re:Virals 506

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 Jo McInerney was:

     
Ides of March
snowmelt down the rainspout
floods the alley
— chad henry
   tsuri doro Issue #8 – March/April 2022

Introducing this poem, Jo writes:

This haiku by chad henry made me laugh out loud — not a bad reaction in these aching cold days in southeast Gippsland, as autumn meanly drizzles into winter. I love the classical portentousness of the first line, the temporary beauty of snowmelt, and then the sudden, mock disaster of a flooded alleyway.

Opening comment (Keith):

Another verse that has elements of both haiku and senryu. I’ve had a similar experience, although it was in late summer. After a long period of drought, a welcome deluge. Only then did it become evident that our outside drain by the back wall of the house was blocked. I had to strip off to unblock it in the belting rain. The resulting verse was rejected. I could have done with a portentous and unusual first line…

Not far short of the spring equinox, the Ides of March were the occasion of Roman and other ceremonies, as Wikipedia will inform you. But to anglophone readers of literature, they are evermore linked by Plutarch and Shakespeare to the soothsayer’s warning to Julius Caesar: “Beware the Ides of March.” It was to be the day of Caesar’s assassination. The phrase has generalised to become one of omen, bad omen. Its use as a ‘keyphrase’ gives the verse some depth in literature, in time, and in associations. It is also a refreshing change from ‘spring equinox.’

Although the Ides of March fixes a time of year it does not necessarily fix the season between the hemispheres. The poet does so with “snowmelt” in the second line, where the rhythm changes to trochees, skipping along. The dark changes to light.

Murphy’s Law holds that if something can go wrong, it will. Great! —the snow is melting. Damn! —the alley is flooding. If that was all the Ides of March hinted at this year, we’ve got off lightly. However…extrapolating…with global snowmelt, the portents are very bad.  Sea levels are rising by more than one-tenth of an inch every year. Amsterdam and former New Amsterdam will be among the first to be flooded. Then there’ll be Hell to pay.

Jerry Reynolds:

This Haiku is a powerful example of form, effectively using minimal words to create a vivid image. The connection of a historical phrase creates a subtle tension that adds depth to the poem. Strong imagery and concise language make it a successful poetic expression.

Sitarama Seshu Maringanti:

The use of the mystical phrase ‘Ides of March’ in this haiku sounds as ominous as it sounded when Shakespeare first used it in Julius Caesar. Those living in the western hemisphere are familiar with landspouts that form from the ground up. Unlike the tornadoes, these dry formations are not as destructive as the tornadoes that are associated with thunderstorms.

Chad Henry refers to a rainspout that is fed by snowmelt ,augmenting the destructive power of the ‘sprout’ to flood the alley. I have the feeling that a personal experience of sorts prompted Chad Henry to tell us about a real life incident. He wrote a beautiful haiku to convey that personal experience and I like it.

Those of us who live on the sea shores of the tropics must have seen and experienced huge funnel-shaped columns of sea water sprouting from the sea and, in a tsunami like sweep, rise high and destroy all things on the coast. The tragic destruction occurs during cyclones caused by the formation of low pressure over land and adjoining sea. I have lived in the colder climates and experienced snow storms/ blizzards. Melting snow obviously augments the sources of a rainspout to flood the alleys of hamlets and villages downstream.

Sudha Devi Nayak:

The poet opens his haiku with the Ides of March, the fifteenth day in the ancient Roman calendar. The day is considered inauspicious, associated with a foreboding of doom. The date became important in history as the day the Roman emperor Julius Caesar was assassinated and later immortalized by Shakespeare in the eponymous play. In this the soothsayer warns the emperor: “Beware the Ides of March”. The emperor in his hubris ignored this advice and paid the ultimate price.

In this haiku the poet is perhaps talking about an unexpected turn of events where there is a heavy pile-up of snow that melts down a rainspout – a device for draining water to prevent damage to the roof. The result is flooding in the alley which inconveniences people and livestock, as it enters their homes and upsets their routines. We living in India have experienced devastating floods during the monsoons that upend lives and livelihoods. Such a fearsome event has been memorialised by the poet in this haiku. Natural catastrophes like human catastrophes are often unpredictable and random. All that is left to us is the resilience and fortitude to tackle such situations, reconciling ourselves with loss and salvaging what remains. We may have an indication of the impending events which in our callousness and arrogance we ignore at our cost. At the same time events may confront us without prior intimation and we are expected to brace up to these events as best as we can. That is the unwritten law of life.

