re:Virals 524

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 Susan Yavaniski. This week’s poem, chosen by Jo McInerney is:

   
lost dog
I leave my voice
in every street
—Madhuri Pillai
 The Heron's Nest, September 2018, Volume XX, Issue 3

Introducing this poem, Jo writes:

I’ve spent a significant part of my life searching for lost pets.

“Pets”— the word feels inadequate. They are family, they are children. The attachment runs deep, secured with love and responsibility. What will become of them without us and, unspoken, what will become of us without them?

Madhuri Pillai’s senryu embodies for me this dual sense of loss. In it, the seeker leaves a part of herself in each street through which she passes.

Host comment (Susan Yavaniski):

If a poem’s goal is to emotionally connect with readers, the visceral opening words, “lost dog,” immediately achieve it. Who hasn’t lost something dear—a dog, a parrot, a person, a keepsake? Loss can leave us feeling utterly alone, yet at the same time, because no human life is exempt from it, connects us with every other human being on the planet. Few readers will need to reflect on the words to deeply feel either the sense of despair conveyed in the fragment, or the sense of desperation conveyed in the phrase.

Uncontrived, natural, like music more feeling than thought, the poem achieves the immediacy, the wordlessness,†  so coveted in haiku. With a craft exemplary because it appears effortless, the short o sounds of the slow pyrrhic “lost dog” (in my particular accent like the aw of paw) bear a sense of heaviness and sadness, which is underscored by the succession of keening ee sounds in the phrase. The alternation of unstressed and stressed syllables “I leave my voice/ in every street“— the iambs here aptly mirroring the beat of a human heart—with a legato of sibilants, the slant rhyme of leave and street, and the soft v’s and the l’s connecting the whole, render the verse melodious and instantly memorable. If one of the hallmarks of the aesthetics of karumi* is rhythm and attention to sound, then this week’s verse embodies it. While we might linger with the verse to wonder what this lost dog, this voice, this street mean on a meta-level, the reader need not go searching to access Pillai’s words.

Pat Devine:

This poem seems to be about grief. Something lost (a dog) and a person who has cared about this dog is leaving the footprint of his voice in every street so that hopefully his beloved dog will hear his voice and be led back to him/her. Or maybe the individual is calling himself a “lost dog” out of desperation after losing a loved one and is crying out for his loved one that has died. He is leaving remnants of his voice on every street that he and his loved one once walked, hoping to find him or her still there. Still yet another interpretation: An individual is feeling lost, like a dog that has been lost or abandoned. Leaving his voice in every street is a cry for help. Hopefully, someone, somewhere can help him find his center again so that he can go on living.

Urszula Marciniak:

I know the feeling when a dog goes missing. Mine was found. He heard a voice and came back. I also helped someone look for a dog, calling its name without even knowing what it looked like. Even the loss of an object can evoke a sense of loss. It’s hard to find the right words to describe the loss of a dog. The author of the haiku found it. I hope she found her dog too. I hope she didn’t meet anyone who told her it was just the dog that was missing. But maybe she did meet someone who helped her search. A dog usually loves a person unconditionally, and here it’s clear that a person can also love a dog unconditionally. The world is full of good people and good dogs.

Alan Summers:

The choice of wording is sparse yet expansive and the “line break craft” makes this appear simple yet it’s brilliant. It’s a poignant opening line which many readers can pull out, their own experiences, even before we all go further into the poem. We have all suffered loss after all. The second line starts to make an intriguing entry into the poem. It can make us wonder, and so we need to visit the next line. In turn we then revisit the whole poem all over again. I hear those echoes, perceived or otherwise, as that voice travels the streets, long after the human has left. It’s a great example of super clean concrete imagery yet where the abstract aspect heightens, and is heightened, by the concreteness through the poem and through its streets. This was also chosen by me as one of my top ten for the 2018 Heron’s Nest Readers’ Choice Awards.

Sudha Devi Nayak:

I can sense the anguish and desperation in this haiku as the poet looks for her lost pet scouring every street and calling out for her in fear and anticipation. If only she could find her, if only nothing happened to her. Soul searching and feelings of guilt confront her as she could have missed her in a careless unmindful moment. Bereft and bewildered she looks at every leash, she hears her in every bark and looks at every face with questions. She remembered the sunlit walks, the moonlit strolls, how she sensed your moods keeping pace with your quiet moments anchored your days, offered you solicitude and loyalty when no one else seemed to care. She loved her everyday Sisyphean life and loved you with the understanding that she deserves nothing in return but is just content to love, a love that is hard to explain but harder to lose. I only hope the poet was able at last, to find her, to feel her healing presence and wipe away the feeling of dread and abandonment in her pet’s eyes. I can fully empathise as I have experienced the loss of my beloved Labrador who passed on leaving me inconsolable. Her resilience through life and the quiet dignity with which she gave up at last asked me to carry on with courage. When she left it was not only my routine that shifted but my sense of balance too. The leash on the wall, the beanbag she luxuriated on, the food bowl on the shelf are forever reminders of one that taught me love was the best way to serve. Being with her on a quiet evening meant grace, a peace -“God’s in his heaven all’s right with the world.” Some presences are irreplaceable, some memories are indelible, we must learn to live without one and live with the other. “Until one has loved an animal a part of one’s soul remains unawakened”, said Anatole France.

