Thinking in Circles

November 29, 2011

The weather wavers,
but Time, thinking in circles,
has no misgivings.

This haiku is in honor of Mary Douglas and her book Thinking in Circles: An Essay on Ring Composition (Yale University Press, 2007) which was the inspiration for the structure of this haiku series. Ring composition is suggestive of a cosmology of eternal return – where there is no true ending but regeneration and renewal – and its classic structure echoes the course of the seasons embodied in these haiku. The structure of ayearincircles in this case is the message.

Many classic writings have utilized ring composition, including The Iliad and The Odyssey, The Aeneid, the Garden of Eden story and the Akedah in Genesis as well as the book of Numbers, Rumi’s Mathnawi and James Joyce’s inscrutable Finnegan’s Wake.

Douglas in her book lists seven conventions of ring composition:

1. A prologue. The early haiku from January talk about beginning, creation, stepping out into new territory, expanding the senses.

2. Split into halves. Halfway through the year, the world begins its retreat back to its beginnings.

3. Parallel structure. The classic ring composition matches the natural arc or parabola of the seasons with the pinnacle at the end of June and each month corresponding across with the month across the parabola: June-July, May-August, April-September, March-October, February-November, and January-December.

4. Indicators to mark individual sections. Each month is a kind of ring in itself in the structure I have chosen and the last day connects back to the first. There are certain images or themes used as indicators at the beginnings and ends of each month: January (beginnings); February (green man); March (traditional lion-lamb); April (danger); May (color); June (ouroboros); July (shadows); August (color/visibility); September (cat); October (autumn leaves); November (time); December (beginnings).

5. The mid-turn. The mid-turn for my haiku is at midsummer and is a small ring in itself beginning with June 20 and ending on June 30 and marked by a garter snake as the ouroboros. Many of the themes introduced in the prologue are repeated here.

6. Rings within rings. Each of the months create their own ring as well as the mid-turn ring mentioned above.

7. Closure or latch. The ending of the year (still to come) should correspond to the beginning and become a latch to complete and close the ring that has been created, both verbally and thematically.

Ring composition, above all, is a form of play and is meant to give pleasure to writer and reader, to anyone who hops into the ring. After all, that is what life should be too: play in its purest sense.

July 1, 2011

Only shadows fall
on the silent new black moon.
Now is the night’s time.

So this is the beginning of a new month (and wonderfully coincidental for this year, a new moon) and the start of another circle comprising the July haiku. However, it is with this haiku that the large ring, the annual ring, starts its return back toward its beginning as it moves to the end of the year. There are two ways to make the journey back: 1. in a circular fashion in which the haiku talk across the year to their counterpart across the circle (so July 1 speaks to January 1; July 2 to January 2; July 3 to January 3; etc.) or 2. in a parabolic or pedimental fashion which is the traditional structural form used in many ancient writings such as the Iliad, the Book of Numbers in the Bible, and Rumi’s Mathnawi (see Mary Douglas’s book Thinking in Circles) and thus the haiku talk across the parabola to their mirror image (so July 1 speaks to June 30; July 2 speaks to June 29; July 3 speaks to June 28; etc.).

I found both ways appealing. The first because it matched the pattern set by the smaller monthly rings, and thus followed Hermes Trismegistos’s edict: as above, so below, with the microcosm being structurally the same as the macrocosm. The second traditional pattern is appealing because it matches what we observe in nature; the year is parabolic or pedimental reaching its growth peak at mid-year before taking its turn back toward winter’s slumber.

Both ways in fact were so appealing to me that I foolishly decided to do both. So some haiku are circles or parabolas in themselves (I have pointed this out in a few cases in my blog). But each haiku is part of three other rings: the monthly circle (for example, this haiku will speak with July 16 – “Descending”), the annual circle (for example, this haiku will also speak with January 1 – “Beginnings”), and the annual parabolic ring (for example, this haiku will also speak with June 30 – “Ringslangen”).

It is a rather ambitious undertaking as I attempt to do this and remain true to the changes in both weather and garden that I daily observed in 2011. How successful am I? It is not my place to say, but it might be worth the effort to see how the various rings fit together even imperfectly. Once in a while I will refer to the haiku that are speaking to each other in this blog to point out the connection.

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