HAIKU DIALOGUE – Ekphrasti-ku… Misguided Little Unforgivable Hierarchies
Ekphrasti-ku with Guest Editor Pippa Phillips
Once upon a time, under the dubious influence of Nietzsche, I grew despairing of the undeniable fact that I wasn’t a cool Dionysian at all, but a nerdy and visually fixated Apollinian. Once I got over myself, I leaned into it. There’s nothing I like more than taking a sketchbook to a museum on one of its free days. This time, I’d like to take you with me, to visit some of my favorite paintings, and the stories behind them, on a kind of digital ginko walk. These paintings are rich with detail and all are open to metatextual rumination. I look forward to seeing how they inspire you.
next week’s theme: “Arbol de la Esperanza, Mantente Firme” (“Tree of Hope, Remain Strong”)
The link to “Arbol de la Esperanza, Mantente Firme” (“Tree of Hope, Remain Strong”), from DCA, City of Los Angeles, is here.
The title of Frida Kahlo’s work, “Arbol de la Esperanza, Mantente Firme” (“Tree of Hope, Remain Strong”), can be seen emblazoned on a yellow flag in the hand of the artist’s counterpart on the right. The title comes from a song, “Cielito Lindo,” which you can listen to here.
You will likely find the tune familiar.
Kahlo was involved in a bus accident in her teens, and suffered from injuries that caused her lifelong pain. In this picture, the artist is reckoning with a recent surgery and recovery that forced her to wear a metal back brace, and which was unsuccessful in addressing her pain. The artist takes matters into her own hands in this picture, rescuing her invalid self and emerging victorious in Tehuana costume. She finds healing in cultural elements, her faith – yet the landscape behind her complicates this story, moving from the clear skies of the song to a cloudier one, and drought-wrought cracks seem to be fissures in the artist’s resolve.
The use of art to address personal pain and heal from it is something that reverberates with me, as I found solace in haiku during a low point in my life, and I have heard many haikuists express similar sentiments. Sing and don’t cry, goes the song that inspired the painting. Cante y no llores. What songs will you sing?
The deadline is midnight Central Time, Saturday January 29, 2022.
Please use the Haiku Dialogue submission form below to enter one or two original unpublished haiku inspired by the week’s theme, and then press Submit to send your entry. (The Submit button will not be available until the Name, Email, and Place of Residence fields are filled in.) With your poem, please include any special formatting requirements & your name as you would like it to appear in the column. A few haiku will be selected for commentary each week. Please note that by submitting, you agree that your work may appear in the column – neither acknowledgment nor acceptance emails will be sent. All communication about the poems that are posted in the column will be added as blog comments.
below is Pippa’s commentary for Misguided Little Unforgivable Hierarchies:
! ; v e $ m @ + + e < ! e $ $
P. H. Fischer
Vancouver, Canada
So much is folded into this monoku. The first thing that strikes you is its semblance to a grawlix, giving it the immediate appearance of profanity. On closer examination you see the message: “lives matter less” – a profane sentiment indeed, undermining its allusion to the Black Lives Matter movement. Even closer, we see that the symbol replacing ‘r’ is the inequality sign, signaling the basis for the profane sentiment – and the lives that might have mattered have fewer dollar signs than the other side of that sign, implying at least one structural form of that inequality. Another thing to notice about that inequality sign is that it is the poorest substitute for its letter, giving a tone of interruption: “Lives matter –” someone starts to say, but they are cut off by the inequality sign, to be told no, not under capitalism, at least.
peeling back her plumage
the caged bird
still singingTracy Davidson
Warwickshire, UK
Plumage here conjures up images of feminine decoration, particularly the feathered kind – a specific kind of decoration associated with nightlife, with a signal to sex – peeling it back may be something like a woman lifting her skirt for a ride – or it could be the opposite, a discarding of one’s adornment for the truer self underneath. If femininity is a cage, do you lean into it, or try to escape? Whatever song you choose to sing, the cage remains – but so does the song.
Aoko mora we eat our livers as stilettos
(Aoko, Japanese origin, meaning ‘blue child’ and mora, Spanish origin, meaning ‘little blueberry’)
Alan Summers
England
If Finnegan’s Wake were a haiku, it would look something like this. ‘Ao,’ in Japanese, can mean either blue or green – the blue aspect plays on the next word, while the green aspect conjures up budding vegetation – another meaning it has is algae bloom. It can be a girl’s name in Japan as well as Africa – for the Luo, a Kenyan-Tanzanian tribe, it means ‘born outside.’ While ‘mora’ continues the multicultural picture of youth and nature, haikuists might have come across this word being used interchangeably with ‘on,’ the basic sound unit of Japanese – although mora is a more general linguistic term. This adds a metatextual dimension to the poem, asking us to measure its sound. ‘Stiletto’ is also ambiguous – it can also be a knife. That and the eating of livers conjures up mythic punishments – Prometheus’s eagle, the pain of the little mermaid’s bargain – but the poem implies we punish ourselves – and the stiletto is, after all, a punishing shoe to wear.
