re:Virals 472
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 Nathan Sidney, was:
glass rain the rush of blood as you spit me out —Jennifer Hambrick, Heliosparrow, Sept 7th 2024
Introducing this poem, Nathan writes:
What struck me most about Jennifer’s ku was its corporeality, its violence. Glass rain, rush of blood, spat out; there’s nothing serene about this poem, it’s all force and power. But it also has a hint of the tender heart, the rush of betrayal or rejection and a vivid collocation between the cutting rain and what I take to be an argument between lovers. It could be a movie scene.
Opening comment:
A powerful verse by an assured poet, adept at many forms. Also adding variety to the daily diet of butterflies, blossoms, birdsong, the moon, stars, letting go, Grandma, snow and ashes.
We’ve often seen in re:Virals that readers’ chosen favourites have something arresting about them. Getting the reader’s attention (so that they do more than skim-read) is particularly useful in this very short form, as it is in movie straplines. The first line with its memorable fragment “glass rain” accomplishes this straight away. The elision of glass and rain prompts all sorts of associations, from wet windows via see-through barriers, brittle fragility and liquid softness to the familiar negative feelings that accompany unmodified “rain.” The next part of the following phrase, “a rush of blood” summons up, again, several visceral associations from an access of red anger, to the edge of madness, to uncontrollable embarrassment; and relates to the theme of liquids and negative feelings set up in line 1. The final part of the phrase complements these lines with another violent, fluid image: no polite rejection with an excuse, but the ejection of a bitter and unpalatable thing spat out. An enormous range of feelings and emotions is concentrated in the imagery.
The whole exudes alienation, anger, and bitterness. It may suggest a wish for revenge (but on subsequent readings, not necessarily). Although the verse is phrased in very personal terms, it is nevertheless detached enough for a reader to bring their own experiences of rejection to it, for the exact circumstances are not given but left to the imagination. Some may recoil, others empathise, others find it cathartic. I enjoyed meditating upon it.
Amanda White:
Immediately visceral. This haiku birthed me into a world of sensory pain and beauty in one big explosion for so few words. Jennifer has created an outer and inner world of intense emotion, of nature and our own nature. There is nothing gentle about the rain here or caring. There is nothing maternal and yet something that connects us with nature and others. Am I inside watching the persistent rain on a window, trapped but then caught in a moment of ecstasy to get out into the weather. It mirrors my day here in Italy where the rain has dug in, we are catching the edge of a hurricane from somewhere else and finding mountains covered by mist that then reveal themselves and tempt me outside. But glass too here suggests more than a window and coupled with blood in the second line, there is a physical sense of cutting, pain and death. All life is mirrored here, our brief and passionate but at times difficult existence. The inner and outer worlds. The sense of a nature we find beautiful but does not care for us at all. Spit is a wonderful evocative onomatopoeic cut in the final line. As the rain persists here this haiku has encouraged me to spit myself out and live a little more.
Sébastien Revon:
Rarely did I read a senryu as violent as this one: “glass rain” already sets the tone. I become stiff, my blood frozen. What’s going to happen next? That first line couldn’t be more ominous.
“the rush of blood” develops the first line. We go from a complex, blended first image, combining nature and a human-crafted element to the bodily fluid we all share.
The two images juxtaposed create a stark and shocking impact on me.
Finally the third line “as you spit me out” is like a slap on the face of the reader. I am hurt but probably less than the writer has been hurt. The anger, the resentment, the bitterness, the emotional pain.
This verse is quite upsetting and I think it was designed and crafted for that purpose. Am I right in thinking that? Is that verse just a rendition of the emotional experience of the writer? Does the verse mean anything beyond that? It probably does, but I am so drawn to the emotional discomfort that this verse brings that I cannot detach myself from it in order to switch to a more cold analytical commentary about the depth of it or its layers of meaning. I am hurt and maybe it is good. It means I am human. This verse tells me more about myself that it does about the one who wrote it. If this verse has a purpose, maybe let it be a means for self-introspection.
Melissa Dennison:
This is an intriguing one. Glass rain…apparently there is a planet out there in our vast universe where it does just that. Can you imagine? However, I suspect this is not what the author is conveying. Or is she? Since this poem is ambiguous, with room to be read in various ways.
Before I discovered there is glass raining down somewhere out there in the vast ocean of space I took it to mean pain. Sharp, slicing pain. And the word blood seems to reflect this.
The rush of blood as a phrase usually suggests a rash or foolish act. Is this what Jennifer means? If so I would love to know what the act was.
The rush of blood rolls off the tongue, nice bit of alliteration.
It’s dark isn’t it? A bit gothic or noir.
Who is spitting her out? Why?
Is this a fight? A relationship ending? Could that be why there is pain? Does she regret this as suggested in the phrase ‘the rush of blood?’.
Or could it be understood differently, as a triumphant moment? Is she relishing this? Could it be like being reborn?
I think there is humour here too. You know in a way it reminds me of Plath.
I like it, these few dramatic lines get you thinking. That’s the sign of a good haiku, that there is space for you the reader to fill in the gaps.
Linda A. Powers—a story of rejection:
In this story of rejection, the falling rain feels like cutting shards of glass. Rain is clear so this line poignantly suggests a moment of clarity. “Glass” may also mean a mirror hinting the poet is seeing reflections of the truth. The “rush of blood” follows beautifully from the cutting rain. Both are flowing: as the rain falls down, blood rushes up to the face and through the body as strong emotions wash over the poet. Despair? Anger? Confusion? All these and more. The poet is struck by rejection and may taste this injury like blood in the mouth, may wish to spit out the pain but feels like a thing that has been spat out. The loving poet’s heartfelt devotion is washed away in the rain.
