Cake
A sweet, crunchy treat
Icing forming waves on top
Of a sea of cream
Rainbow
Brilliant, bright colours
Filling in the mighty canvas
Of the endless sky
School
Time of needless pain
Which crawls at a snail's pace
For its poor victims
Dreams
Cloudy wisps of thought
Floating in the dark abyss
Of our restless minds
*******
P.S I know I didn't get the syllable count right in ALL of the poems, so please excuse me! :)
Points:
Time spent:
Canary word: Present
Possible AI signals:
Original Text:
Are you sure you want to delete this comment? This cannot be undone.
Mark this comment as a review? Points will be awarded to the poster.
Your comment was posted, but it wasn’t long enough to count as a review. Reviews need about four complete sentences (at least 250 characters). Try writing another review that explains your thoughts in more detail — the author will appreciate it, and you’ll earn points for it.
125,008 Literary Works • 672,832 Reviews
Hey there, Mystical. Here again to put my two cents in. Let's get started.
Cake:
I won't be looking at this one in depth because I didn't feel it was really a haiku. Haikus generally (although not always) focus on an element from nature, or gives us a new perspective on something familiar, and I didn't think this fulfilled my personal haiku requirements. That isn't to say it didn't fulfill others--just a personal preference.
Rainbow:
May I ask that if your haiku isn't fulfilling the haiku syllable pattern you simply specifically ask for help with it? Ignoring the fact that the second line is eight syllables, I do think this is a step up. Remember: elevate your vocabulary and give us something new. This is a perfectly acceptable description of a rainbow, but it wasn't as evocative as I might have liked. This may be because there was no one clear verb--"filling" didn't quite cut it for me.
School:
*See "Cake"*
Dreams:
I love this one. This is by far my favorite because it establishes a powerful and clear action (floating) and moves gently from there, so I feel like I'm in a dream myself. The term "abyss" is often overused, but the way you positioned it, I didn't feel like that was such an issue. I'd love to see you go further with this, replacing "abyss" with a stronger word like "cavern", etc. Thank you for sharing.
Anyhow, don't forget to be awesome. I'll see you in the next review!
IronSpark
Hey! ChocolateCello here!
Okay, so you posted this quite awhile back, I don't usually review things more that a week old unless they're in the green room, but I thought 'hey, what the heck, it's review day' (Happy review day by the way!)
So I'm pretty sure I reviewed your last 'House of Haiku' (Or at least mentally wrote a review, not sure if I submitted it) But I'm really impressed with your haiku skills. I didn't go counting syllables, I suck at syllables and I don't think that the layout of the poem should over take the content, even in a haiku. Each of your poems were greatly written. Being able to put detailed descriptions into three short lines is not a skill I possess, so I commend you for having this ability. Even if it's not on the proper 'syllable count' the fact that you can put so much description into so little writing is amazing enough on its own. I think I'm starting to repeat myself... Sorry, a bit sleep deprived.
I especially liked the last one, 'Dreams'. It was very poetic and really put a vision in my mind.
Keep up the good work!
-ChocolateCello
Hi! I am not really into poetry, but I am interested in haiku and other Japanese styled poems, and so please excuse me if this review doesn't help much.
As you read the links provided by cleverclogs you will understand more about haiku and its nature. It is so complicated, and definitely not simply poetry arranged in 5-7-5, which is why it fascinates me.
You have great descriptions in your haiku, like those in 'Dreams', not simply because they are descriptive and full of details, like what you look for in normal poetry or short stories, but because you included a deeper meaning which you want readers to imagine and think more about. In my opinion, a modern haiku in English, unlike those written in Japanese, does not need to observe so many rules as mentioned in the links, but at least they have to introduce to readers certain sensations or thoughts subtly hinted through the 17 words in a haiku. You have managed it in 'Dreams', but you may want to add and hint some hidden meaning in the others in my opinion.
A haiku may influence readers to think and reflect about their lives, or something philosophical, or at least thoughtful. Meaning to exist, peace, or how time flies could be some common themes. You have already got wonderful imagery. Try putting elements of these into your haiku and you will find them to have much more depth and potential to be interpreted.
Another issue that have caught my eyes is that you have used a lot of adjectives in your haiku. Usually in normal poetry or prose you want to avoid adverbs only, but in haiku I think avoiding the use of adjectives is equally important. You will see in the example:
The first line, in my opinion, is not as strong as the second. A cake is usually sweet. What I want to point out is that unless you want to describe features of an object that is contrary to usual beliefs or views, avoid using an adjective. Considering you can only have 17 syllables in a haiku, using strong nouns and verbs can make a haiku much cleaner and neat, and it helps to save syllables for you to instill meaning into your haiku.
By the way I love how you compare icing to waves. Good job!
Another thing is rhythm. It is probably just me, but I find a longer pause after each line makes a haiku more 'poetic'. I don't know how to put this (feeling frustrated), but I find breaking a sentence into lines before a verb (which you have done so in every haiku here) brings the rhythm out quite well.
Somehow I think it is not really important to follow modern sentence structure rules in a haiku. Fragments can help save syllables from being occupied by prepositions and pronouns, which makes a haiku feel more solid and concrete.
Anyway you have done a great job at attempting haiku. Remain with your great imagery, avoid adjectives, and add a depth of meaning to your haiku, and I am sure you will be astonished with what you have got. Sorry if the review didn't help much.
Yo, Mysticalxx. cleverclogs here to review! Let's roll.
The first thing I'll do is link you to a review that will link you to two wonderful haiku resources (link-ception!).
work/fortis/Haikus-Time-122358#c543524
The links in this review are really great and helped me better understand what a haiku actually is. In school, they usually only teach you about the 5-7-5 rule, so you have lots of 5-7-5 poems floating around without actually being haiku. Please read these two resources, because I'm not an expert on haiku and I never could hope to be as informative as them. Hopefully these will help you.
Now that that's out of the way, I'll give you some other thoughts I had that aren't related to the non-haiku-ness of these poems.
"Crunchy" isn't the first word that comes to mind when I'm thinking about cake. I don't really think it's appropriate here.
As for the "School" one: I don't really like when kids compare themselves to prisoners or whatnot when they're in school. This makes me a hypocrite, since I do it all the time, but part of me is always like, "you should feel lucky". So, yeah, I'm not a huge fan of that poem. It comes off as kinda whiny.
Even though the "Rainbow" one isn't really a haiku, I do appreciate the imagery you use in it. After
stalkingfollowing your works, I've noticed that beautiful description seems to be your strong point.Overall, the main weakness in these haiku is that they aren't haiku. I'd recommend fixing that before anything else, or classify them as something else. Keep on writing!
hello, thanks for reviewing! As I said, some of the syllable count isn't correct, but not ALL of them are wrong. I mean "Cake", and "Dreams" have the correct syllable count which is needed. Don't they?
Thanks for the tips!