poetandknowit13 Sep 2002

Dear Doug: since I am the house roach here and everybody else seems to have wandered back to their lives I will try to answer your questions. First off, I do not think many of the folks who have responded to your poem lacked an understanding of it. I know that on first read it was quite clear what you were saying, although I did not pinpoint it as Iraq but took it to mean our lovely "war on terrorism." As far as your comment to beaker, technically yes, a haiku is not restricted to the 5/7/5. It is basically an American translation of the haiku. So you are right there, but in almost all cases a haiku is under 17 syllables, which this is not, so he is correct in questioning the style. Also a haiku tends to focus on one image, although the creator of this site will argue that two contrasting images are necessary, which you have incorporated into the poem. Traditionally, using simplistic imagery is what brought about the haiku's depth, but in this case, you not only use burden-laden imagery, but border on cliche. The lovely (oh if you only look like the image I have in my head) God's Wife was making the case that the best artistic works, especially on areas relating to real events are usually best tackled by those who experienced it first hand. I realize we all experienced it first hand in some sort, although I was in bed, but the general philosophy in formalist literary circles is "write what you know, know what you right." As far as your comments to Limeness, I think she, like all of us were a bit amused by the tedious explanation of a poem most of us were well equipped intellectually to understand. It really is not deep or complex at all - simple imagery, simple metaphor, etc. And my comments regarding Christianity were not in reference to the poem, but to the comments. Just trying to keep it real and light. And last but not least, a good majority of the folks on this site are not American and thus were not affected as Americans. So that is always good to remember. 8>pk