THREE MONOKU (one-line haiku) by Patricia Kelly (Roswila)

you speak the wind rides a palm in the blue sky


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waves breaking a sliver of silence


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a murder of crows flying the gibbous day moon


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Dates written: 3-26-09, 3-11-09, 12-10-08. (The second and third above appeared in the 2009 & 2010 Anthology of the Haiku Study Group of Southern California, respectively.) It's been some time since I've posted any haiku of mine (i.e, not dreamku, which are dream-based and kissing cousins of haiku). And I suppose to many folk the three above are also not haiku. However, the monoku form meets all the usual criteria for haiku in the West except for the three lines of seventeen syllables. The monoku form has two distinct sections that contrast or compare with each other (created by the stop word [kireji]), i.e. it's not one complete sentence, and so on. For those still using a season word (kigo), it will have one as well. A "happy accident" the one line form seems to make happen more readily in the writing than in three line haiku, is a point at which the two sections can be read two different ways. At least in my own experience. Though that hinge does not always happen for me, it does somewhat in the three above. However, in mine here it could just be seen as the reader's hesitation as s/he determines how to understand what the monoku is saying. I'm always learning about the subtleties of various writing forms and have my own hesitations in teaching about them. I will only add that to me the monoku form nicely echos the way ancient Japanese haiku were written in one vertical line in Japanese characters (kanji). Photo "Dusting Off the Day" by Roswila.

PLEASE NOTE that in most browsers you can click on the above image for a larger version. Also, that the photo accompanying a daily dream poem or non-dream based poem is not necessarily meant to illustrate it, but to reflect some small, even slant aspect of the verse -- similar to Japanese haiga (illustrated haiku). I've also recently realized that although the dreamku (i.e. dream based poems) posted here tend not to have metaphor or simile, the accompanying photos almost always act as such. And to write a metaphor or simile into a dream scenario is something I rarely do. It can be confusing: did it really look like a hand, say, in the dream, or am I just being poetic to make my conscious point? As these dreamku act as a dream journal, my over-riding tendency is to try to stay close to the actual dream scenario itself. Admittedly making for a tendency to less "poetic" dreamku. Then why pay attention to any haiku, tanka, or monoku parameters at all when writing about my dreams? Because I find in even attempting to adhere to them I'm making choices that relieve my dream recall of a great deal of chatter so that I can get down to some important dream aspects. Here's a link to THE AREN'TS OF DREAMKU & ACCOMPANYING PHOTOS in which I go into some of the basic parameters for dreamku and the photos chosen to go with them (and with any non-dream based poems I post here, as well).

The archives in the sidebar hold years of the daily dreamku, tanka, monoku and photo posts I've made, grouped in one post by month. As I no longer post dreamku (or non-dream based poems) strictly daily, each post will appear below and then in the archives by the day on which it was posted.

There are many other sorts of posts here, not all dream-based. I indicate which are about or influenced by dreams. Some non-dream focused posts are book reviews, "regular" poems (some by other writers than myself), scifaiku, writing exercises, Tarot haiku, photos, haiga, and so on. However, most of those are in much older posts. There's a listing by month going back to early 2006, at the end of the sidebar.

Click here for a more in-depth INTRODUCTION.

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‘til next time, keep dreaming,

[aka: Patricia Kelly]
**** If you wish to copy or use any of my writing or poems, please email me for permission (under “View my complete profile”) **** My other blogs: ROSWILA’S TAROT GALLERY & JOURNAL; ROSWILA’S TAIGA TAROT; and OPENING TO THE LIGHT ****