Greetings, Poetry Lovers!
Recently I sent my semi-regular batch of new haiku submissions off to journals, and one of the acceptances that came back this week was for a very short monoku. What's a monoku? A one-line haiku. In English-language haiku, this approach has been around for decades. There's something about how condensed and compressed such a poem is, how crystallized, that - as long as it does its job with juxtaposition and layered possibilities of meaning, - I just love.
I'll share the mentioned poem after it's published. Modern Haiku accepted it with a nice note. I can share two others MH published in the current issue, though:
one door closes morning glories
after the hurricane leaf blowers
Modern Haiku, Vol. 49.1, Winter-Spring 2018
poems ©Robyn Hood Black. All rights reserved.
Looking back, one of my earliest published haiku was a monoku:
rush of wind my imperfect t'ai chi
A Hundred Gourds, March 2012
©Robyn Hood Black. All rights reserved.
Several one-line haiku I've had published since then are among my favorites, if I had to pick from my own.
Most of us travel paths in children's lit, and usually I prefer a good book for young readers to a book for adults any day. Books for kids must be precise, concise. Of course, that's something I love about poetry - and, to me, the most concise kind of poetry is haiku. (Maybe the most concise type of haiku is a monoku?)
My personal preference is not for one-word poems or something that seems to be simply a clever word trick, though some of these are published with special formatting and such. I generally hold to the notion that a haiku should contain two juxtaposed images.
The one-line haiku that have come to me have always arrived all in one piece, in a singular, fleeting, but palpable moment. They've been little gifts. No haggling, no teeth-gnashing for just the right word, or tweaking and playing with lines and breaks. Just two images fully formed into a little handful of words, drifting down like the surprise of a feather.
(PS/pssst - In case you're a haiku fan stocking up on short poems for Poem in Your Pocket Day, I've got ISSA Seasons mini haiku cards for sale in my Etsy shop here. If you need a different kind of discounted amount, just give me a holler.)
Now, drift on over to Today's Little Ditty, where the ever-surprising Michelle has this week's Roundup, complete with tons of poetry teaching tips from PF regulars and guests, just in time for April. (Be sure to catch the March challenge from Nikki Grimes while you're over there, too!)
Recently I sent my semi-regular batch of new haiku submissions off to journals, and one of the acceptances that came back this week was for a very short monoku. What's a monoku? A one-line haiku. In English-language haiku, this approach has been around for decades. There's something about how condensed and compressed such a poem is, how crystallized, that - as long as it does its job with juxtaposition and layered possibilities of meaning, - I just love.
I'll share the mentioned poem after it's published. Modern Haiku accepted it with a nice note. I can share two others MH published in the current issue, though:
one door closes morning glories
after the hurricane leaf blowers
Modern Haiku, Vol. 49.1, Winter-Spring 2018
poems ©Robyn Hood Black. All rights reserved.
Looking back, one of my earliest published haiku was a monoku:
rush of wind my imperfect t'ai chi
A Hundred Gourds, March 2012
©Robyn Hood Black. All rights reserved.
Several one-line haiku I've had published since then are among my favorites, if I had to pick from my own.
Most of us travel paths in children's lit, and usually I prefer a good book for young readers to a book for adults any day. Books for kids must be precise, concise. Of course, that's something I love about poetry - and, to me, the most concise kind of poetry is haiku. (Maybe the most concise type of haiku is a monoku?)
My personal preference is not for one-word poems or something that seems to be simply a clever word trick, though some of these are published with special formatting and such. I generally hold to the notion that a haiku should contain two juxtaposed images.
The one-line haiku that have come to me have always arrived all in one piece, in a singular, fleeting, but palpable moment. They've been little gifts. No haggling, no teeth-gnashing for just the right word, or tweaking and playing with lines and breaks. Just two images fully formed into a little handful of words, drifting down like the surprise of a feather.
(PS/pssst - In case you're a haiku fan stocking up on short poems for Poem in Your Pocket Day, I've got ISSA Seasons mini haiku cards for sale in my Etsy shop here. If you need a different kind of discounted amount, just give me a holler.)
Now, drift on over to Today's Little Ditty, where the ever-surprising Michelle has this week's Roundup, complete with tons of poetry teaching tips from PF regulars and guests, just in time for April. (Be sure to catch the March challenge from Nikki Grimes while you're over there, too!)