already against
the next war
finch songBryan Rickert
Belleville, Illinois USA
The world-weariness of this poem is at odds with its humor, the political element at odds with the natural, the scale of war at odds with the scale of a bird, the implied catastrophe at odds with the pleasantness of birdsong – yet these disparate elements are forcibly yoked together by the observation that war and the struggle to evolve past it are as cyclical as the seasons.
after the last land mine destination wedding
Roberta Beary
County Mayo, Ireland
I used to live in Cambodia for some time, and one of its strangest elements is the juxtaposition of the omnipresent physical legacy of the Khmer Rouge and the beauty of its landscape – and the tourism both these things draw. Most people I saw were as likely to visit a temple as to visit a killing field – this poem immediately conjured up the atrocity tourism that I remain troubled by. I’m sure it has served as the location to many destination weddings, and I am sure that land mines were nearby. Beary’s poem explores similar tensions as Rickert’s, but where Rickert’s tone is one of resignation, Beary’s is an indictment.
separated at birth knot
Tim Cremin
Massachusetts
There are only four words to this poem – and four is the number of death – this is a poem that plays with opposites. Death governs the composition of a poem about birth – it begins with separation, and though the immediate separation that comes to mind is that between siblings, there is also the separation that comes with the cutting of an umbilical cord – something that comes to mind with the knot at the end of this monoku. The knot implies a binding on what has been unbound – after all, no matter which separation you read into this poem, family is bound by blood.
& here are the rest of the selections:
bodies reclaiming the unclaimed
Mariel Herbert
California, USA
the artist’s blood spit
on paper
blossomsLev Hart
Calgary, Canada
polka dots caught
in infinity’s net
hallucinationsCaroline Giles Banks
Minneapolis, Minnesota
pornocopia —
the delirious lust
for blood and rosesMark Meyer
Mercer Island WA USA
false pretense held hostage by her f-me pumps
Cynthia Anderson
Yucca Valley, California
a clash of ‘isms’
in the pale blue dot–
wailing sirenMadhuri Pillai
Australia
matryoshka
inside she hides another
identityJames Gaskin
Fukushima, Japan
At the top
of the food chain
hungry belliesGeetha Ravichandran
India
chiaroscuro
in the potpourri I taste
my best flavoursLuisa Santoro
Rome, Italy
wounds and bruises
in hierarchal state
red anemones springMelanie Vance
USA
carousel swirling –
everything becomes
something elseCristina Povero
Italy
wolf moon
her aeolian screams
non-consensualAmanda White
Morvah, Cornwall, UK
red blossom
a snake slithers around
through the grassMona Iordan
Romania
same old bondage . . .
bending over backwards
to please himBill Waters
Pennington, New Jersey, U.S.A.
hierarchy blossoms into blood
Pamela Jeanne
Yukon, Canada
pink blood
dripping from the sky
not for girlsgenie nakano
Gardena, CA
remembrance day…
red poppies
mark their gravesNancy Brady
Huron, Ohio, USA
flesh on
flesh on flesh
the blossoms pulsateAlex Fyffe
Texas, USA
eating away
our dreams and hopes
this bio warKavya Janani. U
India
my temple studio
use to be a guestroom
i paint inner windowsKath Abela Wilson
Pasadena, California, USA
anti war protest
turning our words into
hand grenadesFlorin C. Ciobica
Romania
this life
not even a bicycle
to carry her awayPeggy Hale Bilbro
Alabama
a butterfly amid thorns I lose my way to you
Devoshruti Mandal
India
blood color-
warm shade on the grass
of a pomegranateAngiola Inglese
Italia
bionic bits…
I bend over backwards
to try and fit inBaisali Chatterjee Dutt
Kolkata, India
blood lilies –
the different perspectives
of politiciansgigli di sangue –
le diverse prospettive
dei politicantiDennys Cambarau
Sardinia, Italy
humanity lost in the fog of war
Bona M. Santos
Los Angeles, CA
the same dahlias
on a different grave
wartimeMona Bedi
The way
the pale grass cuts us—
kaleidoscopic bloomSonika Jaiganesh
United Kingdom
war stories
i turn bullets into
haikuChristopher Calvin
Indonesia
ascendant
screaming the world
into flowersPat Davis
NH USA
Auschwitz . . .
