re:Virals 466

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 Jo McInerney, was:

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

Introducing this poem, Jo writes:

I love the deft contrasting of images – the kite on its string and the line of geese. The correspondences are beautiful, linking the shape of the kite and the outstretched wings of the birds.

But the links are more than visual. They prompt the reader to ask what invisible force anchors and connects the geese on their undulating flight path.

The answer is found in the first line with the passing of winter and the powerful instinctual pull that draws migrating birds back to breed when and where they were bred.

Opening comment:

In this charming haiku of seven words the season is referenced four times: ‘spring’, ‘thaw’, ‘kite’ (according to Japanese saijiki) and ‘geese’ on the wing. The cumulative impression conveyed is one of joy at the change of season. What makes it, for me, is the second line which is an arresting, original, poetic vision. It demonstrates the power, in this small form of poetry, of a direct metaphor or simile (it is both), or parallel, without the use of ‘as’ or ‘like’ that can become tedious in longer form, ‘mainstream’ poetry. The vee of the geese, their measured station off each other, and the pull of the earth are all conveyed in the image of the classic diamond-shaped kite with winged bow tails tied in, flown out of pure joy.

I think the augmentation of spring factors, which might be deprecated by some traditionalists, adds to the poem. Some personal thoughts on kigo in the Footnote.

Dan Campbell:

A musician interpreting the poem:

spring thaw
a kite string
of geese

might focus on the imagery, emotions, and natural progression depicted in the poem. Here’s how a musician might interpret the poem and approach its musical arrangement:

The poem captures a vivid spring scene, invoking a sense of renewal and transition. The “spring thaw” suggests melting snow and the warming of the earth. The “kite string of geese” brings to mind a visual line of geese flying in a V-formation across the sky, like a kite string stretched in the wind.

The poem evokes feelings of lightness, hope, and a gentle, yet persistent return of life. The seasonal transition from winter to spring can bring a sense of optimism and renewal.

Instruments:
Piano: A gentle piano melody could represent the thawing ice and snow, with soft, flowing arpeggios that mimic the melting and flowing water. This instrument can also capture the lightness and fluidity of the poem.

String Instruments: Violin or cello might be used to create a sense of warmth and richness, reflecting the deeper emotions of the thaw and the arrival of spring. A violin could mimic the flight of geese, with soaring notes that rise and fall.

The melody might start gently and sparsely, reflecting the gradual thaw of winter. It could be built around a major key to convey the warmth and positivity associated with spring. As the piece progresses, the melody could rise, mimicking the upward flight of the geese.

The musical arrangement of this poem would aim to capture the delicate balance between the calm of a thawing spring and the lively movement of migrating geese. The piece might move from stillness to motion, from cold to warmth, using a combination of melody, harmony, rhythm, and dynamics to evoke the imagery and emotion of the poem.

Melissa Dennison:

The economical use of words here captures a moment in time completely. We know it’s a time of transition as indicated by ‘spring thaw’. Life is re-emerging, as conveyed by the geese. Geese are also a sign of changing seasons, for example, flying south for the winter here in the UK.

As I read this haiku I am transported to the outdoors, looking up into a sky where to my excitement there is a long line of birds high in the sky. A bit like a kite string. I like this imagery. Geese often fly in a ‘V’ formation, and I can envision this undulating, being buffeted by the wind, just like a kite string. This is both descriptive and playful imagery from Anne. As the spring thaw has begun, a gaggle of geese is migrating from their winter nesting sites, heading home to breed and rear their young. It’s a sight that is full of childlike wonder, how many times do we watch as geese fly over? Do we ever tire of this? I know I never do. It is also a reassuring sight in these times of environmental crisis, especially after the bird flu epidemic where millions of birds succumbed. It is then a hopeful haiku, there are still geese in the sky and the cycle of life continues.

Amoolya Kamalnath—celebrating the onset of spring :

There are three kigo of the same season in this haiku. Spring thaw clearly shows it’s early spring, kite is all spring and geese (departing geese in Japanese saijiki, arriving geese in some other parts of the world) are mid-spring.

So spring has set in and the poet sees the geese as kites flying with their V-formation almost looking like a kite and its string.

The verse celebrates the onset of spring and the spring season itself and all the things and emotions associated with spring.

