Alan Summers

Two Favorite Haibun: Unsettling Clashes

Photo by Steve Johnson from Pexels

When two different genres appear in a single package, it can be unsettling. But the “clashing” genres of haibun—the prose storytelling, the radical interruptions of haiku— also allow us to embrace unsettling things in startling ways. Kati Mohr offers a good example of this with “Dear Human, I don’t think poets are more troubled than others,” which originally appeared in The Other Bunny (Sept. 2, 2024). It is a tour-de-force of haibun, both literary and poetic. More than just a journey of observational boxes being ticked, it’s educationally self-revealing—not only of the author, but also of any reader prepared to enter the territory of a deep revelation.

Dear Human, I don’t think poets are more troubled than others

Self-harm exists on a spectrum. The mildest, most invisible to the outside, the one that hurts so much on the inside, is that I bury my feelings.

succulents stripping in my skin

Hardly anyone can tell when I need to cry. I don’t realise it, too, I just stand beside myself and watch my smile as if it were one.

parentification

echoes of an echo

come back

I believe that when you grow up in love but it’s not the one you need, you learn to throw it against the wall under a different name, like shadows.

sleepwalkers an intimate cup of poet’s jasmine

One day you turn around to the sun and weep in horror, because it’s bright, it’s big, shifting the shadows to become real. The ground disappears into them.

a late evening sun,

we mark the foothills

in the dust

Again I can’t cry. It is a new day. I carry guilt and shame, unclear if they are really mine.

semicolon tattoo

making myself

sigh

When I seek expression for the turmoil within me, I crank up the volume, let the singers scream for me. That’s better than being completely silent.

death growl petals enter the ether

But I don’t know what real silence is. So often something inside needs sorting, nurturing, is wild, wants everything everywhere all at once.

spring tide the headlines after Ophelia

I think we have art to keep us alive.

sunset meadow

it is as if there were

a thousandfold of bars*

I feel like I need to apologise, but I don’t want to. No-one’s eager to see this. But it’s human to get lost. To be found. To struggle with oneself.

microscoping class

the world composed

in breakdown

Self-harm is a state, it begins, it ends. Turn the pain inside out like a sock. An illusion: to think we’re at any given time the same person.

the realm of and

i’ve held a snowflake

Someone thought they should comfort me by saying the wounds will surely disappear. I look at the old scars on my arm and think: they’ve never bothered me,

but the humans

do unkind things …

reading from the prophecy

My consolation now is to see my scars. I read in their existence like I read poems, and write some, and the most important of them are like socks, too.

I study Joseph Wright’s play of light for a long while

if I just had a final say in it, and I have

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*Excerpt of “Der Panther,” Rainer Maria Rilke. Translation by Kati Mohr.

Kati Mohr’s haibun could have easily been titled “Self-Harm,” though that might have repulsed or frightened off readers, or made them feel that’s all they need to read (the title as retail label). Instead, she chose a title that is like a hook and pause, allowing the reader to ponder the theme. Addressing the reader as “Human” implies that an alien from another world is speaking—or that the speaker is alienated, both from others and herself. “Alien’ is certainly a term that means so many different things, often negatively.

Kati waits to unveil her intended subject matter until the first prose stanza, which acts as scaffolding for the first poem.

succulents stripping in my skin

Succulents are known for their ability to store sap that can sometimes be toxic. Here, the arresting addition of the preposition “in” makes it more personal and visceral. Another two-sentence paragraph, and we come to a poem with a very long, single-word opening line: “parentification,” A parentified child may be required to take care of their younger siblings or referee their parents’ arguments,¹ and the ramifications rebound off both title and opening prose sections.

Both poems show how haiku assist in unexpected ways, offering short respites from prose passages and weaving paths as side information, a little like dialogue in a novel. Each prose stanza tackles the author’s point of view and personal health, with short poetic interruptions that combine haikai characteristics such as natural history and symbolism with concision and white/negative space. The symbolism runs deep in the third haiku,

sleepwalkers an intimate cup of poet’s jasmine

The flower is Jasminum officinale (common jasmine, poet’s jasmine, poet’s jessamine, summer jasmine or true jasmine). In addition to referring back to the title’s mention of “poet,” it conjures multiple associations: love, purity, and sensuality; the medicinal properties of calming sedatives; aromatherapy as a way to relieve stress and anxiety. It’s packed with hidden behind-the-scenes information.

