re:Virals 468

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 John Daleiden, was:

     
overripe plums—
not ready
to be old
—Carolyn Hall
The Heron's Nest, Vol XXVI, No. 3, September 2024

Introducing this poem, John writes:

Carolyn Hall’s poem appeals to me on many levels. An initial reading raised the question, why does the narrator have overripe plums close at hand?  Yet, this interpretation is just too simple. There must be a deeper meaning for the narrator of the text. What conclusions do other readers come to?

Opening comment:

Ripe plums in the wild are eaten by large birds and by mammals who spread their seed (pits) either via their digestive system or by dropping it some way from the tree. Cultivated plums are for human consumption, selection and propagation. In either case, here we have plums that have (so far) not fulfilled their expected role; not being taken, they have grown “overripe.” The suggestion that they are “not ready” to meet their fate either implies sentience in the plums, or at least introduces a human assessment.   If  unrealistic anthropomorphism is discarded, plums have no feelings akin to human feelings.  I therefore construe this poemlet as one natural seasonal image (end of summer) followed by a related personal thought of the poet comparing her own predicament with overripe plums. This has become an increasingly popular style of haiku in English since the 1990s.

Comparing overripe plums with the poet’s feelings, in essence readers are invited to examine their own. Is one overripe, and if so, in what sense? Beyond, or past, fulfilment? Ignored? Going soggy round the middle? Past an eat-by date?  Is one ever “ready to be old?” Followers of the Zen or the Daoist traditions would say that ready or not, if you’re old then that’s just the way it is:  not to accept it is unenlightened. The rest of us kick  against getting old, and go to the gym or otherwise try to keep ahead of the Reaper.

Subliminally I was also prompted to think about a variant: ‘not ready / to be sold.’

Plenty to think about, which is the main aim of these short verses that we write and enjoy reading. Footnote on image + thought haiku.

Fatma Zohra Habis:

The haiku reflects on the ripe plum at its final stage, contemplating what comes next and expressing a fear of it becoming wrinkled. The writer seems to be warning about the inevitable changes that the future brings, despite the present’s beauty. The choice of the plum serves as a metaphor for this transition.

Jo McInerney:

Carolyn Hall’s haiku employs a beautifully light touch to reject common perceptions of old age.

Its opening line – ‘overripe plums’ – creates a vivid image of fruit past peak condition. The current customer warnings that note ‘best by date’ lack the suggestiveness of these two words. My childhood backyard held a huge golden gage that fruited in crazy abundance. By the end of the season, the ground was thick with fallen plums and buzzing flies. Depending on readers’ prior experience, this haiku’s opening image may suggest something less extreme, perhaps a couple of dark damson plums in a bowl, soft to the touch, their shine dimmed.

Despite the em dash ending line one, line two – ‘not ready’ – comes as a surprise, seeming to contradict the beyond readiness of the opening fragment. However, this second, flow-on line takes us to ‘to be old’. The pieces now fall into place. We hear an authorial voice refusing to accept the state described in line one and the associations it carries.

‘Overripe’ captures mellowness tipping into excess. A word that in less gender-aware times was applied, like ‘overblown’, to disparage women whose physical appearance had lost the appeal of youth. For me, Hall’s opening line bears some of these connotations, wryly suggesting anatomical features of both sexes that lose their tautness over time.

Hall’s concluding lines indicate not so much a denial of age as an encouragement to readers to define age in our own terms; to make ripeness all for as long as we can, and to reject the pejorative social framing so often imposed on those who are no longer young.

Nairithi Konduru (aged nine):

This poem expresses the poet’s desire to be young again and not old, even though being old has a lot of perks like getting fed, sleeping all day, not getting scolded by anyone etc. One doesn’t have any one telling them, “You need to grow up, I can’t be doing this for you forever! 😡”

When I looked up overripe plums, I found a lot of recipes which used overripe plums to make salads, jams and desserts.

Very old people need someone to take care of them especially when they fall ill or injure themselves.

