My Notebooks & I

A few of my notebooks, and, yes, Michael Jackson's Invincible CD from 2001.

A basic suggestion that I have for my highschoolers who enjoy writing, but find themselves at a loss for subjects or ideas, is to carry a notebook with them during their daily travels. In the modern age, of course, you could sensibly substitute some sort of i-thing, I prefer ye ol' pen and spiral bound notebook approach. (Full disclosure: I have on occasion used the "Notes" function of my cell phone.) For times such as the current quarantine, they also provide an interesting way to look back on prior thinking and experiences as a means of mining for subject matter.


My thought process: connecting
Into Thin Air to Shakespeare
to Star Trek V.

In my estimation, this is slightly different than the Writing Journals I have my own students keep in class, though ideally the outcomes of  are similar. Those of my students who most seek to develop their skill (and love) of writing seem to understand and embrace the idea of two writing "journals': one for school that is more teacher directed and a second that is personal.


If math classes can watch Numbers
as curriculum, why not
CSI:NY for English?

In-class journaling is among the most enjoyable activities I have my students work on year long, for both of us. A subtle distinction is to be made between the two (in-class and in-pocket) writing journals. Different than a personal journal, or traditional diary, in-class writer's notebooks allow students to explore potential writing ideas at their own pace with the guidance of their teacher.

In all of my grade 11 (and in years past, 9, 10 and 12) English classes, students are asked to bring a Composition Book on the second day of school for safe keeping in our classroom. I recycle those left behind by prior students (after removing the completed original owner's entries) or purchase new ones for those who don't have access to supplies outside of school. Every few classes, students are provided with a prompt to get their writing juices flowing. While these entries are evaluated with points and feedback, the evaluation is not for content in as much as for quantity of information put forth and the quality of details provided (or whatever is is loosely prescribed by the prompt). Grammar, punctuation, consistent verb tenses are not important, I am looking for thinking.

I warned you that it was
bad imagery.

Personally, I am a proponent of the personal diary (or to confuse matters more, "personal journal") for my own purposes. While I, too, respond to the same prompts my students do as a means of modeling, I also almost always have a small spiral bound notebook with me (preferably in my shirt pocket). There, I keep notes as I fumble through my days. Some of what I scribble is related to work activities that I need to follow through on, items I need to pick up on the way home, books/artists/authors/websites that are mentioned to me in passing that I would like to learn more about, and even recipes that may be fun to make at home. Mixed in is the occasional story idea, image that has struck me, or haiku jottings.

The key for me here is that while these may seem like a disjointed collection of notes, ramblings or badly conceived poetry drafts, ultimately they may (just may) serve as fodder for some later project or piece I am moved to draft for my own pleasure. More often they just become part of a collection of notebooks that I'll thumb through for inspiration when none is to be found elsewhere.

But, for now anyway, they wait quietly on my shelf awaiting future mining...

Haiga

School courtyard at noon. (12/4/14)

Deserted courtyard,
hungry crow pecks wilted sod—
autumn silence grows.

Haiku v. Haiku: Fight 2014!

With National Poetry Month kicking off this week, I didn't want to miss the opportunity to lay the groundwork for some haiku writing in my Advanced Placement Language and Composition courses. In order to mix things up slightly, rather than requiring that students simply generate two haiku, I assigned them to develop a Dueling Haiku. With Spring Break and AP exam administration on the horizon, what better time to still ourselves in the interest of crafting haiku? Our initiating activity was intended to covertly inspire students to collect the clay that would ultimately be shaped into their dueling haiku.

Initial journaling prompt.

Past experience has shown me that the "write about Nature, because we're going to write haiku" approach is lacking, I first shared a prompt (posted to the right) that would--if explained correctly--result in two 50-70 word free-writes about naturally occurring, potentially oppositional, animals or elements. The prompt does not overtly suggest that the final outcome will be two haiku (which when placed side-by-side are dueling), but rather nudges students to focus their thinking and writing on a specific subject as well as its opposite number. It was helpful to share some examples of potential topics that while initially too broad, could be refined in such a manner as to yield appropriate fodder for the poetic grist.

