re:Virals 578

“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 Denisson. This week’s poem, chosen by co-host Shawn Blair in lieu of last week’s chosen commenter is:

   
autumn evening
butterflies
on a burst melon
— Mihan Han
    The Heron's Nest Volume XXV, Number 4: December, 2023

Introducing this poem, Shawn writes:

It could be argued that the long-short-long format is the most overtly musical and therefore most natural form for English-language haiku, considering how tension is introduced in the shorter second line and resolved in the longer third line. Here, the word butterflies directly expresses tension that can be felt in the body (butterflies : a feeling of hollowness or queasiness caused especially by emotional or nervous tension). The image of butterflies on a burst melon can be seen as a creative metaphor for a stunning sunset, but it can as easily be seen as corresponding to one’s heart and the emotional turbulence that can accompany it. The season is autumn, but other seasons are also present in the verse, butterflies and melons conventionally representing spring and summer respectively. There is something so rich about the composition that it seems to me the melon has actually emanated butterflies.

Host comment (Melissa):

This is a beautiful haiku. Just seven words over three lines, an autumn evening where butterflies alight on a burst melon, lucky things. I imagine them having a great time feasting on this. A lucky find: a brief moment of joy in what is a brief life. And as it is autumn, a kigo that conveys transience and impermanence or Mono no Aware, perhaps that is the point. These butterfies are in the last chance saloon, and like them we should be finding something to enjoy and celebrate in what is a short life. So go on, grab life with both hands and as the poet Robert Herrick wrote ‘gather ye rosebuds while ye may’.

Alan Summers:

What Happens at Dusk

As the author is from Toronto Canada I’m assuming these are Monarch butterflies. Autumn evenings are prime time for them as thousands travel through to central Mexico.

These Monarch butterflies (Danaus plexippus) use Toronto and the surrounding shores of Lake Ontario as a vital migratory corridor every single autumn. Hundreds of thousands of them funnel through Toronto from late August through October. Autumn evenings are prime time to spot them, as they form tight, resting clusters called roosts in sheltered trees to conserve warmth and energy.

Watermelons split or “burst” either on the vine from late summer to early autumn often by erratic watering patterns and extreme weather fluctuations. There are also kitchen explosions from fermentation: The sugars convert to gas; the rind is airtight, so pressure builds up and up until it pops.

Perhaps the melon got tossed outside. I’ve been to a butterfly pub and know they love alcohol as much as humans and other animals! Fermented fruit has always enticed so many of us.

Enjambment can be a useful tool with haiku, not simply line breaks as such. Here if the verse is a duostich or monostich it contains effortless beauty:

autumn evening butterflies
on a burst melon

autumn evening butterflies on a burst melon

The decision, as we are talking about poetry, is not necessarily reaching the other side of the page or screen, as white space is as much a tool as other poetic devices.

Here the 3-line approach to haiku can provide fruit:

autumn evening
butterflies
on a burst melon

It’s an autumn evening, a main feature is butterflies, and that deserves its own line. And what are the occupants of its own line being so present about? It’s a fully fermented opened up melon, a treat, just as an evening down the pub, or bar can be for a human.

Dan Campbell:

3 FRIENDS DISCUSS A POEM

Dan
There’s a quietly moving quality to the poem which makes you stay with it and think about it for a while. You can imagine the butterflies all drifting in around the split melon, attracted to its sweetness as the autumn light slowly dies. The fruit is split open and what looks like a waste of a melon becomes a surprise banquet for the winged creatures. It makes you think about the pleasures that are still there if you just look for them. What stays with you is the idea that an ordinary evening can be the very thing that reminds you of all the beauty that’s still out there for you to notice.

Hubert
I’ve lived amongst the sidewalks, the buses and the apartment blocks all my life so I can’t really envisage butterflies alighting on a melon outside. In my part of the world someone would have long ago cleared the smashed fruit off the ground before anyone even got a chance to look at it. Do butterflies eat melon I wonder, or are they just there because it’s getting cold? Autumn in my area is all about earlier streetlights, the pavements getting damp and people rushing home with their collars up. I quite like the idea of a place where something left on the ground would actually draw people in rather than just elicit complaints and where no-one in particular is in a rush to get it cleared away.

Zoila
I learned about haiku in El Salvador and I admire the conciseness of those three lines. They give us a moment and that’s it. The first line “autumn evening” is a seasonal reference which puts us in the right time of year and gives the scene a very quiet sense of the dark coming on. In El Salvador we’re very much aware of the seasons through the arrival and departure of the rain so I might have opened with a different seasonal marker, but I can certainly see the image of fruit ripening and then falling back to the ground. The butterflies and the burst melon are a nice contrast. The delicate wings are all around the damaged melon and what looks like an end becomes an occasion for feeding. I really like the poet’s restraint in that there is no mention of death, no mention of rebirth, no mention of thanks at all. It’s just a few images that allow the reader to go and make their own mind up about what it all means. You could quite easily be thinking of a mango that has fallen from a tree after the rain, its scent rising in the warm air as the little creatures come to feed on what’s left.

