Virals is a section in which one person choses a haiku by another person and comments on that haiku. Then the author of that haiku is invited to select a haiku by someone else and comment on that poem, and so on. For an introduction to this section, see Virals.

                                             toll booth lit for Christmas—
                                             from my hand to hers
                                             warm change

                                                                               — Michael Dylan Welch

I find this poem full of contrasts and of hope.  The contrasts include the lighted booth in the early dark of a December evening, the coins warmed by his hand reaching out into cold Christmas weather, and the warmth of the connection in what is a very impersonal fleeting monetary exchange.  The hope I feel in this poem comes from the light in the darkness, the hope of the season, the reach across what may be class and race as well as gender lines, including the smile and thanks I assume are there.  And that last line has so many reverberations. We are all humans, giving us the potential to connect with warmth.  We have the potential to change the global messes we are in if we make those connections.  I admit this is laying a lot on a short poem—maybe far too much.  But the feelings of connection, warmth and hope are all in that moment, and after all, emotions are what makes any poem poetry. Thanks, Michael.

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• Viral 5.1 (Metz ➾ Lyles)
• Viral 5.2 (Lyles ➾ Chang)
• Viral 5.3 (Chang ➾ Stevenson)
• Viral 5.4 (Stevenson ➾ Yarrow)

Hi folks,

Here is the latest update regarding additions to the Haiku Registry. Each poet’s page is accessible by last name: simply click on that initial in the search index on the opening page.

Added between January 19 and February 2:  Zoran Antonić, Deb Baker, Kirsten Cliff, Ljubica Vukov Davcik, Madeleine Findlay, Dubravko Ivančan, Dubravko Korbus, Duško Matas, Boris Nazansky, Sanja Petrović, Patrick M. Pilarski, Željka Vučinić-Jambrešić. Also: a photograph has been added for Rebecca Ball Rust’s page.

Added between January 6 – 18: Kay F. Anderson, Margaret Beverland, Randy Brooks, Lee Gurga, Penny Harter, Keith Heiberg, William J. Higginson, James Kirkup, Günther Klinge, Catherine J.S. Lee, Thomas Martin, Tanya McDonald, Marlene Mountain, Kathe L. Palka, Zvonko Petrović, Darko Plažanin, Lynne Rees, Robert Spiess, Willem Johan van der Molen, Saša Važić, Max Verhart, Paul O. Williams, Peter Yovu, Jadran Zalokar.

To submit your own information, click the appropriate link on the Registry’s opening page.

Headsets addresses the psychological aspect of literary craft as it applies to haiku and senryu. Poetry elicits emotion and associations from readers by means of subjectively potent rhetorical devices. Classic psychotherapy questions will be asked: “What’s happening here?” and “How do you (might one) feel about that?” Readers are invited to examine their responses, and poets to explore their purposes.

Headsets is overseen by Paul Watsky.

Sometimes we read poetry in order to experience a soothing sense of refuge from life’s stresses. We want a gentle swoop downward to darkness on extended wing rather than rage, rage, against the dying of the light. Haiku which provide conventional images, rhythms, and diction, even perhaps a nice cliché, affirm that the world’s peaceful rituals and nostalgic consolations remain at hand, comfortably unchanged, e.g. Southard’s bland

In the garden pool,
    dark and still, a stepping-stone
        releases the moon

(The Haiku Anthology, 3rd edition, p. 190)

or Virgilio’s

after father’s wake
the long walk in the moonlight
to the darkened house

(p. 263)

Dark and still, darkened house—no surprises or discords here, nothing to disrupt sleep, and, as we know from scientific studies, excessive sleep disruption precipitates madness.

Although tending toward the cliché, dark and its cousins darkness and darken are venerable power words partaking of a western literary tradition that descends from Homer’s wine-dark sea and Milton’s well known description of hell in Paradise Lost, which hinges on the inspired oxymoron darkness visible:

A Dungeon horrible, on all sides round

As one great Furnace flam’d, yet from those flames

No light, but rather darkness visible

Serv’d onely to discover sights of woe . . . . (Lines 61-5)

Epic traditions, however, gradually degenerate, as exemplified by this oft-parodied opening sentence from a Bulwer–Lytton’s 1830 novel Paul Clifford: “It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents—except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.”

