Intriguing Aspects of Spider Haiku

watering flowers—
the spider's hammock
filled with diamonds

Gabi Greve, Spiders in Paradise,
<http://happyhaiku.blogspot.com/2005/02/spiders-in-paradise.html>

I have a fascination with spiders. I enjoy the way they hunt, the way they communicate, and particularly the way that they aren’t really observed by the normal person. Their inner mechanisms and behaviors are typically neglected due to the taboos about being venomous, disgusting, or even evil. This typical neglect is why I want to delve into with spider haiku. I want to see if the poet can study and observe the actual ecology of spiders. Furthermore, I would like to see if haiku written about this aspect of a spider’s life would be considered well-written haiku. To try and figure this out or at least get my insight on the subject, I’m going to delve into a few of what I consider well-written spider haiku and talk about these aspects.

Taking a look at the haiku on the first line, what do you notice? It talks about the scenery—an effective aspect of any haiku—and it doesn’t really mention anything about the spider, merely that its web is filled with water droplets. What is the part that the reader likes about this haiku though? When I read it, I immediately like the idea of two flowers separated by a few inches with a spider crawling across its “hammock,” hanging by a few threads of its fine silvery silk. Then the author glamorizes the picture and dazzles the reader with diamonds of water with the sun’s rays glinting off the droplets in every direction. It’s such a beautiful picture, but it has almost nothing to do with the spider itself. It is these aspects of the spider’s life that the author wants to capture and convey to the reader. The author focuses on how beautiful it looks when the water is just hanging onto the silvery sheen of silk. She wants us to see the beauty of the water, the life-supporting, delicious atom that is so wondrous in many ways—one of which being that it can reflect light beautifully. I think that if the author were to write a haiku about this aspect of the spider’s life specifically, it would be much different. It would probably be something as follows:

The spider
Clinging for dear life
Struggles from water’s drowning grasp

D. Delaney

Now which do you prefer? I, for one, prefer the nice shiny crystals resting in a hammock to a drowning spider. In actuality, a lot of spider haiku has to do with the webs and how the water clings to them, but there are spider haiku that deviate from the web.

autumn deepens—
my spider still weaves
sunbeams

Gabi Greve, Things Found on the Way,
< http://worldkigo2005.blogspot.com/2006/07/spider-kumo.html>

Here is another haiku describing much of what people love about nature—beauty. The autumn is deepening. This phrase just really sets a great picture in my mind. I see leaves falling onto an already leaf-strewn forest floor. The sun is about three quarters of the way through its journey across the horizon and the clouds have a beautiful purple and mahogany tint to them. Overall, it’s a perfectly serene picture of nature. Then, it talks about the spider still weaving. It’s been working hard day-in and day-out creating this web to make ends-meet. Then it wraps it all up with the sunbeams. It never actually says what the sunbeams are doing, just that they are there. I imagine them sifting through the spider’s web to illuminate a few dappled spots on the forest floor below, although someone else may have their own interpretation that pleases their mind’s eye. This is one of the keys to any successful haiku—it should be able to be manipulated to each individual in some way. The effective part of the haiku, then, really has almost nothing to do with the spider. And the part that does deal with the spider isn’t exactly accurate either. It’s not accurate to think that a spider works hard, or that it persists, in creating its web. It is a spider’s instinct to make this web, that is, that the action is completely functional the first time it is performed. Therefore, the creation of a web, for members of the same species, will be approximately the same time, and it will look basically identical with the only variables being caused by the environment that the web was weaved in. On that note, a spider doesn’t weave its web. It doesn’t deal with needles and thread; rather, it instinctually knows how to deposit silk, and its body has certain structures that allow it to do so just like we have thumbs that allow us to grasp objects. In reality, there is nothing special about a spider creating its web. It’s an everyday activity for web-building spiders. The only special aspect of this picture is the sunbeams that we aren’t even really sure what they are doing.

