Sunday, May 26, 2013

Frog Love

Thanks for the tweet from Virginia Beach that inspired this haiku.  Now, Heights-ers, I'm counting on you to keep me going!
Tweet your impressions of Spring (through May 31) and recreation (all of June) to #htspoetweet.

Here's a haiku.


The lush, ferned shore-line

hides the amorous bullfrog.

Still, his trumpet sounds.


Haiku, is a Japanese poetic form which attempts to capture a fleeting moment of experience of the natural world - a dramatic moment in an everyday occurrence.  The rhythmic, or metrical speech patterns of the Japanese are vastly different than American speech, so we cannot hope to replicate exactly the syllabic 'rules' of haiku as practiced by the great Japanese masters, Matsuo Basho, Yosa Buson, Kobayashi Issa and Masaoka Shiki.  So, American haiku generally are written in seventeen syllables (yes, syllables) and arranged in three lines of 5-7-5 syllables.  A reference to nature and/or a season is obligatory, but the meaning of the haiku should go beyond a simple  recounting of an event experienced by the poet to comment on something resonant of human nature as well.

Kathleen Cerveny
2013-14 Cleveland Heights Poet Laureate

1 comment:

  1. You're fast with that pen!
    I'm so happy that you introduced me to the Poetweet project...it'll be fun to contribute and to follow the tweets.

    Thanks Cleveland Heights for selecting a poet laureate name of KC...ever so cool.

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