A poet’s unmindful insertion of dark or one of its variants into a haiku can mean trouble, since many readers will be equipped not only with numerous unpredictable literary and other cultural associations, including death, ignorance, and racial stereotypes, but also idiosyncratic emotionally-charged memories of encountering the dark: scary nights in childhood, thrills at the movies, adventure while exploring caves, etc. All that dark constitutes a special challenge for haikuists, because a single clumsy word choice can wreck a short poem’s tone. In the 1999 edition of Cor van den Heuvel’s, The Haiku Anthology, from which all of the present column’s examples are drawn, dark, and its variants, appear in twenty-nine poems (see pps. 15, 30, 34, 47, 49, 71, 77, 83, 91, 96, 110, 148, 149, 173,190, 193, 195, 231, 233, 238, 241, 244, 247, 249, 250, 261, 262, 263), usually in the more conventional mode, but not glaringly cliche. Several, however, illustrate how, if carefully presented, dark still can increase a haiku’s stimulus value, its novelty.

One way to achieve this is by offering the starkest, zen-like simplicity, as with Kerouac’s

Birds singing
  in the dark
—Rainy dawn

(p. 96)

Minimalist, chiseled diction, just the “what is.” There’s no attempt to stage-manage a reader’s mood, to steer projections, except perhaps a cryptic dismembered echo of the homily It’s always darkest before the dawn.

Another way is to play traditional associations of dark off against the poem’s idiosyncratic context, as in Larry Gates’

The lights are going out
    in the museum, a fetus
        suddenly darkens

(p. 47)

An already-dead unborn child, deceptively reanimated by the lit-up exhibit case, suffers a second death. That’s heavy! as old-time stoners used to say—and certainly not conducive to restful sleep.

But such strategy also can produce humorous effects: Garry Gay’s first two lines, Snowflake’s fall/into the darkness, sets us up for a comic turn: of the tuba (p. 49) What a tomb! And what a sound. That tuba evokes an elaborate American scene: under gray skies a chilly halftime at the college or high school football game, bands parading on chilly fields. . . .

Then there’s the ironic approach, as exemplified by two of Alan Pizzarelli’s non-standard pieces:

a spark
falls to the ground
          darkens

that’s it

(p. 148)

The blank line after darkens allows us an interlude for maudlin projection before the poet pulls out from under us the self-indulgent rug.

And how about “Porno Movie:”

the girl
         loosens her bra
starts peeling off panties
         darkens

         25¢

(p. 149)

The editing process offers an opportunity to evaluate your haiku’s tonality. Decide what responsive mood you want your readers to experience, and whether that’s a realistic agenda. If you’re uneasy about the results try the poem out on truthful friends. If you identify a problem, ask yourself whether any previously unrecognized discordant feelings or attitudes of yours may be responsible. Make adjustments—and repeat the debugging sequence as often as necessary.

Here are a few questions that came to mind after reading Paul’s piece:

While “dark” and its cousins are, as Paul writes, “venerable power words partaking of a western literary tradition,” do you think this is where this influence is predominantly coming from when it comes to English-language haiku? My immediate, personal, associations were to a few of Bashō’s more popular poems. So, do you think the influence is western, or from translations of haikai/hokku/haiku?

Also, are there other ways to attain the same kind of mood without leaning on the use of the word “dark” or any of its variations? Can you think of examples of haiku that are able to create this mood, feeling, or idea, without being so explicit?

Lastly, is the overt use of “dark” and its cousins something we should avoid in haiku? Sometimes, “it depends,” always? Are you mindful of using it—if not avoiding it altogether—when you write?

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                                                                    The little girl on the plane
                                                                    Who turned her doll’s head around
                                                                    To look at me.

The above poem was written by J.D. Salinger for his second-most-famous-character, Seymour Glass, who, we are told by his brother, Buddy, in Seymour—An Introduction (pp 126-7), “probably loved the classical Japanese three-line, seventeen syllable haiku as he loved no other form of poetry, and that he himself wrote—bled—haiku (almost always in English, but sometimes . . . in Japanese, German, or Italian).”

And so, one of the most intriguing characters in English literature, created by one of our best 20th century writers and stylists, is none other than a haiku poet, and a haiku bleeder. Making Salinger—no?—a downright haiku nut.

The poem was originally composed in Japanese (as readers learn in “Seymour—An Introduction” p134), on the day he committed suicide (see “A Perfect Day for Bananafish,” one of Salinger’s Nine Stories), and was lovingly translated into English by none other than Buddy. The poem first appeared in Salinger’s novella, “Zooey”, published in the May 1957 issue of The New Yorker, and, in 1961, was published with “Franny” to create the double martini that is Franny and Zooey.

The poem’s focus is not the airplane, the doll, the doll’s head, or even the poet/character, but the little girl; the child. Even more so, the mind/spirit/soul of a child and what they represent: innocence, purity, emptiness, the ego-less. A kind of spiritual perfection, ultimate enlightenment and beauty—all the things they can teach us and show us, reminding us of what we once were and, perhaps, what we could be. Only to remind us, however, that to achieve this is virtually impossible.

