re:Virals 509
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. In the host chair today is Melissa Dennison. This week’s poem, chosen by Harrison Lightwater was:
cheerful mechanic sketches the broken fuel pump on my map —Marianne Bluger Early Evening Pieces, Buschek Books Ottawa 2003
Introducing this poem, Harrison writes:
The Foundation’s Book of the Week was a reminder for me what quality should look like. This senryu from it would be fresh and rich with inner meaning even though paper maps have gone out of use in favour of satnav. I like the way that we have the mechanic, the poet, the broken fuel pump, and the map juxtaposed or arranged and all are related to each other. I like the originality. I like that almost every word is pregnant with unspoken meaning or counter-suggestion: the cheerfulness of the mechanic suggesting not only his enthusiasm for the trade (‘his’ if we are allowed to stereotype), but the counterpart frustration of the itinerant poet; the poet’s romantic spirit contrasted with the practical mechanic; the map a token of exciting travel to unknown parts, kiboshed by the broken fuel pump (reeking of haiku wabi and sabi); the well-meaning attempt to explain the fuel pump’s problem disfiguring the map. I like that all this is expressed in everyday language that does not require Googling or unscrambling to get the meaning, and contained in a single grammatical sentence, with no cut, giving the lie to those who say a cut is indispensable; yet there is plenty of juxtaposition and haiku aesthetic. It will be interesting to see how critics respond.
No, they don’t write ’em like they used to. Masterly.
Opening comment (Melissa):
Marianne’s poem is deceptively simple, appearing artless yet there is a great deal of skill in this arrangement. Harrison mentions the cut in his opening comments above, and he makes a good point since this poem is an expression of toriawase, it is a harmonious arrangement of separate elements such as the poet, mechanic, broken fuel pump, map and journey which all together make a whole. Through this arrangement her senryu manages to encapsulate a moment in time, there is nothing dramatic or high octane happening, this poem simply captures a straightforward everyday interaction with another human being. Some might think this is mundane. Yet, in our world where we are becoming increasingly fragmented and atomised, and where loneliness is on the rise these three lines articulate a fundamental human need for connection, and for kindness and how these are central to our humanity and what it means to be human. It also reflects the notion of ready-to-hand as articulated by the German philosopher Heidegger where everyday tools are an integral part of our lives, eg a writer and their pen. This is similar to a verse by Issa: the daikon picker/with a daikon/has shown the way!, where whatever we have to hand whether that be due to our experience of trade is used to share what we know with others. In Marianne’s poem the mechanic is using whatever is to hand to show the way, ie to share his knowledge and explain what is wrong and/or how to fix a broken fuel pump.
As Marianne is deceased there are no author comments this week. However, there are some links in the footnotes if you are interested in reading more of her work.
I have added a link in the footnotes for those who might wish to learn more about toriawase too.
Sudha Devi Nayak:
The haikuist must have been on her way driving to some place when the engine stalled or surged unexpectedly, and, she may have stopped to find out what can be done. In a moment of hopelessness perhaps in an out of the way place there appears a mechanic who explains to her the problem with a sketch on a board or drawing paper.
The first line talks of the cheerfulness of the mechanic who lightens the mood, possibly at the prospect of a customer. Or he may be just the good Samaritan who can ease her woes. The whole haiku breathes hope and high possibility as the mechanic seems to love his work rather than as the run of the mill drudgery and is pleased to make the traveller happy. “Blessed is the man who has found his work, let him ask for no other blessing”.
Life as we know it is a matter of probabilities lived for us by unknown forces and if we are fortunate enough we meet people on the highway who can bail us out of a critical situation, so we heave a sigh of relief, whisper a prayer and move on. If it is not for such people and such moments this haiku would never have been. A haiku that transforms practicalities into a poem and illumines the moment.
Sitarama Seshu Maringanti:
Marianne Bluger frames two images in the haiku – one, that of a cheerful mechanic who enjoys repairing or replacing the damaged parts of an engine and the other, of his drawing the sketch of a broken fuel pump on someone else’s map or drawing board. The mechanic is a cheerful person and seeks enjoyment in his work. But he is so deeply involved in his work that he forgets his civil duty of obtaining his friend’s permission before using the latter’s map to imagine the various mechanical steps to go through for repairing a broken fuel pump.
Leslie Wolf:
This poem speaks to me of the joy of work – blue collar work. Work that is concrete, that uses one’s hands. That offers an individual freedom, a practicality, an applied sense to the things in our world. The mechanic is “cheerful”…when was the last time we encountered a “cheerful” worker?…This mechanic so very naturally wants to help, to solve a problem, and diagrams a sketch on the car owner’s map…no thought or hesitation to marking up someone else’s property…it’s just paper, a map, and his sketch is equal to it….such enthusiasm. Not thinking of asking if it is OK to mark up the map or look for a piece of paper….a small, social rule broken. You can feel the freedom in this person (not that he might not carry the common human burdens or more, that we all do) but that the choice is to immerse oneself fully in the moments of his work. I can see the stained, greasy hands, smell the oil and metals of the shop. Is this person on a road trip and had a breakdown- why the map in the hand?. No matter- the broken fuel pump will be fixed and all will be well. How grateful we are, when we are vulnerable and have trouble, that there is some cheerful, helpful person there for us.
