re:Virals 529
Welcome to re:Virals, The Haiku Foundation’s weekly commentary feature on some of your favorites among the best contemporary haiku and senryu written in English. In the host chair today is Shawn Blair. This week’s poem, chosen by Dan Campbell is:
a bit of Mozart among beeps and buzzes of the MRI —Tim Dwyer; Bangor, Northern Ireland / Brooklyn, NY Frogpond, 48-2, 2025
Introducing this poem, Dan writes:
In a gloomy hospital room, the MRI begins its ritual of mechanical heartbeats and metallic sighs. Within this sterile choreography, a musician somehow hears the faint echo of Mozart: The machine speaks in codes of calibration and certainty; Mozart speaks in the language of grace. This reveals something essential about musicians—the longing to find harmony where none should exist. Technology listens for what is broken. Art listens for what endures. Between them lies the quiet persistence of the human spirit, refusing to surrender its music, even in the presence of cold machinery.
Host comment (Shawn):
Fundamentally similar to backyard chimes, but resonating with the energies of a supermassive black hole rather than earthly summer breezes, the MRI machine’s powerful bangs, knocks and whirrs infuse it with Dionysian breath. What a cocoon to put one’s body into!
Headphones create another kind of cocoon; they provide a comfortable or inspiring environment of sound and make a boundary beyond which the unwanted sounds of the world are deadened or completely silenced. Over-ear headphones with the patient’s choice of music are often offered when having MRI imaging done—I have always assumed they don’t really keep the machine’s noises at bay and have only ever declined this offer, opting instead for cheap ear plugs of dubious functionality.
Noise can be experienced as music, and I wonder if just listening to the machine, listening deeply and attentively, could for some inspire comparisons to Mozart. An especially sensitive person may even hear Mozart in a sense, in the clanging of an MRI. About Mozart’s String Quartet No. 19, nicknamed Dissonance, the Italian opera composer Giuseppe Sarti disparagingly quipped that Mozart had “ears lined with iron”. In this modern world, “ears lined with iron”—reconceived as the ability to transmute noise into music—seems to me a good and useful quality.
Sara Winteridge:
If you have been in an MRI scanner the initial offer of a musical distraction seems like a nice thought. In reality it is like being strapped underneath a plane at takeoff, even with ear protection. The bangs and beeps and vibrations definitely belong with the loudest percussion. Each different scan has a rhythm and music of its own. The brief snatches—be it Mozart or Motown—seem incongruous. The echoed clicks and words of the radiographers are also surreal. A big experience captured in a few words.
Amoolya Kamalnath:
This is a sentence type of senryū with onomatopoeia in it.
Who can forget all those noises while lying down inside that room getting an MRI done? Definitely not one who has experienced it. However, here the author has seen some small similarity with Mozart’s music; probably thus finding his own calm amidst the loud sounds. Also, the poet doesn’t address it as noise but as beeps and buzzes; he has named what type of a sound he figures it out to be. It is said that when a certain thing is named, it is easier to observe and understand it. Then the fear or the negative emotion associated with it dissolves. Perhaps this enables the narrator to hear Mozart’s music in the rhythm of continuous beeping and buzzing.
I had to try a lot of things to keep myself calm during my hour-and-a-half-long MRI in the not-so-distant past. How I wish I had known this verse then. It may have been a bit easier for me to relax.
Sudha Devi Nayak:
One can sense the anxiety of the protagonist in this haiku, his little escapades into the landscape of imagination and the compulsive return to the reality bytes of beeps and buzzes in the MRI machine. He experiences albeit in snatches the divinity of Mozart’s music, the upliftment, the sublime solace of perhaps his “Requiem” or the magic of his “Magic Flute”, a search for truth and love and enlightenment, lying in the cavernous bowels of the machine.
The palliative effect of the music transcends the unpleasant immediacy of the present, the foreboding fears of something drastic waiting to happen, and makes it all bearable.
His passion for music is his escape valve raising him to the realms of the ethereal. The haiku comes as a glorious medley of bits of Mozart and, the beeps and buzzes of the machine, such deep contrasts, such incomparables and through it all shines the “Mozart effect”.
