Catholic School: Haiku

Great haiku. Thanks for sharing.

And you did! LOL. My husband would sympathize with you.

Marvelous !!!! THOSE NUNS !!!

Are you picturing Joan Crawford in a habit Peter? That's nasty.

I didn't go to catholic school Kay but have often wondered if this is where american haiku "posts" learned the slavish devotion to 5/7/5.

Ya scare me a little Sammie!

Even now it burns;
the ruler that you
once crackethed over my knuckles,
for breaken those rules.

King Jamesian! Verily it twas.

That one was about sex too.

thx k. were you confirmed? :)

haiku is all about discipline :)

lol, great job

:)

Nuns, haikus and rulers......

terrifying!

very nice

lol

excellent... i hear ya...

What is it? I'm sorry, I am not Catholic. Is it an art form that you posted? It's lovely.

Haiku. Only a handful of people on gather can write it. Everybody else thinks haiku are-

three lines of awful
verse totaling seventeen
syllables of lame

but it ain't . Even American school teachers perpuate the blasphemy of a false definition. We are an ignorant people. The way we like it. Don't get me started. Too late.

Haiku are holy and real. But few care to educate themselves. They are magic word machines that require intuition to function. Here are some actual english language haiku by people who know what they are doing. Syllables have nothing to do with it.



Alzheimer's birthday
each slice of the cake
takes part of her name

Bill Pauly




cumulus clouds- -
watching the catheter
for the next drip

--David Cobb


daffodil morning--
looking for something
very blue to wear

--David Cobb




calm evening
the ballgame play-by-play
across the water

--Jim Kacian

funeral procession . . .
snowflakes blowing
into the headlights

--Randy Brooks


two lines in the water
not a word
between father and son

--Randy Brooks

empty park--
a cup full of acorns
left in the sandbox

--Ikyuo Yoshimura



nobody on the street
stray dog stops to bite
its wagging tail

--George Swede



passport check
my shadow waits
across the border

--George Swede


marble nude--
heat of the afternoon
still in her shoulder

--Lee Gurga




Venus at dusk--
a thin slice of lemon
in my water glass

--Emiko Miyashita


haystacks--
nothing else but
the blue sky

--Emiko Miyashita



a long look
at winter stars . . .
someone else's wife

--John Stevenson



Christmas Day
the exchange
of custody

--John Stevenson



milkweed fluff in the air
the sleepy
lions

--David Lanoue


the old priest dines
his wine
just wine

--David Lanoue

Some people choose to attempt classic haiku using 5-7-5 as the syllable count. (In reality 17 "on" equate more to 12 English syllables) however, such writers should not immediately be trashed as "lame." I submit that a Japanese speaker, hearing an English Haiku recited would recognize the 5-7-5 long before he or she recognised some of the above as haiku. (Some of which in fact do fall short in message, intuition and attempt.)

wings beat forgiveness
white cranes grow one thousand strong
paper creased folded

Nice job on your Catholic School Haiku

And haiku is taught in all schools, not just Catholic - to the person above who didn't know what it was.

thx Shelley!

James, did I say "lame"? I guess I did. I needed a one syllable word to illustrate the tiresome connect-the-dots product that results from a 575 paint-by-numbers "discipline." It served its purpose.

A Japanese speaker wouldn't be of much help in this context I'm afraid. I'm referring to haiku in english. And yes, 12 sylls would be more like a traditional Japanese haiku in length.

Is it a "fact" that the award winning haiku quoted above "fall short in message, intuition and attempt"? I did not know that! I can't imagine the editors of the Haiku Society of America journal who selected them know it either. :)

re:thousand cranes

Not that I think it's dreadful, it's just wordy and bulky. I like a lean clean concise haiku. I'm also a bit troubled when a modern english writer adopts an ancient oriental slant to write haiku. "Paper cranes." Run out of modern american subjects?

It reads like you are counting syllables. Most 575 read that way to me. Like they are being padded with extraneous words to fill the quota in some cases and clipped like a telegram in other cases. It strikes me as unnatural. But who am I? :)

People should do whatever they wish. WHen it comes to haiku they certainly seem to. But to sit down and write

grandson's first birthday
his beautiful little hands
clap and clap for joy

and suppose you have produced a haiku is to suffer under a misguided notion. Arranging words in 3 lines of 575 does not equal a haiku anymore than painting yourself red would turn you into a fire truck. There are plenty of resources availible for anyone who wants to know what they are and how they happen. Most apparently, do not wish to know and are satisfied with their current level of misinformation.

I've always been amused by those who say they write 575 in english because they wish to write "traditional" haiku when in fact (and this is one) that practice takes you further away from the tradition, not closer to it.

Actually Bret, Japanese do fold paper cranes even unto this day.

The Haiku Society also hammered out from 1972 thru 1978 the tradition of 575, but did also box it into using seasons (cranes grow by the thousands in the nesting season of spring) and juxtaposition of man and nature (paper cranes man made, to honor the Asian bird of peace; which is the crane) and that is probably why this Haiku was chosen for publication. Sorry you found it ponderous.
And yes,I deliberately chose an ancient Japanese ritual of folding 1,000 cranes to seek realization of a wish or hope.

Ok so I saw one of the judges was Japanese, is it any less creative to write to your audience?

Can you link me to some of your published Haiku, I'd like to see where I've gone astray.y

Are you Japanese? That's different then. Cranes would be part of your culture. If one of the judges on a modern mixed demographic english language contest were Mexican, I still wouldn't wear a sombrero to try to relate to them. I don't think we modern english writers should traffic in our imagined romanticized version of another culture. Not that I haven't done my share of stone lantern, bamboo and origami haiku.

I lived in Japan for a year and a half. (Misawa) For a while I thought that made me qualified to get poetic on shrines, stone lions, beggars rice bowls etc. I was mistaken. My culture is baseball, the empire state bldg, highways crossing the desert, etc.


The fact that HSA changed their minds in 78 shows they knew thay were off track.

I've been published in Mainichi Daily News, Tinywords, Acorn, Shadow Poetry and Simply Haiku. You'll have to search for Bret W's items. I'm lazy.

I can quote you one but I doubt it will solve anything for you.

Lighthouse Field~
a kite filled sky
tugs at the earth

Blue sky
But never the sun
My prison window

Lime green~
The townies wail
firetrucks should be red

wail is consistent and reinforcing. good choice.

=Arranging words in 3 lines of 575 does not equal a haiku anymore than painting yourself red would turn you into a fire truck.=
this from your discourse on Haiku inspired me I think! : )

That and a Tom Bodett tale of the firetruck purchased unseen by the town council;
Errrrk, it was LIME GREEN!