Young Writers Society

Hey there, Buranko! I haven't ever reviewed a haiku before but really liked the contents of yours, so I thought it would be the perfect haiku to review.

Syllables have always been something I've been terrible at counting, and I saw the link that went into your views on the haiku down below. I'll avoid discussing the length of your haiku because of it, but I will admit that I didn't actually see any problem with the syllables because of the reason I just described. It does look short enough to be a haiku, though!

One of the things the link you shared did mention was a tie to nature. Specifically, a tie to nature and a time of year. While I don't think your poem is necessarily about nature, you do invoke it with the mention of electronically stored agriculture. It's a shame that you're confined to just three lines with this poem - I would have loved to see that idea explored more!

The way your poem is worded actually reminds me a lot of my brother @sheyren's style of poetry. It comes across as abstract due to the lack of context and the abruptness of the ending. When I think of the wonders of the future, agriculture definitely isn't the first thing that comes to mind. Even if it had been, I doubted that the electronically stored part would have been what I was specifically thinking of. It definitely was an unexpected twist, and I really enjoyed how it played out!

My one suggestion would be to change the title. Haiku is a great placeholder, but doesn't give the reader enough context before going into the piece. Maybe you could name it something like "on the way to the future"?

All in all, this was a really interesting read! I'd be interested in reading more of your poetry in the future.

http://www.nahaiwrimo.com/home/why-no-5-7-5

Hi there Buranko! I'm here for a quick review on your poem, courtesy of #RevMo .

This is an interesting poem, but I do want to point out that's it's not actually a haiku. A haiku has a very specific number of syllables in each line: 5-7-5. That means there's a total of 17 syllables in a haiku. Right now, you've got 10-8-11, which means you've also got 29 syllables - 12 too many. You can use a syllable counter site if you like to count syllables, or break the words up yourself:

Is-n't the fu-ture a won-der-ful thing?
We are on the way to hav-ing
El-ec-tron-ic-al-ly stored ag-ri-cul-ture.

One possible version of this poem that would fit the syllable requirements would be something like this:

Isn't the future
wonderful? We'll soon have new
ways to store our food.

Of course some of the nuance and meaning is lost, but that's part of the fun about haikus - trying to fit as much meaning as possible into a set number of syllables. (If you don't think you can fit everything into one haiku, you could make a pair of haikus - or just decide to make a non-haiku poem about this.)

The reason I spent so much time talking about haikus is, well, the literal title of this poem is "Haiku" so if you do want to keep that title, it seems like a good idea to make sure the poem is actually a haiku

On to the actual contents of the poem! Like I said, it's definitely interesting and original; I've never read a poem about something like this! You've got consistent punctuation & capitalization, which I love, and your grammar's great, so no technical nitpicks as far as that stuff goes. My main thing is that this doesn't really feel like a poem, per se. There's no imagery (description using the five senses), and the tone feels pretty technical and not super poetic. Now the tone of the poem is totally a stylistic thing and up to you as the poet, however I would suggest at least trying to incorporate some aspects of what is typically considered to make poetry, poetry: imagery, structure, rhythm, etc.

If you're not sure where to start, take the opening line:

Isn’t the future a wonderful thing?