[Glenn Wright]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_En..._French_Poodle

Version 3

The Invasion of Montréal

The cool silence of the cathedral collides with the hot bustle in the Place d’Armes. Agitated wasps infest the air, and a faint tang of smoke sounds a distant alarm in the summer heatwave. Marc-André J. Fortier’s bronze Englishman holds his pug and sneers at the French basilica. On another corner of the busy square, his statue of a French Canadian woman carries her poodle, scowls at the British Bank of Montreal, notes the missing accent mark, hates the theft. The dogs strain toward each other, restrained by their masters’ prejudices, yearning. People flutter by, dodging the insects, complaining in English and French. A young warrior in a gray bespoke suit shouts at his phone, ducking and waving off the black and yellow drones: “Je suis devant la cathédrale. Dépêche-toi!”

Migrants come to town,
desperate yellowjackets
displaced by wildfires.

Version 2

Montréal: Late Summer 2023

Migrants come to town,
desperate yellowjackets
displaced by wildfires.

.

The cool silence of the cathedral collides with the hot bustle in the Place d’Armes. Agitated wasps infest the air, and a faint tang of smoke sounds a distant alarm in the summer heatwave. Marc-André J. Fortier’s bronze Englishman holds his pug and sneers at the French basilica. On another corner of the busy square, his statue of a French Canadian woman carries her poodle, scowls at the British Bank of Montreal, notes the missing accent mark, hates the theft. The dogs strain toward each other, restrained by their masters’ prejudices. People flutter by, dodging the insects, complaining in English and French. A young warrior in a gray bespoke suit shouts at his phone, ducking and waving off the black and yellow drones: “Je suis devant la cathédrale. Dépêche-toi!”

Apart together,
Climate and politics burn.
Pug and poodle yearn.

Version 1

Montréal: Late Summer, 2023

Migrants come to town—
desperate yellowjackets
displaced by wildfires.

The carved wooden door swings open. Cool, blue silence from the cathedral
collides with the hot, white bustle in the Place d’Armes. Agitated wasps infest the
air, and a faint tang of smoke adds to the oppressive weight of the summer heatwave.

     Marc-André J. Fortier’s bronze statue of an Englishman holding a pug sneers at the
     French basilica. In another corner of the busy square, his statue of a French Canadian
     woman carrying a poodle scowls at the British Bank of Montreal, noting the missing
     accent, hating the theft. The dogs strain toward each other, restrained by prejudice.

Between them people flutter by, annoyed by the insects, complaining in English and
French. A prosperous-looking young man in a gray, bespoke suit shouts into his phone,
ducking the black and yellow drones: “Je suis devant la cathédrale. Dépêchez-vous!”

French and English clash.
Climate and politics burn.
Pug and poodle yearn.

.

[Nick McRae]

Originally Posted by Glenn Wright

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_En..._French_Poodle

Montréal: Late Summer, 2023

Migrants come to town—
desperate yellowjackets
displaced by wildfires.

The carved wooden door swings open. Cool, blue silence from the cathedral
collides with the hot, white bustle in the Place d’Armes. Agitated wasps infest the
air, and a faint tang of smoke adds to the oppressive weight of the summer heatwave.

     Marc-André J. Fortier’s bronze statue of an Englishman holding a pug sneers at the
     French basilica. In another corner of the busy square, his statue of a French Canadian
     woman carrying a poodle scowls at the British Bank of Montreal, noting the missing
     accent, hating the theft. The dogs strain toward each other, restrained by prejudice.

Between them people flutter by, annoyed by the insects, complaining in English and
French. A prosperous-looking young man in a gray, bespoke suit shouts into his phone,
ducking the black and yellow drones: “Je suis devant la cathédrale. Dépêchez-vous!”

French and English clash.
Climate and politics burn.
Pug and poodle yearn.

.

Hi Glenn,

I'm not the best option for critiques of prose poems, but I'll give this one a go.

IMV, any changes to this depend on what you want it to look like. At present you've got some enjoyable phrasing and vivid imagery, and it reads something like an excerpt from a novel. If you want to keep it more or less in this state you might consider tightening the language up a bit. A few things that stand out in the first part of your poem (for example):

Montréal: Late Summer, 2023

Migrants come to town—
desperate yellowjackets
displaced by wildfires.

The carved wooden door swings open. Cool, blue silence from the cathedral
collides with the hot, white bustle in the Place d’Armes. Agitated wasps infest the
air, and a faint tang of smoke adds to the oppressive weight of the summer heatwave.

     Marc-André J. Fortier’s bronze statue of an Englishman holding a pug sneers at the
     French basilica. In another corner of the busy square, his statue of a French Canadian
     woman carrying a poodle scowls at the British Bank of Montreal, noting the missing
     accent, hating the theft. The dogs strain toward each other, restrained by prejudice.

The highlighted words are either areas that pop out as extraneous, or could use a modification, mostly examples of words that might be extraneous. IMO, at the core of this poem is an enjoyable display, but my idea would be to strip out anything that absolutely doesn't need to be there, and to modify any words you can into their best self. If a word could sound better, change it.

My take is that excessive modifiers kill a poem when they don't really add to the larger whole you're trying to portray. If they're just decoration for decoration sake then they can be burdensome for the reader as they try to unravel your writing. Poems will generally read better if they're pared down and read more swiftly. You want the decoration you do use to be dense, and powerful.

Now, I mentioned that this is the first way you could do it. The other thing you could do (and what I generally do with prose) is to be a little more unwieldy with the axe. These days I like tearing up language, and adding in more of the unexpected.

