Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

I do not generally write haiku, but it's clear that having been exposed to the form has influenced me. Although I usually don't count syllables or tweak the relationship between the ideas presented to make haiku, I keep thinking, and occasionally writing down, things like,

The kitchen is cold,
The food hot;
Breakfast is consumed quickly

with the sound of it in my head definitely having the "this is supposed to be poetry" pacing even though it's too short for me to feel I can 'legitimately' call it a whole poem except when I happen to hit the haiku or limerick pattern. (And yes, I know about "Lines on the Antiquity of Microbes" and "The Red Wheelbarrow", so this is more about whether I feel I've 'done enough' for it to 'count' than about the definition of a poem. It's my issue.) The thing is, nowadays, after having been moved and amused by many haiku over the years, I can write these snippets down and leave them to be found, standing alone as their own somethings even if I'm not quite ready to call them poems. (Snippets. Fragments. Crumbs. "Bits of poetry". Maybe someday I'll have the self confidence to just go ahead and call 'em poems.) Once upon a time, if I wrote something like that down, I'd have felt I needed to write something longer for it to be a start, end, or middle of; that it was too short to be complete, and could only be taken as a note reminding me to write something based on it. Not something ready to let anybody else see or hear.

Now I can just put them out there, maybe a section of a journal entry set off from the rest, or a short journal entry by itself; a cryptic post to a mailing list or a newsgroup, or something to insert into a silence to see how others react to it. (Or, of course, building a doggone essay around it, which is, of course, cheating. (And correlates to the "if you have to explain it, it's no longer funny" maxim in comedy.) But really, I was about ready to post that this morning when I started thinking about how my attitude has changed since I was younger, and decided to compose this entry instead. Honest.) If I see a longer work waiting to be born, I'll go ahead and write that, but I now have the option (okay, I always had the option; now I've 'given myself permission' to do something I've always been allowed to do) to either extend the snippet or let it stand by itself. Perhaps it would often be better if I did use snippets as the seed-crystals for larger pieces ... or perhaps not. (*shrug*)

So. Either I've broken myself of a habit that limited me, or I've gotten lazy as I've aged. Either way, it interested me when I finally noticed the change. And I do think reading all those haiku was a major factor in how I got to this point.

But also, either way, I feel kind of guilty/ashamed for not writing more poetry than I do, these days. Hmm. Another issue to explore. Later.