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Welcome To Fruitopia

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By JEFF HOUCK, The Tampa Tribune

Published: December 19, 2007

JUMPS: FRUITCAKE HAIKU, Page 4

They are the "crack of the poetry world."

RELATED STORY, Page 4:

Judge takes his job very seriously.

For the second consecutive year, we challenged readers to write their most creative haiku using Mrs. Harvey's White Fruitcake recipe as inspiration.

This marked the 56th holiday season that the recipe appeared in the Tribune. (If you missed it, you can still find the recipe online at TBO.com, keyword: Fruitcake.)

The haiku contest is our way of giving a nod to tradition while still having a little fun.

As with last year, hundreds of haiku entries flooded our e-mail account and postal bin. This year, though, there was a noticeable increase in creativity and energy in the three-line verses (which must have five syllables in the first line, seven in the second and another five in the third). With words alone, authors created a world full of wit and cleverness. One with fruitcake at its core, of course.

FIRST PLACE

Black cherries, sugar -

the existential fruitcake

knows his life is fluff.

CAMILA SAINZ DE LA PENA

Tampa

SECOND PLACE

If you have to choose

Between hemlock and fruitcake

Hemlock is painless

DIANE FRANKLIN

Sebring

THIRD PLACE

Oh humble fruitcake

Would you were a martini

Red and green olives

JOE VILLENEUVE

Tampa

HONORABLE MENTION

It's a nutty thing

to be dreaming of fruitcake

dancing in my fridge

MARY ELIZABETH HILL

Tampa

Leah Brainard, vice president for administration/human resources at WEDU, Channel 3, wrote in to say that she read our solicitation while navigating through traffic.

"This is definitely a nutty idea, but as I was reading this (at stoplights!) on the way to work, I then had to think up something on it."

Her creation:

Life is like a fruitcake

Every bit that you put into it

Is what you get out

Fruitcake philosophy. Gotta love it.

Jim Grannon of Ruskin wrote to say that the contest helped put a dent in "my 40 years of writer's block. Haiku is great - no research, no balance, no attribution, no attention span needed."

Sorry, Jim. What were you saying?

Some haiku artists resorted, as did Gloria Morrow of Sun City Center, to literary invention:

Yum, yum, delicious!

This recipe is fabjous.

(I made up that word.)

"This article was timely, as I was just teaching my creative writing class haiku poetry," Morrow e-mailed. "I challenged them to enter your contest, and, of course, I had to do the same."

What exactly is fabjous, Gloria? A mixture of fabulous, jellied and delicious? Very creative.

Robert Greene of Tampa found the experience triggered a bit of his obsessive-compulsiveness. Along with his submissions, he also sent along the following two haiku on an overcast day to express himself:

You cannot write one.

Words celebrate all living.

Life goes on from there.

Thank you for the chance

Of putting these together.

Apt choice in cloudy weather.

"This is what went through my mind as I read about your fruitcake-themed haiku contest," Jane Barnett of Tampa wrote:

Would you believe that

"Fruitcakes" is the name of a

Jimmy Buffett song?

That's true, Jane. Sadly, "Fruitcake in Paradise" is not one of his hits.

We got another letter this year from Virginia Rhoades of St. Petersburg (last year, we mistakenly called her Victoria).

Unlike last year, when Rhoades protested what she perceived as a denigration of a literary genre, she wrote: "This year, I'm joining the humor brigade but still holding fast to the integrity of the form. After all, Japanese haiku poet Kobayashi Issa was a master humorist in much of his work."

So inspired, Rhodes wrote:

Nine lives for the cat?

No match for the endurance

Of well-packed fruitcake.

Yes, Virginia, there is humor in haiku.

Several teachers accepted our challenge by assigning their students to pen a few lines of verse.

"My sixth-grade language arts students at Davidsen Middle School decided to give your contest a try after I introduced the article and recipe on Mrs. Harvey's White Fruitcake," teacher Patricia Zambito wrote. "As you can see from their haikus, there is definitely not a meeting of the minds concerning their views about fruitcake."

From student Romina Emskhani:

Worship the fruitcake

Bursting with joyful sweet tastes.

A virtual feast.

Classmate Amy Le retorted:

There sits the fruitcake

Acting as my paperweight.

An unwanted gift.

Cathy Stein once again saddled her fourth-grade language arts students at Robinson Elementary School in Plant City with haiku duty.

"I brought in some fruitcake to let them smell, touch (I had them lift the uncut cake to feel its weight, which was 15 ounces), inspect, then taste," Stein wrote. "Like last year, most had never tasted it and most did not care for it. More boys seemed to like it than girls."

The experience elicited strong emotion from student Mavric Griffin:

Fruitcake's disgusting

It will make you choke to death

Don't eat it ... DO NOT!

Deb Risner of Gibsonton sent "an oddball sample from my oddball husband, Mike" that we found amusing:

Soft, squishy fruitcake

Would use it to line my shoes.

But nuts hurt my toes.

"See what I have to live with?" she asked.

Risner sent nine haiku of her own, the last one being:

Deb in the office

Is doing fruitcake haikus

My boss will be mad

Fruitcake haiku, Risner explained, "are the crack of the poetry world. You write one, then you get on a roll and bam! You're Walt Whitman. (OK, maybe not Walt Whitman. More like Walt Wittenhour, the little old guy who lives down the street who always decorates outside at the holidays, but only half untangles the lights, so he keeps buying more lights each year, until he ends up with a tangled glob every 4 feet or so."

Know what we think, Deb? You and Mike were made for each other.

Reporter Jeff Houck can be reached at (813) 259-7324 or jhouck@tampatrib.com.

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