tim's poetry workbook - 2. Haiku

I love these - my fav has to be the heron - "hoping for hopping"

These are great - I am LOUSY at haiku, so a little jealous.

Thanks for sharing them!

Love them! 

They all have a Zen like quality to me.

I particularly like the flower baskets one - although I might have used something like bringing glorious colour as its second line... (some haiku warriors might complain that this one has no seasonal reference to it - but, as the father of haiku himself, Matsuo Basho, reportedly once said "Learn the rules, so that you can break the rules.")

I really like the snowdrops one as well. And I don't give a toss about the fact that the final line may have one more syllable than it should have.

But they're all good. You're doing what Basho himself did. His haikus were about what he was observing during his life. It doesn't matter that you are surrounded by "concrete and glass, wind and rain, traffic and honking horns...with a little green thrown in"- you've just shown there's still a lot in your everyday surroundings to speak to your inner poet.

Thank you! They are all beautiful. The squirrels practicing for spring will be forever edged in my brain...  

6 minutes ago, Marty said:

Love them! 

 

They all have a Zen like quality to me.

 

I particularly like the flower baskets one - although I might have used something bringing glorious colour as its second line... (some haiku warriors might complain that this one has no seasonal reference to it - but, as the father of haiku himself, Matsuo Basho, reportedly once said "Learn the rules, so that you can break the rules.")

No seasonal reference? My thoughts were i can only go by where i live and here, flower baskets really only arrive in summer.  I did have colour in the second line, but chose to reject it because concrete, brick and glass are very devoid of life ...

6 minutes ago, Marty said:

 

I really like the snowdrops one as well. And I don't give a toss about the fact that the final line may have one more syllable than it should have.

I count 5:  in = 1  white = 1  and battalions is 3 ( bat-tal-ions )

6 minutes ago, Marty said:

 

But they're all good. You're doing what Basho himself did. His haikus were about what he was observing during his life. It doesn't matter that you are surrounded by "concrete and glass, wind and rain, traffic and honking horns...with a little green thrown in"- you've just shown there's still a lot in your everyday surroundings to speak to your inner poet.

 

 

Thanks for reading and for your excellent comments. They are much appreciated!

32 minutes ago, MericCotton said:

I love these - my fav has to be the heron - "hoping for hopping"

These are great - I am LOUSY at haiku, so a little jealous.

Thanks for sharing them!

i struggle to get them out...thanks for reading them!!

31 minutes ago, Starrynight22 said:

Hoping for hopping left me smiling. I like alliteration very much. 

 

And I also liked the imagery of white battalions of flowers.  

 

 

Short poetry isn't something I feel I do well either,  but I enjoy long rambling free verse. 

 

But I don't read these as being thick or brutish. Nice work tim

Thanks Starry (i'm still waiting..just sayin   )  I appreciate your comments .. yeah i'm with you on the free verse xo

7 minutes ago, Kapucinski said:

Thank you! They are all beautiful. The squirrels practicing for spring will be forever edged in my brain...  

 

glad something appealed.  It has been horribly cold here and the other day i saw a squirrel running through the pines .. and it thought why are you even up??

1 minute ago, Reader1810 said:

...

 

I enjoyed reading each and every one of these, tim. Pausing each time, so I could see them in my mind’s eye. 

 

Nicely done as always.  

thanks Reader! Much appreciated!

Just now, Headstall said:

This one... 

 

hearing Spring’s warm call
snowdrops push through melting ice
in white battalions

 

paints a lovely picture... love "in white battalions"

thanks Gary ... my mum had a large patch of them at the end of the garden. i can still see them and the melting snow around them.

These are awesome! Hoping for hopping made me smile, but the others did, too. 

50 minutes ago, Marty said:

I really like the snowdrops one as well. And I don't give a toss about the fact that the final line may have one more syllable than it should have.

 

31 minutes ago, Mikiesboy said:

I count 5:  in = 1  white = 1  and battalions is 3 ( bat-tal-ions )

I suppose that depends on how someone actually pronounces a word. Some might pronounce batallions as bat-tal-i-ons (4 syllables) whereas others might say it more like bat-tal-yons (only 3).

Not that it really matters, but it may have relevance to how westerners (non-Japanese speakers) view the writing of haiku....

The five-seven-five rule comes from the fact that Japanese haiku is traditionally written in three parts, the first with five sounds, then seven sounds, and finally another five sounds.

Bear in mind, however, that a sound in Japanese is not the same as a syllable in English. For example, the English word “sign” only consists of one syllable, but I understand that to the Japanese ear it would actually be heard as three sounds (roughly: “se-eye-en”).

Because of this, a seventeen syllable Western haiku would normally be longer than a seventeen sound Japanese haiku.

