re:Virals 465

Welcome to re:Virals, The Haiku Foundation’s weekly commentary feature on some of your favorites among the best contemporary haiku and senryu written in English. This week’s poem, chosen by Shawn Blair, was:

     
midsummer—
the boat tips
toward the whale
—Johnette Downing
The Heron’s Nest Volume XXV, Number 3: September 2023

Introducing this poem, Shawn writes:

The technique of contrasting a small detail with a wide-angle field of view is especially powerful in Johnette’s verse, while the scene remains perfectly natural. I can feel that boat tip within my body, and my five classic senses are fully engaged. A total experience.

Opening comment:

At the pivotal point of the year we tip towards what, according to Gabi Greve’s World Kigo database, is a winter kigo. But I don’t think this haiku has anything to do with that. Rather, it summons up the ancient and modern feelings towards the whale, from fearsome leviathan to fellow mammal. The verse nicely leaves space for a reader to consider two reasons why a boat might tip towards a whale, apart from waves. In the old days, a tight rope to a harpoon. These days, the shift of excited passengers out whale-watching, to the side of the boat offering the best view.

The whale is at once massive and powerful, and yet helpless and vulnerable before humankind. Probably the record of the humpback whale’s haunting songs some fifty years ago did more than anything else to transform our feelings for the whale from fear to sympathy and fellowship. It was indeed a tipping point. Some nations still brutally hunt our cetacean fellows where it is not necessary to do so to keep their population from overrunning the seas (as we overrun the land). In most countries savagery sits alongside the sensitive refinements of culture.

Some whales get their own back…the recent episodes of orcas attacking yachts come to mind; said by some to be a game. The many films of orcas developing ruthless strategies to prey on seals, and on young whales of humpback and other species as they migrate, and the power in a whale’s tail, are a reminder that we should keep a respectful distance, and not—as has sometimes occurred—capsize the boat.

Jo McInerney—obeisance to the whale:

Johnette Downing’s fine haiku shows delight and awe at encountering another species.

The poem is deftly set in its moment. The opening line, ‘midsummer’, puts us at the season’s apex; the high point before it tilts toward autumn. Warmth, light, and pleasure are all around us. However, its em-dash pitches us forward, not into another time, but into a particular action and location.

We are on the water, specifically in a boat, not on a ship. Our smaller vessel comes with a certain risk – ‘the boat tips’. We ready ourselves for the possibility of being capsized. But no, we’re not in the water, instead, we are tipping ‘toward the whale.’

There are few living creatures with the whale’s resonance. Kin and other, these gigantic ocean denizens share our warm blood and mammalian classification yet have a stature and significance that seems to dwarf our own.

Having industrially exploited all whale species and pushed them toward extinction, our transgenerational guilt remains. The mass butchery that once contributed to humanity’s material comfort ended all too recently and incompletely, such that whale sightings still prompt relief as well as awe. The celebratory feeling is deep and complex.

The final line captures this feeling. What has happened? Has the whale already breached and, as it submerges, are we tilting toward it? Has it only just surfaced? Whatever has occurred, the whale remains before us, and we are off-balance and overwhelmed in its presence, our tipping an obeisance.

Alan Harvey:

Midsummer is the dividing line between early and late summer. And Downing sets us up nicely in L1 that season of being on the water. We are out on the water and the boat tips in L2. Finally, we see the reason for this in L3, a whale is spotted. All the passengers rush to the side railings to catch a glimpse of the whale. It’s appropriately happening on midsummer, the tipping point of the summer season. The boat is shifting, passengers can sense a shift in their balance. With the whale watching, we know the direction of the shift, toward the whale. The direction of summer may be more unknown.

Dan Campbell:

In the heart of summer’s warmth, where light bathes the world in ripe stillness, the boat floats, steady, sure—a vessel of self, drifting in the familiar. But the moment comes when the boat tips—when the self falters and the calm is shattered. It’s a sudden shift where the soul, once stable, is thrust into the unknown.

The whale emerges, a shadow from the deep, vast and ancient, a secret long submerged. This is no ordinary tipping, but a pull toward the profound, a beckoning from the depths. The whale—a truth so immense it dwarfs the sky—draws the boat closer, closer still, to the edge of understanding, where old beliefs teeter.

