re:Virals 476
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:
false spring the robin's egg blue of fresh snow —Laurie Greer The Heron’s Nest Volume XXVI, Number 1: March 2024
Introducing this poem, Jo writes:
I love the surprise of this poem and the way in which, on a full reading, its disparate pieces fit so beautifully together.
Its opening line, ‘false spring’, deftly suggests hope deferred and yet that hope extends into the second line where we are presented with the blue of a robin’s egg. However, that further promise is a sleight of hand, for what we see is only the colour. There is no clutch of bright eggs holding new life. Instead, the blue is that ‘of fresh snow’. Cold and pure, but not imbued with fledgling potential. Indeed, this new snow is deep enough to absorb the other wavelengths of light.
This is, as line one states, a ‘false spring’. It may be some time before life is unlocked with the thaw.
Opening comment:
There’s a certain amount of poetic licence in this well-composed haiku of Laurie’s (who makes a well-deserved second appearance in this column within a fortnight). The eggs of our British robin are white-ish with sandy spots, but those of the North American robin are a startling vivid blue — bluer by far than the blue tinge taken on by deep snow or glacial ice in sunlight. But enough to cue in the thought of the bird’s egg and suggest the presence of one, and a scenario that the egg is a casualty of the robin’s being misled by what has turned out a temporary thaw.
There is balanced alliteration between “false spring” and “fresh snow” to tie the verse across the lines, as well as the central rhythm of “robin’s egg blue” that rolls nicely off the tongue.
Blue can be upbeat, as in blue skies, or denote sorrow, as in the blues: the latter use established by Chaucer some 650 years ago in The Complaint of Mars (“Wyth teres blewe and with a wounded herte“). Robin’s egg blue is a bright, cheerful colour but in the context, blue with cold has to suggest that death and sorrow has triumphed over the prospect of life and flight through the skies.
Kigo: the admixture of bird’s egg, spring and snow might give haikai purists the shivers, but the spring is a false spring, the bird’s egg is first a colour before we get to the physical image, and the snow is fresh snow. Of the classic kigo in spring we have:
shallow spring (haru asashi, early spring).
returning cold (saekaeru, early spring).
still cold (yokan, early spring).
light snow (awayuki, all spring).
end of snow (yuki no hate, mid spring).
last frost (wasurejimo, late spring).
And now we have “false spring.” In his recent presentation to the British Haiku Society, Jim Kacian suggested that to address climate change, we might need new kigo, or “kigo-plus.” After all, “climate change” or “global warming” do read more like explanatory category titles than kigo. It seems to me that “false spring” could be one candidate, and Laurie’s verse could go into a possible climate change saijiki. Others may emerge.
Meanwhile, if the strictures against multiple kigo are relaxed, we can reflect the disorientation of the seasons, as we see them in reality and in our notebooks, by including kigo from different seasons in our verses. A robin’s egg might fry as well as freeze (our robins can produce two or three broods a year).
Dan Campbell:
I am a huge fan of graffiti artists and wondered how such an artist would transform this poem into a work of art that expresses the poem’s meaning.
They would start with a pale blue wash spreading it across the wall as a soft background to create a faint, almost dreamlike effect.
In the center of this wash, the words “false spring” would be painted in delicate, lowercase script, their letters thin and somewhat shaky, as though they might melt away or blur if looked at too long. The artist would choose a cool, frosty white for these words, edged with a subtle outline of darker blue to give a sense of fragility.
Beneath “false spring,” the phrase “the robin’s egg blue of fresh snow” would appear, written larger, perhaps with a brushstroke effect that gives each word a sense of softness and flow. To evoke the sense of the egg’s fragility, some letters might look like they’re breaking or cracking, hints of pale lines running through the blue like tiny fractures.
Scattered around these words, the artist would add small, stenciled robins’ eggs, painted in that delicate pale blue, some whole and perfect, others faintly cracked or barely visible. These eggs, symbols of hope and new beginnings, would be subtly placed, almost hidden, within the mural.
To finish, the artist might spray a faint mist of white or pale gray over the entire mural, creating a sense of cold air settling onto the words. This final touch would mimic winter’s grip on spring’s promise, symbolizing the poem’s essence of hope tempered by fragility.
