There it is! In 2020 I challenged myself to write a short story a month with arguable success. 2021 will see the challenge of a daily haiku (yes, I’ve already missed a few days and a few of them have spelling mistakes but here we are). If all goes well, I’ll still have around three-hundred haikus by the end of the year. That’s another exciting prospect if we can keep it up!
Why haiku?
I honestly adore them. But they provide a few special challenges for writing well (and I promise you here and now that nowhere near a plurality of my haikus will actually be well-written. That’s the name of the volume game.) Obviously, there’s the five-seven-five paradigm (not always followed as it turns out, but I’ll do my best again without guarantees. This is for fun, y’all!)
First and foremost is the commitment to being concise even writing in so-called “telegraph speak.” Cutting superfluous words, being just-so in phrasing, avoiding things at once too flowery and too simplistic. That’s as fun a challenge as any, especially for someone who, I think I can honestly say, is more than a little verbose.
Next, a well-crafted Haiku has this thing, kireji, a reversal, a cut, that when it’s executed well is jut so beautiful and emotional and linguistically pleasing that it’s hard to find an equal. There’s actually no English-language equivalent for it, and in English there’s usually more an emphases on the reversal and the language play or emphasis used in Japanese.
In that sense I’m already limited in what I can do, but I sure as hell can try.
Much like a haiku itself this blog post is brief. Rest assured there’s plenty I’m still up to! At the end of every month I’ll be showing my favorites and posting them in the blogosphere, so look forward to that. Per that poll on my insta, it looks like my next blog series will be top ten books.
First, we have to define what that means.
Then, we have to tunnel through all my bookshelves to see if they’re still hanging around. I like lending books too, so I may have to engage in a little recreation.
But I am excited for it. Let’s see how it goes!
My January Favorites (slightly edited from the twitter feed):
Fresh falling silence.
My world covered in a sheet.
A step! Soft crunching.
Call it addiction
So I can blame anyone
Except you or me.
What else can I do
Through winter days except dream
Of our summer nights?
Music that freezes
The present while forcing me
To dance in my past.
Four red roses bloom.
Picked, die sooner than normal-
But with such purpose!