re:Virals 517

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.

This week’s poem, chosen by Biswajit Mishra was:

 welcome death mat
—Jerome Berglund
 dadakuku, 8.21.24
 and Haiku 2025 Anthology, Modern Haiku

Introducing this poem, Biswajit writes:

A very brief poem; what Jerome had on his mind, no one knows.  Is it a doormat he is seeing at a funeral home or a hospice where death is looming close, that has triggered this poem? I see this poem at different levels irrespective of the physical surroundings.  Physically, maybe someone the poet knows is chronically ill and is nearing death, which might end their suffering, hence the “welcome”.  Spiritually, many traditions consider death as just a stepping over a threshold to a different space, and accepting this fact may reduce the fear and the suffering from it (hence: “welcome”).   A doormat is something at a doorway where people briefly step to cross over to a different space: maybe the poet is hinting at that, too.  Maybe ‘mat’ is a metaphorical version of the threshold.  Death is inevitable, yet not easily an acceptable reality, although in haiku it has been given a status of a kind of genre through death poems. On a technical level, too, Jerome’s poem, as short as it is, has a juxtaposition between “welcome” and “death” which makes the poem stand out for me.

Opening comment (Melissa):

As I engaged with this poem I loved the sense of humour, ok, so it is dark humour but after a hard week I wonder how many of us can relate to these words? Now some people might argue that this is not a poem, and that it is not a haiku or a senryu at least not in the traditional or conventional sense. For example, it lacks a seasonal reference and is just three words long, some might read it and simply dismiss it as ‘so what?’ but I ask you to consider how these words resonate with you, do they touch you in some way? do they elicit further thought? Or a response?

I find this monoku to be thought provoking. It is novel, innovative and unconventional. There will be people who disagree but for me Jerome’s poem is reminiscent of the avant garde art of the last century, for example, Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon or Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain. These stimulate debate about what art is, and caused more than a little controversy.

Jerome’s monoku also reminds me of punk rock and nihilism, in that it rejects conventions and questions the prevailing narratives surrounding haiku. Nihilism is a philosophy that emerged in 19th Century Russia with the writings of Dostoevsky and Turgenev. One of the best known writers on nihilism is Friedrich Nietzsche, for instance in his Thus Spoke Zarathustra and Beyond Good and Evil. Nihilism can suffer from bad press, associated as it is with meaninglessness, disillusionment and despair. However, it is also a philosophy that encourages us to find our own purpose and meaning, to question and challenge rather than tacitly accept prevailing norms and forge our own path. It is bold, exciting and daring, just like Duchamp placing a urinal in an art gallery and declaring it art.

It could be argued that there are risks with writing verse in this way, and that there is a place for convention and tradition. I agree that as we seek to innovate we need to acknowledge the traditions our poems are situated in, and remember what it is that attracted us to haiku in the first place. We don’t want to throw the baby out with the bath water! Deconstruction is great, but we need to ask ourselves what is it that we wish to deconstruct and why. There is a balance to be struck between innovation and tradition. What that balance is however is up to you. Some questions I have for you as the reader are what would happen if all haiku were simply three words? Would this enrich or impoverish the form? Another is does this monoku need more words? Would it be enriched with additional words? I am anticipating a lively dialogue!

Finally, for me these three words have hidden depths, for instance, concerning our attitudes to dying and concerns around what the experience of end of life can be like. There are complex arguments happening currently around the notion of ‘a good death‘ and how we provide this as a society. As Albert Camus argues in his Nobel prize winning essay Create Dangerously (1958), art is not simply for art’s sake, but the purpose is to understand, and to advocate for living beings. I think that is what Jerome’s monoku is doing.

Eddie Dean:

porch light
still on
for no one

Sudha Devi Nayak:

The single line haiku evokes a single impression of a mat and its manifold uses as gaming mats for tabletop games and for desktops, laptops and as mouse pads made of comfortable materials to ensure smooth surfaces. There is nothing to distract the reader- in haiku where a single thing or moment can be poetic it is the Japanese art of taking more and more things away to charge the few things that remain.

But the death mat can be just what it is, a death mat. In many traditions like among the Hindus, the deceased is respectfully placed on a mat on the floor or earth before cremation or burial. It is part of the process of bidding farewell to the departed, preparing the body for it’s final journey and to facilitate the transition of its soul to higher realms. The mat placed close to the earth connects the soul to the natural elements as it transits to the next phase.

This particular reading of the haiku calls up the image of one who having gone through the tedium of living with its travails and complexities has at last hung up his boots ready to leave for the hereafter. Death is a welcome release and he goes not raging against the light but without regret or qualm on a journey of no return ,perhaps hoping for a better deal in the next world. I can see the beatific expression on his face and the peace in his demeanour. In death we face the fundamental fact of the human condition and even in the last moments we try to make meaning of the inevitable end. Mortals are but mortal.

Joshua St. Claire:

The first word that came to mind when I read Jerome Bergund’s postku “welcome death mat” was scrumtrulescent. That’s not hyperbole. It’s the most innovative ku I’ve read in a year at least.

First, it is impossible to ignore the concrete aspects of this poem. The three-word monoku invokes both a welcome mat and a dead body lying flat on a doorstep. Berglund refuses the temptation of making this poem a cirku showing life and death as a cycle. Like time, this haiku leads in only one direction to our inevitable, shared end. Further, a welcome mat is a banal, common thing. Splitting the two words apart, and putting “death” in the middle is a master stroke—showing that death appears “right in the middle” of our everyday lives.