Author Jennifer Hambrick:
Thanks to Nathan.
This poem is about physical embodiment and the viscerality of emotions in the interpersonal realm. The poem began when the image “glass rain” came to me, seemingly out of nowhere. I thought the image was fresh, and its sensual and emotional depth led me to consider its poetic implications more fully. I imagine that, in a world where glass could be physically embodied as rain, it might embody in perfectly smooth drops. But if it’s really glass rain embodying according to the essential nature of glass, it could also equally easily embody as shards dropped rough and unrounded and ready to cut and wound.
That potential for physical wounding, in this poem, manifests in the “rush of blood” from a mouth that “spit(s) me out,” but it stands metaphorically for an emotional wound which cuts, if you will, far deeper. This emotional wound isn’t inspired by any emotional wound particular to me, but rather by the universal experience of interpersonal rejection and loss – the lover who pulls away with violent revulsion, the childhood schoolmate who wants to play with other kids at recess.
These rejections weave into the DNA of our self-perceptions. They “break our hearts,” which is a fleshy way of saying we feel them emotionally and somatically, with every cell, every neuron of our beings. Where the emotions meet our flesh and blood is more than the birthplace of our animality; it’s where the full fever of our humanity takes on skin and bones.
Thanks to all who sent commentaries. Welcome, Linda. As the contributor of the commentary reckoned best this week, Linda 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:
the cat asleep next to the new TV morning sun —John S Green The Haiku Foundation Haiku Dialogue 18 September 2024
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Footnote:
Jennifer Hambrick scarcely needs introduction. A very accomplished poet, in haikai as well as long form poetry, her website is here. A selection of her haiku may be read at the Mann Library.
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Received after the deadline from Lakshman Bulusu:
This haiku/senryu combination is about raining tiny shards of glass instead of rain water on earth. Glass is made from various raw materials and intense heat. L1 captures this image in just two words. One can notice how the familiar word ‘rain’ is used in a special manner. L2 and L3 refer to the connotation of defeating someone badly or having someone speak openly in quick succession of words when he/she is unwilling to do so. This causes some irritation, upset, or anger in him/her. It is this that causes the rush of blood and it seems to rain glass as opposed to water instead. The intense heat while the fabrication of glass (L1) and the rush of blood (a metaphor for anger/upset) while losing in life (L2 and L3) align creatively.—–
I leave you with (yet) another Japanese aesthetic prized by Bashō: atarashimi —novelty (in form or content); he had in mind the need to refresh tradition. And with a quote attributed to R.H. Blyth: “If a haiku isn’t interesting, it isn’t a haiku.” Does anyone have the original book and page (or letter) reference for this, please?
Comments (7)
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Hambrick’s piece is
vivid,
I’ll give it that. Oddly, it does not leave much to the imagination.
I prefer this one, also among those in Heliosparrow where Hambrick is much featured.
a peaceful death the river unkeening
….”unkeening” is another word that gets reader attention (also “un-” words are fashionable in the genre), and personally I like it when good old words are kept alive and used. However, Lorin, who in the renku sessions argued that describing the moon as “indifferent” was nevertheless implying unacceptable personification of the moon (I took the other side), might argue similarly that a river cannot possibly wail and ‘not wailing’ implies that it can…
What do you think, Meg?
Meanwhile I thought this week’s poem was to an extent paradoxical in that it was intensely personal and explicit, yet left the reader to bring their own experience of rejection, as the exact circumstances were not given,
.
Keith,
I think you have a broader and more detailed sense of what is going on in the haiku world than do I– to notice the
frequent use of “un” words, for example.
As to personification, well, naturally it depends. I do think someone in the depths of grief, or despair, which might tend to color all experience, could internalize (so to speak) the sound of a river and hear it as keening, though I think someone might choose another word– “keening” is pretty high-pitched for a river. (Is there a lower-pitched word that gets at the same thing?)
Then, a peaceful death might reverse this. But I realize I am stretching, and begin to question the poem I chose. But in general, I do think, overall, that in states of heightened subjectivity one might without choice experience the world accordingly. The world mirrors one’s grief, one’s joy, and seems to partake.
I suppose the “unkeening” follows a more painful experience of a loved-one’s death.
Perhaps the “glass rain” poem might bring a reader to consider her own experience of rejection, but, looking at it with that in mind, I would say that it is so subjective, so extreme, so violent as to exclude the reader. I have to get over the shock of it before I can think of anything else. And when I do, my first thought is to wonder, as someone who has experienced painful loss, if my experience was anything like standing under a “glass rain”. Then I recoil once more.
Hi Dan – here’s a link to search results in THF digital library for volumes authored by Blyth, including the two that you asked about : https://thehaikufoundation.org/omeka/search?query=blyth&query_type=boolean&record_types%5B%5D=Item&record_types%5B%5D=File&record_types%5B%5D=Collection&record_types%5B%5D=SimplePagesPage&submit_search=Submit
Many thanks princess k!
Hi Keith, I could not find an exact source, do you have access to these 2?
Blyth, R. H. Haiku (4 volumes). Hokuseido Press, 1949-1952.
Blyth, R. H. A History of Haiku. Hokuseido Press, 1963-1964
Hi Dan, thanks to the THF Library I do have them, but searching the pdfs for “interesting” (which word Blyth uses often), the closest I can find is Blyth’s Haiku vol 1 “Eastern Culture” p. 112: “haikai, which replaced the mere pastime of renga with aesthetical motives, and from which haiku broke off, treat of “interesting” things. ”
Which is not the same thing as the attributed quote…