the bricks
screamKathleen Trocmet
New Braunfels, TX USA
stilettos
climbing a barbed wire
fenceLafcadio
USA
red rose in grandma’s hair –
tango night
at the veterans centerDaniela Lăcrămioara Capotă
Romania
top girl
her furs fashioned
from her sisters’ painDorothy Burrows
United Kingdom
Leviathan
a whip snaches
the Takka flower’s fleshMircea Moldovan
România
bend over backwards,
incubus on sucubus –
this is how class worksSarah Davies
United Kingdom
miscarriage crimson rose buds on the fence
Arvinder Kaur
Chandigarh, India
splash of blood —
all forms
lead to voidAmrutha Prabhu
Bengaluru, India
crack
in the kaleidoscope
now I see itRoberta Beach Jacobson
Indianola, Iowa, USA
prepartum shaving the bitch’s nips
simonj
UK
sunspots a phoenix erupts in blood fire
John Hawkhead
UK
blood rain i play with glass dolls
Subir Ningthouja
Imphal, India
a dried rainbow
beneath so many cracks
star dustAlfred Booth
Colombes, France
saffron in rains
his last letter
from the east coastlineAnna Yin
Ontario, Canada
birds between bullets
singing as the sun
bleeds outAlan Peat
Biddulph, United Kingdom
Sat on a wall
In world at war
Gave a flowerIan Parkin
Sheffield, England
a pile up
of motorcycles
of body partsMark Gilbert
UK
war never ends only on hiatus
Susan Farner
United States
in the constellation of sadness silently the abused child
Helga Stania
Switzerland
artificial pond
among colored carps
hierarchiesTeiiichi Suzuki
Japan
Winter –
room in my pots
for wild flowersKaushal Suvarna
India
Occluded
Pages of history
Write backRashmi Buragohain
India
glass ceiling
i take the stairs
instead of the liftRicha Sharma
India
piston heads
the mechanical owl
lets go of its gasRobert Kingston
Chelmsford United Kingdom
ink art –
the child captions it
as mom’s heartR. Suresh Babu
India
misguided generations
stack upon one another
their unforgivable sinsHifsa Ashraf
Rawalpindi, Pakistan
crack from a flung
high-heeled shoe
glass ceilingDeborah P Kolodji
Temple City, California
misled into black beauty tortured into acrobatics
John Zheng
Itta Bena, Mississippi
blood on the tracks
the need for me to escape
so far awayStephen A. Peters
Bellingham, WA
hate speech rally
sparrows on the wire
sing harmoniouslyKeiko Izawa
Yokohama, Japan
crime scene —
searching for a heart
among the body partsKeith Evetts
Thames Ditton UK
spike heel…
painting with the tip
of triple-loaded bristlesLaurie Greer
Washington, DC
taffeta & chiffon
a runway
of bonesJonathan Roman
Yonkers, NY
a fashionista
stamps her mark
stiletto moonSue Courtney
Orewa, New Zealand
all the Zen stones
reshuffled
PeaceRavi Kiran
India
walking a familiar path
his muddy shoes
at the doorstepDeborah Beachboard
Adna, WA
fighting to take over the voices in my head
Vandana Parashar
India
artwork
all the colours
of their painMargaret Mahoney
Australia
bone white shirt
crack!
dark marrowMashaal Ahmed
Washington DC
rubbish dump
children untangle
rusted wiresDaniela Misso
Italia
regeneration—
the trash we leave behind
in warIngrid Baluchi
North Macedonia
on the warpath trampled flowers spilling red
Minal Sarosh
Ahmedabad, India
sex equality
making women’s room
bigger than men’s崇尚性平等
洗漱须要大空间
女士才方便chong shang xing ping deng
xi shu xu yao da kong jian
nv shi cai fang bianXiaoou Chen
Kunming, China
bootprints leave lasting impression
Jenn Ryan-Jauregui
Tucson, AZ
a black swan
nesting in the blades
cross-hatchingAdele Evershed
Wilton, Connecticut
cyborg easy rider
finding traction
in trafficked fleshRichard Matta
San Diego, CA
lost in the twists
and turns of an umbilical cord
worldly identitiesTeji Sethi
India
Guest Editor Pippa Phillips is a recovering academic who hails from Cape Cod. Her micropoetry has been published in a variety of publications, including Cold Moon Journal, Frogpond, Failed Haiku, Modern Haiku, and The Asahi Shimbun. She also writes long and short-form fiction. She is interested in the intersection of ethics and aesthetics and walking the line between the populist and the experimental. You can find her on Twitter @IpsaHerself and Instagram @pheaganesque.
Lori Zajkowski is the Post Manager for Haiku Dialogue. A novice haiku poet, she lives in New York City.
Managing Editor Katherine Munro lives in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, and publishes under the name kjmunro. She is Membership Secretary for Haiku Canada, and her debut poetry collection is contractions (Red Moon Press, 2019). Find her at: kjmunro1560.wordpress.com.
The Haiku Foundation reminds you that participation in our offerings assumes respectful and appropriate behavior from all parties. Please see our Code of Conduct policy.
