Spine Haiku: Nature or Blackmail?

Not that I'm slow on the uptake or anything, but it just dawned on me today that another reason my spine haiku are good to share is that you also get to see some of the crime fiction sitting on my to-be-read shelves.

I have two spine haiku to share with you today. One has a strong hint of the natural world, as many haiku do, but the second seems to contain just a bit of... blackmail. You'll see what I mean!

#1

Endymion Spring

The Scent of Rain and Lightning

Water Touching Stone

#2

Ordinary Grace.

Sins of a Shaker Summer...

Does Your Mother Know?

So... which do you prefer? Nature or blackmail? Inquiring poets would love to know!

Spine Haiku: Variations on an Ending

You'd never know it to take a look at this blog, but I love poetry. It's a love that came to me while I was in college because nothing much was said or done about that art form while I was in high school. During those university years, I had a full-blown love affair, especially with the English Romantics and Victorians, and with Robert Frost and Emily Dickinson.

It was probably Emily Dickinson's style that led me to the Japanese form of haiku: a three-line poem consisting of lines of five, seven, and five syllables. Haiku normally are fleeting glimpses of nature, but since they are the only sort of poem that I've ever been able to write, I've bent the rules a time or two. That's why I decided to bend them for National Poetry Month.

I've seen posts on book blogs over the years showing "spine poetry," in which bloggers have made poems from the titles showing on spines of books. That's always appealed to me. This year I decided to do a little spine poetry of my own, but I always have to play around with the rules. The two rules I added are: (1) the "spines" would be from my crime fiction to-be-read shelves, and (2) the poems would all be haiku.

It didn't take me long to find two books that just seemed to fit together. The problem was that I found four different endings. I'm going to show them all to you and let you choose your favorite. How's that?

#1

The Boy in the Snow

Started Early, Took My Dog.

Death Lurks in the Bush.

#2

The Boy in the Snow

Started Early, Took My Dog...

Going Nowhere Fast.

#3

The Boy in the Snow

Started Early, Took My Dog...

Death in the Dark Walk.

#4

The Boy in the Snow

Started Early, Took My Dog...

Faces of the Gone.

They all turned out a bit foreboding, didn't they? Which one do you prefer-- 1, 2, 3, or 4?  Inquiring spine haiku poets would love to know!

Redneck Haiku by Mary K. Witte

Title: Redneck Haiku
Author: Mary K. Witte
ISBN: 1891661299
Publisher: Santa Monica Press, 2003
Paperback, 112 pages
Genre: Poetry, Humor
Rating: B-
Source: purchased from Amazon.

Japanese haiku is one of my favorite forms of poetry, each haiku consisting of three lines and seventeen syllables. In this small volume, Witte covers just about every aspect of the redneck lifestyle. One that made me smile was:

Wanda's new wind chime
made of kitchen utensils
she seldom uses.

It does an excellent job of describing me! As the pages turned, I'm afraid that it became a bit of a one-trick pony for me. Redneck humor can be very silly and funny, but it can pall quickly if you're not careful.

Would I buy Witte's second volume of redneck haiku? No, but I did enjoy reading this one.

Buy from Amazon.
Buy from The Book Depository.
Buy from an Indie Bookseller.

Northwest Rainforest Pioneers: Narratives and Photography

Title: Northwest Rainforest Pioneers: Narratives and Photography
Author: Claudia Harper
ISBN: 1571883452/ Frank Amato Publications, 2004
Genre: Poetry, Photography
Rating: DNF

I did not realize from the book's description at Paperback Swap that this is a collection of the author's narrative poems and photography. If I had, I would not have ordered it. My success rate is rather hit or miss with this type of book, and I always want to base a reading decision upon physically seeing the book and going through its pages.

I barely started reading when I knew that I was not going to finish. I love poetry and photography, but I'm very subjective about both. Harper's narrative poems just didn't "grab" me, and I didn't care for her photographic technique.

In a case like this, I feel as though I should create a new rating category: NMC--"not my cuppa". NMC would mean that I made an entirely subjective judgment call in not finishing the book, and that my decision should not be taken into consideration if you're deciding whether or not to read this book!

Saturday Soliloquy-- Learning to Love the Language

Today my mind is still on those seminal books of my childhood which I still own. I will never willingly part with them. Almost all of these cherished books deal with various forms of nature that I showed a fascination with quite early in life. Most of them do, but not all.

There is one book in particular that isn't a nature guide book. It is a small, tattered, cloth-covered volume of poems. More than any other single tome, this old book bred in me a love of the English language and the miraculous ways that words can be put together to create beauty. It also fostered a belief in me of the power of old things to be beautiful, to touch the spirit, and to teach the soul.

I can still remember the day I ran across this well-worn little book. When I was a child, my grandparents began collecting antiques. They would go to estate sales, and it wasn't unusual for them to come home with box lots of items, go through the contents, keep what they wanted and discard the rest. My grandmother had just finished going through a large box of items, and I found this on the discard pile:


Perhaps it's because I want you to fall in love with this book as I did, but I sincerely hope that you'll click on the photos to view them full size so you can catch all the detail. When I saw this unwanted book, I was immediately drawn to it. The gold in the lettering and on the daisies softly glowed in the sunlight. Even at that age, I loved flowers, and I wanted to know what a "garden of verses" was. I opened it.




"Copyright Boston, 1898"...even as a child in the early 1960s, I felt that Boston and the year 1898 were far away and long ago-- both things that made the book even more special. And look! There were more daisies etched in gold! My grandmother looked over to see what I was doing. Obviously the look on my face told her something because she said, "If you like that book, you can have it." After a big smile and an even bigger "Thank you!", I was off with my newly-discovered treasure.

I sat down on the bench beneath the shade of a blossoming magnolia tree and looked at the goldfish swimming in the pools for a moment before opening the book again. Once I started to read, I was lost to everything around me. Robert Louis Stevenson's words flowed together in a way that I'd never seen before. I tried some of the lines aloud and smiled. I loved the way they sounded. And the things he talked about! When I was a child, I battled many an illness. What child who'd ever been sick could not read and identify with

When I was sick and lay a-bed,
I had two pillows at my head,
And all my toys beside me lay
To keep me happy all the day

from The Land of Counterpane? Or this one that reminded me of my favorite playground activity?

How do you like to go up in a swing,
Up in the air so blue?
Oh! I do think it the pleasantest thing
Ever a child can do!

Mr. Stevenson even seemed to have dreams like I did, at least it looked that way when I devoured The Land of Nod:




That one little tattered book began my lifelong love of poetry and of language. As a child, I knew nothing of rhyme, meter or form. I just knew what sounded right, and which poems seemed charged with light and power and emotion. Poetry to me has always seemed prose stripped to its essence, full of imagery and feeling. Daisies From A Child's Garden of Verses was the beginning of all this for me. This book is what made me begin to learn to love the language.

Over the years, I've moved on from Robert Louis Stevenson's verses for children. Emily Dickinson, Pablo Neruda, and Robert Frost are just three of the poets who make the hair on the back of my neck rise. But Robert Louis Stevenson will always own a very special place in my heart.

What about you? Are books more than stories to be told or characters to enjoy? Does the perfect combination of words on a page make your heart sing? What are the books that began your lifelong love affair with language?