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Michael Antman Haiku
4 Playsin 14 hours
Author and critic Michael Antman joins Joe and Mark for Michael's second appearance on Re-Creative.
After discussing Michael's novel, Cherry Whip: the Twentieth Anniversary Edition, recently released by Donovan Street Press, which features a Japanese protagonist, Michael explains the origin of his love for Japanese culture. According to Michael, it all happened because he didn't know what a "porter" was (it's not what you think...)
Well, that and his discovery of a six volume history of haiku.
To Michael, haiku has always been "a wonderful diversion." It's a passion that Mark shares, both Michael and Mark having actually published haiku in The Mainichi Daily News.
"A writer writes," Michael reminds us, advice he received from fellow writer Scott Turow. "I'm a writer, that's what I do."
And to prove it (not that we needed proof), he shares with us all a choice morsel of his own haiku.
For more information, check out the show notes for this episode.
Re-Creative is produced by Donovan Street Press Inc. in association with MonkeyJoy Press.
Contact us at contact@donovanstreetpress.com
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Transcript
Personal Anecdotes and Weddings
00:00:09
Speaker
Hello, Mark. Joe, how are you? Very well. Yes. Yeah. Hey, it's been a while. It has been a while. So I know lots of time has passed. I know you're a father and you have kids in the right age for this question. So I'm going to ask, okay have you ever been best man or an usher as ah a member of the wedding party? Oh, yeah. Bring up that pain point. Thanks a lot.
00:00:37
Speaker
I knew it was one that he did. I feel like I've had lots of good friends and lots of them have got married, but I've never been chosen to be the best man. can only assume it's because never was actually the best, quotation mark, man.
00:00:52
Speaker
so Yeah, I have been a best man, but I mean, it's it's a very stressful day if you're the best man, because you take on all kinds of responsibilities that you don't really have much to do with. I remember when my buddy Jeff was getting married, we're waiting for the chapel here on ah University now, and and we start to hear bagpipes.
00:01:16
Speaker
and And Jeff's like, someone's practicing their bagpipes. But what had happened was his wife-to-be had actually arranged to have bagpipe a bad piper. oh And so I'm like, do you want me to take care of him? I'll take care of him. So I i roared out of the room, ready to just like beat the crap out of some piper who had been hired to do that.
00:01:40
Speaker
Wow. But I guess his playing was such that it sounded like he was practicing. It sounded like he was practicing. But he was just warming up. He was actually very good. Okay. Okay. So, Michael, have you ever been a best man? Have you been? I was, and I screwed it up. I was the best man for my friend Rodney's wedding.
00:01:58
Speaker
And he had a rehearsal, ah wedding rehearsal the night before the wedding. And so I showed up, and my friend Rodney said, where's your tuxedo? And I said, who wears a tuxedo to a wedding rehearsal? I mean, we're not going to be wearing tuxedos to the wedding, so why would we wear it to the wedding rehearsal?
00:02:16
Speaker
And he gets all red in the face and says, what do you mean we're not wearing tuxedos to the wedding? Of course we were wearing tuxedos to the wedding. And I didn't have a tuxedo, needless to say. So I raced around town trying to find a tuxedo in time for the wedding.
00:02:30
Speaker
And he he was not happy about that. Was this in Chicago? Yes. ah Luckily, you could find a place where you could rent it. Yeah, it was it was not like my cousin Vinny where I ended up having to get a green velvet double-breasted Liberace tuxedo. It was a one. One of my favorite movies. Mine too. I think I've seen it about 15 times. Did you say Utes?
Michael Antman's Literary Journey
00:02:58
Speaker
Utes.
00:03:00
Speaker
ah Okay, so this we've decided so we're season four now and we're just figuring out how to do this podcast in the four seasons. So Michael Antman, welcome to our to our podcast. Thank you. Nice to see you.
00:03:13
Speaker
And we've decided we're not going to force the guests to introduce themselves anymore. We're actually gonna do the do the duties ourselves. And and I had it all. I had it all ready. And now it's it's gone.
00:03:28
Speaker
Cheers. I might have it. I might have it here. Oh, well, yeah. In which case, you can do the honors. So, ah Michael, welcome to the podcast. Michael Antman is the author of the novel Cherry Whip, Everything Solid Has a Shadow, and the recently completed novel A Distant Place of Slaughter.
00:03:45
Speaker
He is a two-time finalist for the National Book Circle's Balakian Award for Excellence in Book Reviewing. I hope I pronounced that right. He's also a theater critic, urban photographer, and poet, and formerly the global head of marketing for a fortune.
00:04:00
Speaker
100 company? Is that correct? Correct. Okay. There we go. Nailed it. Nailed it. Well, except you forgot one very important fact. Oh, what's that? Also recently published the 20th anniversary edition of Cherry Hill with a little up and coming indie publishing company, Donovan Street Press. I did mention the book.
00:04:23
Speaker
Okay. Yeah. Okay. ah By the way, I got my copies of the 20th anniversary edition of Cherry Whippy in the mail this afternoon, and I just opened the carton.
00:04:34
Speaker
That's always a great moment for an author. Absolutely, yeah. Did you record it, like the unboxing or, you know, for... No, because I see everybody doing that on Instagram and it's kind of corny and I don't know. I just i just didn't think to do it.
00:04:51
Speaker
Last time I did it, I got my cats involved. Because it's a box, right? So I know they're interested. So I just like put them on the counter and said, oh, look, it's a box, guys. There's nothing cats love more than boxes. it's This is true. The best.
