Assignment 17: Your Best Haiku - The Task

Please write what you would consider to be your best haiku. Think it through.

Make sure that your haiku contains the things that you have learnt during this long and challenging class:

* clear images
* a juxtaposition
* fragment and phrase, or phrase and fragment, or pivot
* aha moment
* resonance in the nouns chosen
* plain language

Please include a paragraph of prose telling me which techniques, constructions and methods you used in composing this haiku.

Thank you very much for your persistence and diligence.

Best wishes on your haiku journey,
Myron.

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the lawn mower
stops with a groan –
summer grass

This one has two clear images – lawn mower and summer grass. It uses a phrase for the first two lines, and a fragment in the third line. A lawn mower as we know is to cut grass, but in summer especially after rain, grass grows rapidly. The lawn mower makes frequent stops by the tall grass for me to clean its blade.

trimming canopy
from the tree    suddenly
     the sunlight

The images in this one are the tree canopy and the sunlight. Again the phrase runs through the first two lines, then the fragment on the third line. There is a space on the second line between ‘tree’ and ‘suddenly’ for a special effect – my backyard is very shady because of tall trees. But after a storm, I asked the wood cutter to trim the broken branches that are imposing damage on my house. When the job is done, there’s bright sunlight coming through the opening, an ah moment to me.

Or

trimming branches
from the red oak    suddenly
     the sunlight