Saturday, April 18, 2009

Haiku on Eating Dandelion Heads

Gail Sher starts out her book, One Continuous Mistake, describing how writing saved her life. In the beginning, she says, she started out writing one haiku a day. She would write her daily five-seven-five and then return to haiku of days past to polish and revise.

That has me thinking. Seventeen syllables? Sure, I can do that. But can I do it well? I’ve always been interested in haiku, and when I was younger I’d often try to come up with the most insulting, crass and grotesque ones I could. I’m sure that was perverting the entire purpose of it, but it was a lot of fun.

Now that I’m an adult, I think I’d like to try my hand at writing meaningful haiku, especially about the mundane things I do. It makes them seem a bit more interesting, twisted into this attractive format. There are more rules (aesthetic in nature) than just the syllables and format, but for the moment I’d like to keep it simple. I’ll work up to it.

Hana tempura
Lawn as beautiful garden
Weeds taste wonderful

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