While students have been shown how to write haiku since elementary school, I annually like to revisit the form with them. The hope in doing this is to reveal some new background information, or to at least elicit from them a poem or two that does not consist solely of seventeen syllables thoughtlessly puked out on a paper ten minutes prior to class.

Some students insist that the haiku is an "easy" poetic form to master. My response to these shows of hubris is that "Writing crappy haiku is as easy as 5-7-5." Crafting good haiku takes time. The challenge here is to impress upon students that simply stringing together enough syllables in a familiar structure (5-7-5) does not mean one is "good" at writing them. I find it helpful to remind students that the while the form they (and I) have been taught since childhood is "haiku," it is not purely haiku in the Eastern sense, but more of a Westernized "traditional" Haiku form. The basic rules are well-know: haiku are comprised of 17 syllables, arranged in 3 unrhymed lines of 5-7-5 syllables and the content should evoke or link to the natural world.

The modified evaluative tool.

The use of the word "opposition" in the instructions can be confusing for students as there is no actual "conflict" or coordination between the two poems, only the potential for the reader to sense the opposing/contradictory/differing nature of the two forces, animals or moments. As I explain to the students, while there is no "shared DNA" between the two, there should exist an implied connection that is discernible to the reader. While the two poems can stand alone as well-crafted haiku, when paired together they offer a sens of opposition or express the dual nature of a subject.

Each time I deliver this lesson and assign the corresponding task, results vary. The majority of students can generate three unrhymed lines in a 5-7-5 syllable structure. Not all can write haiku that give pause for reflection on the image.  Often times the resulting poems are quite impressive, and my hopes are that some images will pop with evocative language this year, too.

Two Cardinal Pics & One Haiga

Cardinal on hanging planter of wave petunias. (6/16/13)

Sunday afternoon, while talking with my kids who had stopped by to wish me a Happy Father's Day, my son noticed this Northern Cardinal sitting in the planter outside the house. Fortunately that little guy stayed there for long enough for me to grab my camera and get outside to take pictures. My daughter later noted that it was "like he was posing for you!"

Often I'll use moments captured on film (or as digital images) as visual haiku prompts. In truth, when I employ this strategy, what I am writing can best be defined as a haiga. Haiga is a style of Japanese painting based on the aesthetics of haiku, and usually including a haiku. Today, haiga artists combine haiku with paintings, photographs and other art. A haiga (haiku + image, in my case, photographs). The wonderful thing about haiku is that whether what you generate is "good" or "bad" there is always something (a moment) "around" one to offer worthy inspiration.

Cardinal. (6/16/13)

Toes clutching chipped paint
trellis, Cardinal awaits
whatever comes next.

American Sentences Redux

Two examples shaped from my own freewriting in class.

Following our recent work with the traditional 5-7-5 haiku format (albeit with subject matter that was more reminiscent of a senryu), I decided to continue an exploration of compressed language forms by introducing my AP classes to a new, less well-known play on the 17 syllable poetic form, the American Sentence. A truly Western take on the Eastern haiku, this form originated by late Beat poet Allen Ginsberg.


"Publishing" student work from class chart paper drafts.

Ginsberg saw haiku, and the American sentence, as a means of compressing poetry to get "Maximum information" with "minimum number of syllables.” This compressed form allowed for the possibility that Ginsberg's notion that poets are people who notice what they notice could be accessible to everyone.

Though some of my students struggled with writing "good" haiku, I'm hoping that the more concrete, urban bent of the American Sentence will make for more lively, dynamic drafts. I have taught this form for nearly three years now with what I have felt have been pretty good results. The move from haiku to American sentence is a natural one. While still adhering to the 17 syllable standard of the traditional haiku, the imagery included in the American sentence is presented in a linear fashion reflective of the left-to-right reading of English as opposed to the top-to-bottom approach in Japanese haiku.

