Making a big effort to write short poems that sound like haiku for Frank Tassone’s challenge.
Moon filtered
through budding branches—
owl hunts, skims silver.
Hazy moonlight
soft as feathers falls—
silver dapples.
Ice cold, the sky,
moonlight glitters on water
bright as diamonds.
Words from the poemetry unit
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Jane Dougherty Writes 
And succeeding, Jane! Wow! 🙂
Does that mean I did it? I have been finding the concept of haiku difficult to grasp. Your explanation of it helped a lot.
You’ve had an intuitive grasp of haiku better than most, Jane. I’m happy to hear that my explanation helped! 🙂
It did. There’s something about haiku, the way the image has to be presented that I’ve never quite got. So many haiku I’ve read seem (to me) to start with a recognizable image then finish on something completely unconnected.
Reblogged this on Frank J. Tassone and commented:
#Haiku Happenings #11: Jane Dougherty’s latest haiku #sequence for my current #haikai challenge!
Thank you 🙂
I love your Haikus, Jane! And love your poetry, too!
Thank you, Rishhu! I’m very pleased you enjoy my poetry 🙂
I have the same problem, Jane. I don’t always “get” them. Yours are lovely though. 🙂
I’m glad these pass muster, even though I couldn’t say exactly why 🙂
🙂
All three excellent!
Thank you. I’m pleased with what the Oracle gave me this week 🙂
A satisfying feeling
It is 🙂
🤗🥀
I have been playing with haiku for a while and I’m still puzzled at times. You are doing well though.
Pat
Thanks Pat. I think I’m getting better at it, even if it still doesn’t come entirely naturally.
I know. It is a bit odd at first😊
Inscrutable.
…and sometimes you just get it😊
Even that happens sometimes 🙂
I like the feeling of flying feathers…and of course the painting!
I always think you capture an essence, which seems right for haiku. (K)
Thank you! I tried hard with these to ‘do it right’. The syllable count thing has always been more of an exercise than poetry, but once you get rid of that, the poem seems more ‘poetic’.
It does make sense. I still feel tied to those syllables. But I hope to make an attempt otherwise.
It takes a lot of nerve to let them go, I admit.
aloha Jane. this is my favorite:
moon filtered
through budding branches
owl hunts
excellent images. way fun. aloha r.
Thank you, Rick. I’m pleased you approve 🙂
there is such a lot going on, and to consider, for such a short form. it’s a process we can all undertake, however we each have to start from exactly where we are. I’m constantly surprise by discovering something new that i then want to go into my haiku thinking. that’s always fun too of course. fun on. aloha r.
I find it difficult to stick to one image. I tend to ramble.
ha. I’m a rambler too. haiku has helped me become more succinct. not that i don’t still ramble, however too. yeah, haiku often does not follow the same concepts of poetry that other (western) forms value. with haiku, contrasting or exploring a maximum of two images is ideal (2 sequential lines for one image, and the other single line for the other image). those two images also with very limited description words, and no judgments, or abstractions involved as well. whew. that can be a tall order. yet in so doing, the haiku expands, enabling each reader to create their own vision from their own experiences. when we add more information, it limits what others can see, or explore, from within their own experiences. th more we go after those limitations, the more expansive our haiku become. really interesting concepts. and fun to explore. fun on that. aloha r.
That’s right. Honing a whole vision of a season or a landscape into three tight lines using a single emblematic image is a great literary exercise. It really helps prose writers to stick to the point, pick out the essential and leave all the peripheral stuff to the imagination.
yes. exactly. in haiku we only need to work on two images, even tho they are in three lines. that’s fragment and phrase thinking in haiku. the phrase being the two strongly linked sequential lines. and the fragment being the single line. keeping that in mind helps when creating haiku. as does writing in the now-moment tense. three different images, one per line, does not work well, if ever, in haiku. three independent lines, each with their own image, in haiku, is sometimes called a shopping list (rather than haiku). that’s where compare and contrast come in, you can work compare and contrast well with two images. it falls apart with three images. haiku is like fitting a puzzle together. each haiku is a new puzzle. fun on that.
I can see how it works (in theory) now, but it’s hard to get right. All the more reason for persevering. A lot of haiku just isn’t.
yes, to me it’s a very explorative time for haiku now. and yes, it is challenging to write a good haiku. still, the only way we improve, is to start exactly where we are with our own haiku and as you say, persevere. i would suggest and encourage you read lots of haiku, of all kinds, good, bad, masters, translations and all, as well as articles on haiku. little by little by doing this, your haiku thinking and knowledge will grow. the more it does, the greater our ability to appreciate haiku will be. i think it’s more important to keep writing your haiku and growing your knowledge of haiku, than to worry about setting down the perfect haiku each time. over time our haiku change because we become more knowledgeable about the genre. so, yeah, just go for it, every day. learn a little something new about it, every day, and you’ll get it more and more. way fun on that journey. it’s one we can share with everyone. fun on. aloha r.
Good advice. I only wish there were more hours in the day to work at each style of writing that pleases me. Haiku isn’t at the top of my list even though I enjoy the imagery of it. When I’ve got a few bestsellers published I’ll sit back and take haiku more seriously.
yeah, i hear you on hours in the day. about 36-40 hours a day might work. i agree, focus on where your interest is. that’s where it’s fun. fun on. aloha r.
It’s all fun except for having to break off to cook or do the odd bit of cleaning up.
bwahahahaha. yeah, pesky, daily tasks. still, it’s good to take a break now and then—even when we’re having fun.
Makes us appreciate it all the more.
Stunning, Jane.
Thank you, Victoria!