our seatbelts silences the pleasant but insistent chime. The company rep at the wheel fusses with the climate control. 37c. What does that mean, I wonder. I need to check my guidebook, do the conversion. It’s something like 100 degrees out there. Somehow, shuttled from limo to limo, I hadn’t quite noticed.

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He slides the BMW into a purring third gear and we begin our climb. What we are about to see, he tells us, will change the way we think about life. I hold fast to the handrail.

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As we round yet another sharp, steep bend, a small herd meanders into the road. There are gray sheep with clumps of uneven wool, some brown, some mottled, and a few goats, all tended by a lightly robed and heavily turbaned man. In a movement unconscious of its efficiency and grace, he catches the rear foot of one brown sheep with a long stick and, with the other hand, the tail of a goat, somehow bringing all the animals to a simultaneous halt.

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Our driver scarcely brakes as he swerves past. This is what I would like to ask about – this man, these animals – but I cannot wedge in a word. “Electron microscopy,” our driver is saying, “recombinant,” and “nanotube array,” and “plasma elector feresis.”

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I turn in my seat to watch the shepherd move his flock. His robe flutters in our wake as he shields his eyes with his long brown hand.

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Our driver is saying “Intel”; he is saying “Merck”; he is saying “W.H.O.”; he is saying “Citibank,” and the valley opens before us.

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Across the wide, sloping, expanse several camels pick their dusty way. They are piled high with multi-colored burdens and driven by a small robed group of people, several with bundles atop their heads. One small figure lurches from side to side with every slow step. Vaporous whirls of heat shimmer and dissipate.

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Our guide pauses to pull on his Diet Coke. I seize the opportunity.

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“These people,” I say, gesturing toward the valley, “Who—"

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“Ach,” he replies. “Bedouin. Nobody care about.” Then “Ach,” again as he shoves the shift into second to take a turn so sharply that we are thrown onto the narrow shoulder.

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The laboratory comes into view. It appears the German team is already there to meet us. “Neo-natal,” the rep is saying. “The possibility to perfect even in the womb, even the zygote, we can make correct.”

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As the road gives way to dusty gravel I spy, in the shade of an ancient gnarled fig, a woman. She is squatting and with one hand, using a rock to pound something. We come closer and I see that her other hand supports a baby. She is nursing. We pass so close I could call to her, so close I think, for a moment, that our eyes meet. But then I remember that I am looking at her through one-way glass.
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First, let me say that I am glad to have tried this exercise. It solidified my thoughts about haibun, helping me to distinguish which of my ideas might best be cast in this format. Ultimately though, it simply retrenched my original notion: haibun requires haiku. The crux of the form is the precipice preceding the poem. In a piece like the one I’ve offered above, syntactical logic conveys the reader safely across that precipice, protecting her from ever having to leap.
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So what have I written? I would not call the result a prose poem. There is no heightened language, no "turning" and no metaphoric development. (I invite you to read my short essay defining prose poem in Triplopia.)

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Nor would I call the result a flash fiction. Though this is largely fabricated (I did once see Bedouins on a drive to a high tech company in Haifa, but the "occasion" was entirely different. For one thing, there was no driver.) there is no change in the protagonist by the end of the piece, which, in my opinion, is the litmus test of short fiction.

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Certainly it is a piece of "flash" writing: fully realized in fewer than 500 words (the generally accepted maximum length of a flash) it both begins and ends in the middle of something, presenting a glimpse but basically leaving a feeling of openness, similar to a sketch. As a reader, I might call this "flash travelogue" though as its writer, I know it is largely contrived and fictitious.

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On the other hand, perhaps what I’ve written is simply the prose portion of a haibun patiently awaiting its complementing haiku. So, favoring result over experiment, I offer it now:

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switchback ―
our tires throw dust
on cactus blooms

by Tracy Koretsky

Berkeley, California