In that tipping, the soul faces the whale, a presence that demands reckoning. It is a force, a surge from the deep that cannot be denied. To tip toward the whale is to confront the self, to plunge into the abyss of the unknown, where wisdom lies in wait, in the dark, in the deep, where the soul finds itself anew.

The boat tips, and in that moment, the world shifts as the old gives way to the vastness beneath. The whale is there, a guide, a guardian of deep truths, leading the way to a greater wisdom. It is a call to descend, to embrace what was hidden, to surrender to the depths, and rise, transformed.

Melissa Dennison:

This is a poem that says so much in just a few words.

Initially it had me conjuring up images of whaling, with the body being dragged and perhaps pulled down by the whale. However on second reading I changed my mind. It seems to suggest whale watching, perhaps on vacation as the seasonal word ‘midsummer’ suggests. The boat tips towards the whale (nice use if alliteration), as the passengers on board rush towards the spectacle – the whale, for a better view. I can picture their excited faces, the ‘ooohs!’ ‘ahs!’ and gasps of astonishment, as they encounter the whale. This is a once in a lifetime experience. It’s also quite profound in more ways than one as it speaks to our sometimes fraught, complex and changing relationship with nature.

It wasn’t so long ago that whales were hunted on a large scale, their oil used as the fuel lighting our streets, in soap, wax and even leather. The whaling industry was a leviathan, contributing millions of dollars to the U.S in the 19th century alone.

Seas which were once full of these creatures were silent. Whales became endangered. It was only in the 20th century that our attitudes changed and people fought campaigns such as ‘Save the Whale’. Thus bringing about a moratorium on whale hunting.

In 200 years our attitudes have been transformed. We no longer see whales as just another commodity, or a means to an end, but as sentient beings, and as creatures we want to encounter, connect with and understand.

Once the boat may have been full of whalers being dragged along in the wake of the whale. Today, the boat tips towards the whale with peaceful wonder and awe. Long may that be the case.

Ashoka Weerakkody:

A likeable haiku by Johnette Downing prompts us to participate with an expression of interest.  The overall grasp, resultant of this three line input, reaching the inner sanctum of the mind of a haiku aspirant is something quite similar to a computer “hard” taking in the user interface “clatter,” reading the data in the only language the processor knows, the machine language. Soft to the touch, ergonomically designed and highly user-friendly, since born upon smartly architectured concepts of miniaturisation through nano tech innovations computers are getting ever closer to the human-brain neuronic sensing, as can be humanly comprehended within today’s level of our inborn intelligence.

Haha…now that’s a fairly harmless way of showing off one’s newly acquired intellect I suppose, coming to talk about so-called machine language of computers. But yes, they do exist, because computers are but machines man has produced with metals, conductors, semiconductors and rare earths that give them immense speeds and accuracy to carry out the ultra-complex calculations and computations we see only as natural phenomena nowadays, nothing more. Hence they remain machines made out of solid hard matter we call hardware and these machines shall never ever comprehend anything we input through the interface or keyboards in our vernacular linguistics but the machines own sensitising of electrical pulses.  The circuits carry the appropriate currents under levels of voltage that run against the heart-beat, the time base of the artificial creature we call the computer. And here we have a glimpse of the language, the electric beat, in its innumerable patterns and forms which becomes the machine language the beast understands.

Having said that, the rest is pretty simple I reckon. If not forgotten by now, I began by quoting the midsummer—a factual haiku by author J. Downing.  I say factual since this poem hides under its terrifyingly clear imagery an unspoken reality of nature we might be oblivious to.  Here we see a boat in distress at sea, with the menacing presence of a killer whale, and moreover the boat is presently tipping toward the killer. With the first line, seemingly the Ideal season word for this haiku, the event fills a clear blue backdrop of a sunny summer day, of blue skies over blue waters.  Beautiful but frightful, sadly. That, then, is the input the virtual computer would be fed with by the haikuist at work and here we have a genuine haiku brain serving us with a brilliant piece. In “machine language” we discussed above:  wouldn’t it translate into just this? It’s “midsummer”, virtually bisecting the season right in the middle and days are heading towards the incoming Autumn. The “boat tips” as time slants away from the upright, the midpoint of Summer and its fall into the whale’s jaws is now imminent.  Indeed with Autumn closing in, it will usher in the Fall, as it always does. And the beast of change patiently waits for exactly that, having a “whale” of a time.

