my ‘yikes!’ haiku (from a suite of the first-ever haiku I submitted to THN)
1.
moon rise
on church window,
mom and I holding hands
2.
magnolia petals
in the wind—
the rush at my wedding
3.
shredded blooms
on my hair—
writing on my journal
4.
spring rain—
the taste of salt spray
the first time
5.
first spring walk—
a clump of drooping snowdrops
black patch smaller
6.
against the haze
a hedge of briar roses—
my unfinished poem
These and the rest in the suite of ten haiku, of course, came back declined. You might want to let me know why, first, and then, I’ll write a self-critique.
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About
autumn wind
wondering about lilies
in a mountain pond
Tell me a writer who really gets a satisfying jornal, in Spanish a daily wage or its equivalent, and I’ll bare a spirit in constant bouts of doubtfulness. Does a writer earn more because of what he writes and how he does it? Or is a writer paid more or less because of who he is? Is it money or honor he expects to receive?
Ahhh … but money as wage, and praise or honor as reward would be too predictable, too common as Job lamented in the Book of Job. It is in these lines that read: “Is not man’s life on earth nothing more than pressed service, his times no better than hired drudgery? Like the slave, sighing for the shade, or the workman with no thought but his wages, months of delusion I have assigned to me, nothing for my own but nights of grief. Lying in bed I wonder, ‘When will it be day?’ Risen I think, ‘How slowly evening comes!’
Restlessly I fret till twilight falls. Swifter than a weaver’s shuttle my days have passed, and vanished, leaving no hope behind. Remember that my life is but a breath, and that my eyes will never again see joy.”
Not money but joy is the ultimate wage as the passage implies. And joy is not hard to earn for it is in everyday life if we have eyes to see, a nose to smell, fingers to touch, ears to hear–a heart beating. This to me, is how a writer earns a daily wage. His wages then take the guise of treasures his heart can transfigure into a universe of thought that taps into other hearts, that causes a swirl in the depth of other souls, or that makes wings to sprout on leaden heels.
Sometimes not joy but rueful, poignant moments are my pick. Take what I earned once: On my walk home in my neighborhood, I caught two clumps of snowdrops–such tiny blossoms smaller than fingertips that do not look up but shyly droop close to black patches on the ground winter has frozen. That afternoon in the frosty wind, they trembled as if ready to turn away and run but how could they? For that poignant moment on seeing the wintry rain beat on the fragile snowdrop–as if pushing it to go home now, go to sleep–I earned my jornal, my daily wage.
Once on summer walk, the crackle of dried leaves just hit me both like the laughter of children and sobs long suppressed. Neither one of them would resolve the dryness, but I recalled how each does bring tears: laughter for joy, sobs for healing that comes with the release of a dammed-up pain. My jornal that day came as two haiku.
Fall has since shortened the day and the heart begins to crave for lost space that it doesn’t even recall which or where. I feel that most treasures have turned into mush so much so I wouldn’t be able to sift them off the ground. Yet I caught the dying day yesterday–so glorious in the gold of autumn it opened a flip side of serene heaven. Blades of grass coated in diadems of rain that carpet the lawns render royal walks poor by imitation. A burst of red maple against an inky blue sky humbled me, a soul bragging about her skill to recreate beauty in words.
I suppose I’m taking Job’s reflections to heart. I’d rather not gloss over each day and look beyond what’s there, right before me, or else fragile as is my breath one day “my eyes may never again see joy” to write. With what then will I compare the eternal joy, the ultimate wage I await?
Yet for now, as other eyes hanker to make the invisible visible, I put a tag on some moments of joy. Like on seeing the snowdrops, I paid myself $200 as my jornal.
What could have been yours?
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jornales 
Alegria,
I really do not know. I have been rejected multiple times by THN. I admire your pluck to show us, the world, your haiku and ask for feedback. I liked #1 and #4. If anything, I notice the “my” point of view. Many a good haiku has a self at the center. But it makes the battle to publish harder to write with my, me, I, myself hanging in the wind. Or so I think. I am still very much on the journey. You have such gifts of imagery. Keep at it.
Sully
Hi again, Sully!
Wheeww, I just finished editing my first reply to your kind comment, which was rife with mistakes! I dashed it off on my way to a conference on ‘women and media’ at the University of British Columbia. I’m sorry about that, sorry for the winch-ing I must have caused you.