Linda Powers O’Dell:
It’s wonderful to encounter humorous haiku. They appear too infrequently even though the three line form is perfect for making something akin to a joke. The surprise of a haiku’s third line can easily serve as a modified punch line.
In the subject poem we are introduced to an intriguing character, a cheerful mechanic. Why is he cheerful is a question that must remain unanswered, but the fact that he would draw on a map suggests a free spirit. Is there nothing else to draw on? Perhaps drawing on the owner’s map amuses him, “I’m going to show you the way I can fix your pump and get you on the road again.” (Here I catch myself in a stereotype; the mechanic might well be female.) Both concepts of ‘fuel’ and ‘pump’ suggest moving forward with both the repair and with traveling to the map’s destinations.
In addition to the fun of the mechanic’s humor is the delightful invitation to imagine the drawing of the fuel pump on top of all the map’s lines and color schemes. Like an abstract conceptual art work, the design might be quite impressive: two different types of maps superimposed, their contrasts producing ironic humor.
This beautiful, clever haiku makes me wish I could see that map and that I could have been there as it was drawn. Such a specific, delicious slice of life must have actually happened.
Dan Campbell—An Ode to Labour:
CRITIQUE OF A POEM BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Methinks this scene, though short in syllables, doth teem with comedy and gentle grace. The “cheerful mechanic”—becomes here the poet’s muse. He doth not curse the failing pump but sketches it upon a map with artful hand.
This jesting gesture—half cartography, half camaraderie—makes noble the mundane. The fuel pump lies broken, aye—but not the spirit, nor the will to aid.
Thus, in three lines, a world unfolds: of journey stalled, of help bestowed, of joy in labor. Such verse doth sing of kindness writ in grease and ink—a pastoral of pistons, where humor is the heart’s true engine.
Thanks to all who sent commentaries. As the contributor of the commentary reckoned best this week, Dan Campbell 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:
chime shop the dialects of wind — Peter Newton The Heron’s Nest, Volume XXIII, Number 1: March 2021
re:Virals is co-hosted by Shawn Blair, Melissa Dennison, Susan Yavaniski, and Keith Evetts (managing editor).
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:
Marianne was born in Ottawa, on 28 August 1945. She was the Treasurer of the Haiku Society of Canada, and Co-Founder of the Ottawa Haiku Group in 2002. Marianne authored various collections of poetry including:
The Thumbless Man is at the Piano 1981;
On Nights Like This 1984;
Gathering Wild 1988;
Summer Grass 1992;
Tamarack & Clearcut (Haiku) 1997;
Gusts (Tanka) 1998;
Scissor, Paper, Woman 2000;
Early Evening Pieces (Haiku) 2003;
Zen Mercies / Small Satoris (Tanka) 2005;
The Eternities 2005
As well as individual collections of poetry Bluger’s work also featured in various anthologies:
Eternal Conversations: Remembering Louis Dudek, ed. Skarstedt, Gnarowski, & Collins; DC Books (Montreal), 2003
HAIKU: Poetry Ancient & Modern 2002 MQ Publications (London)
HAIKU: Poésies anciennes & modernes 2003 Éditions Véga (Paris)
Redmoon Press, TANKA Anthology, winter 2003
In her lifetime she received various honours for poetry including Archibald Lampman Award for Poetry 1993; and Canada Council Arts B Award 1989.
Marianne’s view on poetry below appeared in Poetry and Spiritual Practice (Selections from Contemporary Canadian Poets), edited by Susan McCaslin for the St. Thomas Poetry Series, 2002:
“Poetry moves me to a kind of reverence – not all of it, but much of the best of it. When I engage with poetry, I become contemplative and mystically transported to a deeper awareness, to a kind of enlivened, prayerful consciousness; and to gratitude…Poetry soothes and heals me, as I am constantly overwhelmed and often undone by feelings and perceptions. The images and phrases present themselves. I jot them down as a secretary would dictation, and then delight to tinker until they seem perfect. I never could untangle my religious practice of prayerful consciousness, from the articulations themselves. All I am any good at is poems. I have cried to the silent unmoved, unmoving heart of the void: “o Pivot of all, invisible, inviolable Lord, I am lost. Describe my wayward footsteps, in some figure of your dance; guide my track of agitation, in this cycle of distress. And bless my black unknowing: Christ make sense of this stammered evidence I suffer from, the wound of consciousness”.
