re:Virals 491

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 Scott Mason, was:

   
alone
a meadow
makes me its weed
—Peter Yovu
 The Heron's Nest (Volume XXVI, Number 3: September 2024)

Introducing this poem, Scott writes:

I find Peter Yovu’s work in haiku not just thought provoking but highly “feeling provoking” — this is poetry, after all! His trademark novel take on everyday moments feels completely authentic to me, not gratuitous (i.e., for the sake of novelty alone), and thoroughly refreshing. This poem is just one example.

I would speculate that most of us approach our surroundings with the abiding, if low level, question, “What am I to make of this?” In Yovu’s poem the situation is flipped: the meadow in question is making something of the poem’s protagonist. Of course, it’s not quite that simple since the poem is not just the record of a moment but, more to the point, a record of the narrator’s perception of that moment. This, then, presents yet another twist. Oftentimes we seek out natural spaces for a sense of comfort or belonging or even a feeling of embrace by (or communion with) some greater whole — just consider “forest bathing.” Here, however, nature seems to be a collaborator, if not an active agent, in the narrator’s sense of alienation.

But, then again, isn’t a weed as much a part of the natural scheme as, say, a flower? This sort of extended rumination and emotional engagement is one of the glories I find time and again in Yovu’s work. I look forward to reading how others respond to this simple yet capacious haiku.

Opening comment:

With a bow to its refreshing, unexpected imagery (atarashimi— novelty, freshness, originality), and to its surplus meaning (yojō — less is more), this verse on first reading is sad and self-deprecatory in keeping with haiku traditions of misère.  The poet is alone…and made a weed. Or the meadow alone is capable of accepting — or not accepting — the poet, according to the reading and to the value we place on ‘weed’ as contrasted with ‘grass’ or  ‘wildflower.’  Any gardener knows that a ‘weed’ is simply a plant not wanted in a given spot.  Any poet knows that a meadow is a bucolic, lyrical place.  So do we feel that as the meadow makes the lonely poet its weed, he finds acceptance there even though he may be alien and hitherto alone?  Does he now belong among the other ‘weeds’ that we know alternatively as wild flowers?  Or is he even more aware that he is alone and unwanted, and feels himself a disparaged ‘weed’ to be uprooted?

All that, of course, if we as readers want to understand something from a verse. To treat it as intelligible rather than ineffable. Some contend that only that which goes beyond reason, that which has a wordless visceral effect,  is poetry.  Some, that haiku is not poetry.  Some, that it is pure poetry stripped down to minimal essentials.  Others maintain that haiku is a direct transfer of real and present sensory stimuli from the observed to the reader without mediation by the poet.  Yet others that creative imagination is inevitable and indispensible in the process.  Or can haiku be all of the above?  Concise, sensory, direct, imaginative, visceral, ineffable, and intelligible.  Are all the arts attempts at communication, to be assessed by their success or failure in communicating?  Or random sparks in the dark; chaotic, unorganised or without mutual meaning, paint flung blind at a wall?  Or, something in between.

This week’s haiku again shows that engaging the reader’s attention and interest is a key aspect of these tiny verses. I think it succeeds.  Familiar tropes and well-worn phrases, even as kigo, are perhaps less likely to do that.  At the other end, verses that are barely intelligible, or too jumbled in concrete form,  or otherwise affectedly precious,  provoke a reader to move on without the bother.

Peter’s poem hits the sweet spot. Commenting on an ‘editor’s choice’ haiku (by Anita Virgil) in March 2009, editor Susumu Takiguchi wrote: “One can read a lot into this haiku, which is not a pre-requisite of good haiku but which is often the case with good haiku. Equally important is that, in many cases, one had better not read anything into haiku, however tempting it may be.” That might apply equally well to this week’s verse.

Alan Harvey:

Peter Yovu’s haiku sounds to me like acceptance – the field is accepting the one – even if only a weed. A soft, gentle acceptance in this world. There is nothing brass about this haiku. Its gentleness treads lightly, refusing to step on and crush the weeds. And what exactly is a weed? George Washington Carver often said, “A weed is a flower growing in the wrong place.” This world needs more acceptance and maybe more weeds. Thank you, Peter.

