Haiku Dialogue

HAIKU DIALOGUE – Man-Machine Interface – Communication – long list

Man-Machine Interface with Guest Editor Alex Fyffe

By now, most of us are probably exhausted by the discussions around AI-this and LLM-that. Technology’s exponential growth is hard to keep up with, and each generation seems shorter and shorter even as the divides between them grow farther and deeper. The juniors at the school where I teach told me recently that “generation alpha is cooked, mister!” To translate: They have no hope for their younger siblings’ generation. They explained that “the kids these days” (remember, these are practically “kids” themselves!) are already caught in the rabbit hole of online misinformation and “brain rot” entertainment, and they all seemed to agree as a class that they couldn’t see any way for them to come out of it as fully functional people. Of course, every generation tends to despair the hopeless inadequacies of the next, so maybe we can chalk up their young cynicism to age-old attitudes. Then again, these complaints typically come later in life – adults griping about teens –, not from those so young already – teens griping about grade schoolers.

But whether or not all this doom and gloom is warranted, one thing is certain: To live in the modern world is to engage with technologies most of us don’t fully comprehend. Whether ordering food on a screen instead of from a cashier, watching other people play games on our phones, or asking a chatbot to write our essay for us, technology has become embedded in our daily lives. The prompts for this series – Man-Machine Interface – will be about the relationship between humanity and technology. Now that much of the cyberpunk fiction I loved in my younger years has invaded our reality, let’s write some haiku and senryu from this cyberpunk (cyberpop-punk?) perspective.

Below is Alex’s selection of poems on the topic of Communication:

spring picnic —
the dots on each phone
converge at last

Raji Vijayaraghavan
India

 

the deactivation
of his Instagram account
falling star

Boryana Boteva
Sofia, Bulgaria

 

vibrating
the hollow log
her notification

Bryan Rickert
Belleville, IL

 

the checkout operator
installs an app on my phone –
grocery shopping

Anne Curran
Hamilton, New Zealand

 

life long learning
training my voice
for Siri

Biswajit Mishra
Canada

 

Generation
X
for text only

Susan Farner
USA

 

online poetry
a makeshift sestina
with blue #hashtags

Mark Meyer
Mercer Island, WA

 

99 years old
my haiku beeps
in his pocket

Kathabela Wilson
USA

 

online friends
all hear about my break-up
before I do

Tracy Davidson
Warwickshire, UK

 

sixth sense
I feel your email
before I see it

Cynthia Anderson
Yucca Valley, CA

 

waterfall . . .
my cell phone
in a bowl of jasmine rice

John S Green
Bellingham, WA

 

the romance
of a dark night sky
starlinks crossing

wanda amos
Australia

 

photo bomb
seeing myself
in a stranger

Herb Tate
Jersey, UK

 

eschewing emojis
i’m finally acting
my own age

Curt Linderman
Seattle, WA

 

email all in CAPS
cubicle glass between me
and the humanoid

Chen-ou Liu
Ajax, Ontario, Canada

 

new haiku
thirty likes
if I’m lucky

thomas david
UK

 

doomscrolling
I swipe right
on existential angst

Lee Hudspeth
USA

 

silent world
their hands talk
in a video call

Kalyanee Arandhara
India

 

by the sea gulls hijack our video call

Sheikha A.
United Arab Emirates

 

Zoom call –
slipping my heels off
under the desk

Caroline Ridley-Duff
UK

 

video call—
my father’s silence
in high definition

Thomas Vaultonburg
Rockford, IL

 

video call—
grandma smooths my hair
through the screen

Sathya Venkatesh
Coimbatore, India

 

family zoom
after the logouts
i linger

Myxl P.
Newfoundland, Canada

 

typing… typing…
meanwhile the mynahs
chat-tering

Anju Kishore
Bengaluru, India

 

after our first date
three dots appear…
then

Adele Evershed
Wilton, CT

 

three dots
dance in grey…
a crimson heart

Arvinder Kaur
Chandigarh, India

 

voiceless anger
my triple exclamations
after the text

Jackie Chou
USA

 

He tells me it’s rude
to end a text
with a period.

