Guadalupe River Haiku - edit

[TranquillityBase]

Young hawks cry hunger.
Abandoned like the new moon,
their plaint cuts the night.

v. 2
Young hawks cry hunger.

Abandoned like the full moon,

they mutter and sigh.



v. 1

Young hawks cry tonight

abandoned to star and sky

and motherless moon.

[alonso ramoran]

If this is a series I'm looking forward to it! Enjoyed this one

[TranquillityBase]

If this is a series I'm looking forward to it! Enjoyed this one

Thanks alexorande,
I am fortunate to live on the Guadalupe River and it's an excellent haiku outpost, so I'm hoping there will be more.

[RiverNotch]

on line one: i feel like "hawk chicks" would be punchier. "tonight" is definitely redundant.

now the rest. the progression of images is off. taken as it is, it goes from dark to light to dark to light, or smallest to biggish to biggest to small, in a seemingly undirected fashion, but that's taking the young hawks as an *image*. "cry" here connotes sound, but the rest of the poem seems to be concerned with sight. this comparison between the visual and the auditory seems to be the cut for your haiku, but it's a rather uncompelling one. the sentiment you seem to be delivering is one of abandonment. what does it say, broadening the already very deep sense of abandonment in young chicks crying for their parent? nothing.

the moon is usually a symbol of fecundity, while in a lot of myths known to the west the moon's personification or commanding goddess has a mother or a mother figure -- the image evoked by calling it "motherless" doesn't seem to exist, or at least make any sense.

young hawks crying, meanwhile, is a good image -- and i'm back to letting 'image' be more of a figure of speech -- and having a good image to portray, with a clear idea of what sentiment you want to convey, is a good amount of the work done. you just need to choose more coherent images to compare with your main image, to develop a better reason for those choices, and to provide a setting for all those images -- both the central one and its companions -- beyond your title.

haiku should stand on their own. for a set of haiku, the title should be descriptive: this set should be called the Guadalupe River haiku because they're all set near or on the Guadalupe River, and not that the set shows scenes by the Guadalupe River because the title says so. while it isn't necessary to show us directly a bit of the titular river -- if this is going to be a part of a set, then the river could instead be shown by the later members, or else the river could resolve from all the details the set explores -- there should still be a strong sense of where the central image is, or where the speaker is in relation to this image. as it stands, young hawks crying under an evening sky could be anywhere.

[TranquillityBase]

on line one: i feel like "hawk chicks" would be punchier. "tonight" is definitely redundant.

now the rest. the progression of images is off. taken as it is, it goes from dark to light to dark to light, or smallest to biggish to biggest to small, in a seemingly undirected fashion, but that's taking the young hawks as an *image*. "cry" here connotes sound, but the rest of the poem seems to be concerned with sight. this comparison between the visual and the auditory seems to be the cut for your haiku, but it's a rather uncompelling one. the sentiment you seem to be delivering is one of abandonment. what does it say, broadening the already very deep sense of abandonment in young chicks crying for their parent? nothing.

the moon is usually a symbol of fecundity, while in a lot of myths known to the west the moon's personification or commanding goddess has a mother or a mother figure -- the image evoked by calling it "motherless" doesn't seem to exist, or at least make any sense.

young hawks crying, meanwhile, is a good image -- and i'm back to letting 'image' be more of a figure of speech -- and having a good image to portray, with a clear idea of what sentiment you want to convey, is a good amount of the work done. you just need to choose more coherent images to compare with your main image, to develop a better reason for those choices, and to provide a setting for all those images -- both the central one and its companions -- beyond your title.

haiku should stand on their own. for a set of haiku, the title should be descriptive: this set should be called the Guadalupe River haiku because they're all set near or on the Guadalupe River, and not that the set shows scenes by the Guadalupe River because the title says so. while it isn't necessary to show us directly a bit of the titular river -- if this is going to be a part of a set, then the river could instead be shown by the later members, or else the river could resolve from all the details the set explores -- there should still be a strong sense of where the central image is, or where the speaker is in relation to this image. as it stands, young hawks crying under an evening sky could be anywhere.

RiverNotch,

Thanks for your detailed critique.  