Author Anne Burgevin:

When I first read Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac as a teen, the essay “March” resonated with me deeply because March had always been my favorite month of the year, and Mr. Leopold confirmed why: March embodies the suggestion of change, plainly stated in the first line of my haiku “spring thaw.” Since then I’ve been able to admit that March excites me despite people’s tendency to hurry through the month. In March of 2015 when I saw a small flock of geese flying over my childhood home, for a moment I remembered the first page of the “March” essay with a line drawing of geese at the top. Then above me I saw the flock’s formation in the shape of a kite string. Kite flying season wasn’t too far away, was it? I felt the excitement of flying a kite. For a moment I was with the geese, and I was my younger self in a place of joy. Many moments in my life came together in “spring thaw.” Thank you for noticing and nominating this haiku, Jo, and for the opportunity to share my reflections with each of you.

Thanks to all who sent commentaries. As the contributor of the commentary reckoned best this week, Amoolya 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:

     
father's day
I asked my mother
for advice
—Ida Wiesenfeld
LEAF issue 4 Summer 2024

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:

Bio:
Anne Burgevin blends her professional work as a former elementary teacher and a creative writing teacher with her passion for haiku. Helping youth explore their role as stewards of our natural resources is important to Anne’s sense of purpose as an educator. She has found haiku to be an exciting vehicle for these goals. Anne’s second collection, Sunny Uplands, is newly available from Red Moon Press, as well as her first collection, Frozen Earth. She is an associate editor at The Heron’s Nest

You may view her photo, activities and some of her poems on Anne’s website.

——

To my mind Anne Burgevin’s verse is poetically superior to Bashō’s:

ah haru haru / ōinaru kana haru / to un nun
(mellifluous and euphonic, rhyming to our ear)

ah spring, spring
how great is spring!
and so on
Bashō tr Reichhold

Which I doubt would be accepted for publication by THN (although it may appeal to the world-weary with a sense of humour).  Admittedly Bashō was parodying a Chinese poet, as Reichhold notes. In his turn he was parodied in the apochryphal verse Matsushima ya / ah Matsushima ya / Matsushima ya (‘Matsushima! Matsushima! oh! Matsushima!’) that has sometimes been attributed to Bashō but is believed to be authored by one Tawarabo of Sagami.

——-

With your forbearance…
Thoughts on kigo: writing them out helps me realise what those thoughts are.  They’re still evolving.  Discussion welcome.

Seasonality and season-words (kigo) play a central role in classic Japanese haiku, but less of a role in anglophone haiku in the rest of the world. In Japan, a kigo gives both an anchorage in a given season —ideally the season in which the haiku poet is writing in the present moment— and some connection with past poems of various kinds stretching back to antiquity and which have used those kigo; thereby adding ‘depth’ to a verse.

With each use a kigo accumulates  associations, to go with the general symbolism the image may have: for example, the moon, snow, a brazier, mating cats,  plum blossoms, white chrysanthemums and so on have acquired symbolisms which can make a kigo a very economical means, in a very short form of poetry, of conveying a mood and a wealth of associations as well as setting a context.

Kigo are not confined to seasons, however. They may also be cultural: for example, marking various dates or celebrations, or things like the start of the academic year.

Some schools of haiku insist that to be a haiku, a verse ‘must’ contain a recognised kigo: that is, one that has been collected and codified in a saijiki. Strict adherence to codified kigo can, however, be very limiting for haiku and haiku poets, and sometimes verges on the absurd.

The establishment of a word — such as ‘moon’ — as firmly denoting a single season (autumn in this case) is clearly at odds with the actual presence of the moon at all times of the year. So we get devices such as ‘hazy moon’, assigned to spring, even though the moon may be veiled or hazy outside that season. And why pin a verse arbitrarily to a season? The bones of a whale on the beach may be seen at any time of year. In spring and autumn, geese both arrive and depart at the same time, depending where they are from, or to where they are heading.  The Thames estuary to bird migration is what Clapham Junction is to railway travellers coming and going. Arbitrary insistence that a particular phenomenon must always denote a particular season, or even a micro-season, can weaken the credibility of kigo as a ‘must have’.

