AMERICAN MOSQUITOES ARE NOT XENOPHOBIC?

This conversation happened recently on Facebook:


Dimitar Anakiev:

This morning I got a letter from a leading American haiku poet and editor. In this letter he suggests me to change the title of my haiku collection Xenophobic Mosquitoes because, as he said, "mosquitoes cannot be xenophobic"... What do you think about the state of poetry in the USA?


Adis Imamovic Pixi:

Mosquito flying,
Diving, taking blood
Horisont is red


Colin Stewart Jones:

My own experience with midges in Scotland and people who go to countries where there are mosquitoes suggests that all biting flies prefer to attack visitors because their blood is different in the hotter climate. This means that biting flies discriminate. Xenophobic is a very clever synonym to describe this selective dining.


Kim Goldberg:

He sounds like a literal-minded nit-picker. Not the mind of a poet.


Dimitar Anakiev:

It is hard to add something but for these who learn from us (I face such objections two decades and I suppose all other poets... That is a disqualification of personification, which is one of the most frequent kind of metaphor in haiku because it comes from identification of poet with subject i.e. from empathy) let me remind you on famous Zhuang Zhou reply from his (mythological) discussion with Confucius where he answered similar objective statement about fishes with: "How do you know when you are not fish"? In this case "How do you know about mosquitoes when you are not a mosquito"? This Zhuang Zhou answer is classical defense of poetic mind, defense of poetry against flat rationalism. Only the identification can speak in the name of things, so only poets. Cold rational mind is killer of poetry. Such "poets" create formalist approach to "poetry". So yes, Kim Goldberg, not a poetic mind. But unfortunately more than two decades he shapes the haiku in US and present day situation in the haiku of US is result of his work - which is very different compared with the situation related to beat generation.


Marta Stothers:

xenophobic twit
can't discern the difference
between bugs and art


Dimitar Anakiev:

Exactly Marta! In fact what are "bugs" in reality in art they become symbols. But it is hard to understand even for leading poets and editors.


Samo Dekleva:

Change the title to Mosquitos Allergic to Foreign Blood?