re:Virals 518

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 Keith. This week’s poem, chosen by Nancy Brady was:

  
only on days ending in why another mass shooting
- Julie Schwerin
Password, Issue 1.2, May 2024 

Today our hearts go out to the victims of the school shooting in Minneapolis, and to their parents.

Introducing this poem, Nancy Brady writes:

The reason I chose this particular monoku is that I find all the mass shootings distressing and I keep asking myself why they keep happening over and over again. Nearly every day in the United States there is at least one mass shooting, yet the Congress will not act to curtail gun laws, particularly those regarding guns that fire multiple rounds in a matter of seconds. While I am not against guns, the deaths of those people because of mass shootings are generally random. Like Julie’s monoku, I wonder why. What makes somebody pick up a gun and kill strangers? Why does it happen over and over again? Why does it seem to happen daily? Why can’t we have sensible gun laws? Why mass shootings at all?

No matter the day of the week, which all end in the letter Y, Julie points out how often mass shootings occur.  Her monoku  addresses this with simple, direct words and makes the reader wonder why.

Opening comment (Keith):

Pamela Garry, below, has the essence of what I was going to say about the techniques that make this monoku so effective. I’d just add here that it is not based on one or more direct visual images, but on two generalities — although we can easily picture both parts in our imagination.   They fit together well.  The line strikes a good balance between an unmistakeable, heartfelt message of mingled irony, exasperation and despair, and a view detached enough to be couched as a question, but which does not tell the reader what the answer may be.

Mass killings are not confined to the United States, but they seem very frequent there, and have spread to other countries.  Intense media coverage, and copycat killers wanting it, may be factors.   As to why; well, every babe is born innocent…  Here is the background of teenager Axel Rudakubana, lately convicted of stabbing several young girls at a dance class in Southport, killing three, and seriously injuring eight more plus two adults.  The background of the suspected Minneapolis shooter this week is beginning to be pieced together.   As to how, the ease with which high-powered semi-automatic weapons can be had make them the natural choice in the States.  Elsewhere, where guns are not so readily available, deranged assassins turn to blades, vehicles, crossbows, bombs, arson, or whatever means comes to hand.

This is the third week in succession that we have had a politiku (although Jerome’s from last week had wide readings in addition). Some comments on this subgenre follow in the Footnote.

Dan Campbell:

The poem says: only on days ending in why another mass shooting

And that’s the joke, right?
But it’s not funny
It’s the kind of joke that cuts your tongue out.
The kind of joke that makes you choke on your own laugh.

Every. Day. Ends. In. Why.
Every day ends in a mother’s cry.
Every day ends in a headline.
Every day ends with another place turned into a tomb—
church, grocery store, classroom, parade—

And the why?
The why’s not even a question anymore.
It’s routine.
It’s the lullaby we hum in this country:
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday—

all ending in why,
all ending in blood.

Picture it:
a child spelling “Monday”
while zipping up their bulletproof backpack.

Picture it:
a mother kissing her son like it’s the last time.

Picture it:
the silence in this poem holding all of us hostage.
It gives us the truth, raw,
like barbed wire in the mouth.
And maybe that’s holy work, too.
Writing the curse.
Writing it down so even God can’t ignore it.

This poem is a siren, a bell, a scream.
This poem makes me mad.
Makes me tired.
Makes me mad again.
So damn.
Thank you.
Thank you for writing the wound open.
Thank you for refusing to close it.
Thank you for reminding us:
every day ends in why,

Alan Harvey:

Why. . . why. . . why?

Mass shootings are all too common and this monoku plays off the quip: Only on days ending in y. Julie Schwerin reimages the letter “y” into the word “why” and ends it with “another mass shooting”. So, instead of: I only play golf on days that end in the letter y, we’re left pondering the WHY? of mass shootings. The reading pivots on the word “why”. It’s a rather elegant tweak to a contemporary question of mass shootings that we wouldn’t expect to be asked in a haiku.

Haiku shouldn’t tell us what to think because the poem itself will lead us and the reader can form their own conclusion. This one line slips the question Why? into the conversation and lets the reader ponder the answer for themselves.

Sudha Devi Nayak:

The two part monoku gives us in stark terms the anguish of mass shootings and the random meaningless loss of life. So often there are such devastating incidents at schools, malls,clubs and other public places that can mark one for life. Crime today reads like a cricket score card and daily life has become increasingly fraught with danger turning everyone vulnerable. With the passing of time the victims fade from memory reduced to mere archival statistics but for those personally affected by these drastic events there can be no memory lapse till they step into their own graves. A lifetime of love and connection irretrievably lost. A horror story without end.