In poetry I am always talking to ‘the Other’ with a kind of certainty that I am heard; and reporting on present things, however distressing they be.”
You may access several of Marianne’s haiku publications in THF’s Digital Library on this search.
For more information on the Japanese principle of toriawase, which applies to many Japanese arts, not just to haiku: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRrgo3ydlxU
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Keith adds:
The Issa verse to which Melissa refers is:
大根引大根で道を教へけり
daiko hiki daiko de michi wo oshie keri
the daikon picker
with a daikon
has shown the way!
Harrison brings up the absence of a ‘cut’ in this week’s verse by Marianne Bluger. Conveniently the Issa haiku illustrates a frequent pattern in his verses. It’s essentially a single sentence: the cutting-word keri — which acts as an exclamatory suffix and can also modify a verb to a past tense — comes at the end, inviting the reader to reflect. You could say that Bluger’s single sentence likewise leaves the reader to reflect. Time was when anglophone haikuists would put an exclamation mark or an ellipsis at the end of such a sentence to substitute for the ending kireji (typically ‘kana’ or here, ‘keri’), but that’s gone out of fashion and all we are left with by way of a closing ‘cut’ is the white space and linebreak at the end of the verse.
All haiku are in effect ‘cut out’ or snipped from an experience to present to the reader, whether they contain a specific kireji or not. Hasegawa Kai* contends that there is a perceptible ‘cut’ before the first word of a haiku, and another after the last word (even if the verse doesn’t end with a kireji), which he calls “zengo no kire” — a crisp break between ‘before’ and ‘after’ a haiku. A majority of classic haiku in Japanese also have a familiar cutting-word separating two parts of a haiku, a convention that has been borrowed in anglophone haiku despite the lack of cutting words in English. But a significant minority, like the Issa, place the cutting word at the end of the sentence. Even in Japanese, as Bashō noted, a verse could be ‘cut’ without a cutting word, i.e. semantically. From the late 1880s, and notably since some of Shiki’s pupils formed a breakaway school of haiku, many Japanese verses have been written without cutting-words but nevertheless contain one or more juxtapositions, as in Bluger’s verse. In other words: a cut within a verse is a convention, a characteristic technique that is very useful to separate images within a haiku creating space for an insight to spark across; but it is not an inviolable ‘rule.’ There are several ways to write haiku.
* Hasegawa Kai – “Cutting Through Time and Space”
Comments (13)
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An issue for me would be, if there was a def. article before “cheerful mechanic”, I’d immediately wonder how many sour-puss mechanics there were along with this stand-out, cheerful one.
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I went and had a quick look at the verse as it is in ‘Early Evening Pieces’ and noticed that (on the page this verse is on) her verses are not simply haiku, but each verse links to the previous, something like the verses in a renku do.
A renku has one and one only ‘cut’ verse: the hokku, from which sprouted ‘haiku’ (individual verses with a cutting mark or cutting word) From the page I’ve read, it seems to me that Marianne Bluger quite deliberately and successfully wrote linked verses. I don’t think we could call them haiku if there is no cut of break, but I don’t think we need to fuss over whether or not they are linked verses in a form based on Basho’s haikai no renga.
Thanks, Lorin, and well spotted. The verses do look linked or interrelated, while not conforming with other renga criteria. And many of them are cut.
Susan Yavaniski comments via the submission form:
“Thanks, Harrison, for putting this poem and poet on my map.
For me, Bluger’s omission of an article gives the poem more zest than it would if it had one.
If I say the poem — aloud — the way she has written it: cheerful mechanic /sketches the broken fuel pump / on my map, it instigates a natural, wryly expressive pause ( a cut) between mechanic and sketches.
That pause is much less obvious when I say the poem as a more matter-of-fact sentence, with an article: the cheerful mechanic /sketches a(or the) broken fuel pump / on my map….” .
To me, the absence of the article seems considered, not clumsy. I feel the narrator speaking to me, directly, see her brow furrowing, her eye cocking, in bemused surprise.
Bluger’s near-contemporary, Raymond Roseliep, wrote many a haiku without articles, that also feel to me just right. Roseliep wrote of how haiku “happen fast”* and his frequent omitted articles seem to add to the effect of flurry, as does his skilled use of the simple present tense, which Bluger used in her poem.
Some Roseliep:
hole in my sock
letting spring
in
shooting star
still in the eye
of the electrician
and his “ famous” sequence, “The Morning Glory” showcasing the simple present
takes in
the world
from the heart out
funnels
our day
into itself
closes
on its own
inner light
* Raymond Roseliep: “This Haiku of Ours” – Haikupedia”
For me, the language of the Bluger poem and the first two offered here by Roseliep, are indeterminate in an odd way. It’s a kind of haiku-ese, somewhere between English and Japanese. I think that kind of construction was more common in the ’80’s and ’90’s. People seemed to be unsure how Japanese an English language haiku should be. What interests me is writing haiku in English, letting the English language play a role in what and how something is written. If it strays from what is typically considered a haiku, that’s okay. I think this was discussed on the reVirals featuring a haiku by Stephen Gill.