00:05:04
Speaker
Now you have to um you do have to pick out and examine every book. So one of your fellow label mates, Matt Watts, we ordered him a bunch of books and a whole slew of them were damaged. We had to send them back.
00:05:18
Speaker
So I'm really hoping that's not the case with ah with your books. I didn't didn't see any that were damaged, although it was packed without any paper or padding. So I think I got lucky.
00:05:29
Speaker
They slid around a book but a bit, but they all looked fine. Good. Yeah. And and so and and are you liking this edition or? It's beautiful. I love it.
00:05:40
Speaker
It's I love the cover. The cover is beautiful. Yeah, I will tell the designer. He'll be happy to hear it. He actually designed that cover. almost 20 years ago when the first edition was printed. i was is never thrilled with the cover of the initial edition, but I didn't have much say over it.
00:05:59
Speaker
And I asked the designer that I worked with at at work to do an ad for Cherry Whip, which we ran in some literary publications. And the ad, I loved the design, and I showed it to the publisher. And she said, that looks more like a book cover.
00:06:15
Speaker
And I was thinking, exactly. And that's the design that we used for the new edition was the yeah same design that he had done for the ad close to 20 years ago. He had a search through his old files to find it, and i was very glad he did. But yeah, I'm very happy with the way it looks.
00:06:33
Speaker
And the interior design is excellent. The typography. And it's just a pleasure to hold and read. Excellent. We should actually tell the story of how this ah ah publication came about.
00:06:46
Speaker
and And because you're the guest in this podcast, we should let you do the talking. Well, um it came about because of you guys. I did an earlier recreative podcast, as you both know, and I really enjoyed it. And I think it went pretty well. And afterwards, I believe, Joe, you had a conversation with my friend Christopher Guerin.
00:07:08
Speaker
And the two of you talked of about Cherry Whip. And separately, Mark, you had mentioned that you really liked the book. And somehow it all coalesced. and you having a new small press kind of thought that maybe this would be a potential candidate. And separately, I kind of.
00:07:26
Speaker
you know, plucked up my courage and said, you know, would you be interested? Because it's, as you both know, a very unusual thing for a small press ah novel, first of all, to stick around for 20 years with the original publisher, and then for it to be republished by a different small press.
00:07:45
Speaker
it's i've I've never actually seen any other examples of that. So in my mind, it was a little bit of a miracle. it was It was wonderful because I wrote it back in 2001. It took me three years to find a publisher. i had an agent for a couple of years.
00:08:00
Speaker
He wasn't able to place It was very frustrating because he came very close with to Random House. One editor at Random House accepted it, and I was just so excited. And then her boss said, well, I was in Tokyo once, and I didn't think this was realistic. So she overruled the first editor. And um so at that point, my ah my agent went paid back to being a... yeah magazine editor anyway, so I ended up looking on my own for ah legitimate small presses.
00:08:34
Speaker
And we have to say that these days to distinguish between yeah actual small presses and vanity publishing, which I was not interested in. So I did find a legitimate small press. And ah even though I was never happy with the cover, I have to say that the ah The publisher and owner did a wonderful job of editing. She is she was a line editor yeah for several of them as you know mark for several of the major publishing houses, and she knows what she's doing. And so she did a beautiful job on the line editing. And...
00:09:06
Speaker
made it as close to perfect as you can get. And like I said, she kept it in print. Now, the marketing and distribution were problematic, I would say, but you know that's what happens when you're dealing with a small press. I did a lot of marketing on my own, but overall I was happy and had kind of put it all in my past and said, well, that was a nice experience. And I had other books to write. I wrote a memoir.
00:09:30
Speaker
I wrote a second novel, which was published by a different small press. And then I recently completed a third novel, ah which is currently out to agents, looking for an agent. And I kind of put, you know, Cherry Whip in my past.
Character Study: Hiroshi in Cherry Whip
00:09:44
Speaker
And then as a result of the serendipity of of this podcast and and Mark championing it. It's not serendipity, man. This is big. because I'm going to say this because it's my favorite E&C book.
00:09:57
Speaker
Oh, well, thank you. And the because and that's she published my first book, too. But of the two, I actually still prefer yours. Yeah. all the things you said are true. like But she was an amazing editor. Yeah, she was. yeah Yeah. Well, it's a great book. She still is. You can find her people.
00:10:17
Speaker
But I mean, like, you know, after I talked to you when you were first on the podcast, I thought it was such a great conversation and you were such an interesting person that I ordered your book.
00:10:28
Speaker
And so it came in and I read it with some trepidation because, you know, sometimes you, you know, read these. Yeah, the cover is not good. You know, but immediately love the book. I thought it was and still think that it's exquisitely written.
00:10:44
Speaker
And it thought it was a shame that it was out of print with the other publisher. And so to me, it just, you know, made sense. And when you're operating a small press and you've got to do all this work on these books, you don't want to work on a book you don't like.
00:10:59
Speaker
Right. Because it's going to be a massive amount of work. And you're going to have to read it multiple times. And in the case of your book, I'd already read it once. So, but I looked forward to reading it again because I just love the main character, Hero.
00:11:15
Speaker
It's just being in his mind. I mean, it's It's probably not a mind I would want to spend multiple. ah you know Or is it Hito? It's Hito, right? Well, the yeah yeah woman he meets in the U.S., Maureen, calls him Hero, is short for his name, Hiroshi.
00:11:35
Speaker
I don't think he would he would have been referred to as Hero Hiroshi. Or hero in Japan. He is the protagonist of the book not particularly a hero as such and but she uses that term affectionately because ah She kind of helps rescue him from his Idiocy I think it's very yeah good point that most people probably wouldn't want to spend a lot of time in his mind not that there was anything sick or awful about him, just that he overthinks everything. And that sort of is the central theme of the book, that this is a character who overthinks everything except what really matters.
