09 January 23 Winter – good, bad, ugly Theme 5 - #3

The Ugly Aspect of Winter Made Tolerable by Way of Haiku and Echo Poems

Reader beware. The poems within this post may be like playing poetic twister. Anyway, onward . . .

Photo Credit: imantsu

In last week’s post, I told you I would do it. Maybe you thought I was kidding. I wasn’t. I promised that I would post any submissions. (Maybe that was ill-advised.) Specifically, in “Exploration 1” last week, I invited you to write a haiku about the dead of winter. Dear Readers, if you are truly out there, I need to inform you that only one faithful reader dared to try his poetic hand to meet the challenge. His haiku response was so brilliant that I was motivated to echo with my own haiku with a couple of echo poems thrown in. So, what we end up with is:

• Haiku
• Echo poem
• Dead of winter theme
• Combinations of the three above

See?

Oh, yes. Who was our intrepid explorer? None other than the Wannaskan Almanac’s own Chairman of Friday and Squib-Sunday fame. 

Here we go!

Below is the Chairman’s official response to the haiku invitation:

Nine above zero

Sunset on the frosted trees

Paradise welcome

I’m going to leave that one alone. Pretty good, eh?

Then he submitted a sentence that just begged to be transformed into a haiku.

Here’s the sentence: "In March I think of escaping the mess of winter’s reverse menopause." 

Here is the haiku/echo poem I wrote in response. By the way an “echo poem” is a form I made up and have used for years. More on that in a moment.

Escaping winter's

mess of reverse menopause

March. No escaping

Another Exploration asked readers to define the dead of winter. The talented Mr. Chairman responded with the following:

The dead of winter is the thing that steals my warmth, shrivels my marrow, and kills me in some nameless ditch. I countered with another haiku/echo poem with a small twist. The 3-line syllables are 5-7-7- not the usual 5-7-5.

Dead of winter steals

my warmth – shrivels my marrow

Kills me in some nameless ditch

  

And using the same sentence as the baseline, here is a haiqua, which is a haiku of four lines or longer. It is presented in one vertical slice with only a word or two per line. This mimics the vertical printed form of Japanese haiku. Same words, different poem, this time it even has a title.

Winter

Steals warmth

Shrivels

Marrow

Kills me

Nameless ditch

That’s all for this week folks. No background. No explorations. However, the invitation still stands. Write a haiku of any type about winter, preferably the “dead of winter.” If you would like some haiku information to guide you, contact me at catherineastenzel@gmail.com