As if providing commentary on your poems within your own collection is not self-referential enough, I will now be offering a review of that selfsame poetry collection Neon Haiku, which was written by none other than yours truly. At this point, the meta-self-reference may seem so extreme that the reader may be wondering if I am suffering from a form of literary narcissism. This, of course, is possible, but I don’t know of any doctors in the area who could diagnose such a condition, and anyway, I don’t have the cash to pay for it if they could.
However, this is not a run-off-the-mill book review. For starters, as it is quite difficult for an author to objective about their own work (they usually either despise it or idolize it), I will not be giving a review of whether its content is aesthetically or artistically ‘good’ or not. Instead, I will be sharing my own ‘epiphany’ about the work that occurred soon after its publication.
About a week after my book was published, something rather uncanny became apparent to me: although totally unintentional, the narrative structure of my book (which is written in four acts) follows a Japanese form of dramatic structure known as Kishōtenketsu. The first reason I found this to be so hard to believe was because I had not consciously constructed the collection using this form. In fact, all of my knowledge of how story structure works is based on a western understanding of narrative, which consists of two primary forms: three-act structure and five-act structure. Although years ago, I had heard of a Japanese form of narrative structure, I never studied it nor internalized it. So, the fact that I structured my collection using a form which I was all but ignorant of, and which I certainly did not consciously choose, was quite surprising.
The second reason I found my use of Kishōtenketsu so eerie is because my collection Neon Haiku, uses a Japanese form of poetry: the haiku. Therefore, both the poems, and the narrative structure into which they are grouped, are Japanese in origin. (However, it must be noted that this form of storytelling is not specifically Japanese, but is Eastern in nature, having first originated in China, as a poetic form of storytelling; it migrated to Japan and Korea, where it became embedded as a dramatic form. However, because of its popularity in Japanese storytelling, it is now generally recognized as a Japanese form of dramatic structure, even though it technically begin in China.)
But the next question that naturally arises is, what is Kishōtenketsu, and how does my work follow this unique form of dramatic structure? Ah, so glad you asked! In short, Kishotenketsu is a four-act narrative form that follows a unique pattern, method, and idiom. The first major departure from western storytelling in this form of narrative is its refusal to rely on conflict to drive the narrative. In almost all western drama, conflict, whether between a traditional protagonist and antagonist, or between a protagonist and some more obscure antagonist (like one’s own self/flaws, the natural world, etc.) is the engine under the hood of the narrative structure. But in Kishotenketsu this is largely absent. Instead, self-revelation through juxtaposition is the preferred way that truth is transmitted (much like the haiku form itself).
In my own collection, it is quite safe to say that there is no conflict in the traditional sense, as there is no main character who has a problem to solve. In fact, unless we take the City itself as character, there is no protagonist.
However, viewed through another lens, my story does have conflict, but not in the traditional sense. Broadly speaking, the City (or mankind) is the protagonist and sin is the antagonist. But at face value, my story is closer to being categorized as not having an explicit conflict, similar to Kishotenketsu.
Now onto how each of the four acts in Kishotenketsu function. The first act, known as ki, is the introduction of the characters, setting, and plot. In Neon Haiku we introduce the ‘main character’, which is the City itself, along with the main aspect of the plot: the problem of Original Sin. However, although a couple human characters are introduced, the introduction of characters (aside from the City) takes place mostly in Act Two in our work, which slightly departs from Kishotenketsu (although our artistic reason for doing that was to loosely follow the Gensis creation story, in which God creates the Earth and its natural elements before he fills it with living creatures in the second half of the week.)
The second act in Kishotenketsu is known as shō, and is the development section. Our work follows this pretty well, as Act Two in Neon Haiku introduces particular characters to populate the City that the was introduced in a more general fashion in the First Act. It also shows the effects of Sin that was introduced in the First Act. In this sense there is a development which takes place.
The third act, or ten, is where my work is most clearly related to Japanese drama. In the Kishotenketsu form, the third act is an abrupt departure from the first two acts, and serves as a juxtaposition to them. There is a radical shift, where subject matter, setting, and even characters can totally change. However, the purpose of this shift is to provide thematic insight through contrast. In Neon Haiku, the Third Act clearly departs from the first two acts by focusing on art and culture, although the first two acts were more concerned with mankind’s sin and its effects. While composing the collection, I myself was a bit confused by this radical change, but knew that it worked intuitively because it ended up tying in to the work’s overall themes and provided a nice break from the seriousness of the first two acts. Furthermore, the end of Act Three perfectly segues into Act Four, in spite of the fact that the majority of Act Three seems unrelated to what preceded it.
The conclusion (and fourth act) of Kishotenketsu called ketsu, wraps up the work, similar to the denouement in Western literature, but not quite synonymous. My work sits somewhere in between a traditional western ending, and an Eastern one. In Neon Haiku, the problem of sin that was introduced in Acts One and Two is resolved through the Salvation offered freely through Jesus Christ as mediated by the Catholic Church and Her Sacraments. Although this is a rather traditional ending in that it clearly solves a problem that was introduced earlier (as opposed to a revelation based almost solely on juxtaposition), and hence western, it still fits nicely within the Kishotenketsu structure.
In conclusion, it remains a great mystery to me just how I compiled a narrative in Kishotenketsu without consciously knowing what I was doing. Was it a case of artistic intuition? Coincidence? Providence? You’re guess is as good as mine.
But don’t take my word for it. Get the book and see if you think my thesis is the stuff of madness or a genuine insight that developed in hindsight.