Haiku Low-ku

[pjthompson]

raecarson's recent oke-ku's and thursdayhaiku's Thursday haikus have got me thinking about haikus again. I've written them since forever, encouraged by a writing teacher back in the misty days of yore who believed that writing haikus was a good way to learn to boil image down to essence and to discipline the mind. As anyone who's read my fiction can tell you, the "boiling image down to essence" thing apparently didn't take because I do go on a bit, but I also think Mr. Whatshisname had a point. It's a lovely way of catching a moment, a fleeting memory, a photograph in words, and a good discipline.

For the first two weeks of the class, he wouldn't let us write anything but haiku, and we had to turn in a set number after every class. I filled notebooks with them all that fall and winter, even after we'd moved on to another class routine. It was fun and electrifying. I love haiku, I love poetry. I love writing it, all of it. I'm not a good poet , not good enough to make it as a poet. And I don't mean that in a self-denigrating, "kick me again I'm not good enough" way. I mean that I don't have the particular drive and passion to make myself better as a poet. I love it, but it's not the basket I've chosen to put my eggs in.

But it all helps the fiction, I think. Any discipline outside what a writer normally pursues helps expand the mind and the writing muscles. That's the true lesson I learned from Mr. Whatshisname.

Hands remember what
my mind does not: just so my
father planted beans.

Comments

nice haiku

[thursdayhaiku.livejournal.com]

That is a nice one. Also, you are observing
a rule of haiku that I constantly violate: the "no title" tradition.

I just can't seem to relinquish that extra few words pinned to the top of my 5-7-5!

Re: nice haiku

[pjthompson]

Hey, you're in good company. Ezra Pound couldn't resist it, either. One of my favorite favorite haikus ever:

In the Station of the Metro

The apparition
of these faces in the crowd--petals
On a wet, black bough

Re: nice haiku

[pjthompson]

Oh, and thanks. :*)

[raecarson.livejournal.com]

I'm delighted that my virgin 'kus sparked any thought process other than derision.