Pamela Garry:

It is not only dismissed, but often poisoned, plucked and trampled. The beautiful weed in its abundance, shamed for being uninvited. But to zoom into a single weed, its beauty exceeds. And in the panorama, scattered weeds sow swaths of color.

Line 3, I see how the meadow draws the solitary poet to roam throughout the whole meadow! Like a weed, the poet spreads his attention and whole self every which way through the singular meadow. The poet is one with the meadow. Poet and meadow are together each ‘alone’. How glorious to be alone and to be a weed in a meadow!

Peter C. Forster:

Solitude—that recurring theme in haiku. As if it is not sad enough to be alone, the poet’s in a meadow, a poetic place that we picture with wild flowers and grasses, where he feels he is made a weed. Something that doesn’t belong. Something to be grubbed out. It could be read as a rejection of even a single human presence in the natural world that we have spoiled. “Where every prospect pleases, and only man is vile” —in the words of Bishop Heber.

(host comment: author of many hymns, Bishop Reginald Heber’s poem is entitled: From Greenland’s Icy Mountains —topical again! Best forgotten as a poem, aside from that couplet).

Melissa Dennison:

A few years ago I went on a botanical trip and visited a meadow. Maybe meadows and fields seem unremarkable, but here in the UK we have lost around 98% of our wildflower meadows since world war two. The need to feed our population was greater than the need to conserve native species. Being able to sit in a wildflower meadow then is special and rare.

I like to imagine that this meadow is full of glorious wildflowers. And that it’s summer, and there are sounds of pollinators busily working away.

Perhaps the poet is laid down, surrounded by blooms, not doing anything in particular, enjoying the moment.

In a hectic world, that is seductive.

The value of alone time in nature. Just being. Peter expresses an interesting point, as he calls himself a weed. This reflects our complicated relationship with nature, earlier I wrote about wildflowers. Surely that is what ‘weeds’ are, but when we see them in our gardens and public spaces we can get quite stressed, battling them every year with the glyphosate. We like to compartmentalise and separate. Wildflowers are ok in meadows, not alongside the prize dahlias. ‘Weeds’ are unwanted and unloved.

Thus, I think this is a love poem, where the poet describes himself in such terms, but where he has succumbed, becoming a part of the meadow. This message appeals to me, as surely we should all feel connected to and want to be in love with the nature around us?

Jo McInerney:

For me, Peter Yovu’s haiku skilfully compels us to question human beings’ place in the natural order.

The opening line’s single word, ‘alone’, stresses isolation both semantically and through its placement and number. The reader recognises the solitary and singular nature of the speaker and wonders what is implied by this discrete condition. Does the speaker savour or regret this disconnectedness?

Line two – ‘a meadow’ – provides a physical location. There would be few readers without experience of or fantasies about a meadow. A nurturing place of ease and beauty, of grass and wildflowers.

Geographically meadows can be either man-made or natural. If natural, they exist because temperature, rainfall, soil type or regular flooding prevent large plants establishing themselves prolifically. They are places that seem to invite human occupation, use, enjoyment. In David’s Psalm 23, his god has him ‘lie down in green pastures’. In this context, the speaker’s apparent separateness initially seems paradoxical.

Line three – ‘makes me its weed’ – extends this sense of separation. Surrounded by gentle abundance, the speaker apparently feels an outcast, an unwanted species. At this point, the haiku almost seems a small re-enactment of the loss of Eden. The separateness revealed here could be seen as both the cause and the outcome of humanity’s existential problem, neither in harmony with the natural world nor independent of it.

If line three is to be read as ‘the meadow’ rejecting the speaker, then perhaps this is meant to be a result of the harm human beings have inflicted upon a world within which we have failed to recognise our place.

Lakshman Bulusu—an object of its own destruction:

This haiku points out the sadness involved in solitude. It portrays “non-existence in existence.” The “meadow” being alone is so “solitary to the point of broken” that it makes the viewer or the character in it “an object of its own destruction”, the “weed”.