The process of crafting American sentence is one that lends itself to the existing management activities in my classroom. Students know to pick up their writing journals each day upon entering the classroom. Before even revealing the form, I ask them to freewrite about the lends itself easily to classroom writing process, beginning with a free write. This will give the writer the "clay" with which to shape their lines. The prompt is straightforward: In the next 6 minutes, relax, observe and capture via free write personal sense-based observations about the world around you (our classroom). Use as descriptive a language as you are capable. While it is not incumbent on you to use figurative language strategies, you may find that they come to you—write them down.

Following this journaling exercise, I introduced the class to the form more, well, formally. Based on my own research,  I suggested to the class that an exemplary product would include at least one of the following:

After sharing my own freewrite notes, and modelling the culling of a few possible images for further development into "popping" American sentences, I share the following quick-and-easy process for crafting their own:

As a ways of making the form more collaborative, I asked students to contribute to a chain of lines, by first writing two American Sentences, then selecting the one they felt best met the criteria (evocative, imagisitc, approximately 17 syllables in length). This activity was completed for each of my three Advanced Placement Language and Composition courses, resulting in three community  poems of 20+ lines apiece.

After sharing our class collaborative American Sentence Chain, I task each student with taking the activity home to their friends and families. Students were assigned to both explain this unique poetic form to their victims volunteers and facilitate each person's development of a unique, personal American sentence. The final 17 syllable (fingers-crossed) sentence,  was to then be added to the student's own American sentence chain.

Of course, if the syllable count varies slightly, that's "all good." The American sentence was the result of Ginsberg believing that haiku in the Western tradition placed too much emphasis on counting (syllables), at the expense of developing image. The goal, as with a haiku, is to communicate and image, and if you're luck (or good) evoke a response in the reader.

Haiku vs. Haiku... FIGHT!

Teacher examples of Dueling Haiku.

Yesterday in English Class, with AP Language and Composition exams in the rear view window and the upcoming English Regents 11 not posing much of a concern, I began working with my eleventh graders on first analysing, and then writing haiku. While students have been "taught" how to write haiku since kindergarten, I annually like to revisit the from with them, in hopes of sharing some new background information, or at least eliciting from them a poem or two that does not consist solely of seventeen syllables thoughtlessly puked out on a paper ten minutes prior to class.

Writing good haiku takes time. This is what I tell students who insist on the ease with which this particular form is mastered. The challenge here is to impress upon students that simply stringing together enough syllables in a familiar structure (5-7-5) does not mean one is "good" at writing them. Today in class we first started by reading four different haiku by different authors, including Basho.

It is important to remind students that the while the form they (and I) have been taught since childhood is "haiku," it is not purely haiku in the Eastern sense, but more of a Westernized "traditional" Haiku form. The basic rules are well-know: haiku are comprised of 17 syllables, arranged in 3 unrhymed lines of 5-7-5 syllables and the content should evoke or link to the natural world.

In order to mix things up slightly, rather than asking students to simply generate two haiku, I assigned them to develop two Dueling Haiku. A form I found online a number of years ago, a single Dueling Haiku consists of a pair of individual haiku that each focus or express forces, animals or seasons which can be seen as being in opposition to one another.

The use of the word "opposition" in the instructions can be confusing for students as there is no actual "conflict" or coordination between the two poems, only the potential for the reader to sense the opposing/contradictory/differing nature of the two forces, animals or moments. As I explain to the students, while there is no "shared DNA" between the two, there should exist an implied connection that is discernible to the reader. While the two poems can stand alone as well-crafted haiku, when paired together they offer a sens of opposition or express the dual nature of a subject.

At the top of this post are two examples of Dueling Haiku that I wrote and ultimately shared with the class.  Each time I deliver this lesson and assign the corresponding task, results vary. The majority of students can generate three unrhymed lines in a 5-7-5 syllable structure. Not all can write haiku that give pause for reflection on the image.  Often times the resulting poems are quite impressive, and my hopes are that this some images will pop with evocative language this year, too.

Raindrop Haiga

Backyard ornamental grass at 7:00 a.m., July 18, 2012.

Elusive rain drops
comfort limber blades--
respectful, gentle bows.

Gardening & Haiku-ing at Dawn

Left side: before, right side: after...

