Backwoods Reflections - 3. The Four Seasons

Truly beautiful 

Thanks, Chris.  Another experiment...

You can experiment any day you like. These are lovely. 

1 hour ago, Parker Owens said:

You can experiment any day you like. These are lovely. 

Thanks, Parker.  My initial thought was to introduce Limerick humor to Haiku form, but I soon learned I was about 200 years too late for that to be original.  So after further reading and a few minor alterations, I'm now happy to be simply trying to emulate one of the masters  

1 hour ago, Backwoods Boy said:

Thanks, Parker.  My initial thought was to introduce Limerick humor to Haiku form, but I soon learned I was about 200 years too late for that to be original.  So after further reading and a few minor alterations, I'm now happy to be simply trying to emulate one of the masters  

But humor is also appreciated, when you have time to work some in. Judging by how nice this set is, I'm sure we'd be smiling at properly metered jokes as well!

Four excellent haiku poems.  I did like the humor of the second and fourth poems.  The bug spray in the second was a fun tweak to the idea of haiku topics.  

These are wonderful. I really need to get back to trying @AC Benus's lessons in Zero to Hero.

20 hours ago, Geron Kees said:

But humor is also appreciated, when you have time to work some in. Judging by how nice this set is, I'm sure we'd be smiling at properly metered jokes as well!

17 hours ago, raven1 said:

Four excellent haiku poems.  I did like the humor of the second and fourth poems.  The bug spray in the second was a fun tweak to the idea of haiku topics.  

8 hours ago, WolfM said:

These are wonderful. I really need to get back to trying @AC Benus's lessons in Zero to Hero.

Thanks to all three of you for your observations.  I enjoyed my initial poetry efforts four years ago when @AC Benus was writing Zero To Hero, and am finding it useful trying to get restarted.  I read the Haiku chapter before attempting these, and when I showed them to AC, he suggested I look at the Zen Humor essay that followed.  That essay informed me that a subtle, skewed humor was endemic to both Haiku and Tanka - as opposed to the somewhat raucous humor of limericks.  He also suggested "Issa-style Haiku" instead of my planned "Irreverent Haiku" as a subtitle.  Further research showed that, beside subtle humor, Issa tended towards rural images and, to quote AC elsewhere,  "Issa's Haiku often place himself as an observer and ask the reader to understand the unstated emotions on their own."  Precisely!  So I reworked things a little in an attempt to better emulate Issa.

That hopefully explains my vague responses above, and it's probably more than anyone wanted to know, but I'll mention a few specifics.  @raven1 pointed out the humor in the second and fourth.  The third depends on whether one chooses to laugh at the squirrel or sympathize with the fox.  As to the first, I think the intended humor was too obscure, so I changed it slightly.  

Really enjoyed these and had a bit of a chuckle with the second and fourth. "Fragrant" isn't a term I'd readily associate with steaming warm horse-apples, though. 

2 hours ago, GLH said:

Really enjoyed these and had a bit of a chuckle with the second and fourth. "Fragrant" isn't a term I'd readily associate with steaming warm horse-apples, though. 

Thanks for reading, and for your observations.  There was an attempt here to produce the type of skewed humor found in some of the original haiku.  I think the intended humor in the first was too obscure, so I changed it slightly.  

6 hours ago, Backwoods Boy said:

Thanks for reading, and for your observations.  There was an attempt here to produce the type of skewed humor found in some of the original haiku.  I think the intended humor in the first was too obscure, so I changed it slightly.  

Upon first reading the humor of the first went right over my head, which frankly, at times can be an embarrassingly low bar.

9 hours ago, GLH said:

Upon first reading the humor of the first went right over my head, which frankly, at times can be an embarrassingly low bar.

I would blame it on the original wording.  One thing I'm learning about playing with poetry is how word choice and order can make a big difference.  "A light mist" vs. "Spring rain" paints an entirely different picture, and even "cloudless" is more explicit than "clear blue".  The thesaurus is an essential tool, and feedback from readers like yourself provides clues that what I intend, others might not see