00:12:15
Speaker
He overthinks everything but understands nothing in terms of what's really essential it's about life. And the story is a story about how he comes to terms with who he actually is and why he is so obsessive about... He is he is the original FOMO character before that term was even invented. He's got this obsessive fear of missing out and he wants to experience everything new.
00:12:40
Speaker
He's not a hedonist as such, he just wants to experience everything. And he has endless, boundless curiosity. But of course, he doesn't really realize that he's doing this and he is this way because he's suppressing something that he doesn't want to really face face about himself and about his past.
00:12:58
Speaker
So the book is predominantly a comedy. It's a funny novel, but because he's funny. But there's also an element of tragedy to it in the sense that he is, in fact, suppressing something tragic from his past, something that really wasn't his fault, but he did in some way take some responsibility for unfairly to himself, but he did.
00:13:19
Speaker
And i love the notion of people coming to terms with who they are and understanding why they did all the crazy things they did. It happened to me. I think it happens to most people. And of course, it ah by death almost by definition, it always happens too late. So we only understand these things in retrospect. yeah But it's nonetheless, it's very satisfying, I think, that to come to terms with who one is as a person. And that's really what the what the novel is about.
00:13:46
Speaker
And what's the the famous line, you know, life must be lived forward, but understood backwards. Exactly. Kierkegaard. And we should mention as well that, ah I was counting on you, Mark, to know that.
00:13:58
Speaker
But we should mention as well that, of course, Hiro, it's not giving ah too much away to say that the predominant exterior struggle of the book is that he becomes paralyzed shortly after arriving in New York as a young jazz prodigy. And then, so he's got to deal with all this psychological baggage while also dealing with this physical impediment.
00:14:21
Speaker
Yes. But, but even more to the point, it is precisely because of this physical impediment that he is forced to deal with the psychological baggage because he can't, he can no longer run around like crazy seeking after new sensations. He's strapped into a hospital bed, unable to move, he's paralyzed from the neck down temporarily. It's an illness called Guillain-Barre syndrome. And it was based on my father's own experience with Guillain-Barre syndrome. It came on very suddenly.
00:14:50
Speaker
One minute he laid down for a nap and was feeling fine. And when he woke up, he rolled onto the floor and he couldn't move. And the only parts of him that moved were his vocal cords in his in his eyelids. So it's a frightening disease. But on the other hand, it's almost in 95% of the cases, it's largely to entirely curable. So it's not the tragedy that some neurological um illnesses are. But it gave him an unexpected gift.
Cultural Influences and Haiku
00:15:18
Speaker
which is enforced idleness and the need to explore the only thing he was still able to explore, which was his own mind and his own past. And so all these things from his past, in particular what happened with his sister, who had, she kind of evolved from having a rich fantasy life to being actually mentally disturbed.
00:15:39
Speaker
She was older than Hiroshi, and therefore he had no real responsibility over her, but he still felt like He could have saved her in some ways. And I don't i don't think I'm giving away too much to say that.
00:15:50
Speaker
And so he's in a strange country, in a strange city, in an overwhelming city, New York. And he meets all these people that are just absolutely baffling to him. And everything that everybody says to him, he tries to interpret.
00:16:05
Speaker
And it's not a question of English language skills. He's fluent. But he just overthinks everything that everybody says and tries to read into it. What do they really mean? And this tendency to overthink things becomes forced inwards as he's lying in the hospital bed, unable to move. And he starts thinking about the things that really matter for the first time in his life.
00:16:29
Speaker
And he has a breakthrough. So, and he's obviously Japanese, he's ah and because you lived in in Japan. and And I know that the one thing that you wanted to talk about today was a collection of of volumes about the history of haiku. Right.
00:16:45
Speaker
Right? So, um and... I was amused ah in our correspondence ah leading up to this ah podcast where you said that you had Haiku published in, know what was the name of the magazine?
00:16:56
Speaker
My Nietzsche Daily News. Yeah, and then it turns out that Mark has also been published, Haiku, and like, what are the odds? yeah I would say pretty high. I mean, I think Olga had specific tastes. So I think actually the odds are actually pretty high that a lot of her authors maybe might have been published in that.
00:17:18
Speaker
Okay. The interesting thing is that Mainichi means daily. So the Mainichi Daily News is the Daily Daily News. It's the Daily Daily News. It was a newspaper and they had a little corner ah devoted to the haiku of the day. And yeah I submitted one and Mark did too. i I don't really think Olga had anything to do with it because she was not particularly interested in Japan. No, no. But I think i think there's something – I actually think there is something about haiku that – That is very, ah it helps for a developing your writer voice. absolutely. And I think, so I think it's not a coincidence that both of us have yeah haiku poems published by that. Right. I i think it helps develop a concision.
00:18:07
Speaker
Yeah. Stultity and also the art of juxtaposition, which are all three cardinal characteristics of a good haiku. Yeah. That's what I meant by that. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. But now I want to take a poll, okay, of all the people listening and of all the people that I've ever known in my life, how many have ever had haiku published in this? In my niche daily news. Yeah. Fair enough, Joe. Yeah. I'm thinking two. You two. Yeah, I think we are probably the only two. Yeah, maybe. Yeah, maybe. But I didn't even live in Japan. So
00:18:41
Speaker
i i you lived in Japan for a couple of years, right? Yeah. Yeah. no But I got to clarify, the haiku was in English, right? Oh, it was English. It was English. how yeah my yeah My Japanese was never put enough. In fact, when I lived over there, I had actually visited...
