Dee Evetts
Essay #11 Sept/Oct 2022
Attempting to categorize haiku is essentially a mug’s game. This is illustrated by the well-intentioned attempts by some editors, a few decades back, to publish haiku and senryū as separate sections in their journals. Such experiments died a natural death, since inevitably there were readers as well as contributors who would object that this or that haiku could in no way be labelled a senryū, and vice versa.
I have been at risk of falling into a similar kind of trap, while transitioning from physical abuse as reflected in haiku, through various forms of non-violent abuse, and across the spectrum of chauvinism and paternalism. These are convenient labels, the reality being that there are shifting sands underlying this whole terrain. Hitherto I have been writing from a fairly conventional perspective: a binary model that pre-supposes the traditional two genders, and a polarity based on the underlying presumption of one sex (historically at least) tending to exploit, diminish, or exclude the other. To a certain extent my choice of examples to illustrate this simply reflect such work as has been published, and that I have been able to find. I have all the same been on the lookout for the more elusive aspects of established relationships as expressed in haiku. And within those relationships the roles that are taken for granted, or alternatively adopted.
While labels and categories can be odious, I want to narrow the field for now by considering mainly poems that — always allowing for ambiguity — reflect the hinterland, so to speak, of ongoing relationships. Infidelity, breakdown, separation, re-coupling — such dramas lie in the future. And we will get to them. Meanwhile this is about co-existing as a couple, for the most part in harmony: the routines of getting on with life and with each other. We may conveniently start with one of my own attempts to write from within this context. It derives from the observation that a plastic washing-up bowl (if you use one) does not wash itself along with the dishes.
we never talk about
who washes
the washing-up bowl
This could be posing the question: is it she who is not too fussed about this, given all of the other demands on her time, while he quietly prides himself on doing a proper job? Or is it that he has never caught on to this low-profile chore, though he does polish the wine glasses to absolute perfection. Alternatively, it may suggest the kind of tacit agreement that can help a relationship run more smoothly. It is also the case that a degree of manipulation can serve as a useful emollient in long-term relationships, though there are potential hazards to this. Claudette Russell and Carolyn Hall provide us with these examples:
folding your laundry I let him
exactly the way remember it his way —
I want you to be spring gust
One could place the first of these as a scene during the early days of a relationship, with reefs already in plain view. The subject of Russell’s poem is likely to be disillusioned if she thinks this kind of modelling will change her partner’s behaviour. Perhaps he is by nature a bit of a slob, but this issue is standing in here for more deep-seated disappointments. By contrast Carolyn Hall’s haiku more evidently fits a later stage in life. The subject has here chosen the diplomatic route, having apparently decided that harmony counts for more than being right or wrong. The third line, while conveying a larger (and thereby consoling) context, seems at the same time to assert something not unlike Galileo’s “E pur si muove.”
In the following two haiku — by Jack Barry and Lee Gurga respectively — it is a matter of not saying more than you need to — which as we all know is not the same thing as lying.
snowlit dawn night on the town
not telling how beautiful the girl
the whole dream
my wife finds fault with
Why would you burden your partner unnecessarily with the notion of loving elsewhere? Particularly if it never actually happened. Imagine the conversations that could ensue, along the lines: “If you could dream it, then you could think it. And if you could think it, then …” And so forth. A more forthright couple might tell everything, and trust one other to understand that imaginings are not in themselves transgressions. While broadly speaking in the same territory, Gurga’s poem is particularly subtle. This husband does find the girl beautiful, and admits it plainly to himself. His wife criticizes her, knowing or intuiting that this is the kind of woman her husband finds attractive. (Having perhaps a quality she lacks? In her mind it may be so.) Thus the worm of jealousy insinuates itself. How might this scene have played out differently? Plausibly she might poke him in the ribs — just a little harder than necessary — and murmur, “She’s just your type, isn’t she? She is lovely.” But that would imply a very firm basis of confidence in their relationship.
coming off the phone
my wife informs me
I was never breastfed
This haiku by Hamish Ironside gets my imagination going. I read it as being his mother — or possibly a sister — with whom his wife has been talking. Who else would have that kind of information? The narrator may or may not have been in possession of this knowledge previously — and if he was, apparently did not think it significant enough to have shared with his wife. Or perhaps, on the contrary, he guessed that she would make overmuch of it. In any case it is hard not to detect a note of triumph in her declaration, and a weary acceptance in his hearing it. The implication being that she now has the explanation for some failing or deficiency on his part.
Not surprisingly, there are numerous haiku that reflect at least periods of harmony in a long term relationship. Marcus Larsson is particularly adept in this area, as the four haiku below amply illustrate:
melting snow cherry blossoms
your list she closes her book
of projects
as she sees me
warm night April argument
the honeymooners ask we can’t subdue
about our marriage
our laughter
I detect an affectionate knowingness in the first of these poems. The poet recognizes his partner’s habit of itching to get started with things out of doors that she been planning during the long Scandinavian winter. The second piece seems to me to convey gratitude for what has become established for this couple: they acknowledge each other’s presence even when it interrupts what was previously holding their attention. I know — it could equally likely be a courtship scene. And that for me is the charm of it.
Regarding “warm night” it is intriguing to speculate what conversation would have ensued from that question. I like the implication that something about the older pair prompted the younger pair to ask — and to feel comfortable about asking. As for the final poem, this conceivably has as its origin in a youthful joie de vivre, yet it displays a maturity of outlook that I think would be uncommon so early on. Perhaps one needs to have argued and quibbled for many years in order to see the absurdity of most of it? It is also true that disagreements can go underground for a time — out of sight and out of mind — as Mark Gilbert demonstrates:
Jurassic coast
we uncover a fragment
of last year’s argument
This is skillfully written, with an adroit side-stepping of outright metaphor. The scene suggests a common interest and shared pursuit. Whether the dispute it refers to was a geological one, or something more personal, we will never know — but my money is on the latter. Perhaps the couple rarely gets to spend this much time alone together, while also engaged in a common activity. As such it may be a rare pleasure, the only downside being that it allows latent stuff to come to the surface. Arguably of course, this should not be considered a downside at all. How a couple handles their disagreements is assuredly one measure of that partnership’s resilience. In both of the next two poems, by Elizabeth Nordeen and Thoman Martin, there is the suggestion of something still to be cleared up:
truck tires on gravel fingernail moon
the small grievance all that’s left
lodged between us
of the argument
Nordeen achieves a lot with her first line: first of all there is the sound it evokes (no doubt irksome to some) and then the visual link of a stone caught in the crevice of a tire. There is the suggestion that it will still require some effort to extricate this. Reading Martin’s haiku, I allow myself to imagine that this argument has taken place out of doors, with the poet throwing a backward look at the moon’s thin crescent as the couple move back indoors, now in relative harmony. I concede this is a somewhat fanciful reading.
We may pleasurably close with this eloquent vignette by Praniti Gulyani. It is true that the scene might be drawn from any stage of a loving relationship, whether romantic or connubial. It could equally well depict an episode of misunderstanding between a parent and their adult child. Furthermore, it may betoken a short-term misunderstanding, a long estrangement, or a final parting. In my current mood I am going to vote for the temporarily estranged couple.
train window …
the shape of an apology
on her lips