Please note that all poems & images appearing in Haiku Dialogue may not be used elsewhere without express permission – copyright is retained by the creators. Please see our Copyright Policies.
This Post Has 13 Comments
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Thank you so much, Pippa, for an inspirational prompt and a wonderful commentary. Congratulations to all the poets featured. I thought some of this week’s responses were astonishing and I have learnt a great deal by reading all the poems. Many thanks to everyone!
This week’s art prompt and the resulting poems are really mind-blowing for me! Your analysis of the selected poems brought depths to them thst I was not able to see on my own. Thank you so much and thank all of the poets who responded so poignantly to the art.
Thanks Pippa for including mine. I felt this striking painting was difficult to approach – I zoomed into the detail to try to capture a gory close-up of the collage technique. P.H. Fischer’s monoku stylistically reminded me of a collage. And I felt Cristina Povero also tried to capture the collage aspect:
carousel swirling
everything becomes
something else
Thank you Pippa, another wonderful selection… enjoy them all! Thanks for including mine again!
Amazing, thought-provoking haiku this week!
war stories
i turn bullets into
haiku
Christopher Calvin
Indonesia
I love this haiku for pointing to the redemptive and cathartic power of art to provide light (both Calvin’s poem and Mutu’s painting) amid darkness.
Bryan’s poem is similarly evocative, giving voice to the voiceless—at least in human affairs. Oh, how our world might spin to a different tune if we all stop to listen to the finch’s love song.
already against
the next war
finch song
Bryan Rickert
Belleville, Illinois USA
Thank-you, Pippa, for selecting my poem this week and for your commentary. Your interpretation is spot-on, and you have articulated it astutely; seeing things I didn’t see myself.
Another layer I hoped to convey is how the increased digitization of reality, including humanity, is inexorably stripping us of materiality; codifying our being into a commodification of data points. As we become increasingly virtual entities, sold down the river of imposed algorithms, our lives become more and more “matterless”, that is, disembodied, unable to distinguish between an actual finch call and the call of a ringtone.
Haiku, like all art, is an act of resistance to the many dehumanizing, earth-dishonouring forces that hide in the hollow horse we all too often welcome into our homes, schools, nations, politics, lives.
I loved your monoku, which is reminiscent of the fragmented collage style of Wangechi Mutu’s painting.
Thank-you, Mark. I really appreciate your comment.
I’m enjoying this series immensely and am grateful for the introduction to Wangechi Mutu’s incredible art. Thank-you, Pippa!
Peter
What a varied take on a great prompt. Thank you Pippa for including mine.
Thoroughly enjoyed your selections.
As always a deep bow to KJ and Lori for maintaining the page.
Amazing haiku this week, honoured to be among them. Thank you Pippa.
A lot of great, challenging art this week–no surprise, considering the inspiration! Some favorites (other than the ones that are already commented on so well):
.
carousel swirling –
everything becomes
something else
Cristina Povero
Italy
.
I like how Povero uses the language of transformation to talk about an artwork that was made by swirling existing images into new forms.
.
same old bondage . . .
bending over backwards
to please him
Bill Waters
Pennington, New Jersey, U.S.A.
.
Great commentary from Waters on the pressure some feel to live up to old repressive norms.
.
Auschwitz . . .
the bricks
scream
Kathleen Trocmet
New Braunfels, TX USA
.
A unique take on the image–the horror of heaped bodies living on, their cries echoing down the decades as a reminder of the brutality of diminishing the humanity of “the other.”
.
top girl
her furs fashioned
from her sisters’ pain
Dorothy Burrows
United Kingdom
.
miscarriage crimson rose buds on the fence
Arvinder Kaur
Chandigarh, India
.
Haunting and beautiful at the same time, much like the artwork itself.
.
birds between bullets
singing as the sun
bleeds out
Alan Peat
Biddulph, United Kingdom
.
Love the play on words here with sun/son.
.
in the constellation of sadness silently the abused child
Helga Stania
Switzerland
.
hate speech rally
sparrows on the wire
sing harmoniously
Keiko Izawa
Yokohama, Japan
.
bone white shirt
crack!
dark marrow
Mashaal Ahmed
Washington DC
.
Some excellent use of contrasts in the above.
Thanks Alex for your appreciation. Means so much.
Many thanks, Alex, for mentioning my poem. I am delighted that you appreciated it. I admired your poem too. I thought the repetition of ‘flesh’ and all the ‘s’ sounds worked wonderfully and produced a great rhythm.
flesh on
flesh on flesh
the blossoms pulsate
Alex Fyffe
Texas, USA
peeling back her plumage
the caged bird
still singing
Tracy Davidson
Warwickshire, UK
I take this as a reference to Maya Angelou’s well-known poem. Neat to refer to one such work of art in comment on another – I like it!