With the high heat and humidity of late, I have fallen into a groove of waking up at around 6:00 a.m., drinking a cup o' joe, and heading out to our yard to garden. At this point, most of my "gardening" consists of removing many of the plants that the previous owner had used as ground cover (such as columbines and daisies), but that instead, having been unchecked, over ran the garden beds. Each year my wife has attempted to manage this, but work and other activities have hindered her for doing so effectively. I, to this point, hadn't bothered to meaningfully participate. While helpful when directed to assist, I had not taken the initiative to address the gardens.

I am endeavoring to take of the time afforded me this summer break to do a full "clear cut." Perhaps because I am not teaching summer school this year I feel a deeper need to contribute, so this far this summer I have been busy, doing my best to establish a baseline "clear" for our garden beds before mulching and adding plants. You'll note from the image above that the grasses we planted a few summers ago needed to be pinned back so that I could get beneath their "plumage" to get at all the things requiring extraction. I know that this is all very rudimentary garden activity, but something about it is very exciting and appealing to me.

Friday morning, clearing columbine and daisies.

An unanticipated (and welcome) byproduct of my early morning routine is the inspirational fodder for the occasional haiku I pull from the time in the garden. For example, this morning I was inspired by the roots of a small, unattractive bush, that I extracted from beside our front steps

Exposed taproot tugged:
unearthed, fleshy brown hairs cling
to dirt clods like dreams.

Much like my gardening acumen, my haiku writing needs work, and I am glad to have the time to work with the soil and my words this summer.

Introducing American Sentences

"Publishing" student work from class chart paper drafts.

Following our recent success with the traditional 5-7-5 haiku format (albeit with subject matter that is more reminiscent of a senryu) as part of our Hallway Haiku, prior to Spring break, my classes and I embarked on an introduction to a new, less well-known play on the 17 syllable poetic form, the American Sentence. A truly Western take on the Eastern haiku, this form originated by late Beat poet Allen Ginsberg.

While still adhering to the 17 syllable standard of the traditional haiku, the imagery included in the American sentence is presented in a linear fashion reflective of the left-to-right reading of English as opposed to the top-to-bottom approach in Japanese haiku.

After taking 10 minutes to slow down, look around and capture via free write personal sense-based observations about the world around them (our classroom), I introduced the class to the form more, well, formally.

Based on some research,  I suggested to the class that an exemplary product would include at least one of the following:

• clear concrete images,
• juxtaposition (The arrangement of two or more ideas, characters, actions, settings, phrases, or words side-by-side or in similar narrative moments for the purpose of comparison, contrast, rhetorical effect, suspense, or character development.),
• found poetry (a type of poetry created by taking words, phrases, and sometimes whole passages from other sources and reframing them as poetry by making changes in spacing and/or lines, and consequently meaning),
• reflect a degree of "mindfulness,"
• be "compressed" (condensed) for maximum information, minimum number of syllables, and/or
• demotic speech (of or pertaining to the ordinary, everyday, current form of a language; vernacular).

As a ways of making the form more collaborative, I asked students to contribute to a chain of lines, by first writing two American Sentences, then selecting the one they felt best met the criteria (evocative, imagisitc, approximately 17 syllables in length). This activity was completed for each of my two Advanced Placement Language & Composition courses, resulting in two poems of 20+ lines apiece.

As seen in the picture above, I am currently in the process of publishing (word-processing) each classes collaborative American Sentence Chain and will posting them soon.

A Poetry Month Coloring Book Discovered!

While combing the stacks at one of my alternate comic book shopping locations I came across a coloring book, which is apparently based upon a popular children's title, from Arcana Publishing, A Cat Named Haiku. Written by Mark Poulton and illustrated by Dexter Weeks, the small (24 pages) book cost only $2.95, and as suggested by the genre, consists of simple wordless pictures of a cat, presumably named Haiku, engaged in silly cat-like activities.

At the time that I initially saw is coloring book, I was a little cash-strapped (validating buying so many comic books is difficult enough--explaining the purchase of a coloring book to my wife might not be so easy), so I did not purchase it, a decision I now regret.