Sean Murphy
Maryland, USA

 

bated breath…
watching three dots
dance on screen

Kavita Ratna
India

 

need a new
emoji for ennui . . .
spring sleet

Monica Kakkar
India and USA

 

birthday wishes
to and champagne
I send my felt

Madhuri Pillai
Melbourne, Australia

 

miles apart
between emojis
we share the moon

Millicent Bee
Richmond, VA

 

personalizing
my emoji
purple heart

Eavonka Ettinger
Long Beach, CA

 

drawing her self-portrait
in the sand…
smiling emoji

Laurie Greer
Washington, DC

 

early sunrise––
remembering how
we used to write letters

Sheila Sondik
Bellingham, WA

 

screen time enforced
the child waves
to a passing dog

Debbie Scheving
Bremerton, WA

 

incessant texts
i don’t open my inbox
until it rains

Amoolya Kamalnath
India

 

festival lights—
greeting each other
on WhatsApp

Neena Singh
India

 

pummeling rain
when she started ghosting
his texts

Bruce Feingold
Berkeley, CA

 

yahrzeit
the last text I sent her
left on ‘read’

Marin Paul
USA

 

christmas eve
I cc the relatives
both kinds

simonj
UK

 

a crow confab
to start the day…
social media

Richard Straw
Cary, NC

 

storks cawing
the clatter of laptops
on the evening train

Marie Derley
Ath, Belgium

 

before we hang up –
my swifts
answer yours

Hynek Koziol
Czechia

 

muffled
by huge headphones—
the trees are singing

Tony Williams
Scotland, UK

 

checking off
the phone call…I answer
the reminder

madeleine kavanagh
California, USA

 

retirement home
rotary ringtones
on the mobiles

marilyn ashbaugh
USA

 

we don’t touch
but
our phones do

Melissa Dennison
UK

 

coffeeshop–
texting her mother
beside her

Federico C. Peralta
Bulacan, Philippines

 

latchkey kid –
she finds her AI friend
waiting

Valentina Ranaldi-Adams
Fairlawn, OH

 

pajama party
texting their friends
at the other party

Barrie Levine
Massachusetts, USA

 

cold call
mum’s telephone
gone dead

John Hawkhead
UK

 

warm evening
in the screen’s light
her coldness

Artur Zieliński
Poland

 

alone in the house
alexa answers a question
no one asked

Vicki Vogt
Watertown, MA

 

empty evening
i describe my day
to the chatbot

Subir Ningthouja
Imphal, India

 

family dinner
everyone texting someone else
the menu

Stoianka Boianova
Bulgaria

 

dateless weekend
my chatbot tells me
I’m beautiful

Anne Fox
Broomes Island, MD

 

paying for the session
just to be heard
the old lady

Luciana Moretto
Italy

 

wedding
with a virtual husband
her fluffy dress

Keiko Izawa
Japan

 

our one-way conversations
I keep you posted
driving to work

Cristina Povero
Italy

 

filing for divorce
autocorrect chooses
a kinder word

Padma Rajeswari
Hyderabad, India

 

meltdown
over ideology
alumni group chats

Geetha Ravichandran
India

 

homeward bound
the AI tells me
I’m already there…

Joanna Ashwell
UK

 

he said he loved me
but it was just
his autocorrect

Margie Gustafson
Lombard, IL

 

no longer
talking to myself–
Alexa

Nancy Brady
Huron, OH

 

doing my own research
ChatGPT
on the toilet

Mike Fainzilber
Tel Aviv, Israel

 

spotty reception
through shifting clouds
a shaft of light

AJ Johnson
Stephens City, VA

 

Join us next week for Alex’s commentary on additional poems…

 

Bios

Guest Editor Alex Fyffe teaches high school English in the Houston area. His haiku and senryu have been published in various journals, including Frogpond, Modern Haiku, Failed Haiku, Akitsu Quarterly, and the Asahi Haikuist Network. He is also a contributor at Prune Juice, where he writes articles about modern Japanese senryu in translation, and he is currently working on a series of articles for the Japanese gendai senryu journal Manten no Hoshi comparing the similarities and differences between English-language and Japanese-language senryu. Some of his favorite short form poets include Issa, whose work he discovered in the intermediate Japanese textbook he used while studying in Hikone, Japan, and Santoka, whose writing introduced him to the liberating concept of “freeform haiku.” Currently, Alex uses haiku in the classroom to ease students into poetry and build their confidence as readers and writers. He posts haiku, including translations of contemporary Japanese haiku and senryu, on Twitter @AsurasHaiku and on Bluesky @asurashaiku.bsky.social.

