HAIKU DIALOGUE – Surrealism II – “Without Hope”

Surrealism II with Guest Editor Lafcadio

For the next few weeks I would like to be your docent again in The Haiku Foundation Art museum. We will continue our tour of the Surrealist gallery. I know we were there last year, but now I’d like to show you a few of the works of the female Surrealist painters. First, let’s have a quick review about surrealism to make sure we are all on the same page, or in the same room. Surrealism is an artistic movement that began in the early 20th century. Surrealistic painters created dreamlike and often inexplicable images. One of the major characteristics of this kind of painting is the comparison of unrelated entities and components. This creates a surprise for the viewer and hopefully carries them into a world of fantasy and symbolism. This technique of painting not only challenged traditional painting, but was also a representation of the social and political upheavals of society after the trauma and disillusionment of World War I. Still, surrealistic paintings are used today to transcend the boundaries of the ordinary and deliver us in the realm of the extraordinary.

In 1924 Andre Breton, known as the father of Surrealism, wrote his first Surrealist Manifesto. He stated that 19 painters had created art that was absolute Surrealism. None of these painters were female. These painters felt women were useful to them as muses and inspiration but not as artists in their own right. However, by 1985 it was determined that no other art movement had such a large number of women participants. As Surrealist art grew into a larger and more diverse group of men, women became interested in expressing themselves through this art movement. Most of the first women who entered the Surrealistic movement were lovers of male Surrealists.

As with the previous male painters we have viewed, there is so much abstraction and symbolism in the drawings and paintings that you will be able to create surrealistic haiku and senryu that reflect the emotions in these works of art. Let’s begin…

prompt: “Without Hope”

We have time for one more painting. This artist is one of the most famous Surrealist painters. Her name is Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderón or more commonly, Frida Kahlo. She lived in Mexico all her life. She was disabled as a child by polio but then recovered enough to go to medical school. Unfortunately, she was injured in a bus accident at age 18. Her injuries caused her medical problems and pain for the rest of her life. Spending time in her bed at her parents’ house she thought of the idea to have an easel built over her bed so she could paint and become an artist despite her disabilities. She painted in a naive folk-art style and was also considered to be a Surrealist or Magic Realist. She did not want her paintings categorized as Surrealism because she said they were not dreams or her subconscious, but they were her real life. She painted portraits, self-portraits, explorations of culture, gender, identity, class and race. She also created autobiographical paintings especially about her chronic pain. As she recovered some, she became interested in politics and joined the Mexican Revolution Party in 1927, through which she met a fellow Mexican artist by the name of Diego Rivera. They were married two years later. She continued to paint and exhibit in Mexico, France and the United States. Her first solo exhibition in Mexico City was in 1953, just a year before she died at the age of 47 due to complications from the bus accident.

The painting we will see today is one about her chronic pain. She had many illnesses, and became thin and malnourished. Her doctor prescribed forced feedings of pureed food every two hours. This painting, “Without Hope” (painted in 1945), lives at Museo Delores Olmedo in Mexico City. You can have a close-up view here. She has painted her feelings of being trapped by the constant feeding and her loss of independence. Her arms are held down by the blanket. The colors create a somber mood. The isolated background points to her melancholy and hopelessness. Frida wanted to show both her physical and emotional pain.

Maybe there is a real event in your life that you can write about in a surrealistic haiku or senryu.

The deadline is midnight Eastern Daylight Time, Saturday August 2, 2025.

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.) In the Poem box, with your poem(s), please include any special formatting requirements & your name & residence as you would like it to appear in the column. 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.

Join us next week for Lafcadio’s selection of poems on the topic of “Without Hope”…

Bios:

Guest (& 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:  Lafcadio

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.