I can't recall who said it now, but one of the greats of the past once said something like - 'all good poetry includes the unexpected'. Anymore, I think this kind of thing is a near requirement of good poetry. If the phrasing and word choices you use are too close to the ordinary, then it's hard for your poem to read a level above, a higher state than what people are expecting. To me, that's usually the aim of poetry - to propel the reader outside of everyday experience.

I can't really give you recommendations for this route, but you might find it a fun experiment to take what you've written here and see how you can deviate from established language norms. Google 'poetic deviation' to see what I mean.

Hope that helps.

[Glenn Wright]

Hi, Nick—

Thanks so much for taking the time to give your considered reaction and useful suggestions. I took to heart your advice to tighten up the language, particularly to eliminate malingering adjectives. I tried to compress and clarify the images, and think I was able to do so with a minimum of sacrifice to meaning. In the first version I wanted the poem to be in the shape of an aerial view of the Notre-Dame Cathedral in Montreal, but in the second version, it seems more to suggest two dogs on opposite sides of a wall. Minimalism and compression are the hallmarks of haibun and all Japanese art, so your advice was wise.

I wanted to juxtapose two seemingly unrelated things: the British invasion of French Canada in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and the invasion of wasps in Montréal last summer as a result of wildfires caused by climate change. If I were writing a longer poem, I could have also included the European invasion of the First Nations in earlier centuries. I also had in mind the attitude of modern developed countries toward immigrants from less developed countries. I wanted to show how fear (of wasps or immigrants) prejudice, and competition can override our natural spirit of fellowship and generosity.

Thanks again for your response!

Glenn

[Joe Crocker]

Hi Glenn

I don't know much about Haiku and Haibun but I like what you've done with this in response to Nick's comments. The details are great. The English-French animosity, the stolen accent, the dogs' straining, and particularly the Frenchman shouting at the wasps to get lost while speaking into his phone. An entertaining vignette.

Joe

[Glenn Wright]

Thanks for weighing in, Joe. I’m glad you liked it.
Glenn

[Paula Fernandez]

Glenn--

I'm so happy to see your haibun! I've just finished reading Haibun: A Writer's Guide by Beary, Watts, and Youmans, and I'm in love with what this form can do. I think you've captured some key elements of the form exactly--it feels very much like a visual feast and a single captured moment. You've given us lots of sense information--smoke smell, the buzz of the wasps, the heat. So that all seems dead on with the form. Also, I love the lightness of it--the Frenchwoman aghast at the missed accent, and the little dogs straining toward each other.

I wonder, though, if you're trying to get too much commentary loaded up here. I thought that when first reading it, and then when I read your comment on the poem's intentions, I felt confirmed in that reading. I feel there are at least 2 haibun in here--the one about the French/English sculpture and the little dogs--and the one about migrants and the unwelcome yellowjackets who just need to get away from the smoke. Intertwining them (as in version 2) split my attention too much. (Just my opinion, others may disagree). To resolve this, you could either just write two separate haibun or return to something more like version 1 which more clearly separated the two conflicts.

In Beary et al, they emphasize the importance of balancing the three elements (Title, Prose, Haiku) of the haibun so that each is enhanced by and amplifying the others. I feel that your title is not doing enough work for you. You could easily incorporate the location and context in the prose. Maybe a title like "Alien Invasion"?

The first haiku ("migrants come to town") is very good I think. I appreciate that you kept the 5-7-5 though that doesn't seem to be common in English language haibun I've been reading. It has a clever turn. I wonder if "desperate" is the strongest descriptor, but the haiku definitely does its part to pull the haibun together.

I think the closing haiku doesn't work as well for me, as it just lacks some essential haiku quality. I like the last line a lot (pug and poodle yearn) but it's too explicitly pulling the whole thing together without that sense of ambiguity that animates haiku.

Hope that's helpful. Definitely a lot of high-quality material in here to work with.

[Glenn Wright]

Hi, Paula—

Thanks for your very helpful input. As I said in an earlier post, I wanted to juxtapose two things that seem unrelated at first glance, but which share a commonality—in this case, invasion and the negative feelings of fear and resentment that it causes. I decided to take your advice and include this theme in the title as a way to unify the piece.

I also agree with your judgment that the final haiku is weak, lacks vivid imagery, and doesn’t really add anything that could not be inferred from the rest of the piece, so I ditched it and moved the first haiku to the end. I read somewhere that in a haibun, the haiku serves as a stand or pedestal upon which to display the prose “picture.” I kept “desperate” because I want a word that suggests sympathy for the wasps.

Thanks again for your suggestions. I feel that they improved the piece.

Glenn

[Paula Fernandez]

Glenn-- I do like Version 3 best so far. I stumbled over the tang of smoke "sounds" an alarm. Maybe "kindles"? I wonder if "cursing them in English and French" would be stronger than "complaining in English and French: since I'm not sure just complaining conveys what they are complaining about and I want them to be more than mildly annoyed.

[Glenn Wright]

Hi, Paula—

Originally Posted by Paula Fernandez

Glenn-- I do like Version 3 best so far. I stumbled over the tang of smoke "sounds" an alarm. Maybe "kindles"?

I used the synaesthesia deliberately to suggest an almost subliminal awareness of the smell of smoke. Maybe I need to rethink it.

I wonder if "cursing them in English and French" would be stronger than "complaining in English and French: since I'm not sure just complaining conveys what they are complaining about and I want them to be more than mildly annoyed.

Perhaps I’m leaning into the stereotype that Canadians are particularly polite.

Thanks for the helpful input, Paula!

Glenn