Some background:  I spend a lot of nights just sitting in the dark on our patio.  I heard a strange sound, that continued over several nights, like two large birds muttering and complaining to each other.  I suspected they were hawks because hawks have nested in that tree for a couple of years.  But it was such an un-hawklike sound that I had to do some research to find out that hawk parents abandon their offspring at a certain point, and for a while the young hawks, not being very proficient hunters yet, will "cry" for their parents because they were not able to feed themselves enough.  The young hawks are still here but I guess they soon learned they are on their own and stopped making the cries.

So, these are not chicks, but young adults.  And yes, the main theme is abandonment (although the sound of their cries is what I'd really like to be able to reproduce).

I'm mostly dissatisfied with the second line, but probably not for the same reasons as you, and as for the moon, I can't be responsible for its mythological connotations.  If a reader brings that baggage along, that's their problem.  When I see the moon, I see a dead, sterile planet, left alone in the night.  I suspect the hawks see or feel something similar.  They are materialists like me 

Anyway, moon or no moon, you have convinced me that as a haiku, it is seriously flawed, and maybe haiku is not the form for what I want to describe.  But I'm going to give it another shot with your recommendations in mind.

Thanks again for taking the time to critique.

[busker]

Young hawks cry tonight
abandoned to star and sky
and motherless moon.

I agree with River on this one: 'motherless moon' is not a convincing expression.
and 'star and sky' is rather cliched.
I like the first line.

[TranquillityBase]

A revised version, thank you all for your suggestions.  As a certifiable lunatic, I could not give up the moon 

[CRNDLSM]

Young hawks cry hunger
abandoned like the full moon
they mutter and sigh.

I'm trying to match in my head the phrase I'm reading with your background and description, and what I'm left with is wondering how the moon is motherless, or could mutter and sigh, 'like' the Hawks.  I think the motherless moon is what you really want to describe but I'm not getting it from the Hawk description.  I think youre close.

Young hawks cry tonight
abandoned to star and sky
and motherless moon.

[TranquillityBase]

I'm trying to match in my head the phrase I'm reading with your background and description, and what I'm left with is wondering how the moon is motherless, or could mutter and sigh, 'like' the Hawks.  I think the motherless moon is what you really want to describe but I'm not getting it from the Hawk description.  I think youre close.


Maybe some punctuation would help.  I didn't mean to say the moon mutters and sighs.

[Mark A Becker]

Hey Tim-

Hope you're enjoying your independence.

Young hawks cry hunger.  good start
Abandoned like the full moon,  How about "as a new moon" instead? The new moon does appear a bit abandoned. At least to me it does; a full moon, not so much.  That, plus, "young/new" kinda go together.  Since the hawks are probably crying out for food, that makes "full" an even iffier choice.
they mutter and sigh.  You know me and sound... First they "cry", then they "mutter and sigh"- sounds like mixed messages.  There must be a sound that they make that can be conveyed in 5 syllables.  Crows seems to mutter (but not sigh), but hawks?  I'm afraid that the feathers fall off of this one at the final 7 syllables.

If not sound, than an image describing where the sound seems to come from; the branches, or trees that they're in.

You also know me as one who says that these short pieces can be deadly difficult, and this one is one of those.

I know what you're going for.  Getting there is the hard part. 

All that said, I really do appreciate this effort, Tim.

Thanks !
Mark

[TranquillityBase]

Abandoned like the full moon,  How about "as a new moon" instead? The new moon does appear a bit abandoned. At least to me it does; a full moon, not so much.  That, plus, "young/new" kinda go together.  Since the hawks are probably crying out for food, that makes "full" an even iffier choice.

I was orignally wanting to use "new moon" but it was waxing at the time.  But hey, this is confirmation I was right in the first place.  New last line in place as well.  Another stab in the haiku dark.

They are back, at least one of them.

[Magpie]

Hi there, I really like the image that you've got here, however I feel that your adherence to the 5-7-5 syllable structure is somewhat cluttering the poem. I won't get into the reasons why 5-7-5 is not necessary although I do understand why people use it as I use to use it myself. So that said, in the spirit of brevity I think a simplified version of your poem could possibly give more. I agree with Mark in that the new moon is a better image to represent abandonment.

Young hawks cry hunger.
Abandoned like the new moon,
their plaint cuts the night.

could be reduced to


young hawks cry
abandoned -
a new moon

I do like the image that you've got here and think it is very worthy of a haiku,

thanks for the read

Mark