The source material, with the same title, on which the coloring book is based chronicles Haiku's antics in the eponymous three line poetry--as a fan of the form (as well as its variations) I will be ordering have ordered from my local comic shop!

Poetry Found?

Do you see it? I didn't.

A celebration of National Poetry Month is in full swing at school. Between prepping the "release" of our Hallway Haiku Project signage after next week's Spring Break, and working on individual American sentences (that will later be combined into collaborative poems), one of the students in my Advanced Placement class made an interesting observation that further illustrated my premise for students that poetry really is everywhere. As trite as it may sound the exchange also created a "teachable moment," (groan!) during which some previously unknown (and truly "nice to know" in nature) information could be shared with my class.

As I circulated around the classroom offering assistance with syllable counting and image shaping, one lad prompted me to look carefully at the recently hung writing framework signage in the front of our classroom. The air was ripe with discussion and consideration of a variety of haiku formats, as well as "found poetry" (a form I explained to students--who had oddly never been exposed to it--by explaining about the 5-7-5 hand washing reminder I came across in the hospital men's room years ago), so it makes sense that the sharpest students would begin to apply their poetic mindset to their surroundings... and once again I was shown that the student quickly becomes the master.

Upon first glance at the aforementioned signage, I sincerely had little idea what I was intended to observe in the poster. "What does that sign look like?" the student prompted me once again.

Despite my having actually having been part of the committee that generated it, I had failed to notice (or clearly see) what my student had. Pointing to it again, he revealed, "It's got seventeen syllables like a haiku."

After congratulating the student for innately processing the syllable count (without clapping it) of he signage around him, I wondered aloud with the class whether or not that though the phrase "All evidence must be/supported with/details and analysis"  did indeed meet the strict syllable count requirement learned since kindergarten about what a haiku is... but was that enough to label it a haiku poem? Lacking a kigo or cutting word (or punctuation), it seemed clear that it was not a haiku in the strictest sense, but could it be presented as such with some syntax rearrangement or punctuation? The syllables (and words) could easily be set in a haiku 5-7-5 format, thusly:

All evidence must (5)
be supported with details (7)
and analysis. (5)

While a traditional image is absent, this found poem might better fit under the "heading" of a senyru rather than haiku (senryū is a Japanese form of short poetry similar to haiku in construction that tends to be about human foibles rather than nature, and are often cynical or darkly humorous than the more  serious haiku. Senryū also do not include a  cutting word, and do not generally include a kigo, or season word.) There are few things more cynically received than a new writing framework shared to a group of educators comfortable with an existing state.

Now, that's getting really Zen...

Piecing Together The Hallway Haiku Project

While it has been a few weeks since I first posted regarding the Hallway Haiku Project my English 11 classes and I had been involved in, I have not forgotten about them. To their credit, as you'll read, neither have the students. Prior to our ten day Winter Recess, which ended today, the classes and I had continued honing our "products," ultimately selecting a "final four" of sorts: the four haiku from a total of roughly 240 generated by the classes, which represented (given specific criteria) what we had hoped to communicate to the school as a whole

As anyone who is involved in the democratic process on any level will attest, the "winner" is not always the "best," and with this in mind, prior to the break we took the activity to the next level, from both the linguistic to the visual, and from the group to the personal. I hoped to give them a chance to work with both the final four, like the one to the left ("Life is a puzzle,/pieces not always fitting,/ sometimes that's better."), as well as one of their own haiku which had not been selected to move on in our "Haiku Survivor" contest, but to them had a kernel of merit worth revisiting.

The task was as follows: each student was assigned one of the four (4) hallway haiku that had made the cut based on individual group (hello, oxymoron!) consensus. With the haiku as a part of the visual, students then had to use either Microsoft Publisher or Word, to draft a visual representation to go along with the assigned haiku. The result would be a hallway sign of sorts, communicating on both linguistic and visual levels. Students were told that the visuals, or signs, should be easily interpreted.