00:18:57
Speaker
a couple of years previously and I spent three weeks there after I quit my job. I had kind of an early midlife crisis. But then after I got married, we moved there and we studied Japanese assiduously. We took lessons together for the whole two and a half years we were there. And we lived next door to a couple of, to a young couple who had a couple of kindergarten kids. They were twins. And we became friendly with the family and with the twins. And we would talk to the twins in Japanese because, you know, we were very proud of our newly acquired Japanese skills. And one of the kids looked at both of us and said, in Japanese, why do you guys talk so funny? So...
00:19:40
Speaker
In essence, we weren't even at kindergarten level is what I was. Yeah. In terms of our in terms of our language skills. I should say that my interest in Japan started a long time before I even knew what a haiku was. it Certainly way before I'd ever moved to Japan. It started when I was in high school. And I want to tell this little story because it's illustrative, I think, of how little incidents, little moments of serendipity can really determine the course of a person's life.
00:20:09
Speaker
Sort of a sliding doors kind of story. So between my junior and senior years of high school, I desperately needed a summer job because I had no money. And I went in. And in those days, of course, you didn't fill out online forms. You walked up and down the street. So I walked up and down the street looking for businesses. And I stepped into a dry cleaning establishment in laundry. And I said, I'm looking for a summer job. And and the guy, a very gruff guy, said, well, we need a porter.
00:20:38
Speaker
And I didn't know what a porter was. And to be honest, to this day, I'm still not sure what a porter is. I don't mean a railroad porter. This was some other kind of porter. I think it might have been something like a janitor. But I kind of looked befuddled and I think I must have said, do you know what a porter is, Mark?
00:20:55
Speaker
I know what a porter is. Yeah. what What is a porter? A porter is someone who carries things. no I don't think that's what he meant. I met the most amazing people I ever met and ke in ah well in in Nepal were a family of porters who carried our stuff.
00:21:13
Speaker
They were amazing. They were just incredible to me. like that And they were they called themselves porters quite proudly. And I think there actually is a Japanese word for porter, ah which is quite revered, which is called boku.
00:21:28
Speaker
Ah, yeah. Well, I don't think that this dry cleaning establishment was very similar to a mountain climbing in Nepal. I think he probably meant mopping the floors. was a It was a polite term. So i did I said, I don't know what that is. And he got disgusted with me and he shooed me out of the dry cleaning establishment. I didn't climb any mountains that day. Let's put it that way.
00:21:49
Speaker
So I kind of wandered next door and I stopped into this radio repair shop. And it turned out to be a Japanese radio repair shop. This was back in the days when the Japanese completely dominated consumer electronics. It was called Naigai USA.
00:22:04
Speaker
And they said, ah sure, we're looking for stock boy. And so I became a stock boy. Terrible, terrible stock boy with no... Very poor stock boy skills. they were The Japanese guys were constantly taking the cartons I'd stapled together and ripping them apart and restapling them and saying, see, this is how you do it. And I never quite never quite got it right. And it was very hard work. It was sweaty. I spent all day unloading trucks and reloading them and going to various warehouses and and so forth. And every day I would go to this
00:22:36
Speaker
place called Chicken Unlimited and they have an enormous lunch because I was working so hard and I was in those days very skinny about six foot three and 155 pounds so I would have a double cheeseburger and a chicken breast and a chicken leg and a large order of fries and a large coke an apple pie and you know so that was barely enough to keep me fueled so one day I was getting ready for lunch and the owner came in with a big a tray filled of with what looked like snowballs to me And I took a closer look and they were perfectly brown, perfectly spherical rice balls.
00:23:11
Speaker
And he he also was a very gruff man, but he kind of thrust the tray at me and said, take take a couple. So that was my lunch. I grabbed these perfectly round rice balls, which are very large. And I bit into one and inside were these golden orange um salmon eggs, Ikura.
00:23:32
Speaker
and i had never seen never heard of anything like that to me it was miraculous i couldn't believe it when i when i saw it in there because it was so colorful and bright and most of all exotic i mean i i grew up eating burgers and meatloaf and and uh you know chicken soup and this was so exotic to me that i swear that literally at that instant I fell in love with the idea of Japan and Japanese culture. And that was what led me when I got my first real job at the Chicago Board of Trade after college.
00:24:05
Speaker
When I got my first paycheck, I went out and I bought this incredibly expensive six volume set of haiku by the famous translator R.H. Blythe.
00:24:18
Speaker
And they were beautiful volumes. They were bound in a material that looked kind of like burlap. It's kind of hard to explain. Never seen another book like it then or since. And and I'm sure they're not available at all anymore. I don't know remember how much it cost me, but it probably ate up a good portion of my paycheck. And I began studying Japanese literature, and that was what sort of set me on my journey.
00:24:44
Speaker
So that yeah many years later, when I needed a break from my job and from life. I went to Japan for three weeks and explored. And then later when I got married, my wife and I were both really sick of our careers. So we decided on an impulse just to get a job in Japan and we moved there.
00:25:03
Speaker
And so it all happened because I didn't know what a porter was. That's great. Now I wish I'd bound your book in burlap. I actually have one of those too. Oh, do you? It's a very old, it's not, it's not Japanese though. It's a old book.