Albert Einstein in his despondent moments drew his inspiration from Mozart “…the music of Mozart is of such purity and beauty that one feels he merely found it—that it has always existed as part of the inner beauty of the universe”. Life is a sum of such rapt moments that sometimes come even when we are deeply afflicted.
Radhamani Sarma:
In a conversational tone, this senryu contrasts gentle music with the loud noises of an MRI scan. Soft music touches the heart and soul of man, whereas the technology of advanced medical systems can often be experienced as a disturbance.
The very first line, “a bit of Mozart”, takes us to a world of music, soothing, serene and calm.
With the remaining lines, “among beeps and buzzes / of the MRI”, we are now patients, we have our inhibitions, scary undergoing these tests.
At this point, one prefers at least a bit of Mozart, how warm, soothing into a lull, it is only our wish at this moment. When we are shattered, visibly shaken, this technology is no doubt our boon. But with such deafening sounds, we need a mentor in the form of Music soothing, cheering, with positive vibrations.
As far as this haiku is concerned, this is what Mozart’s music gives, transporting us into a different world. Inevitably we need technology, advanced medical systems, life saving therapy for all of us. But we remember Mozart, the child prodigy—his influence even today is abiding and lasting.
The haiku writer in a few words has transformed all of us, especially music lovers.
Sitarama Seshu Maringanti:
The skills of Mozart are inspired by divinity. They transport listeners into a realm of ethereal music. On the other hand, the beeps and buzzes generated by the MRI machine offend the patient’s auditory senses. They are not pleasant to hear either to the ears of the patient or to all those concerned with the patient’s health. They generate an unwelcome anxiety about the outcome of the MRI technologist’s report. Even a bit of Mozart’s piano keys offer a soothing feeling. An MRI scan, though essential in some cases, causes an unavoidable discomfort. The haiku is a commentary on the abrasive noises of modern medical technology.
Urszula Marciniak:
A smiling nurse takes him to the MRI. He thinks he hears Mozart. He hasn’t been in the hospital long enough to forget it yet. It’s just a diagnosis, but the thought of a mournful song flashes through his mind. But it quickly fades. He smiles at the nurse.
The music plays, so life goes on. Even if it’s just the sounds of the MRI. In a few days, he’ll be listening to Mozart again as much as he wants. Everything will be fine. Surely.
Surely?
Ashoka Weerakkody:
An MRI, the pacemaker that makes this haiku keep beating and alive—it took more time than I anticipated to decipher what it abbreviates.
At first I thought of the beeps and buzzes emanating from electronic devices. They just go on beating and beeping and buzzing unpaid, while the paid men and women walk in and walk out, rostered to do so, in addition to “living, loving, laughing, and…dying” (a phrase I remember for ever from a BBC radio drama series “Scotland Confidential” circa 1972).
Then I considered the sound of electronics in an ICU where doctors and nurses monitor patients, sitting in their remote workstations as they are rostered to do for a living.
Then again, I felt it could be the beeps, buzzes and vibes within the confined space of a cockpit as pilots and flight engineers work, earning well, leaving the autopilot to land a heavy Airbus jetliner all by itself, gliding, banking, revving the engines up and down to capture the glide slope to flare out and touch down right on the centerline of runway 22 (that’s here in my locality).
In each of these possible situations human beings keep vigil, almost invisible, while electronics handle the critical situations and save life.
In the process man is warned, forewarned, alerted and commandeered by machines that human beings put in place with a mind power so strong and so smart.
Returning to the haiku after that whistle stop for discovering the meaning of MRI, we now begin to hear the “bit of Mozart” which author Tim Dwyer reports hearing himself amid all the state-of-the-art surroundings. Yes, indeed it comes on and goes off for each and every one to hear but it takes your inbuilt intellect to recognise it as such. For author Dwyer it’s Mozart and he may well recall the name of the piece and which numbered movement it was, too. But while the author may be absolutely correct in that respect, for me knowing nothing about Mozart, and for that matter anything at all of those immortal classics in music, the beeps and buzzes still mean many other things, particularly the urgency associated with imminent danger, of mortality, of samsaric journeying beyond and beyond!
Jonathan Epstein:
During an MRI scan, from a patient’s headset, snippets of Mozart; from the MRI, mechanical noises.
