Hi Jim,
Haibun is not a form I've tried, though I've written haiku. Good to see you giving it a shot.
For me, the two haiku are what is working the least well here. How familiar are you with the form?
In schools, haiku tend to be taught as a syllabic form with 5/7/5 syllables and pretty much no other constraints. I guess it's an easy thing for kids to work with. However, modern haiku in English typically use around 10-14 syllables, for reasons given
here and
here. Basically, due to differences in the two languages, 5-7-5 syllables in English is a fair bit wordier than a haiku in Japanese, and hence doesn't replicate their brevity. There are, of course, other considerations to what makes a haiku. See e.g.
here for links to some good discussions/guides.
I prefer the first of your two haiku, though it's pretty wordy (more so because it's actually 5/7/6) and would benefit from being more concise. There is imagery and some surprise in the last line. Though it also reads as one continuous unit, with no "cutting word", no sense of a break. The second isn't really working for me at all, as it combines abstraction with cliché. As the piece stands currently, I think it's better without the haiku.
Some comments on the prose.
1st para.
I wonder if the first sentence is too long/complicated, has too many qualifications? Maybe it would work better as two sentences?
I have watched for weeks the cut rose slowly droop in the glass vase, and always come away with teeming thoughts of life and death and the connection between the two
Personally, I'd just end this sentence at "vase". Do we need to know what the N thinks, or is it more interesting for us to ponder / supply our own interpretations? He's watching the rose die, after all. And you have the blood image coming. Or if you think we need to know it, can you find a less abstract/telly way to communicate this?
I think "begin" should be "began". I really like the image of dried blood at the corners of the mouth to illustrate the fraying rose, while also hinting at death.
I watched the water disappear. It burned into my memory. I kissed it. I threw it away.
I get confused at this point. How is the N kissing the disappeared water? Or throwing it away, for that matter. Though I guess maybe there's still some left. Or is he kissing the memory of the water? (In which case, how does that work, and how does he throw away the memory?). If it's the rose he's kissing, maybe there's a way to make that clearer. I think, given the contrast with the second para, in which he keeps a rose, it is the rose he throws away. But the referent of "it" doesn't seem to be the rose.
2nd para
I like the parallelism here, and the contrast. The short-stemmed (and short-lived) rose and the long-stemmed (long-stored) rose. Again, I wonder if the first sentence should be made into two sentences? Maybe ending after "bookmark"?
I wonder if "It's been a long time" and "along with many other books I abandoned" are needed. Would you miss them if you took them out? I think the first can be deduced from the N not remembering. And with the second, the important point seems to be that that he gave away the book. Do we need to know he gave away others? Does it add to anything? Concise prose is (traditionally at least) a thing in haibun, as I understand it.
I'm not sure of the thing of clarifying that you're talking about the rose and not the book is adding much, but if you're going to do it, it might work better if you only do it the once.
I don't understand what the semicolons are doing at the end of this paragraph. Commas or full stops, I reckon.
best,
Matt