00:25:20
Speaker
I think it's English publisher, ah but it's a ah fairly original um translation of All Quiet on the Western Front. Oh, really? And it's bound the same way? Yeah, it's it's it's burlap and it's got red. Yeah, it's it's from my grandfather's library and it's beautiful. It's beautiful beautiful work. yeah They're incredibly sturdy books. I mean, i can still read them today. yeah This is now 40, something like 48 years since I purchased them and the and the pages are still white and
00:25:51
Speaker
The type is still fresh. Yeah, my edition is like 95 years old or something, and it's still readable. Wow. Amazing. So you said this is a six-volume collection? History of history of a haiku. Now, I'm going to sound like the philistine that I am, I guess.
00:26:10
Speaker
Is there that much... information about haiku to generate six volumes of dude like how i would say i would say that's only moderately philistine compared to of course there is yeah the interesting thing about have you spent any time at a library oh my god you can find 12 volumes on the intestinal tract of a cockroach
00:26:40
Speaker
Okay, but see, you're talking to someone who's currently reading a 500-page comic book of Starman, okay? so that' Okay. you know Well, there you there you go. yeah so but It's actually quite excellent. But anyway, yeah tell me tell us about this. this like What is in it?
00:26:58
Speaker
There's a saying in in Latin, multum in parvo. not sure if I'm pronouncing that correctly, which means the world in a microcosm. And that's what haiku is.
00:27:09
Speaker
They're very small, obviously. The English version of haiku is five, seven, five, as you know, five syllables, seven, and then five. It's not exactly the same in Japanese, but it's kind of ah an approximation. So they're very small.
00:27:22
Speaker
ah Virtually every haiku has a seasonal element, and most haiku feature some sort of juxtaposition. And they also are kind of like a neutral observation of the natural world in which the ego of the poet is is in most cases not present.
00:27:41
Speaker
There are some exceptions. But the most interesting thing about haiku is that they do contain, they're like microcosms. They contain the universe in miniature. And you can look at a haiku and, um,
00:27:55
Speaker
read it one way, and then if you shift your vision a little bit, like ah an optical illusion, a whole other dimension opens up. And these books, this that ah by R.H. Blythe, he takes each of these haiku, famous haiku. The first two are actually the history, and the last four volumes are divided by season, you know, spring, summer, autumn, winter. And he takes each one and and kind of, he doesn't...
00:28:24
Speaker
Exactly analyze them, but he looks at them from various angles sort of the way you look at a gem from various angles as you hold it under a light and It reveals all these beautiful facets ah They kind of throw off sparks so to speak of of different meaning and ah they Haiku is fairly closely associated with Zen practice because it's something about emptying the mind and removing the ego and just sort of letting the world flow through you. And that's what a good haiku does. And and it opens your ah senses and your sensibilities to the possibilities of the world, but in a very subtle, very low-key way. I've always disliked literature that lectures.
00:29:12
Speaker
And that talks at me. i feel the same way about singing. I don't like being sung at. I like being sung to. I like the subtlety of it. and And that's what haiku does. They don't lecture you. They don't tell you what to think. They don't talk at you.
00:29:28
Speaker
They simply observe in a very subtle kind of way. And ah I became kind of transfixed with it. And in this was, as I mentioned, I purchased this with my first paycheck. And as I spent my early years at the Chicago Board of Trade learning, you know, the financial markets, which was not something that came naturally to me because, you know, I was not naturally a financial person.
00:29:51
Speaker
I kind of distracted myself by writing haiku and exchanging it with my friend Christopher Guerin, who was a previous guest on Recreative. And he and I would send letters to each other several times a week with our latest haiku.
00:30:05
Speaker
And we eventually put them together in a collection. We never published it, but we were both happy just to created this collection of our haiku. I think we had a hundred each. It was called Here Are More We Missed, was the title.
00:30:22
Speaker
It was based on a a haiku I wrote that went like this. Remember, we chase fireflies all summer long. Here are more we missed.
00:30:33
Speaker
And that became the title of the ah of the collection. And ah it really kind of kept our spirits up as we both kind of adjusted to having to the to face the shocking reality of actually having to work for a living you know after college. and it's real yeah It sucks.
00:30:51
Speaker
It was very tough in the early years. And so that really softened the blow in some ways. And when I would go on vacation and go hiking in the mountains or whatever, I always had my eyes open. I was looking for things to write about. And it made a big difference because I see i saw the world more clearly and more sharply.
00:31:06
Speaker
So did you do, um you and Christopher, did you, I think it's called... Actually, there's Renku, which yeah think is like a single poet sort of expanding on a theme or playing with a theme. um But there's also one where you play back and forth, and I don't know the term for that is. Is that Senku or something like that? or Yeah, i don I don't remember the term for it, but I know exactly what you're talking about. So did you do that? You like like you'd you'd sort of give him a haiku, and then he's got to bat it back to you? Yeah. Did you try that?
00:31:39
Speaker
We did that a few times. Oh, cool. That's so cool. We also wrote a lot of senryu. If I recall correctly, that's the term. I may be wrong. ah But senryu is humorous haiku, and I wrote yes quite a few of those ah basically about absurdity. I wrote some sexual haiku, which may seem like an odd combination. No, I'm not.
00:32:00
Speaker
But and we we tried all kinds of experiments. and And then we, of course, would critique each other's haiku. We were kind of like miniature R.H. Blythe types. um So cool.
00:32:11
Speaker
Yeah. And it was, ah you know, in your 20s, I don't know about you guys, but for me, when I wasn't sleeping, I was either working constantly because I was trying to establish myself in my career or obsessing about girls and ah looking for a girlfriend and going out on dates. And yeah I would go out every evening and, you know, in search of entertainment that I didn't really realize until later was a way of kind of compensating for the...
