re:Virals 498
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, hosted by Keith Evetts (managing editor) and Melissa Dennison. In the seat today is Keith. This week’s poem, chosen by Vidya Premkumar was:
old book smell i catch the rye —Kimberly A. Horning, USA Prune Juice, Issue 45
Introducing this poem, Vidya writes:
I chose Kimberly A. Horning’s haiku for this week’s analysis because it immediately evoked a profoundly personal and sensory memory. The haiku, deceptively simple, is rich with intertextual and olfactory resonance. The mention of “old book smell” anchors the reader in a physical space, one of aging pages, yellowed edges, and the musky scent of time passed. For me, it recalled hours spent in second hand bookstores, where scent often preceded discovery. The phrase “i catch the rye” cleverly alludes to J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, making the haiku a sensory experience and a literary one.
From a reader-response perspective, the poem invites each of us to project our own associations. For some, it might be nostalgia for adolescence, but for others, it might be a reconnection with literature that shaped them. The lowercase “i” introduces a tone of humility and perhaps even childlike wonder, blurring the lines between self and story. It suggests that the speaker is not simply reading the book, but being caught by it—absorbed into its world. Structurally, the haiku performs what Barthes called the “pleasure of the text”—a fusion of bodily and intellectual engagement.
This poem struck me as the perfect follow-up to an earlier haiku by Gary Hotham: “music two centuries old / the colour flows / out of the tea bag.”* While his evoked the senses through music and tea, Horning conjures the scent and feel of a well-loved book and a well-worn narrative. Both poems celebrate the quiet intimacy of personal rituals that connect us to history, literature, and ourselves.
*This Gary Hotham verse is from “Pulling Out the Bent Nail” (Wind Chimes Press, 1988) —ed.
Opening comment (Keith):
The olfactory nerves run close to the hippocampus and amygdala, key parts of the limbic system associated with lower level visceral emotions, and with memory. Smell and taste are particularly evocative, and so it is in haiku, a medium of the senses, where an emotion may be aroused below the reader’s threshold of consciousness.
Here we have the evocative if hard-to-categorise odour of old books. The first part may be a trifle weakened by the slightly clunky drafting of “old book smell” (vide Megan Halls’ comments last week criticising telegraphese). In the second part of the verse we have a complementary taste, rye, slightly sour. The separate but related smell, and taste, link and harmonise well (toriawase). For further meaning of part two, the poet signals by “old book smell” that we should look to a book. At this point, the monoku might lose readers who do not realise that “i catch the rye” is an allusion to a celebrated work of modern fiction, The Catcher in the Rye, the title of which is, in turn, another literary allusion to a poem by Burns, Comin thro’ the Rye. Thus, while some readers may be left with “i catch the rye” as just an internal comparison between the smell of old books, and the sourish edge of rye as it might be in rye bread or Canadian rye whisky, other readers may go on to consider the import of Salinger’s book and Burns’ poem. While they may have reduced the effective readership, these give depth to Kimberly’s poem in the hallowed haiku tradition of reference to older texts.
Lastly, I don’t know whether the book is still in the curriculum, but it probably spoke loudest to those, like me, of a certain age. Although I was three when The Catcher in the Rye was published as a novel in 1951, it was still very influential when I read it in my teens, and by the 1960s had sparked a whole wave of men-coming-of-age novels, including the “Angry Young Men” movement in UK. And so, we have olfaction prompting a strange odour of adolescence, an element of nostalgia coupled with the bittersweet recollection of the rebellious years we broke out of our cocoon and lost “the innocence of childhood.” Quite a bit compressed into seven words.
Sitarama Seshu Maringanti:
As an avid collector of old books, some that turned yellow due to aging and some dog-eared owing to frequent use or reading by others, I am familiar with their smell. The second part of the line from the Haiku “old book smell I catch the rye” intrigues me a lot. Has it got something to do with story of J D Salinger’s book Catcher in the Rye – which is about preventing the youngsters falling prey to undesirable influences ? Kimberly A Horning may have found in her book shelf an old copy of Salinger’s book that needed dusting off. Though the book smelled old, she must have found a mission to her life – to assume the role of the catcher in the rye !