Outside my window
a spider and her husband—
loved to death

Angelika Kolompar Bygott, Spiders in Paradise,
< http://happyhaiku.blogspot.com/2005/02/spiders-in-paradise.html>

Now this haiku has a more accurate representation of a spider’s behavior. First off, I notice that it is coming from the angle of a person watching out their window. It’s a pretty picture because everyone wants their view outside their window to be pretty. Then the haiku takes a more personified phrase—“a spider and her husband—.” This makes it seem like each spider is in a committed relationship with their significant other. In reality, the longer the spider remains, the more likely he is to be killed and eaten by his mate whether for the nutrition or territorial reasons. This aspect of some spider life cycles, also known as sexual cannibalism, actually does occur. In some spider genera, the female, being much larger than the males, will mate with the males, and, after copulation has been completed, they will attack and eat the male spider. This is because cannibalism is one of the healthiest diets an organism can be involved in. If they eat one of their own species, then they are getting all of the amino acids and proteins that they need to survive. Also, it is beneficial for the male because he most likely won’t live to copulate a second time anyway, so by supplying the best nutrition to the female he mated with, he is better ensuring the survival of his genetic line. Notice, however, the anthropomorphism used in the last line—“loved to death.” Love is a human emotion that organisms like spiders do not have the cognitive ability to express. This is the aspect of the haiku that the readers pay attention to. They like the idea of a bitter-sweet romance where the spider husband gives his life to support his children’s lives despite his will to live. It’s the romance of the situation that draws the readers’ interest, not the truth of it. In reality, the male tries to get away from the female, typically. The female, however, being much larger and stronger, typically kills the male before he gets more than a few centimeters. A haiku representing this interesting behavior would be as such:

Impregnated spider
Gorges herself
On the mate’s remains

D. Delaney

Now unless you are one who is really into gory scenes, I doubt this is your cup of tea.  It has no relation to typical human behaviors, and it has no connection to human urges or feelings (at least not the normal urges…). This behavior is an exciting and atrocious behavior that greatly increases the reproductive success of both parents; but that doesn’t make it a behavior that the reader would like to envision.   

dark morning—
the fate of a spider
on my wall

Angelika Kolompar Bygott, Spiders in Paradise,
<http://happyhaiku.blogspot.com/2005/02/spiders-in-paradise.html>

This haiku brings to mind an immediate impulse that most people have when they see a spider. They wake up in the morning and roll over in their bed to see this huge, eight-legged creature creepily crawling across their wall. Their first reaction—kill it. The mood is set by the dark morning and the spider by itself on the room-owner’s wall. Nobody wants to see a spider in the morning when they wake up (even though the spider is really preventing multitudes of other creatures crawling about in one’s room). On another note, this haiku has another more subtle attraction to it. It talks about fate and how the fate rests in the author’s hands. This particular idea brings God to mind. Every human being wishes that he / she were a god at some point in time. The idea that the fate of a helpless creature that has entered your domain rests in one’s hands really strikes home for some people without them even realizing it. People like the idea of being in control. They enjoy power. That’s why the poem reads “my wall” and not the wall. It’s the author’s wall and that spider is trespassing so it deserves whatever punishment the author deems worthy of the spider’s transgression. One could also take this haiku in a sadistic tone, depending on the reader. The author might enjoy the pain he/she’s about to cause this helpless creature. Regardless, the attraction derives from the sense of power that comes with comparing ourselves to organisms like spiders. Also, this haiku is written from the human perspective. It’s not coming from the third person that is merely describing a scene. It’s coming from someone who is watching this spider and most likely contemplating its death; so, this haiku doesn’t really have a perspective from the spider. The closest thing one could make would be to describe the vibration stimulus that the spider received right before it got smashed by a gigantic hand. I sincerely doubt many living people can relate to feeling the air vibrate before they were completely smashed by something a hundred times their size. It just wouldn’t happen.

spider web
in the corner
valentine in the mail box

Natalia L. Rudychev, Things Found on the Way,
< http://worldkigo2005.blogspot.com/2006/07/spider-kumo.html>

