Haiku with Flair

Nan Poetry

Responding to Susi’s challenge …
IWH Haiku Challenge #4 (Picture interpretation)

#1

The scream lies below
Trapped and halted in flight
Withering inside

#2

Modesty unleashed
Seeking tendrils of love
Dark desires atoned

#3

Find me in the night
Shimmering with cold desire
Reaching, touching time

**********************
Thanks to Jim for pointing me to this challenge.

Addendum: As I mentioned in a comment below, I looked again at the picture and saw an entirely different image! Not sure why I didn’t see “the baby” before …?? Obviously this means my haiku creations will seem a bit “strange.” All I can say at this point is pretend the picture isn’t there and just use your imagination.

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30 thoughts on “Haiku with Flair”

  2. So boringly pedantic as always, I thought I’d ask, what is the purpose of the haiku form? Why do it – in other words, what’s the ‘artistry involved’ – and what is the reason this is such a national treasure of prosody for the Japanese?

    Without investigating and trying to implement this understanding in a true haiku, the form of 5-7-5 doesn’t mean anything other than using an arbitrary constraint to express whatever. It’s like painting whatever but ‘constrained’ by using only 2 shades of the same colour; it’s not almost never art in either case but almost always craft. Crafting a haiku, then, is a facsimile of a haiku. For many Westerners especially, this is sufficient to accept the image as the original and call such craft ‘poetry’. But it’s not the same product as creating a real haiku any more than a sand drawing of the Eiffel Tower is an equivalent architectural marvel.

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    • Boy, what a spoil-sport your are! Did you get up on the wrong side of bed this morning?

      To each his own, tildeb. I’m not “into” the heavy-duty technical stuff that you write about, but I certainly wouldn’t downgrade it as being “boringly pedantic.”

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      • No, no, no, Nan… the boring pedantic is ME. Not you. At all. That’s why I bothered to comment this way so that you could take or leave my questions without any receiving or causing any offense.

        I can’t help but immediately compare and contrast such offerings with my knowledge about prosody generally and the haiku form specifically. That’s why rather than tell you unsolicited stuff that that I think would improve your work greatly, I asked the questions that I think would allow you to harness the obvious craft you have with the artistic challenge to produce what could be stunning an stunningly beautiful haiku poetry. But if people settle for the facsimile, for the form alone, they are missing the artistry entirely. And that’s what makes the haiku so remarkable.

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      • Ha! Many books have been written about just this, but at its core the haiku is a timeless and harmonious moment captured. This means there has to be two unrelated ideas (the natural moment and the poet’s moment) that, together – with short, blunt words if one is to respect the Japanese tradition – form a cohesive capturing whole that attempts to resonate with everyone. Haikus are for the reader to gain insight into themselves.

        It is, I think, the most artistically challenging form of poetry and requires (again, I think) real and not manufactured artistry to find that beautiful and simple yet profoundly moving linking element. If I don’t encounter two ideas in a haiku form then I know I’m not reading a real haiku; I’m reading word-smithy craft (prose) in the 5-7-5 facsimile and not poetic art (prosody).

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        • So … in your esteemed opinion, how would you “grade” the haikus I presented in this post?

          BTW, I have written and posted three of my (much earlier) haikus on my creative blog (link in blog heading). They were written during a Creative Writing class in college so perhaps they are more “traditional.”

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            • Thanks. I like that one too. I suppose I really should try and do more creative writing.

              I actually liked the haikus I wrote on this post (even though they didn’t really match the picture after I looked at it more closely). And perhaps in the “truest sense,” they’re lacking. But I was satisfied with them.

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  6. Something interesting just happened. I looked again at the picture and saw an entirely different image! Hmmm. Very strange.

    Perhaps I should “haiku” again (even though I’ve already submitted my “limit” to the challenge). Nawwww. Enough confusion for one blog.

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