04 September, 2010

Summertime Branches

Winter at Home


summertime branches
leaves heavy with rain
and sparrows

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

those wintertime branches
are heavy with snow
and blackbirds

Hobbes said...

An anonymous writer left the following message, which seems to have since disappeared - I rather liked it, and so include it below:

those wintertime branches
are heavy with snow
and blackbirds


Which leads me onto haiga, and haiku. Of course, haiku have to include a little "distance" between two entities, and the reader must make the connection between the two. This prevents the haiku from being just a mere discription. A haiku is "alive", in that sense, and the reader, by forming that connection, and making that leap themselves, becomes engaged and involved with the poem.

Similarly, with a haiga (a picture and a haiku together): there must be a similar distance between the words of the haiku and the image - we cannot simply have an image that illustrates the haiku. (Well, we could, but it would be flat!) As within the haiku, so in a haiga the reader jumps the distance between the image and the haiku, and becomes involved. That is, he "figures it out", and makes the connection between the image and the poem himself - it shouldn't be just a straight illustration.

This is a long way of saying that I selected this image for my haiku because it is a different season, with different birds, and with different precipitation - it is the inverse, or complement, of the haiku. I'm sure that my anonymous contributor knew that, anyway.

In some ways, the amateurish haiga are my favourite part of the Half-Dipper... :)


Toodlepip,

Hobbes