HAIKU DIALOGUE – Island as Metaphor – No One is an Island – commentary

Island as Metaphor with Guest Editor Marietta McGregor

Islands in literature are often used as metaphors for isolation, escape, refuge and solitude. They can be places where our dream is to start anew, leaving behind trappings of a previous life and reinventing a whole new existence. Or they can be places of control, of imprisonment. We may think of Napoleon exiled to Elba, or the Birdman of Alcatraz. Islands have been used as lazarettos or prisons in far-flung lands such as the Venetian lagoon and in Tasmania. Islands also abound in mythology. The island of Ithaca was reputed to be Odysseus’s home. In their journeys, Odysseus and his men were beset by diverse perils, among them the Sirens whose unearthly songs tempted men to cast themselves to their deaths. To this day, a group of jagged rocky islets off the Amalfi coast, Li Galli, carry the name Sirenusas. Theseus abandoned the pregnant Ariadne on the Cycladic Island of Naxos, where she perished. Victorian literature, notably Robinson Crusoe, also features islands. These were tales of valour, self-sufficiency and survival against the odds, where a lone adventurer battles hostile islanders, bizarre creatures, hunger, isolation and exposure. Our bodies even have their own secret islands: the islets of Langerhans are clusters of endocrine cells within our pancreas that secrete vital hormones including insulin. We can think of the landscape of our brains in terms of islands of activity, areas where each of our senses is processed and interpreted.

Below is Marietta’s commentary for No One is an Island:

Thank you all for your enjoyable and thoughtful responses to this week’s prompt. Through your wonderfully varied interpretations of “No One is an Island” I’ve traveled to a multitude of shores and experienced many different settings. While the words ‛island’, ‛islands’, ‛isles’ and ‛islets’ recurred, many other poems dived deeply into the concept of island as metaphor and created whole new internal or external worlds. You visited ancestral homes and remembered favorite places. Some experiences you conveyed were contemplative, some comforting, some joyous, as in Sheila Barksdale’s ‛float-running / turf and tussocks’. Others were adrift, conveying despair – Adele Evershed’s ‘lost words’ and Mary Beth Defer’s ‛lost birds’. It turns out that, whether recovering from illness or family upheavals, reading, napping or dancing, enjoying a luscious dessert, looking at the stars or simply living our daily lives, we all travel to, from and within the many varied experiential islands of existence.

her hospice bed
arrivals and departures

Deborah Guenther Beachboard
Adna WA USA

The unadorned nature of this haiku evokes a sense of impermanence and grief in its unusual two-line structure. Line 1 could be read literally as seguing directly to Line 2, referring to visitors who come to care for, comfort, and console their relative or friend who is near the end of her life. Another reading supplies a pause, an implied ellipsis following ‛bed’. The ‛arrivals and departures’ become all the souls who have passed through this end-of-life place, and the many others who will do so in future.  “Arrivals and Departures” also could be read as signage on a ferry wharf. Visitors and patients alike are travelers approaching and leaving an especially solitary island. A deceptively simple haiku which conveys a great deal in six spare words.

a loon’s fado
in the night breeze . . .
traffic island

Arvinder Kaur
Chandigarh India

This haiku through juxtaposition immediately conjures an interesting locale. Sounds more connected with a wild place in Lines 1 and 2 are linked with a refuge in a roadway, usually found in more cosmopolitan situations. Loons are birds of lakes and large ponds, preferring to nest in sheltered coves or vegetated hummocks in shallow water. Their distinctive calls have been described as yodels, wails, hoots, and crazy laughter. The loon’s wailing night cry is a drawn-out vocalization for locating a mate or chick. In this haiku, the loon’s haunting call transmutes to ‛fado’, a music genre originating in Portugal with soulful lyrics often featuring the sea and poverty, and minor key melodies which conjure sadness and loss. Traditional fado may be sung at night, their melancholy notes echoing through darkened streets. Perhaps we are on a quiet road near the loon’s refuge and hear its mournful call on the wind, giving rise to a brief shiver as we walk on.