Lakshman Bulusu:

This haiku paints a vivid image of a boat in midsummer season full of people who have come to the ocean for whale watching. It is going a certain distance into the ocean where whales jump out into the air and the direction the boat is tilting is towards the whale’s somersaults. The boat tilts towards the angle the whale is approaching, though it’s a risk sometimes if the boat tips too much.

Metaphorically it can mean, to get something rewarding or joy we may have to risk something.

As I read the haiku with the em-dash, I pause (L1) to signal to myself that it is midsummer season and whale watching is common, and then lines L2 and L3 take me to enjoy the pleasurable experience of seeing a whale and the boat I am in is tilting sideways. The joy derived from this outweighs the risk in it.

I love the way the haiku progresses from L1 to L3

Amoolya Kamalnath:

At first glance, I thought it was a pure shasei. In midsummer, the whales come out to the surface for feeding and whale watching is rampant in different parts of the world. In a flurry of excitement, someone’s movement tips the boat towards the direction of the whale. As the reader, we don’t know the distance between the boat and the whale but I picture the creature being quite close-by. This evokes a sense of fear in my mind.

Now is it someone not heeding to instructions and trying to touch the whale? Is it a huge wave that tossed the boat near the whales and the wind propelling the boat to tilt its edge towards the whale?

Is it the scenario of an election where the votes tip in favour of the party the poet/reader doesn’t want to see in power? Is it that in the youthful years, the speaker was carefree and life went in a direction that may have taken her on a dangerous/an adventurous path?

Author Johnette Downing:

The poem came to me during a whale watch trip in Newburyport, MA. The captain of the vessel indicated over the intercom that a whale was spotted on the starboard side. This announcement caused all of the whale watchers to run to the right side of the boat resulting in the boat tipping in the direction of the whale. 

Thanks to all who sent commentaries. As the contributor of the commentary reckoned best this week, Jo has chosen next week’s poem, which you’ll find below. We invite you to write a commentary to it. It may be as long or short, academic or spontaneous, serious or silly, public or personal as you like. All with respect for the poet. Out-takes from the best of these take their place in the THF Archives. Best of all, the chosen commentary’s author gets to pick the next poem.

Anyone can participate. Simply use the re:Virals commentary form below to enter your commentary on the new week’s poem (“Your text”) by the following Tuesday midnight, Eastern US Time Zone, and then press Submit to send your entry. The Submit button will not be available until Name, Email, and Place of Residence fields are filled in. We look forward to seeing your commentary and finding out about your favourite poems!

Poem for commentary:

     
spring thaw
a kite string
of geese
—Anne Burgevin
 Modern Haiku vol. 46:2, Summer 2015

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.

Footnote:

Recipient of the 2024 Robert Spiess Memorial Haiku Award and the 2017 Louisiana Writer Award, Johnette Downing is a musician, author, illustrator, and poet with thirty books and twelve recordings. Cofounder of the former New Orleans Haiku Society, Downing’s haiku have appeared in bottle rockets, Modern Haiku, Frogpond, Heron’s Nest, Mayfly, Prune Juice, August Moon Haiku Journal, World Haiku, and others, and her poem “ripples in the pond” received an Honorable Mention Award from the Haiku International Association in Japan. Her book, Singing Waters, A Selection of Haiku, Senryu, and Haibun, published by buddha baby press, is a collection of over one hundred previously published poems. 

Johnette Downing’s website.

Some of her haiku may be read in THF’s Haiku Registry.

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The range of reader responses is always interesting, and informative too. Sometimes eccentric, which is a delight. Cited by Bowers in this week’s THF Book of the Week, Harold Henderson defined haiku in a nutshell as: “meditations…starting points for trains of thought.” I can only agree.

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