Thanks again!!!
Thanks, Sully, for your thoughtful read, always the first, too, to respond to my ‘prompts’ for a critique. I do need it, who is the writer who doesn’t? The briefest of words have helped me see my hazy way through and I believe I’ve gained ground in my writing of haiku because of these.
Thanks for taking note of my ‘pluck’!!! I developed it from experiences in writing classes I attended in Manhattan more than a decade ago when I dared to enroll in writing classes at NYU. Guess how it went with me the only non-native writer and speaker of English in a class of New Yorkers…the ‘bashing’ though drew out my ‘pluck’!
Thanks for picking out nos 1 and 4 in this half-suite of haiku. I, too, think, these are quite good enough though something in there might make it better to be GOOD haiku. Indeed, we never know, do we? But, too, indeed, reading suggested haiku reasource links by Michael Dylan Welch and Alan Summers, and most of those that Melissa includes in her ‘haikuverse’, as well as more and more published haiku, or editors choices in some journals, have helped.
The ‘my’ apparently, turns around a line and gives it more depth or a kind of universality that reflects the human condition. But you’re right in that it’s tricky and could end as a ‘huh’or ‘duh’!
The problem is when one’s writing a haiku or any composition for that matter, the mind takes over. Alan Summers once commented of a haiku I wrote on the haiku facebbok site and rewrote on the same space to follow “your instincts”. Perhaps therein lies the secret. But again, like you said, “I really don’t know”!
Thanks again for your kind words about my images. They amaze me most of the time; honestly, I don’t know where they come from. And I’m always so honored with your visits and your comments. Yes, I’ll keep it up, and please do come by again.
Okay, I like #4 a lot and I really love #2…really really. Very focused, nice images, resonant juxtaposition. Maybe whoever (Peggy?) just wasn’t in a magnolia mood that day. That’s the thing with haiku or any kind of literature, it’s so subjective, so you don’t really know when you get rejected whether it’s because what you wrote wasn’t any good or just because the editor doesn’t have the same taste as you, or just wasn’t in the mood for what you wrote that day.
I will say that I think in general you work better in longer forms, tanka or sequences or longer poems, just because your mind is so full of such wonderful images and goes skipping around delightedly to all of them and I think usually haiku need to be a little more focused than yours tend to be. I am frequently stunned and amazed by your longer poetry. And you have written wonderful haiku too, but I think basically your mind might be too big and full for haiku most of the time. 🙂 That’s what I see in most of these — it’s just hard in each haiku for the mind to figure out what to focus on in each one. I keep wanting either more detail or less.
And that is my highly subjective, take-it-with-several-grains-of-salt evaluation. 🙂 Thanks for sharing all your wonderful poetry with us, wild woman…keep it up.
Melissa, dear friend…I love how you call me, “wild woman”!!! That’s how my imagination works and where all those images come from–yet believe it or not, from a silent almost sedate life, sedate me!!!
Everything you said is true. No grains of salt to take. I know, I’m really really more at ease with longer forms. Yet while haiku has helped me with its discipline and compact-ness, it has also ignited my imagery! Now I can catch one image at a time where I used to gorge on landscapes, not just a hint but whole novellas that write themselves out in my mind. Now I can compress though with some effort one image at a time.
Yes, I’m also aware how subjective editors can be. It’s the first thing I learned in literary criticism classes–from biographies of poets, and later in the humanities course–from the lives of the now icons of generations. And we could die a thousand times from rejection but we DON’T!!! I wish I could and stop myself from ‘birthing’ all these swirling images in my mind. But no, I WON’T because I don’t think I can.
And so, I keep up because I just can’t but…Thanks again so much for loving some of my haiku! In this suite, yours, Sully and mine no. 4, and yes, no. 2 that I think opens to a lot of imagery and thought. The magnolias I have in mind here are not the delicate perfumed white ones but the pink lilac huge blossoms, that widely open like women in love, hence, so easily shattered by the wind as when their petals get carried off like bits of their silk selves tearing apart…there I go again, as wildly as the image can get!!!
Thanks again and again. And I say it again I wear a badge that says, “She, Red Dragonfly, Melissa Allen, is my true friend” WW
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