a place to watch

February 10, 2007 11:36 PM

Horses eat a lot / prances in the lovely field / They are beautiful.
Pandas eat bamboo / All pandas live in Japan / Pandas are harmless.
CAT'S sit and lay down / CAT's are big and fluffy / My cat is a Maine coon / I'm chasing my cat.

The assorted haiku of Bloomfield Elementary School in Skowhegan, Maine.
posted by four panels (34 comments total)

I'm smarter than those kids.
posted by jonson at 11:55 PM on February 10, 2007

I am better than your kids.
posted by scodger at 12:00 AM on February 11, 2007

Don't they have a teacher around to remove those offensive and unnecessary apostrophes?
posted by Autumn Dandy at 12:03 AM on February 11, 2007 [1 favorite]

JesuitMaximFilter: I'm still bitter that two poems I wrote at age 7 were not printed in a collection of kids' poetry I submitted them to back then. They were much better than a lot of junk that got in.
posted by Kattullus at 12:09 AM on February 11, 2007

bob the angry flower is rolling in his soil.
posted by clyde at 12:21 AM on February 11, 2007

Let's hope these kids never meet a real panda.
posted by null terminated at 1:18 AM on February 11, 2007

You smell like snowboots
In winter, while trying haiku.
Don't quit your day job.
posted by bicyclefish at 1:40 AM on February 11, 2007

dogs snakes panda deer,
dogs snakes panda deer horses
dogs snakes panda deer.
posted by sourwookie at 2:10 AM on February 11, 2007

Oops, screwed up:

dogs snakes panda deer,
dogs snakes panda deer horses
cherry blossoms fall.
posted by sourwookie at 2:11 AM on February 11, 2007

IM IN UR HAIKU
DOIN IT WRONG
posted by pruner at 2:29 AM on February 11, 2007

Aren't haikus supposed to include something about seasons or nature?
posted by bob sarabia at 2:34 AM on February 11, 2007

Aren't haikus supposed to include something about seasons or nature?

yes... that's why sourwookie corrected his.
posted by pruner at 2:36 AM on February 11, 2007

"Aren't haikus supposed to include something about seasons or nature?"

Perhaps, but the word "haiku" definitely should not be pluralized with an s . The s is unecessary.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 2:38 AM on February 11, 2007

I bet you say "formulae" as well.

For me, Fall stands head and shoulders above the rest in that collection.
posted by chrismear at 3:24 AM on February 11, 2007

I bet you say "formulae" as well.

What? You talking to me? I've never said "formulae", actually. Never had occasion to use the word aloud, I suppose. Never really thought about it. But now that I think about it, yeah, if I ever need to use the word, I'll say "formulae". Thanks!
posted by flapjax at midnite at 3:43 AM on February 11, 2007

So it's come to this
Metafilter's winter:
The poems of kids
posted by DenOfSizer at 3:52 AM on February 11, 2007

Pandas eat bamboo / All pandas live in Japan / Pandas are harmless.

Kids are idiots.
posted by dydecker at 3:55 AM on February 11, 2007

i like child haiku
even though it's often dumb
cherry blossoms fall
posted by sdn at 6:09 AM on February 11, 2007

man visits doctor
"I eat SPAM daily," says he
angioplasty
posted by Foosnark at 7:19 AM on February 11, 2007

Haikus are easy
But sometimes they don't make sense
Refrigerator
posted by danb at 7:52 AM on February 11, 2007 [4 favorites]

Pandas in Japan?
What are they learning in school?
I mean, WTF?
posted by illiad at 8:24 AM on February 11, 2007

Aren't haikus played out?
They used to be kinda cool
but now they're just meh.
posted by pdb at 8:44 AM on February 11, 2007

Look how cool we are
picking on some little kids'
poetry. (Winter.)
posted by I Am Not a Lobster at 9:01 AM on February 11, 2007

Dogs are very nice
Sometimes dogs are very hyper
Dogs are very cool.

Your astute observations
are somewhat ruined
by your overuse of 'very'. C-
posted by dydecker at 9:16 AM on February 11, 2007

Frederick J. Frenger Jr.: [making up haikus as he robs a neighbor appartment] Thinking he is alone... breaking, entering... the dark and lonely place-places...
[finds gun under mattress]
Frederick J. Frenger Jr.: ... finding a... *big gun*...
[opens fridge and steals some pork chops]
Frederick J. Frenger Jr.: ... smelling like a rose.
posted by Astro Zombie at 9:21 AM on February 11, 2007

dagosan's Haiku Primer:

In fact, Japanese poets do not count "syllables" at all. Rather, they count "onji." The Japanese word onji does not mean "syllable," it means "sound symbol," and refers to one of the phonetic characters used in writing Japanese phonetic script. Onji are very uniform in length and duration (unlike English syllables -- compare "on" and "wrought"). Onji are also, on average, quite a bit shorter than English syllables, as onji can have no more than one consonant, and long vowels count for two onji. In addition, haiku contain "cutting-words" or kireji that divide a stanza and indicate a pause; they are like sounded punctuation and are counted as onji. Therefore, the fact that virtually all classical Japanese haiku consist of 17 onji in three parts of 5-7-5 onji each does not easily "translate" into an analogous English form 17 using syllables.

posted by monju_bosatsu at 10:16 AM on February 11, 2007

monju_bosatsu: Yes, there is no way to move a poetic form from language to language and keep it exactly the same, even very similar tongues. Which is why, for instance, there are differing sonnet traditions in every European language (that I know of). When it comes to the sonnet we've reached the point where the sonnet can be defined as a poem of fourteen lines that is about love, which certainly isn't how Petrarcha understood it.

Thus, we have the Western haiku, which is a three line poem where the first and third lines are 5 syllables and the second 7 syllables long. For a while it looked like the seasonal aspect of haiku would disappear from the Western aspect of the form, but, fortuitously I think, it seems to be making a strong comeback.

I'm hoping the tanka follows suit and enters the Western mass consciousness, but I'm not holding my breath. I have no hope for the renga, as lovely as it is.
posted by Kattullus at 11:11 AM on February 11, 2007

Pandas are harmless. Until they rip your freakin' face off.

Do not mess with the pandas.
posted by five fresh fish at 12:06 PM on February 11, 2007

Ah, spam haiku.

I feel almost ashamed to admit it, but I wrote over 800 of those.

A bulge in my jeans
"Is that SPAM in your pocket?"
I blush and say "Yes"
posted by tomble at 3:49 PM on February 11, 2007

Oh yes, I meant to mention. I got a number of spam haiku printed in the book, and received a pretty healthy payment for them (thank you favourable currency exchange rates)

This pissed off my friend, a serious poet, who struggled to get anything in print, let alone get paid for it.
posted by tomble at 3:52 PM on February 11, 2007

There once was a poet from Osaka
Whose audience thought he was wack-a
He tried with a sonnet
It made 'em all vomit
And all his haikus were just caca
posted by arto at 3:56 PM on February 11, 2007

(However, I wish more poets started with a line like "Snakes are very cool.")
posted by arto at 3:58 PM on February 11, 2007

I don't like Haiku. You just get started writing, aand then it's over
posted by Bonzai at 1:22 PM on February 12, 2007 [1 favorite]

counting syllables
feels like creativity
but it's not really.

- Dan Kaufman
posted by thekilgore at 2:11 PM on February 14, 2007