Discussion 8

This week you looked at sound and form--two important elements to consider in many (not all) poems. Even so-called "free" poetry, such as e e cummings's "l(a", often has intentional form. But we are going to work with a more-traditional, closed form, the haiku.

The rules for haiku were in this week's lecture, and you looked at several examples.

Here is your task:

• Write a suite of (at least five) haiku. They should all be somehow related (five sports haiku, seven haiku on family, five haiku realting to a backpacking trip of Yosemite, etc.). You may even tell a story (briefly) having each haiku show a key scene/event sequentially (the stages of a relationship, for example).

  Heck, if you want to go for broke, see if you can re-tell any of the readings on our reading list in a handful of haiku (retelling The Night Circus in half a dozen haiku would be quite a challenge).

Note: be sure that you actually do know the rules for writing haiku. You can look in the text, review the lecture, even revisit "Beavis and Butthead." Form and content both count.