re:Virals 567

“More difficult than making your own verses interesting is understanding those of others…” ―Shinkei (1406 –1475). Citing this, Onitsura (1661 – 1738) wrote: “…this should be a way in which a person is completely given over to training.”

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 Sean Murphy was:

   
more airstrikes
the deepening red
of the poppy
—Archie G. Carlos
  THF Haiku Dialogue – Allusion – Engaging with Other Forms – Long List, June 4, 2025

Introducing this poem, Sean writes:

“In Flanders Fields”, which this haiku alludes to, is a bit of an odd beast: In its first two stanzas, a hauntingly understated depiction of the costs of war; and in its third, a propagandistic call to action that elevates the dead to glorious martyrs. I read this haiku as, in part, a rejoinder to that last verse. There is a contrast at play between the poppy, a symbol of fallen soldiers, and airstrikes, which in the last few years especially, have been regularly deployed into civilian centers. And there is an emphasis on the continuation and intensification of violence — more airstrikes, deepening red — which stands against any notion that this violence will eventually lead to peace, for the living or the dead; it’s been over a hundred years since the Great War, and yet its ghosts still haunt us.

Host comment (Melissa):

What strikes me about this poem is the reference to the poppy, which seems to be a ubiquitous signifier when it comes to war due at least in part to the famous poem In Flanders Fields. There are many different poppy species, however, and even more cultivars. Not all poppies are red. In my garden I have several that are yellow and orange. And they are hardy, great survivors. It seems that this beautiful flower Papaver rhoeas, is forever associated in our collective consciousness with the concept of war. One of its common names is even the Flanders poppy. I guess that reflects the power of art. 

In the Japanese context, the poppy is taken to be the field poppy, and its accumulated hon’i or “poetic essence” includes karumi (a flower of light weight); vulnerability, especially to the wind (a frequent theme); fragile beauty and transience, for a field poppy blooms for a short time. The short-lived bloom of the field poppy can be a potent symbol of lives taken by the winds of war.

Crucially, poppies can also be seen as a symbol of peace, in particular there is the white poppy, one of which I own. These are perhaps not as well known as the poppy used for remembrance, but then why are they less well known?. For more information about the poppy of peace see Remembrance & White Poppies.

And here is a poem by Tachibana Hokushi, a disciple of Bashō, believed to be his death poem (jisei):

writing and trying again
erasing again and again
in the end a poppy blossom
(See remarks concerning attribution and translation in the comment thread following this week’s post in Moon and Finger)

Another way to see or imagine the poppy. A brief flowering of painstaking art, or if it is Hokushi’s death poem it takes on the deeper implication too of a life of effort blown away after too short a time.

Ok, so back to Archie’s poem, it is unlikely to have been drawn from his direct lived experience, or so I hope, and appears to be composed from imagination – in particular the news. I would be interested to hear what you think about the role of imagination in writing haiku? If you are interested in this topic then this is a useful link: Shiki’s Haikai Essentials.

I have been thinking a lot about the news recently, and whether this might skew our notions of reality. News is invariably bad isn’t it? Always focusing on the terrible things that people do to one another. I wonder how this impacts how we see the world, how it shapes our understanding of ourselves and more importantly, whether this influences how we construct our relations with one another. One question I have is is it possible to see our world differently?

Overall, I enjoyed reading Archie’s haiku as it has stimulated a lot of thinking, not only for me but in the commentaries below. So I say thank you for that.

Alan Summers:

Once again, war haiku take the forefront, before it was the breakup of Yugoslavia, as a catalyst, when President Josip Broz Tito died (May, 1980), now war feels everywhere or about to be.

The single line phrase “more airstrikes” suggests how popular this method has become with as weapons can be deployed safely from home to target distant peoples, often non-combatants.

A brief history of the poppy starts in 1915 with Canadian doctor John McCrae with his famous poem “In Flanders Fields” witnessing red poppies growing over graves of soldiers. Then in 1918 USA academic Moina Michael wears a red poppy to respect the dead, and begins campaigning for it as a war memorial. It’s officially adopted for war remembrance in 1920 by the American Legion (USA). Then in 1921, French humanitarian Anna Guérin persuades the newly formed Royal British Legion to adopt an artificial red poppy, who create the first mass distribution for its UK Poppy Day on November 11, 1921.