Kigo also present some practical difficulties around the world. They do not travel well. In tropical countries the seasons are far less distinct, perhaps marked only by ‘dry’ and ‘wet’ seasons, or in the Caribbean by the hurricane season. Fruits and flowers may appear at almost any time of the year, or all through the year near the Equator. The arrival and departure of migratory birds in Africa may have more to do with the onset of cold weather in higher latitudes than with any seasonal change in Africa. There are from time to time attempts to create saijikis for different regions of the anglophone world, but they do not seem to attract many poets, and writing to them can become a sterile exercise more suited to the classroom than to the natural environment.

There is also a problem in recent years of climate change: not only does the season shift, but there can be conflicting ‘seasonal’ phenomena at the same time. One haiku poet has described hollyhocks blooming (due to day length) amid large flakes of snow (due to temperature). Are we to be admonished for depicting what is actually seen simply because of some arbitrary classification of kigo?

In addition to these practical considerations, there is less of a tradition in English literature of writing in strict accordance with the seasons. Also, although there is a measure of intertextuality in anglophone poetry, it is rarer that a poem consciously or conspicuously references an earlier one.

There are still many words without formal ‘kigo’ status that carry a weight of symbolism and association, and many ways of referencing a season if a season is central to the poem. Both in Japan and in the anglophone haiku community the idea of ‘keywords’ has developed: that is, words that do not necessarily have to be seasonal,  but words which a majority of readers will recognise from their past usage, and that have some accumulated weight of symbolism or association.

The essence, the spirit of haiku is prompting meditation in the poet, then in the reader, through brief  plain imagery, to arrive at some insight, revelation or reflection. The insight may be philosophical, or the revelation may be one of beauty, or of humour; of sadness; or of fellowship, a novel view of a shared situation that others will recognise. I think that the precise form a verse takes is secondary to the content and its effect. A kigo or keyword is part of the toolkit for the anglophone haiku poet, but only one of a selection of tools. There should not have to be one as a matter of rule: only when it is important to the verse’s content — when it adds significance to the poem, or is shorthand for a bunch of associations relevant to the poem. Short of a recognised kigo or keyword, a seasonal reference or allusion of some sort, if it is needed, may be perfectly adequate. This is one of the ways new kigo come into being and get adopted. Simply shoehorning a ready-made season word into a verse because you are ‘supposed’ to have one seems to me to be misguided in this spare poetry.  At least, as far as concerns English Language Haiku.

In classic Japanese haiku, having more than one season-word or image in a verse was/is frowned upon, partly because it may indicate unnecessary redundancy (despite several precedents where old masters of Japanese haiku/hokku flouted this ‘rule’).  Some pundits of ELH have added this to their list of no-go strictures.  Other haiku poets have argued that if one of the words is clearly the dominant season word, then that is acceptable. If you regard kigo or seasonal references in the light of the previous paragraph, then it is not critical when two such words are used in the same verse —provided that each adds something to the verse, which would be diminished if either of them was to be taken out. The best way of such writing is from the real and present moment, when all the images around you are consistent with  reality, if not always consistent with a doctrinaire abstraction of it.

There may also be cases when the poet observes things from different seasons in the same temporal context. These days we have asparagus tips in the greengrocer’s nearly all year round. We’ve had daffodils bloom before Christmas in our southern English garden, along with the last yellow rose of the past summer. Are we to say that the haikuist should censor a natural observation to remove these supposed conflicts of season, experienced directly?  Sometimes the very point of a haiku offering insight into climate change will be strengthened by conflicting seasonal words.

There is a newer tradition of ‘seasonless haiku’ (muki haiku) in Japan, although it remains controversial to the old guard. Why have a season, if it is not necessary to the content and message of the verse?  Yet that led not to liberation, an unbinding of feet; but to five thousand codified expressions in a saijiki, many of them clumsy in English.  Admittedly,  a wider choice of tight shoes.

In sum, I think that for haiku in the English language, understanding what kigo and keywords are for, and deploying them where they are truly useful as part of the content and add significantly to a verse (which they often do), but not otherwise, is a better approach than writing haiku strictly by long lists of such things required by formality, by doctrine. But I come from a society that has grown less hierarchical and orderly.  I prefer to think that a notebook is all you should need to write haiku.  Not a manual.

Others will disagree, I hope with civility.  From thesis and antithesis one arrives, with luck, at synthesis and progress rather than entrenchment and stasis.

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