Thank you, Peter. Old issues of journals bring up many interesting examples of authors schooled in English poetic traditions grappling with what was then a new, exciting and supposedly accessible form, and trying either to imitate it or bend it. I think people are still unsure of how Japanese an English haiku ‘should’ be. The further removed, the more attenuated. Somewhere in between, compromises that can be ungainly.
In parallel there are fashions in the broader scene of anglophone poetry that also bear down on anglophone ‘haiku’ composition, such as the endless focus on the first person, and the aversion to correct punctuation, or punctuation at all.
Having reflected on these comments, would adding ‘the’ add anything to the meaning of this senryu? Would it make any difference either way to us as the reader?
Generally I would like to think I ignore ‘rules’ and consider rhythm, spacing, even how the haiku ‘looks’ on the ‘page’ to decide this kind of subtle choice. But of course one does not want too many ‘the’s in close proximity unless intended, that’s a good rule.
Interesting discussion, enjoyed reading these comments. I don’t think it’s problematic, erm the absence of an article. ‘The cheerful mechanic’…ah the choices a poet makes when writing. I think ‘cheerful mechanic’ is fine myself, but like all art this is subjective.
Although touched on in Keith’s comments, it’s worth pointing out that Marianne’s haiku starts out with five and seven syllables, subtly deployed but encouraging the reader to expect the rhythm and meter of a further five syllables. The blunt delivery of ‘on my map’ undermines this expectation, the technique and content of the final line working together to suggest spontaneity and surprise. The 5-7-3 form has been used successfully in this way since Marianne’s granular haiku.
i never know what kind of blowback I’ll get from comments I make, but geez, isn’t this a clear cut case of “tontoism”, omitting the article when clearly it is called for? One might assume that Bluger didn’t like the idea of opening with a 6 syllable line–*the* cheerful mechanic– and so truncated it. But it would seem she was more experienced than to be bothered with that. I should add that I don’t especially like the word “cheerful”, though I like it perhaps a bit more now than I did at first. It offers a nice counterpoint to what I would think is an annoying (at least) situation for the one on whose map a broken fuel pump is being sketched. Still, the word “cheerful” is a bit generic for me. Why not something that speaks to the mechanic’s cheer– without naming it?
More thoughts on the opening line. Perhaps Bluger thought that if she said *the* cheerful mechanic/ sketches the broken fuel pump/ on my map it would emphasize the haiku’s being written as a single sentence. To me, it creates an unappealing awkwardness.
I see your point, and I feel some editors disapprove of starting a haiku with an article as if it somehow demeans it and isn’t ‘poemy’ enough, but here I feel it matches the matter-of-fact tone.
Meg, constructive, civil, critical comments and questions are definitely encouraged.
I’m more relaxed about the absence of an article in line 1, but probably it would be better starting with ‘the’ and taking six syllables in consequence.
In some verses, the absence of an article, often in the opening ‘fragment’, implies a generality, e.g. three fine verses by Peter Yovu:
sunrise darkens the face I dream with (would it be better or worse with ‘the’ sunrise?)
fire all at once I never had a future (ditto with ‘the’ or ‘a’ fire?)
start of day the butcher’s white apron (two missing here — the start of the day?)
Then we have the very author of the essay chastising ‘tontoism,’ Paul O. Williams, with his:
from mud to sky the heron's feetI don’t think it would be improved by ‘the’ mud and ‘the’ sky; do you?
We all have our tastes, foibles, and irritations. I, getting old, find I am irked by widespread affectation of the ampersand in contemporary poetry, and by the absence in anglophone haiku of many of the grammatical rules drilled into me seventy years ago by teachers. And then there is some atrocious spelling and misapprehension of the meaning of words, even in the BBC… We should have a drink together, and bemoan the state of the world.
But yes, this one’s probably better with ‘the’ cheerful mechanic as it’s a specific mechanic.
‘cheerful’ because, as Harrison points up in his introduction, and as you acknowledge: “the cheerfulness of the mechanic suggesting not only his enthusiasm for the trade…..but the counterpart frustration of the itinerant poet“. I think ‘cheerful’ carries its weight here. What alternatives would you suggest to show the mechanic’s cheerful enthusiasm? — “smiling” might sound supercilious or even sinister….
As I mentioned, the absence of ‘the’ in line 1 allows the haiku to cheerfully undermine the 5-7-5 ‘rule’, which some would be overjoyed to see.