Lee,

Here’s another batch: it’s hard to find good critique on Haiku, so please chop 'em & cook 'em up.

I know that traditional Haiku poets and Tanka poets tend not to venture into the others domain, but I gave it a shot and have found Tanka quite a bit more than I thought it was.

Anyway, thank you very much for the time and energy you have spent on these little-big poems!

Fr. RP

PS: Hopefully I can get those other two ku up to speed before you flee this place!

first light
on the cabin porch
mayflies

late night—
spring’s first fly
bounces off the wall

summer evening
another quick chirp
from the microwave

yellow moon
along the icy prairie…
coming home

frost covers
an untilled field…
for sale

evening fades—
a rusty tractor
covered by weeds

blustery day—
an eagle crouches
on the white boulder

Orion rising
the sound of snow
beneath my feet

a few flowers
among the weeds
a rusted trowel

sudden wind gust
prairie dust rises
to meet the rain

I like this one, Donna. I'm not sure it 'interacts imaginatively', but I really feel clueless about what is and isn't, what does and doesn't. But I like this little picture. http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/ubbhtml/smile.gif

Hi Peter, To begin with your question, haiku of course makes use of all the sound resouces of the language. I have not been emphasizing this because we have been discussing more basic issues. But here, for example are some poems in which sound is an important part of the message, that literally beg to be read out loud. The first, by Peter Yovu, is one of my top ten haiku of all time:

mosquito she too
insisting insisting she
is is is is is

(Please notice also that it is absolutely invisibly 17 syllables. It achieves this invisibility, in my view, by using the kind of short sounds that Japanese haiku use.)
here is a lighter one by Mary Alice Herbert, in which the vowels literally take flight:

All Hallow's Eve
swallows
loop the moon

here is one by Gary Hotham in which the weak vowels intensify the sense of loneliness:

dark darker
too many stars
too far

and finally one by Dru Phillipou in which the sounds are the subject of the poem:

Wet sedges
egrets unseen
the fleetest schwas


A look at your poems . . .

Coachwood
in the north wind - arrows
fresh shot, quivering

as my comments on other poems may have suggested, haiku with this sort of conceit don't do a lot for me

Panther pads
in the forest - vines
twist to the sky

not sure these images are close enough for me to connect, though that might be my failing

A skim of water
one foot of bank -
two hundred of sandstone

not sure i get this one

fallen logs
after dusk - fireflies
with quiet noels

interesting!

For this reader one hit in four, which is way higher than my own average, I can assure you.

Lee

Hi Lei . . . it's Lee!

Punctuation. Punctuation can be used to break, equate, throw forward, stop. Traditional japanese haiku don't have punctuation, but have kireji or cutting words that perform that function. (And make up a part of the sound count of the haiku. So if you insist that 17 syllables is the correct form for haiku, which is of course your right, then you should count each of these marks as one syllable.) So please punctuate away if you please. The important thing is that everything in the poem should contribute to the poem. There should be no "default" punctuation in a haiku, like a period at the end to tell the reader "this is the end of the poem." I use punctuation maybe half the time,but only to a purpose. In fact, I have only once ever used a period in a haiku. Here it is--you can decide for yourself whether you think it belongs:

his side of it.
her side of it.
winter silence

(Please note that there is not a period at the end of the poem.)

Enough on punctuation for now?

And now to your poems . . . which I am going to look at with an "editorial eye." I have a haiku buddy i get together with every month so we can critique each others poems. I am going to comment on these as if they were Randy's and I was sitting across the table from him.

Behind the house
apple branches break
bears grow fatter

OK, I have several questions about this one. First, why behind the house as opposed to in front of it or next to it? I am good with the branches breaking, depending on what else is going on in the poem. I am not sure why you have "bears grow fatter" to finish the poems. Is the point that they are eating the apples? Or is there some other reason< the season, perhaps? As a reader, I am not sure. If it is the season, then it seems redundant since the apples have already told us what the season is. If it is because they are eating the apples, i wonder what the point is. After all, bears can climb trees, can't they? Now if the bears are breaking the branches, that is something else, but i don't really get that out of the poem.

cold sails
billow in the wind
a moonlit lake

nice.

Brown eyes follow me
tail wagging, mouth apant -
I prefer the cat.

I prefer the second haiku. By the way, I love "apant". At first i thought it was a typo! (Duh!)

Lee

Quotes are fine. My question indicates the level of my own ignorance. Seeing where you were from, I thought maybe it was a TV show!

Lee

Christy, sorry, but i missed your poem! I like this version best (except i would lose the period):

black tree white skies
filmed framed packed
to fly away.


I like the three participles in the second line and like the ambiguity of the third line.

Lee

Feel free to do whatever you like with my poems!

Lee

Yes, it is a paved country road, as opposed to an unpaved one.

Lee

donna I like the first one and the one lee liked. Here that one is in my lingo


a willy willy
surprise surprise fairy dust
in eye then in eye


odds are not just dust but a tree trunk might whack you on the nose as well; that right cally?


Robert

I like the mayflies as well maybe begin


first light mayflies

Lee a thought!

What about caps for names and places as in May-flies?

Maryann, thanks for sharing all the versions. I think this is a great example of the process of haiku self editing. When I do that, which of course i do with every poem, by the time i get to the last version i often find i begin leaving things out. For the first line, I line "the icy bridge" or "ice-slick bridge." (Doesn't "ice-slick" take your feet right out from under you?) For the rest, i like the first version. Though i don't generally like rhetorical questions in haiku, it think it works here as something very natural. Here it is an actual dilemma (with enlarging overtones) rather than a fanciful one of the poet's invention.

Lee

P.S. Sorry folks, but i am running out of gas--had a long day at work. I promise to have more tomorrow and the next day and . . . in fact, i am off work for the rest of my visit, so i should be able to give you more, maybe more than you want!