Memoirous

 Waiting in a Snowy Wood Riding our bicycles Through a fog-hushed snowy wood A train horn echoes We wait, the sound fills the air Grinding down all around us The above is a tanka, a Japanese form I’m revisiting after my class, The Road to Haiku. In a previous post  I outlined the 5-7-5-7-7 syllable scheme. Truthfully, anything can be a form see renga, sonnets villanelles, and the rondeau. Consistency is the secret sauce. Regardless, the form forces us to search for different words instead of taking the first one that comes to mind, it forces us to pay attention to sound. With a specific word/syllable count we have to make choices—often for the stronger adjective, verb. It makes us slow down, dwell with the piece, ask ourselves, What exactly do I want to communicate? Emphasize the sensory. The context or story behind the story is Jack, my 3-year-old grandson, and I like to ride our bikes in the woods near our house. He on a child’s balance bike and me on mine. Believe me,...

chicago daily 34 massacre 1929. Jun Fujita, photographer. St. Valentine's Day White men stoning an African-American man during the 1919 race riots. Chicago History Museum ICHi-022430; Jun Fujita, photographer haunting image taken by Chicago photojournalist, Jun Fujita, at the scene of the SS Eastland disaster. In my last post (link) I laid out the bare basic of some poetic forms that can be adapted to writing flash—or at the least observing nature and writing small about it. But as one can see from Eve Ewing’s poetry collection 1919 , yes her remarks emanated from setting a scene or landscape but also were responding to the 1919 Chicago Race Riot. And, also commenting on contemporary culture. I was first introduced or given visual cues about the Chicago Race Riot while visiting the Poetry Foundation . I forget what event I was there for, but there is a small exhibit space that they use to great impact. I’ve seen a few exhibits there that I’ve posted about. Th...

Tanka: Poetic Form. The Japanese tanka is a thirty-one-syllable poem, traditionally written in a single unbroken line. A form of waka, Japanese song or verse, tanka translates as "short song," and is better known in its five-line, 5/7/5/7/7 syllable count form. Tanka: Poetic Form | Academy of American Poets - Poets.org How to write a Tanka poem The Tanka poem is very similar to haiku but Tanka poems have more syllables and it uses simile, metaphor and personification. There are five lines in a Tanka poem. Line one - 5 syllables  Beautiful mountains Line two - 7 syllables  Rivers with cold, cold water. Line three - 5 syllable  White cold snow on rocks Line four - 7 syllables Trees over the place with frost Line five - 7 syllables  White sparkly snow everywhere. Tanks poems are written about nature, seasons, love, sadness and other strong emotions. This form of poetry dates back almost 1200 years ago. Similarly, t...

“Haibun for July 30” . . . . after days of blood, candles in the window again birds shake off the rain A couple of things: 1)Many of her poems are reactions to research on the 1919 Chicago Race Riot—specifically to The Negro in Chicago: A Study on Race Relations and a Race Riot , a 1922 report, an old book sitting on library shelves that broke Eve Ewing open when she read it. “ . . . It was so direct and made such a bold claim on totality.” Here is the excerpt she is reacting to from that study: Rain on Wednesday and Thursday drove idle people of both races into their homes. The temperature fell, and with it the white heat of the riot. (7) Eve Ewing did not approach this collection with a set methodology. She searched for the most (to her) authentic response/form. She chose to write a haibun. From an interview I found online: “There’s a haibun in the book (“Haibun for July 30”). People are more familiar with haiku, but what the haibun does is allow you...