Tony Pupello
Essay #29 Sept/Oct 2025
Practitioners of renga or, for those who prefer the more “modern” coinage following Bashō’s precepts, renku, are very familiar with the concept of “link and shift”. Per Tadashi Kondo and Bill Higginson: “It is crucial to understand that renku consists of two dynamic forces: link and shift”. Renku, of course, is a collaborative linked-verse form of poetry. The link and shift in renku refers to the link and shift from one stanza or link to the next.
What I find most interesting is when this “shift” is employed within a single poem; the entire poem being the “link” as it were. There are poems that appear to be “heading” in one direction then — whether abruptly or subtly — “veer off”, shift, in another direction. This shift often serves to highlight or enhance the moment at hand. Indeed, the moment may not be as eloquently captured save for this adroit shift — or, as we can see from Peggy Willis Lyles’ classic below — the quintessential moment is to be found in the shift.
Summer night:
we turn out all the lights
to hear the rain
The sound of rain falling: gentle, hard; pattering off leaves, bouncing off concrete. Whatever the setting, one of the most elemental expressions of nature. For many, as for this observer, regardless of its intensity, no doubt a soothing comfort, akin to the sounds made by waves breaking a river running.
Leaving out the third line of the poem for a moment — “to hear the rain” — where does this poem seem to be heading per the first two lines? Nighttime, why turn out all the lights? Why, to better see the stars, of course. In this masterful double-turn of events, we do not see stars, indeed, we do not see anything. We are brought to “hearing” — we are left with the enhanced sound of the rain.
I find a profound depth in the shifts exhibited in the poems below by Brent Goodman and Mihan Han below. For me there are striking similarities not only in the shifts employed in the poems, but in the actual “shifts” that may have occurred in the objects of the poems as well.
vietnam my father’s given name purple heart
the shadows of birds
returning home
Goodman’s piece is a haunting enigma to me. His shift is profound and startling. From “vietnam” to “my father’s given name”, the poem continues to reverberate. “vietnam” — a name yet so much more. For those of us, especially those in the US, who came of age during the war years, the embodiment of a time, a generation; the embodiment of a myriad of feelings still unexpressed or inexpressible by many. The very mention of “vietnam” brings us to untold places — a few of untold joy at a cousin or friend returned safely from the conflict but mostly places of untold sadness — peasants struggling amidst the devastation of war; soldiers junked out of their minds — of a nation’s moral fibre that had been ripped apart. “There’s something happening here” — what is happening in this poem? Perhaps the poet is reflecting on a military or government document with his father’s real, given name; the starkness of this “official” name on an “official” document. Or, I suspect, is there a great deal more going on? As many vets did, had the poet’s father returned from the war a “changed” man? A man whose given name no longer fit. Is Goodman presenting a resonance between the conflict and the formal name of a combatant who took part in it; is he presenting a contrast between the two names; or has Goodman gone beyond, in essence, renaming his father?
Similarly, I find Han’s poem to have profound layers evidenced in the shift. “purple heart” immediately takes me to another military setting, if you will. A Purple Heart is a medal awarded to US military personnel who have been wounded or killed in action. There is very little ambiguity in those awarded a Purple Heart — the medal being based purely on physical evidence. For some fifty years, from 1942 to 1997, it was also awarded to non-military personnel, but no longer. Han deftly shifts us from the military to birds returning home. So, is this then purely an observation? Clearly not. For me this is a poem about scarring that returns with a soldier who has experienced combat. Witness, Han does not write about the actual birds themselves; he writes about their shadows. Are the returning soldiers shadows of their former selves? I sense a similar metamorphosis as that occurring in the Goodman poem. I have to add one more thought which I continue to, perhaps erroneously, cling to: there are times in the reading of a poem when associations are made which may or may not have been intentional by the poet — or, even more to the point — may not be at all what the poet had in mind. To be clear — the associations I am referring to are made without any stated or clear wording in the poem. These associations are totally on the part of the reader — in this case I am taken to the underbellies of birds seen while they are in flight. Dark, perhaps purple underbellies; reflecting/echoing their hearts.
slave cemetery
i scrape the moss to find
no name
In this most disturbing poem by William M. Ramsey, the shift for the reader is undeniable. In a cemetery we would fully expect a funereal marker to have information — a name, gender, dates of life and death. Yet the poet, upon clearing away moss from a funereal marker, finds no name. At first I am struck, as I’m sure many are, by this horrific absence. I think, however, there is more going on here. Note, Ramsey situates the poem in a slave cemetery. He is scrapping the moss — but off of what? He purposely does not indicate what the funereal marker is. Is it a tombstone, which were rare in slave cemeteries due to cost and, in not a few cases, the need to maintain anonymity from slavers? Or is the marker more likely a fieldstone — which only rarely were inscribed — or a wooden marker in which any info, if provided, would have long been lost to age and decay. Perhaps Ramsey found exactly what he expected to find: nothing — no name, no information. The poet’s uncovering of “no name” in death only serves to highlight the tragedy of slavery in which an individual ceases to be an individual — essentially deprived of an identity.