Some might find splendor in solitude; however, as this haikuist points out, the meadow is no longer charming being alone, and it goes to the extent of erasing his existence – an “adventure in adventure” that is one of negativity.

The passage of time ultimately uproots both the character and the meadow and brings it to a realistic end that is one of non-existence, and not any more experienceable as one that was all green and bubbling with sunshine and moonshine and flora and fauna.

Author Peter Yovu:

I cannot point to a specific incident which prompted this. I tend to think the feeling of being alone— somewhere . . . anywhere . . . inchoately dwells in some houseless corner of one’s being, longing for expression, to feel assuaged (or intensified) by words . . . . Words— one way being alone feels itself. Not the only way.

Thanks to all who sent commentaries. As the contributor of the commentary reckoned best this week, Lakshman has chosen next week’s poem, which you’ll find below. We invite you to write a commentary to it. It may be short, or of moderate length, academic, your personal response, spontaneous, or idiosyncratic.  As long as it focuses on the verse presented, and with respect for the poet, all genuine reader reaction, criticism, and pertinent discussion is of value.   Out-takes are kept 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:

     
secluded beach
a wavelet
plays footsie
— Scott Mason
  Modern Haiku Vol. 55.3, Autumn 2024

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Footnote:

Peter’s poems have been considered several times in past re:Virals, e.g:

the sky’s blue gong an orange in my hand

two ballerinas in one skin a newborn foal

a blue coffin/one nail escapes/the solar system

a fork in the/the road turning into a/a clock

Peter Yovu has lived in Vermont a long time, worked in psychiatric facilities, earned an MFA from Warren Wilson College, loves Tomas Tranströmer as well as Tomaš Šalamun. Paints abstract. Is tired of bears in his garbage. Has a charming sense of mischief.

You might like to read Šalamun’s poem ‘Alone’ in the context of this week’s verse.

Peter deconstructed the haiku scene in his seminal article “Disordering Haiku”, for the New Zealand Poetry Society (no longer available online), the substance of which first appeared as a book review (of a Red Moon Anthology) in Modern Haiku: That review article, still available, is well worth reading. Although that was some seventeen years ago, the scene has not changed that much.  The substantial majority of verses that flood the journals follow uniform patterns. Peter and the like-minded have fostered a refreshingly different approach that leavens the mix, makes us blink, and can produce effects that transcend the words.

Peter also hosted and prompted a series of very interesting discussions among the elite of the haiku community, Field Notes, archived in the THF forum and again, well worth reading.

Peter has published several books, some of which can be found in the THF LIbrary. His latest work, Shine Shadow, Red Moon Press is reviewed by Cherie Hunter Day in Frogpond 48.1, Winter 2024-2025: “Shine Shadow is …. a satisfying literary treat that offers haiku or haiku-like minimalist poems along with longer poems in the lyric, narrative, and mediative modes, short prose, and haibun. Over sixty percent of the poems are haiku or haiku-like, either single-line or three-line poems, some with expansive alignment.” Citing Philip Rowland (editor of NOON): “when the integration of haiku with other kinds of poetry is done with nuanced care . . .the effect is enriching, opening new avenues and perspectives for the reader.”  Peter comments via email: “and for the writer as well.”

Scott Mason has also reviewed the book for Modern Haiku in considerable detail and with great enthusiam, noting inter alia that “Peter Yovu’s work in haiku is so very fresh that it’s hard to imagine he’s been at it, on and off, for nearly four decades.”

I’m another enthusiast.  Peter’s body of work and thought is significant. He makes me think. His range is admirable and original. I savour his poems. You can find an early book in the THF Library, Turn To The Earth, containing some of his haiku from 1991 onwards, to read or download. Already good, you can see how far his journey has since taken him.

I think it’s a good strategy to include serious haiku in a book with other short poems and somewhat longer forms. The haiku community can be a little too hermetically sealed, tending to prefer ‘pure’ haiku, senryu, haibun and haiga in a book. Yet at the same time bemoaning the marginalisation of haiku by ‘mainstream poetry.’ Equally, the readership for ‘mainstream poetry’ may tend to assume that haiku poets can’t cut the mustard: so a demonstration that they can does not go amiss.