This haiku has some interesting qualities about it. First off, it initially seems to be from the spider’s perspective observing a human holiday. The spider is sitting in the corner, of the mailbox perhaps, and it sees that a valentine card has been dropped off for that someone special. The audience loves to hear about love and throwing the nature aspect in there can really help to paint the picture. It makes the reader almost able to see the anxious boy/girl opening the valentine and getting that flirtatious grin on her face because it’s from the boy she’s had a crush on since their eyes met in third grade. However, looking further into this haiku, I’ve found that it derives from a Russian superstition. This superstition says that if you don’t kill a spider when you see it, then you will receive a letter (N. Rudychev, http://worldkigo2005.blogspot.com/2006/07/spider-kumo.html). Obviously, in this case the letter was a valentine’s letter. This superstition plays, again, on human emotion rather than the reality of the situation. It gives hope to the everyday person. This haiku might inspire a little girl to go out and look for spiders not to kill so that she can get that valentine. It could also be saying that if you do a good deed then you will get rewarded—the good deed being not killing the spider and the reward being a letter from a possible lover. On the same note, this haiku plays on a superstition so it doesn’t even really have to be about the spider. Rather, it is stemmed from fear of bad luck or not getting what you want. Superstitions are a big part of a lot of societies so writing haiku about superstitions is really appealing to some people. Therefore, it’s not so much the spider that the haiku centers on, it’s the superstition and the reward—two things that people pay a lot of attention to. If a haiku were to be composed about this situation and its relation to spider behavior, it would be something about the spider creating its web in a bad spot (in the mailbox). Barely any prey items would venture into the mailbox so the spider would either have to find a new hunting spot or die from starvation. Once again, the emotional aspect and beautiful situation takes precedence over the reality.

widow's cottage ~
every spider
has a name

Paul Hodder, Kigo Theme: Spiders,
<http://www.haikuworld.org/kukai/archive.aug2008.html>

This haiku speaks volumes. Clearly, it is an emotional haiku. You don’t even need to get past the first line to realize what it is talking about. I love it because it really hits the lonely note home. Anytime I imagine a widow, I think of a lonely woman, probably in her late twenties that just received the news that her husband has been killed in war. Not only that, but she lives in a cottage. Personally, I think of a very lonely, drab, plain-looking cottage that is sitting all by itself on the countryside. Every syllable in this haiku is dripping loneliness. “Every spider” insinuates that not only does she know exactly how many spiders visit her, but she also knows exactly where to find them. After reading the third line, I’m led to believe that this widow even holds conversations with the spider. For whatever reason, she is all alone, whether it’s because she’s the last living member of her family or because her and her deceased husband’s families didn’t approve of their marriage. Whatever her circumstance, she has no friends or family and the only comfort she can find lies in a dusty cobweb in the corner. She has a name for each and every spider that creeps its way into her lonely cottage and she’ll remain like this most likely for the rest of her life. As I said, it speaks volumes. However, does it really have anything to do with the spider’s life at all? I think not. Rather, this haiku is about the woman. It is about how she has nothing left except for the lowest of the low and she’s clinging to it for dear life. The only reason a spider is in this poem is because the spider is a creepy creature that many people don’t necessarily like, although, one might look at it from the Russian superstition perspective. Perhaps she constantly talks to the spider because then she can reassure herself that it’s there and it’s not just a figment of her imagination. Maybe she’s longing for a letter that will never come so she searches for anything that could give her hope for her dismal life. That is the role the spider plays. This haiku has nothing to do with how a spider hunts for prey or how it finds a mate; rather, this haiku is about loneliness. It is a fantastic haiku about loneliness and sorrow, but it certainly is not about the spider itself.

There are many aspects of spiders that most people don’t even know about. They are such effective predators and they play significant roles in almost every ecosystem. However, their importance to the world and how it functions doesn’t necessarily qualify it for haiku. The spider is beautiful in every right, whether it is from the intricate colorations or to the wondrous webs they weave day-after-day; however, the human mind is fickle and it doesn’t want to try to convey these amazing parts of a spider’s life in three lines. Instead, haiku seems to focus on broader pictures and aspects of nature that can be related in various ways to human life. Haiku author’s like to capture the way the sun sparkles off of the web or the thrill of the hunt rather than the way the female spider decapitates her mate immediately after copulation. It is no fault of humans or spiders; it is just the way that the human mind likes to utilize its imagination. Sometimes, reality just doesn’t exactly do it.

Works Cited

Greve, G. and A. K. Bygott, “Haiku and Happiness and Haiku (01): Spiders in Paradise.” Web. http://happyhaiku.blogspot.com/2005/02/spiders-in-paradise.html. Greve, G. 05 Dec. 2010.

Greve, G. and N. L. Rudychev. “Things Found on the Way.” Web. http://worldkigo2005.blogspot.com/2006/07/spider-kumo.html. 2007. Greve, G. 05 Dec. 2010.

Hodder, P. “August 2008 Kukai.” Web. http://www.haikuworld.org/kukai/archive.aug2008.html. 2008. The Shiki Monthly Kukai. 05 Dec. 2010.