Sudha Devi Nayak:
The one line haiku is intriguing and cryptic with things unstated and yet deeply implied. The smell of old books with breaking spines and brittle pages, underscored lines, margins crowded with comment, helps the poet to reconnect with self and the world. The much thumbed pages snap open, read, reread and revelled in, as an occasional bookmark pops out carrying in the past.
When the poet tried to catch the rye in an offshoot from Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye perhaps she seeks the protection of her innocence and individuality, preventing herself from falling prey to the ills of the world. Good books are a source of comfort,an escape from the cruelty and deviousness of people. For a time a book transports us out of the current context, we become part of a different narrative, inhabit different worlds, walk through different sunsets and come back charged and replenished. In a world where we long for acceptance and unable to make a connection these brief encounters teach us that books are a reassurance, bastions of knowledge and hope in the midst of confusion.
The image in the haiku to me is of a child in a rye field, on the edge of a precipice and the poet’s is the bounden duty to break her fall, rescue her and preserve her innocence and goodness. The book is a metaphor for the preservaton of oneself.
Books are friends, family, community and conversations with people crossing bridges of time. The good VIcar in The Vicar of Wakefield says books are unreproachable companions to the miserable and that if they could not bring us to enjoy life they would at least teach us to endure it. Books are a continuing relevance in the eternal flux and our refuge. Books are canonised by the power of their readers as temples are sanctified by the footfall of their devotees
Amoolya Kamalnath:
Old book catches my attention enough and then the sense of smell is enhanced with reading the third word. After reading a few pages or just flipping the pages searching around for the source of the smell, the speaker finds a grain. So much unraveling! And there’s a rhyme in ‘i’ and ‘rye’, which is subtle and enriches the short verse possessing just as many syllables as the words it contains.
This little verse shows the progression of time in spite of capturing a moment in time. The poet gauges the age of the book, not only by its age or its presence in whatever place but from the smell of rye hidden in its pages.
There’s a whole story hidden in here. Who had been reading this book earlier? Was it the poet herself or someone else? How long back was that? What had they been munching on while reading? Rye bread or something else. Were they at home or out on a picnic while they read the book? The verse definitely transports the reader back in time.
Peter C. Forster enjoyed thinking about it…:
I remember a speech Jim Kacian gave to the HNA conference a while back that asked how the guardians of haiku in English who had a full understanding of it should prepare for a coming flood of haiku as it became more popular. After analogy with the various levels of baseball, he postulated several levels of haiku and a scoring system.
Running those scores over “old book smell i catch the rye,” I rate it two for form (gets away from 5-7-5 to a form adapted to the content), plus 1 point five for content (okay but no great epiphany), and one point for style and technique—it has a juxtaposition but is in confessional mode with the lower case “i.” This puts the ku halfway between level three “Haiku as Platform” and level four “Haiku as Practice” in Kacian’s Hierarchy of Haiku. There are six levels on the scorecard. The two beyond “Haiku as Practice” are “Haiku as Pathway” and the sixth and highest level, “Haiku as Poetry.”
Kimberly has shared with us an experience in a book store or maybe library linked to a whimsical thought she has, cued (I think we guess) by Salinger’s book. A reader is left to speculate on the connection from the book to her as the poet. The book’s theme is coming to terms with adolescence and the loss of innocence. The poet has twisted round the catcher (protector) of children in the rye (the field where they go astray), into the poet as subject, catching the rye itself.
I am having to work hard as reader to suss out enough to make me feel something or to empathise. I love books and enjoyed Salinger’s but I also loved losing my innocence, so any disconnect is mine. Anyways, I enjoyed thinking about it, so a compliment to the poet. It’ll be good to read her comment as author.
Author Kimberly Horning (in haste!)
Thank you. Just saw the email. I’ve been caring for a friend after his open heart surgery, so poetry is pretty far from my mind. Actually I have a bookmark with “old book smell” emblazoned on it 😌 That’s what gave me the idea—that and the fact that The Catcher in the Rye basically saved my life in HS. Sorry to be so late responding.
