My thanks to the HSA President, Jay Friedenberg, for choosing the following monoku for commentary:
assigned gender the 25,000 sexes of split-grill mushrooms
Kontinuum, Volume 1.1, 2021
Poets are often afraid of using their art to explore sensitive issues in politics and culture. This monoku does just that. There is a lot of current debate over how gender is determined, for example whether it is primarily biological in nature or more shaped by environment. Debbie Strange sets the stage with the first two words but what follows takes us on an interesting detour. It is the case that some fungi have many thousands of sexes. What then does this mean for people? Nature astounds us with its variety and suggests all sorts of possibilities. There is a hidden lesson in this lesson about the natural world.
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