The piped in music occasionally masking noises from the imaging machine produces a kind of John Cage “prepared piano” effect. It was Zen Buddhist-influenced Cage (1912-1992) who in the 1940s created what he called “the prepared piano” by tying small objects — nuts, bolts, nails, bottle caps, bells — between piano strings. Listen to the piano’s newly textured, percussive sounds with curiosity (mindfulness), Cage claimed, and “unwanted sounds” (aka noise) can seem musical. “The prepared piano, he wrote, “led me to the enjoyment of things, as they happen….”
From whose viewpoint do we “hear” the juxtaposed sounds? The technician’s or the patient’s? At least half the multi-millions who have had an MRI report a feeling of panic during their 15-90 minute MRI. Face up in a closed capsule, nose inches from the top — or, as it evolved, a foot away — can be torture for the claustrophobic, to say nothing of natural fears of the test results.
After my father, in his late 80s, injured his back in a fall, he underwent an MRI. He asked me to stay with him during the test. Though he didn’t tell me he was terrified, I knew it. He was claustrophobic. I reassured him I would hold his foot during the process, “so you’ll know I’m here.”
Note the alliteration: The voiced bilabial plosives of bit, beeps, and buzzes give 1/3 weight to Mozart for “bit,” 1/3 each for “beeps and buzzes.” Discord over harmony.
On the other hand, three humming m’s — Mozart, among, MRI — point to equanimity, the job of the technician, who monitors sound levels for music and machine noise.
Tim’s senryu covers a “slice of life” that seasoned haikuists will recognize, a crossroads when life’s sweetness is eclipsed by looming illness or mortality. Worse, perhaps, is the period of uncertainty when the patient’s ailment has no name and an MRI is scheduled.
In the end, my takeaway is this: to approach life’s “beeps and buzzes” (disturbances) with curiosity and patience, from moment to moment; and remember how that can lead “to the enjoyment of things, as they happen.”
Sean Murphy—the tone of the piece:
One of the great joys of life is finding music in everyday sounds, be they natural or technological. Who amongst us hasn’t tapped their foot to the beat of a leaky faucet, harmonized with the hum of a microwave oven, or made a half-empty bottle into a chime or a flute? The first two lines of this senryu capture that experience well, “Mozart” acting as synecdoche for the unexpected musicality of these mechanical notes — though I wonder if it could be more literal, a fragment of a familiar melody emerging from the noise, recognizable even when rendered in a medium utterly alien to the Austrian composer. The third line then takes this common experience and places it into a specific scene, introducing a tension between the playfulness and nostalgia of the moment with the anxiety – perhaps dread – of the setting. That tension lingers after the first reading; the poem still strikes me as cheerful, though that cheer takes on an edge of… nervousness? Dark humor? Tragic irony? The tone of the piece is left in a sort of superposition, existing as all possibilities until the results of the MRI come in. And as we, the readers, will never see the result, we are left to wonder: is the Mozart in question something like Twinkle Twinkle Little Star? Or something more like a Requiem?
Author Tim Dwyer:
My thanks to Dan Campbell for choosing my piece for re:Virals. And my thanks to Alysson Whipple and the Frogpond team for publishing this piece. As a relative newcomer to Japanese forms from longer poetry, this is an honour and opportunity to look closely at how this poem is shaped and crafted.
I see a couple of continuums that lean a poem more toward haiku or senryu. On the haiku continuum it can range from very vivid sensory images of kigo and nonhuman nature with very light human presence, such as Basho’s haiku of the crow on the bare branch, to hints of nature with increased human presence, crossing into senryu. And the senryu continuum that can have a light touch of the human with or without nature or human environment, or with increasing human concerns/issues that highlight a specific person with a specific concern.
Looking at my piece, though it is apparently a senryu, dealing with human activity/environment/concern, I think it is written in more of a haiku tone. It begins with music, which I think of as one of the human qualities that comes close to nature, and perhaps music began with learning the calls of birds and mammals. And the human presence is subtle, there are no personal pronouns or adjectives. The human presence appears through the choice of words shaping the experiences. A ‘bit’ of Mozart is an example of this and conveys a tangibility to the music and perhaps even taste. And ‘beeps’ and ‘buzzes’ convey sound but also the tactility and vibrations that the body can feel. The piece has two seemingly discordant sonic elements. There is the rich melodic, harmonic rhythmical tones of Mozart that might convey to the reader joy and beauty of lasting masterpieces, a lifefulness, contrasted with the harsh, arrhythmic sounds of the MRI enclosing the person in a sterile alien environment, that might convey disturbed feelings, an ugliness, an apprehension of mortality.
