Yūmu Yamaguchi

[Lorin]

well, I wrote a haiku with a condom between lantana seedlings (a pervasive weed here, hard to root out) in it, early on, and it was met with icy silence when I posted it on a forum (years ago). Mind you, it might've been just an awfully bad ku.

Someone else I know got into trouble with a haiku about 'first snow'  :o  on the bedspread. No overt reference to condoms or the lack of, even. (yes, Virginia, there is a connection between 'snow' & what's in the condom, )

Could it be that we're willing to accept from someone from another culture what we're not willing to accept from someone from our own?

I do like Louis Menand's concept of ' ironic self-reflexivity' that David posted. Somehow it takes me back to Barthe's 'Empire of Signs'.

- Lorin

[AlanSummers]

Hi Lorin,

It might have been the lantana that caused a silence. ;-)  

I've tackled a lot of lantana in my time, and it's a tree killer if left for too long, so I hate the stuff.  It was seen as a sort of Victorian pot plant, ridiculous idea as it was ugly as a faux pot plant as it is now strangling trees.

I think a few people wrote haiku about condoms, or some sex related matter, and especially back in the 1990s and even early 21st Century, there was a presumption that haiku had to be "natury".  

As this haiku shows, and I'm sure others, everything is inter-connected with nature.

Alan

[Don Baird]

"As this haiku shows, and I'm sure others, everything is inter-connected with nature." Alan ...

A great thought for us all to keep in mind. We are fully integrated beings and as natural as the coyote or red herring.

I've always had trouble defining the other side -- if it isn't of and/or inter-connected with nature, what is it?

:)

Don

[chibi575]

May I ask the members interested in this poem, what, if anything has Yuumu san's poem given to you as poets?

And, might I vloluteer a reply using what the poem has given to me as a poet: mostly a different perspective.  Frankly, it has galvinized my sense of subject.  Generally, my poetry has a "natural" setting not linking to man-made objects bur more objects that exist in nature independent of humans or would exist without the presents of humans.  Yet, I can appreciate a little more accepting a wider subject matter due in part to Yuumu san's poem and David's introduction.

[snowbird a/k/a Merrill Ann Gonzales]

I find the haiku truly reflects the poets feeling of the chill that had come over his world...it was not just a condum but a knotted up condum... I feel is it even more than a parody...but a condemnation in that he brings to mind the passion that had been there once... now hidebound and frozen.