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

THF strives to maintain a safe and friendly environment for our readers and site participants. Participation in our offerings assumes respectful and appropriate behavior of all parties. We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone, for any reason, at any time.

If you see something you feel may violate our Code of Conduct, please report it to the appropriate moderator or the President here.

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.

Photo Credit:

Banner Photo Credit: A double-exposed photograph showing Tesla in his Colorado Springs laboratory by Dickinson Alley, ca. 1899, Public Domain Image Archive

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. Read past Haiku Dialogue posts here.

 

kjmunro

Comments (32)

  1. Alex, thank you very much for publishing my poem. Hearty congratulations to all the featured poets.

  3. Thank you to Alex and the contributors and admin for a good read this week. I read through these again to comment on a favorite or two but found reading the grouping as a whole my favorite impression by the end.
    It will be interesting to see how this same topic looks in ten years. Put that on your calendar, Alex, for a retrospective! Just a thought.

    1. I’m happy to hear the arrangement worked. I originally organized them under various headings (“Emotional Characters,” “Ellipses and Other Punctuations,” Socially Distanced,” etc). I decided to remove the headings, but I kept all the groupings together, hoping it would read well throughout.

  4. I have to agree with Sheila Sondik (above) about the compelling haiku and reading them right through. So much technology (and the way it has changed over the years) covered in this long list. Congratulations to all the poets for these eye-opening, mind-expanding haiku all written without the help of AI, I would guess. Thanks Alex for sharing them with us, and for including one of mine in the list.

    Thanks, too, to KJ, Lori, Lafcadio, and Vandana for all your volunteer efforts in keeping the Haiku Dialogue column going and helping the guest editors.

    I wrote a similar comment yesterday, but the bots would not accept it on the tablet I was using and it disappeared into cyberspace. Ironic that the subject of changing technology also kept my comment from going through. Hopefully, this one will get through. Now, to read everyone’s comments. ~Nan

  5. new haiku
    thirty likes
    if I’m lucky
    .
    thomas david
    UK
    .
    I have never gotten thirty likes on any of my haiku.

      1. I feel fortunate if I get 10 likes on my haiku and/or my blog posts, Alex and Valentina. Alas…

    1. Thanks, Alex, for including a link to Sean Wright’s Substack, which is new to me!

      Thanks also for including one of my submissions in this topic’s long list. There are many to ponder over. A favorite:

      video call—
      my father’s silence
      in high definition

      Thomas Vaultonburg
      Rockford, IL

  7. What a fascinating variety of topics covered in this selection! I really like this one – the way we seem to be going…..

    sixth sense
    I feel your email
    before I see it

    Cynthia Anderson

    1. I agree, and I almost saved this one for the commentary short list. “I feel your email / before I see it” is such a great phrase. It was the fragment, “sixth sense,” which held me back. I felt there could have been a more unexpected juxtaposition. The phrase already conveys the idea of extrasensory perception, so I think it would be slightly more effective if weighed against a line that comes at it more aslant. Even so, this one has a great insight about how attuned we’ve become to technological communication.

  8. Thank you choosing my haiku to lead, Alex! Appreciate it very much.
    I thoroughly enjoyed penning for this prompt!
    Thank you, haiku dialogue team for a wonderful chance to share here!