Also, because of this distinction between Japanese sounds and Western syllables, some western haiku writers argue that the 5-7-5 rule should not be taken literally. More important, they reckon, would be short-longer-short format. I suppose the decision is ultimately up to the poet...

Excellent Haiku, my Brother. They didn't come across as clunky to me, I think they flowed well and were inspiring.

36 minutes ago, Marty said:

 

Also, because of this distinction between Japanese sounds and Western syllables, some western haiku writers argue that the 5-7-5 rule should not be taken literally. More important, they reckon, would be short-longer-short format. I suppose the decision is ultimately up to the poet...
 

Thanks. These are written in response to the Poetry Prompts here:

56 minutes ago, Parker Owens said:

These are awesome! Hoping for hopping made me smile, but the others did, too. 

Thank you Parker .. xo

3 minutes ago, BHopper2 said:

Excellent Haiku, my Brother. They didn't come across as clunky to me, I think they flowed well and were inspiring.

Thank you, A.  xo

It's so nearly impossible to teach what lies at the motivation to want to write a poem, or put another way, write one that is disciplined to speak about the self in a way meant to touch others. Many write in forms as if the forms are the thing motivating the work. Others speak extemporaneously, ad nausaum, about themselves with no thought of others relating to it. 

And so let it be. 

But your poems here do have that soul driving them towards a meaningful existence. If you are uncomfortable with the forms of Japanese poetics, you are not when it comes to the heart of why they exist. So, if you need to be thinking of them as 'brutish,' then please keep working at it and producing poems at this level  I love them. 

The basket of flowers against concrete and glass is a perfect image. As any fine Haiku should, you simply show the picture but are able to do it with the quiet expectation that it is relatable to others; I know it is to me. 

Same goes for the squirrels and snowbells. The pictures you paint are sedate and place me there, inwardly pausing and thinking about the sadness inherent in what I'm watching. 

That same sense of futility is captured in the line "waiting for the rakes." 

I hope you write more, and find Haiku and Tanka useful tools in your poetic kit of parts. Thanks for taking the challenge. 

these are beautiful tim 

well i haven't read the "lesson" but they all paint little pictures, no personal observations

and i love the squirrels practicing for spring, and the battalions of snowdrops is such a clear image

and thanks again for the notes!  i'm loving not only reading through @AC Benus prompts, but seeing your process and learning from that too

32 minutes ago, AC Benus said:

The basket of flowers against concrete and glass is a perfect image. As any fine Haiku should, you simply show the picture but are able to do it with the quiet expectation that it is relatable to others; I know it is to me. 

Thank you AC. i will write more of them.  i understand what you mean about how some let the form motivate or drive the work but the form is a frame to colour in, to fill up.

i am glad you can see the flower baskets ... i didn't need to say they were colourful... they are flowers... i wanted to show life in front of the wall .. i'm glad you could see it.

thanks AC .. for excellent prompts xoxo    for the motivation to learn, to try and create xoxo

52 minutes ago, Mikiesboy said:

Thank you AC. i will write more of them.  i understand what you mean about how some let the form motivate or drive the work but the form is a frame to colour in, to fill up.

 

i am glad you can see the flower baskets ... i didn't need to say they were colourful... they are flowers... i wanted to show life in front of the wall .. i'm glad you could see it.

 

thanks AC .. for excellent prompts xoxo    for the motivation to learn, to try and create xoxo

For me it's more the urban grayness of the wall and pavement that comes through as a background. Against this, something natural always seems refreshing

Your haiku was nicely done. I especially liked the olive tree shedding leaves to be ready for winter. You can find nature in the city. It is my understanding part of the definition of haiku is that it reflects nature. Like fusion cuisine you could stretch or change the haiku by making it about city things. Thank you, Tim.

6 hours ago, JeffreyL said:

Your haiku was nicely done. I especially liked the olive tree shedding leaves to be ready for winter. You can find nature in the city. It is my understanding part of the definition of haiku is that it reflects nature. Like fusion cuisine you could stretch or change the haiku by making it about city things. Thank you, Tim.

Thank you very much, Jeffrey. Yes, there is nature around us, in that there are trees and parks. I guess you sort of have to reduce down what we have. There are no mountains, or open fields or woodlands for example. There is wildlife, like squirrels, mostly gray and black but in recent years some red ones. Feisty little things they are! But we have seen the odd fox and a couple of years back a deer! We see nuthatches, chickadees, and several types of woodpecker, blue jays and cardinals as well as sparrows, starlings and crows. Hawks now and again too. So there is nature but just a bit citified...  thanks for reading... sorry about blathering on here this morning! 

tim, they're all wonderful. I really like Baskets of Flowers since being in a large city, sometimes the walking past a florist shop is the closest to the colors of nature we get.