Fish Oil Friday

The fish oil must be working, because I'm about to get all cerebral on your hiney. I can't seem to keep French expressions at bay either. And I refuse to put my French expressions in italics. If you are a Haiku Friday devotee, don't hate me, read to the end. It's my intention that by that time you will feel new avenues of creativity opening up to you.

I couldn't bring myself to write any Haiku for Haiku Friday. Not because I'm incapable, au contraire!

I could write my blog
Entirely in Haiku if
I were so inclined.

But I'm not. I have a confession to make. I am a poetry snob. I am a poetry snob because I am a language snob, and a poem is meant to be the purest, most powerful way of using language there is, and our modern approach to this form completely bypasses that aspect of it. I blame our systems of education.

I was taught about Haiku my junior year of high school, which is strange because we were supposed to be studying American Literature that year. Here is how it was explained to us by my beloved Mr. Brown, he of the translucent white pants that clearly showed his tighty whitey beloomed fruits.

A Haiku is a poem consisting of three lines. The first is five syllables, the second is seven, the third is five. They are usually about nature.

C'est vrais, but isn't something missing here? Like the point of a haiku? Every medium of poetry we studied was taught this way. How many syllables, what type of meter, what rhyme scheme if any, how many lines, and typical subject matter. As a result our brains get the pasteurized processed homogenized understanding of poetry. We look at it the way we look at a cheeseburger.

Yep, there's a bun, some mayo, a beef-ish patty, an orange cheese-flavored square, perhaps a pickle and a smidge of iceberg lettuce. Yep, it's a cheeseburger. But is it a good cheeseburger? Is it juicy, thick, filling, and delicious? Was it slapped together and sold merely to fill one's gaping maw and get a dollar in the cash register, or was the tomato tested for firmness and flavor, the patty lovingly seasoned and patted into shape by a sensitive and loving hand?

We are taught the mechanics of poetry, but not it very purpose, it's raison d'etre.

In contrast to the Haiku I wrote above, which certainly fits the guidelines for a Haiku in English, read this one.

so suddenly winter

baby teeth at the bottom

of the button jar

--Carolyn Hall (Water Lines, Snapshot Press, 2006)

My Haiku meant nothing. This one has so much meaning I could suck on it longer than an Everlasting Gobstopper.

Poems are supposed to mean something that is more than the sum of their words. Poetry is the purest form of language. Not a way of assembling pretty words, but a method used to make the reader see beyond the restrictions we wrap around language, the cliches we create on a daily basis. It is a true poet that is able to do this, and a true poet is a very rare thing. And I am not one of them, rest assured. ;)

Here are some examples.

"I want to do with you what Spring does with the cherry trees." -Pablo Neruda

One of my favorite quotes of all time, which has been much ripped off apparently, as I found when I Googled it trying to remember the name of the poem. Of course sex is the first thing you think of, but that's really only a part of it. He doesn't just want to have sex with her, he wants his love for her to inspire bloom, the kind of beauty that begins in the heart and manifests itself externally. It takes me thirty words to say that, it took him 13. In English anyway, it was originally written in Spanish. He turned a complicated thought into into a short, visual, easily understood phrase. That is poetry.

"Every day you play with the light of the universe." -also Pablo Neruda.

This phrase shows the effect this woman's love has on him. It so permeates everything in his life that he imagines her hand in everything around him, to the very mechanisms of the universe. How true, how beautiful!

"Hope is the thing with feathers." - Emily Dickinson, esteemed lover of the dash.

Of course she's thinking of a bird, so why doesn't she say that hope is a bird? Because she doesn't want us to think of a physical, corporeal being. She's not saying that hope is a bird, she's saying that hope is light, buoyant, innocent, and fleeting.

Now that is poetry. Simply taking any old sentence and putting it into a 5-7-5 format? Not poetry.

It is these high standards of mine that prevent me from writing anything other than the occasional silly limerick. How sad is that? I'm no Pablo Neruda or Emily Dickinson, so I don't even bother. I understand poetry, but I don't feel qualified to produce any. I'm far too analytical and verbose.

I think everyone has attempted poetry at some point, and everyone has thought that at least one of their poems was pretty darn good. God knows I did. A lot of mine even rhymed, and my ears burn with shame just thinking about them.

But the beauty of Haiku Friday -even if it's not alliterative, which is basically illegal in the blogosphere- is that it does get people thinking about what poetry is. And the strict structure of it does force a certain care in word choice. I think a lot of teachers use haikus to open discussion of poetry because they are so very simple, they take the edge of intimidation off of the student, who can't help but think, "heck, I could have written that!"

So while I've intimidated myself out of writing Haiku or pretty much any kind of poetry, I really do applaud those that put some elbow grease into it, and who have the cajones to display their work in a public forum. Maybe some day I'll stop trying to force my rigid self under such a low limbo stick. In the meantime I'll content myself with standing on the sidelines with a pina colada and just enjoy the show.

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