Hopefully these two elements become woven together by the sound and rhythm of the words and lines, such as the ‘b’ consonants and the capital M that are included in both parts, and the use of the traditional short-long-short form. And at least I as a reader, sense a light humor in referring to a ‘bit of Mozart’ and a playfulness in ‘beeps and buzzes’ perhaps like the sounds of a pinball machine. I note also that this being nearly a 5-7-5 is longer than my typical pieces, enhancing the sense of a conversational though poetic voice. I think the piece conveys the seeking of lifefulness in an aura of mortality.
I think least important is sharing the personal background and experiences that inspired this piece. In my writing I try to use the self more as a vehicle for the poetic themes that hopefully resonate for others, than the self becoming the prime focus of the piece and so less resonant. The piece was inspired by one of many scans of radiation, CT Scans and MRIs I have had while having cancer for the past 13 years. I have been enclosed in these capsules perhaps 70 times or more. Often for MRIs you are offered headphones and a choice of music to deal with the potentially aversive sounds, though I have a weird enjoyment of that. At this specific MRI I requested jazz but wound up with classical. I can’t remember for sure what music I heard that blended with the MRI cacophony, but as I drafted the piece I thought of one of my favorite Mozart pieces, the Flute And Harp Concerto. Though this MRI and lab results led to my beginning chemotherapy for my metastatic cancer, I remain quite fond of a ‘bit of Mozart’.
Thanks to all who sent commentaries. As the contributor of the commentary reckoned best this week, Sean Murphy has chosen next week’s poem, which you’ll find below. We invite you to write a commentary to it. It may be short, or of moderate length, academic, your personal response, spontaneous, or idiosyncratic. As long as it focuses on the verse presented, and with respect for the poet, all genuine reader reaction, criticism, and pertinent discussion is of value. Out-takes are kept in the THF Archives. Best of all, the chosen commentary’s author gets to pick the next poem.
Anyone can participate. Simply use the re:Virals commentary form below to enter your commentary on the new week’s poem (“Your text”) by the following Tuesday midnight, Eastern US Time Zone, and then press Submit to send your entry. The Submit button will not be available until Name, Email, and Place of Residence fields are filled in. We look forward to seeing your commentary and finding out about your favourite poems.
Poem for commentary:
first petrichor after learning the word petrichor —Saumya Bansal Cold Moon Journal, September 10, 2022
Footnote:
Tim Dwyer (born May 16, 1956, Brooklyn, NY) was raised in Flatbush by Irish immigrant parents. He focused on creative writing as an undergraduate at Oberlin College, Ohio, (1978) then completed a Ph.D. in clinical psychology and psychotherapy at Georgia State University (1991). In 40 years in the mental health field he worked in many settings including his last 15 years in NYS prisons. A dual Irish-US citizen, in 2019 he and his wife Marianne moved full time to her hometown of Bangor, Northern Ireland; living by Belfast Lough is a constant inspiration. He resumed writing again in 2010 and for many years primarily published in Irish and UK journals. His chapbook, Smithy Of Our Longings was published by Lapwing Press in 2015. He has often leaned toward brief poetry, and since 2023 has focused increasingly on Japanese forms, and as of Autumn 2025 he has had approximately 150 Japanese form poems published/to be published in many journals and anthologies. As of 2025 he has received the Peggy Willis Lyles 2nd Place Award 2025, the AMA Pearls International Waka Contest 2025 Honorable Mention, and the Eucalypt Journal Scribbler’s Award 2023. His debut full collection of longer poetry, Accepting The Call, published in 2025 by Templar Poetry (templarpoetry.com) has received the Straid Collection Award. He is a member of the Haiku Society Of America, the British Haiku Society, the Tanka Society of America and the Waka Society of America. Tim can be reached via his email [email protected] or on FB https://www.facebook.com/tim.dwyer.988
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