Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Fun with haikus

Haikus are so fun and attainable. I love anything that takes only a few minutes to complete. Why spend years toiling away on a book that may never be finished, when you can compose a haiku so easily and actually feel like you accomplished something? Here's one I came up with as I was letting the dog out just now.

Fuzzy bumblebee
The black sheep in a field of
buzzy honeybees

4 comments:

  1. It is funny -- I like it as a funny little poem

    but it AIN'T haiku!!

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  2. Hmmm. I'm no haiku expert, for sure, but I thought I hit all the points!

    http://www.wikihow.com/Write-a-Haiku-Poem

    Not to imply that wiki knows everything! But I'm curious to know what I did wrong...?

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  3. Well I thought you'd fallen for the commonly taught but erroneous notion that haiku is simply a 17-syllable poem.

    The wikihow site you cite is very good and if you follow some of its leads then you may well come to learn a great deal.

    The thing about your piece is that its strength is in the language interplay of fuzzy/buzzy and that the "black sheep" is a metaphor rather than an actual sheep (though I may have misread it here). These are poetic techinques which haiku tries to avoid by relying on clear imagery and juxtaposition.

    love from mandy

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  4. Thank you, Mandy! You are very informative!

    ReplyDelete