It is a sick society that breeds individuals who can snuff out lives without compunction or thought. And yet no malady is without a cause and as we mourn the dead we also feel a deep sorrow for these misguided maladjusted souls labouring under illusions and fantasies. They are themselves victims of social injustice who try to exorcise their demons of angst and anger towards the world.  It is general institutional apathy and moral decline that is responsible for the making of these individuals, and that makes us mere observers and bystanders and passively complicit in such dark tragedies.

I thank Julie for converting a tragedy into a thought provoking haiku.

Sitarama Seshu Maringanti:

There has been much research done on the gun violence in the United States of America. It would appear that there is a pronounced occurrence of mass shootings in the evening hours (6 p. m. onwards) and during the weekends. Have such shootings something to do with the psychological make up of the perpetrators of the gun violence, has also been a subject of research with the conclusions pointing to such a probability. The haiku of Julie Schwerin shows the concern of the author for the meaningless mayhem in which many innocents lose their lives and many more are dangerously hurt. The haiku is timely though there seem to be no answers to the question of how to tackle the gun violence.

Pamela Garry—the cutting word:

This monoku balances a light touch with a heart-wrenching cry: “… why another mass shooting”

The kireji (cutting word) is ‘why’, which completes the first phrase standing in for the letter ‘Y’. It starts with a light , humorous touch, “only the days ending in y…”, which of course are all the days. And then ‘why’ becomes the pivot and the poem turns sharply in mood to the ending phrase, “…why another mass shooting”. It lands with a profoundly upsetting impact, way beyond what one might expect from a little monoku. The contrast of mood, makes the darkness all the more chilling. I am in awe of this monoku.

Author Julie Schwerin:

This poem stemmed from my frustration over the many mass shootings we experience in America and the claim that there is nothing we can do about it. After all, “guns don’t kill people. People do.” A popular talking point brought to us by the National Rifle Association and their powerful lobbyists. Although we know that the rate of mass shootings steadily decreased during the period of a U.S. ban on assault weapons (1994-2004), only for it to rise again after the law was allowed to expire in 2004. As a result, between January 1, 2025 and July 31, 2025 (211 days), there have already been 268 mass shootings in the United States with “mass shooting” being defined as involving 4 or more victims.

“Only on days ending in y” is a popular idiom offering a tongue-in-cheek response to how often one indulges in their own bad habits, as every day name (in English) ends in the letter “y”. And indeed, we now average more than one mass shooting per day in the United States.

The twist in the poem, of course, is the word “why” – a homophone of the letter “y”. Why is the question those of us who support common sense gun laws ask every day. It is a poem born of frustration at senseless death and trauma. And a cry into the void for those who would hear. Thank you to all who responded to this poem. I hope you will continue to share it with others.

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

     
umbrella bin – 
leaving the rain
at the door
— Risë E. Daniels,
  bottle rockets #41 2019 Fall Edition

Footnote:

Bio: Julie Schwerin is an associate editor at The Heron’s Nest and a member of the Red Moon Anthology Editorial team. She was instrumental in establishing several haiku installations in the Midwest including The Forest Haiku Walk in Millersburg, Ohio, The Seasons of Haiku Trail at The Holden Arboretum in Kirtland, Ohio and Words in Bloom: A Year of Haiku at the Chicago Botanic Garden, to feature the work of other poets and bring further awareness to haiku. She is the author of three chapbooks: What Was Here (Folded Word Press), Walking Away From the Sunset (Brooks Books) and still growing wings (Backbone Press). Her first full-length collection of haiku, fencing with the moon, is available now for preorder from Finishing Line Press.

——

Politiku:

The catchy soundbite often requoted without question, that all poetry is politics, is easily refuted: simply consider a dragonfly perching on two grass-tips, the beauty of the distant stars, rose-gold dawn breaking over snow-capped mountains.  One might just as plausibly maintain that all poetry is biology, as it is an observable if minor behavioural characteristic of one animal species.  It doesn’t get us far.

Nevertheless, some poetry is political, indeed quite a lot of it, and the tradition goes back a long way. Consider the Greek epics in hexameter, or the Satires of Juvenal (still a rattling good read and bang up to date—see below*). In China, witty and satirical entertainers were used with care to soften the path of diplomacy after a feast, a dangerous activity at times.  In 500 BC Confucius ordered the execution of several who performed for the Dukes of Qi and King of Lu when they met at the Narrow Valley, for “whoever insults royalties should be executed”.  Embedded as the “Narrow Valley Principle,” I’m sure you can imagine supporters of that view among present-day statespersons.  Confucius highlighted the role of aesthetic delights in moral and political education, and, like Plato elsewhere in the same era, was suspicious of the power of art “to awaken frenzied and distracted feelings.”

