[Jim Moonan]

.
No longer confined to haibun form...

rv. 2

Two Roses

1.
Today I found a single petal had dropped from the funereal rose I had cut weeks ago and placed in a small cut-glass vase in the center of my round glass table. I had not seen it fall. Only found it lying there. I left it alone, not wanting to interfere. I watched for days and weeks the cut rose slowly slump, top-heavy on its stump of a stem. Over time, the tight-lipped kiss of the closed bud opened to become a labyrinth of red lustrous lips that slowly became slack, loose-lipped as old age and shriveled at the edges, darkening like dried blood does in the corners of the mouth. Stem and flower, tautness and slackness, youth and age, beauty, truth, water, fire — all meshed to become a bouquet of thoughts. The water that filled the cut glass vase slowly vanished. The quietus of the rose burned into my memory. I kissed it. I threw it away. The rose.

2.
When I was much younger, I put a long-stemmed rose inside a complete illustrated volume of Shakespeare’s works. I don’t remember where it came from. The rose. It may have been from my wedding. It was a long time ago. It stayed for decades on a sagging shelf. I rarely took the book down to read it. The sheer bulk and weight of it was too much to handle. It became nothing more than a place to keep the pressed rose flattened between pages of Shakespeare. Not long ago, when I was moving to a new place, something compelled me to give the book away to charity. I think about it from time to time. The rose, not the book. I kissed the memory. Felt the prick of its thorn. Bled rose blood.

3.
Cut red rose in water
stem sucking dry every drop
extinguishes itself.
Pressed into darkness
compressed, colorless, confined,
everything escapes between lines.



---------------------------------
.
rv 1

Two Roses

Today I found a single petal had dropped from the rose I had cut weeks ago and placed in a small cut-glass vase in the center of my round glass table. I had not seen it fall. Only found it lying there on the table below. I left it there, not wanting to interfere.
I watched over days and weeks the cut rose slowly slump, top-heavy on its stump of a stem. Over time, the tight fist of a bloom had opened to become a labyrinth of red lustrous lips that then began to fall apart as if pouting, then shriveled at the edges, darkening like dried blood does in the corners of the mouth. Stem and flower, life and death, youth and age, beauty and truth, water and fire meshed to become a bouquet. The water that filled the cut glass vase slowly vanished. The quietus of the rose burned into my memory. I kissed it. I threw it away. The rose.

Red rose in water
stem sucking dry every drop
extinguishes itself.

I kept a rose on a long stem flattened inside a complete volume of Shakespeare’s works. I don’t remember where it came from. The rose. It may have been from my wedding. It’s been a long time. It stayed for decades on a sagging shelf. It was a fixture in my life. I rarely took it down to read it. The sheer bulk and weight of it was too much to handle. It became nothing more than a place to keep the long-stemmed rose. Not long ago, when I was moving to a new place, something compelled me to give the book away to charity. I let it go, along with other things that suddenly seemed disposable. I think about it from time to time. The rose, not the book. I kissed the memory. Felt the prick of its thorn. Bled red rose blood.

Condensed in darkness
compressed, colorless, confined,
everything escapes between the lines



EDITS

LI was: "the rose I had cut to be on a short stem weeks ago"
Various grammatical changes to the opening prose poem.


----------------------------------

ORIGINAL
.
While Paula's haibun sits in detention, I grew one of my own that may or may not be a true haibun. My petals are beginning to drop. It's too late to concern myself too much with form…


I Looked For A Long Time

Today a single petal dropped from a single rose I had cut weeks ago to be on a short stem and put in a small glass vase of water on my table. I did not see it drop. Only found it lying there on the table below. I left it there, not wanting to interfere. I have watched for weeks the cut rose slowly droop in the glass vase, and always come away with teeming thoughts of life and death and the connection between the two. I watched as the tight fist of a bloom opened to become a labyrinth of impossibly red lustrous petals that turned a deeper, impossible red and begin, over time, to fray at the edges like dried blood does in the corners of a mouth. I watched the water disappear. It burned into my memory. I kissed it. I threw it away.

Fire in the water
sucking dry every drop
extinguishes itself.

I once kept for decades a rose on a long stem flattened to be a keepsake bookmark in the middle of a complete volume of Shakespeare’s works. I don’t remember where it came from. The rose. It may have been from my wedding. It’s been a long time. Once, when I was moving to a new place, something came over me and I gave the book away with the rose inside, along with dozens of other books I abandoned. I think about it from time to time. The rose, not the book. I kiss the memory; am pricked by its thorn; bleed.

Condensed in darkness
colorless, odorless, gone
nothing lasts forever

.

[Glenn Wright]

Hi, Jim—

I like how these two haibuns serve as companion poems—the first a meditation on the impermanence of beauty in the physical world; the second, on the immortalization of beauty in art and memory. I like the allusion to Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind” at the end of the second haibun. Lovely work.

Glenn

[Matt Q]

Hi Jim,

Haibun is not a form I've tried, though I've written haiku. Good to see you giving it a shot.

For me, the two haiku are what is working the least well here. How familiar are you with the form?

In schools, haiku tend to be taught as a syllabic form with 5/7/5 syllables and pretty much no other constraints. I guess it's an easy thing for kids to work with. However, modern haiku in English typically use around 10-14 syllables, for reasons given here and here. Basically, due to differences in the two languages, 5-7-5 syllables in English is a fair bit wordier than a haiku in Japanese, and hence doesn't replicate their brevity. There are, of course, other considerations to what makes a haiku. See e.g. here for links to some good discussions/guides.

I prefer the first of your two haiku, though it's pretty wordy (more so because it's actually 5/7/6) and would benefit from being more concise. There is imagery and some surprise in the last line. Though it also reads as one continuous unit, with no "cutting word", no sense of a break. The second isn't really working for me at all, as it combines abstraction with cliché. As the piece stands currently, I think it's better without the haiku.

