Fourth of July

                Fourth of July—

                     a line of ants

                          along the parade route

Another shasei haiku. There is no comment. The mention of the visual phenomena is all that’s needed. Of course this must be done in the context of the kigo, and this shows why a kigo is of such central importance. In itself a line of ants can bring an emotional effect, but on the Fourth of July? and on a parade route? Ah, the kigo!

—Jerry Ball

A little wryness to make us smile. The poet has come to the Fourth of July parade and finds, paralleling the human parade, an ant parade. I am enjoying the light-hearted take on the ants that the poet has offered, and I could stop here. But if the poet wanted to move the writing from a light humorous observation of ants to something that asked the reader to cogitate more, then I would offer this:

The central idea of the haiku is that a natural behavior of ants (a summer kigo) is their parade-like formations. And using the Fourth of July (also a summer kigo), which is a traditional parade venue, immediately sets the stage for the haiku. However, consider the weight of the “Fourth of July” versus the “ants.” The “ants” are totally overwhelmed by that huge fire-cracking, band-playing “Fourth of July” imagery. Also, the interplay between the ants and the Fourth of July stops with the similarity of the parade aspect. But consider a march of veterans or a protest march or a gay-pride march or a marathon run. Suddenly the ants take on additional meaning. We are confronted with more than the parade-like quality; we think of how small they are, how persistent they are in the face of great odds, how unified they are, how defiant, etc. So, by making the ants the central and only kigo and bringing the image they are compared to into a more balanced perspective, the possibility for additional meaning opens up.

—Patricia J. Machmiller

My Response

As I’ve written elsewhere, using what may seem like two season words has been sufficiently common among master haiku poets in Japan that the use of so-called double kigo need not be automatically rejected. Such usage asks more of the reader, although it is always good to ask if both season words are necessary or helpful. And as I’ve also written, the use of a particular word does not automatically make it the poem’s season word—and that’s the case in this poem, where “Fourth of July” clearly dominates as the poem’s seasonal reference. Indeed, as I see it, being a season word is best understood as an possible function of the word, not a mandatory property. And as I’ve also written elsewhere, we would be impoverished if we could never write about ants on the Fourth of July—or ants in the context of some other seasonal phenomenon. Ants don’t suddenly disappear just because it’s Easter, Tanabata, or Anzac Day.

As for the assertion that deeper meaning is possible with another context, that may well be so, but I would suggest that sufficient meaning occurs with the Fourth of July setting. I’m fine with rewriting “actual” experience to produce a better poem, but I don’t see any need to do that in this case, and the examples Patricia offers simply give the poem a different meaning, and not necessarily a better one. For me, the industriousness of ants may well relate to the hard-working nature of many Americans, which is part of the Fourth of July celebration. Or, to the extent that Fourth of July American patriotism may relate to military awareness (Fourth of July parades often include military components), the ants can be seen as being like the military in their focus, precision, and selflessness. In other words, no, the “similarity” between ants and the Fourth of July doesn’t stop just at the concept of ants being parade-like. Talking about a protest march or a marathon run would also lose the festiveness of the Fourth of July that is fun to apply to the ants. That’s a light-hearted aspect of the poem, but the meaning doesn’t stop there.

In 2010, this poem was discussed extensively on the Haiku Foundation’s “Troutswirl” blog in the context of its regionally focused cultural reference, but much meaning emerged from the poem both within and beyond that context.

—17 June 2025