Out of Nowhere

the roar of the sea
coming out of nowhere -
dawn in the mist

Argentina Stanciu

fog in the harbour –
the seagull’s cry
out of nowhere

Sonia Cristina Coman

Haiku poetry often seems mannerist poetry. Both due to the techniques used and due to the fact that it addresses the same issues. In both poems above we are presented with the same strange experience of the inability to visually locate the sounds heard through the fog. The experience itself is that of a state of uncertainty and disorientation. Being wrapped in fog creates an anxious state of the senses which can no longer co-operate optimally. Without visual cues, what you hear makes you more disconcerted.

This is our situation. The way it is treated in the two poems, however, although the props are about the same, the fog, the sea, is quite different. The first poem is a quiet one, it captures the fact directly. The sound of the sea is always perceived as an breath always resumed by the waves that reach a peak and then vanish quietly into the sand. The fog happens during dawn and it will soon disappear. The middle line is one that lengthens and apparently weakens the tension of the sound coming from nowhere.

The second poem knows and wishes to control the tension by increasing it. The fog seems to paralyze the port. What was meant to be a visual, vital dynamic has perished and is speechless. Instead of the monotonous roar of the sea, suddenly and shortly, we hear a gushing sound, tearing through the numbing fog, that of the terrible wailing of the seagull. Its searching is full of anxiety, and the answer to not finding what it is looking for is just an elliptical and concise one, almost defiantly – out of nowhere.

(Corneliu Traian Atanasiu)