Jessica May • Jessica's Haiku •

Almost Unseen: The Psychology of George Swede’s Haiku The categories of his haiku range from street violinists to training bras to crickets. While many of them ride the haiku/senryu fence, all of his works serve to provoke the reader into an observant state when considering the world around them. On the day of November 20th, in the year of Our Lord 1940, Mr. Swede was born to two loving parents in Riga, Latvia. When he was seven years old, his family relocated to Canada where he has since resided. In order to fund his undergraduate education, he worked a slew of layman’s jobs over the years; no doubt, this variety of employment offered plenty of background to pluck inspiration from in his later years. He finally acquired the position of a school psychologist in Toronto in 1967; one year later, he joined the faculty of Ryerson Polytechnic University. He remains there to this day, only now he holds the position of the Chair of the Department of Psychology. Though Professor Swede has not limited himself strictly to the haiku form, of the 29 poetry collections he has published, over half of them are haiku. It’s clear that he seems most comfortable in this writing medium, and the work speaks for itself indeed. The majority of his haiku deal with the unseen; what happens when our backs are turned. He examines the relationships between people, people and their surroundings, even nature within itself with a very attentive eye. I was initially drawn to his work for just that reason; his work is featured in The Haiku Anthology 3rd ed, edited by Cor Van Den Heuvel. We were assigned to read selected authors from the book for Global Haiku class, and George Swede’s haiku really struck me in my first reading of them. They were the types of haiku I wanted to write: sarcastically funny and odd, yet terribly relatable and personal to me. When we began reading his collection of haiku, Almost Unseen, I became intensely drawn into a recurring, unspoken aspect throughout his work: the element of psychology. Because of his profession, I wasn’t necessarily surprised at this tie-in; but because of their abundance, I decided to explore more in depth these “psychology” haiku. The first series with a theme I noticed was his “shadow” haiku. They are as follows: mental hospital my shadow stays outside The Haiku Anthology, 216 or mental hospital my shadow stays outside Almost Unseen, 77 passport check: my shadow waits across the border Almost Unseen, 216 the man with the split personality shadow boxing Almost Unseen, 81 first warm spring day I take my shadow for a walk Almost Unseen, 17 The first one of the above series is the first “shadow” haiku that caught my eye. I thought it interesting that he referred to his own shadow as a separate entity from himself. Kind of like Peter Pan, who lost his shadow in Wendy’s bedroom and attempts to reattach it to himself by sewing it on. It got me thinking about my own shadow; how often do I really notice it and then when I do, do I look close enough to notice the differences between it and myself? Shadows can appear in front of us, next to us, behind is – in any number of positions in a spatial relationship with us. More often than not, they appear below us on the ground – does this indicate that, if they are separate from ourselves, they are less than ourselves: a baser form of us? His shadow also seems to have a primal instinct about what’s going inside the hospital by refusing to be dragged along inside with its owner. In the second haiku, Mr. Swede demonstrates the advantages of being a shadow: access to places we, ourselves, are not allowed to be in. The third, which could be considered a senryu (because of the comic approach towards human nature,) takes an omniscient view and looks in on someone having their own issues with their shadow. In this case, the man is a schizophrenic; and though he may just be shadowboxing as an exercise, because of the way Swede has set up the haiku, I interpreted it as the man fighting with himself. Or, different sides of himself. In the last haiku, he refers to his shadow almost as if it were a pet – something restless that had to be walked every now and then. Another series of “psychological” haiku that I became aware of were a few with a very self-reflecting, philosophical theme. after the search for meaning bills in the mail                                Almost Unseen, 79 I absolutely love this haiku. It perfectly captures that moment where everything seems to fit into place and you suddenly have an epiphany about what life is all about; you reach a moment of enlightenment, if you will. Swede describes his enlightened moment, and then follows it with an activity so expected and ordinary in life (yet so unexpected in the haiku) that the reader can share the feeling of his hopelessness at life. The structure of the haiku is also very appropriate to the immediate, train-of-thought movement I believe Swede was attempting to achieve. I’d like to close this paper (and this semester’s class, which has been amazing) with, probably my favorite haiku of George Swede’s in his “psychology” theme approach. It’s a haiku everyone can relate to, in my opinion, because we’re always trying to find a piece of solitude in our life. The whole time we’re maturing into adults, we’re creating a space for ourselves so that we might create our own life. When we finally do get that space, we complain that we’re lonely, or we’re always trying to fill up our lives with stuff and relationships so that we don’t feel so alone and abandoned. It’s a duality of humanity that might never be explained. Mr. Swede doesn’t attempt to explain it, either, merely express his similar feelings on the matter: alone at last I wonder where everyone is Almost Unseen, 87 —Jessica May