Sudha Devi Nayak:

The haiku bursts on us in a celebration of Autumn, Keats’s ode to the season in a nutshell. A beautiful autumn evening with a burst melon on a vine, its juices spilling over and colourful butterflies hovering over it is a heartfelt moment to be revered and carried. Autumn spreads a canvas of colour in shades of red, yellow, orange across forests, parks, and homes where leaves and flowers are in freefall and fruits ripen with ease and the world wakes to vibrance of colour and soft breezes. The witcheries of spring and its seemingly effortless profusions are far behind. Keats says ” Where are the songs of spring?/ where are they?/ think not of them/ thou hast thy music too”. Spring is a serenade, Autumn is a nocturne.

We can visualise the balmy evening, the fruitfulness of the melon and butterflies in their various shapes and colours feasting on its sweetness and scent. What a colourful evening, and how intoxicated can the butterflies get? I am reminded of Basho” A Bee/staggers/out of a peony”. Tyron Edwards, American theologian, says “The splendid colouring of Autumn leaves is their graceful and beautiful splendour of life when they have finished their summer offering of service to God and man”.

So on a quiet autumnal evening in the beauty of fading light, the butterflies and the melon and the fall colours everywhere is the very definition of that Peace we are in search.

Radhamani Sarma:

A beautiful haiku by Mihan Han where season and color, butterflies and full blown fruit and nature and a haiku writer’s imagination have free play. A contrasting image takes us a long way to dizzy heights, pondering where do all these lead. Beginning with the autumn evening, preparing the ground for fall, leaves are shed, the beauty covering in its own décor, where we all step into the “season of mists and mellow fruitfulness”. Autumnal beauty captured by Keats, renowned romantic poet of England.

Autumn is the season of calm and cool outside, with its beauteous shades of red and orange flowers, where we sit and stare through the window, allocate some time for ourselves, when birds zoom around: this is a western scenario. But in India, we shudder through autumn and winter, we tolerate water logged roads blocking traffic and mosquitoes in garbage, ringtones in our nets, slush and mud spoiling the road side view.

In the second line haiku prepares our mind for butterflies; in general butterflies – springlike, colorful attracting us all from flower to flower, a quick zoom around, with their own delightful pastime. Here a seasonal shift in the perception of the writer.

A beautiful connectivity with “a burst watermelon” where a fascination of color combination acquires new dimensions. Full blown, juicy, mellow, not sliced or cut watermelon, but automatic burst watermelon, the pop up sound attracting colorful butterflies, imbibing watery juice. The writing radiates with the powerful contrasting images of autumn, butterflies and “burst watermelon”.

A free play, innovative of season and serendipity, marvelous technique with multiple approaches.

Sitarama Seshu Maringanto:

Mihan Han’s haiku reflects a fact of life. Melons are susceptible to excessive water absorption caused by rains during or at the end of the autumnal season. The excessive water at the roots is absorbed by the plants. It results in bursting open of the melons. Fruits brought home from a store or a farmer’s market could foam or burst open due to other factors like heat.  It is an interesting feature of the melons. Farmers and consumers alike are generally unaware of the development until it occurs. The poet has written the natural phenomenon nto a subtle haiku that also highlights another natural feature – that of butterflies hovering around a burst melon and feeding on the juice. It is common that some Butterflies are attracted to the colour and the oozing nectar of the flowers. But if one desires to attract a good number of different varieties of Butterflies, a burst Melon can do the job very well. The haiku brings out the poet’s keen sense of observation of Nature. The haiku is a blend of aesthetics and scientific observation.

Urszula Marciniak – seize the day:

Another evening. The butterflies are busy finding food which is not always easy. It is not every day that one happens upon such a royal feast. Much in life depends on luck — and on whether we are able to recognize it in time, appreciate it, and take full advantage of it.One could put it off until later, to some indefinite tomorrow.Alternatively, one could choose to be here, in the present moment. It is up to us what we do with what the world brings our way. Will we notice the colorful butterflies on the melon? Will we find a sense of wonder in this moment? They do not wait for another evening.

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

     
the blues  
the mirror behind the bar 
reflects autumn
— Marta Chociłowska
  74th Basho Memorial English Haiku Contest (2020)

Footnote:

Mihan Han “is a burned-out frontline healthcare worker training to be a teacher, which, in retrospect, may not have been the wisest decision to avoid further burnout. His work appears or is forthcoming in Modern Haiku, Ricepaper Magazine, Juniper, Frogpond, and others. He lives in Toronto, Ontario.”

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

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