In addition to offering a shift in direction, a multi-layered poem may offer a shift in the tonal setting as well. Both of these “double shifts” can be found in the poems below by Roland Packer, Valorie Broadhurst Woerdehoff and Kuniharu Shimizu respectively.
summer fling another drowning
Brahm’s 4th Symphony country road
the modulation of the flutist’s I quietly cross
eyebrows the Equator
In “summer fling” Parker adroitly takes us from a dramatic, exciting, perhaps tumultuous summer romance in a truly unexpected, yet no less dramatic direction. It could be that the poet is “playing” with us here, “the unmentioned object “drowning” in romance — but I think the topic too dark indeed for that interpretation. No, I think Parker tugs mightily at our strings — shifting from a very positive tone to a very negative one; the “fling” serving as the “hinge” between romantic fling and fling off of a cliff or a high pier.
In Woerdehoff’s “Brahm’s 4th” what would we be expecting a musician to be modulating — especially as the piece is known for its range of highs and lows? We would expect the flutist to be modulating their tone, pitch, rhythm. Yet the shift is found when the poet takes us to the flutist’s eyebrows. In a very nice resonance, we may experience the flutist’s timing in the modulation of their eyebrows. What of the aforementioned double-shift? Where is it to be found in this piece? The poet takes us from the vast landscape of a symphony to the almost unnoticeable flutter of an eyebrow.
Where are we expecting Shimizu’s crossing of a country road to take us? Well, in addition to the “other side”, I would expect it to lead us in the direction of an inn, a barn, maybe even a county fair. No, it is leading us to cross no less than the equator. In this very quiet, unassuming piece, Shimizu offers the opposite double-shift from Woerdehoff’s poem; from the finite, that of a small country road, to the infinite, as it were — the high concept of the equator. Note the capitalization in Shimizu’s “Equator”.
Lest we think a shift can be employed only in quiet, disturbing or serious pieces, I note it is often employed on the senryū side of the spectrum, as well as the lighter side of the haiku/senryū spectrum. I make the distinction as not all senryū falls on the lighter side!
hippie wedding smuggled home
free spirits in a jacket
at the open bar campfire smoke
tugging and begging
at the end of his leash
the dog’s owner
Jeral Williams’ “hippie wedding” is an enjoyable romp employing a hinge shift — “free spirits”. Does “free spirits” refer to the alcoholic beverages offered at an “open” as opposed to a “cash” bar — as one would expect at a wedding? [As an aside, I know of one set of friendships that was lost because the bar at the wedding was a cash bar — unfortunately too much for one of the sides to take!]. Or does it refer to the free-spirited hippies? Well, it could refer to one or the other or to both at the same time. And does it really matter? There is a most attractive, might I say intoxicating, exuberance to this piece.
John Victoria’s “smuggled home” employs a quieter yet no less fun shift. As soon as “smuggling” is mentioned we are put on guard. Smuggling is ofttimes a criminal, punishable offense. What sort of contraband is being smuggled? Alcohol? Cigarettes? Drugs? Why, no, none of the aforementioned. In his/her travels the traveler has obviously been camping out at least some of the time. Probably unbeknownst to them, until home and unpacking, they’ve picked up a souvenir of sorts — the smell of campfire smoke!
“tugging and begging” is from the pen of a long-time practitioner of the shift — Mykel Board. As two of the “original” members of the Spring Street Haiku Group, I’ve had the pleasure of knowing shifty Mykel for thirty-five some-odd years and sharing in some of his punnish antics on-and-off during that time. As with much of Board’s work, there is a great deal of truth in this piece — as well as an expression of what may commonly be observed but rarely commented on. The first two lines of this poem lead us in the direction of a rather ordinary occurrence, a dog owner trying to tug a dog away from something, perhaps an unsavory pile of stuff, or towards somewhere, perhaps home — all the while pleading with the dog at the same time. We are expecting to find the dog at the end of the leash. Not so! Instead, in this deft shift, we find the dog owner at the end of the leash — reminding us as much as the dog is leashed so too is the owner!
Moving back to the serious, I’d like to end this essay with a poem from another fine poet, Tom Tico. Tico’s piece allows me to introduce another form of the shift. A shift need not be towards an unexpected object. It may be found in an unexpected absence.
forever diminishing
our view of the sunset:
the loss of the pine
The first two lines lead us to an unsettling place to be sure. What foulness is afoot that can serve to diminish the beauty of a sunset? Perhaps an ungainly structure has been erected — an ungainly building or billboard? Perhaps there is a form of pollution occurring in greater frequency, such as smog? No, it is not something present that obstructs the view. Rather, it is something absent, something no longer there. For the author this particular sunset has been intimately entwined with a pine tree that has, most probably, been in the scene for quite a number of years. The sunset from this vantage point encompasses the pine, is not complete without the pine. They are part and parcel of each other. Not only has the “view” been diminished but clearly the loss of the pine is indicative of the barrenness, the emptiness, experienced by the poet. I would venture a guess, only a guess mind, that in some way this is a form of pollution — I strongly sense the pine has been lost due to human intervention. The naturalness of the sunset and the pine has been disturbed. If I am correct, this is an environmental statement of the subtlest yet highest order.
