Doing the Paso Robles Wine Haiku

Having a little fun with three lines, 17 syllables

Paul Simon, said his wife Edie Brickell, the singer, “has a way of looking at life and making it poetic.” This does not describe me at all. I am more of a straight ahead historical nonfiction prose guy. I do have a favorite poem, though. It is printed on a dish towel and hangs on the wall of the spare bedroom where I write. It is by William Carlos Williams. Here it is:

This is just to say

I have eaten 

the plums

that were in 

the icebox

and which 

you were probably 

saving

for breakfast

Forgive me

they were delicious

so sweet

and so cold

You may be thinking, “That’s not a poem. That’s like a note you scratch on a napkin and stick on the fridge.” In which case I would say, “Exactly.” Which brings me in a straight ahead way to a fun little activity we stumbled onto the other day that I’d like to share with you. It could be a party game or something you do while killing time on a long car ride or sitting around after dinner with friends.

All that is required is to be in a playful frame of mind. Drinking might help.

The best way to explain how to play is to tell how it came about in the first place, which was entirely by accident. We are in Paso Robles, California, walking towards the town square about to have lunch. There are four of us, two women, two men. Across the street is a massive, multi-story, block-long hotel that is now under construction. One of our hosts, who has lived in Paso—everyone calls it by that name, tourists and locals alike—for two decades, explains that this was once the site of a lumberyard.

Suddenly, those two concepts pop into my mind, without punctuation: hotel lumberyard.

After lunch we resume our walking stroll around a town that has, in the past 10 to 15 years, undergone a near-complete makeover. Not that long ago Paso was, to put it unkindly, “a cowtown.” That is how city folks referred to it as they blew past on Highway 101 on their way to whatever important place they thought they were going.

That has all changed. Paso has become nouveau hip. Forbes Magazine called it the No. 1 wine region in the U.S. Vineyards and wineries are everywhere. Tasting rooms abound in trendy gathering places such as Tin City on the edge of town. Late last year Treasury Wine Estates, the Australian wine conglomerate, paid $1 billion to acquire Daou Vineyards. That turned some heads in town, I’ll tell you that. Similar corporate takeovers are occurring all over the place.

The new Paso is on full display in the town square and the blocks around it. Restaurants such as Taste and Fish Gaucho, the boutique bakery Just Baked with its entertaining homage to Dolly Parton, and the luxury Hotel Cheval all cater to the stream of visitors pouring into this Central Coast destination. At Di Raimondo’s Italian cheese shop the owner tells me that most of her customers are no longer locals, but from out of town.

Then, again, two more unpunctuated concepts come to mind: out of towners locals.

Followed by still more. Studios on the Park art gallery was once an auto parts shop. That becomes: art gallery car parts. And don’t forget the one-time furniture store that has morphed into Street Side Alehouse. How about: Furniture store alehouse.

I am seized by either a major revelation or a brain melt. Take your pick. But it occurs to me that the changes we are seeing unfold on the streets of Paso Robles are nothing more than the building blocks for a…what? A haiku? You’re kidding me, right? Where did that come from?

You got me. Nevertheless there it is, and after a fast consult with my iPhone I become an instant expert on a subject I have not thought about since high school or before.

A haiku is a deceptively simple form of poetry, Japanese in origin. It must follow certain rules, similar to how an English sonnet must contain 14 lines. A haiku has only three lines total. Each line has a precise number of syllables. First line: five syllables. Second line: seven. Third line echoes the first, with five syllables only. By following these mandatory rules the total number of syllables adds up to 17. Not 16 or 18, but 17 on the button.

So the four of us, once we are back in our car, begin to try to make life imitate poetry. Tell the story of Paso’s remarkable transformation in three lines and 17 syllables, using punctuation if needed but not so much rhyme. Rhyming haikus, while not unheard of, are not typically done. Since it is more or less my idea I take a stab at putting these various concepts together, talking it through out loud:

Car parts: gallery

Lumberyard becomes hotel

Out-of-towners flock. 

This is clearly wrong. Not only is this too literal, it makes no sense. Furthermore, there is no mention of the key item in Paso’s makeover: wine. After the four of us bounce words and concepts around that are not quite right, one member of the group breaks the deadlock with this brilliant opening:

Paso Robles shift.   

Five syllables on the nose, and it sets the stage for the story we hope to tell. On a roll she skips over the second line and goes straight to an on-the-money closing line:

New faces pour in.

“New faces” tells the tale far better than my clunky out-of-towners phrase and is a clever pun: They’re pouring in as one pours wine into a glass. Still, we need to come up with that crucial seven-syllable in-betweener that complements the two five-spots bookending it on either side.

We play with ideas. Cowtown to wine town? Nah, too dismissive of Paso’s still-vibrant ranching traditions. We go back to the original concepts—lumberyard, hotel, car parts, etc.—but they lead to a dead-end as before. Line two must refer in some way to wine or…yes, okay, maybe this is the way to go…vineyards. Lots of oak trees in Paso—the formal Spanish name of the town is El Paso de Robles, The Pass of the Oaks—but there are also ranches…grasslands. Wait. Hold it. Do we? Yes, we do. By George, we’ve got it!

Paso Robles shift 

Ranch lands turning to vineyards  

New faces pour in

Great art? Nah, but we had some laughs doing it. Choose any subject you like. All ideas are welcome, and yet they must observe the limits of the poetic form. If you try it, you’ll find it’s a lot harder than you think. And if you do give it a whirl, drop it in the comments box. I’d love to see it. It engages your brain. Everyone gets involved. In summary, let me say—

Turn a day sublime

Make your life poetical

Try haiku, yes you!