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0 thoughts on “Modern Haiku”

  3. hell, I can’t shut up today. one more thought: does this also refer to death a thousand miles up river, floating down? you may have (intentionally) butchered the haiku form, but the richness of your long-winded brevity is relatively impressive.

  4. Well, I think “Modern” here means an ‘updated’ form of the tradtional haiku giving the author the liberty and flexibility to say what needs to be said.
    I don’t think the poem is a reference to the Minnesota disaster, but the lingering tragedy of the Hurricanes, which, I believe, just had its 2 year anniversary…there was a lot of stuff in the news about how much damage and bad memory still remain…exponentially compounded by a government that’s more concerned about ‘nation-building’ in Iraq (half-way across the world) rather than rebuild our own country {guess that would entail having a semblance of a domestic policy). Sorry to enter into politics but that’s part of life outside the vacuum.
    And not to be contrary, but shit, I love it when someone butchers a ‘form’ or is too ‘wordy’ (Out with the traditional and in with the revolutionary!)…that’s just me.
    “Modern Haiku”, reminescent of Ginsberg’s ‘Wichita Sutra’, loved it!

  6. That’s cool. I didn’t mean to be a jerk…hope it didn’t come across like that. I enjoy reading your insightful comments…whether i agree with them or not.
    But anyways, yeah, I like John Berryman’s 18 line sonnets called Dreamsongs written in 3 stanzas 6 lines apiece (in 5-5-3 iambic pentameter..mostly)…and the 385 songs as a whole are a dramatic monologue epic poem…mind-boggling…and very unconventional at the time he wrote it and later received Pulitzer for. Language and form should always be moving into new ‘frontiers’ to remain original, individual, and ‘to expose naked truths of life’ …this is just my opinion. But I also enjoy reading some classics including traditional haikus.

  7. any friend of Henry is a friend of mine. But there’s a very tight consistency to Berryman’s 18 line poems, nearly every one composed of three six-line stanzas that provide a skeleton on which he hangs an intense variety of style and content, many of which he composed after bartime. As for haiku, I’ve seen far more experimental forms (by Johnny Fathom or Elizabeth Jill) that go way beyond Matt Miller’s use of a single cluttered clause for a final line. This one almost seems like it just deteriorates into clumsey language at the end, but I think he has a purpose in that – he usually does. I wish he’d weigh in, because it’s certainly caught our attention. Anyway, nice to have an actual dialogue here.

  9. Thanks for the comments! My purpose behind this was twofold. First, it is commenting on the lack of grammatical understanding of modern writers. Not only is it in incorrect haiku form, but there is a misplaced modifier. Grammatically, it is the smell of rotting flesh that is walking through the market. Second, it is meant to comment on New Orleans’ ancient nature and how it survives catastrophes like Katrina. Even though Katrina killed many, still, that smell of rotting flesh is still alive, still walking through the old Market.

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