Haiku construction:

more = a comparative word

Cambridge Dictionary: “more” acts primarily as a comparative quantifier, determiner, pronoun, or adverb used to indicate an additional quantity, amount, or a higher degree of something. It is the comparative form of “much” and “many”. As a deeply emotional or evocative concept, the word ‘more’ can elicit a response within us, I would hope, in its partnership with “airstrikes”.

deepening = adjective

There are poets out there who believe they should not use adjectives in their haiku poetry. That we should “not tell but show” despite being “storytellers” who tell in our varying degrees.

The phrase “deepening” is a process, crisis, or state ever “more” intense within a specific context. (Paraphrased from the Collins Dictionary)

red = noun

It’s a colour often associated with hunger, love, passion, danger, as a warning: power and authority

poppy = Flanders poppy etc…
Seen as a war zone flower both ongoing and historic.

The Five Battles of Flanders (World War One years 1914–1918) fought in the Dutch-speaking (Flemish) northern region of Belgium and closely tied to the Battles of Ypres and Passchendaele also horrifically red in tooth and claw red blood-drenched conflicts.

We could say there is “ever more” of these aerial attacks to keep countries trained up in ongoing and new weaponry
e.g.
Ordnance: military weapons, guns, and ammunition.
Munitions: items used in war, like bombs and bullets.

We cannot overlook the coldness and unsympathetic role of contemporary war, we can use the lens of poetry, just as Canadian doctor John McCrae, USA academic Moina Michael, and French humanitarian Anna Guérin used their individual lens to reveal the human cost of lives lost.

David Cox:

Carlos’ poem delivers with a pithy economy. The use of the present participle *deepening* is unusual in haiku, but it is worth noting that, without it, we would lose the arresting visual of a deep wound saturating clothes or the ground with the blood of the injured or the dead. These appear to be an inevitable consequence of war: not only the casualties among combatants, but also the collateral loss of civilian life. The participle *deepening* conveys this intensifying process alongside the reminder of *more*; not simply becoming redder, but a darker, more ominous red. As Shakespeare puts it, “I am in blood / Stepp’d in so far”, the image itself conveying the idea of irreversible fate and tragedy.

As spectators to the ravages of war through its reportage on 24-hour news broadcasts—though these are by no means the only horrifying drip-feed—we may feel powerless to do anything. In the UK, the poppy is a symbol used by The Royal British Legion to convey remembrance, echoing Kipling’s phrase, “Lest we forget.” Perhaps the question Carlos’ poem probes is not simply whether we remember, but whether, lest we fail to intervene, perhaps remembrance alone is not enough.

Urszula Marciniak:

Poppies have long been associated with war: in the fields of Flanders, at Monte Cassino. How can we change these associations? Poppies are fragile and wilt easily. They are unsuitable for a bridal bouquet. Imagine a field of poppies stretching to the horizon, with children playing and colourful butterflies fearlessly landing on the red flowers.
How many generations without war will it take to reprogram these associations? But war still follows war. The poppies are turning red again, not because of first loves, but because of war.

The association grows stronger. The poppies are turning redder and redder. Blood has been shed. Transfusions from soldiers to poppies.

Perhaps we should send poppies beyond Earth. Perhaps they will find a better place to live there. Unless, of course, a war breaks out over which country sends poppies into space first.

Sudha Devi Nayak:

In a world ravaged by war, drones and missiles playing havoc with lives, we are denied the luxury of watching the sun set quietly or a poppy bloom in peace. The red poppy has turned a deeper hue with the rage of war. “The ceremony of innocence is drowned” says Yeats in a world where violence and chaos have erased moral boundaries. Purity and innocence are compromised in apocalyptic disorder, where hospitals, schools and. homes are bombed , the lives of the sick, the maimed and children are snuffed out without compunction. “We see the heartbreak and heartlessness of it all-a long line of blocked relief trucks on one side of the gates, the long shadow of starvation at the other. It is a moral outrage” says António Guterres, U. N. Secretary-General, voicing the outrage of saner voices.

The world has become a holocaust where the old live in the midst of death, terror, loss deprivation and the young give up their lives for a war of not their making. “What passing bells for those who died as cattle” asks the poet Wilfred Owen.

Will sane voices prevail,will that epiphanic moment flash when power and greed have run their race and the Powers that be turn to dialogue and diplomacy understanding we belong with each other because of our shared humanity? Let us hope the poppy blooms again in a hundred colours. In heartrending lines John McCrae the Canadian poet says “In Flanders Fields poppies blow/ between the Crosses row on row”. Life will again spring from the devastation of war-torn soil.

