The Haiku and Imagery
The Haiku, created by Matsuo Bashō in the seventeenth century, is a short, three line poem consisting of five syllables in the first line, seven in the second, and five in the third. It can be described as “lean and uncluttered,” because there simply are no filler words, and every word is significant (Chu 217). Because of its brevity, haiku poems employ imagery. Imagery such as tactile, audible, or visual are common within haiku. Authors may use imagery to convey nature, religious, or spiritual undertones in their haiku.
An example of a haiku using imagery to aid in the visualization of the landscape is Richard Wright’s №31.
In the falling snow
a laughing boy holds out his palms
Until they are white.
№31 uses tactile and auditory imagery to understand the emotions of the boy in the snow. Simple pleasures are often overlooked as one ages, so the boy reflecting on his current surroundings leaves the reader with an impactful visual. But the haiku contains a deeper image, relating the white snow to racism in America.
The haiku involves a boy laughing while snow falls onto his palms. Wright’s particular word choice, like “laughing,” and “holds” [out his palms] to describe the boy, and “falling” and “white” to describe the snow, helps the reader imagine the scenario the boy is in (Wright 219). A clear reflection of the boy’s blissful and calm mindset emerges through the auditory and visual imagery.
The boy laughing, even while snow is falling from above, gives us the sense that the cold temperature of the snow does not bother him. To him, holding his palms out until covered in snow reveal his relationship to nature: not finding harm in the natural elements. He did not hold out his hands for a short period of time — he held them “until they are white.” (Wright 219). The tactile imagery of the snow on top of the boy’s bare palms lends itself to the visualization of this sensation, including the freezing temperature of the snow. However, this uncomfortable feeling is not shared by the boy, who is laughing.
The boy should have felt uncomfortable with cold snow building up on his hands, but instead, the temperature of the snow made his hands numb, so he felt no pain. The boy, who is most likely black, considering Wright’s contributions to Black literary culture, has lived with the trauma of racist America his whole life, and knows no different. Although there is pain, the build-up of trauma, or in this case snow, is numbing to the boy. Also, the white snow covering up his bare, black palms, symbolizes society’s whitewashed lens and preferential treatment toward white people in America. The boy, in his innocent encounter with snow, reflects the happiness of a relationship to nature. However, this same visual and auditory imagery of the boy laughing and his hand whitening, evokes how racism is “naturalized.”
Wright captured this joyful, yet politically revealing moment of the boy through the precise tactile and auditory imagery of the haiku.
Chu, Jean Hyung Yul. “Haiku.” Exaltation of Forms: Contemporary Poets Celebrate the Diversity of Their Art. Edited by Annie Finch and Kathrine Varnes, U of Michigan P, 2002, pp. 217–222.
Wright, Richard. “№31.” Exaltation of Forms: Contemporary Poets Celebrate the Diversity of Their Art. Edited by Annie Finch and Kathrine Varnes, U of Michigan P, 2002, pp. 219.
