Thursday, August 16, 2007

Poetry Thursday - Senryu


grass stains on her knees
dirt under her fingernails
the gardener sings


There are rules for most forms of poetry, and then there are the words that just rise up in your thoughts as you compose... which sometimes follow the rules and sometimes don't. My understanding of the difference between haiku and senryu is that haiku are mostly about nature, and senryu are mostly about human nature. According to shadowpoetry.com, "Senryu (also called human haiku) is an unrhymed Japanese verse consisting of three unrhymed lines of five, seven, and five syllables (5, 7, 5) or 17 syllables in all. Senryu is usually written in the present tense and only references to some aspect of human nature or emotions. They possess no references to the natural world and thus stand out from nature/seasonal haiku." I just couldn't follow the "no references to the natural world" rule in this one. Oops! *grin*


photo of fancy pink zinnia, by Aisling, August 16, 2007

2 comments:

Robbin said...

Ok, that's hard for me too. I played around with it and I always seem to get nature in there somewhere.....lol.
I love the sound of a child's laughter so I'm working on that one, I'll let you know if I get it.
Thanks again Aisling, I'm so enjoying these posts.

Marcie said...

Robbin, I'd love to read your haiku or senryu! I wrote some when my 8 year old son was a baby that I think would qualify as senryu. I thought of them as haiku at the time I wrote them, because I hadn't learned about senryu yet. That shadowpoetry.com site has great information on a lot of forms of poetry. Many I had never heard of.