Beth Camp Historical Fiction

Thursday, April 25, 2013

U is for Useful . . .

Tonight I lean my face
against the glass of our bedroom window;
apple blossoms just outside
glimmer white in the moonlight.
I smell spring 
as I fold winter laundry.

#   #   #

Sweet apple blossoms
glimmer under a spring moon,
while I fold laundry.

Tonight's two poems (just barely past the midnight deadline) experiment with two forms -- the first, an open form, and the second, an experiment in haiku  (first line 5 syllables, second line 7 syllables, and last line 5 syllables). 

As neat as the haiku form remains, it relies on the reader to add reaction, interpretation, meaning. The first haiku I read long ago presented a lovely scene of a pond. The last line went something like this: "A green frog went plop!" And that last line suggests the surprise or moment of awareness of the 'now' that haiku can bring.

Do you agree? Which form do you prefer? Open? Haiku? Is poetry 'useful'?

Thanks always to NaPoWriMo and the A to Z Challenge.

Apple Blossom (Wikipedia)


4 comments:

  1. Beautiful poems. Haikus = numbers, and I can't write 'em. Love that image of folding laundry under a spring moon. It raises so many questions, kinda like the red wheelbarrow glazed with rainwater beside the white chickens. Your laundry-folder immediately strikes me as a woman. Kids have finally gone to sleep, maybe. Or she's an insomniac. Or OCD. And spring blossoms might calm her. So many possibilities. Thanks for sharing!

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  2. Both poems are lovely. I liked the imagery of the open poem. I felt pulled into the moment more.

    I loved this:
    "I smell spring
    as I fold winter laundry."

    It fills me with hope.

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  3. I can see and feel you leaning against the glass. Lovely. I finally finished my U poem.

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  4. I love both of these poems - the imagery of leaning against the glass, the moon and the blossoms. When I do write poems, I prefer free verse, just because I have a hard time conforming to some of the "rules" of other forms without it sounding forced. For this reason, though, I admire people who can write in different forms...like haiku :)

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