In the English poetic tradition there is much political poetry, for as long as we have records; some detached, from worldly Chaucer through Gray’s Elegy (“The paths of glory lead but to the grave”) and Shelley’s superb and mercifully crisp Ozymandias, to some committed to arousing those “frenzied feelings”: Shelley’s over-long Masque of Anarchy, for instance, with few memorable phrases among the 347 lines of his passionate poem advocating non-violent resistance to state savagery — revolution…(“Ye are many; they are few”).  It is unsurprising that the tradition continues in our age of ideologies and entrenched positions, increasingly divided and inflamed.  And that we want to write stuff that is relevant to our times and mores, as well as stuff praising cherry blossoms or wallowing in nostalgia.

As to whether haiku/senryu is an effective medium for politics, opinions vary. “My elegant art,” wrote Bashō, “is like a fireplace in summer, a fan in winter.” Jim Kacian, addressing the Second European Haiku Conference, in Sweden, June 2007, said: “There are advocates of an expanded content (of haiku), including political, war and zen poets. As to the effectiveness of these contents, I believe that in general whenever the needs of poetry are subsumed to the needs of advocacy, poetry suffers, and that has been generally the case here.”

Michael Dylan Welch commented on this column’s precursor in 2010:
“Are haiku important? Not by a long shot. ……….
If haiku are not important in the face of human suffering, the obvious question might be to ask if haiku should try to alleviate suffering in some way — by promoting world peace or by employing some other agenda. Hell no. Please!   Haiku with an agenda such as this makes the aesthetic ideal subservient to the political or activist agenda — and thus, in my opinion, nearly always destroys the art.  Yes, art can be political, and some good art does have an agenda, but my feeling is that, most of the time, haiku is better off without it.

Haiku has a sort of importance — as with other arts, it’s something we live FOR. We seek to overcome the suffering in life so that we can enjoy the magnificent pleasures of being human. But haiku should not, in my opinion, ever have an agenda — other than an aesthetic one. Haiku will be what it is, and I don’t see how it matters whether it has ‘importance’ or not.”

Some points here. The genre has traditions of detachment, of acceptance of things as they are, of “letting go.” They do not lend themselves to advocacy, nor to telling the reader what to think or do.  Haiku are characteristically based on images rather than ideas.  Yet the matter-of-fact use of images and thoughts in a detached way can, as we have seen these past three weeks and elsewhere, be very powerful. More powerful, I suggest, than reiterating some political rant or slogan  as many do in the thin guise of “haiku” in some fora.  Such things may be more zappai.

Moreover there exists a tradition of political haiku and senryu in Japan. You can’t have a more impeccable precedent than Issa: “even the kite / of the war lord…/bad-mouthed“, or “losing the contest / surprise! the lord’s chrysanthemum / came first.” And of course, last century we had Japanese haiku poets jailed for alluding aversely to imperial war.

There’s the question of effectiveness.  The readership of anglophone haiku is very restricted, even more so because with all its conventions and allusions, it usually needs a skilled reader to construct or reconstruct its meaning and appreciate a verse. I believe that the anglophone haiku community is overwhelmingly sympathetic towards peace and goodwill, compassionate, and opposed to anger, aggression, hostility and wars of whatever kind. So, we are likely preaching to the already converted in our limited readership.

There is also the matter of currency — the burning politics of the day soon become the ashes of history. And likely of marginal if any relevance. Whereas a haiku such as Bashō‘s “summer grasses / all that remains / of warriors’ dreams” has enduring relevance as long as wars are fought.

But again, writing haiku and senryu is also often a  therapeutic practice.   If you feel better getting some bitter thing off your chest, and being comforted by the support of the like-minded, there may be some good in doing so.

To end: among this year’s verses here is one politiku by the week’s winning commentator that is a favourite of mine:

Election Day
stepping on barnacles
we carry the boat
Pamela Garry, Modern Haiku 56.1 Winter-Spring 2025

Bare feet…

—–

*From Juvenal’s satirical poems, ca. 100 AD / CE, a few quotations of enduring interest:

“If you want to be someone, do something worthy of prison….It’s crime brings the gardens, mansions, elaborate dinners, old silver plate, and those drinking-cups carved with goats.”

“What can you do, when a madman is giving the orders, who’s stronger than you?”

“There’s nothing the powerful won’t believe of themselves, when praised to the skies.”

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