There is no recognizable kigo. Rather, this muki haiku relies on the key sensory image of the mat and the unidirectional force of the monoku. There are no comforting, seasonal associations to root us.

Like the best monoku, the kire could be between any or all of the words or even before or after the entire line. The ambiguity of the cut develops considerable ma. “[W]elcome death” is a masterful allusion to Chaucer’s “The Pardoner’s Tale” via Rowling’s “The Tales of Beadle the Bard.” It delves deep into, and comments on, both high and pop art. “[D]eath mat” invokes a death bed—and, perhaps, the poet looking death in the face and responding with a poem—both an ars poetica and an ars vita. A “welcome death mat,” a phrase at times wistful, and at times grisly, opens the door to a kaleidoscopic interpretation of our final destination—the nexus of both momento mori and sic transit gloria mundi. The permutations continue to spin out further meaning far beyond the confines of this small essay.

Cheers, Jerome! Continue pressing against the borders of haikai. Wake the haijin from their slumber under the yozakura and show them the way deeper into the winedark!

Nancy Brady—welcoming an old friend :

Welcome death mat. What an intriguing monoku that Jerome Berglund has written!

I can read it several ways, but I see it as a person who is facing death and welcomes it (putting out the mat, welcoming Death). Unlike many people who fear the end of their lives, this person may be like my Dad was towards the end of his life: elderly, living alone, missing my Mom who had passed away a few years earlier, and, frankly, tired of it all and not willing to have a surgery that would only prolong his life briefly, if at all. Or like the person with cancer, finding the thought of going through another chemo treatment with all the side effects and knowledge that it is not working, choosing hospice care instead. Again, (being at death’s door, so to speak) welcoming death. Even, using an example from the Harry Potter series, Ignotus Peverell owning the Invisibility Cloak, keeping Death at bay, until he finally removed it many years later and welcomed Death as a dear friend.

Not all people fear death, and this monoku illustrates it with the welcome mat representing a conduit to Death, and yet, and yet…it is just one interpretation of Jerome’s monoku.

Author Jerome Berglund:

Demise can be a blessing. Whether folk head into something eternal or return to the cycle of reincarnation, and even if expiration purely signals an end to the pain, that can be an enormous benefit and boon from those in excruciating circumstances. Personally all my life I’ve found myself surrounded by those who would happily shuffle off their mortal coils. I’m named after a maternal grandfather who passed away just before my birth and his wife who I was closest to growing up was always quite vocal regarding missing him, and hoping to join him as soon as she was able. Similarly my uncle, who I share the most similarity to in terms of sensibilities and brain chemistry in our extended family, has been unhappy with living since my youth. For thirty years has been expressing a burning desire to leave this plane of existence, attempting to expedite with hoses attached to exhaust pipes, and refusing food on and off at the veterans’ home where he long resides. Similarly a staggering quantity of family members in the past and recently have long suffered with chronic, degenerative health conditions, Parkinson’s and Dementia being the most prevalent and debilitating. Watching cherished loved ones gradually vanish, their physical forms persist in perpetual pain and indignity, is very difficult for them and for all. In our era of frightful fascistic tendency, any leniency towards permitting euthanasia risks very real and legitimate threats of being co-opted and misused toward the culling of populations viewed as unprofitable to the government and industry, the elderly and infirm and differently abled run a real risk of getting coerced in Malthusian manners in the horrifying traditions of eugenic extremists. But still personal autonomy, and choice of whether chronically plagued victims of terminal progressive illness and disease must necessarily endure the worst, and are not given a swifter humane alternative, is an important question worth considering as a species and generation.

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

     
only on days ending in why another mass shooting
— Julie Schwerin
  Password. very short poetry Issue 1.2, May 2024

Footnote:

Jerome Berglund has worked as everything from dishwasher to paralegal, night watchman to assembler of heart valves. Many haiku, haiga and haibun he’s written have been exhibited or are forthcoming online and in print, most recently in bottle rockets, Frogpond, and Presence. His first full-length collections of poetry were released by Setu, Meat For Tea, Mōtus Audāx press, and a mixed media chapbook showcasing his fine art photography is available now from Fevers of the Mind.

Spotlight on Writers — Jerome Berglund.

Art and Aesthetics—Jerome Berglund.

Interview with Jerome.

Starbeck Orion – some of Jerome’s works.

Haikai roscuro.

Read more about Picasso’s Les Demoisells d’Avignon (pdf file).

To see Duchamp’s fountain.

Read Nietzsche Thus Spoke Zarathustra online.

Further reading on Nihilism.

To read the Nobel prize winning essay for literature by Camus “Create Dangerously” (pdf file).

Admire a variety of welcome death mats on Etsy!

Headline image free from Pixaby: by Christa_explores

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Lastly:

We also received an impassioned commentary interpreting this week’s poem in terms of the manipulative ‘welcome’ of controlled food aid to starving Gazans, and the associated deaths of many. This intriguing parallel, which extends the reach of the verse, was couched in terms that contravened the Foundation’s Code of Conduct in several important respects, and therefore does not appear above.

re:Virals is co-hosted by Shawn Blair, Melissa Dennison, Susan Yavaniski, and Keith Evetts (managing editor).

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