blue surrounding the silence of an only child

petro c. k.
Seattle, Washington

As an only child I was immediately drawn to this intriguing monoku, which invokes a synesthetic sense of colour as emotional feeling. Blue is a singular colour, the most pervasive in our human world. We’re surrounded and submerged in the blues of sea and sky. As well as being the primary color in Nature, blue has been used to represent heaven and the ethereal realm, vast open spaces, freedom, intuition, inspiration and the breadth of human imagination. A British person may ask if someone is “in a blue funk”, meaning are they afraid or panicky. We may say we feel “blue” if we are down in the dumps. Blue can also stand for personal isolation. In the poem we have a solitary child, silent and not necessarily lonely but in some ways separate from their surroundings. Alone and surrounded by blue I like to think that youngster is happy to retreat into the wide blue yonder, traveling to islands of their imagination which can be anything and anywhere.

by chance
the warmth of his skin
two strangers in a city

Deborah Karl-Brandt
Germany

This sensual haiku uses an unusual form. Instead of short/long/short lines, it uses a short/ longer/ longest form, each line revealing a little more. Line 1 sets the scene with just two words which effectively launch us into a narrative without giving too much away. Sensations are often heightened when we are traveling in unfamiliar places. Perhaps tired from a journey and lost in the island of their own thoughts, the subject in Line 2 suddenly becomes aware of another human presence close by, not touching but palpably present in an intimate physical sense. We don’t know where the unexpected impression takes place, but we can imagine it plays out in a train station, art gallery, coffee shop, library or somewhere else where people who don’t know each other come into close proximity. Then in Line 3 we learn this is a truly random encounter of two ships passing with only a signal shown, but it is no less memorable for that.

archipelago
the lazy susan
becomes our sun

Daya Bhat
India

In this enjoyable haiku I was captivated by the idea of a lazy susan being the sun. I imagine an extended family, indeed a closely interlinked archipelago of relations, gathering around a large dining table, the lazy susan a warm focus at its centre shining with colorful dishes of food cooked for this special occasion when all have gathered together for a feast. As the meal progresses, the lazy susan rotates, presenting different dishes to the diners on its slow circular progress.

gathering the desert oasis

Shruti Patel
Switzerland

Over the decades since Japanese short form poems were introduced to audiences outside Japan and writers began to experiment with English language haiku, the haiku form has evolved in varying ways. From the Japanese form of 5/7/5 comprising 17 sound units, the structure now most used is a short/long/short structure with around 11-12 syllables and a two-part juxtaposition. Some haiku, mostly monoku (monostich) forms, have experimented with form and brevity. This haiku of only four words is interesting for its brevity and what it manages to express in a few words. Here the ‘oasis’ is not a literal gathering place in the desert but rather forms a tuck, pucker or crease in the landscape, gathered rather like the folds of a Bedouin robe. This is a focal place where water flows, palms grow, and travelers head for, an island in the midst of a sea of endless sand dunes which gathers all the desert has to offer its visitors.

Join us next week for our next prompt…

Bios:

Guest editor Marietta McGregor is a retired Tasmanian botanist and journalist who has made her home between Canberra and the scenic south coast of New South Wales for over four decades. A lover of the natural world since childhood, she went on to study biological sciences, and has worked as palynologist, garden designer, science journalist, editor, university tutor, education manager, and grants developer for the national wildlife collection. Her haiku, haibun and haiga have been widely published, have won awards and appear in anthologies.

Assistant Editor Lafcadio, a former teacher, now works from home writing, editing and proofreading study guides for nursing textbooks. She lives in Tennessee. She has written poetry for a long time but a couple of years ago fell in love with Japanese micropoetry and hasn’t looked back. Lafcadio has been published in a number of journals and anthologies. She writes under the nom de plume of Lafcadio because nom de plume is so fun to say. You can read her poems on Twitter (X) @lafcadiopoetry or BlueSky @lafcadiobsky.

Assistant Editor Vandana Parashar is an associate editor of haikuKATHA and one of the editors of Poetry Pea and #FemkuMag. Her debut e-chapbook, I Am, was published by Title IX Press (now Moth Orchid Press) in 2019 and her second chapbook Alone, I Am Not, was published by Velvet Dusk Publishing in April 2022.

Lori Zajkowski is the Post Manager for Haiku Dialogue. She lives in New York City and enjoys reading and writing haiku.

Managing Editor Katherine Munro lives in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, and publishes under the name kjmunro. She served as Membership Secretary for Haiku Canada for ten years, and her debut poetry collection is contractions (Red Moon Press, 2019). Find her at: kjmunro1560.wordpress.com.

Portrait by Laurel Parry

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Photo Credit:

Banner photo credit:  Marietta McGregor

Haiku Dialogue offers a triweekly prompt for practicing your haiku. Posts appear each Wednesday with a prompt or a selection of poems from a previous week.