It makes one’s head spin.

Unable to achieve this god-like (Buddha-like, Jesus-like) state of consciousness and being, Seymour (an older, more sophisticated, learned, and complex version of Holden Caulfield?) committed suicide, leaving the above “straight, classical-style haiku” behind, written in pencil, “on the desk blotter in his hotel room.”

It seems Salinger’s themes and concerns only continued from Catcher in the Rye, blooming from a field, holding in much, into a family made of glass. Haiku, it seems, presented Salinger with a kind of key, and enabled him to take his art to a whole other level.

What do you think?

Virals is a section in which one person choses a haiku by another person and comments on that haiku. Then the author of that haiku is invited to select a haiku by someone else and comment on that poem, and so on. For an introduction to this section, see Virals.

                                                      rain in gusts
                                                      below the deadhead
                                                      troutswirl

                                                                                   —John Wills

Talk about seeing a world in a grain of sand. Here is the story of life and death revealed in a swirl of water. Though like most good haiku it is about a moment of perception, this poem may take a few seconds to fully appreciate. Although it is basically about the single moment of the “troutswirl,” to experience the haiku’s full resonance one should also be aware of the several states, or conditions, of water that precede and accompany the moment. The three words of the first line call up not only the “rain in gusts” but by implication—suggestion—we are made aware of the steadier fall of rain, or mistiness, or even absence of rain, which comes between the gusts. The second line, with the word “below” tells us not only that we are looking at a stream, or river, but that its water is flowing and swelling above “the deadhead” (a wholly or partially sunken log) as it tries to get around this obstruction. We can also see the smoothness of the quiet water just below the log. We then see the coming together, the meeting, of those three or four kinds of rain on the different kinds of river surface, and finally we see the moment of the troutswirl itself. The many images of water united in one. And out of this elemental world of river, wind, and rain—and death—comes that one sign of life. The mystery is deepened as much by what we don’t see as by what we do, for the trout itself is either unseen, or just barely glimpsed through the water.

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• Viral 3.1 (Metz ➾ van den Heuvel)
• Viral 3.2 (van den Heuvel ➾ Patrick)
• Viral 3.3 (Patrick ➾ Forrester)
• Viral 3.4 (Forrester ➾ van den Heuvel)

Periplum is a section that is devoted to 20th and 21st century haiku from around the world. Periplum is overseen by David G. Lanoue. For an introduction to this section, see Periplum.

Some haiku—let’s call them “special haiku”—take hold in our minds and imaginations so deeply that we can never, ever forget them. We revisit them often, reminded of them by random words or situations. We meditate on them compulsively, joyfully. Many of the world haiku that we’ve pondered together in this “Periplum” series, by this definition, have been special. I think of Keiji Minato’s “In my luggage” (“Periplum” #1), Petar Tchouhov’s “night storm” (# 2), Fay Aoyagi’s “ants out of a hole” (#4) and Casimiro de Brito’s “From song to song” (#6)—just to mention a few. The haiku of Saša Važić are also special in this way, including three that follow in Serbian with English translations provided by the poet.

As always, my comments do not pretend to unveil “the” meaning of a haiku but rather “a” meaning. I hope my musings will stimulate your own. If these three haiku take hold in your minds as they have in mine, you’ll be thinking about them for a long time to come.

Seoski vašar
U gornjem levom džepu—
licidersko srce

Country fair.
In my upper left pocket
a candy heart.

A candy heart lies in the poet’s shirt pocket, close to where her real heart beats. But her real heart goes unmentioned in the poem. A heart-shaped candy serves as its proxy, suggesting the sweetness and vulnerability of childhood.

Does the poet’s “candy” heart brim with memories of earlier country fairs, triggered by the familiar sights, sounds, tastes and smells of this one? I think so. But the exact nature of these feelings and associations lies tucked out of sight, inside her pocket—so easy to reach for her but, to the eyes of the world, hidden. Her poem announces a secret: only she knows the sweet treasure in her pocket. Other fair-goers—hundreds, thousands?—may look at her or ignore her, but either way, none will understand her, none will perceive her pocketed heart.

And how does she feel about this fact? How do we, putting ourselves in her place, feel about it? Are we happy to keep our hearts to ourselves? Do we smile with the pride of ownership? Or have we walked too long in the Country Fair of Life, hoping that someone would understand that which has never been given; hoping that someone, someday, would ask us for our candy hearts? Važić leaves plenty of suggestive space for the reader to build in. The answer to all the above questions depends on each reader’s experience and each reader’s relationship with his or her own heart. A poem that at first glance might seem pure whimsy opens to a world of resonance.