Amoolya Kamalnath:

Physically, we age, it shows on our skin by way of wrinkles and other features. Mentally, we are still young at heart, we still want to be the 5, 10 or 20-year-olds. I remember my younger sister (as a young child) used to tell my mother that she didn’t want her to grow old like our grandmother, she wanted our mom to be the same as she was then, even years later. We’re never ready to grow older. However, time flies by and another birthday arrives.

This verse reminds me of my daughter’s senryu written on the theme of Growing Old in Haiku Dialogue.

another birthday…
can i still be
a baby

Nairithi Konduru (then aged 8), India

Melissa Dennison:

Well I can relate to this, having had a milestone birthday recently. I am definitely not ready to he old. Who is? This is something which we will all get to contend with, hopefully.

It’s a clever haiku using the imagery of overripe plums in respect of growing older.

However, perhaps we should celebrate getting older, why see this as a bad thing? I know that I have become more comfortable in my ageing skin, as I know myself better than I did at 21. What about you, do you feel this way?

Life isn’t easy at any age, I don’t recall growing up as a straightforward process. Being older we have lived a life, we have much to offer, and still a lot we can do.

We live in societies, particularly in the west which are youth oriented, where we are striving to look young and be young as long as possible. Therefore we can perceive older age as negative, as as we age we mourn the passing of our youth. It doesn’t have to be this way.

Let’s celebrate those overripe plums today!.

Finally, a great use of the ‘o’ sound!

Lakshman Bulusu:

This haiku focuses on how ‘ripeness’ is the pinnacle of sweetness by portraying how a ripe plum fruit is enjoyable to the palette and has ‘no aging’. L1 evokes a sense of desire by way of saying even though plums are overripe, they are still ‘not ready
to be old’.

This haiku is beautifully done to signify its meaning. The contrast between being overripe in L1 and not being ready to be old in lines L2 and L3 sums it up in 4-3-3 syllables.

Metaphorically it means there is no age for something sweet or cherishing and though ‘overripe’ to quote the haikuist, is still rewarding. It seems the author insists ‘overripe’ and ‘old’ might intersect at some point, but are still not at the same stage. The former can be savored like plums even though overripe.

Sébastien Revon—mirroring nature, we delve into our self:

A juxtaposition of similitude. At first, I found that the two images were too closely juxtaposed. After mulling it over, this haiku became a beautiful prompt to dig deeper into my own relationship with the ageing process.

We can find that depending on the climate, plums ripen between the end of May through August. Here we are more advanced in time. We are nearer or already in Autumn… for the plums and maybe for the writer too.

There is a clear sense of touch in this verse. I imagine touching the skin of an overripe plum and then I imagine touching my own future wrinkled skin or the one of my beloved partner… one day, perhaps.

Indeed, this haiku is introducing the mirror effect of Nature on our own life. Who is ever ready to be old? We could imagine, if we were personifying the plums, that they are not ready to be old… a funny thought. But of course the natural element is here as a medium for introspection into our own ageing process.

I quickly thought of an alternative while reading this verse: overripe plums – / not (yet) ready / to be old

This is what this haiku does for me. Leaning towards an acceptance of the process but I’m only 45 years old so I shall see later on which way I will go through it, if I am given the chance to do so. This haiku is one of a kind that I appreciate. While we mirror Nature, we are given the opportunity to delve into our own self, to ask ourselves the questions that matter.

Author Carolyn Hall:

Many thanks to John Daleiden for selecting my haiku for this week’s re:Virals commentary. This “end of summer” poem seemed to just write itself. It was August, and the stone fruits in our little orchard had all seen better days. Not willing to give up on them, we kept eating them well past their prime . . . till finally it was clear that the ground beneath the trees was their appropriate, and final, resting place. Having turned 83 on my most recent birthday, I could easily relate to those plums. Neither they, nor I, are “ready” to be old. Not that we have any choice in the matter.

