sun's gaze transforms
frost-lace to dewdrop-diamonds
then to memory
Comments
1 - 9 of 9
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Love this Haiku
Very pretty -
This is really nice. I gave up on haiku because I can't learn it but some people like you have mastered it. Very well done.
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a beautiful picture
this is one of my favorite sights through the season. thank you for capturing it so vividly. as for form, I don't know exactly where it fits; nor do I care. It's a beautiful poem.
James -
ok
sun's gaze transforms
frost-lace to dewdrop-diamonds
then to memory
Hi Eric - i was fascinated to read this poem. I saw your message on the haikumonk haiku article, so i thought i'd check out what you learnt from him.
your winter piece is wonderfully descriptive, contemplative and poetic, but perhaps far too much so for contemporary haiku. it uses personification (sun's gaze) and overt metaphor (frost-lace/ dewdrop-diamonds). the use of the 17 syllable format is old-fashioned and the padding required to fulfill this syllabic format makes this more of a poem than a haiku, especially as the final line takes the poem away from the moment and into the future.
sorry i couldn't be more positive. i hope you don't mind my blunt comments.
i know there are many schools of haiku and that perhaps my views are too narrow. your example here shows that you are a rebel and a rule-breaker and i admire that in a poet.
best wishes,
myron. -
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Myron, I prefer blunt comment. The only thing I'll argue is that memory makes it present...and everything else past.
Thanks for coming by.
[edit]
Oh...and I don't try for "contemporary" in haiku. I prefer the old way. Maybe that matters here, maybe not...
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impressionable
- The snowman sneezes - what about it
. But serious this might be a good one for a long trainride and see where it ends up. The setup in the first two lines makes it all possible.
I liked yours even though very much it's more impressionable.
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This is a really interesting write. L1 and L2 are wonderful. I appreciate the heads up to read this one. My only question is L3.... it seems to turn the haiku into a poem as it doesn't have the typical haiku "sudden shift" of awareness.... it's more of a continuum of the first two lines. The words "then to" does that to it. Not sure what you'd use there but needs something of contrast/juxtaposition.
sun's gaze transforms
frost-lace to dewdrop-diamonds -
a snowman winks
I'm not saying to use this...LOL... it's just a quick way of pointing out the contrast we need in L3.
Nice one to distill some. It has wonderful potential.
Take care friend,
Don
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I've noticed before that we have two different views about that 'shift'. (Depite everything I'm about to say, I agree with your analysis, by the way.)
My earliest introduction to haiku came from John Murray, who was also my instructor on the katana. While acknowledging that there were other schools of thought, he told me that his training said the signal aspects of a haiku were brevity, observation of a moment in nature (that would only by inference or association relate to people) and a contrast between the ongoing and the ephemeral. That was his concept of the shift. In this case, the contrast between the eternal nature-cycle of freeze/melt--physical manifestations--and the fleeting nature of those manifestations as lace becomes diamond, then is nothing but a memory.
I agree that there are other approaches to haiku, some probably more authentic or 'valid', but that one remains the one that has always most appealed to me. Even so...you're right; using "then to" is the weak link that turns contrast into process, and that needs working out before this thing is presentable. I knew something was wrong, but I couldn't put my finger on it. Thanks for letting me borrow your eyes!
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I'm watching this happen out my window this moment.
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