Tuesday, February 3, 2009

And now...haiku time...with exclusive extras!

Tiffany over at Poetry and Hums hosts a weekly haiku prompt. Since I've recently been hit by the haiku bug, I thought I'd become a regular participant.

This week, the prompt is about butterflies. Here is my attempt:

"La mariposa"
Is Spanish for butterfly.
Es muy bonita.

I like haiku because it's quick and easy to create.

My bloggy friend Jenners over at Life With a Little One and More recently wrote a post on something called "found poems" and posted some examples of her own "found poems". According to poets.org, a found poem takes "take existing texts and refashion them, reorder them, and present them as poems. The literary equivalent of a collage, found poetry is often made from newspaper articles, street signs, graffiti, speeches, letters, or even other poems." Read more about found poems here.

Jenners wrote her found poems based on random words she looked up in the dictionary. I decided to try this exercise, opened up my tres old Webster's American College Dictionary, and found this:

parquet: n., v.: N: 1. a floor composed of short strips or blocks of wood forming a pattern, sometimes with inlays of other woods or other materials. 2. the front part of the main floor of a theater, opera house, etc., between the musicians' area and the parterre or, esp. in the U.S., the entire main-floor space for spectators. VT: 3. to construct (a floor) of parquetry.

Okaaaaaaayyyyyyyy...my first found poem is all about flooring! Whoo!

Here we go...it's my first attempt and not very good. I'm going to need practice!

From high above courtside,
I watch the men in green and white
Skip over the criss-cross pattern of the wooden floor.

But is it all really genuine blocks of wood,
Or are there other substances forming its short strips?

Yeah...I know it sucked. I need practice.

More attempts to come. They're not all gonna be good...but then again, even the best authors have received criticism for their works!

12 comments:

Tiffany said...

The haiku is great. I like it much better than the one I wrote. And the found poem is so much fun! I've actually heard of going back through your own writing to do a found poem. I think I'll try that tonight. That idea might have come from the book Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg, but I'm not sure. Anyway, cool poems! Thanks for playing along!

Brandi. said...

Good haiku! I was never good at writing them. I always seemed to have too much to say in too little time. LOL!

I also like the "found poem" idea. I may have to try it. :)

Kitten said...

Tiffany: I should try that method with some past blog posts. Thanks for the idea!

Kitten said...

Oh, and I'm glad you liked my poems. :)

Kitten said...

FireLillie: Let me know when you've posted some found poems. I can't wait to see what you've written!

Jodi said...

I liked the haiku and the found poem. Keep writing girl!!

Jenners said...

I love the haiku! Great job!

And I must clarify a few thing re: found poems. First, I didn't even know there really was a term for found poems. I just thought I made that term up. So I was interested to learn that there really is a term for this.

Second, I guess I didn't explain my found poems clearly. What I did was look up a bunch of random phrases in the dictionary and then arranged them into poems and came up with a title. It just so happened that they all kind of fit together in triplets. So, you might want to try again and see if it works for you like it worked for me. Take one phrase from your flooring definition, pick a few more random defintions/phrases from the dictionary, and then see what you can find or create.

I feel terrible that you ended up trying to write a poem all about parquet flooring!!!! It wasn't bad! But the way I did it, you don't have to write anything...you just try to "find" some kind of poetry in the random phrases. I told you I was weird.

And by the way, my user name on Paperback Swap is Jenners not Jennifer P. like I think I told you. I don't know why I thought that ... I think it says that in my profile!

Vickie said...

I would not have gotten anything from that definition. You are very creative:)

Anonymous social worker said...

I DON'T KNOW WHY i GIGGLED WHEN i READ YOU LA MARIPOSA ES MUY BONITA.

Kitten said...

Thanks for the compliments, guys! I'll be trying my hand at more found poems soon. Tonight, however, I've got to write something for church, and later I have a whole bunch of papers to correct! Arrgh!

Unknown said...

I find haikus to be so difficult to write...for me. I went to a wedding once where the best man's speech was a haiku. I suppose it just takes practice like everything else. I love your new layout, btw. bring on spring! I'm ready for it:)

Kitten said...

Chessa: Thanks for the layout love!

Franco: Thanks for stopping by!