I would like to take this opportunity to submit to my dear readers the shortest poem I hath ever writ!I writ it about 83 years ago.
It’s got the regulation number of syllables for a haiku.... but dangy if I know anything more of what a haiku is?
Is this thing a haiku?
Wet Leaf
There was a drop…
There was a drop crystal clear
It clung and would not plop.
© Ciprianowords Inc. 2006
A haiku or not a haiku, that is the question.
ReplyDeleteWell, I guess maybe it is, if you feel that THIS thing is. . .
"Haiku Ambulance" by the inimitable Richard Brautigan:
"A piece of green pepper fell
off the wooden salad bowl:
so what?"
Check your Thrall and Hibbard, Tolstoy.
Conventionally the haiku is said to run 5-7-5 syllables per line.
But even Shakespeare muddied the iambic pentameter waters occasionally.
Is it ART though? Oh my, there's the rub; that is the question.
The haiku should suggest a strong image, a moment of enlightenment even. . . oh, as yours most definitely does.
I can see that it must be implying [if ever so . . .ummm, subtly] that purity ["crystal clear"] is the fount of tenaciousness ["clung and would not plop"].
Of course, in doing our little exegesis the reader must keep in mind that this drop no longer exists as a drop [it "WAS"] - having succumbed to the universal and ever popular theme that even the most tenacious and pure will eventually fade.
Ah, what a philosopher resides within the haiku! And within the wonderful cipriano.
It is great fun to read you always.
But don't quit your day job in pursuit of usurping Haiku-master Basho.
Wow!
ReplyDeleteThank you, dear darling anonymous person!
That is a lot of great haiku-info!
And even though he was a rather wild looking critter, I am going to take that "Tolstoy" designation upon myself with honor.
I do think that my... whatever-it-is, haiku or not, is way better than this Brautigan guy's deal about green peppers and whatnot else!
Thank you for reading me.
And P.S.:
If "anonymous" is a GUY, then please delete the words "dear" and "darling" from my response, above.
I may talk about bisexual novels and even READ them, but that is totally as far as I go with that!
I quite enjoy writing haikus, even when they arn't true haikus in the 5-7-5 fashion sense.
ReplyDeleteOne type of poem that I am quite interested in, but have never attempted myself because just thinking about it would give me a headache, is a palindrome. They read exactly the same both frontwards and backwards. This one is by Alistair Reid:
T. Eliot, top bard, notes putrid tang emanating, is sad. "I'd assign it a name: gnat dirt upset on drab pot toilet
Shark:
ReplyDeleteThank you for reading Wet Leaf.
Know what's worse than a palindrome?
A paradelle!
And I wrote one. It is my most prized achievement, in poetry. When I completed the thing, I could not believe I had even DONE IT. But I did.
The paradelle is one of the more demanding French fixed forms, first appearing in the langue d'oc love poetry of the eleventh century. It is a poem of four six-line stanzas in which the first and second lines, as well as the third and fourth lines of the first three stanzas, must be identical. The fifth and sixth lines, which traditionally resolve these stanzas, must use all the words from the preceding lines and only those words. Similarly, the final stanza must use every word from all the preceding stanzas and only those words.
It's not easy, but very rewarding!