Poetry Emergency Department

This is a thread for advice on writing poetry, be it solicited or unsolicited. Especially unsolicited.

If ever you encounter someone butchering verse in another thread, feel free to call them out here and tell them what is wrong with it, and how to fix it.

This is far more common than you would think.

Speaking of...

Yeah, Snake, at this point I am entrely unconvinced that you know what either a haiku or a syllable is. Good thing the Poetry Doctor is in the house, because you need to be rushed into the E.D.! (E.R. if you are a yank.)


First off, to at least satisfy the form of a haiku, it should consist of three lines, consisting of five syllables, seven syllables and five syllables. (Not 5-9-5)

There are other conventions, like seasonal imagery, and a juxtaposition of ideas, but I'm not really qualified to comment on those, and they are usually ignored in Western haiku anyway.

A syllable is a part of a word consisting of one vowel sound. It can have no consonants, have consonants on one end, or be bracketed by consonants. They can also be spelled with multiple vowels, if some are silent, or combined. (as in "cake" and "tool" respectively)

The reason I am telling you this is because your haiku did not actually come close to meeting the 5-9-5 format you were mistakenly aiming for, but had 7-10-6. (Or 7-11-6, depending on pronunciation. I think some people say it "ev-er-y-one".) That you thought this correct suggests to me that you have difficulties identifying syllables.

Let's break it down:
[I] [did] [Na] [zi] [that] [Co] [ming] 7 syllables
[Ev] [ry] [one] [re] [pos] [ting] [the] [same] [non] [sense] 10 syllables
[Snake] [is] [a] [shit] [pos] [ter] 6 syllables

Contrariwise, this is the syllable breakdown of a properly-formed haiku.
[I] [do] [not] [know] [why], 5 syllables
[Snake] [keeps] [on] [a] [ping] [hai] [ku], 7 syllables
[He] [fucks] [them] [all] [up] 5 syllables

Does that at all help you see the problem?



I should probably point out, mostly for strangers to High Noon, that I am doing this because I would actually enjoy your poetic outbursts if they did not annoy me by being so malformed.

 

Maybe the problem is that I play the syllables by ear and I'm mispronouncing the words because of my local dialect instead of going online to check if I got right?

 

Well, that's easy enough to check.

Could you lay out where the syllable breaks are in your dialect?

 

Technically, Western Haiku and Japanese Haiku are slightly different, since the actual word is not syllable, but some irritating term that is only sometimes lined up with a syllable based off of Japanese pronunciation.

But accepted Western form is 5-7-5

 

Dream away in ash/
Lost scents of moist grass and kin/
Prison made of grief.

EDITED.

 

Have you had a death in the family?

I quite like it. It has quite strong imagery, and flows well.

The second line is one to two syllables too long, but the structure is really less important than the content. (If you wish, you could remedy it by switching "family" to "kin".)


But excellent work, Snake. You have outdone yourself.

 

I'm going though some troubles, but my family is fine.

Already edited.

Thanks.

 

Blind near fields of wan/
Awake to find a burnt canvas/
Lost my way by the lake.

 

Numb, with defeat and past decay/
Crippled by lost repetition/
The door is closed, cold.

 

artistic license!/
scream out "Fuck the word of god"/
Canon, a fool's dream.

edited

 

Perhaps "Canon, a fool's dream" for the last line, to bring it down to five syllables.

 

Thinking on new verses/
Damned aches and fears hold my pen/
Time wasted and useless.

 

One out of three ain't bad is better than nothing.

What you have there is a 6/7/6, at least as far as I am standing.

As for fixes, "Pond'ring new verses" would seem the most obvious fix. If explicitly tweaking the pronunciation to fit the form is good enough for the immortal bard, it's good enough for you.

Alternatively, "Thinking on new verse" would also work.

As for the final line, perhaps "Time, wasted in vain"?

I would be curious to see a breakdown of where you put the syllable breaks on one of these in your accent. I can't really picture* what an accent that makes your haiku have the right syllables would sound like.

Here's me saying it in mine, followed by a breakdown of the syllables.

*as odd a word as that is for a sound. -_-

 

Well i messed up with verses because i got careless and i say useless too fast to break it down into the normal syllables.

but thanks

maybe i should try a different style that leta me use more words?

 

Could be.

I mean, most poetry beyond the freeform stuff has some form of restriction, rhyme, meter, structure, etc., so it may not be as easy as you hope.

branching out would Probably help you, though.