00:32:41
Speaker
um difficulty of, you know, learning a career from scratch. And that was kind of all-consuming. So the um the haiku was sort of this wonderful little diversion.
00:32:55
Speaker
And... It also brought me into contact with larger ah ah aspects of Japanese culture as well as Japanese literature. And I began reading all the great Japanese novels. This happened more in later years. ah Some of my favorites like Mishima and Kawabata are two of the two of the greats. Uh, Mishima was particularly impressive and I was very surprised, you know, Yukio Mishima, he was the, uh, novelist who wrote The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea and many other famous novels. And he very famously committed, uh,
00:33:34
Speaker
uh seppuku uh and it was kind of a sensation in japan i was very surprised to find out that he was considered by japanese people including the literati as a weirdo ah he was not at all representative of japanese culture at all as it turns out he was just ah a very strange character but a brilliant brilliant writer one of the greatest of the japanese writers ah It's interesting to me how you came to haiku because it's very different for for me I came to haiku through Buddhism.
00:34:04
Speaker
i was very much into sunris ah Suzuki, so a Japanese Zen master. and I read his book, Zen Mind, Beginner Mind. I just kept noticing that he kept using haiku as his point of reference for how to understand haiku.
00:34:26
Speaker
Zen. And I was like, and I'm like, okay, that's interesting. And then I was like looking at some of the the haiku in the, in the end notes. And it's just like, Oh, this Basho guy, maybe something that I should learn about. So that's really all I know about haiku is, is, is about those two things. It's like about yeah Suzuki and Basho. And I just read all of his, all of his, all of his haiku and they are just, they're gorgeous. Yeah. He was the master. he was he was perhaps the greatest of all the haiku poets. And they're just so beautiful, and they're just so perfect.
00:35:02
Speaker
Like, just perfect little Buddhist gems of how to understand that we live in this weird world, and it doesn't really make any sense, and we have to make sense of it. That's my interpretation of it. I think that's exactly right. I had a professor in college, and here was another bit of serendipity or good luck.
00:35:23
Speaker
I took a creative writing course with a poet named Lucian Strike. I knew so little about him, I thought he was Lucian was a woman's name. And I came in and found this very dashing figure who was a veteran of the Second World War. And he looked like the classic poet.
00:35:41
Speaker
And Yeah. looks you know there's a dunesbury cartoon where a student is sent to pick up the visiting poet at the at the train station and he says how will i know which one is the poet and and his teacher says oh you'll know so He comes to the cafe next to the train station and there's a line of five or six guys hunched over their coffee. And one of the guys has ah autumn leaves blowing across his face and the wind is blowing his hair. that is There's the poet. there There's the poet. Yeah. And that's exactly what Lucian Strike looked like. And he himself was his Zen poet and a probably the America's foremost translator of
00:36:24
Speaker
Zen poetry. He became very famous within that very limited circle, of course. And he was a wonderful guy and an excellent teacher. And ah um I learned a lot from him as well. But again, that was a pure luck. It's not as if I went off in search of him any more than I went off in search of Nygai USA, the radio repair shop. I just i guess it was just sort of faded ah to be that way. And I turned him into...
00:36:51
Speaker
a major character in Sherry Whip. He is the character of Hiroshi's father. The one who as we I say in the novel, torments Hiroshi with his support was based on was based on on Lucian Strike, my my professor, a very similar personality. that he was He was really um focused on greatness.
00:37:15
Speaker
He was um a Zen practitioner and and had all the qualities you you'd associate with that. And yet at the same time, and I'm not, I don't think I'm giving anything away because he's passed on. He was very obsessed with success and was very bitter that other poets had received prizes that he had not received and was always talking with envy about other poets. And it seemed to me, even at the time, to be very contrary to the spirit of Zen Buddhism. And yet, at the same time, I think I recognize then, and I recognize even more now, that first and foremost, he was a human being.
00:37:50
Speaker
And all human beings, no matter how exalted they are, are still subject to, you know, common emotions like envy and jealousy and and competitiveness and so forth. And I have great affection for him because precisely because he was so human.
00:38:07
Speaker
So today I watched the premiere of the new series of Shogun. Oh. Which is quite excellent. It really I've seen one episode, but it's pretty stunning.
00:38:19
Speaker
And in it, one of the characters says that we believe in this country at that time everyone has three hearts. the the one heart that we show the world and the one heart that we only show our friends and then the one heart, which is the secret heart. And what you're saying about time your poet friend strikes me as, so he's got the one heart for the for the Zen and then he's got the other heart, and which is you know seeking greatness and which kind of explains the the superficial conflict that you know it's like, how could he be one or the other? Well, he's got the two hearts and then there's probably another heart that never showed anybody.
00:38:57
Speaker
Well, you're going to love ah the rest of the series because you'll get a chance to experience some great Zen poetry or some great haiku. That's the interesting thing for me is that poetry is not valued very highly in our culture.
00:39:12
Speaker
Is it still like valued um in modern day Japan? Oh, that's a good question. I don't know. I don't know the answer to that. Yeah, yeah I would say that um it is to some extent. I happen to live in Japan when I went back the second time after getting married. My wife and I were there at the very height of the Japanese economic boom. And it may seem quaint to think back on this now, but at the time, everybody was worried that the Japanese were taking over the world.
00:39:40
Speaker
Yeah. And now, of course, that's the first. It does seem very quaint. Very quaint. It's the furthest thing from people's minds. But at the time, the Japanese were just ahead in everything. And part of... ah One of the side effects of that is that they were really kind of leaving behind their traditional culture. And a lot of the primary practitioners of of some of their great um traditional art forms were foreigners who appreciated ah what the Japanese themselves had kind of lost in their focus on culture.
