A musician and artist, as well as an accomplished haiku poet, Alan Pizzarelli is well-known for his literary humor and playfulness. He specializes in senryu—poetry that utilizes the brevity and structure of haiku, but with a decidedly more comical, sometimes slightly caustic approach that lampoons human vanity and other foibles.

Born in New Jersey in 1950, Alan Pizzarelli didn’t need long to decide haiku was for him. By the early 1970’s he had taken Harold Henderson as a mentor, and soon Pizzarelli’s work was being anthologized.

Herein I’ll offer my own responses to some of Pizzarelli’s very particular haiku achievements, and also some excerpts from an interview I recently conducted with him through the admittedly impersonal means of e-mail.

the taffy pullers
the taffy pullers
the taffy pullers

I love this one just for the straight humor of it. So simple with its repetition, but the second line being pulled like the taffy itself is such a clever conceit. It doesn’t seem showy, though, because of the brevity (soul of wit!) and unimposing language. Strawberry saltwater taffy: I can taste it right now. There are the secondary associations as well—state fairs, carnival barkers, tilt-a-whirls.

october rain
the tarpaulin ripples
across the infield

Being an almost obsessive follower of baseball, I was instantly struck by this one. A cold autumn rain brings a sudden stop to the playoff game—perhaps even the World Series. Mother nature letting us mere mortals know who’s really in charge after all, as she sends our little contest to a screeching halt. I can see the tarp battling and buckling in the wind, as members of the grounds crew fight to secure it. A sellout crowd waits patiently (they know the game must be played) at the park, and millions more not-so-patiently at home wait to see it on TV. A father laughs as he tells his young son, “No, they won’t cancel the game. This is the World Series.”

starry night
the jeweler
closes the folding gate

It’s easy to picture the bright sky lights—stars sparkling like so many of the jeweler’s diamonds. I can hear the heavy, albeit rickety, clanking of the ancient security gate as the elderly businessman struggles to force it across his storefront.
But for me the words “starry night” initiate a memory unrelated to the poem’s subject matter. I think of Van Gogh’s painting of the same name, which reminds me of the Art Institute of Chicago (though I don’t think that particular work was exhibited there), where I sometimes went with an old girlfriend.

done
the shoeshine boy
snaps his rag

I can smell the shoe leather, and the polish. I picture myself sitting in the customer’s chair—the modern businessman’s version of a medieval throne. Maybe this shine is being administered before going on a first date; or perhaps a lunchtime job interview. The man with the rag offers unsolicited (but very much needed) shoe-care advice. Look at the gloss on the wing-tips!

The break, or caesura, is unusually well-executed in this haiku. The first line is a solitary word, so we necessarily isolate it as we read. Also, the word in and of itself is a kind of built-in caesura: Done. There is a finality to it despite the fact that it begins the poem. There is a lovely circularity in the work as well, as the snap directs us straight back to “done.”

squinting
to read the sign
“optician”

“I can’t see my glasses ‘cause I don’t have my glasses on.” I think the old joke goes something like that. In any case, I imagine a middle-aged man whose eyesight has been deteriorating for years now, and he’s finally swallowed his vanity and gone—for the first time, mind you—to have an exam. I see him standing on the sidewalk, neck craned as he stares at the shingle above, trying to generate the nerve (and humility) to enter.

the dog runs after the stick
i pretend to throw

Playful or cruel, or both. I picture an enormous public park: wide open spaces for chases. The dog is young, but good-sized and growing by the week. A black lab, or a setter maybe, and very adept at fetching—frisbees, tennis balls, you name it. After a while the owner gets bored and decides it’s time to tease man’s best friend for a little while.

Alan Pizzarelli Email Interview

Q: Some of your amusement park haiku remind me of the old Springsteen song, Wild Billy’s Circus Story. How much inspiration do you take from direct experience versus literature versus music versus other?

A couple of my amusement park poems were written in Asbury Park (Springsteen’s hometown). I almost always write from direct observation. A keen perception is the key to writing good original haiku.

Q: Are you working on something now? Do you ever take an extended hiatus from writing altogether?

I’m always busy with a number of works-in-progress.

Q: Do you travel much?

Not much.

Q: Not necessarily influences, but who are some of your favorite writers, haiku or otherwise, living or dead?

Jack Kerouac and the beat generation poets & writers.

Q: Do you have any hobbies or bad habits you’d like to relate or renounce?

I enjoy creating art, photography and music (I’m also a musician) but I do not regard them as “hobbies”.

Q: When did you first feel that you had the knack for writing?

I was young, about eleven—but it takes years of study and practice to write haiku.

Q: What subjects, if any, do you feel should be taboo for haiku?

The only subject that can be considered “taboo”, is human nature. As Anita Virgil stated, "if it is man within the world, it is haiku. If it is the world within the man, it is senryu."

Q: Is being a quality senryu/haiku poet more a matter of proper temperament or intellect?

As with any artistic genre, be it music or art or poetry—one must have both a natural ability as well as many years of study and practice to develop the skill.

Q: Anything angry and cathartic you’d like to say about a publisher or politician?

Nah! I hope this has been helpful to you. Good luck on the road to haiku.

Books by Alan Pizzarelli

The Windswept Corner, 1998
It’s Here, 1995
City Beat, 1991
Amusement Park, 1990
The Flea Circus, 1989
Baseball Poems, 1988
Hike, 1984

All of the above-referenced haiku and senryu were published in Cor Van Den Heuvel’s excellent Haiku Anthology, pp. 144-157.

Alan Pizzarelli can be contacted at
poetryA@peoplepc.com