Haiku Habits

6 responses so far ↓

• Via Negativa // December 25, 2008 at 7:47 pm | Reply

  [...] Haiku Habits Seagulls picked at plastic bags. We belched Christmas turkey. —- This entry was posted Thursday, December 25th, 2008 at 7:46 pm and is filed under Smorgasblog. SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: “”, url: “http://www.vianegativa.us/2008/12/25/3519/” });via e-mail or social bookmarking.  Print Welcome [...]

• 

  Peter // December 26, 2008 at 1:04 am | Reply

  It is Christmas night, and your haiku has captured me.

  Wonderful.

  (I’m here from a link at Via Negativa, whose trackback has registered, I see.)

• 

  Ken Wagner // December 26, 2008 at 10:49 pm | Reply

  Thanks for the comment, Peter.

  I’d love to hear what you liked about the poem. I am still learning haiku and appreciate any suggestions for continued practice/improvement.

  Dave – Thanks much for the trackback!

• 

  Peter // December 27, 2008 at 1:40 am | Reply

  Ken, I think the implied association of the haiku’s two images grabbed me — poverty vs. excess. There’s also something sandwichy about the poem, beginning and ending as it does with names of birds and then stuffed with something mundane (plastic bags, belched). (The alliteration helps the sandwich’s middle congeal, I think.)

  The association going on during this sandwich isn’t too preachy or overwhelming, which I like.

  There’s more to the contrasting images that pleases. Both images involve eating, of course, and there’s even a progression, a role reversal, and a contrast. The progression is the movement from eating to digesting. As far as the role reversal goes, the eating bird becomes an eaten bird. The contrast is on the foraging bird vs. the feasting Christmas revelers. (Well, I guess I’m back to talking about poverty vs. excess again.)

  What this all leads to is hard to describe, which I guess is what haikus aim for. I found something cyclical and sick, and yet something natural, in it. I’m in no position to help anyone with a haiku, really, but I liked where this poem took me. Maybe I felt a moral twinge from having too much Christmas lasagna in my stomach when I read the poem. (Maybe the moral twinge was just indigestion . . .)

• 

  Ken Wagner // December 27, 2008 at 7:20 pm | Reply

  Thanks so much for sharing your reactions, Peter.

  I’m trying to land in that space where western poetry, the haiku form, and my own psychology as a reader/writer meet.

  Meanwhile, I belch forth . . .

• 

  hraps // December 28, 2008 at 11:54 pm | Reply

  What Peter said, but something more. We, head meat eaters (well, some of us) leave the wildlife to pick over our rubbish. It’s the way we modern humans relate to our fellow earthlings and the planet itself. What we take as pleasure (and necessity) leaves the environment trashed. Our fundamental human flaw in an age of consumer capitalism.

  A simple, yet complex image. Brilliant.