    1. spring picnic —
      the dots on each phone
      converge at last

      Raji Vijayaraghavan
      India

      I picked your poem because of how well it captures a common part of modern life: our reliance on technology to guide us to each other. In this case, the phones are guiding everyone perhaps to an unfamiliar picnic spot. But it is common for people to use navigation tools even when going places they’ve been to dozens of times before. There is a comfort in being told where to go, in watching the dot on the screen follow the line to the end of the road. And certainly the tools are useful. But perhaps something is lost, a sense of adventure, a scenic view, the daily activities happening that don’t show up on the screen for the little dot to see. The real connection happens after the phones are put away and the people can enjoy their excursion together.

      1. Thank you, Alex for your wonderful comment to connect!
        What I have penned actually happened when as family, we decided to have a picnic in a big park. ( Cubbon park in Bangalore in the centre of city) To avoid getting lost, we used the app as a marker to meet at a location that suited us all as we came from different directions. It was a wonderful occasion too, so this haiku is written in that spirit.
        Appreciate your taking the time and sharing with us!

  9. Thank you Alex for publishing my haiku.

    no longer
    talking to myself–
    Alexa
    Nancy Brady …… this is a haiku of this century – well done

    2. Wanda,
      Thank you so much for your kind words about my ‘ku. I’d rather look at your romantic dark sky. ~Nan

  10. This fantastic poem is very much of our time:

    the romance
    of a dark night sky
    starlinks crossing

    wanda amos
    Australia

  11. Thank you, Alex for bringing together such a brilliant collection of haiku. It’s been delightful reading the variety of ways that we respond to technology. Thanks for posting my haiku…My gratitude to Kj, Lafcadio, Vandana and Lori for their dedication in keeping Haiku Dialogue up and running.

  12. Thank you for including my poem in this fantastic collection, Alex. This topic feels so immediate and omnipresent that I wrote the two I sent in within minutes of reading your prompt. I can’t wait to see what you selected for commentary.

    I loved so many of these poems, but I was particularly struck by this gem:

    retirement home
    rotary ringtones
    on the mobiles

    marilyn ashbaugh
    USA

    What an incredibly impressive way to mix past and present!

  13. Once I started reading, I couldn’t stop! What a wonderful range of responses to this prompt. This is clearly a HUGE topic. Thanks to Alex for opening it up and to all the poets who shared their haiku.

    1. early sunrise––
      remembering how
      we used to write letters

      Sheila Sondik
      Bellingham, WA

      I liked this one quite a bit because it resonates with and without the prompt. In the context of the prompt, it brings to mind the disappointment of quick and easy digital messaging that is more functional than literary, possibly after hur getting up and looking at your phone (“early sunrise”). The speaker longs for a time when communication took more time and consideration. On its own, too, the poem elicits this nostalgia for the past, but it could be read in a more romantic sense, as someone whose marriage has perhaps left behind the letters of early love and who suddenly wishes that passion were still there.

      1. Thank you for this comment, which added to my own ‘take’ on my poem. I wrote this on waking early Thursday, your prompt still resonating in my mind. What followed was a rare and delightful early-morning haiku-writing spree with my husband (relationship still good after 53 years, btw).

  14. Alex, thank-you very much for publishing my haiku. Thank-you also to everyone who volunteers their time to make this column possible. Congrats to all the poets whose work was chosen.

    1. latchkey kid –
      she finds her AI friend
      waiting

      Valentina Ranaldi-Adams
      Fairlawn, OH

      I like the way your poem blends the older term “latchkey kid,” which came to define generations of children coming home from school to an empty house or apartment every day, with the recent concept of having a chatbot “friend.” The connotations of “latchkey kid” emphasize that this friend “waiting” for her is not a real presence but a facsimile — just another brand of being alone in an empty house. There is also something almost sinister in that last line. The AI is always there, waiting to be used, like some creepy doll from a horror film leeching off the life of a desperate kid.

Comments are closed.

Subscribe to Our Newsletter

Our mission is made possible by the generosity of others. Learn how you can provide vital support to our organization.

Donate | Volunteer

Questions, comments, or concerns? We’d love to hear from you!

Home | Policies, Disclaimers, & Terms of Use | Contact

The Haiku Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization proudly operating as an inclusive remote workplace and is staffed exclusively by community volunteers.

The Haiku Foundation
P.O. Box 2461
Winchester, VA
22604-1661
USA

Back To Top