Theresa Walsh Knows Haiku

I love haiku. Evocative words. Compact presentation. They’re what you can write even when you can’t seem to write. And they give back, too; they fill the creative well—at least for this author.

While drafting my debut, The Last Will of Moira Leahy, I wrote haiku every week, sometimes every day. Sometimes the haiku were light, like this one:

The Other Dragon
Wild dragon in flight;
domesticated dragon
stays home, simmers stew.

Or this:

Adaptation
He thinks he's fishing,
but the worm is off the hook,
learning how to swim.

Other times, not so light:

Farm Life
All just blood and bones,
scattered, spattered on the floor.
Ring the dinner bell!

Sometimes they were all about the wordplay:

Plea of the Fish
"Please add some water..."
Swirls of gold and tangerine
accent uncoiled fronds.

Or:

The Queen's Man
A pawn in her eyes,
he tripped on her libretto,
they spilled in his robes.

Often, I’d tie a haiku in with my work-in-progress—the story of twins, a tragedy, and one sister’s uneasy path to recovery:

Blood Sisters
It was not a dream:
upright white flash, blood, our oath,
blink, and you were gone.

But no matter my mood, or the needs of my muse, those poetic tapas always gratified, filled a void in me.

One of my favorite hangouts, and the place that inspired so many of my poems, is the writers’ forum Absolute Write. There you can read and/or contribute poems of any shape or variety, and participate in what is likely the longest chain of haiku in the world—Chain, chain, chain of haiku fools. To contribute, use the last poster’s third haiku line as your first. Check it out here.

I haven’t written as many haiku since my debut novel was accepted for publication and was finally published. There were so many editorial deadlines to meet, a website to construct, publicity and marketing concerns, and then the pressing need to write the second novel to fulfill my two-book contract. I’m in need of a little inspiration now though, and Rachael’s request to post here today has reminded me of this long lost favorite method for finding that. So I’m off to fill the well via a little 5-7-5, and I’m sure to feel better for it.

Thanks again for the invite, Rachael.

(Psst, would you like to read more of my fave haiku poems? I’ve dedicated a page to them on my website, here:)


Therese Walsh is the co-founder of a site Writer’s Digest named one of the best for writers four years running, Writer Unboxed. Her debut novel, The Last Will of Moira Leahy, was published in 2009 (Random House). Prior to becoming a novelist, she was a senior researcher and writer for Prevention magazine and Rodale Press, and has had hundreds of articles on nutrition and fitness published in consumer magazines and online. She is married to the next Tommy Makem, and has two cute kids, one cat and a Jack Russell named Kismet. Learn more about her at http://theresewalsh.com/.

A Birthday Haiku

My birthday today

Taking time to celebrate

See you all next time!

--Gigi

Martha Thinks Haiku Is Perfect

Ah, for once, I find myself on the side of positivity! Week after week, the others Pens have found lovely things to say about Grace (ugh), Love and Romance (blech) and First Lines (whatever) as I have been a fountain of naysay.

Not this week, my friends, cuz Martha loves herself some haiku.

Why?

Because:

1. Haiku never lasts long enough to bore you. It's short, sweet, and structured. I'd slit my wrists before finishing overwrought whining from Frost or Shakesperare about a cold, winter's night. But Soseki?

Over the wintry
forest, winds howl in rage
with no leaves to blow

Bam! Done! Satisfied!

2. Haiku is always misunderstood and who doesn't love a misunderstood hero? Despite popular belief, the structure is not based on syllables but sound-count. Let's take the word "haiku." How many "syllables" are in this word? The answer is three: ha-i-ku. Let's try one more...how about Tokyo, capital of the land of haiku. How many "syllables" in that?....
...
...
...
...
Did you guess four? Go get a cookie.

3. Haiku's symbolism is obvious. How am I supposed to know that Frost uses roses in his poems to represent his dead wife? You'd have to tell me, that's how. But there is a haiku dictionary which details a list of keywords and their seasonal symbolic references. Woohoo!

So keeping this in mind, please enjoy one of my favorite haikus by Issa

a world of dew,
and within every dewdrop
a world of struggle

Within these words there is pain, uncertainty, fragility, life, death, doubt - I dare you to better on 17 sound-counts.

Why Lisa Loves Haiku

Why I love haiku?
Five, seven, five syllables
is easy to do.





Funny that this topic has stirred up such animosity among some Pens. I hesitate to admit it but this subject was my idea.

I am not so good with poetry. Personally I prefer a longer format, say book length, to explore themes and stories. Iambic pentameter, dactylic hexameter, Anapestic tetrameter, Trochaic octameter...all have rules about the lines, feet, stanzas, stressed syllables versus unstressed syllables, rhyming, and the restrictions go on and on. I mean, really, who can remember all of that?

What I love about haiku is that anyone can write it. If you can clap out the syllables, you are good to go.

A few years ago we took a trip to Portland and stayed at the Kennedy School, a really fun, funky old schoolhouse converted into a hotel. The hallways are decorated with absolutely gorgeous artwork, a lot from former students.


This is a painting on the wall, depicting a ghost said to be a former student who haunts the halls




The owners also are brewers and the restaurant serves their yummy beer.


The old theater shows complementary movies all day long.




The rooms are literally old classrooms complete with the original blackboards on the walls.


The one thing the rooms don’t have: televisions. So to keep my kids from moaning about the lack of television, I gave them an assignment. Everyone had to write at least one haiku. Coming up with goofy haiku to describe our adventures turned out to be a heck of a lot of fun.

Try it and you might just learn to love haiku too.

Lisa

Haiku Inspired Frustration

L.G.C. Smith

Haiku froze my brain.
Creativity failed me.
I'm just frickin' miffed.

