33 thoughts on “Haiku: Time bends”

  2. I would see this as sentimental of the BEST and most enduring kind, worthy of Wordsworth. Again, the picture goes perfectly as if you painted it for the poem which I know you did not, but somehow you got it so right, and the poem, though three lines, says everything. Beautiful. Really beautiful Jane. Love it. xo

    Reply

      1. I was just saying earlier today, I did wish there was a way of saying a compliment or praise, without it sounding ingenious. I think sometimes it does, much like saying ‘I love you’ because it is so over-used and often I truly believe people compliment not truthfully but because they feel they should or they are being polite. I would that the world were more sincere, and when we say things, we really mean them. I try to do this all the time, but using the words that others may not mean, sometimes leaves me feeling like I wish there were an entire new vocabulary for sincerity so someone would know I truly meant it and was not just ‘saying’ it. How though? I expect when we know a little of a person we can start to see their character and from that, how sincere they are. Equally, I couldn’t agree more, less is more when it comes to deep emotions. Some of the most striking poetry is very short. Lately I have been writing longer and longer (deliberately) as before I wrote shorter and shorter. Like you I try different styles and forms, though not as well as you do because you seem to be able to slip between universes. A Houdini !

      2. One universe I could never enter is yours. You write about very deep personal things that I could never do. It’s like what my mother once said (she was a painter) she could never paint someone she was emotionally very close to. She never wore her emotions on her sleeve, wasn’t very tactile, but not cold and aloof either. Simply embarrassed at being seen to be moved. In French I’d call it pudeur and can’t think of the right word in English. Not modesty, but a reticence to expose one’s feelings out of tact or awkwardness. The things that have hit me deepest, even decades later, I still don’t feel like exploring.

      3. And if I had to choose, I wouldn’t either. Not because it’s ‘wrong’ but for the reasons in way, your mom gave. I am French also, so maybe I understand on that level but for some reason I write the way I write without enough control over choosing what to write about, what to leave aside, what to avoid. If I had the talent to write on things that were not personal more often, I suspect I would but so much is colored by the person for me, and I do wear my heart on my sleeve which I find a little detestable and shameful at times. I think modesty is the right word, the shame-face of the bold or the shallow because true depth is mining everything especially what is without us. You do that exceptionally well.

      4. I didn’t know you were French. That might explain in part why you find the abstraction of the emotions easier to put into words. To have the ability to do that in two languages is phenomenal.

      5. Good point. I’m not truly versed in any one language, which is a fault but possibly lends itself at times to good outcome, though I’d say that was more accidental than purpose-driven. You have a great vocabulary, I often read your work and then write down a word you have used (cheating I know!) that’s always a boon when you read someone who takes you further than the every day.

      6. I have a vocabulary that trips over itself at times, unable to distinguish between English and a French word I’m convinced is also used in English. The mark of fluency, proficiency, but not bilingualism.

      7. Humph, well I could argue that we never feel bilingual because it’s a perpetual learning curve, but I’m sure in the ‘real’ world you’d be considered that, and then some. I moved to America in my twenties, so now I am jiving with the Americanisms as well, it’s all strange, this language-stuff. You have a great vocabulary, you often use quite different words, you can tell usually someone’s writing by their repeated words, and phrases but you often surprise me, I’m not sure I would recognize your work based on repeated phrases and that’s probably a good thing if we strive for originality as I know I do.

      8. Nice to know I don’t repeat myself too much. Words are magical. Tracing the origins of words is fascinating, English words in particular because their origins are so diverse. You write with a great freedom of expression but I’m not sure I’d recognize a style to it. your word choice is idiosyncratic, but I’d never have thought English wasn’t your fist language.

      9. Agreed. I took a course in Linguistics once, and then went on to the history of language, I could spend a whole life-time looking at the roots of words and the origin of language, utterly agree with you. We really ought to have more time on this planet for such endeavors. Thank you for saying so, I work at it as much as I can, though at times I get easily dispirited. It helps to have read so many good books from an early age. I find it disheartening to see how few children today never read.

      11. Neither I. I am proud to say I have never played a game online. I have never used apps and I don’t own a Nook or Kindle. In fact I won’t have any work published in an e-version. Luddite or not, I’m with you, it’s all just distraction and white-noise. As for not reading, heard an interesting thing on PBS not long ago about how if you read online you absorb about half and if you read a book the tactile aspect of reading helps your memory and you recall far more. Makes sense to me. The smell of the pages, the feel, the memory of this experience. A binding. Far more natural than flicking across a screen. Why kids do not like reading I shall never understand. There are so many great books for them. I used to love The Magic Faraway Tree – now I see kids only reading their reading lists (if that) it’s such a loss.

      12. Lots of people say that about books. I got a Kindle to try and keep up to speed with the competition in the YA fantasy field. It hasn’t had the desired effect. Cheap books downloaded on a kindle are almost always second rate. The good stuff is still full price and out of my range.

      14. There is such lyricism in some of those lines, as there should be given the subject. All so different, even when we have shared the same body. I’m proud to have inspired you to write this.

      15. I concluded, that a person cannot be creative if that person cannot create outside of themselves. Thus, if someone writes the secret-self and reveals the inner-self, they are not creating they are a cross-between a diary and a close observation. To truly be a writer one must be able to write outside of the self and create those worlds, and only then when you write not of anything you know, do you in your creation, know more. I am not able to do this terribly well, that is why you see my poetry the way you do, as being exposing of things that you would not want to touch, because you have created vast worlds with your observations outside of yourself, and have no need to come back to yourself, or confine yourself to just yourself. Perhaps I do. In which case I’m neither creative nor a writer, but more like the author of AS I SAT DOWN AT GRAND CENTRAL STATION AND WEPT who really wrote about her own life, or anything by Anais Nin or Sagan. It is little wonder I grew up loving those authors, in some ways it’s a juvenile form of narcissism. I have really come to see this, and it makes me sad but at least I am not denying it. Perhaps in time I can grow. Although time is running out!

      16. The nouveau roman is a form of navel gazing that to be honest gets up my nose. Patrick Modiano is the only one I have much time for. Duras I appreciate for those languid descriptions of Vietnam and the Mekong. But that style of concentrating vision to one tiny optic, and even then only elliptically, as though even the narrator isn’t certain what she is thinking/feeling I find very frustrating. If you want to take a broader perspective, I’m sure you could step outside the personal. The world is a huge place and you can be anyone or anything in it. Just dare 🙂

      17. Them’s fightin words! Thank you for the jolt of inspiration my lady xo (totally agree that some authors who meander, appear not to know what it is they are trying to say or convey and that is a little tweedy for me also)

Leave a comment