Dandelion haiku

Robert Southwick Richmond

 

     cold winter twilight:

     one lonely dandelion

     blooms in withered grass

  • Author: Robert Southwick Richmond (Offline Offline)
  • Published: December 20th, 2020 10:28
  • Comment from author about the poem: I don't often write haiku, so I just followed the rules as described in Harold G. Henderson's An Introduction to Haiku, still the best book on the subject I've seen in 60 years. - Every day since the beginning of the pandemic I've posted a photo of a "Flower of the Day" and e-mailed it to fellow independent living residents in my retirement community in east Tennessee - mostly of flowers I've photographed right here on the grounds. This was yesterday's post.
  • Category: Unclassified
  • Views: 24
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Comments +

Comments6

  • orchidee

    Good Haiku Robert.
    Is Haiku French? (Note to self: Do shut up now Orchi. lol).

  • Robert Southwick Richmond

    I never heard of haiku in French, but Wikipedia came to my rescue.

    How do you count syllables in a French haiku? You pronounce all the normally unspoken vowels (including two syllables for l'eau, 'the water'), in their example, a translation of Bashō's frog.

    https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ha%C3%AFku

  • FredPeyer

    Robert, I am not a technical writer, I just know what I like. And I do like both, the picture and the Haiku. Well done!

    • Robert Southwick Richmond

      I tend to get technical about anything I write about. Pathologists do a lot of technical writing.

    • Jerry Reynolds

      Haiku is Japanese. In tradition praise of a good one is to offer a humble link.

      frostbitten dandelions
      bloom for days

      • Robert Southwick Richmond

        Indeed the haiku form is Japanese. I'm not convinced it can be reproduced in English, or any other European language.

        • Doggerel Dave

          Ah the relief! You exactly express my feelings - different language, totally different culture. What's left? Feel like miniature Edward FitzGeralds gone wrong, to me.

          • Jerry Reynolds

            If history has taught us anything it’s that humans can make a convincing sounding case,
            in any language, for or against absolutely anything.

            Haiku is a practice in humility.
            Can you with straightforward language and uncomplicated images objectively report
            what you observe at the moment you are in, not what you feel or think,
            using a phrase and a fragment in less than 17 syllables?

            • Doggerel Dave

              I'll think about that one, Jerry

              Dave

              • Robert Southwick Richmond

                The English-language haiku has become its own tradition. Most verses labeled haiku in English would be called senryu by a Japanese, because they contain neither kigo (season-word) nor nature. People do better at counting syllables, but English syllables are different from mora (Sino-Japanese 'on'). For kireji ("cut-words") we at best substitute punctuation - thus the colon in my haiku would be a word, や ya, in Japanese.

              • Goldfinch60

                Good Haiku. I write a great many Haiku and Senryu.

              • L. B. Mek

                a wonderful haiku, capturing time, place and meaning: as glimpsed through nature's veil,
                well executed



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