The follow-up activity was to then revise (if necessary) one of their haiku and do the same for that. In the case of both the finalists and their own haiku I invited students to play with punctuation use (dashes, commas, periods) to see if they could tweak the meaning of lines by doing so.

The results were even better than expected on both fronts. The graphics developed by the students represented a wide range of interpretations and it was interesting to see what each brought to the visual table when considering a common series of words, in this case a haiku. As one could fairly expect, there were common motifs or symbols employed, especially when the haiku itself suggested one (such as the puzzle to the upper left). It was also nice to see the ownership not only the works produced collaboratively with an unnamed poet, but with the pieces they were given the opportunity to revisit.

This morning in class, one student inquired as to whether or not we would be returning to the hallway haiku project now that break had concluded, and actually get to hang some of the haiku up in the hallway. As I told her, that is the next step...

Resolution One

res·o·lu·tion [rez-uh-loo-shuhn] (noun) the act of resolving or determining upon an action or course of action, method, procedure, etc.

It's that time of year (uh... the end, that is), and in addition to celebrating (followed by a period of decompressing from) the December holidays, folks are coming up with lists of favorites and New Year's resolutions. I, too, am jumping in with both feet as far as the whole resolution-thing goes. Like most I have both a few things I hope to accomplish throughout 2012--or even for the first few months of the new calendar year--and many more things I should do to be a better "fill-in-the-role-here." The simplest way for me to break down my resolutions so as to not end up with a gigantic to-do list is to break it into two or three parts, each intended to focus on and develop a seemingly different facet of myself--but in truth all contributing to my holistic well being. First up, a little something for my mind...



Finally found a place to post a pic of our Christmas Tree.

This morning as I was trolling through the National Public Radio website (a boundless source of inspiration, I might add), I came across the article A Poem A Day: Portable, Peaceful And Perfect by Alan Heathcock While Mr. Heathcock's resolution to "manage a minute or two for the words," is an excellent one, I'm just extending it a tiny bit further by setting forth my intention to write a poem a day. Let me clarify a little: by "a poem a day" I do NOT mean something on the scale of Dante's Inferno, but something more manageable like a smaller form (think haiku, senyru or tanka) each day. Also, "writing" seems too final a term for my tastes, so I'm more likely to be drafting or crafting a poem each day--this process in and of itself could take anywhere from 10 to 60 minutes. So there it is, Resolution 1: "I will write one poem a day."

But, things change.. While Resolution 1 is intended to help sharpen my thinking (brain), it might also help me in some other areas as well. This idea was further reinforced by an interview I recently came across on Tricycle.com, Haiku Mind: An Interview With Clark Strand. In this interview, Strand equates the practice of writing haiku to meditation, "But haiku is very, very simple. In the same way that you make yourself very simple by following the breath. You clear your mind, let go of everything else. In the same way, writing haiku takes you right to the heart of the moment," evening defining it as a practice unto itself. Though I have at different point committed to varying degrees of meditative sitting, I like the idea (which is not really all that new) of using seemingly common activities and engaging them in a way that is at once meaningless and meaningful. So what was initially intended as a means of sharpening my thinking (mind) might also be of value in calming by spirit, a discipline that is always worth polishing.

After considering Strand's interview, I've slightly modified my resolution. The new and improved  Resolution 1 is: "I will embrace the practice of crafting one poem a day." In the interest of  getting into it, here is the haiku I wrote yesterday (whcih was actually "today" when I starte ddrafting this post:

Bags stuffed with write-offs:
relieved floor boards sigh, freed from
weight of useless things.

Now only 365 days to go!

Hallway Haiku Project: Process & Model

A few weeks ago on Facebook my "friend" Scott Simon of NPR posted a story about his interview with activist/artist John Morse entitled Haiku Traffic Signs Bring Poetry To NYC Streets. Fascinated by the combination of poetry and visual representation, I set about developing a series of relatively quick activities I could work through with my Advanced Placement students. The intent was to have the activities culminate in the development of Hallway Haiku signs that could (depending on the quality of the final product) be posted throughout our school building--or at he very least the classroom.