Yes, it’s special. And here’s another:

Srušeni most
Kroz oblak dima
preleti ptica

Broken bridge.
Through clouds of smoke
birds fly.

In one breath the haiku captures both a moment of history and one of history’s tragically recurring themes. Bridges connect people; wars destroy connections. In this instance, a Serbian bridge, bombed and broken by NATO forces in the spring of 1999, is a powerful metaphor for the brutal tendency of all wars to end converstaion and understanding, to demonize “the enemy,” and to thereby justify acts of outrageous violence. Human history happens in the poem, but “Through clouds of smoke/ birds fly”—suggesting that Nature endures along with (I hope) the nobler human feelings that connect us.

Bombs and cruise missles rained destruction on Belgrade from March 24th to June 11th, 1999. In October of 2007 I visited Saša Važić at her home in the Zemun neighborhood of Belgrade. We walked past a flower-stuffed shrine marking the spot where a young girl died from the NATO air attacks. Later, I sat in Saša’s house, listening to her stories of the war, when suddenly the power went out, leaving us in blackness. She lit a candle; explained that the power plant and electrical grid, bombed in the war, still wasn’t completely repaired.

During my stay in Belgrade, enjoying the hospitality and spontaneous generosity of Saša, her daughter Ana, and my other new Serbian friends—including editor and poet Dragan J. Ristić—drinking with them, dancing with them, eating with them . . . I discovered something about myself. I can never again support the bridge-breakers of this world. Instead, I’ll fly with the birds: through the smoke, over the river.

This haiku’s imprint in my mind is deep, indelible. Here’s a third, just as special:

Zimsko veče
Glas što pozdravlja komšiju
na moj mi liči

Winter evening.
A voice greeting a neighbor
sounds like my own.

It’s shocking to hear, out of the blue, a voice sounding like one’s own. In this case, amid the gathering darkness of a cold winter evening, the poet has a sudden out-of-body experience: someone else greets a neighbor using her voice. For just a second, she slips away from herself, becoming a ghost, while her doppelgänger takes her place. An ordinary neighborly greeting—part of what would normally be viewed as a lackluster moment of everyday life—suddenly becomes extraordinary and strange.

Russian formalist Victor Shklovsky saw literature as a “making strange” of language. Važić’s third haiku takes this a step further: it achieves the making strange of reality. But this evocative strangeness hints at a truth: something oddly familiar, comforting even—something we knew once as children or, perhaps, even before that but have forgotten. There is a stranger out there, somewhere, in the night: someone we have never met, who sounds like us, who looks like us, and who is perhaps, just as we are, even now, thinking the very thoughts that we are thinking. We are not alone in the winter dark.

Važić, Saša, “Country fair,” first appeared in Haiku novine, 2002, in Serbian; “Broken bridge” won 2nd place in the English Tanka and Haiku Water, Lake and Sea Contest, sponsored by the 35th Annual Conference Committee of the Japan Society on Water Environment, 2001; and “Winter Evening” first appeared in Simply Haiku, 2004.

“Victor Shklovsky.” Wikipedia. Accessed 16 January 2010. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Shklovsky

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• Periplum #1: Keiji Minato
• Periplum #2: Petar Tchouhov
• Periplum #3: Masahiro Koike
• Periplum #4: Fay Aoyagi
• Periplum #5: Jean-Pierre Colleu
• Periplum #6: Casimiro de Brito

The response to the Haiku Registry has been wonderful, and we are continuing to work with poets as new submissions are received. One suggestion for improving this segment of The Haiku Foundation site was to provide periodic updates so that returning visitors could find new poets added to the gallery more easily. We will probably devise a better way to do this in the future, but for now, here is a list of the poets who have been added since January 5. They are accessible by last name: simply click on that initial in the search index on the opening page.

New to the Haiku Registry Since January 2010

Kay F. Anderson, Margaret Beverland, Randy Brooks, Lee Gurga, Penny Harter, Keith Heiberg, William J. Higginson, James Kirkup, Günther Klinge, Catherine J.S. Lee, Thomas Martin, Tanya McDonald, Marlene Mountain, Kathe L. Palka, Zvonko Petrović, Darko Plažanin, Lynne Rees, Robert Spiess, Willem Johan van der Molen, Saša Važić, Max Verhart, Paul O. Williams, Peter Yovu, Jadran Zalokar.

To submit your own information, click the appropriate link on the opening page.