Jennifer Gurney:

So many layers in this three-line poem. The word “airstrikes” sets the poem’s beginning in the time of air planes and bombs. I think of WWI being the first time planes were used in war, but Google corrected me. Italy first used planes in war on October 23, 1911 during the Italo-Turkish War. I would have gotten that one wrong in Chronology. In Line 2, use of “deepening red” made me think of blood spreading on the ground in war from bombs dropped from above. And line 3, “of the poppy” ties the poem to remembrance of those who died in war. I know poppies from the small artificial flowers given out on Memorial Day that are also used to raise funds to support veterans. What I didn’t know until today was that poppies were chosen because they were the first flowers to grow on battlefields during WWI. The poem “In Flanders Fields” was written in 1915 and connected poppies to fallen soldiers. Although this haiku is clearly set in the early 1900s from the references discussed here, it is also entirely relevant to today. Current-day war, casualties and remembering the fallen are 100 percent on my mind as I read this poem. Past meets present in Carlos’ poignant haiku. I wonder whether the use of the phrase “deepening red” is also a political reference to current times.

M. R. Pelletier:

What a Haiku Calls to Mind

“and somebody spoke and I went into a dream …” The Beatles, A Day in the Life

August 2, 1990. Iraq invades Kuwait. I’m TDY (on temporary duty) at Incirlik Air Base, a twenty-three-year-old Sergeant in the USAF. My unit — the 520th AGS (Aircraft Generation Squadron), of the 20th Tactical Fighter Wing, stationed at RAF Upper Heyford — comes here every summer. Our mission is to fly sorties along the border Turkey shares with the USSR to collect ELINT (Electronic Intelligence — aircraft telemetry data, radar emissions, missile guidance systems signatures, etc.). Within twenty-four hours of the invasion our orders change — we are now part of Operation Desert Shield and our three-week posting is extended by three months.

I’m not doing my usual job anymore — as a Communication and Navigation Systems Specialist on F-111s — because I’m “short” (within a year of finishing my enlistment). I’m assigned to the tool room now, but here it isn’t even a room, just a taped off area covered by a canopy next to the first aircraft shelter on the flight line. I hand out tools and other equipment at the beginning of shift and take them back at shift’s end. For the other eleven hours of my shift I mostly watch the European Green Toads (Bufotes viridis) chase insects all over the flight line or read my way through On Love and Barley, the only book I brought with me.

When I’m relieved at 6 am, I walk back to the dorm past the bomb staging area where hundreds of pallets of precision-guided munitions — GBU-10s, -12s, and -15s — wait to be loaded. I shower, have a beer and a sandwich, and watch news of the build-up to war on CNN.

November 11, 1990. Veterans Day (Remembrance Day in the UK). We de-board the C-130 Hercules at Heyford around 5 am. I’ve got the day off but have an hour-and-a-half to kill before the first bus to Oxford, so I get some chow and drink about a gallon of coffee trying to drown the sound of roaring propellers still thrumming in my head.

I get off the bus at the depot downtown, walk the few miles to the house I rent on St. Clements, just a hundred yards up from the Magdalen Bridge and roundabout. Almost all of the people I pass wear paper poppies on their lapels. I remember the hills were red with them when I left in late July.

Summer grasses,
all that remains
of soldiers’ dreams.
–Bashō, trans. Lucien Stryk

Sitarama Seshu Maringanti:

The haiku is a telling commentary on the contemporary and ongoing warfare in the Middle East and between Ukraine and Russia.  Massive airstrikes on the Gaza strip and Lebanon by Israel, and the US war with Iran have left a deep mark of horror on the population there. Thousands have died, many of the women and children. School buildings and hospitals have been struck leaving a gash on the conscience of humanity. The blood of innocents has been spilled and flows like a river. In Ukraine, it seems that the airstrikes are the accepted norm of warfare between that country and Russia. Drones, hundreds of them, have replaced the traditional fighter jets for sneek attacks during nights leaving hundreds dead. Gone were the days when the poppy flower had symbolised a post-war armistice . It seems that a fistful of the blood-reddened earth will replace the poppy as the sign of the times if and when peace is restored. The anguish of the poet is too palpable through the haiku

Radhamani sarma:

This is a thought provoking haiku, resonating well with modern tempo, bombardment, war and peace etc. The age and environment is such that war is not in the fields below, but on air heavy and non stop. Reasons and reactions, hours and days of tension, noise suppressing voices, render many homeless, as well as many fatherless children and widows, many hiding where we do not know. Once again we have to recall Indian History, calling back Ashoka emperor of Kalinga to exhume from his burial ground and strike a peace treaty. But is it possible? introspection reveals the modern scenario, aspecting upon countries’ individual, cultural, political and historical backgrounds unearths various helpless situations and answers. Above all technological growth and scientific inventions add fuel to fire.

