Forum: Author Hangout

Neither do I. Although eons ago, I did take a creative writing class. We spent a couple of weeks on 17-syllable pieces, none of which, if I remember accurately, turned out to be very good.

However, the exercise may have been useful in imposing some discipline to the writing process. It takes a bit of concentration to tamp things down to a five-syllable line, then seven, then five again.

That said … I suspect that a mediocre storywriter would be a mediocre poet too. For example, I might write:

"A rabbit hopped through the back yard."

Johnny Keats put it this way:

"The hare limp'd trembling through the frozen grass."

Or …

I might say:

"Your mother left."

While professional songwriters …

"She's long gone with her red shoes on."

The inclusion of the words 'limp'd trembling' and 'red shoes' makes the prose so much more vivid, n'est-ce pas?

Back to haikus … here's one I dashed off this morning just for the fun of it:

"The spindly geezer
slowly stork-walked around
glossy ice patches."

Do you haiku …?

Paige

I do haiku, a lot. Though not as much as I tanka, the poem form that haiku developed from. It looks like a haiku with two more seven-syllable lines.

Both are good exercises in writing both vividly and concisely. The advantage of tanka is that, because a purely descriptive tanka almost always feels flat, you need to also fit a concise narrative in there as well.

I prefer the Haka to the Haiku

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xI6TRTBZUMM

Her skirt is too short
Bright blue, silky to the touch
Oops, bright red panties