Red Fox, Snowy Day - Haiku

Red paws step lightly;
white feathers hang limp. Blood drips
red, white, white on red.

This is my first time trying to write a Haiku so I have no idea if this is right or not. When I looked up to see how many syllables each line is supposed to have I realized that people don't agree. This poem is five, seven, five.

Thanks,

A. S.

this haiku made me think a little. I had to read it a few times to actually figure out it was talking about a fox. (besides the giveway title). I thought this was short and sweet which made it simple to read and yes, this was a haiku. haikus have five syllables, seven, then five again. soo you did this right. good job! i liked it. so the meaning is a fox killing a bird in the snow?
I mostly like it because it actually had a meaning while some haikus people write are just random words thrown together.
keep writing. (:

Red paws step lightlyWhite feathers hang limp, my favorite part blood drips Red, white, white on red

best wishes, Nessa

Hey! I agree with papernessa, this WAS a haiku (at least, how I always wrote one) and it actually made sense. It made the reader think a little and I like how you didn't just tell the reader everything in your limited amount of lines. Anyway, well done!

Thanks for the reviews guys. I really had no idea how I did, A. S.

This is a great poem. I love Haikus. Keep writing!

Good morning, Cal! So obviously, this review won’t be that long considering the length of Haikou is pretty basic. Now, I’ll take it through some general impressions.

First off, you hit the Haikou style as far as rhythm, and in descriptors. For that, kudos to you. However, I have an issue with the clash of the description in the title and that in the poem. The issue arises because of the difficulty of cramming many ideas into a single-stanza Haikou. Precisely, the issue is the one-time mention of snow in the meat of the poem only as the word “white”. However, this may become a non-issue if you assume the reader takes the title as part of the poem. I understand that editing this to be more precise could prove difficult, but see what you can do, if you choose to adhere to that bit of advice.

My second and final quip is, of course, regarding punctuation. I’m unsure if you’re one of those that believes that poetry doesn’t require punctuation, but please—please—punctuate the end of your lines. But, again, it’s not demanding advice.

I apologize for the shortness and lack of helpfulness of this review. As you can probably guess, Haikou isn’t my strong suit, though I know my way around it.

PM me/wall post me if you have any questions or comments.

-Lumi

I think this is great

Haiku can be quite difficult to pull off rhythmically, but this was done wonderfully. The stops and beats are perfectly timed, and it's a nice slow pensive rhythm, which is wonderful for this type of poetry.
However, there are a couple of things I want to mention:

As Lumi said, there are a whole lot of things going on in here. Haiku generally consist of a simple basic image, beautifully expressed, but simple. Because you had so much going on, the mention of a season is really limited, and it took me a moment to realize that's what it was. I thought that it was talking about the feathers. In haiku, the season is generally the point of focus-- if it isn't mentioned, then it's called senyru, another type of poetry altogether. This is right about in between. I think that for it to be stronger, you should stress the season more- you don't need to come right out and yell WINTER or anything, but give it better focus.

The other thing: The last line felt a little awkward to me because of the "red, white, white" thing. I went through it a couple of times and tried to reword it to no avail- however, haiku really isn't a strong point for me.
I think that if you worked on it a bit more, you could find a way to rid of the awkwardness. Once you've done that, I really think this will be superb.

Nice job!

-Coral-

Thanks for the review, you all have given good advice.

A. S.

I actually didn't see anything wrong with it. Maybe it's because I'm used to reading stories about dogs and wild animals and my dad's a hunter, but I understood right away what was going on. I don't think it's all that complicated, or a lot of information; maybe what he others were saying was that a haiku usually just describes a branch of a cherry tree or something? (I don't know all that much about haikus myself.)

And yes, the most common way to write a haiku is 5-7-5. I think it's beautiful, and I actually like the way you used "white" instead of snow. It's actually rather common, I think, and indicates that the ground is, well, white, which usually means it's snowed/snowing (unless you're at white sands or something. )

No, you are right about the snow. Thanks for the review. : ) I forgot about this poem.

not bad for a haiku. Haikus can be a really effective form, but since they are so short every word has to be absolutely necessary and concise. One piece of advice I have is instead of saying

"red, white, white on red."

Maybe you could replace the word on with another color? It's okay to repeat colors, I actually like that, but I think if you threw another one in it would be good too. Just can't be yellow. But a third color will give the poem another dimension, I think.

Thanks for the review, I did think about that. Actually I tried, but I couldn't find anything that sounded perfectly right. Because I meant the white feathers against the red fox and the red blood against the white snow.

Thanks,

A. S.

This is a haiku...at least the way i learned how to make them....it makes you wonder what it is exactly you're writing about.......