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

     
autumn dusk Schrödinger's cat on the fence
—Colleen M. Farrelly
Failed Haiku issue 102, September 2024
(note for small-screen readers: this should be formatted as a monoku)

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:

Carolyn writes: “Originally a Minnesota girl, I pulled up stakes and moved to San Francisco in the early 1960s. After a checkered career including stints as a histology technician, graphic designer, and copy editor, at age 58 I penned (and published) my first haiku and was immediately smitten with the form and the way in which it opened my eyes to the world around me. With Laura Bell as my patient haiku tutor, I became utterly hooked on leaf buds, meadows, streams, and the evening sky. Even if I should never write another haiku, it would be impossible to close my eyes to the world of nature that haiku has gifted to me. For that I am forever grateful.

From 2008 to 2012 I was editor of Acorn. Both prior to, and following that, I edited Mariposa, the journal of the Haiku Poets of Northern California.”

In Carolyn’s entry in the THF Haiku Registry you may see further details, and half a dozen of her selected haiku. There are more in the Living Haiku Anthology. You can read a review of Carolyn’s book Water Lines, with some of her earlier haiku, here. Her most recent books (I think) are Cricket Dust (Red Moon) and Calculus of Daylilies (Amazon).

—–

Image plus thought:

Interviewed extensively for Juxta in late 2015, celebrated haikuist and anthologist Cor van den Heuvel commented:

“…there is another kind of new haiku that I think often fails to present a haiku moment. It’s not the haiku way I’ve been trying to follow. It has actually been a trend that has had many adherents for some years. That is the juxtaposition of a psychological, emotional, or an intellectual situation or thought with a brief reference to an element in the natural world, as if the combination will create a haiku moment. I don’t think it is that easy. …I trace this trend back to Adele Kenney’s fairly well-known haiku about a flight of geese combined with the phrase “once there was so much to say.” The poem first appeared, I think, in the 1990s or earlier. I remember seriously debating with myself as to whether I should include it in the third edition (1999) of The Haiku Anthology. I finally decided not to.

Now, and for some time, the haiku magazines and whole books are full of this kind of “haiku.” Its “success” in finding editors who like it is, I think, helping to encourage more and more poets to write … that kind of haiku.”

Well.  Since that interview, there have been ever more such haiku, against occasional rearguard action from some quarters.  I’m sure we have all written them, and enjoyed reading them.  They are easier to write than it is to find two or more physical images that, artfully arranged, say all that is necessary.  Particularly as that ground has been thoroughly turned over during the past few centuries of classic haiku, leaving us with many a trope recycled, and many a haiku driven more by  a paradigm than by a fresh experience, perception or insight.

Possibly the approach reflects the several attempts to define haiku in English that emphasise the ‘creation of emotion’ in the reader as an essential characteristic.  It is perhaps easier to generate some emotions by displaying them, or alluding to them more directly as a thought, than it is to suggest them through a physical image.

In my view there is room for all variants, and whether or not a haiku makes the grade depends on many characteristics or conventions, not every one of which will be in any haiku yet written. The essence is that with natural simplicity, and without obvious artifice or contrivance, a verse provides just enough information to start the reader thinking or seeing in a fresh and insightful way.  The form and the composition is secondary to that.  William Higginson: “overemphasising the formal aspects of any poem destroys its value for the human beings involved in it; we must read (Ippekirō’s)  poems for the brilliance of his images, the humanity of his observations, and the depths of his feelings for the objects and events he records, as we read―or should read―all haiku.”

The ‘image plus thought’ seems here to stay.  To the extent that ‘the thought’ has a broad reach, and is not somehow  restricted to the individual poet and their ego, it can  pass scrutiny. To quote Sébastien’s commentary as one way of looking at it: “While we mirror Nature, we are given the opportunity to delve into our own self, to ask ourselves the questions that matter.”

Views?

P.S. After the above was written, news is arriving of Cor van den Heuvel’s death yesterday. Born March 6, 1931, he has been a great figure in the history of English haiku.

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