NC State University Insect Museum

We were immediately impressed with this historical and entomological poem, which paints a stark image of dueling contrasts - small, innocuous insects (lice) vs. the grandeur of Napoléon Bonaparte - in deceptively simple language. In line 1 the haiku reminds the reader of man's perceived dominance over nature, before crushing that conceit in lines 2 and 3. The reversal of subject and object from line 1 to line 3 mirrors the reversal of fortune delivered to La Grande Armée during their invasion of Russia (how sardonic!), a turning point in the Napoleonic wars reproduced as the turning point in the story of lice and men.

In our initial reading of this entry the foreshadowing of line 1 almost rendered lines 2-3 redundant (to an entomologist anyway). Pediculus is an efficient vector of several human diseases that have been implicated in epidemics involving soldiers, prisoners, and other gatherings of humans living in close quarters. Raoult et al.'s (2005) recent discovery that the lice-vectored bacteria Rickettsia prowazekii (the agent that causes typhus) and Bartonella quintana (the agent that causes trench fever) were present in Napoléon's soldiers (bodies unearthed in Vilnius) and in the lice found on those cadavers serves as evidence that this cunning (and slightly vicious) poem has a moral: beware pickers lest you become the picked.







This meticulously descriptive haiku simultaneously eschews and embraces all that is warm and wonderful about the transition to spring. Our brains combat competing imagery - the soft, quiet, and clean figure of cat grooming (we can feel the sun pouring through the window as a warm spring breeze filters through the old screen door) contradicts the cold, creepy, and, some would argue, filthy portrait of a fly scraping its compound eyes with bristly legs (Bzzzzzzzt! Shoo!) Alas, to the entomologist the grooming routine of an insect represents a fascinating suite of behaviors to be thoroughly documented, and there are parallels between flies and cats (superficially, anyway) in the ways that they rub their heads by combing them with their front legs. It's an eerily familiar scene.

The judges glommed onto the euphoniousness of "tarsi" as a building block for poetry. The inclusion of this captivating anatomical term boosted this haiku from the ethereal planes of quasi-entomology to the heights of hexapodology. Well done.

Congratulations go out to these poets for producing such extraordinary works of art, and we thank them for submitting these haiku for our pleasure.