It's time for a rant. A small one, but a rant nonetheless. Not for the first time, anything I might possibly have to say about our subject has been said by the First Week Pens.

Oh, things start out fine. Maybe Sophie makes a little comment about something I might address. Oh, well. I think of something else. Then Rachael mentions something else I was thinking about. Back to the drawing board.

Then Juliet says something like "haiku makes me grumpy," and I get a little ruffled. Because it makes me a little grumpy sometimes, too, and I'd thought I could work with that. Kind of along the lines of how great poetry is so stunning but most of it is so meh, and what's up with that? Blah, blah, blah.

Something Japanese in honor of Haiku

I give all that up, and decide I will pursue creating haiku-limerick hybrids. What happens? Adrienne mentions limericks. I soldier on, but with my heart not in it, I manage a few erotic versions, and some spectacularly cheesy ones. They all suck. The insouciant bawdiness of the limerick eludes me. Drat.

Finally, I fall back on the old "Haiku is a form, the novel is a form, Vladimir Propp, folktales, yadda yadda yadda," and our lovely Friday guest, Lila Dare pretty much covers that angle. At this point, I wrote the Haiku at the top of the page.

Really, though, the problem isn't the topic. The problem is coming in the second week. Am I right, fellow second-weekers? Is it time for us to rise up and throw off this shackle?

Nah, I didn't think so. The main reason I'm not much into haiku this week is that I'm in the middle of reading the third volume of George R.R. Martin's "A Song of Fire and Ice" fantasy series. I started the first volume, "A Game of Thrones," ten days ago. It was 800+ pages. Each installment has gotten progressively longer. This is the novel taken about as far as it's possible to get from haiku. My head is in a space of sweeping sagas rather than that of a tight and tiny gem.

I love these novels: The length.The scores of characters. The names. The multiple plot lines that don't line up exactly chronologically. And so much ugly emotion. Desperation. Foolishness. Weakness. Cruelty. Fury. Avarice. All the bad stuff. Martin is a master of not sparing his characters a lick of pain. If it's possible to make them hurt more, he goes for it. I'm learning from that, even though more than once I've wanted to beg him to be nicer to them. But that's not his way. Neither is haiku his path, and I, for one, am most grateful.

Nature in Three Lines

--Adrienne Miller

Confession time: I’m not really a haiku person. I’m really more of a limerick girl. Don’t get me wrong, I like the concept of haikus, a little snapshot glorifying the human experience in nature. Delightful. Except, I don’t really like nature. My experience in nature usually goes something like this.

I walk through the woods.

Look there. Three shiny red leaves

Great! Now I’m all itchy

Ok, ok. Maybe I’m being a little hasty here. I love the ocean. I haven’t found much that can compare to the sight of the full moon reflecting off the midnight waters of Monterey Bay.

Crashing waves of gray

Never fail to calm my mind

Tides roll in and out

Or maybe the groves of redwoods nested next to the Russian River. There’s a strange kind of peace that can be found walking beneath a canopy so massive that it blocks out the sky and sun above. No other animals, just ferns and sorrel.

Life in green and brown

The earth is soft beneath me

Here there is silence

And I am fond of Sonoran desert sunsets, the ones that make the sky light up with color. That kind of sunset can stir my imagination like nothing else. 

Horizon ignites

The day’s last gasp of brilliance

Before dark descends

So maybe there is some nature that I like, but I think I’ll do everyone a favor from here on out and stick to prose.

Juliet's a Haiku Grumpy-Pants

Does it sound too grumpy if I just say that I really, really, don’t like haiku?

(I do, however, like the picture to the left. Note that the tagger didn't actually write a haiku.)




I’m not all that wild about any kind of poetry, actually, with the possible exception of the work of Pablo Neruda. A Freakin' Genius. Neruda makes my toes curl…in a good way…especially when his words are read aloud, by a low-timbered voice, in the original Spanish.

Me gustas cuando callas porque estás como ausente
(I like you when you’re still; it’s as though you were absent)

Toes curling yet? You don’t catch Pablo writing 5-7-5 verse. His longer poetry might cross over the line towards prose, but it’s not three lines guided by syllables.

One thing I’ll say for Haiku – it’s democratic. Correct me if I’m wrong, but as far as I know there aren’t even any rules about using subjects and nouns, or even meaning anything. Anyone can write with such a formula – I imagine that’s why it’s such a staple in elementary school classes, and amongst people like me who can’t (or won’t) write poetry except under duress.

So for all the grumpy-pants curmudgeonly cranks out there like me, I suggest going onto the Genuine Haiku generator. One click and you, too, can create an original cyberpseudopoetic masterpiece.

Such as:

wetly lame jailers
luxuriate, epic swift
defiant burglars

or

grayly, circus frowns
dizzily, cradle glistens
quickly, plowshare builds

All right, all right. If I have to write my own:

Ill-tempered poet
Prefers to write a novel
than simple Haiku

Ultimately, though, I think I’ll stick with Neruda:

Mariposa de sueño, te pareces a mi alma, y te pareces a la palabra melancolía.
(Butterfly of my dream, you are like my soul, and you are like the word melancholy.)

***

P.S. Just to join in on the travelogue already posted by Rachael and Sophie, here’s a special pic of vampire-writer--and former Pens guest-- Mario Acevedo, being schooled by Jeanne Stein and Lori Armstrong in a barroom smack-down. Not sure why. But it made sense at the time. And yes, that’s the same bar in which Lori later wound up draped upon the pool table along with our very own Rachael Herron and Sophie Littlefield. I tell you what, being a writer’s a tough job, but somebody’s gotta do it…

Oh...and Feliz Cinco de Mayo!!!