Haiku

So, my school is an arts integration school.  Or at least, it's one in theory.  We've been told a lot of things about AI, and we've been to a lot of meetings about it, but there has been very little in the way of specific, helpful training that really makes me feel comfortable with integrating art effectively.

Because of that, I have a tendency to fall back on the only art form that I know well: writing.  Maybe that's not what they're looking for, and maybe the kids don't want to write, but it's the thing I know best.  So, suck it up, kids.

Last month, we wrote children's books about cells.  They learned about basic organelles and then analyzed kindergarten-level books, studying the form and patterns of that genre.  As a bonus, they got a little experience with technology and rubric-reading in the process.

This week, we studied eco-interference and haikus.

Personally, I've never much appreciated the haiku form.  It seems to be overused in classrooms, and it often results in a jumble of words chosen precisely for syllabic quantity and not for any kind of cohesive meaning.  Basically, they're a bunch of semi-related words and phrases split into three lines.

Case in point, this haiku I found in a quick google search:

Leaves changing color
Pumpkin pie, apple cider
Visions of autumn

What kind of bullshit nonsense is that?  I'll tell you what: the kind of bullshit nonsense you write when you just need to get 17 syllables on a page because somebody made you.

But the beauty of teaching writing and science simultaneously is that I'm getting content knowledge from students, and I'm exposing them to this art form that I love and know a lot about.  One student walked up to me the other day when I was reading their poems and giving them suggestions, and she said: "Here's my haiku, but it's bad.  I'm not very good at poetry."  I looked at her and laughed, "I studied poetry for three years straight, and I'm not that good at it, either.  But the great thing about being bad at poetry is that you can only get better!"

Several other students echoed the same self-doubt.  When I told the class today that we'd keep revising our haikus, one student blurted out, "Aww, man!  Haikus are hard!" At which point, I felt like I'd really done my job.  Because nobody ever says haikus are hard.  When done wrong, they're easier than bad rhyming poetry.  But done right, they're nuanced.  The syllabic format of 5/7/5 becomes challenging, and the additional parameters of the traditional haiku (a moment in time, usually a single sentence or thought; includes a metaphorical or syntactic break/shift between two of the lines), those parameters require you to really think about what you're writing.  They require you to show not tell (as my writing teachers always liked to say).

Now, let me step off this pedestal I've created for my haiku instruction to admit that I didn't do the art form and its history nearly the justice it probably deserves.  I got most of my information from a single, unverified website, and even that gave more instructions than I put on the kids.  For example, a traditional haiku usually references the season in some way (for example, mentioning a kind of plant to denote a specific season).  But hey, one step at a time, right?

We're not done with our haikus yet, but the poems have actually turned out pretty well.  Poetry that started off pretty dependent on the "tell" ended up closer to "show," and many students figured out that they could create a poem worth displaying fairly easily.  They weren't always great at accepting criticism--a few looked surprised that I didn't automatically tell them that their poem was perfect--but that's part of learning to write, as well.

I wish I had taken pictures of the original poems some of them had written.  Here's an original that I've tried my best to recreate from memory:

Noise Pollution

Don't honk your car horns.
Avoid using leaf blowers.
Increasing heart rate.


It read like a textbook.  Or likes notes on content from a textbook.  So I made two suggestions.  Suggestion 1: No more than one sentence.  Suggestion 2: Paint me a picture.  The result?

So, the girl's no Emily Dickinson, but it's a lot closer to haiku poetry than where she started.

Other poems used the form more faithfully and stuck closer to that "moment in time" idea.  Here are a few that students wrote this week:

Again, I wish I'd taken pictures of the rough drafts, so you could compare.

More than anything, these poems make me want to write a little poetry of my own.  When I was at NOCCA--the creative arts high school I attended--we spent a few weeks on poetic forms.  I wasn't ever very good at it (on the whole preferring the safety and forgiveness of free verse), but I liked the idea of the different forms.  They were like a challenge puzzle: Could I say what I needed to say, upside down with one arm tied behind my back?

Recently, I've been considering how to step up my writing.  I read this great piece by a friend's sister about the importance of daily commitment to the craft, and it made me especially proud of this month of writing...and especially confused about my purpose and goal as a writer.  Sure, some people like to read this blog for the random thoughts I vocalize therein, but most everybody just hopes I date someone new so that they can hear stories about me being ridiculous with men (myself included).  Do I have a vision?  Should I try fiction?  Should I pick an informational or sociological topic for each post?  Is my writing more about self-care than product?  The truth is, I don't know, nor am I sure how to figure that out.

Until then, I guess I'll keep writing.