Some comments on the prose.

1st para.

I wonder if the first sentence is too long/complicated, has too many qualifications? Maybe it would work better as two sentences?

I have watched for weeks the cut rose slowly droop in the glass vase, and always come away with teeming thoughts of life and death and the connection between the two

Personally, I'd just end this sentence at "vase". Do we need to know what the N thinks, or is it more interesting for us to ponder / supply our own interpretations? He's watching the rose die, after all. And you have the blood image coming. Or if you think we need to know it, can you find a less abstract/telly way to communicate this?

I think "begin" should be "began". I really like the image of dried blood at the corners of the mouth to illustrate the fraying rose, while also hinting at death.

I watched the water disappear. It burned into my memory. I kissed it. I threw it away.

I get confused at this point. How is the N kissing the disappeared water? Or throwing it away, for that matter. Though I guess maybe there's still some left. Or is he kissing the memory of the water? (In which case, how does that work, and how does he throw away the memory?). If it's the rose he's kissing, maybe there's a way to make that clearer. I think, given the contrast with the second para, in which he keeps a rose, it is the rose he throws away. But the referent of "it" doesn't seem to be the rose.

2nd para

I like the parallelism here, and the contrast. The short-stemmed (and short-lived) rose and the long-stemmed (long-stored) rose. Again, I wonder if the first sentence should be made into two sentences? Maybe ending after "bookmark"?

I wonder if "It's been a long time" and "along with many other books I abandoned" are needed. Would you miss them if you took them out? I think the first can be deduced from the N not remembering. And with the second, the important point seems to be that that he gave away the book. Do we need to know he gave away others? Does it add to anything? Concise prose is (traditionally at least) a thing in haibun, as I understand it.

I'm not sure of the thing of clarifying that you're talking about the rose and not the book is adding much, but if you're going to do it, it might work better if you only do it the once.

I don't understand what the semicolons are doing at the end of this paragraph. Commas or full stops, I reckon.

best,

Matt

[Jim Moonan]

.
Thanks Glenn and Matt. Major revision posted.
I’m still (still!) learning to give deeper artistic consideration to my writing and editing vs. spouting the first words that come out of my thoughts and onto the page.

Genn, I’m happy to hear you enjoyed it. Much of my poetry is rumination in the raw. Thinking out loud. Thinking out loud doesn’t often make for good poetry, but it does serve to empty my mind : )

Matt, Though I have never done much research on or even much reading of the haiku form, I’ve always found it to be refreshing in its dichotomy of simplicity and complexity. I’m pretty sure, though, that the Japanese authorities would confiscate my attempts at writing haiku if I were to attempt to enter their country with it in my bag — Ha!

Yes, I first learned of haiku as being 1.) bound by the 5-7-5 syllable count, and 2.) nature-related. When I was in grammar school the nuns had us writing strict 5-7-5 haiku as part of our English class lessons. In recent years the form seems to have been exploded to become pretty much anything that can be contained within three short-ish lines. The only real criteria seems to be that it must be phantasmagorical.

Your links are fantastic and I got lost in them for a time, learning more about the form in thirty minutes than I had known my whole lifetime. Thanks for that. Your crits are often tutorials for me.
I’ve combed back over the entire haibun, (I’m not even sure it is a haibun) using your comments as a spur, and have largely re-written both parts.

.

[Jim Moonan]

.
In anticipation of Paula’s haibun being freed from detention, and having second thoughts about having two haibuns on the board, and given the fact that I have revised the original to be something else, I have freed mine from its own confinement to the haibun form. It's now prose poetry ending in a flurry of verse.

.

[James Brancheau]

I think your latest revision is an improvement on the original, Jim, though I’m not at all fond of the first sentence of section 1. I think it's too wordy and might try to explain a little too much. It risks throwing readers out of the poem before they have a chance to appreciate what follows. And I see that you’ve mined some good images out of what you originally wrote. I would just write “a labrynth of lips” – but I like it. Also, “loose-lipped as old age” made me smile. The dried blood in the corners of the mouth I think is nice and “bouquet of thoughts” I like. Though I’d cut “Stem and flower” from the list.

I’d slightly adjust the ending of the first section: “I kissed it and threw it away. The rose.” I want to like “The rose” ending of section 1 more than I do. This making sure that the reader gets what you are referring to (the rose) is maybe my favorite thing about the poem. I absolutely love it. It’s terrific re voice, and can be so revealing when it comes to the speaker’s thoughts, frame of mind, and connect to possible themes of the poem as well. It’s wonderful. The problem is that, in that first section, I don’t think that there is any confusion about what the speaker is talking about. Maybe I’m missing something there, but, for me, it’s obvious that the speaker (N) is referring to the rose. This, however, does work well in the second section and in fact I’d be tempted to end on it (dropping “not the book”). I might be tempted to end both sections like that, if you could make the close of that first section work. I’m not terribly fond of the last three sentences of section 2—not quite fresh enough, and kiss a memory is rather intangibly blah. The rest of that section works very well, imo. I like it a lot.

I’m still thinking about section 3. I like “extinguishes itself,” and probably like the first half of it more than the second… Something like ‘sucking dry every drop from where it was cut…’ ?? I dunno. Like I said, I think I need more time with it… If I come up with anything that might be useful, I’ll come back. I enjoyed reading and thinking about this one, Jim.

[Jayne Osborn]

Hi Jim,
I enjoyed reading this, being very fond of (yellow, in particular) roses. I'm in a rush to go out at the moment, but I just wanted to say that "over time" twice in close succession jumped out at me.

Jayne