Frost on the Pumpkin

                frost on the pumpkin—

                the mail today

                             arrives early

Again we have a shasei style haiku. The author lays out the facts: frost on the pumpkin, and the mail arrives early. Could it be that the mailman is hurrying because of the cold? When I read this verse, I feel that I am part of a bigger picture where the oncoming winter demands attention and preparation. As one who is older, this process has been repeated many times, and there is immediacy in this haiku. I wonder how this haiku appeals to younger readers?

—Jerry Ball

Both frost and pumpkin are autumn kigo and each speaks to me strongly in different ways. In order to make clear the confusion I feel, let me offer these two truncated versions of this haiku (with apologies to the author) for purposes of clarifying my dilemma:

(1) frost: the mail arrives early

This version gives an image of the mailman hurrying through his (or her) tasks even before the frost is gone. There is an urgency here, whereas in

(2) pumpkin: the mail arrives early(!)

there is an element of joy in the expectation, of receiving a letter, of communicating with the larger world. I think the poem would be better served if either one or the other kigo were used and the perception were developed to support the one kigo.

—Patricia J. Machmiller

My Response

I disagree with the suggestion to remove either “frost” or “pumpkin” simply for the sake of having just one so-called season word in the poem. It’s a diminishment of this particular life experience not to be able to write about frost on the pumpkin as it is. It seems to be a failure of the imagination and sympathetic reading not to receive frost on the pumpkin as it is offered as a common human experience. Should one’s knee-jerk application of a perceived “rule” somehow be allowed to deny actual experience? Indeed, Japanese haiku masters employed more than one season word in their haiku surprisingly often, and doing so is considered a practice that is best attempted by more experienced haiku poets. But that’s not the real issue here. Is it not possible for “frost on the pumpkin” to work as a whole as a single seasonal reference? The proposed simplifications feel insensitive to the actual experience and run roughshod over the original poem, even if just for the sake of discussion. Consequently, the logic for these proposals feels pedantic and unnecessary. If “frost” and “pumpkin” speak to the reader in distinct ways, that may well be true, but that’s the reader’s issue. The poem is asking the reader to apprehend “frost on the pumpkin” as two elements together, whether individually seasonal or not, and to rise to what the poem is asking of the reader—which is not much to ask. The value of frost on the pumpkin should be intuitive, as it was for the first commentator. In the original poem the idea of the mailman hurrying and the joy of receiving a letter are both present, and together “frost on the pumpkin” may be considered as a new season word (or phrase). I would suggest that there is zero need to sacrifice either part.

—Michael Dylan Welch, 15 June 2025