Melissa Dennison:
What an interesting way to describe snow, as robin’s egg blue, I shall be looking out for that if it snows this winter. There are many words to describe snow, and possibly many colours. I wonder how many of us stop to consider snow as anything but white? It could be pink, orange or gold, grey, brown, depending on the time of day, weather, quality of light and where it is situated. I often see the dark brown sludgy stuff as it melts on the road.
My chance to witness the colour of snow seems to diminish year on year as our climate changes. Winters tend to be warmer and wetter here in the UK. As a child I recall year after year trudging to school in knee deep snow, and hours of fun throwing snowballs or building snowmen.
I sense there could be a nod here to these changes with the first line ‘false spring’. Perhaps it has been mild and there are blossoms and flowers opening earlier than usual, insects emerging before their is time (as I have witnessed with ladybirds). Has the robin been laying eggs too? As the climate continues to warm, nature is increasingly confused and there are disconnects between the nesting season of birds and the emergence of food species such as caterpillars and so the young struggle to survive.
This then is the message that I think this haiku is conveying, how nature is increasingly out of kilter, where many behaviours and activities associated with particular seasons are happening at other times of the year. Looking in my garden this morning I have strawberry flowers which are about to open, a fuchsia that is full of flower buds, summer bedding surviving whilst the deciduous trees shedding their leaves. It is incongruous, and not normal for November, usually we would have had a frost by now and these flowers would be no more. The patterns and rhythms of the year are definitely changing.
Lakshman Bulusu:
This seasonal haiku contains a ‘double kigo’ and reflects on
‘false spring’ when the weather gets unusually warmer in late winter or early spring before suddenly getting freezing cold again. The robin’s egg is green-blue in color that is recognizable as getting warm for hatching.
A parallel haiku to this can unearth the meaning in this as in
why a separate spring?
the robin’s egg blue
nesting in unseasonal summer
Just as the false spring tricks the vegetation into dormancy, the robin’s egg blue gets fresh warmth in this period before getting tucked away in its nest below the fresh snow of the freeze in the weather that follows the short period of warmth.
L1 refers to kigo of ‘a short summer’ and line L3 of reoccurring winter.
Metaphorically this might mean enablement of what one desires or longs for a short while yet fruitful—staying with them protected with the external ambience not hurting or being an hindrance.
I like the way the haikuist threads the ‘double kigo’ to the rest of the haiku.
Amoolya Kamalnath—the expectations of spring fail to materialize:
It is spring. The robin has laid its blue egg. However, there’s still fresh snowfall. Is it early spring?
It’s spring but not for this robin because the baby bird never hatched. What happened to the egg? Did some animal or bird steal the egg? Did the egg somehow fall down? Was it dropped or thrown down by an intruder?
I see a clever word play in this haiku. The word ‘blue’ is used for the actual colour of a robin’s egg and to show sadness (due to the loss of its egg) just as fresh snow too indicates sadness (probably on account of the same reason). The sadness could also be because the expectations from spring did not materialize or that it was only a thought of spring’s arrival. Spring seems false due to the unhatched/missing egg, due to a loss rather than birth, due to sorrow rather than joy, due to departure rather than arrival, due to signs of late winter rather than early spring.
Author Laurie Greer:
I don’t remember much about the immediate circumstances of writing this, and I don’t think it went through drafts. But it has a couple of fairly deep roots. One is the scarcity of snow here over the past few years, which in some ways makes it loom larger in mind. It raises questions, too, such as when is it spring if there hasn’t been much of a winter, or if the seasons seem broken up and their pieces shuffled in unpredictable ways?
But though snowless, winters have been sometimes brutally cold. A few years ago there was a February so mild that trees started budding and birds made nests. Sparrows nested on my window ledge and were incubating a brood when March came in like a pack of ferocious lions. The cold and wind stayed all month and while the birds tried, they could not save their first eggs. I could hear them moaning as they bravely sat their ground. I’ll never forget it. There could have been no falser spring. That’s obliquely commemorated in this haiku.
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:
come as you are ... cherry petals in the wind —Vladislav Hristov Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival 2024 international section Hon. MentionThe 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:
Laurie Greer is an independent bookseller in Washington, DC. Drawn by the immediacy and brevity of the genre and the warmth and generosity of its community, she started working on haiku in 2018 as a distraction from giving up running. This short, direct form soon expanded from something to do while walking to a somewhat obsessive ongoing activity.
A few of her verses may be viewed here in THF’s Haiku Registry. One of Laurie’s poems received a Touchstone Award last year.