Jonathan Epstein:

Straightaway, we feel the poet’s distress. Images from past “lost dog” notices trigger memories of our own frantic searches for runaway pets.

Desperate over the disappearance of her beloved dog, the “I” in this poem roams the streets near the dog’s last sighting, calling out its name until she loses her voice.

Or does she? The tone of “I leave my voice/ in every street” seems to float a tender cry, as if each call of the dog’s name imprints a prayer to quicken the dog’s safe return.

Both dog and dog seeker are lost, but in different senses. The woman is bereft; not so the dog, who has gone missing, not uncommon when a pet is confined to a small backyard or a home interior and decides one day to escape boredom or captivity and dig a hole under a fence or take advantage of a door or gate left ajar to make a dash for freedom to explore the world, savor smells, expend pent-up energy, escape boredom, seek a mate: or, off-leash on a walk, give chase to a cat.

The dog can find its way home by its super keen sense of smell when or if it wants, but may wander miles in search of a beguiling scent (a female dog in heat). Meanwhile, if the dog has no identifying microchip or ID on its collar, worst case scenarios rise to the surface: Has it been run over? Stolen? Does it shiver whimpering and desolate in a distant animal shelter cage?

A poem of loss and grief many a reader will identify with. The treasured bond between humans and dogs spans the ages; our cross-species relationship epitomizes unconditional love.

Lines 2-3 act as a loop and a reverberating echo; the poem offers no closure. I, too, remember a lost dog and call his sweet name.

Kay Schwartz—a poignant mystery:

The first line “lost dog” immediately draws in the reader. Many have been in this situation or can identify with the strong emotion evoked by a lost pet. Will the dog be found? What will happen? No one could read this first line and fail to go on reading. The phrase “I leave my voice/in every street” uses delicious sense-switching, as though the voice was a physical object instead of a sound. Likely others heard the voice calling, even if the dog did not hear it. So in a sense, the speaker actually did leave their voice with the neighbors in every street, and conveyed to anyone listening the whole story of the lost dog. As a reader, I can imagine myself hearing someone walking up and down my street, calling for the lost dog. The haiku leaves us with mystery. We don’t know the end of the story. Was the dog ever found? Just as the people on neighboring streets who heard the call are left with the same mystery. So this haiku draws the reader into the situation, engages the reader in the action of the poem, and leaves us with a poignant mystery. Well done!

Author Madhuri Pillai:
My haiku is based on an incident that occurred a few years ago. An old friend invited us along with some other friends for a weekend to her home in the beautiful coastal town of Rye in Victoria, in Australia. She was minding a dog of her friend, who was away on a holiday. We were warned about the frisky dog, an escape artist, and we were told to make sure the front door was always kept shut. The day proceeded with the usual chatter and merriment, when one of us noticed that the dog was missing. Someone had forgotten to shut the front door. What followed was hours of agonising search, every street scoured, combed, and every stranger apprised of the situation. Soon it was evening, my voice hoarse and limbs weary, I headed back. When almost near home, a wildly waving stranger approached me with the news that the dog had been found. Someone had seen the footloose dog and had taken him to the local vet who recognised the runaway chihuahua. All’s well that ends well.

I wrote the haiku as it came to me. The second and the third line of the haiku perhaps has ghostly connotations, a disembodied voice lingering in the streets and lanes, long after the owner of the voice has left. For me the lines are indicative of my anxiety, and the unspoken thought, what if the dog is truly lost.

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

     
march winds
the chaotic sound
of wind chimes
—Linda L. Ludwig
 Poetry Pea Journal 2:24 

Poet Bio:
Madhuri Pillai is an English (Hons) graduate. She has studied journalism and has worked as a journalist. Madhuri discovered haiku and other related forms in 2013. Her work has been published in various journals.

Madhuri is an animal activist and is passionate about their welfare and well being.

Footnotes to Host Comment:

† “Haiku, for the reader, is wordless because those few words are invisible. We as readers look right through them. There is nothing between us and the moment . . . The phrasing and the choice of words provide the music of the haiku, which must be as short as a birdsong. Meter . . . is used to create a musical flow that is unobtrusive . . . It does not call attention to itself. It is like the faint sound of a breeze . . .”
—Cor Van Den Heuvel, The Haiku Anthology, Third Edition, W.W. Norton & Company, 1999

*  “Karumi . . . implies rhythm and attention to the poetry of the ear, what Ezra Pound referred to as melopoeia, especially those sound patterns that generate emotional connotations . . .Traditional Japanese poetry is thought to be based on syllabic meter without accent or stress, but this is true only in a very narrow sense . . . When one or more phonetic qualities—pitch, loudness, length, and timbre (fuzziness, hoarseness, sharpness, etc.) . . . are emphasized, as they frequently are in Basho’s poetry, the syllable is stressed or accented, creating a rhythm. Equally important are the patterned or melodic variations and repetitions of sound . . . The overtones . . . generated by rhythm and sound rather than by allegory or abstract concepts . . . represent the antithesis of heaviness.”
—Haruo Shirane, Traces of Dreams: Landscape, Cultural Memory and the Poetry of Basho. Stanford University Press, 1999

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

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