First students were asked to write in their Writing journals about issues of importance to high school students and to suggest advice to be shared with peers in addressing these issues. This was followed by a quick consideration of the elements of classic haiku through the reading and analysis of traditional examples of the form written by form luminaries like Basho.

The following class, we took both activities and synthesized them into the writing of re-purposed haiku (really more of a senyru as the kigo, or seasonal word was unnecessary) intended to both evoke an image and to communicate a message or idea of value to the student's peers (high schoolers). This resulted in roughly 240 individual haiku (four by each of the sixty students).

The next two classes we dedicated time for peer reviewing and consensus building the 240 down to five. These will next be assigned to students for both revision (some punctuation placement may yield different meanings) and development of accompanying visuals. I still think some better options have been passed up via our student group consensus building, so I may allow a way for previously "rejected" finalists to find their way back in (sort of a poetry Redemption Island).

This morning I spent a little time (okay, really about an hour), revising a previously submitted, and ultimately rejected, draft with the purpose of using it to make a sample sign for sharing in class on Tuesday. The original hallway haiku was as follows: Urgent pencil strokes/tap-tap-tap of lead like rain,/still thoughts pool. This was actually an "exemplar" that had made it through but did NOT meet the 5-7-5 criteria, and so I set about revising it to meet the traditional form. I also realized that there really isn't lead in pencils anymore, so I sought to take that into consideration while playing with the language. A short time later I came up with: Shhh! Urgent pencils/move, tappety-tap of tips/like rain—still thoughts pool. I'm a fan of onomatopoeia and alliteration so figured "what the hey." While students will have Microsoft Publisher at their disposal at school, I was limited to Microsoft Word and online free clip art to make my model, posted to the left.

This week, we will proceed to the next phase and see what develops...

Haiku in the Machine

Accepting the convenience of modern technology, the author succumbs to the use of his cellphone to "write."

This past Thursday at practice, while the girls team was completing their dynamic stretching/form drills, I was struck by an image. While the image itself was not "earth shattering," I thought enough of it to write it down. Normally, I carry a small spiral bound notebook in my breast pocket, or in the front of my hoodie, for just such occasions, but on that day I left it at home on my desk. Reaching my hand in my pocket, I realized that I had my cell phone. It was then that it occurred to me (as it has to 10 gazillion other folks already) that there might be a notepad function on the fun that I could use and--wallah!--there was.

Though it was just a very rough draft, and something that though I reworked it for about 30 minutes on the word-processor when I returned home after practice (and eventually posted in a from closer to it's orgginal one on my Twitter feed to the right of this post), I had conflicting feelings about the process. The experience of using my cellphone to do this was both satisfying (quick, easy, no worry about poor handwriting) and sad, mostly because I had been a proponent of not losing the skill of using "manual" tech in favor of easy electronic ones.

I suppose you can now count me among those hypocritical psuedo-luddites who both decry modern technology while simultaneously embracing the parts of it that ease their own lives.

Run-ku

A haiku inspired byg this morning's dewy run:

street drains of leaf piles--
reward the rambling with damp,
soft ankle kisses.

Breathe in, breathe out… YOU AND I ARE ALIVE!

Fruit-ku

A post-work week snack haiku crafted on the ride home:

crunch of tooth breaking
taut apple skin over soft
flesh, tart to taste--YUM!

Breathe in, breathe out… YOU AND I ARE ALIVE!

Haik-roo, Too

Not much running going on these past few days, but sitting at the kitchen table after work yesterday, greeting our dog Gracie "good evening," I was inspired to craft a haik-roo:

puppy licking beard:
a hint of genuine love
or lunch residue?

Breathe in, breathe out… YOU AND I ARE ALIVE!

"Tornado Warning" Haiku

rat-a-tat-tat rain,
a brimming gutter deluge--
the weeds need love, too.

Breathe in, breathe out… YOU AND I ARE ALIVE!

A Ducky Run-ku

by the narrow path--
hissing geese waddle and warn,
"watch out for goslings!"
Written this morning following an early, rainy run which took me through Ellison Park and along the familiar gravel trails of the Erie Canal Trailway.