Thanks to all who sent commentaries. As the contributor of the commentary reckoned best this week, Peter 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:
from the corn maze the laughter of lost children —Garry Gay Haiku Foundation Volunteer Anthology 2024 "bee here now"
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Footnote:
Kimberly A. Horning.…
…is blessed to live by the sea (in St. Augustine, Florida). A former actor, she is happy to have found a new life in writing haiku. Kim is a total bookworm & classic film nut. Days not spent reading, writing or devouring films are devoted to her four legged pals. A total beach bum/hippie, Kim’s final wish is to die by the railroad tracks like Neal Cassady…
(short bio found on the Starbeck Orion)
I received a hasty reply to my email to Kimberley thirty minutes before this post appears. Kimberly: thanks; and any further comments would be most welcome below the post if you have an opportunity. All good wishes for the recovery of your friend.
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J. D. Salinger: there is an absorbing obituary of this enigmatic author in The Independent of 30th January 2010. Accept adverts to read, if not a subscriber. Without the exercise occasioned by Kimberly’s poem, I’d never have looked for it. For a feminist confessional about The Catcher in the Rye, try this piece by Jessie Thompson on Holden, the ‘privileged snowflake:’ https://www.penguin.co.uk/discover/articles/i-thought-catcher-in-the-rye-was-just-for-obnoxious-teenage-boys
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Many thanks to Peter C. Forster for the particular speech/essay by Jim Kacian, “Bridges,” of which I was unaware. Here is a link. Jim is an artful presenter and his think-pieces are cogent, penetrating and thought-provoking.
Concerning this one, I found interesting the idea that haiku could be compared with baseball… There are several levels, as outlined in the presentation, but the one we’re most interested in is the highest level, the supreme level of haiku here categorised as “Haiku as Poetry.” It’s tempting, but I’m not sure the analogy holds; for there are many kinds of haiku. I don’t see it as like different levels of prowess in baseball, a single sport with defined rules. More like the broad field of bat and ball games where it doesn’t make sense to critique baseball in terms of cricket, tennis, table tennis, badminton and any permutation of the above, although they have things in common. Not all haiku is aimed at being literary and ‘poetic.’ Sometimes it’s practised for other valid reasons, be they humour when faced with life, sharing, healing, mindfulness, meditation, zen, zoka, or other patterns of thought or belief; beauty, insight… A verse may be memorable, and handed down in the canon, for any of those reasons. So I think evaluation on just one plane, that of poetic literature in English, may be unduly restrictive. Morevoer, as soon as we start giving primacy to poetry in haiku, then how to define ‘poetry?’ And whose poetry? English poetics do keep nudging their way into haiku in the English language, don’t they?
Your views?
Then we have the suggestion of systematised scoring. I was tempted by that too. It reminded me of serving on the tasting panel of a wine merchant in Lisbon, and the time when, suffering greatly from imposter syndrome, I filled in for a missing judge at an International Wine Challenge, the only amateur. Ten tables of six judges each. Every ten to fifteen minutes, a new bottle (rather more consideration than one would give a new haiku, I fancy). For two days… We had the usual score sheet for nose, colour, body, palate and finish; totalling 100 points. And, like the endearing haiku community, the practitioners amongst whom I was sitting were very reluctant to give such a low score as would ‘fail’ a wine even when they agreed in conversation that it was terrible and they wouldn’t serve it to a guest.
Like haiku, there are many forms of wine. Do you compare a syrah against a riesling? Each was judged against characteristics for its kind —although there were common factors to look for, and some points available for personal overall assessment. However, I don’t think that the scorecard approach would work with haiku. There are too many factors if you consider form, style, the long list of ‘aesthetics’ and other desiderata, the impossibility of any one verse having them all, the passionate disagreements, the personal tastes, freshness, the progressively deadening effects (as on the palate) of repeated tropes and so forth. The assessment should be simpler, analogue not digital, I think.
It may be long ago, but the article is stimulating, the sample verses given are interesting: reading recommended. The scorecard approach doesn’t seem to have caught on since 2007. Instead, we often get deliriously enthusiastic encomia on even the most banal verses.
Again, your views?
