haiku - life

Two haikus i wrote randomly. tell me what you think




Life. It’s not easy
Life. It can be difficult
Life. We soldier on




Branches claw at sky
Petals elegantly fall
Yes, autumn is nigh

Firstly, very nice! I love the images in both of these.

I'll start with the first one:
The first two lines sound a bit like they're saying the same thing?
I think in one of the lines (maybe the middle one) you need to break the pattern of saying 'life' - poems (even short ones) that start with the same word on every line can become a bit monotonous.
I really loved the last line. Keep that, please!

Now the second one:
The first line is brilliant, especially 'claw'.
With the second line, although it's a very pretty image, I don't really associate falling petals with autumn. I think it would work better with the third line if you changed it to something like leaves, because in the third line you say 'yes' as if they should obviously understand, which is fine, but it would make more sense if the images were more obviously autumn, if that makes sense.

I hope this helps, and I haven't been too harsh! I'll look out for more of your writing!
Sophie

Hey! I like the second poem and since haiku are a little difficult to critique, I can't really find anything wrong with it. It sounds good. However the first haiku could use some work. Haiku only have seventeen words, so each word is important. That means you probably shouldn't repeat words unless completely necessary, partly because it doesn't sound as interesting and partly because it gives the impression that you can't think of anything else to say. So think about what message you want to put across and how you can express it better, with more words, and perhaps some sort of imagery because haiku tend to take a moment of life, a scene, perhaps, and tell it as it is without judgement, but allowing the reader to still realise the emotions behind it. Nate posted a link to an article in the YWS Writing Olympics that probably explained it much better than I have. Play around with it a bit.