While the clothes were going round and round at the laundromat, I read from a chapter called 'The Renku' in the book
Matsuo Basho by Makoto Ueda. Matsuo Basho, who lived in the 1600s, was a master haiku poet but his talents in renku were considered even greater. Renku is a unique, very structured process where a team of poets takes turns creating verses of a long collaborative poem. Each uses the last lines of the previous poet's effort to begin the next stanza. Ueda's description of the process makes it sound like performance art, or a party game.
'From the individual poet's point of view, each verse has a double meaning, one conscious and the other unconscious. One of the factors that make renku writing exciting lies in the development of this unconscious meaning. A poet composes a verse, and a few minutes later he finds to his amusement that one of his teammates interprets it in a way he had not thought of.'
The poem Ueda uses as an example is called 'A Winter Shower'. There's a balancing act going on, where the poets strive to become a unified force, but through preserving their distinct personalities, writing styles, and imaginations. The process leads to startling shifts in direction and perspective as they move the poem forward, a shared journey that's both cohesive and chaotic.
(The sculpture pictured above is located on the Tulane University campus.)
