Haiku and Limerick Study
So I plain forgot to do my daily update for yesterday, and since limericks are such a set form that requires little study, I’ll just do them both today and catch up! This is probably going to be a lengthy bit of text, so I’ll dump the finished poetry up here, and put the main body under the tantalizing “Read More” page break…
Haiku:
Around the blankets,
A scent of coffee lingers -
Winter sleeps outside
Limerick:
A captain was sailing his ship,
When he suddenly started to slip;
With a cry to the lord,
He fell overboard,
And the helmsman cried out, “Oh Shit!”
I left my nice, golden guide to poetry at home, but after a bit of poking around online, I found a couple really great resources to use. The best I could find was definitely over at Shadow Poetry, but this site also helped convey the usage of Haiku in non-Japanese languages.
Most people think of Haiku as a standard 5-7-5 syllable pattern. While this is still considered a form of Haiku, the original Japanese versions use a much more complex system of counting than syllables. It is a kind of cross between Meter and Syllables that doesn’t translate very well to English writing. So for now I’ll just stick to 5-7-5, and also try my hand at the American Haiku Society’s definition which “only requires that the poem be short and refer to nature.” (Taken from my second link.)
So anyways, let’s get at it. This is going to be a sort of brain dump, and while it might not be a very interesting read, I’d like to come back in a week and try to draw things based on the poetry that comes out.
Haiku is about focusing on special moments in the middle of ordinary ones, which actually makes it quite difficult to write. i say this because I’ve been sitting here for 10 minutes with absolutely nothing. =O
Around the blankets,
A scent of coffee lingers -
Winter sleeps outside
THERE. Well, fairly decent if I saw so myself. That sucker took me like 20 minutes to write. Now you might be wondering why it took so long. Well the thing is that Haiku is not just 5-7-5 syllables. That’s pretty boring actually. Haiku is supposed to show the reader an image, which then can make a sort of mini story. You need to incorporate seasons, very concise imagery, and and story basically. I have most of those elements in this piece. It’s not great, but it’s a start, and I’ll definitely try to write more of these since its an interesting mental exercise. =)
Okay, enough time with Haikus. On to the Limerick. It’s actually a comic and vulgar form of poetry focused on common use. It uses an aabba pattern, that has a “bouncing” quality to the meter, and tends to save the humor until the last line. Anyhoo, I’ll just jump right into it since its easier to see that way:
A captain was sailing his ship,
When he suddenly started to slip;
With a cry to the lord,
He fell overboard,
And the helmsman cried out, “Oh Shit!”
So yeah, a fun and basic form of poetry writing. It’s really easy to get into, and you don’t have to worry about being metaphoric at all. It’s just plain and simple poetry. So yeah, that’s my bit for today.
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