Senryu : dreaming

dreaming of a poem
struggling for that perfect phrase
reaching — nooo! — it’s gone

senryu by M. Nakazato LaFreniere

 

Entering a poem is to enter a dreamscape.  Random unrelated bits float, connecting, making sense as they coalesce into a vision. The poet struggles in a storm of letters, reaching for that perfect phrase, drowning in words.

I write senryu generally, haiku on occasion. The haiku/senryu form is a lifeline, paring syllables down to a minimum, with only three phrases.  No more, no less.  If you do more, it’s tanka or something else, a sonnet maybe.  Haiku/senryu has its rules which I disobey regularly but they are the north star — there behind clouds or shining bright when you need a compass.

Do your words provoke/convoke an idea/emotion/memory in your reader? A poem kept to yourself, hidden in a drawer, changes once it is let free to embrace other readers.  Meanings suddenly change in between the lines.

Three lines, that’s all.  You get it right or you don’t.

Wake up.

References:

March 14th 2018 … A Love poem
Heeding Haiku With Chèvrefeuille
Mindlovemisery’s Menagerie

Chèvrefeuille challenged us to write a haiku or haibun inspired by Rumi’s quartrain :

Although you may consume sweet desserts, roast meat, and pure wine.
Know that (if) you consume water in a dream,
When you get up from the dream you will [still] be thirsty.
For the water you consume in a dream causes you no benefit.
(c) Rumi (taken from “The Ruba’iyat” of Rumi, quartrain 1786)

provoke
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Second life photo by M. LaFreniere, avatar Kayla Woodrunner

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