Before diving in, I’d like to thank Geoff M. Pope for being the first supporter of this new project. I’m now officially making progress on my goal of covering website costs for the year. If you would like to support the Culinary Saijiki project, you can visit the Buy Me a Coffee page here: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/culinarysaijiki.
Second, don’t forget that tonight is the deadline to send your haiku and senryu for the May 31st bonus post. Note that although the deadline is 11:59 p.m. CST, I will be asleep when that passes, so if you slip your haiku in during the wee hours, I’ll still take them! You can find the submission form here: https://forms.gle/wamaaMmoYS88AjXz6
Notes on All-Year Food
In my May 10th post, I noted that I have observed three broad categories of food words in haiku:
- Food words that are a definite seasonal referent;
- Food words that are not a part of any specific season;
- Food words that become seasonal with an additional modifying word.
This week, I’m focused on the second category.
As of this writing, I’ve collected 125 haiku for the project. Of those, the greatest proportion are all-year words, making up 36% of the current total. Although I haven’t collected statistical data every time I add a haiku to my Scrivener file, I know that when I first started collecting, the all-year food words were an even higher percentage. As I’ve added to the collection, the proportions have evened out somewhat, though the all-year words still come up more frequently. As yet, I don’t have a hypothesis as to why that might be.
In Haiku World, William J. Higginson identifies the following food-related words in the All Year section of his saijiki:
- Meal
- Cooking
- Beverage
- Coffee
- Pots and Pans
Although I have collected a range of all-season words beyond these five, as a nod to his work, in this post, I’ll discuss the haiku I’ve collected that relate to his original list. None of these appear in Haiku World; they’ve all been published recently.
Meal
Breakfast is a common meal that shows up in haiku. Morning and evening seem to be inspiring times of day for haiku poets, and if you have the luck of enjoying peaceful, leisurely breakfasts, I can see how the first meal of the day would lead to inspiration.
morning meditation;
Shir Haberman, bottle rockets #46
thinking about not-thinking
. . . and breakfast
rising early . . .
Tony Williams, Failed Haiku #70
a half-finished haiku
for breakfast
I debated whether classifying Johnette Downing’s lunch haiku as all-year or not. On the one hand, there isn’t a clear seasonal referent. On the other hand, a lunch box implies school. As school runs most of the calendar year, though, I didn’t feel right assigning this haiku to the autumn category. A lunch box could also imply summer camp. Therefore, I designated this one as all-year. If you disagree, let me know in the comments. I’d love to hear your thoughts! (Johnette, if you happen to see this, please do chime in about what you intended!)
lunch box
Johnette Downing, bottle rockets #46
her doll
a stowaway
The act of setting the table can be a meditative experience that can yield haiku moments. It doesn’t have to be a formal dinner arrangement; a simple home arrangement for a small family brings new moments of awareness.
table setting
Brittney Ritoff, Failed Haiku #70
for three
bun in the oven
Cooking
At present, I haven’t found much in the way of cooking-related haiku, senryu, or zappai that don’t have an additional seasonal modifier. Ronald K. Craig’s humorous poem reminds me of the pitfalls of having to cook for oneself: not wanting anything you have in the fridge, hoping dinner will cook itself, and trying to talk yourself out of takeout.
often the fridge door of opportunity opens
Ronald K. Craig, Failed Haiku #70
Beverage
Tea is the most common all-year beverage I’ve collected so far, and ultimately, deserves to be a topic of its own, on par with coffee. That being said, varieties of tea can become season-specific words; a colleague of mine talked about how green tea makes her think of spring. I’m certain that tea will get a post of it’s own in the future!
teacups filled
Shiela Sondik, tinywords 18.2
with fallen blossoms
closing time
blue days
Adele Evershed, Haiku Pea Podcast, Series 5, Episode 6
Mom pours what ifs
from her teapot
Sunday morning
Kristen Lindquist, Kristen Lindquist, Haiku Pea Podcast, Series 5, Episode 8
head bowed, hands clasped
around my tea
In Gary Hotham’s poem below, the cup could refer to tea, coffee, or something else entirely. The presumably empty beverage vessel connects to rich memory, nostalgia, and perhaps grief. I’m also intrigued by the extent to which mothers come up in the haiku and senryu in this section.
Mom’s home
Gary Hotham, Rightsizing the Universe: Haiku Theory, Yiquralo Press, 2019
the last cup
she drank from
Coffee
Coffee is one of the most popular all-season food words I’ve collected so far. I’m certain that if I went through the list of all the haiku I’ve written, coffee would be the food/beverage word that features most frequently. While coffee can be modified to reflect the season (more about that in June), a hot cup of coffee seems appropriate just about any time of the year. (And if you’re not sensitive to caffeine, it’s appropriate to any time of day!)
coffee shop date jitters
Marsh Muirhead, Failed Haiku issue 70
waiting for your call
David Gale, First Frost #1
the coffee percolator
welling up
coffee milk cloud
Crystal Simone Smith, First Frost #1
another day to figure
out the finances
hot black coffee
Paul Callus, Haiku Pea Podcast, Series 5, Episode Episode 8
ad-just-ing my eye-sight
between sips
Pots and Pans
As with most of the cooking-specific haiku I’ve collected so far, most of my pots-and-pans haiku have a seasonal modifier, taking them out of the all-year category. However, left to their own devices, this is definitely an all-year word. We have to cook regardless of season!
our first saucepan cooking for one
Maurice Nevile, Failed Haiku #70
silence . . .
Seth Kronick, Haiku Pea Podcast, Series 5, Episode 8
water comes to a boil
in a silver pot
Do let me know your thoughts in the comments, and don’t forget to send me your bonus post submissions by tonight! I’m already putting it together with the work that has come in so far, and I’m looking forward to sharing it with you.
So happy and excited for you! 🙏🏽💝✨