Harrison Lightwater:

The black humour and ironic acceptance of fate made me smile. There are always two or more sides to everything. Something to be pleased about. Something to worry or grumble about. Chad Henry has captured this well. A springtime douche of cold water! Maybe it isn’t a great work of art, but it reads like a relatable experience, well written, with “the third axis” that is a traditional feature of haiku in Japan. Isn’t that what haiku is more about — us and nature, sharing experiences — than great poetic literature?

Jonathan Epstein—the monumentality of literary allusion:

Signs of an incipient flood spell disaster for an urban or rural population. Line 1’s familiar allusion to Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar” casts a pall of conspiracy, betrayal and foreboding as we recall the soothsayer’s warning to Caesar in Act I — “Beware the Ides of March,” Caesar’s March 15 birthday, a caution he famously ignores, resulting in his assassination by a band of Roman senators (“Et tu, Brute”), with civil wars to follow. The locale of this haiku could be Europe or North America, especially vulnerable to climate change effects on snowfall (decrease or increase) and early spring warming.

While line 1 sounds an ominous alarm, it comes with the sure knowledge that, as in the play, nothing good will come of what follows. Line 2 (“snowmelt down the rainspout”) flows mellifluously into line 3, where the melted snow already “floods the alley,” a crisis hidden from view and soon to worsen. Caesar’s hubris and character (self-proclaimed dictator for life) leads to chaos and unrest; the world ignores climate change at its own peril.

A fine example of how a literary allusion can inject monumentality into a haiku and trumpet its own prophesy in a handful of words.

Author Chad Henry:

Delighted that my haiku has been chosen for discussion.

The haiku itself is, I think they call it, a ‘shasei’ — a snapshot from life. I was in downtown Denver, on a sunny St. Patrick’s Day, during the spring thaw, in a rundown warehouse area, with a lot of old brick buildings, and a slightly seedy atmosphere. The snow melt running down the four-story building’s drainpipe made a kind of music, as the water gushed into the old brick-paved alley.

I chose my words to be as simple and descriptive as possible, while hoping to share a sense of the day dedicated to a saint, and to the coming spring, as the energetic force of sun melting the winter snow animates even these ancient, run-down buildings, and brings a sense of renewed hope.

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

     
jazz piano 
the river glitters
with gulls
— Caroline Skanne
  Presence 77, November 2023

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:

Chad Henry:

“I’m a retired playwright and composer.  I’ve had productions of my work around the U.S., Canada, England, and Japan.  I was also privileged to spend a few years in Japan collaborating with Furusato Caravan, a touring Japanese theatre company.   Our show, Labor of Love, toured throughout Japan, the U.S., and played the Barcelona Olympics Arts Festival.”

A short bio with some of his verses is here in the Haiku Registry

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The various readings of a verse in re:Virals commentaries are always interesting for what they reveal. Here, the word ‘rainspout’ conjures up a climatic phenomenon for a reader in Asia, although linking that to snowmelt may be a stretch. For a British reader, the unfamiliar American ‘rainspout’ would be a gutter under the roof eaves or its downpipe (often blocked by dead leaves or roof moss or for some other reason gushing over). Or a gargoyle spewing water from the roof away from a stone building’s walls.

The heavy omen in the Ides of March suggests something more than just a flooded alley. The light disconnect generates gentle humour or irony. Additionally, the use of that portentous phrase prompts the thought that this minor flood may be a signal of something more serious; an allegorical interpretation. Hence for two commentators at least, the serious effects of climate change.

From the poet’s own comment, this was not in his mind when writing the haiku — at least, consciously.  He was feeling hope, renewed by the energy of spring.   Some long-time contributors to re:Virals fret that if the poem’s ‘message’ is not clearly transmitted to a reader, albeit in the supposedly subtle ways of haiku, there is a failure in communication. Others point to the principle that the reader completes the poem, and that as readers bring different experiences (not to mention differing cultures, skills and erudition), so readings will perforce be different. Once a poem is released into the wild, the poet has no control over it. Fair game.

As usual, there’s merit in both thoughts. There are obvious cases at the extremes, where communication is so explicit that the magic of intuition is lost, or at the other end where a verse is so obscure or garbled that it becomes a literary Rorschach test. But as with many conundrums, there’s no clear dividing line in the bulk of verses between them. Which, for me, is part of the enjoyment.