Commentary

summer dawn’s dazzle
doesn’t make that much difference
the Piscataqua

--Tom D'Evelyn



Wonderful display of tensions.

The first line is almost unreadable, letting sound come through the text of season, time of day and motion.

Then this is allowed to waffle in the second line so that the punch of the third line hits as a double take -- all flow beneath the surface.

-- Madeleine Findlay

Findlay on a haiku by Issa

Human Nature

Liza Dalby, in her wonderful book East Wind Melts The Ice: A Memoir of the Seasons, translates an Issa poem: Hatsuyuki wo imaimashii to yube kana:

First snowfall
a nuisance
by evening

Kobayashi Issa (1810)

We can’t help but take things for granted. Art prevents us from falling into the ennui of assuming that things are mundane. It helps us find the moment to actualize the particulars that are going on around us.

This haiku maximizes simplicity in each line. “First” projects us into an alerted consciousness. Then the ubiquitous turn with the word “nuisance” which anoints the custodial “first” with an awful curse. Suddenly we are in limbo. Then we have “evening”, a softened likelihood of demured acquiescence. These three movements like those in music create an impression and a rendition or translation of what it means to be human. Words are used in such a way that they are suggestive in a collective way.