Poetry Seven Write Classified Ad-Haiku

Last month I believed that writing in the style of e.e. cummings was our hardest challenge. I take it back. THIS was the hardest challenge. Sometimes I find shorter forms more difficult than longer ones, and we've written to some challenging forms this year, including villanelles, sestins, raccontinos, and pantoums. So really, you'd think haiku would be a piece of cake.

But honestly, I think haiku are really hard to write. Seems ridiculous, doesn't it? But if you follow the rules (and there are lots of them), writing haiku in the spirit intended requires patience, a keen eye, and skill. Here is the formal definition of haiku and some notes about the form provided by the Haiku Society of America.

A haiku is a short poem that uses imagistic language to convey the essence of an experience of nature or the season intuitively linked to the human condition. 

Most haiku in English consist of three unrhymed lines of seventeen or fewer syllables, with the middle line longest, though today's poets use a variety of line lengths and arrangements. In Japanese a typical haiku has seventeen "sounds" (on) arranged five, seven, and five. (Some translators of Japanese poetry have noted that about twelve syllables in English approximates the duration of seventeen Japanese on.) Traditional Japanese haiku include a "season word" (kigo), a word or phrase that helps identify the season of the experience recorded in the poem, and a "cutting word" (kireji), a sort of spoken punctuation that marks a pause or gives emphasis to one part of the poem. In English, season words are sometimes omitted, but the original focus on experience captured in clear images continues. The most common technique is juxtaposing two images or ideas (Japanese rensô). Punctuation, space, a line-break, or a grammatical break may substitute for a cutting word. Most haiku have no titles, and metaphors and similes are commonly avoided. (Haiku do sometimes have brief prefatory notes, usually specifying the setting or similar facts; metaphors and similes in the simple sense of these terms do sometimes occur, but not frequently. 

See, that's a lot to keep in mind for such a short poem. Perhaps that's why great haiku pack such a punch.

Never a group to do things the easy way, we added to the challenge of writing haiku by requiring that we use the form to write classified ads. And what a challenge it was! I wrote numerous pieces, most of which fell into the category of senryu.

Senryu is a Japanese poetic form similar in structure to haiku. Instead of focusing on nature and the essence of a particular moment as haiku do, senryu are concerned with human nature, political issues, and satire. While one is usually quite serious, the other is more playful. 

Here is how the Haiku Society of America defines senryu.

A senryu is a poem, structurally similar to haiku, that highlights the foibles of human nature, usually in a humorous or satiric way.

The 13th Floor Paradigm has this nice bit of history and other information on senryu.

The Senryu came into existence as an independent genre in the Edo Period (1718-1790). It is often satirical, ironical, irreverent, mundane, cynical and is about human nature, therefore about human foibles including the erotic.  It has the same form of the Haiku, but doesn’t use a seasonal word (kigo) and it doesn’t have a cutting word (keiriji)  (in reality, in English we have no direct equivalents to the keiriji, so we use what’s called a cutting phrase.) 

It would be wrong to think that Senryu is always humorous.  In fact, a Senryu could talk about divorce, sex, murder, war, jealousy, cruelty…in a word every day-to-day events in human society.

Alright, it's time to set this rambling introduction aside. I'm generally on the ball with these challenges, but this time around I wrote just over 20 poems in one day -- YESTERDAY! Here are my 3 favorite drafts.


Seasonal workers
needed - Wear boots, bring shovels
Buffalo in May

*****

Seeking teen to teach
hip old guy to surf, tweet, blog …
once the damn thing's on

*****

Kicka$$ girl seeks boy
for whirlwind romance, mating—
head loss optional

**UPDATED**
Okay, I've added one more, this written last night. I really wanted a poem that started with "Desperately seeking." Here's what I scribbled in the wee hours in the notebook I keep by my bed.

Desperately seeking
susans - my favorite daisy
sunshine on a stem

Poems ©Tricia Stohr-Hunt, 2015. All rights reserved.


You can read the poems written by my Poetry Seven compatriots at the links below. 

• Tanita Davis 
• Kelly Fineman
• Sara Lewis Holmes  
• Laura Purdie Salas
• Liz Garton Scanlon 
• Andi Sibley

I do hope you'll take some time to check out all the wonderful poetic things being shared and collected today by Tabatha Yeatts at The Opposite of Indifference. Happy poetry Friday friends!