It’s such combinations of haiku with devastatingly honest prose that gives the haibun its power. Kati approaches difficult subjects in a factual manner. I do the same in my haibun “Life Without Mars.” First published in the Pan Haiku Review (Issue 3), it conjures up a world without fear and aggression from certain quarters.

Life Without Mars

There is an increase of attacks of many kinds on women.

    which dna your nail varnish on the beaches

One lionised man given as a reason for the English Race Riots of August 2024 to target female police officers, and women seeking asylum.

        it’s not just night the grit in my eye isn’t from crying

UK / USA women: British Olympics athlete Bianca Williams pulled over for driving from a training session to her home said “being black is a crime.” British Member of Parliament Dawn Butler stopped as police incorrectly typed the vehicle registration. Sandra Bland (car light malfunction, died 2015). This is for the unknown and known, and Ta’Kiya Young, dead at 21 for alleged shoplifting, fatally shot in her car: Unborn daughter also died from gunshot wounds.

            police stop mom's hands on their car makes her late

There are some differences in how we approach these topics. My haibun contains nationally reported facts, including a zuihitsu-like insert of a press release, rather than facts from another type of front line (the author’s own). And while Kati presents her personal revelations in devastatingly honest prose, I use single-line haiku to give the personal viewpoint, with an ambiguous use of italics: are they lifted direct speech, or the lines of a new poem?

which dna your nail varnish on the beaches
it’s not just night the grit in my eye isn’t from crying
police stop mom’s hands on their car makes her late

which dna on the beaches
it’s not just night crying
police stop

which dna on the beaches it’s not just night crying police stop

(And is it police stop or please stop, or both? Again, the haiku allows unexpected readings and meanings.)

It’s also worth noting the similarities between the two pieces. Both include allusions and references from popular culture past and present, which can imbue a haibun, even invisibly/subliminally, with meaning and context. For “Life Without Mars,” it’s a classic song often played on jukeboxes after it came out in 1971: David Bowie’s “Life on Mars?”

It’s the freakiest show
Take a look at the lawman
Beating up the wrong guy
Oh man, wonder if he’ll ever know
He’s in the best selling show
Is there life on Mars?

There’s also an allusion to a book that’s been quoted extensively, although I’m not aware of whether this particular quote was openly publicised:

A man’s deepest fear is that he is not good enough or that he is incompetent. He compensates for this fear by focusing on increasing his power and competence. Success, achievement, and efficiency are foremost in his life … A man appears most uncaring when he is afraid.

— from Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus (John Gray, HarperCollins 1992)

In “Dear Human …” the allusions go back further in time. There’s Ophelia from William Shakespeare’s play Hamlet (1599–1601), a noblewoman of Denmark and potential wife of Prince Hamlet; his manipulative and vengeful actions force her into a state of madness (gaslighting?) and she ends up drowning herself. There’s also Joseph Wright (1734 –1797) an English landscape/portrait painter who captures the birth of science out of alchemy, and the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke (1875 –1926), whose undertones of mysticism explore themes of experience and disbelief. The lines quoted, “it is as if there were / a thousandfold of bars,” are taken from his famous poem “Der Panther.” Here’s the actual end of that poem, left in the white space of “Dear Human …”:

An image enters in,

rushes down through the tensed, arrested muscles,

plunges into the heart and is gone.2

It’s an apt description of what’s happening in both “Dear Human…” and “Life Without Mars,” neither of which is afraid to confront the reader and reach past any defences. Both show that, yes, we haibun writers can embrace things that are unsettling, like many poets elsewhere—except that the companionship of prose and haiku produces startling results. This clashing of genres is not a barrier but a cause for celebration. And for any writer who feels unsure about using haibun to tackle hard topics, I’ll let Kati have the last words:

if I just had a final say in it, and I have

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Notes:

1. From Psychology Today, United Kingdom: “Parentification is when a child is forced to take on the role of a supportive adult within their family. For example, a parentified child may be required to take care of their younger siblings or referee their parents’ arguments.”
2. Translation by Stephen Mitchell (Brooklyn, New York): poet, translator, scholar, and anthologist known for translations/adaptions of Tao Te Ching, Epic of Gilgamesh, and Rainer Maria Rilke, among others.

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About the Author

Alan Summers is founder of the Call of the Page website, featuring one-on-one mentoring sessions and online courses, and The Pan Haiku Review. A previous editor of the British Haiku Society’s Blithe Spirit (2018) and the Red Moon anthologies (2000–2005), he had a winning haibun in the Bournemouth Writing Festival Poetry & Flash Fiction 2024 anthology, Lines in the Sand.

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