Kudos to Archie G. Carlos for veering round this haiku with an apt image, poetic excellence. The vital aspect of this haiku is airstrikes, gun shots, and red flame all around, the sky immersed in orange or red colors. Leading to the cancellation of international flights, disastrous smokes impacting human traffic, volley of thunders and deafening noise.

The second line, ” the deepening red ” distinctly brings out an image of intense anger, red blood shed, exchange of shots, and uncompromising enmity , whatever be the reason, the question remains of how much human sacrifice, blood shed and raging fires still go on.

A beautiful poetic image dipped in red color has something more to say:
the third line ” of the poppy” referring to poppy flowers (here in this haiku,) red in colors symbolic of war victims, mass killings and blood shed. The poet dexterously converts the red poppy to suit his purpose which resonates well with the concept here.

Here are some quotes on the poppy:
“In every petal, a story of bravery blooms; let’s remember those who gave their all.”
“Poppies bloom where heroes rest; let’s cultivate their memory with love.”
“Every poppy symbolizes a life lived for something greater; may we honor that legacy.”
“The red of the poppy speaks of blood shed, but also of hope reborn.”
“The red flower whispers their names; let’s listen and honor their sacrifice.”

(uncommonquotes.com/poppy-day-quotes/)
There is musical symphony, poetic conversion of image “poppy” universal message of bloodshed, implications, haiku writer’s efficient handling .

Dan Campbell to see anew:

This poem shows that the most intense haiku don’t explain the world; instead, they gradually change the way we view it. By using a small number of carefully selected words, they show that violence goes well beyond the battlefield and seeps into memory, perception, and even our experience of beauty.

Although flowers continue to bloom, once we have heard so many reports about war, we any longer approach the natural world with the same innocence.  The poem shows this kind of quiet strength. Instead of giving a graphic account of suffering, it allows silence to convey its meaning and invites the reader to finish the poem by drawing on their own personal memories, history, and emotions.

In a time when people are bombarded by headlines, it is a significant poetic decision to exercise such restraint. The best haiku, like this one, teach us that history is not limited to books and monuments; it ends up being recorded in our consciousness. It is only when ordinary beauty starts to carry the burden of war and invasions that we realize the most profound effects of war are usually not to be found in the changes that have taken place around us, but rather in the subtle and lasting ways in which it has altered our way of seeing.

Archie G. Carlos:

My verse “more airstrikes” was written in response to a Haiku Dialogue prompt (Allusions) posted by Guest Editor Allyson Whipple. I thought I would write about forever wars.

Way back in college, our Jesuit professor had once assigned John McCrae’s “In Flanders Fields” for our discussion group to report on. For Allyson’s prompt I thought my allusive focus would be on McCrae’s poem about the effects of war.

My final submission to Haiku Dialogue actually had a “long arc.” It was the distillation of a stream of several images into a couple of composite images.

When I was drafting the piece, airstrikes in Ukraine and Gaza — and the mounting number of casualties — were in the news. A stream of similar images crossed my mind at that time as well: Picasso’s Guernica; Hiroshima and Nagasaki; and the bombings of villages in Indo-China during the Vietnam War, when I was still in college. Deadly airstrikes continue to date.

The final image was from a recent chance visit to a botanical garden that, I recalled. had a stunning display of red poppies. That image was compelling.

Finally, I thought I had the elements of a viable submission.

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, to a maximum of 500 words (succinctness will be valued);  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. Please note that commentaries must be your own personal work.

Poem for commentary:

     
a train
I have missed
dream after dream
— John Stevenson
  Wales Haiku Journal, Spring 2025

Footnote:

Archie G. Carlos is a retired Certified Senior HR Professional, an amateur sociologist, and a relatively-recent haiku convert. In early 2022, after several years of “dabbling”, he decided to spend a bit more time practicing haiku and senryu. Carlos’ verses have since appeared in several more local and international haiku journals — in addition to the Asahi Haikuist Network and The Mainichi Haiku in English where his early verses first found a home.
Recent awards: Two Golden Haiku selected for display—13th Golden Haiku Competition (2026); List of Ten Winners—8th Basho-an International English Haiku Competition (2025); Third Place (Nyusen)—30th International Kusamakura Haiku Competition (2025); Certificate of Commendation—37th Ito-En Oi Ocha New Haiku Award (2025); Third Place—12th Golden Triangle Haiku Contest (2025); Sakura Award—Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival Haiku Contest (2024).

And here is a link to this week’s winner Dan Campbell’s blog.
Essays, Art and Plays by Dan

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

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