First attemp at haiku

okay, this is my first attemp of haiku so please go easy on me ( ) i'm going to try the 5 7 5 pattern.


Darkness and chilling,
Frightened screams and deathly jeers;
Tell me of the end.

Okay, I'll be reviewing your haiku - but it'll be short, just to warn you.

Darkness and coldness,
Fright and screams of death and jeers;
This is what I fear.

First off, "coldness" is a bit lame compared to "darkness" and my first impression was that you could have come up with a better term for it. I know you're trying to stick with the 5-7-5 syllable count, but maybe something like "Darkness and chilling" or "Darkness and frost, and" or something.

The second line is nice, but every word is monosyllabic, and I feel like there you had an opportunity to make the poem a bit more interesting. Take some of those shorter ones away and either conjoin them or replace them with longer ones. Like, "Frightened screams and deathly jeers". Something of that nature.

Finally,"This is what I fear". The first thing that stuck out to me was that it seemed to rhyme with the previous line "jeers". Not that that's not okay, but typically (in my opinion) haikus are more interesting when they don't rhyme. Of course, I don't even know if you meant to do that or not. Also, the fact that you ended the poem in that way made me completely rearrange my thinking regarding what was happening. I mean, the first part makes it seem like there's a menacing problem at hand, the second part explains that more and you build suspense. The third part tells me that nothing's happened yet, and you're just preparing for the future. I don't know, it felt like a kind of anticlimax.

Other than what I said (sorry for the outrageous pickiness) I thought it was very nice. :]
You should definitely write a bunch of haikus and post them at once so as to not waste points.
Keep it up! :]

--- James

taytay0939 wrote:

Darkness and chilling,
Frightened screams and deathly jeers;
Tells the end is near.

Sorry to ask you to change it again, but I don't think chilling is good enough (but it's better than coldness). Quick grammar note: change tells to tell. I like the ending, but for some reason the wording feels a little awkward; maybe try something like "Tell me of the end" or "Show the end is near" or something like that.
Otherwise, this was a good haiku; great for a first attempt! For haikus in general, I sometimes find it helpful to just write a three line poem and change the syllables afterwords. Also, one thing I've noticed in some of the more famous (and better) Japanese haikus is that the ending is unexpected and changes the rest of the piece. One piece (this is just from memory, so it doesn't have the pattern) was something like:

The cry of the pheasant
How I longed
For my dead parents!

Keep in mind that that was from a well known haiku writer, so don't worry if yours don't turn out as good!