Simply Haiku: An E-Journal of Haiku and Related Forms
September-October 2004, vol. 2, no. 5

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Reprint: Jim Kacian, "Looking and Seeing: How Haiga Works."
Previously Published in Haigaonline

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Page 19: Non-Representational Iterative Haiga

The second strategy is abstract realism. If we just consider the graphic element in this haiga, one of my own, before you know it is call sun-warmed sea, it might suggest any number of possible interpretations.

But paired with the poem, which reads,

"the sun-warmed sea not knowing where I leave off',"

we are placed immediately and specifically.

And yet this is not the end of consideration, since the poem articulates an interior state of identification. The graphic might just as easily be a pictorial version of this identification, a sort of topography of unification. The gradient scale of colors, moving from the warm and fecund sea green to the royal and mystical deep blue also provides emotional latitude for interpretation. And are those lines the interference pattern of waves incoming and receding? Or are they the EKG of the poet at the time of connection?