Seasonal Haiku

Tentative color,
Almost flamboyant--not quite--
Bright shadow of green.

~~

The Sun sighs deeply,
Warming the Earth's grateful face
To a pink-hued blush.

~~

The blush deepens now,
Ostentatious colors fly
Through the atmosphere.

~~

The sun shies away,
Blinking at the frivolous
display, lost in white.

Hi Sassykat!

I saw the "haiku" in the title and immediately decided to check it out, because I love haiku!

First haiku: The punctuation you used here confuses me. I suppose the "tentative" and "flamboyant" both refer to the green on the last line, but it could be either "tentative colour that's almost flamboyant but not quite, and a dividual bright shadow of green." or "a bright shadow of green that's tentative and almost flamboyant but not quite". And while ambiguousness is the core of a lot of poetry, this is the wrong kind in my opinion. It leaves me just thinking "...eh?" But most of this can be fixed by rethinking your punctuation. For example, the first comma could be a dash, and you could put "not quite" into parentheses.

Second haiku: I see the sun (I love it that you made it "her" though I guess it's pretty much a given, haha) warming the earth, but then I don't get the tears. It sounds pretty, but it's just something I can't quite grasp. Sure, with poetry you have to make readers think, but I've always had the impression that a haiku is kind of like a snapshot photo of a certain moment. You see a photo, you like it or not, and then move on. Maybe this is a bit harsh an analysis of something that I love like haiku, but that's the basic idea of it in my opinion. So I shouldn't have to be confused when reading a haiku, is what I'm trying to say. This just had too many images in it, I guess.

Third haiku: I quite love this. "Ostentatious" was a new word for me (yeah, I'm not a native speaker of English), but I looked it up and I love it. I find myself liking that word in nearly every language, heh. I also like the possible double meaning of "atmosphere" (see, this is the good kind of ambiguous!).

Fourth haiku: I find the use of "white" interesting, because when you say that the sun shies away, I think of sunset and the nightfall, so I would automatically go for something dark rather than white. I still quite like it, though. Frivolous is also a lovely word.

I think that my favourite haiku of these is the third one. In general, I would just say that you're not obliged to capitalise the first letter of every new line (I never do this myself), but you can of course do that if you like.

Keep writing! (And PM me with any questions!)


Demeter
x

Hello there.
This is a good piece. Short and cute.
But i agree with Demeter that your punctuations are really confusing. You must know this that a wrong punctuation can totally change the meaning of any line. So concentrate on the punctuations as much as you do on your poem. If you want then i can recommend you a site where you will find everything about punctuations. And whats with those tilde signs after every paragraph? It is really very annoying.

The Sun dries her tears,
Warming the Earth's grateful face
To a pink-hued blush.

This is my favorite paragraph.
Keep up the great work mate.
PM me for anything.

Hey Sassykat! I'm here to review. And I'll try and come up with something that Demeter didn't already point out.

Any nitpicks I had Demeter really handled quite nicely; actually, a lot better than I could have. I guess my only real problem with these is the rather un-traditional way they were written. Don't get me wrong; I'm no expert on haiku. But my general impression of the style is that they use little to no punctuation, and are never limited by complete sentence form, both of which you've used excessively here. And that's where I think you should try and improve. Also, I understand that traditionally haiku focus on images in nature, which you've done, but unless you have something completely new to describe or a new way in which to describe it, it's easy to become cliched, which I think may have happened a bit here.

My advice:

1. Use as little punctuations and full-stops (periods) as possible. In my opinion they take away from the tone of your poems, and I always think that haiku should have a sort of narrative ambiguity. While normally it's important to have a distinctive, well-developed poetic voice, I don't think it helps you to give haiku personality, in that sense. And somehow in my mind, using less punctuation would help that.

2. Come up with some new ideas! The birth of Spring/Summer is an idea that's been written about and described time and time again, and unless you have a completely new and original way in which to characterize them, it's automatically a cliche. My advice would be to come up with some ideas that aren't normally described in haiku, or not something that comes to mind when people think of them. You can even try new subjects that aren't about nature! (Our very own AquaMarine wrote a brilliant haiku about muddy shoes, so trust me, it's possible to make it work)

Anyway, I hope I could help some. Please let me know if you have any questions or comments! I'll be glad to help you some more if you want.

Keep writing,
Knightley

I'm usually not a big fan of haiku poetry, but I like these. It fascinates me when people are able to make a collection of haikus, each one complimenting one another. Yours did just that. Good work