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September 3, 2010

Poetry Friday--Kipling Wrote Haiku?


No, of course, he didn't, but there is yet another crazy internet site, Hiddenhaiku.com, which creates fake haiku--this one takes sentences from the works of famous writers, like Kipling, and divides them into three lines of 5-7-5 syllables. Here's an example of a Dickens "haiku" from A Christmas Carol:
It was clothed in one
simple green robe, or mantle,
bordered with white fur.
And another from Lewis Carroll (can you guess the source?):
It's the stupidest
tea-party I ever was
at in all my life!
And a third from Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson:
And then, all of a
sudden, a shrill voice broke forth
out of the darkness
Always one to look on the bright side of things, even things that annoy the hell out of me, I decided to make some use of these fake haiku. For instance, the one from Dickens, I used as a prompt that resulted in:
october snow--
the white cat not white
for long
Carroll's morphed into:
the three-year-old
offers a bottle cap cup...
mud puddle tea
And Stevenson's I re-imagined as:
the dream ends
with a shrieking jay
...summer dawn

© Diane Mayr, all rights reserved
Hey, they ain't great, but I think it's safe to say they're closer to haiku than the originals!

Visit Susan Taylor Brown for this week's Poetry Friday Round-Up.

And by the way, the book I tucked under Kipling's arm is Jane Reichhold's Writing and Enjoying Haiku: A Hands-On Guide (Kodansha, 2003).

4 comments:

  1. Fake haiku...why bother?!?!? I like yours MUCH better!

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  2. My point exactly! But, every week I come across some new computer generated haiku-maker! Why? I don't think programmers are out to aggravate me--they must think there's an audience for this sh*t. There's no accounting for the general public's tastes!

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  3. oh and one of our CKK writers has a blog of songku

    http://songsinhaiku.blogspot.com/

    have a nice weekend; much love
    gillena

    ReplyDelete
  4. Thanks for the link, Gillena, I'll check it out.

    ReplyDelete