00:40:14
Speaker
you know, their economy and invention and to be you know blunt money. I recall there's one art, I don't recall the name of it, that consists of taking broken pottery and mending it with little ah bits of molten gold. And it's absolutely gorgeous. yeah And I saw one of the practitioners of it that was most highly esteemed. And he was, ah he was a Westerner who I believe he was Dutch.
00:40:38
Speaker
And that was very typical of Japan at the time. I'm kind of hoping that now that Japan is kind of a, come to terms with the fact that they're not really on top of the world anymore, that they're kind of rediscovering some of the things that make them unique.
00:40:52
Speaker
ah Basically, everything, I liked everything about Japan, at least up until Imperial Japan, obviously. That was a terrible, terrible period in their history. But everything before that and and after the American occupation I admire the way they look at the world. I admire the way they conduct themselves and I admire their arts. So I'm hoping, although I don't know this for sure that they have they have placed renewed renewed emphasis on all their great traditional arts.
Reflections on Writing and Life
00:41:24
Speaker
So that's interesting thematically, because you mentioned that your poet friend and the character in your novel, Hiro's Father, resented the lack of success.
00:41:36
Speaker
right And now Japan, you you spoke of Japan, kind of happened to come to terms with the fact that they're no longer on top of the world, you know, which is something that probably um the British Empire as well, you know, and Mark and I, I think we're, I've spoken about this previously, many writers and artists have to, i think eventually come to terms with the fact that they're not going to be the next, you know, Noel Coward or Stephen King or, you know, and
00:42:08
Speaker
How do you personally feel about that? Do you still harbor ambitions of you know being an acclaimed writer or where do you sit with that? That's an interesting question. That's a very fraught question because, um ah and I'm going to be very blunt, very, very honest, which is to say, i consider myself extremely lucky that I didn't have any good friends or people I went to college with that became ah extremely successful writers.
00:42:37
Speaker
Because if I had, I probably would have had terrible issues with envy. It would probably would have gnawed at me. And in fact, ah you know, I didn't. I mean, i went to school with and know a lot of really good writers, but I'm just talking about, you know, success in the outside world. I really haven't had to deal with that issue of envy.
00:42:57
Speaker
um There's no question that I had delusionally optimistic views of my future as a writer when I was in my early 20s. I thought I was – yes. And I think there's nothing with that. Yes, I'm the best. Yes. There's nothing wrong with I'm the next Hemingway. Exactly. Yeah. And there's nothing wrong with that because that's what being in your 20s is all about. You're filled with ambition and eagerness and optimism. And furthermore, how can you be a writer and put up with all the slings and arrows of rejection if you don't think you're really good? think it actually, thinking you're really great, a great writer, makes rejection more painful.
00:43:39
Speaker
Because if you don't if you don't think well of yourself or think you still have a long way to go, you get a rejection slip and you go, well, yeah, you you know, maybe they're right.
00:43:50
Speaker
But I would think, how could they possibly have not seen my greatness? And, um, It is the fate of of all writers, especially in a country like America, that doesn't particularly true true ah ah value its artists, that you're going to feel overlooked and underappreciated.
00:44:07
Speaker
And that's just that's just a fact of life. You know, i've I've come to terms with it. I've mellowed quite a bit. I still think I'm a great writer, ah but I no longer have that same experience.
00:44:17
Speaker
And I still want to be successful and I want to be discovered and I want people to read my work. But I no longer have that same sense of of gnawing frustration um that I had. And and it it's a protective instinct because when you're a writer, you go through the mill, no matter who you are.
00:44:35
Speaker
It's incredibly difficult to get an agent. a literary agent. I've had three of them, and yet none of them have sold anything. All three of them ended up failing. And I'm not angry with any of them. They all tried, ah but they all failed.
00:44:49
Speaker
And I've had close calls, and I've had frustrating rejection slips. I've had stories that I thought were great that I know will never see the light of day. But when you reach a certain age, you just sort of accept that, and you cherish the victories that where they happen.
00:45:06
Speaker
And one of them is cherry whip being rediscovered after 20 years and republished that makes so many of the frustrations worthwhile, you know? yeah And ah it's good to know that there are some victories out there and some some good things that can happen.
00:45:24
Speaker
Well, see, because I liked what you had said. of Pardon me, Mark. i just I liked what Michael had said about Japan reconciling itself with the fact that it isn't you know maybe the world's greatest nation or you know at its peak anymore, but causing it to reflect back on its past and it's you know to cherish what it is about itself that's special.
00:45:47
Speaker
So maybe when we don't become you know world famous or or rich or anything, these are the hidden silver linings. Absolutely. Or golden linings.
00:45:58
Speaker
Golden linings, right. To get back to – looked it up. So it's – I don't know how to pronounce this word. Kintsugi. I think it probably is right, but I'm not sure. Yeah. So that's the art of like taking a broken, you know, cup or something out of porcelain and then putting it back together and then putting gold between where the cracks are. And it becomes more beautiful. And in a sense that what ah that's what happens for us as writers, like we have this original imagining of like being, you know, Charles Dickens or whatever, and we're not.
00:46:33
Speaker
But then we actually do see that people appreciate our work and there's a beauty to it as well. couldn't and Couldn't agree more. and And it's very interesting because this circles right back to Hiroshi, who is yeah a jazz prodigy and a jazz genius who has a tremendous future.
