January (Haiku)

Willow boughs bow-bent
Arc tear-drenched embroidered sleeves
To frozen river.

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(Or should I ask, "Haiku?")

i'll get but-fucked for this but i think it's more senryu. haiku tend not to be liberally flowered with poetic device. i think it could do with a better cut. you could achieve this by removing the to.

(01-10-2016, 05:55 AM)dukealien Wrote:  January (Haiku)

Willow boughs bow-bent
Arc tear-drenched embroidered sleeves
To frozen river.

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(Or should I ask, "Haiku?")

I'm more a fan of minimalism - this is how I'd use that shot of time and place -


willows, bowed
by lace sleeves ~
frozen river

I love the word embroidered, that is a great and clear description. I don't understand why you hyphenated the words bow-bent, and tear-drenched. I also think the idea of being drenched conflicts with an idea of it being frozen, as drenched indicates something is wet, and not frozen. I love the inclusion of tear in the 2nd line, that way you have a sad element in both the 1st and 2nd line, maybe even the 3rd if a person considers a frozen river sad. People also often associate crying with the willow trees, so I love the idea of being embroidered in ice tears.

I am a little confused by your grammar, as you have a period on the end, treating the haiku like a sentence, but you also have a capitalization at the start of each line of the poem.

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(01-10-2016, 07:39 AM)just mercedes Wrote:  I'm more a fan of minimalism - this is how I'd use that shot of time and place -


willows, bowed
by lace sleeves ~
frozen river

The problem I see with the 3rd line here, is with the original intent of the poem. Are the bowed laced sleeves the frozen river themselves, or are they flowing to the river? Also is it the willows themselves or the boughs (is the poem about one tree, or trees)?

Thanks to all for their comments!  Think I'll go back to trying to learn free verse (though a decade of writing, perhaps eventually passable, haiku would surely aid that endeavor).

@billy -

Quote:i'll get but-fucked for this but i think it's more senryu.

Ah, yes, always hopeful.  But[] you're right,  that was my main fear, that there was too much human nature (tears, sleeves, bows).  I should have been more concerned with excessive detail and metaphors.

@just mercedes -

Quote:willows, bowed
by lace sleeves ~
frozen river

Very lovely and spare, gets the idea across.  Perhaps my rewrite can be only half as verbose as the original, and twice as verbose as yours.

@Jeremiahcp - All your confusions are justified, because they were mine in writing.  Just now heard a woodpecker knocking outside on the corner of my workroom.  Should I knock back?  No - senryu!  But I did anyway.  Confusion!

Revision?  Maybe.  Distillation's hard (so's moonshine).