00:46:51
Speaker
ah He plays the jazz clarinet, which is an unusual instrument these days in jazz. It wasn't unusual back in back in the day, but now it is. yeah ah But he sees his career... ah foundering when he becomes paralyzed and he thinks he'll never be able to play again. And it's the one thing that, you know, that made him feel good about himself. And he, just like Japan, just like us, has to come to terms with dashed hopes and reduced expectations. And what do you make of that? And but a lot of the novel is about how he comes to terms with being a different person than he thought he was going to be and how he comes to terms with not being
00:47:34
Speaker
great with a capital G, but something else instead. It's still important. And I have to say, ah because we've interviewed him, I got to mention um Spencer Evans, because he is a jazz clarinet player.
00:47:49
Speaker
Oh, interesting. And he's amazing. he's he's He's the most incredible musician. And we had him on the show a while ago. And yeah, he's Same thing. you know he's he He lives in Kingston, Ontario. He's got a sort of limited number of places he can play, but he's he's making a go of it.
00:48:07
Speaker
You know, when I actually read Cherry Whip, that was the first person I thought of. Interesting. I didn't even know his existence. That's great because it is an unusual instrument these days. It is. Yeah. Yeah. So if you've ever listened to Cowboy Junkies, he plays all the clarinet. Oh, you're kidding. Well, yeah, I'm a big fan of the Cowboy Junkies. That's very impressive. He plays all the clarinet in that.
00:48:30
Speaker
We're talking about coming to terms with ah the realities of life, basically knowing that you're not going to be great. and And I would add to that that even those who were great had to come to terms with the failings anyway. It's not as if Hemingway rested on his laurels. He was obviously very tormented person. And most great writers with staff who ah reach great heights are unhappy and dissatisfied. That's just the nature of life. you're never You never reach a final um destination as long as you're living. But the important thing is to keep on moving. I mean, I'm
00:49:06
Speaker
getting along now in years, ah but I'm still writing. I recently completed the novel, A Distant Place of Slaughter. It was co-written with a woman named Norena Valetskaya. It's based on her amazing life story.
00:49:21
Speaker
And, you know, ah I'm out there constantly trying to find a new agent, and it's extremely difficult, even more difficult now than it was in the past when I've had agents.
00:49:31
Speaker
And at the same time I'm doing that, I'm working on a sequel to it. at a new novel because you, you know, you have to keep on moving and yeah coming to terms with the fact that you may not be a world beating success is not the same as giving up.
00:49:46
Speaker
You still, if you're an, if you're an artist of whatever caliber, that means creating art is Scott Turow says, uh, he's a writer that, uh, I used to know a little bit cause he lived across the street from me. We went out to breakfast once and he said, you know, Michael, remember one thing, a writer writes and it's that simple.
00:50:05
Speaker
All the rejections aside, all the frustrations aside, it doesn't matter. A writer writes. And I appreciated his concision and and the wisdom of that statement. ah You are who you are. and And if you deny that, you're going to be unhappy. So I'm a writer. That's what I do. And so I continue to to write.
00:50:23
Speaker
And I'm going to wrap this up here. oh no, you're not. I got a haiku for this. But I was going to say, I'm not wrapping it up this instant. Oh, i'm sorry. Yeah. No, no. But I was just, I got to wrap it up eventually because I'm a writer.
00:50:34
Speaker
But if I don't wrap this up, I'm just going to be a podcast editor as opposed to... Well, I just, I have a haiku from Basho. or I'm probably not pronouncing that right, but okay this English translation is perfect because it's exactly what we're talking about.
00:50:49
Speaker
So, the summer grasses. all that remains of warrior streams.
00:50:57
Speaker
Exactly. Wow. Yeah, these haikus make you think. Yeah, they're awesome. they They resonate, don't they? They just like make you go. They do. But now before we completely wrap it up, I wanted to ask, do you guys remember or do you have the haikus that you had published? and then Oh, yeah.
00:51:17
Speaker
I don't, unfortunately. I know I've got a clipping somewhere, but I could i couldn't find it. I looked for it. This was a summer haiku. And before I say the haiku, do you know what kind of what kanji is?
00:51:29
Speaker
ah No. That's the Japanese ideographic writing system. You know, the very complex yeah yeah ah the very complex figures that stand for words. And I was trying to learn kanji. I ended up learning about 200, which is a pitifully small number. I think you need something like 25,000 to be able to be fully literate. But anyway, the haiku goes like this.
00:51:51
Speaker
Practicing kanji. I press the tip of my pen to a tiny net. That's great. Yeah. Okay. So I need to encourage everybody to go out and purchase a copy of Cherry Whip, the 20th anniversary edition.
00:52:07
Speaker
It's an excellent book. Great as well speaking to you again, Michael. Perhaps we'll have the opportunity. i mean, there's always so much to talk about. We'll have you on the podcast again. Well, have to say i enjoyed every minute of it. but It's always a delight talking to you guys.
00:52:23
Speaker
You're the best, Michael. Thank you.
00:52:48
Speaker
You've been listening to Recreative, a podcast about creativity and the works that inspire it. Recreative is produced by Mark Rainer and Joe Mahoney for Donovan Street Press Inc.
00:52:59
Speaker
in association with Monkey Joy Press. Technical production of music by Joe Mahoney, web design by Mark Rainer. You can support this podcast by checking out our guests' work, listening to their music, purchasing their books, watching their shows, and so on.
00:53:15
Speaker
You can find out more about each guest in all of our past episodes by visiting re-creative.ca. That's re-creative.ca. You can contact us by emailing joemahoney at donovanstreetpress.com.
00:53:29
Speaker
We'd love to hear from you. Thanks for listening.